Aaah, weekends.

This weekend started this past Friday morning. At least it did for us. That’s when we packed up the car with clothes, groceries, and as much extra laundry as we could stuff in and went to Beema’s house. The GH is is renovating their bathroom on his days off. He does good work.

So I spent the day with loads of laundry, washing, scrubbing, and hanging. Did I mention that it was above 100 this weekend? Yeah, it was a bit warm out there hanging laundry.

The kids helped their aunties to pull up crab grass in the garden plots out back, and then they watered, which turned into a full scale mud fight. There are fabulous pictures of the girl and her auntie caked in mud from head to toe, she in her little sun dress with the flower pots on the front. (But I can’t show them to you yet because my computer isn’t recognizing my new external drive and without it I don’t have the memory to download any more pictures. Frustrating.) So I did some more laundry.

The house was filled with concrete dust from the bathroom reno. And I made loads and loads of custard. MMmmm custard. I’m getting to be very good at it.

The dust was swept, the table set, the laundry folded and we were just about to light the candles and celebrate Shabbat. And then the dogs started to make such a racket out in the back yard that everyone went out to see what was going on.

Picture a large planter close to the house filled with very tall razor grass. Picture 4 dogs going berserk as they corner one rattlesnake that is longer than my arm in that planter, which is about 6 feet away from the open door of the house. Picture the mothers suppressing heart attacks. Picture the GH severing the snake’s head with a shovel. Then, because we are all about education around here, picture him holding it carefully so the kids can examine it before burying it. Then you can picture it as they watch him skin it and pin the skin out on a board to dry and go on the snake wall in my FIL’s office. You’ll have to picture this all yourself, because I can’t get at my pictures yet.

And then the GH marinated it and cooked it and the Girl ate three whole pieces, with relish. (Totally not kosher, apologies to those who care.) And then we topped off the evening with creme brulee when we torched the sugar on top of the custard to carmelize it. Rattlesnake and creme brulee, it doesn’t come any classier than that.

Maybe I’ll be able to get you pictures by the end of the week.