It’s horrible how I dread baking, then when I start, I think it’s easy and no problem.  I dread walking the dog, then once we’re outside, I enjoy it.  I just don’t understand this aversion to things I know I’m going to be doing anyway.

In any case, I’ve managed to bake around 400 fruitcakes this month, so feel good about that.  This gives me a good start on the season, so for once I won’t be crying while I’m simultaneously baking, packaging and mailing.

On Friday I had a lovely lunch out with my friend Petra.  We met at Earl’s and sat at the window where we had a view of the launch party for the new downtown pier.  Kelowna’s becoming very chi chi, don’t you know.  I rarely go downtown, so whenever I do I’m as surprised as any tourist.

But this is about to change, as I’ve been e mailed the training dates for becoming a volunteer tour guide at the art gallery.  I’ll have to attend on October 3, 8, and 10 from 1:00-4:00 and on October 18 from 10:00 – 1:45!  It had better be very hard to learn how to say to a grade one class, “Now why do you think the artist made the sun blue when we know the sun isn’t blue?”

For fun I’ve written another letter to the editor and hopefully it’ll be in the local Capital News in the next few days.  As usual, people with more money than conscience are asking for land to be removed from the agricultural land reserve.  I love writing letters like that, as it’s a good opportunity to practice slicing with a pen rathen than a sword.

Another bit of good news is that Luke’s capitulated and has hired a nice immigration consultant to help him do the paperwork to get Jan into Canada.  Now at least we have some hope it’ll happen in our lifetimes.

Luke wanted to do it himself, and when we printed the guide on how to fill out the forms, and the guide was over an inch thick, I told him I thought this might be a tricky process.  He said no, we’d work through it and use the guide, step by step.

Question number one, under which class are you applying, stumped us.  We read the definitions and mulled it over, and I said, “I think we need a consultant.”  Luke insisted he’d do it himself.  He filled out the application this spring, mailed it in, and it was just returned incomplete.

Oh well, better late than never and so hopefully Jan’ll be here soon.  But soon means probably 12 – 14 months, according to the consultant.

In the meantime Nicky continues to rent the basement, and basically keeps to himself down there.  He’s good in that he’ll mow the lawn or blow the pine needles off the driveway when required.  I suppose it won’t be too long and we’ll need the inevitable snow removal from the driveway.

And so I keep going, because cooler weather means the beginning of the long slide into Christmas, which is my goal.  That’s just 12 short weeks away, so my God, if I can’t keep going until then I should be shot.

You’d think after attending the gym for over 11 years I wouldn’t have a single muscle that isn’t in shape.  Surprise!  The other day I went to a new class at the gym, called “barre” and I was shocked at how hard it was.  To start with we did what felt like a thousand plies, as it’s a class comprised of ballet moves.

Stop laughing.  We don’t wear tutus or go on pointe, but we do exercises that are surprisingly hard.  At the beginning, the instructor told us to get 2-pound weights, and a seasoned attendee said, “trust me, that’s all you’ll need.”

I was expressing surprise, as in the weight training classes I an easily wing around 8-pound weights.  However when you do a thousand reps of something, a 2-pound weight gets mighty heavy.  It was a very interesting hour.

And today as I walked the dog I realized I’ve just gotten over the pain of walking.  I started walking Louie about two months ago, and I remember I had such sore shins and outer hip flexors I thought I must’ve done something at the gym.  These pains went away after a couple of weeks and new ones settled deep into my haunches.

Then today I noticed I no longer felt pain in my butt as the dog made me run up another long hill.  So doing different exercises certainly gets a variety of muscles working.  I wonder what activity I’ll do next only to discover another whole set of unused muscles.

I had a brief bout of hypochondria this week.  You’ll recall I managed to bang my eye on a garden stake and was told I had a vitreous detachment.  Though nothing serious, the eye doctor told me to come back in six weeks for a re-check, just to be sure I wasn’t one of the 1% of people who get a retinal detachment as a result.

I went in, and of course I’m completely fine.  Then just to make conversation, I said to the eye doctor, “You know it was weird, but in March when my mom’s partner was dying I was under so much stress I lost the vision in the upper half of my left eye for about 15 minutes.  That must’ve been a migraine-related event, right?”

She, being about Nicky or Luke’s age, said “No that sounds like an ocular stroke!”  She asked if I’d had my blood pressure checked lately, and I told her proudly I’d just had a physical and am in the peak of health.  She said, “I just worry about a carotid artery dissection.”

I went home and Googled everything, then phoned my dear old G.P. Dr. Lacroix, who’s in her 70’s.  I went to see her the next day and said, “Doc, am I in imminent danger of having a stroke?”

She looked puzzled, and pointed at the computer screen displaying my low blood pressure, cholesterol levels and blood sugars and said, “How would you have a stroke?”  She said, “Honest to God, young doctors go for the most obscure things” and added a simple spasm can restrict blood flow to the optic nerve.

So you see, live and learn, and I do about so many things all the time.

I saw an article in the local paper stating the art gallery needs volunteers.  I went on-line and filled out a form, faxed it to them, and was called to come in for an orientation session.  I went to the art gallery on Friday, and said I was applying to be a volunteer docent.

A docent is a person who does the tours of the gallery.  Apparently they have a good roster of them, but they always need more as they do two school tours a day, Monday to Friday from mid-October to mid-June.

Being at this orientation for 30 minutes reinforced my strong belief I would not be a very compliant or good employee.  The volunteer coordinator, Renee, was explaining there’d be three half-days of training, one of which was to learn how to ask open-ended questions of school kids.

Then she said after the training we would watch her do one tour, and then we would be assigned to a seasoned docent and be their assistant.  After a while one becomes a lead docent.  I was sitting there thinking of my Master of Education degree but said nothing.

I’ll do their tedious-sounding training, and then hope one day to be able to graduate to lead docent.  If I do, I’ll let you know.  The commitment is to do one tour, hence be there one half-day a week, so I said I can do that.

But in the meantime I’m a baking maniac, and made 11o fruitcakes last week, and the same this week, so have over 200 fruitcakes in the can. I plan to keep this up as long as I physically can, and as long as I think I can unload all of the product.

Last Tuesday my friend Petra and I went down to Osoyoos as I wanted her to meet mom and see the house and orchard.  It was a beautiful day, so we took a detour to the Summerland Sweets store and then onto Dirty Laundry Winery.

Petra hadn’t been to either, so enjoyed that.  We arrived just before noon and had lunch outside.  Jerralynn had made candied salmon, which is salmon baked with butter and brown sugar.  She’d also made a beautiful stacked heirloon tomato salad for the appetizer.

We drank a delicious bottle of Wild Goose’s gewurtztraminer, and Jerralynn made an ice cream cake for dessert.  By three or so it was time to head north, so we said good bye and then stopped briefly at that adorable antique store on main street of Okanagan Falls.

It’s nice to get out and see the things we have here in the Okanagan Valley, especially with the unseasonably hot weather we’ve been having.  It’s still so hot I have to walk Louie before 8:00 AM or else it’s too hot for him.

So this should be fun, going to the gym and the art gallery, baking fruitcakes, writing a blog and newsletter.  For extra challenges I’m working on a short story I plan to submit to CBC Radio’s short story contest which closes November 1st.  Deadlines are good.

And maybe that’s how I’ve been able to stand the fruitcake business, in that there’s always an end goal in sight with it.  December 25th, here I come.

I don’t know how I found the strength, but I managed to get organized and am ready to start baking.  I ordered cellophane bags for vacuum sealing, and picked them up at the Greyhound depot.  The large fruit order I placed at Springfield Bulk Foods is ready for pick up tomorrow morning.

Today I went to Costco and bought a dozen bags of pecans.  I’ve been to the Superstore for the flour, butter, sugar and eggs.  I spend last weekend chopping and cooking the fruit for the Okanagan Harvest Cakes.  Yesterday I got rum at the licquor store.

Yesterday I also roasted all of the almonds, and today will chop the chocolate and cut parchment paper for the tins.  Then tomorrow and Sunday there’s nothing left to do but bake like a lunatic.  Once baked comes the rumming, bagging and sealing and the kitchen has to be cleaned.

A few days ago Nicky had some friends over so I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies for them, and made a batch of chocolate meringue cookies for my web designer.  This couldn’t have taken more than a couple of hours of standing in total, but I felt my knees by the end.  I thought I wonder how a day of fruitcake production’s going to go?

Maybe a body becomes too ancient for fruitcake production.  I don’t know but I’m going to find out.  Certainly I can’t do more than 30 minutes daily of walking/running with the dog and going 3 – 4 times a week for kick-ass classes at the gym to get into shape.  If after that I’m too decrepit to bake, then I’d hate to see someone out of shape try to get into the food business.

But you know there’s not a single aspect of the fruitcake business that’s mentally hard or baffling.  It’s all been worked out, and now it’s just a matter of producing them.  So I feel pretty in control of the upcoming season, and hope to be able to spend at least two full days a week baking.

Not to whine, but I’ve told you this many times before.  Two days of baking are preceded by days of shopping and preparation and followed by days of packaging and delivering or mailing.  Being a one person show is kind of interesting.

However several people have commented to me how much they like my newsletters, so that always makes me feel good.  I really enjoy writing them, and so it’s nice to hear people look forward to receiving them.

And why would I write a newsletter if I had no business to promote?  I have to bake just to be able to do the fun parts.  And because I love the fun parts, it’s always so darn awkward whenever ‘real’ entrepreneurs ask me questions about my business.

I still recall the days of dear Gerry Bruck asking me questions from his standpoint as a former silk mill owner.  He’d ask me the simplest, most straight-forward questions such as “what’s your cost to make a fruitcake?”  To which I usually replied with, “ummm….”

So why I’m in the fruitcake business I have no real idea, but now that I have people counting on me I can’t stop.  I tried, and it caused a commotion, so never mind.