Family

Homesteading and Cupcakes

Apartment-steading, really. But the cupcakes were legit.

wintermute (Kevin)

Oct 13, 2025 • 7 min read

Following our midnight corn-husking festivities the evening prior, we had a few other farm-fresh pluckings to deal with on Sunday the 12^th as well...

We couldn't resist a full-on photo shoot to play with all the colors...

And then it was time to divvy.

Some for Taylor and Ahlina... And my parents... Kelly and Steve... Joe and Paula... Jeff and Lillian... We didn't have enough to feed everyone forever, but we had enough to make sure everyone at least got a single kernel of corn and maybe an apple or two ;)

We started with the corn, since that had been husked and washed and caterpillar-free for almost 12 hours at this point...

We literally had to use an algebraic equation to figure out how many ears of corn should go to each family!

Fortunately I'm not entirely shitty at math, and we got it done.

Then it was time to make some tomato sauce—which we had somehow never attempted until now; but how hard could it be?

I samurai'ed the tomatoes...

...And some onions.

...And some herbs from our garden.

And then Kitten cooked everything down into a slurry—or perhaps into a paste, if that sounds more appealing...

I texted Jeff to let him know there was a veggie-drop waiting for him; and, like a true addict, he came upstairs within 30 seconds.

He and Kitten and I got to talking, and Kitten mentioned something about how our distant neighbor, "Magic Mike's sister," works at GIANT.

Jeff's eyes lit up and he pointed to one of the main doors halfway across the parking lot...

👨🏿

"Yeah; the girl over here, right?"

I stifled a chuckle, because there was only one reason I could think of why Jeff would know exactly to whom Kitten was referring...

😏

"I gotta ask, man: I assume there's a story behind why you knew exactly whom Athennia was talking about."

And, yeah; there was a story.

👨🏿

"So, there's this guy who shows up—I guess her boyfriend or something. He drives a white SUV?"

😏

"Mm-hmm..."

👨🏿

"So I was out walking Turbo one day a couple weeks ago, and I had a hoodie on, and I was literally staring at the ground.

And suddenly I heard, 'Yo, what the FUCK are you lookin' at?!'

So I looked up, and this guy was just like glaring at me. So I said, "Excuse me?"

And again, he's like, 'What the fuck are you lookin' at?!'

So I threw down my hoodie and I was like, 'I'm sorry; do I know you?!'

And then he just sped away in his car. But that guy's crazy, man."

😏

"He sure is. We call him Mad Meth, 'cause he kinda has that look—like with the sunken-in cheeks and stuff.

I almost got in a fist-fight with him back in the first week of July: I was headed out to a friend's funeral, and he pulled that same exact shit with me... only, in my case, I had yelled at him back in the spring because he was out there screaming for 10 minutes straight at his girlfriend's dad—that 8-foot-6 lanky old guy who's shaped like a question mark?

But, yeah; all this time, I've been under the assumption that he remembered who I was from when I yelled at him... But, I guess not: I guess he's just a nutjob.

Maybe one of us will just clock him next time."

Taylor reached out shortly before noon to say that she and Ahlina were "almost done" doing whatever they were doing, and would be coming over soon.

So Athennia and Riley sat around all afternoon and evening waiting for them to finally make it here around dinner time.

We ordered a couple pizzas and some zeppoli from Bambino's, and then the girls took Riley over to their friend Jeremy's to hang out for a few hours.

Then on Monday, the girls stopped by again to visit for a bit longer before they headed back to Connecticut and we headed over to my parents' house for dinner and Hannah's birthday.

We got some pictures.

We got a lot of pictures, actually. But Riley only smiles in 1 out of every 25; so these were actually the best ones...

In other news,

😍

Hannah turned three!

It was a pretty big deal—and Hannah's not remotely camera-shy; so I was able to get so many great shots that I actually had trouble weeding through them all to find the best ones!