brief update

I'm not going to be able to do a proper post with pictures and stuff until I get home from my parents' house because they have dial up, but I thought I would drop in on my own blog just to keep things current.

I am at my parent's house in Sunnyside, Washington, a place aptly named. We've had nothing but sun since I got here, and I understand that home has been continually overcast. I've been keeping busy with simple things like shopping for maternity clothes, drying apples, canning peaches, baking cookies, visiting friends, and taking lots of naps. I must feel more relaxed than I did at home because I'm actually sleeping all the way through the night. It probably helps to have people around so much. Loneliness can unsettle the brain.

This morning Dad and I went gleaning apples. Gleaning (for those of you who haven't; not many, I know) means going through a field or orchard after the professional pickers have gone through. Most people don't mind as long as you ask permission first and are very careful with the plants. Gleaning apples like a treasure hunt because the apples are never in obvious places. It requires a sharp eye and a willingness to bend yourself all out of shape to reach one particularly tempting fruit (parallels to original sin, anybody?). My dad has a stick with an old coffee can on the end that he uses to reach fruit that are out of reach. Of course, there's always the chance that the pickers left a certain fruit behind because it was soft or eaten on the side you can't see and sometimes beautiful fruit are wedged so tightly between two branches that they can't be pried loose, but it's not hard to collect several buckets of good fruit in the space of an hour.

When I would go gleaning in high school, I would climb trees (frowned upon) and twist myself into all sorts of nooks and crannies to get at fruit. I almost thought it was an insult to leave a good apple behind. Now that I'm twenty-six and four months pregnant (almost), I've discovered that some of my old gleaning habits just aren't dignified. Jumping after high apples in poorly cushioned boots -- bad idea. Twisting in between tight branches -- bad idea. Riding through orchard in old truck with bad shocks while wearing lap belt -- bad idea. Without lap belt -- also bad idea. Now baby is just fine I'm sure, but I did scare myself a couple of times, enough that I let Dad carry all the apples back to the truck, whereas in high school I would have dragged my own bucket back if it killed me.

So this afternoon, after my nap, I'm going to fill the dehydrator once again and wait for Mom to come home. Then this evening, we can get started on applesauce.