#35— Groovin
Janie,
Our grass is roughly 3ft high. I’m sure the board members of our HOA are fuming. I’m trying not to enjoy that thought too much because we really have been trying to get it done. It’s really, really out of hand. And that’s coming from ME who typically could not care less about how tidy yards are kept. But this is functionally not good for us. The girls can’t even play in the yard because I’m sure we’ve created the perfect hangout spot for all the neighborhood copperhead snakes. With all the rain and random mini emergencies like a tree falling on Kimimela’s house, very nearly squashing them in their sleep, it’s been hard to find the time or energy to tend to things in the yard. And the yard work To-Do list continues to grow at an exponential rate. I STILL haven’t started my garden. All I really want are cucumbers for pickling and sunflowers to detox the soil so I think, although I’m really pushing it now, we’ll just barely get them in the ground on time.
I did end up getting some of the yard mowed and yes.. there were snakes.
At least inside I have things semi under control. We’ve gone to bed with a perfectly clean kitchen almost every night this week. Cookies are prepped and in the freezer for emergency snacks, I have two days worth of dinner sitting in the fridge waiting to baked. Two more loads of laundry and we’ll be all caught up! I even dusted all the ceiling fans yesterday. Things are starting to tidy up. Now that I’m in some sort of groove, it’s time to really crack down on those little projects I’ve been putting off. But the top priorities now are the chicken coop (supposed to be done last week but the weather was bad), and we desperately need a compost bin which I hope to build during nap time tomorrow with some spare lumber and anything else I can scavenge from the basement.
I should mention, our kitchen has been kept extremely clean for a specific reason. Ants. Ants everywhere. Hundreds of ants. At one point, Silouan was marching around the house chanting “Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Death to ants!” (Chanting quietly because the kids were sleeping). But now there are no crumbs on the floor, or scraps or spills on the counter left after meal times so they’ve gone to hunt elsewhere. Good riddance.
I attended that sewing class and it was incredible! I feel very confident with all different kinds of machines and even had the opportunity to successfully troubleshoot some bobbin issues on an old troublesome Brother machine. Truthfully, I was very bored during the class. It was very technical. But hands on technical which was great because I never would have had it in me to actually read through a manual and figure this stuff out on my own. Not even using YouTube tutorials. So I’m very grateful they allowed very little time to practice actually stitching things because, obviously, that’s the fun part. I’ll happily work on that on my own. Now I’ll finally dive into to some sewing blogs to see what machine I should purchase, although I’m pretty sure I’ve made up my mind and will pull the trigger on a Singer M1150. At least, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to after maybe 10 full minutes of thought. I’m struggling to be patient because I’m itching to get started while everything is fresh in my mind.
Like I said, very little time spent on the machine but I still was able to get a feel for how the fabric gets pulled in by the “feed dogs” (doesn’t that sound like a term made up by someone who doesn’t sew.. at all?), how to regulate the speed using the pedal, and getting used to tying off the stitch using the reverse switch which is a little tricky.
As a final thought for the week, I’ve been really enjoying all the little things lately. One of the things that I really get a kick out of is saying “yoink!” as I scoop up one the girls when they try to bolt after I tell them it’s time for diaper changes. Hehe
-Lydia