Shocking the Amish

 Yesterday was not a great day. It was one of those days that left me feeling ineffective and useless. Tim is not sleeping at night and his exhaustion makes him difficult. I can't fault him really. I'm not at my best when I'm tired either, but it gets discouraging dealing with his frustrations on top of my own. I was just tired out. I tried to come up with a post last night, but couldn't. Some days are just better left unexamined, I guess. I gave up and went to bed and Tim tried hard not to fidget. 

Today, Mattie needed to get to Corry for a 9:30 appointment. Her sister, Lyddie, had an appointment as well. I was looking forward to an excuse to get out of the house for a morning. 

I waited in the car as they had their appointments and when they came out, we zipped over to the grocery store. We pulled into the parking lot and we saw an Amish lady loading her groceries in a van. Mattie immediately said, "She is not from our group." Curiously, I asked how she knew. She looked at me as if I was blind. "She dresses differently." I looked and I couldn't really see it, but then, I was driving the car and had my eyes on other things. Her clothing certainly looked no different to me. 

As I parked, she closed the hatch of the van. Her driver waited in the vehicle. She set at a brisk pace. Mattie and Lyddie laughed. "Now she's going to go to the dollar store just like we will."

Making a joke, I said, "No. I bet she's going to the vape shop." 

They laughed merrily at my joke, but the laughter died away as the woman opened the door to the vape shop. They said in shocked voices. "She IS going into that store!" They had no idea what to make of it. 

But after  some pondering, they decided that she must be buying tobacco for her man. 

I got some great deals at the grocery store. The store is known for their meat selection and they had a great deal on pork roasts. I also got beef liver as a special treat for Tim and I some night when William is having supper with his mom and stepfather. I got three bags of bell peppers on discount, to chop up and toss into the freezer. Things like that. 

The Dollar store had a good deal on Raisin Bran, so I picked up a couple boxes for Tim. In no time at all, my car began filling up with bags and boxes. They certainly do not waste a trip out. There was one more stop at Walmart.  Mattie and the children are making bird houses and she needed to buy the paint for them. 

Driving there both women gave astonished shouts. They spied, with their little eyes, two Amish women coming out of the laundromat. "That's just LAZY!" they said in unison. You have to understand, when I got to Mattie's to pick her up at 8:45, she had her laundry already hung out. Let me tell you that laundry for 10 people is no small feat. She has a gas powered wringer washer in the back room. She came rushing out of the house with the front of her dress still splashed and wet from the wash water. It was a bitter day with a sharp wind and she laughed when I told her that she couldn't be out in the cold with her wet dress. She pulled her cape around her and said, "It'll dry." 

Her sister had an elevated pulley clothes line that stretched behind the house and across a field and when we went down her long driveway, the line was full.  It held an unbelievable number of diapers flapping in the wind. That's a lot of work happening before 9 am, and yet they were watching two Amish ladies coming out of a laundromat. 

They pondered that in shocked silence as well. Eventually they agreed that some of the blankets are awfully heavy and are too big for the wringer.  If these women had a batch of blankets to do, it was only reasonable to use the laundromat, they supposed. 

We had a pleasant morning running errands. Finally, we were headed home. We stopped first to collect Lyddie's four children, three little boys and a girl from a neighbor's house. As we waited, Mattie said, "This house used to be my uncle's house. See the hitching rail over there?" (The place where visitors would tie up the horses.) Once my cousins were playing horses. One of the boys was playing the role of the horse, and at the end of his trip, the youngest boy was tied to the hitching rail as any sensible Amish would do. An 'English' driving by had seen the child tied and called the police on them for tying their child out like an animal. 

We laughed comfortably together. 

It felt good just to have a morning away. When I got home, I made a good rub for one of the pork roasts and popped it in the oven. I chopped up two gallons of green peppers for the freezer. I got the base going for a pot of stuffed pepper soup. The broth will be chlled over night and then the hardened fat skimmed off tomorrow. When supper was over, I got my second crock pot out and simmered the rest of the pork roast off the bone for barbecue pulled pork sandwiches.

Mattie and Lyddie would be shocked at my methods as well, I suppose, but I worked around my old kitchen, getting a lot of stuff done in pretty short order. I headed out to pick up William and today just felt like a better day.