My beloved stand mixer died today.  I am pretty sure it is the belt.  I don't know what kind of belt it is but I know it's the belt.  (I told Reid I thought it was a belt and he asked me why I thought that.  I told him because I had heard that sound while driving.  I know very little about engines but I do know the sound the car makes before you look in your rear view window and see a strip of your engine belt bouncing down the road.) 

Anyway, it was somewhat fitting that it bit the dust today since today I finished the last standing order (of 400 burger buns) I had agreed on before we decided to go down to just doing the Washington Farmer's Market and no longer take retail orders.  So either my mixer decided to die right along with my dreams of becoming the next Betty Crocker or because back to back to back batches of a to-capacity heavy yeast dough is a lot to put on a mixer.  Or simply because I have put my Kitchen-aid Professional Model counter top mixer through 2 years of commercial use (I think somewhere on the packaging it said intended for home use only) with another 4 years of heavy use before that (in my home but they probably don't bet on a single twenty something using it quite as much as I did).  All in all, the thing still looks brand new and up until today ran beautifully. (Except for sometimes there was a little pause from when you put it in gear to when it started running, but I was patient.) 

Oh well.  I'm sure we'll find someone who fixes small engines.  And I'm sure it is just a matter of replacing the belt.  (Or time to replace it with a 20 qt capacity floor mixer).  And tomorrow starts the first day of being near completely dedicated to getting the house ready for Sugar Diaper's first birthday anyway.   (Which we still have over 4 months to go but it seems like she shouldn't be older than 4 weeks and I'm starting to get a little nervous about how fast all of this is going by.)

We are about to go to bed after having deer burgers for dinner.  (It's amazing how you can still eat yeast dough even after working with it all day.  The same is not true for foods like meatloaf.) I had intentions all day to post about the plants and all the great help I got from Otter Creek to have "anything pink" ready by early September.  So I took the pictures below...and then went and wrote about my poor mixer instead. 

My latest victims

Myra Louise

Polka Dot Plant on the left and sweet marjoram, dill bouquet, bronze fennel and chives

I really, really hope we get the mixer fixed soon.  I am a much better cook than plant murderer gardener.