A Joyous Birthday

This past year was quite a journey: 308 days on dialysis, about 3,696 hours connected to the peritoneal dialysis machine, 100 therapy sessions, 40 doctors appointments, 23 days in the hospital after transplant.

And now her new life begins: 1 gracious person who chose to donate her organs,  57 days so far with no dialysis, 5 days playing on the swing set, 2 band concerts, and many more joys on the way. Happy 2nd birthday, Eliana!

Three Dog Night’s Joy to the World

Pitting Party

For the past 5-6 years we’ve bought a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share each summer.  Our choice for the past three years has been Strites’ Orchard – in large part because we get lots of fruits as part of the share, plus the opportunity to pick extra at a discount or at no charge.

This week Amy, Shira and I went to Strites’ to pick more blueberries and sweet cherries.

Yum.

Of course the biggest problem with the cherries is pitting them, right?  Not wanting to spend money on a one-trick-pony of a cherry pitting tool we looked around for other methods. Some of the options:

A straw?  Yeah…as if they made straws that strong any more.
Unfolded paper clip?  Took just as long as a knife, but more cherry mangling.
Pastry bag tip?  Not bad, but a teeny tiny target and if you push too hard you’ll end up splitting the cherry in half.

As I was trying these methods I had this sneaky feeling that there was something in the house that would be perfect for the job, but I just couldn’t place it.  Was it a tool in the basement?  Some other gadget we used for something else?  It was killing me.

At which point I went upstairs to give Eliana her medication for the night and it hit me – the 60 milliliter catheter tip syringes we use for burping her G-tube would be PERFECT! Seriously.  The end is just the right size and doesn’t get wider like pastry tip. Plus it sits upright on the little wings at the top so I don’t have to hunch over to use it.  And we have like 50 sitting in the drawer, so one of them would never be missed.

Worked like a champ.  (That’s cherry juice, by the way. Only cherries were harmed in the making of this photo.)

So by the end of the day we had fresh blueberry scones, a blueberry/cherry/peach compote (using the remnants of last year’s frozen peach crop) and a couple of pounds of fresh-frozen fruit for later.  It was a good day.

Oh…and Eliana’s fine too.  Why do you think we’re ALWAYS going to write about her?