There is a children's book called Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very-Bad Day. In this story, Alexander is having the worst day of his life. All day long, things are going wrong. He forgets his lunch, someone mistakenly takes his stuff, he gets into arguments with his friends and family, and so on. His refrain throughout the story, the only recourse he can think of, is, "I think I'll move to Australia!"
Thursday, I felt like Alexander in his terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad day. In the morning, as I was driving down the Mass Pike, I missed the exit for Rt.20, and found myself traveling down I-84. I went a few more exits and came back up to the village on OSV Rd. I stopped at Costume, where Chris told me she would not be able to fix my summer work dress before she went on vacation. As I walked out of Costume, it started pouring. I RAN through the rain all the way from Costume to Bullard, with nothing covering my head, because it was not supposed to rain on Thursday. I got into Bullard, late for check-in.
Thankfully, Rhys knew who I was and where I was supposed to say, so as soon as I said "good morning" he had me checked off. So that was one positive to the morning. Another good thing was that I knew I was going to Freeman, which meant I would get a proper lunch. Or so I thought...
I got down to Freeman after that shower had blown through. Security had not yet unlocked the house, so I looked for the newborn lamb. I couldn't find her, even though I looked in the proper stall, until the farmers came down for the morning. And there she was, right in front of my face. Oops. I chatted with the farmers Justin and Dan, which was a positive, until Security showed up and I could get in.
Once inside the house, I got the fire ready, browsed the food-plan, and skimmed the diary. I thought, "okay, this morning started out rough, but I'm doing alright now." Joanna joined me, and as we talked about what we were doing for the day I reached a hand up and brushed a hair away from my face. Joanna's expression changed immediately.
"Michelle," she said, in a very straight-forward way, "You have a smear of pot-black on your face."
When I caught a glimpse of my face in the looking-glass I was horrified. From my nose down around my mouth, to my chin, was covered in black. Thankfully, the one positive in this episode, I did not get anything on my cap (miraculous!). Joanna and I went down stairs so I could clean off my face, and we could bring up the food for the day.
We went into the root-cellar to get our parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes. We had no problem finding the J.A.s, however the parsnips were not in the box of sand as the map of the root-cellar said they were. We were mystified. When we came upstairs, Dan gave us some of the parsnips that had wintered in the garden, so we had more than the one left-over on the kitchen table.
Yes, I did get the pot-black off my face, although the tip of my nose was a little discolored for the rest of the day.
Around 10:00AM (yes, I've only been there for 1.5 hours so far...) we realized we didn't know what we were supposed to be telling the Discovery Campers when they came by... so I ran back to Bullard to read the memo, and bring that information back to Joanna.
Because Thursday was such a wonderful day, Freeman was busy for much of the morning. All of a sudden, we realized it was 12:00, and time for my lunch. I had just taken off my apron when a crowd of 20 children, between the ages of eight and eleven, entered and crowded around the table. I couldn't leave Joanna at that craziness, so I put the apron on for fifteen minutes until the crowd died down.
Lunch, at least, was fairly quiet, and I got to find out who (in the John Dickson Carr story) had murdered the con-man and framed Lesley. It was not who I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I looked like to the observers as I sat there, almost falling asleep, listening to the banging of ice-cream makers in the room below, and I know I complained about being tired. But you must understand, Thursday was not a good day. I went back from lunch a little earlier than a full hour, but I wanted to make sure Joanna could get to her lunch.
While Joanna was gone, Maddie, the Junior Intern, and I were responsible to make the fricassee of parsnips, which went fine, and the candied melon, which did not quite come out as well. With the melon, I did not know what it was supposed to look like when it was done. Maddie and I kept stirring it (so it didn't burn), watching it's golden-yellow color start to darken, then all of a sudden it was as black as apple sauce (1830s applesauce, that is, a thick, molasses type syrup). "I hope it was supposed to do that," I said to Maddie nervously. The farmers had heard earlier in the day that we were candying the melon, and they were all looking forward to a taste. Joanna came back from lunch, we took the melon off the fire, and she tested it. We had burned melon inside burned and camelized sugar. I felt so bad about ruining the melon. Joanna kept assuring me it was not a problem, as the whole candied melon project was more of an experiment than a necessary part of the food-plan.
Dan and Justin came by at different times once the traffic started to die down after 4PM. "I represent the farmers," Dan said, his cap in his hand, "in offering our condolences on your candied melon." Justin, too, expressed his disappointment, with the dry humor that is his trademark.
The rest of my day was fairly normal. I was only a couple minutes late to Walmart, since cleanup at Freeman had taken a while (we had to scrub all that carmelized melon and sugar mixture out of the kettle and bowl... that took a long time.) and they kept me moving all night long. At the end of the day I felt as though if I stood still for more than one minute I would fall asleep.
Then Thursday was over. And today, Friday, went so much more smoothly. I actually had a lot of fun working on Games today, and I was hurrying to and fro across the Common, out into the Countryside, all day. I even got a touch of sunburn from the time I spent playing games like 1830s baseball, French-and-English, and setting off a toy fire balloon (hot air balloon) with our visitors.
Ah, yes, I'm glad I don't have to move to Australia anymore, although that looked very attractive on Thursday. That terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad day (although it had its bright spots) was finally over.
And that, my friend, was my Thursday Adventure.
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