I think it’s finally safe for me to announce it, but I believe Luke is launched into the world!  You know how nowadays offspring like to tease their parents by leaving home briefly, returning, then leaving again, only to return?  They do this until the parents no longer believe good-bye means anything other than see you next week.

However, Luke now has his own company, and does directional drilling work all over Alberta and Saskatchewan.  Sometimes I ask him how it works, and he tries to explain it to me.  But as I’m unable to do a task such as record messages on my phone, I certainly don’t understand his highly technical job.  All I know for sure is that it involves a computer, and that he makes decent money.

He and Dan (aka The Boarder) have bought a house together in Sylvan Lake, Alberta.  Luke already has one of those stupidly large pick-up trucks and a dirt bike.  Now he wants a boat and a snow mobile.  I said to my mom next he’ll own a rifle and have a moose head mounted on his living room wall.

All I can say is I tried my best to raise the kid as a decent left-leaning, animal-loving environmentalist.  Where did I go wrong?  He went to French Immersion and took piano lessons, for God’s sake!  Something about Alberta and the stench of oil money has changed my baby.

Now I only need to concentrate on getting the second kid launched and all will be well.  However that’s probably easier said than done as Nicky has always been a tougher personality type to deal with than Luke.  When there was some type of bad news to be delivered, Denis and I would do rock, paper and scissors to see who’d have to be the one to tell him.  Nicky’s philosophy was always to shoot the messenger.

I had an interesting call last week from a nice woman in Alberta.  She’s having a wedding anniversary party, and ordered 250 pieces of Totally Decadent Fruitcake.  She wanted them made with no brandy, which I’ve done for her, but I’ve yet to cut them to see if it even works without booze.  I know I don’t work well without booze, so I assume my cakes carry the same philosophy.

As always at this time of year I’m making tons of apricot jam.  It’s really the only jam anyone likes to eat, so I give it as gifts.  I also need it at Christmas for the Spitzbubchen (granny’s cookies).  Sadly there are fewer and fewer apricot trees left in the Okanagan Valley because they’re such a finicky fruit to grow.

All the vegetables are late this year.  We’re finally starting to get ripe tomatoes from the garden and there’s local corn.  The other night I made sauteed yellow zucchini and tomatoes, topped with handfuls of my chopped herbs.  I accompanied that with tiny potatoes, boiled, then browned in butter, and wild coho salmon, baked in the oven with a bit of brown sugar and butter.

When Nicky came to get his dinner and saw it was all so beautiful and from around here to boot, he said enthusiastically, “Now that’s a legitimate dinner!”