Some Things Don't Go As Planned

Our garden was a flop this year. The severe lack of rain killed almost every plant we had. Carter and Jackson have been checking the garden for the past few weeks. They've picked some cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, banana peppers, and this little guy. It's an eggplant. The boys thought it was supposed to be the size of an egg, so they picked it. It's barely larger than a chestnut and it quite resembles one.


A zippered pouch. I sewed this the other night. I am still using my old manual sewing machine (don't ask about my replacement sewing machine). It's awful. I really don't know how I ever learned to sew on that thing. Having to figure out tension (over and over and over and over again) and rethreading the needle and bobbin about every 3 minutes can make a girl nuts. Seriously. As I was sewing the last few stitches, it occurred to me that the zipper might open backwards. And it does. It opens from right to left. Not left to right. (Is there a difference? How do you install zippers?) After all the machine struggles, it's not right. I wasn't very happy.

We have decided as a family to serve our neighbors more. I want our children to learn to serve others and I think I've found the perfect solution for our family. Every week we are going to take a meal-size portion of dinner to one of our widowed neighbors. We have three. Two men who lost their wives and a lady who lost her husband. I think we're going to also do this for Aunt Lettie and my grandmother. It has made us sad to think that our elderly friends and family aren't getting a decent, nutritious meal as often as they should. In the past, we've made food for the two men, but we've decided to try it weekly and include a few others.

One (generous) portion of a meal is not harder to prepare. Nor does it take any more effort than packing it up and delivering it. My kids are very thrilled about. We are calling it Operation Service.

This past Wednesday was our first try. Roasted chicken, glazed carrots, buttered noodles and cheesecake. The only thing that didn't go as planned is that the chickens took longer to bake than I would have liked and my digital meat thermometer decided to die (not good when you're cooking poultry). I realize that most older people like to eat dinner early, so we need to correct that for next week. It didn't go exactly as I had hoped, but at least we did it. (And, Ruth, our first recipient said she would save it for the following night.)

So, while some things don't go as planned, there's always next time and always room for improvement.