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Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

Lobster Homicide

Friday, August 24th, 2007

Joshua’s girlfriend Kristina comes from a lobstering family, and at least one day a week during summer works on the boat. As a major treat she brought us FOUR lobster. Lobster Homicide 1 Now, I haven’t had a whole lobster since I was on a vacation in about the mid 80s, and haven’t fixed one since I was in grad school in 1982 (and then I just took them home from Boston to California and Mom cooked them). Well. My squeamishness about raw meat products (I won’t touch raw chicken, and Paul has to do the turkey until it is at least half-cooked) did me in. Here’s what happened:

We set the bag of lobsters (they spent the night inside a bag in the fridge…Paul said when he opened the door in the middle of the night to get something to drink the bag moved….) into the sink since it was drippy:

Lobster Homicide 4

Joshua picked up a lobster for us to see:

Lobster Homicide 2

I couldn’t bring myself to pick one up, even wearing rubber gloves. Somehow, awkwardly, I managed to use tongs while wearing gloves to pick one up and transfer it:

Lobster Homicide 3

Into the pot—fortunately no banging on the sides of the pot (which I have heard…shudder) or screaming/hissing:Lobster Homicide 5

The look of the steam/vapor, however is totally cool. I don’t know that I can ever use these photos for a quilt tho…too traumatic.
By the second round of boiling (pot fit 2 at a time), I couldn’t even manage with gloves and tongs, so Eli did the courageous honors (or is it dastardly deed?):Lobster Homicide 6

Then, he decided to be cute:Lobster Homicide 7

Here are two of the lobsters, truly dead and red, in the sink:

Lobster Homicide We had to call Kristina and ask her how to get them open. Answer: pull off legs and claws. Grab head and tail in hands and twist apart. Gut. Shell. Eat. That’s when I lost it. I couldn’t do it. Joshua was able to pull off the claws and legs from one, but wouldn’t gut them. I couldn’t. Paul’s shoulder is bad and he only has one hand these days (the rotator cuff surgery thing), so he isn’t able to do it, though he would if he could. So we now have a king’s ransom in the fridge, boiled bright red, intact…. if I can get someone to gut them for me, I think I can get the meat out, but who…… I know. I’m a wuss. I don’t care. I can’t kill and dismember and gut. Sigh. I may have eaten the last lobster tail of my life nearly 25 years ago.  And I feel guilty about such a wonderful gift, and not being able to live up to it.  Anyone wanna come gut my lobsters?  I’ll be more than happy to share  the meat….

Just a note

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

Just a quick note to let you all know I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth! It has been busy here… Paul is recovering from rotator cuff (shoulder…torn tendons) surgery. Days are pretty good, nights off-and-on…. some good, others not so great. Joshua is doing quite well with his leg, and the plastic surgeon said on Monday that he doesn’t need to see him again. We are to keep the dressings on for a while longer, then the rest is just growing bone, healing and recovering muscle. Joshua is making up for having lost all that weight in the hospital (I’m guessing maybe 15 pounds in ten days?) by eating us out of house and home.

Today I take Eli to Freeport, home of LL Bean, for school clothes shopping, then this afternoon a first for us: Lobster! Kristina, Joshua’s girlfriend, is from a lobstering family and works on the boat once or twice a week. Yesterday, she treated us to four, so we now have a moving bag inside the fridge… I’ll take pics! Time to run…gotta get on the road (Bean is about 80 minutes from here, and we need to be home early enough to fix and eat lobster before Eli’s soccer practice at 6….).

Quilty stuff eventually, Cheers, Sarah

Morning Still Life

Thursday, August 9th, 2007

On Monday, before we knew Joshua would be coming home, I had a quiet moment. Eli was off to camp and I was all alone in the house (a RARE occurrence). There was a ripe mango in the fridge. Not for long…. when I set my things down to eat and read e-mails, I thought this looked so lovely:Morning Still Life

So that is my morning beauty break…. Joshua is improving daily, though he has a long way to go. Having friends over all day nearly wore him out yesterday, but he was so happy having first Taylor, then Kristina. And my Coastal Quilter friend Leigh Smith made us the most incredible dinner (which lasted for two!) of homemade lasagna, Italian bread, ice cream, and even some red wine (with two straws, which Paul had joked we would need since we were too tired to pour a glass), and a heavenly smelling candle! I should have taken pictures, but instead we inhaled the dinner. Gotta get her recipe!

Joshua is HOME HOME HOME!!!!

Monday, August 6th, 2007

As of 6:30 pm, about 3 weeks and 2 hours after he left the house, Joshua came HOME! We are all elated to say the least….here’s the sequence:

pulling into the garage

door openthru garageup stepsinsideAt computerpetting the dogsLife is good. Joshua is HOME! Blessings be, with thanks to all the angels, human and otherwise, that helped bring him home. 

Joshua update 8/6–quilt blocks!

Monday, August 6th, 2007

Sometime today, Monday, we will find out how the skin grafts did…. if well, then Joshua should be able to come home this week (and sooner is better!). In the meantime, it is a waiting game…keeping his foot elevated (so as not to float the skin grafts off…literally! eeek!). But blocks have been arriving by the half dozen…another six or so arrived in Saturday’s mail, which Paul brought with him to the hospital on Sunday. So, I added the new ones to the ones already up there, and laid them all out on the bench where Paul and I take turns sleeping.

The first photo is of the 15 blocks we had in the morning (when the light in the room was better). You can see a bit of the lap quilt from our sofa peeking out at the ends…that room desperately needed color and we needed a blankie!

15 blocks

This second photo shows more blocks but the photo isn’t as good…. 18 blocks