Well if this week didn't start out with a bang! Today was errand day, covering most of downtown trying to replace my ankle boots that weren't even a year old and the heels punching through inside and one boot's outer sole pulling lose from the boot upper already! NOT fun! Then to add insult to injury, I'm at a store trying on a boot, only to discover several boots in that brand name deliberately slanted the inner sole to the outside of the foot's outer toes! Are they TRYING to feed the orthopedic industry??? Ended up visiting a number of stores across town trying to find decent tread, reasonable lining as I wear these year-round minus snow season, go from the puddle to the platform in reasonable function for both places, and be less than $100! Tall order, as usual. . . but finally found a pair eventually, that was in stock in my size, where the fit was actually workable. (pro tip: never buy a pair of shoes you haven't tried on first, if the fit is wrong, it can wreck your feet! or even your ankles!)

We were doing other errands as well. A few weeks ago my daughter had accepted a prescription for amoxycillin, but only took 2 pills when she began noticing at first, one of the "rare" side effects and promptly stopped. A few days ago she began having a second side effect that is supposedly rare, and both point to liver/kidney damage. . . so I told her it was time to give some intense support to those areas. She doesn't like anything fermented except cheese, so I was surprised when she decided that Kombucha was going to be her medicinal vehicle of choice, because of the active pro-biotics necessary to aid her gut in it's role in her healing. Today she bought two bottles that contained ingredients necessary to feed these systems and nurse them back to health. I'm proud of her! Many people won't touch the foods that will heal them, and she put her preference aside to put her health first.

We had other items on our long list to deal with today, and didn't get home till nearly 3pm after starting out at 8:30am!

Tomorrow is foraging day. I need 2.5 jars more of chokecherry juice concentrate and we'll have a year's supply frozen between harvests again. All three of us in the household swear by that stuff! So we hope to bring home several more bags. I have a ton of chokecherry leaves to crush up for my daughter's tea business, and as the summer gave way to a somewhat wetter fall, the trays of drying chokecherries are taking their time. . . Some of those are for household use, the rest for her tea business. Rosehip season is now upon us as well, and it appears the wild rose bushes had a bumper year too! So maybe we'll come home with those to dry and store for use in teas, cold drinks and baking. Two of my daughter's teas call for rosehips too. So we'll see how tomorrow goes.

In the meantime, my son had brought home more milk and wants chai for the family snack time later tonight. The various spice blends that go into various types of chai, all have nutritional/medicinal benefits, particularly in the new viral landscape we all live in now! On top of that, additions my daughter likes to make help make us less inviting to biting insects. We make it traditional East Indian style, steeped in warm milk! We should all sleep well tonight!