As I type this, I have a very funny looking parrot on my right shoulder. It's actually not a parrot at all, rather, it a kitten that is about the size of half a loaf of bread. Her mother is a Siamese mix, heavy on the Siamese, who we adopted as a shop cat a few months ago, but she also blessed us with a little bundle of joy.
Empress Marshmallow Petals
And yes, she goes off like an EMP. She typed many numbers just a minute ago when she took a flying leap off the back of my recliner and onto my number key pad.
Like my life wasn't exciting enough, now I have a parkour kitten on the loose.
She has returned to my shoulder, and is scarily studying my fingers tap as I type this.
Anyway, I have been picking about five pounds of raspberries or so for every other day for quite a long time, and today, since I had a request for jam with seeds in it, well, I made some.
While I was making the jam, something I can do from memory as I have made jam a time or two, I would randomly have a kitten Velcro stuck to my pant legs at random intervals. (I just had to unstick her from my leg for the fifty-second time and put her on the floor, it's like having a toddler around).
I can't say that I didn't giggle at her derp of a look that she gave me every time she would shimmy up to my hip and just stare at me like, hello human, deliverer of kitty crunchies and snuggles.
She just typed 666. It's okay, I deleted it.
The jam turned out quite tasty, I reserved enough before I canned it so the hubs can have some on a biscuit or toast, probably both.
My next jam making foray will be of the seedless kind for pastry making reasons. I am wondering how that process will go, as Petals is only going to get bigger and more rambunctious from this point onward.
Tactical kitten evasion jam making sounds like a cool thing to put on one's resume though.
This year has been a bit odd as I am not doing nearly as many things as I have come to be used to doing in the canning and growing department. Some of that is due to the heathens launching and moving off into the world. And honestly, I haven't minded scaling back a bit, leaning into small batch production, and realizing I don't have to pick and freeze a metric ton of things like blueberries.
Yet, as I stood there stirring my bubbling jam, I had to smile, for there are some things that are always going to feel normal.
My arm being gnawed on like a piece of corn on the cob is not one of them. I gotta run, there's a kitten to jettison!
And as most of the time, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's still alive for the moment until the kitten decides she wants to sample it iPhone.
