When Life Gives You Tomatoes: Exfoliate!

That's right folks! I'll spare you a photo of it, but after processing some tomatoes earlier today I finally looked in a mirror this afternoon and found that I had tomato seeds dried onto my face! So the exfoliating happened while grabbing a shower before dinner!

I am drowning in tomatoes now, but I think the end is near! When I went out this afternoon I noticed many have leafhopper larvae feasting so they won't be good for anything. I am sick to death of cherry tomatoes! The last potato cage was emptied out by my husband and kids today. I wanted to save this chore for him since it is one of the fun things in the garden and he he missed out on the first two. I am really looking forward to doing a few more varieties next year. The kids were pretty cute telling Daddy "how to do it"...I guess it was fun for them since they obviously paid attention the first time. They kept saying "carefully, Daddy, don't scratch the skins!"

Total for today was 2.04 lbs Rose Finn potatoes, 7 lbs cherry tomatoes, 12 lbs Brandywine & True Black Brandywine tomatoes. Ended up with 1 gal bag of frozen cherry tomatoes, ditched the rest, and 4 pints frozen stewed tomatoes.

I didn't have enough heirlooms to bother with more sauce, so I just stewed them and stowed them in the freezer. The cherry tomatoes I just froze whole, it's really the only way to deal with them. Guess we will be having lots of pasta tossed with cherry tomatoes this winter!

The rest of the day today and tomorrow we will be getting ready for company in the house. This is really only my thing since my husband doesn't see the need for a sparkling aquarium, lawn mowed within 24 hours, bad produce out of the garden, and my obsession for setting candles out in the garden...lol, I am very obsessive, to say the least! My husband is outside right now mowing the lawn in the rain... he was supposed to be off earlier this morning, but in true military fashion, didn't get home until 5 pm. He said "do you still want me to mow, it's sprinkling..." HA! It's now or never, since it is supposed to rain all day tomorrow and Tropical Storm Danny is supposed to visit Saturday. It's a weird kind of rain now anyways, humid with the sun still shining through it...he'll be FINE!

Better luck next year...!

Fair warning: this is a whiny post! As most of you know, my husband has been gone most of the year on training missions for an upcoming deployment this fall. Well unfortunately, due to him being on call 24/7 all this year, we haven't been able to see family for over a year. Well, not true entirely, since we got to see my brother for dinner one night as he had a layover here for about 5 hours on his way to Afghanistan...hmmm, not sure that qualified as relaxing though, since he was on his way over there. Anyways, back to my rant: my other brother called about a month ago and said that they were going to rent a beach house in the Outer Banks of NC, which is only 2 1/2 hours from us, and would be flying in here and driving down. Awesome! I check my husband's schedule, and it is during the 3 weeks he is supposed to be here in September. I was soooooo looking forward to this, since we can drive down and spend some time with them and meet my new niece (my first, I might add!). Fast forward to this evening: sailor/husband calls from work and informs me that the ship is now leaving the night before they get here and won't be back until a week after they leave. Wha????? You would think I would be used to this but the false starts and stops the military throws our way I never get used to! I'm okay with the training, deployments, holidays without daddy, etc, but COME ON! At least let us visit family for a couple of days somewhere in that year! Here is a nice fact that hit home this evening - my husband has over 60 DAYS of vacation on the books....that says something about how long it has been since we have been able to plan anything. And Christmas will be a bust, since I am not about to drive alone with 2 kids and 2 dogs up north in winter with only 7 days that the school gives for break. END RANT...BETTER LUCK NEXT YEAR!

Onto other things:

I got a shot of daddy's plane as it landed the other night! In all these years, this is the first time we have had our times straight! Usually they either are late or arrive at a completely different base than was put out to the families (see above, lol!)

Hubby has been working hard in the humid stink outside trying to get put-off chores done before company comes this weekend. Yay! All this crap actually came from behind my sheds...he made 3 trips to the dump and burned alot of debris for me. This is something I don't tackle due to the local water moccasins and copperheads, lol...saved it all for him!

Today I went to the nursery to pick up what was left of their parsley, since the residents of the "Black Swallowtail Daycare Facility" decimated what I had! Below you can see only the stalks are left!

At least we did get one good evening fishing with daddy before he had to go back to work.

Lovely shot of my feet:
And one last kick in the pants - when he got home he told me he would be working "days" for the next 2 weeks. He has been working nights for over a year so I was excited about getting to eat dinner as a family this week. Uhhhh, not exactly - the Navy's definition of "days" is to go in somewhere between 9-11 am and work until 2-3 am. No kidding. Good thing none of you live near me or I would drop off my kids with you while I go get some much needed rest and medication as an inpatient at the closest psych facility!