A slight interruption...

So my friend Amy called yesterday. We've both been especially busy this summer, so I've barely seen her lately. In fact, she lives next door, and I hadn't seen her in at least three weeks. So she called on her way back from school yesterday (she's studying to be an anesthetic nurse) and asked if I wanted to go out for lunch. On the way, she decided to stop and check to "see if the crab apples are ripe."

At this point, I sensed that I was in for trouble. You see, Amy and I are a little like Lucy and Ethel. And Amy is the Lucy. She's the one who is constantly talking me into doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And yesterday was no exception. The crab apples, she explained, were on a tree at her gym. No one ever picks them, she told me, but her mom told her that crab apples make great jelly.

So we got to the gym, and sure enough -- the crab apples were ripe and falling from the tree. But I soon found out that this wasn't just a scouting mission. This was a full criminal plot. Amy produced a grocery bag from the back of her car, and we got pickin'. We got a bag full of crab apples, and suddenly I knew that my work day was over.

Our lunch out turned into quickly running through the Burger King drive-through on our way to buy canning jars. Neither of us had ever made jelly before, but for some reason we were convinced that we could do it. We called Amy's mom in Texas for a brief overview of jelly-making, and she was pretty sure we were insane. But that didn't stop us. After buying all of our supplies, we headed to Amy's place to experiment with our fifteen pounds of stolen crab apples--which, we discovered, was enough for three batches of jelly.

So seven hours and a few minor burns later, we had ourselves 24 full jars of crab apple jelly--and two extra containers to hold the overflow. When I left, we had just finished our dinner (two slices of toast with jelly, which, incidentally, was delicious), and we had been watching TV while the jars cooled, serenaded by the pleasant popping sound of jars sealing. I left the jars there overnight--I'll go and pick them up later today.

Where I'm going to store twelve jars of jelly in our tiny apartment--or how I'm going to move them all to Columbus when/if it happens--I have no idea. But it was quite an adventure. After it was all over, I came home, put my feet up, and worked on my poncho for a while before falling into bed...