4am

... and I am awake.
My sleep schedule is all screwed up.
I was awake at 8am yesterday, making breakfast and getting ready to hit the farmer's market up for some berries and greens.
Then I canned tomatoes. 
All.  Day.  Long. 
We now have a total of 16 quarts of tomatoes canned in their own juice.  My kitchen must have been 5000 degrees.  I decided that if I was gonna heat it up, I might as well bake a loaf of sourdough and roast the first pumpkin of the year while I was at it.  Yup, that was one hot kitchen. 

By the time I finished up in there, it was dark outside, and the heat had sapped the life out of me.  I needed water, and I needed sleep.  Just a little nap, before we head out to the party....
I awoke past midnight, and the party was pretty much 6 feet under by then, and my Honeybunch hardly stirred when I turned on the laptop and started perusing the many blogs I follow and haven't had time to read lately.

I ordered "Made from Scratch" by Jenna at Cold Antler Farm http://coldantlerfarm.blogspot.com/.  This woman inspires me on a daily basis, and I can't wait to read her book.  I can't tell you how many times I spend an evening in my apron and think, "Jenna would say that I am 'a very exciting young person' right now". 

The figs are starting to come in now.  We picked a handful or two for breakfast yesterday, and the tree is LOADED with green fruit.  Honeybunch and I are determined to make a serious amount of fig jam this year, as well as another 5 gallons at least of fig wine.  On Friday night, we enjoyed the last existing bottle of the fig wine we'd made at the end of August two years ago, when we were living separately and spent two weeks housesitting for Good Neighbors. 

It was our first experiment in living together, in sharing a kitchen, after only 4 months or so of (blissful) dating.  We baked incredible fig bread, made loads of fig jam, and brewed three gallons of fig wine that matured to a beautiful finish recently.  We dined together in that kitchen for every meal, and found that the two weeks we had together "playing house" ended too quickly.  Upon returning from vacation, Good Neighbor asked how living together had gone... and I told him, "I want to marry that boy."  Our friends toasted our engagement with glasses of that fig wine on Friday night, and everything felt as though it had come full circle.

I quit my second job last week.  Upon realizing that my orientation period would be requiring me to work double shifts (going straight from a night shift at the hospital into a day shift at the rehab) on a weekly basis, I decided that I'd like to keep my brain somewhat in tact and that I have enough going on at the one job right now to keep me quite busy and stressed out as it is.  Plus, I have the opportunity to pick up some 12-hour shifts at the hospital this month, and I'd like to see how I manage that schedule.  Ultimately, I'd love to work the holy grail that is three 12's in a row... so now is the time to start weaseling my way into that position if I can. 

Our rooster has started crowing.  I need to get to work on finding him a new home where roosters can be roosters without having the police called on them.  He thinks that one of the Barred Rock pullets is just about the sexiest thing he's ever seen, and she's taken to roosting in the fig tree at night to get away from him.  Sigh.  It's fun having a rooster in the flock, especially since he's a really sweet and beautiful one, and his pubescent antics do make me laugh... but we're not on a farm (yet), and we have to be pragmatic about these things.  I'll miss him though.