Labor Day without labor

I have today off. It's Labor Day and I celebrate all the people who work at dirty jobs, menial jobs, and unfulfilling jobs. I am blessed.. I have a demanding job as a kindergarten para-professional (always on the GO) but it is fulfilling to work with kids. I have worked at unfulfilling jobs before and it is mentally and emotionally draining to spend a third of your day or more rented out to The Man doing work you hate.

So, loving my time off, I woke up extra early, 5:45am. Ironically this is earlier than I usually get up on weekdays. I can't claim any extra motivation or special diligence...I have a wicked cold (Maine-ism there, "wicked") and I simply could not breathe.

But I put the time to good use. I cleaned the bathroom, did the dishes, vacuumed, and completed 2 loads of laundry before 8am. With the rest of the day 'free' I sat at my lovely computer, since it is my favorite place in the world (aside from Italy) and I started writing.

There is so much end time news happening, I got three blog entries done! The news keeps popping. But though I was diligently busy searching out scriptures, writing the news, and intently focused on the laptop screen, my cats were driving me crazy. They sleep next to me, they sleep ON me, they kiss and lick my fingers or toes all night, tromp on me in pursuit of moths or invisible lint, in effect, have total command of the bed all night long, they STILL want to cuddle next to me after I get up. ("She's UP, she's UP go see her, go get her..."). It takes a while to get them calmed down so I can write in peace.

It is the 4th week of school and I didn't think I would escape the mucus and germ factory that is the Kindergarten wing of Danielsville Elementary School, I was hoping I wouldn't kick in with a cold quite so early. No such luck. I am sure the germs see me coming from a long way off. ("She's UP, she's UP go see her, go get her...") So I am sniffling my way through Labor Day. Thus this is the scene here at tiny apartment on Clover Avenue:. To my left, we have...

BERT

To my right we have...

KLEENEX

Behind me we have one of the day's two labors cooling. One was a great pan of roasted veggies. I'll steam up some rice later and those will be my lunches for the week. I also tried my hand at pear bread.  My pear bread...oy. I had to cut back from baking 7 loaves to baking 2 because I ran out of vanilla. Even then, I forgot the wet ingredients in one of the loaves, put them both in the oven, realized the bowl of wet ingredients was sitting there, but already forgot which loaf was the dry one. I guessed. Either they'll come out even, or one will be a swamp and the other will be a brick.

So  I took them out and one looked normal and the other looked...lumpy. Like a choppy sea after Hurricane Earl. I cut into the normal one and it was pretty crumbly but tasty, so maybe it'll be OK, I probably just cut it too soon. I hope. Because the other one is frankly, scaring me a little.

So that's my day, and the kitties' day and the waning of the lovely time at home I treasure so much. Back to the workweek tomorrow.