Breaking up with Unemployment

Starting this piece, I have no idea whether it’s going to be multiple entries or just a brain dump all at once. Or it could just be really short? We’ll go on this ride together.

The past couple of weeks have been a literal whirlwind of events and emotions which pretty much any Jew could tell you is just what happens in Elul.  Some of the events that have transpired in, let’s be generous and say-the past month:

·      I met one of my favorite authors and she signed the final book of her trilogy with “Hey Sara, you rock” with a picture of a rock 

·      I saw the total solar eclipse.

·      I got invited to a family reunion by some folks I met on the train en route to the eclipse. Yes. I’m going.

·      I got to see my Brother, who live in the Great North. We had pizza (I customized mine without nightshades), it was epic.

·      I house sat for nearly 3 weeks and got to hang out with some really cool animals.

·      I got to take the dog on lots of hikes 

·      I was offered a job that is PG track and in the Key Route City (at least part time).

·      PartnerPenguin lost his job.

·      My new job offered me to put my name in a hat to do relief work for hurricane damage. I accepted this offer, I do not know yet whether I’ll be chosen.

·      I am not singing in the choir with my synagogue this High Holy Day season due to scheduling conflicts.

·      I bought a new phone and got a new phone number.

·      I cut 16” of hair off.

·      I tried oysters and snails.

·      We got PartnerPenguin’s dad’s old van so I have a car to commute to work.

In short: the routine for my life I had about 4 weeks ago is no longer a routine I have. Much of my emotional struggle right focuses around the grief of routine loss, in some way or another. Humans are creatures of habit and boy oh boy is it uncomfortable when our habits all change permanently and irrevocably. But that’s how we get stronger.

While I am experiencing a lot of change, I am also celebrating a milestone of steadfastness in my life:

I have lived in the Golden State for 10 years. Happy decade to me!!

My decadal celebration and my embarking on a new professional journey are very related in my mind. Ten years ago I left the home I grew up in and all the people I ever knew and cared about. 98% of people in my life stopped talking to me, including most of my biological family. Some of that was my doing, some of it wasn’t. The 2% of people who continued to talk to me did so mostly to use me for my emotional labor of helping them process their emotions. Almost no one helped me process my own life’s implosion. In fact, I was actually lectured by the people I lived with for being honest to my therapist at the time for “telling lies” about them. So my processing of the trauma in my life had to go completely underground and I pretend it wasn’t happening. This…did not help.

This has left an indelible mark on how I perceive human interactions to happen. My emotion brain is convinced that no matter how much people appear to care about me, there will always be an event that they abruptly stop interacting with me and cut me out of their life with no remorse or regret. This is incredibly painful to admit. But I have built into the framework of every relationship I’ve formed that things will end, they will probably be my fault, and I will be alone again. It’s left me believing that unconditional love doesn’t exist.

So I have worked a lot to figure out the conditions under which love does exist. This has actually been very helpful to figure out boundaries. I have had some really good role models like Mama Bear who once told me which behaviors I was doing were unacceptable instead of just cutting me out of her life without explanation. That was one of the hardest conversations I’ve ever had, but also one of the most productive. It allowed me to see that, provided I tried to change my behavior (which I am capable of doing) I would not be cut off from the support I receive.

I usually don’t bring up this particularly cynical view of the world but I feel that it’s become increasingly relevant with impending enormous changes in my life. I fear that I will lose most of my friends with a changing schedule.

I have started to share this set of fears with some of my friends IRL and also electronically. Many have been like “don’t be an idiot, we’re here for you.” Which is exactly what I needed to hear. And what I will continue to need to hear. There are a couple reasons why I don’t full believe everyone when they say it, but I really need to hear it as often as people are willing to say it.

Reason 1 why I think my social world is ending: Time

This past year I have spent an EXTRAORDINARY amount of time focusing on relationships. I had the time. I had the space. I had the spoons. I had the resources. It was one of the most amazing years of luxury and privilege I’ve had in my life. Unlike previous years where I had this amount of resources (like when I was a child) I was actually able to appreciate my privilege. I knew I would have a meal over my head and a roof to eat. Wait, strike that. Reverse it. :P

The thing is, I set out an extremely rigorous set of goals for myself to stay in touch with people. I wrote my PeopleKeeper experiment and then committed to it. I would say that it was an 80% success. I entered all of the people from the weekly, bi-weekly and monthly lists into my calendar and have generally stuck to the schedule I set myself. The quarterly people…not so much because I didn’t actually put them in my calendar. Lesson learned. I live and love by my cellular communicator.

Even though this isn’t 80% of the people on the list, I call it 80% successful because this intentional friendship thing has deepened and strengthened relationships like no other experiment I’ve ever tried in my life. Opportunities have opened like never before and there I was to accept them. I’ve travelled thousands of miles, laughed, cried and held my friends all over the country and had positive experiences I could never have even dreamed possible.

The first reality of this new job is that it is going to take a lot of TIME. My first week is in a training location that is 1 hour from Key Route City, if there’s no traffic. And there’s almost guaranteed to be traffic. So my options then become: try to drive for 2 hours each direction each day or try to find a spot to crash closer to the training location. We’ll see. The van should be big enough for a sleeping pad, worst comes to worst.

Anyway, this is just the first week and I’m only going to bill 40 hours worked. Assuming I don’t get chosen to do hurricane relief, I plan to have 40-hour weeks while I’m in the office. 16 of my billing hours will be in a place 1 hour away from Key Route City. Again, estimated without traffic which can double driving times If I commute both days, which puts my time spent at work+commute to 44 hours, with no traffic.

In the field, however, things will be different. From all the networking I’ve done, I have set the expectation that field work for entry level geologists can often involve 12 hour days. Fieldwork might also involve travel so this will effectively mean a week or two off the grid at least every quarter. Hurricane relief work could be several months long, depending if I’m chosen and which project I’m chosen to participate in.

Keep in mind: this is what I want. I very knowingly signed up for this. This job is exactly what I asked for. This is exactly how I continue on my professional path forward as a Professional Geologist.

I will be signing up for the Geologist in Training (the pre-test to the license that’s $450) in November so I can take it in Spring 2018. Eventually I’ll need to study for it.

I still plan on making jam with Queen of Strawbs and keeping my space in the community kitchen I’ve rented at least until December. I committed to three months to see if the business goes anywhere, I’m hardly someone who backs down from her commitments easily. Or breaks contracts…lol. I haven’t made a website yet but maybe that might be a thing to do so I can handle customer flow online without having to keep that in my cognitive load. But I haven’t even figured out when the next batch of jam is to be made so I’ll get there when I get there.

Oh! I made a new flavor too! I’m excited to see if it scales. It’s blueberry based and is a really nice compliment to my strawberry jam which is very much like “HELLO HOW ARE YOU WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO ACCOMPLISH TODAY.” The blueberry jam is much more “Good morning dear. Have some peaceful contemplation with your breakfast. You are wonderful.”

The other thing that could happen is that I’m being considered to give a presentation in the UK in October. If that happens, that will also eat about 3-5 hours/week. It may not happen because I just don’t know if I can make that kind of time commitment.

But all of this boils down to the very real issue that I just will not continue to have the time for all of my relationships. I do not know how I’m going to handle this. I am still working on it.

Reason 2 why I think my social world is ending: Location

As briefly mentioned in my previous point: I accepted working part time in a location that is quite far from my primary residence in Key Route City. I am already looking into getting a part-time residence up in that area, maybe with someone who wants to AirBnB their place on weekends but would be ok with me bunking there twice a week.

This cuts the amount of time I can physically see my friends by 2/7ths. Reduction of in-person time with friends is an issue a lot of people experience in their mid-late 20s. Somehow in the past year I have actually increased the amount of casual social interactions I’ve had. PartnerPenguin and I go to a gaming group once a week where we play board games and schmooze. We also have a weekly “Family dinner” where we have dinner once a week with at least one friend. Sometimes we have dinner with the Bears instead.

I need to also keep Date Night with PartnerPenguin because the two of us need to actually see each other for our relationship to work out. Date night is not often an actual date, just a time in our schedule where we can spend together and talk and make food sometimes.

If I live in a different part of the area 2/7 nights a week I will lose a lot of the casual and low maintenance ways that I interact with many of my friends.

Also having a distant location will put a strain on my ability to commit to certain things and see certain people. Obviously my answer will be to go be gregarious and make oodles of new friends. But that is also time consuming. I will live.

Reason 3 why I think my social world is ending: Mental Illness

Hey! Now it’s time to talk about something uncomfortable! Yaaay. :{

A big thing that I have discovered from the way that I’ve interacted over the past year is that a lot of my friends are very happy to hear from me—but they are also incapable of “picking up the phone”, so to speak. Automating my reaching out has helped me with my own depression and anxiety (it has generally helped, no system is perfect) and interacting with people has helped even more. Having the opt-in of figuring out how to not feel alone when I’ve feel alone has been magnificent.

It turns out that mental illness is concurrent with a lot of other things I like in my friends: like intelligence and interesting personalities. I haven’t done a survey but like….a lot of my friends have some kind of mental illness, or have struggled with one over the course of our friendship. (Cue Chili Peppers) They have certainly been there through my struggles with my mental illnesses as well so no one is perfect or blameless here.

However: My being the one to pick up the phone, open the FB messenger, send that text, is often how our relationship continues. I am afraid of losing most of these relationships. If your internal wiring prevents you from doing things you love like contacting your friends, I can’t help you change that. And if I’m not initiating contact all the time, I will probably lose your friendship as a casualty.

I feel these relationships have come very far in my setting boundaries around emotional labor and I don’t want that to change. This has been a big deal for me, to even know I could set those kinds of boundaries.

This change is really really really distressing to me. I grieve losing friendships almost more harshly than I grieve the dead. I feel helpless that I can’t change the situation. I feel angry and upset that precious relationships will be lost.

I don’t know if there is any way to solve this problem.

*  *  *

Anyway, to close out I’ll share this song because it’s just so preposterous in is heteronormative machismo.  But so catchy! "The Man" by The Killers

And I feel like no summer (farewell, my favorite season) is complete without this song and eating LOTS of grilled peaches. This video is so preposterous and 90's!! "Peaches" by The Presidents of the United States of America

The Fifth Season Should Be Required Reading for Geologists

***This post contains spoilers and discussion of difficult material, especially child abuse and murder.***

I am beyond thrilled that in exactly one week the final book in NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is going to be released to the general public. This series should be required reading for everyone who calls themselves a geologist, geophysicist or other kind of earth scientist. First of all, it is the only series I have ever read that centers on geology. Not like how mountains are important in The Lord of The Rings series, climaxing at the molten core of Mordor. No. In this series some people are TIED to the land with the gift/curse of orogeny. These orogenes (derogatory term: rogga) are capable of literally moving mountains.

This creates an incredibly intricate and rare thing to occur: Jemisin aggressively does not allow the separation of the doer of science from the scientist as a person. In American science academia, separating the work of a scientist from the health and wellbeing of the scientist themselves is an imperative mechanism upon which STEM practitioners rely to keep discriminatory practices in place. By presenting a world where no such separation can exist, the Broken Earth series shines a light into what it may be like to be a scientist of color.

I mention specifically that this is a racial experience because, as a White woman, this book was the first time I have experienced vicariously what it like to be the victim of a structure based on oppression of “my (the protagonists’)” people. Jemisin accomplishes this tremendous feat by immersing us in an excellently built world with relatable characters and then bombarding her characters with intense personal tragedies.

In the world of the ironically named Stillness, everything has sinister movement just below the surface. Thumbing through Appendix 1 (both books), we get the abridged history of all Fifth Seasons in the Stillness. Many of the Seasons are mentioned throughout the book but none are discussed in great detail because they were long before the living memory of our characters. I particularly love this section because The Seasons are named for of the types of tectonic blowback that would make a planet uninhabitable for 2-100 years.

The specific attention to detail of what would actually happen if a global scale tectonic event occurred allowed me to completely suspend my disbelief in this world. Jemisin didn’t just read a few Amazing Geologist posts and surf around on mindat.org. She thought through what would actually happen if an entire ocean became acidified for 100 years. (This information is terrifyingly relevant.) The series hinges on the opening of a continental rupture the likes of which would make the breakup of Pangea tame and sweet. The environment responds similarly to how we project the Earth would respond to such tectonic upheaval. Across two books I have only found very minor issues with her geologic constructs and I let them go because Jemisin is not a trained geologist and she is human. And humans are allowed to change physics for artistic license sometimes. See: any video game ever.

Starting from this place of incredibly well researched world building I entered into the Broken Earth trilogy able to suspend disbelief to an unusually deep degree. Part of investing in this world, I quickly come to discover, is accepting the systems of oppression that allow The Stillness to “function.” The Sanzed’s crumbling empire is built on the hatred and fear of orogenes. Now, to be somewhat holistic on this viewpoint--orogenes have TREMENDOUS power and it is in fact an orogene who literally severs the continent in half.

The fear of this power is the justification Sanzed uses to completely subjugate, coerce, immobilize and borderline encourage murder of orogenes. The main reason they don’t fully endorse genocide is because they empire seems to know there are non-human entities which will quickly overpower all humans if there were no orogene protectors.

So I am brought along on the journey of several orogene characters and am held witness to the atrocities of their lives. What stands out to me, what I never ever get used to, is the unrelenting violence against children. The rite of passage into the school for orogenes is a cruel trust ceremony where each Guardians breaks the hands of their wards. (Toto, I don’t think we’re at Hogwarts anymore…) I am helpless on the sidelines as the characters witness the murder of their children. I watch parents murder their children. I come to expect the interaction of the Guardian caste to be cold abusers, enticing children to do their villainous (also sometimes murderous) bidding.

I think it is this aspect that has increased my appreciation for certain American Earth communities, particularly Black communities. Within communities of color this level of devastation is real and felt on a scale I cannot understand. Prior to reading the Broken Earth series, I have read about and sometimes marched in Black Lives Matter events. Not being within any community of color myself, I have always been a generic ally without having direct connection to the pain and tragedy behind this movement.

But the murders of kids like Trayvon Martin are the reality that some of my friends and co-workers experience. There was a deeply moving video that went around a while back where Black parents explained to their kids how to act if they were stopped by a police officer. One day a mentor of mine, a brilliant scientist who is a pioneer in their field, told me the gripping story of getting beaten up for driving while Black in America. Even though I have heard these stories, I still don’t have to check the local and national news every day to see if anyone I know directly has been murdered. As Dr. Chandra Prescod-Weinstein mentions in her interview with Ebro being Black in science is still a taboo topic to directly discuss. But in not discussing it, scientists ask members of the Black community to essentially check their identities at the door.

With the Broken Earth series, NK Jemisin opens us to a world of hurt, a world of love, a world of geology that I have never thought possible to understand so intuitively. By refusing to separate the people of the Stillness universe from the ground of the Stillness we see the orogenes perhaps as more whole than we allow ourselves to see each other.

  

Experiments with Energy

So to start it off I sat down and then the existential dread set in. Yay perfectionism? I am sure you’ve noticed my inconsistency with writing, pretty much since I got back from TLoTH. I’m not really sure where this post is going to go. I am a ball of mush so I’m hoping you’ll just look at the puddle of words and think kindly of me later.

I am not a fan of saying that I’m too busy for things so I need to be more honest with you, my reader base, that I’ve had to prioritize other things recently. Firstly, there have been some weird and bad things happening within my life and community that I’m not interested in making public. If you’re super curious you can ask me about it but realize I may or may not want to respond. That took up a good two months’ worth of brain space so I fell off the bandwagon of writing. </end vaguebooking>

One of the major reasons I haven’t written as much is that I have seen most of you. I have made a concerted effort to meet with each of you, make eye contact, offer a hug if I’m feeling up for it. In the past year, I have travelled extensively: finding myself, finding you, defining how I want to live after spending so much time hurdling myself through time and space without taking notice. I have spent so much time seeing you that I forget you’re not experiencing all of this with me.

Does anyone else get this? There is a point of intimacy with friends and family where I literally forget that another person did not experience an event. Mostly this happens with PartnerPenguin for me, because we’ve been in each others lives so long that I falsely assume he’s experienced all the same things as me. I think that I let myself feel this way about other people because I post so much on Facebook. I know there are many people who see all my posts go by so I feel like it’s almost obsolete to write about my experiences. But by the same token, I only post about positive things (generally) on social media because I am caught in the trap of only presenting the best version of myself publicly.

This ties in to my very real struggle to strike a balance of what to share, what’s over sharing and with what audience is appropriate to share what information with. This can sometimes feel like a daily struggle for me. Oddly, the more positive stuff I have going on in my life this issue intensifies. How do I share my success without building resentment among my peers? How do I remember all of the sensitive subjects for all of my friends so that I’m not boasting and making them feel bad? Do I just recklessly live in complete abundance? I know too well that sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down so while I hope my path continues to push solidly upward, I don’t want to alienate those who have been there for me while I’ve been down.

Annnnyyyyyywaaaaaayyyyy

I have continued to network ruthlessly with geologists, engineers, hydrogeologists and botonists, sometimes meeting with three different companies in a day. I’ve gotten a lot of really great and sometimes intense feedback on my resume so now it’s in a state where companies actually read it. In fact, I have an honest to Blog interview next week. In Key Route City. With a company I’d like to work for. Fancy that!

Networking with folks (mostly White people, mostly men) has given me a much better idea of how the field of geology works in practice. It also gives me a much better understanding of how narrow the world of academia was. I had literally been told to leave things off my resume by folks in academia that would have been the one detail that mattered most in private industry. There is a weird social system around ownership in academia that unless something is 100% your project, it doesn’t count at all. This creates very weird mental blocks when I’m trying to own my experiences. “Owning” my work experience and selling myself have been the hardest parts of my pivot to private industry. I think for someone with no history of mental illness this would have been a challenge. My history of anxiety and depression compounded how ambiguously bad I feel about taking more credit for things I’ve done.  It’s possible, just challenging. And I’m super happy that I now have my friends, family and communities that care about me to make sure I am supported in working through my own brain hair-balls.

* * *

Probably the biggest thing that you didn’t know was going on in my life (or maybe you did!) is that due to the ENORMOUS success from my last post…

I STARTED A JAM COMPANY!!!

Wheeeeeee!! This is my logo:

It has been really interesting to go through all the paperwork and seeing all the different agencies but for positive reasons. The Key Route City was, dare I say it, happy to have me start a business. Everyone whom I spoke with was cheerful and energetic and congratulated me. I really like how straightforward the process of starting something so simple as a jam company is. There is a well-paved path with absolutely no off-roading or steep hills.

In my honest opinion the best part of starting a jam company was finding the kitchen I’m going to work in. The Key Route City is an epicenter for innovative co-working--which extends to industrial kitchen co-working. It has felt like the best parts of dating and now I’m super looking forward to the relationship starting. The kitchen I’m going to rent with is owned by a woman in her 30’s who wanted a build a kitchen for her younger self to succeed. Our “intake” conversation was full of laughing and helpful information. I met some of the other tenants of the kitchen who were all nice. There is a snack shop attached to the front of the kitchen so I could potentially partner with some of the bakers in the space to sell jam-toast.

I will soon start on the next level of jam making activities, now that my initial funding goal has been met. In the meantime, my main “website” of sorts is on Facebook and I will leave the GoFundMe open for a while if you’d like to help me financially.

And now to close out with a song! Here is song by a group I’m really excited to see this weekend: Amadou and Mariam! 

How to Spend a Day With Friends-Make Jam!

Hello All! Today is going to be a bit different from most of my blogs as it's going to be a step-by-step of how to make jam! Let's take a moment to set up the cast:

Sara Be-That's me! If you get this blog, you probably know me. Probably?
PartnerPenguin-Readers of my blog know and love him, but not nearly as much as I do. He's my partner, we've been together for 9 years and still give people diabetes because we're too sweet.
The Ribald Tweeter- One of my best friends, she and I have known each other for what feels like forever but is, in actual fact, 3 years. She is small and mighty.
The Kinematic DM- The Ribald Tweeter's sigoth (significant other) who helped us in the late stages of the game.


HOW TO MAKE JAM:

1.  Decide you want to make jam. Talk about it with friends and family, make sure you have support. This is not a decision to make lightly. You will be spending the rest of your day, night and into the early hours of tomorrow doing this task. Choose wisely.
2.  Once you have decided to make jam, locate your nearest Sunday. On that Sunday, locate your nearest farmer's market.
3.  Attend your nearest farmers's market 30-45 minutes before closing. This is an important step so you have enough time to taste test all of the vendor's food.
4.  Choose your fruit for jam. This is very dependent on what's in season. You should look for a fruit that is plentiful with multiple vendors. Fruit should be day-of ripe. (This time around we chose strawberries.)
5.  Find a vendor with a lot of end of day stock. Haggle for all of it.
6.  Purchase fruit. Be sure to have cash on hand.

Organic strawberries, 24 quarts. Small size and very very ripe.

7.  Carry fruit home, praising yourself for going to the gym regularly. Trade regularly with PartnerPenguin and wonder the whole walk if you should get a car some day.

8.  Eat lunch.

9.  Review the documentation for the process:

Copyright 1969, produced by Ball Brothers Company

10.  Go to the grocery store and buy pectin, sugar, a lemon for additional acid (strawbs are low acid) and an underripe fruit (to contrast your very ripe strawbs).

My foolish ambitions of "necessary" ingredients

11.  Get home and read that each container of pectin is only good for 2 quarts of strawbs. Also that each 2 quarts require 6-7 cups of sugar.
12.  Decide to do two batches and start first right now.
13.  Friend shows up and everyone agrees that alcohol needs to be procured, post haste, for this venture.

A nice crisp Rosé for a warm day

Tools of the trade: Wine in mugs, paring knives and a computer with which to watch shows.

14.  Set up the cutting environment for two strawberry cutting robots. Place compost bin between robots (you and your friend) and receptacles for berries in your lap.

Our setup. Notice smiles and optimism. This was early on. RT on left, me on right.

15.  Cut berries by lopping off green part and quartering. When berries eventually turn into jam, you want to do as little smushing as possible. Because you're lazy and smushing takes work. Blenders also exist, but I'd caution against them because you could lose volume. When you shuck hundreds of strawbs, you DO NOT want to lose any of them.

Admire your strawbs before you murder them.

16.  Fill up your receptacle with quartered strawberries.

Fill up your bucket. Admire your thighs, they are beautiful.

Serious Recipe Note: We used 4 quart buckets of strawberries at this stage. Batch 1 has 4 qt strawberries, 2 boxes pectin, 12 cup sugar, 1 nectarine, 10-12 pods cardamom, crushed and about 2 tsp lavender. (I kinda gloss over what happened with Batch 1, focusing instead on Batch 2.)

Batch 1, adding the spices: 

This batch blissfully boiled down.

17.  Realize you have made terrible mistakes and underestimated everything in your life. Send out The Ribald Tweeter and PartnerPenguin for additional supplies for rest of berries. This includes more jars because Oh LORD did you DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH JARS.

18.  Watch GLOW and be grateful you are not the main character. I think GLOW captures a reality I knew (in the back of my mind) that I wanted to avoid regarding becoming a professional actress.

GLOW: Theoretically a show about women's wrestling. Mostly 80's hair and problematic situations.

19.  PartnerPenuin and Ribald Tweeter return from outside adventures with food for dinner and secondary supplies. Batch 1 is doing well and is almost ready to be canned.

20. Can the all jam.

About canning:

Whenever you are canning anything, it is SUPER important to wash your hands all the time and straight up don't participate if you're sick. Cans should be submerged at least an inch, preferably 2, under water when sealing. If anyone wants to buy me a special canning pot that would accommodate my bigger jars I would really love that. 

Sub-set of Instructions for Canning

1. Wash all jars throughly with warm soapy water.
2. Dry.
3. Pick up jar with canning tongs and hold, mouth down over boiling water for 2 minutes to sterilize. Steam is what you're aiming for, not the water itself. (Sterilizing pot different than canning pot)
4. Remove from steam and place jar upright close to jam. We used a secondary bowl to re-arrange tongs for this step.
5. Ladle jam into sterilized jar immediately.
6. Sterilize lid and band of lid. Lids (or hats, as we call them) can be purchased separately from jars if your old lids go moldy or something.
7. Wipe top of jar with fresh paper towel with hot water so lid band does not stick. 
8. Place lid firmly on top of jar.
9. Place band on lid and tighten completely. Then loosen the band 1/2-3/4 turn so the band wobbles and there is room between the lid and the band.
10. Pick up jar with canning tongs and submerge in canning pot with boiling water. My pot fits 4 jars and only when all 4 are inside does the water cover the lids 100%.
11. Water boiling has bubbles but watch for bubbles coming directly from lids. This is the seal becoming air-tight.
12. Once seal is air-tight (about 4-5 minutes), gently remove jars and tilt excess water out from between the lid and the band.
13. Place of flat surface.
14. When cooled slightly, tighten band.

Canning looks like this: 

And we now return to your regularly scheduled shenanigans:

21.  At this point it's 8 pm and you are hangry so the rest of the party makes dinner while you finish canning and soaking pots for the next round.

22.  Come back from dinner and resume beheading a million strawberries. Watch American Gods because Ibis and Jaquel are the cutest couple in the history of television.

I mean, just look at them! So dapper! Match made in Aaru!

23.  Wash a million dishes. Scrub hard.

24. Assemble Batch 2: 12 quarts of quartered strawberries, 5 boxes of pectin, 10 lbs and 1 cup sugar, 2 underripe nectarines cut into inch cube-ish pieces and 1 and 1/2 lemon, juiced. Spices: 25ish pods of cardamom and 3 Tbsp lavender.

25. Mix together strawbs and sugar. I was very wrong on my calculations (in vid), there were 12 quarts of strawbs, not 6. Here is a hilarious video of me trying to dissolve 10 pounds of sugar into strawbs.

26.  Mix together everything in Batch 2. Pot got VERY FULL.

All the fruits and sugar and pectin and spices added.

27.  Decide it's time to split into two pots. Stir both constantly because viscosity is a bitch.

Sad Sara trying to stir all the pots.

28.  Remember you have multiple stirring utensils in your house.

Stir-Crazy Sara, Master of the Jams.

29. Play with the heat and be careful of multiple burners because your jam will pick up heat from all places.

30. Test jam done-ness by keeping plates in the freezer then dribbling a bit of jam on the plate and returning it to freezer for 2 min. When done, it should look like this:

Note that the jam does not rush to fill the void of a finger. Means it's done.

31. Repeat sub-set of canning instructions. Remove all the pickled carrots from mason jars to a take-out container and picked beets to tupperwares. Pray that you have enough jars.

32.  FIN! You have successfully made 2.5 gallons of jam, deepened your friendship and also probably will have a sleep debt. Brava!!

All the jam, 2.5 gallons

Me, the Ribald Tweeter and ALL OUR JAMS!

Brava us! We got through it!

Obviously our song for the week is "Jammin'" by Bob Marley

Additionally, I want to introduce you to the best summer anthem this year!! It's called "Thunder Thighs" by Miss Eaves