Thank you! Homesteading Em. Kids both cute and insufferable.

Dearest readers, Your wildly enthusiastic responses to A Case for Thorns were so rewarding and exciting. Thank you! I dare say I felt like a "real" blogger.

A note about comments. A few have said they fear they "comment too much." Others so kindly comment via my personal Facebook page and wonder why those don't import to the comment section on Em-i-lis.

1) Comments are a blogger's bread and butter. You can NEVER comment too much or often, unless you are an a-hole troll. Y'all are not. So, comment away! 2) If you do want your comment to show on Em-i-lis, you either need to comment directly on the post OR on the feed that scrolls through me Em-i-lis Facebook page. The latter imports directly to the post on which you're remarking. My personal page does not feed into my blog.

In any case, thank you.

Pull Up Your Covered Wagon; I've Got My Kettle A'boil! And some irritating kids for sale.

Today was a marathon of putting up, sandwiched around Tom's work picnic during which Oliver could NOT have been a bigger pill. T and I were trying so hard not to honk and snort on his colleagues (people, can we just be well!?) and Ol's total commitment to pilldom really did us in. I cannot tell you how many times he climbed up the water slide-moon bounce ladder only to then start crying and request that we go up and fetch him. We did not have on bathing suits.

There was a dunking booth which is a bit of entertainment that needs to go newly viral. Jack clamored in and said, "Hey Mom, you wanna dunk me?"

People, I did. I really did. He'd had several moments throughout the morning during which I thought putting a fork in my eye and jumping out of the window sounded preferable to spending more time with him. So, I dunked his business like it was my job. He laughed, I laughed, and we were best pals from then on. Oliver was still whining to beat sixty, and if he were a better swimmer, I'd have forced his tiny bum up onto that dunk ledge ASAP.

The verve with which folks (except one nice mother) dunked their children was a sight to behold. Hilarious. There was even a grandfather who went in on his grandchildren. I think this is very illuminating, y'all. Just sayin'.

But for the rest of the day, I dealt with my the fruits of my wildly enthusiastic labors of yore. Blackberry-buttermilk muffins for breakfast. Straight-up blackberry jam for Tom and Jack; blackberry-sage for moi. So many bags of berries vacuum-sealed and put in the chest freezer for later. This gorgeous blackberry-peach crisp with a sage-brown butter topping. I think there are just a few cups left.

And then the tomatoes. Seventeen pounds, which was roughly half that tub I was gifted last night, were eaten by the boys or pressure-canned into quarts for the months from now when fresh tomatoes seem like a figment of a bygone era. Definite progress!

J and I read another chapter of The Westing Game tonight. Sadly, we're almost done, but happily, he loves it as much as I did when I was his age. Tomorrow the raspberries need tending, the peaches will surely have started to ripen and there remain many a pound of tomato to go. I'm up for it, as long as my Kleenex box and giant cup of water aren't far away.

Some appreciations to close the circle of happy-irritated

Come hell or high water, I was going to can most of those tomatoes tonight. They just wouldn't stop staring at me, not even when the boys plucked their googly eyes off and relocated them: Oliver slapped one over each nostril opening, and Jack moved one to his belly button and one to a place that won't be named. I blanched, peeled, seeded, cored, juiced, stewed and canned those scarlet nightshades. Yes.I.did. Four quarts are cooling now. Because canning tall quarts of tomatoes in a standard, just-taller-than-quart-jars waterbath canner makes for a very sloshy, bubbly, messy 45 or so minutes, I pulled out my Casa Noble Reposado tequila and poured a bit over ice. Plus simple syrup. Plus lime. Equals a dee-lightful cocktail that eased the slight bit of anxiety over spewing, boiling water I had. I highly recommend this tequila; it is smooth as get-out.

Later, I made a delicious salad and had a tiny slice of plum tart too.

In the meantime, I thought about how irritated I was with the children by 5p but also how god-awfully in love with them I am. They are jewels, both of them. Precious, special, funny, creative, kind, smart little gems in my life. I love the way Oliver calls salsa "spice" and how he refers to lettuce as "salad." As in, "Mom, let's buy chips and spice AND cut some fresh salad for lunch." It's too much. I can't stand how darling it is. Also he says "lusually" instead of usually. The other day at the store he said, "Mom, we lusually buy the dish soap with a blue top, so why are you buying this one with a green top?"

I not only didn't realize this color discrepancy but also wondered why he had, was impressed by this knowledge of household minutiae and just liked a chance to hear him say "lusually."

Meanwhile, Jack always has such grandiose plans in the works. And I love that it never occurs to him that 95% are at best highly unlikely to come to fruition, if not completely unrealistic. Like his current plan to build his own snow skis and poles, use them and also build some for Oliver. The night-vision goggles are in the works -there are at least three prototypes in the house now- and for a long while we were going to build a boat with a 9-foot mast. As if. But he was full-speed ahead, and really, that's how you get places in life. You just go do it, worries be damned.

Also, Jack is really great about correctly throwing words like "minuscule" and "modify" into everyday conversation and often prefaces commentary with phrases like, "well, in my opinion" or "more accurately, X/Y/or Z." It slays me to hear a 7 year old with giant and/or missing teeth talking like this. I love it.

And so, despite the fact that they are still totally grounded and in fact added a day to their punishment by throwing pounds of raisins around the house just after the twice-a-month housekeeper left (like literally, as she was walking out), I am grateful for these hellions and all the nonsense they insert into my quotidien life.