Email trash

I forgot how much time it takes to clean out the e-mail in-box and folders. Whew. I was at it eight hours and it is still not done. I took a break from the jewelry as it was stressing me out so I am working on other invisible things like email and computer files. What a mess. It is so easy to get bogged down in crap these days. What a mess my in-box is.

I spent the morning deleting and unsubscribing and answering notes I had overlooked. Whew! How does anyone really run a business these days? I could spend half and whole days just on the phone and computer. I have no idea how other folks do it. Thank goodness we are shutting up the shop. I have been too stressed for too long.

I had a very nice surprise yesterday. I had a little box arrive at my door filled with morel mushrooms from a dear friend from Illinois. The heart of morel country is northern Illinois and man oh man I miss that taste.

They arrived mushy and in a lot of water so I was terrified that they were rotten and no good. But upon investigating the bag I found them to smell just like the old mushrooms of my youth, just a tad soggier. SO I drained them and chilled them and today I sauteed them up with some red wine and butter and some quinoa. Oh my Lord were they tasty. Lets just say there are NONE left after Bill and I dove in. What a sweet and considerate surprise.

These days packages and snail mail have been put aside a lot but I will tell you that this simple little package filled with fungus made my year. I have not had a morel since 1988. Maybe even before that. It brought back memories of fishing on Honey Creek and the Rock River and getting bored on a no fish day and hunting for mushrooms. The gems of the mushroom hunter are the morel and chantarelle. Morels are harder to find in my humble opinion so to me they are even more prized than the tasty chantarelle.

I cannot thank Paul enough for the yummy surprise. I wish I was going to be up North in the spring when the morels peek through the moist earth after a rain. I miss the crocus and the jonquils poking through the snow, the robins arrival to signal that spring has finally come and the warm breezes are soon to follow and the baby deer and little animals that are everywhere in the spring.

SO today was a day of remembrance. Funny how a little fungus can make such vivid memories return like a flood. Tomorrow I dive back into the sorting project so today was a nice respite. Have a great day and we will see you again once the moon sinks into the sea.