I am exceedingly happy to report that Thing 1 (organizing my latest contract) and Thing 2 (finding a place to live in the Philly 'burbs) have, by all appearances, been tied up. This leaves, of course, Things 3 through 7 to be dealt with and forthis reason there is very little stress reduction being experienced by yours truly but, well, progress is progress, right?

So it appears that the Hot Water Bath family is relocating - for the sixth time in 13 years - back to the Philadelphia area. Brainiac is in the final lap ("You're graduating soon, right honey? Right? RIGHT?!") of his program here but I need to start work before he'll be ready to move so we're going to be back-and-forthing it for, I dunno, four to six weeks or so. Piece of cake.

The house we've rented is owned by a township and is located in the midst of 76 acres of farmland that the town has found itself managing and trying to turn into a park. In the meantime the parks office has this house, now nestled around these 200 year old barns and brand new community garden plots, which it's restoring and leasing. Enter us. I'm heading up this week to pick up keys, do the basic clean up and get a few necessities in place to make future runs more comfortable. Oh, and of course we'll hit Ikea because it's the law to do so when one moves to within 30 miles of one of the blue and yellow motherships.

So. There we have it. I'm super excited about setting up a new kitchen. I've been very disatisfied with my current cooking space and although the new kitchen is somewhat under-equipped to be sure in terms of outlets and cabinetry, it's a blank slate in terms of what can be done. Basically a large square room with a sink and range on one wall and a fridge on another and a (possibly) working fireplace on a third, the kitchen is certainly spare and altogether an exciting proposition. I've been doing googling "freestanding kitchen furniture" and finding any number of European outlets where this kind of thing is much more common, but not much more than bakers' racks here in the US. No problem, just more thrill to the hunt, right?

On the canning front, I may have to carve some time out to dust off the kettle sooner than I expected. The Boy Wonder is reminding me with mind exploding frequency ("Sweetpea, don't nag me so, I know!") that we're out of mango jam and he is also expressing an interest in not only having access to some pineapple jam but..wait for it...helping me make it. That's right, the Boy Wonder wants to try his hand at canning. Sigh. If that's not a warming thought on a blustery fall day I don't know what is.