all day with Mary B...

I'm still working on the right mix of chores and dissipations for the days I have committed to spend with Mary Brown -- I did a lot of unappealing paper work last night, with the benefit of cleared flat surfaces to contemplate today... I have a mess of cookery to attend to -- a batch of yogurt, some fridge-cleaning-out, defrosting my freezer while stocks are low, IRONING.

And then perhaps I can spend some time sorting out my pantry shelves... and gathering up all the fountain and/or cartridge pens in the place and reaming them out and getting them running again... and writing a very tall stack of notes and letters to folks.

Somewhere in here there needs to be a sermon also! I am guest-preaching away from St. Curious on Sunday morning, among people I don't know at all -- so the approach to the text will take some pondering.

It is a busy and "fraught" time in Ramblerland...some of it unbloggable, and some of it not-bloggable-before-a-given-date. That date is now past, and so "now it can be told" that along about Easter, all being well in the meantime, the Rambler is going to enter into grandmotherhood..."with all that that entails." Marvelous birthday-present news that took me completely, but COMPLETELY, by surprise.

And in the meantime, the Rambler is now the sole occupant of Tether's End (barring Nefertiti the Wonder Cat). And THAT is all unimaginably new: from here on, NOTHING goes into that fridge that isn't in the Personal Meal Plan. It's a little hard to grasp that I probably won't ever have to buy twenty pounds of ANYTHING, ever again -- no matter how alluring the price! Also new: the sense that nothing, NOTHING in this abode has to be where it is, if I don't want it there. Startling, it is.

I'll come back later to do the Friday Five. But on the schedule now is some personal clenn-up (and "spackling"), some shopping, some bureaucracy, in the meantime contemplating a recipe for non-alcoholic-punch-for-250. My HOS, Fabrector, is getting married a week tomorrow. And I am in charge of PUNCH...this is an area of cookery where neither Julia Child nor Emma Rombauer has been any help at all, but I think I have found a recipe, and now I just have to think about container-for-transport: jam kettle, perhaps.

I also have to give some thought to roasting a turkey, preparing a Giant Pan (or two) of Delectable Stuffing, concocting a Hugeous Leafy Salad...and confecting an 8-cup Tomato Aspic (with shrimp). Others are providing the Brussels sprouts, the sweet potatoes, the pies (and more turkeys and stuffing and mashed spuds etc). Because next weekend is not only WEDDING, but Canadian THANKSGIVING (we like to get these things tidied away early, you see).