Quick update

The girls are out of school and I am recovering from a 24-hour GI bug.

In better news, our pink tree is being delivered (and planted) today! Very exciting!!

I've been busting my butt volunteering with the VNA; today will be 30 hours in the last two weeks. But you can't shop or get pre-sale passes for friends and family if you don't get to 30. And I knew it would be tough with the girls off school. Sweet Ward is taking a day off to help out.

The mattress shopping has become a chore. I've been going out on my own, pre-screening for stores and beds that I think Ward should try. I feel like I've been doing a lot of laying around! I found a place yesterday with a mattress that I think will be just what we want, at a good price without the hassles of Sleepy's. The owner is a little...intense, but I can take that.

Back to Sleepy's...I stopped there last week to see if they had the mattress that Lisa & Bob got. Evidently I went to the only Sleepy's in NJ that doesn't have it. Rrrr. But the guy insisted on writing me a quote for it, and dopey me, I gave him my name and contact information. Now some other guy from Sleepy's keeps calling and saying he can beat the price. On a mattress that I still haven't tried! I think that has pretty much closed the case for Sleepy's.

The soup this week was Scotch Barley & Mushroom. I was intending to use lamb shank bones, according to Jacques Pepin's recipe. But since ShopRite had leg of lamb last week for $1.99/lb I thought that was a much better deal.

I've spent too many springs on sheep farms in the UK to actually be able to eat lamb myself. That said, last year I started adding ground lamb to my St. Patrick's Day Shepherd's Pie. I know it makes a much better version; my mom LOVED when Ward used to get them at Fairway with lamb. But a whole leg of lamb...well I thought I could do it. I boned it out, acutely aware of all those anatomy and physiology classes at Ithaca. "Oh look, here's the (whatever) muscle," I thought, cringing only slightly. But then I put the bone and the meat in the stock pot. And the head of the femur kept bubbling up to the surface. I felt like I was living the scene in "Fatal Attraction" where the bunny is boiling in the pot...yeesh. The soup came out really well, but it was a real test for me.