Pardon Me

I've been a bit absent lately. I've been busy, yes, but really I just haven't felt much like writing.
The opera went well. Opening night, when we stood for the applause, I could see that a girl in the front row had been crying. What an indescribable feeling to know that we moved someone to tears! Apparently at the end of the show when Rodolfo realized that Mimi was dead and threw himself over her in grief, many people forgot that he was acting. I wish I could have seen it. That is absolutely the only thing I don't like about playing in these shows!
It was also fun just to see people walking into the theater. Most had pulled out their evening wear for the night at the opera. It's such a change from Fairbanks's usual super informal dress code that it made it all the more fun. The show was held at one of the local high schools, not some fancy concert hall like the Disney Concert Hall in L.A. or Benaroya Hall in Seattle, but that didn't matter. I love this community.
I did get around to weeding my garden several times over the weekend and discovered something that made me rather ashamed--two pea plants I hadn't even realized I had. Whoops! They weren't on my little garden chart at all, and they were in the area I'd let go wild. Not any more. I cleared some space for them and they're doing better than they should be. One of them even has a pea started on it.
When I checked on my tomatoes I was shocked to discover that they actually have fruit on them. And not just one or two, either, but over 30! I've been watching my plants mostly from a small distance, knowing that in their buckets they don't need much beyond water and a little fertilizer now and then. Now I can't stop obsessively checking them to see if the tomatoes have grown at all, as if they'd visibly grow between when I started weeding the garden and when I ended. But I still need to check.
Lazy gardening has paid off once again. I meant to water the garden last night but completely forgot in the flurry of getting things done before Shane left this morning. However, it started raining during the night and hasn't stopped yet so there's no need to artificially water. Like I said, lazy gardening.
I harvested more rhubarb over the weekend. Some from L's neighbor, who has a large plant that she doesn't do anything with, and some from my own plants. Hurray! I've got just about two gallons of rhubarb stored so far, though I need more like 10-15 for how much we eat over the winter. :) L also told me that lately she's been making rhubarb scones. I must get the recipe from her! Those sound amazing.
We bottled Shane's latest homebrew (a pale ale) last night while cooking dinner, and decided to try something unusual. Shane wanted to see if he could make hard apple cider. Since, of course, it's not apple season, and anyway it would be hideously expensive to make it straight from apples (it requires a full bushel, 42 lbs.), and there's no cidery at which to get said apples pressed, we bought 5 gallons of apple cider from the store. Shane did the heating and then cooling, adding the yeast and some brown sugar (to help the fermenting process) last night and we pitched it (put it in the fermenter) just before bed. It was slowly bubbling away this morning, so it's started the fermenting process. We'll see how that goes.
I'm a bit worried about our cat. Like most of his species, he's generally rather graceful. He's also an accomplished jumper since we've seen him getting over the back fence, which is taller than I am. This morning, however, he knocked over the dog gate a couple of times because he apparently didn't clear it. That was odd enough by itself, but then when I fed him breakfast he failed the leap to the top of the chest freezer, about waist-high for me. The last time I saw him jumping so badly was when he hurt his back after being gone for the better part of three days. So I'm wondering, could he have gotten into a fight with something during one of his nightly sojourns? I followed him once when he hopped the fence and found him facing off with another cat, hissing at each other from a short distance. (As soon as he made the other cat leave, he hopped back over our fence into the yard. Apparently, he just felt the need to defend the house.) Perhaps he met a cat that wasn't scared off by a bit of posturing and hissing? I'm going to watch him carefully for a bit to make sure he doesn't need a trip to the vet. I can't even imagine how I would do that by myself, except by borrowing J&L's cat carrier and getting a ride from someone. What a pain that would be!
The dog managed to mess the floor, twice, within ten minutes of Shane's leaving this morning. That was lovely to wake up to, especially since I didn't sleep much from 5:00 (the time of Shane's first alarm) on. >(