The Tanking Economy Hits Close to Home

The tanking economy just broke up this neighborhood pack of pals. Last summer, we finally had a young family move into a house that had been vacant for well over a year. We were thrilled. The boy, Mather (far left) and the girl, Astrid (next to her brother) were Meagan and James' (far right) ages and quickly became friends and allowed Charlie (center)to tag along with them everywhere they went. What's more, they had a sweet 13 year-old sister who would babysit for us on even a moment's notice. They spent the whole summer riding up and down our street and in and out of each other's houses. You always hope your kids will find good friends and these were good friends.

Once, shortly after the boys became fast pals, they were playing with a toy pirate ship and figurines down in the basement and I heard Mather announe, "Ok these are the pirates that will steal all the gold..." Then I could almost hear his moral reasoning churning in his mind and then he added, "...but they are only going to steal gold for the poor people." That's when I knew for sure I loved these kids being buds with our kids.

Our new neighbors had relocated here from New Hampshire and loved the sunny weather and great community and quickly got themselves connected to new friends, colleagues, and neighbors.

Then, about three weeks ago, while Mather helped us unload the car after a trip we had taken knowing that I'd let James run off and play as soon as this job was done (again, I love this kid!), Mather announced, "My dad got laid off." My heart sank and I froze in my tracks. I said, "Really, Mather?" He said, "Yeah...the economy is not so good." James, senisng the seriousness of this said, "What does 'laid off' mean?" I started to formulate my answer when Mather said, "It's not 'getting fired' but it's kind of the same because you don't get to have your job anymore."

About a week later, Mather announced they were moving back to New Hampshire. Mather's dad later explained that unlike the other higher level managers that were laid off from his lab, he was lucky in that he was able to arrange for a new career taking over his father's small business.

And last week, they packed up all their belongings from a home they had settled into so easily and quickly and headed back to New Hampshire.


The crazy thing is I've been trying to understand this tanking economy of ours... reading the papers, watching news conferences with President Obama, reading articles. I knew this tanking economy was wide spread and affecting everyone, us included. A few months ago, Jeff who follows our long term investments better than I do, came home and said, "Well, we lost half our retirement today."(Fortunately for us we're a ways off from retirement or sending our kids to college and hopefully have time to rebuild that nest egg). But, the biggest and most real blow of all was seeing that moving truck in front of our neighbor's house and watching my kids' pals all pile in the truck and wave a solemn good-bye.

If You Want the Best Jam in the Land, You Gotta Make Your Own

"If you want the best jam in the land, you gotta make your own." This is the chorus to a song I first heard in my living room when our friend, Kylee, sang it to our kids as she played the guitar. Later I learned that Michelle Shocked sings it and if I can ever figure out how to add music to this blog of mine, I'll add the song to this post some day.

At the tail end of July, I got a call from my good friend Tiffany. Here's how the call went:

Tiffany (in her always enthusiastic tone): Angie! They have 25 lb. boxes of apricots at Farmer's Market for THREE dollars!!

Me (wondering why this is such exciting news): Sounds like a good deal for you...

Tiffany: NO! You don't understand! It's a GREAT deal! Go over and buy a box and we'll make jam!

Me: Tiff, I don't know how to make JAM!

Tiffany: That's okay! I'll show you. Go buy a box if you're in. (Click. She hangs up.)

The next thing I know, I'm forking out my 3 bucks for a very heavy box of apricots. I had committed myself to a day of jam making.

Early the next Friday morning, Tiffany shows up at my front door wearing the frilliest apron you've ever seen. It had ruffles like that of a can-can girl and this can-can girl had more canning supplies with her than she had ruffles in her apron. Our six kids got all kinds of busy playing and I put on my apron (not nearly as fancy as Tiffany's) so that Tiffany and I could get all kinds of busy with this project of ours:

First, we sterilized all our jars:


Then we made some tactical errors that cost us nothing but time until we consulted the directions in the boxes of pectin. Then, we got busy cooking down the apricots with pectin and more sugar than I feel comfortable admitting to in print:

We stirred and stirred the dreamy concoction until it was time to can it up with help from some of our six kids. Meagan was especially fond of jarring up the jam:

We experimented a bit trying reduce the rediculous amount of sugar and blending the mixture for a different texture. So, every batch of jam was a little different from the next. We joked that we should wait and label the jars after all was said and done. Some were best labeled "syrup", others "chutney", others "sauce" and still others the "jam" it was intended to be. Call it what you want, but we were pretty darn proud of all these jars:

This project, with the "help" of the six kids took all day long. And we never did get to the second box of apricots. That box would spend the day with Tiffany alone in her kitchen where she would try some new experiments like adding pineapple to the concoction, yum! As we spent the day together, we sustained ourselves on laughter and stories of our grandmothers who were champion canners.

Tiffany told me stories of her memories of canning with her mom and grandma and how they'd tap quickly on all the jars insuring that they were all safely sealed. I told Tiffany about how my grandma traveled with jars of pickles in her suitcase because she never wanted to disappoint my dad, her son-in-law, who anxiously awaited her signature pickles when she and my grandpa would come visit us.

We took another look at all our jars and decided we should be photographed with the result of a day's labor:

How could we have not gotten Tiffany's can-can apron in the picture?!

We really were quite proud. Then Tiffany brought us back down to earth when she said, "You know what, Angie, I was reading my grandma's journal once about how she made 4 bushels of fruit into jam. That's like 4 times what we just made and she did it all by 10 a.m., I'm sure of it! We're not really as cool as we think we are."

Still, we decided we were cool enough to enter our jam in the county fair. On Friday night, we went to the fair to take part in some good county fair fun and to view all the entries, and guess what??!

It turns out we made the best jam in the land.

Here are some other ribbon winners at the county fair:

Meagan's Sunflower Photograph-White Ribbon


James' Horse Painting-Red Ribbon


Charlie's finger painting - white ribbon