Diary of a Homemaker's Week: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

 

Saturday:  As I sit here tapping away this afternoon the house is filled at present with the aroma of fresh baked peanut butter cookies.  I used the 3 ingredient recipe and cookies were ready with little mess or fuss in under 15 minutes.  It took longer to preheat the oven than to mix up and roll the cookie dough.   I am patiently letting them cool at present, awaiting my 3:30 cup of coffee...

John is enticing me to shut my eyes and take a quick nap as he's doing...My eyelids do feel quite heavy.

I think of all the days of the week I like Saturdays best.  Not just because it is Shabbat, but because I concentrate only upon feeding us and so our meals are usually unhurried and I don't bother with dishes except to rinse well and stack to wash later.  

Today I've experimented with a pizza recipe.  It was successful.  And I've a pot roast, a proper pot roast with vegetables, in the slow cooker and now I've baked cookies.  Nothing ever seems to take very long to get going and it's such a leisurely thing to simply put food on to cook and walk away and come back to something delicious a bit later.

I'm reading, choosing The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge.  I started it on Thursday and have taken it in small doses since but today, I'm plowing through.  I love 'getting lost' deep within a good book, especially one I've read but blissfully, can read as though new and experience some character's point of view I'd not experienced before.  

We had the three children yesterday afternoon.  John put the boys on Kindles as soon as they got in, much to my disappointment, because once on there they want to stay.   He sat down at his own computer and Millie and I looked at one another and decided we might as well make the best of it on our own, so we did.  She is mighty independent usually and plays on her own but she does like an occasional comment from the audience at large.  As for me, I appreciated the toothy grin and the "Hey there!" she shouts when she pops up somewhere, lol.

It was a long evening.  The boys were ready for bed really about 7pm but Sam lets them stay up on Friday's until about 9pm in the hopes he'll earn a half hour's extra rest on Saturday morning.   Millie doesn't wind down.  She winds up as she gets more and more tired and by 8:30, though she was dropping to the floor often, she was attempting more and more often to take steps on her own and actually managed one!  

I don't mind saying, Gramma is definitely like the boys and winds down.  Shortly after the children went home, I went off to bed myself and went right to sleep.

Sunday:  I loathed the alarm going off this morning, I will say.  Absolutely loathed it.  However, up I got and I began to get ready.   I'd only a half idea of what I might wear today and no clue what we'd do for breakfast and John, taking one look at me, decided not to leave fate in my hands and made breakfast for us both.  That was dear of him, as was the fresh bar of soap he left out for me in the shower.  It's the little things that often speak the deepest of love, isn't it?

When I did come into the kitchen later, I was stunned by the lovely sunrise but once the sun was fully up, I gasped aloud.  "Why look at all that frost!" I said to John.   The world was white with it.  And why?  There'd been no indication we'd get quite that cold last night though I vaguely recall tugging the blanket away from John so that I might shiver under the cover of it.

After breakfast I did a quick dishwashing and we headed out the door.  It was announced at church today that we might, come April, switch to a 9am service rather than the 8:30 one.  I'm all for that additional half hour at home as the morning can be a bit hectic paced here.  We'll see how that works out, though.  It was a possibility not a promise.

On our way home we had no need of anything but our weekly fill up with gasoline.   Once home, I started a load of sheets and towels.  Now here's a mystery...I didn't notice the sheet torn last night but this morning, as I went to hang it on the line, the top border of the top sheet was torn right in two.   I'm puzzled as can be about it.  I assure you I'm not finding tears on any other of my clothes and laundry but sheets do seem to have a terribly short life these days!  I'm going to see if I might mend the sheet since the body of it is just fine and any further tearing should be stopped by the double stitching at the hem edge.   However, duly noted, I need not only more pillow cases (where do they go?!) and a new top sheet.

It was downright chilly outdoors and I wanted something hot and spicy for lunch so I cooked up some potstickers in chicken broth left from Thursday's boiled chicken, then when that had cooked away and the dumplings were tender, I poured over the tail end of the bottle of General Tso's sauce.  

John went out to work in the yard.  I had already remade the bed, put away last night's dishes and this morning's, done the laundry, made lunch, etc., but I cannot sit still indoors when I know full well he's working.   Now he has no such qualms at all, but I cannot do it.   So I made myself get up and start our supper for tonight.  It's a conglomeration of things I found tucked in the fridge which all needed to be used.  Technically it is Chicken Verde Enchiladas, but take my word for it that it's a mix up.   We shall see if it's any good.  Fingers crossed.  I did not put mashed potatoes in it so there's that bit of hope...

After that I cleared up a handful of dishes and then took the clothes in off the line and folded them.  It's no warmer out there at 3pm than it was at 11am.   Indoors once more, I put the clothes away and then made up a stack of light sewing to be done.  I'm going to go watch the video that Cindi M. shared and see if I can figure the t-shirt alteration out.  I also have four pairs of pants to hem and the sheet to mend. 

Monday:  Today has been a busy enough day though I shan't count it all as work.  I did light housework only, spent overmuch time in Bible study but it was needed,  worked up our accounts for the week ahead and then after lunch, went to work on Genealogy after looking unhappily through the old cookbook.  I don't live an hors d'oeuvres sort of life, do you?  I try to tell myself it's just snacks really which sounds much more casual and less fancy but I couldn't convince myself so I set it aside for today and went on to the family history.

John came up to sit on the back porch and I took out a glass of water and joined him there.  We briefly discussed the income tax refund and what to do with it. I suggested putting some aside for our first trip this year.  He agreed, but then added that he had really thought it would pay off the new appliances right nicely.  I sighed deeply.  I agree with him on the one hand, but on the other, I've been trying unsuccessfully for years now to get him to move a sum of money out of one bank savings that pays absolutely pittance on our funds to one that pays a decent enough amount comparatively speaking.  This means that no money shall be moved anywhere and shall sit there to once more gather moss as it's certainly not gathering interest.  I countered with "Then let's move the other money into a higher paying savings account," which earned no comment at all from him.   Generally his silence is a "No" but I shall become water and start wearing away at this stone. 

On the other hand, I do have our room paid for entirely and groceries, too for our stay.  Now I shall just have to come up with gas funds.

John came in saying he needed gasoline for the mower and wanted to take off trash and as we'd just been discussing lunch on the back porch, I said "Wouldn't it be nice to run by Tim's and get Philly Cheesesteak Sandwiches?" and he agreed saying if I'd phone them and go in we could do just that.  Well naturally I phoned!  Then when we got home and had eaten, I glanced over this week's menu and saw that I'd put down Philly Cheesesteaks as one of our meals one night.  Hmph!  Not at all an original idea of mine today and I've mucked up my own menu plan for the week without even trying hard.  Oh that I had read that menu plan before we headed to town!

Lovely time with the family history as I hit a patch of notes I'd made and NONE of them were in the notebook so I added loads of information which was fun to jot down.  I got lost for a good hour or two before realizing I wanted a cup of coffee fiercely.

To make up for my lunch out today, I pulled out the leftovers of roast beef from Saturday and I have enough for a nice bowl of soup each tonight with it all chopped up fine and a little added water and seasonings.  That will make a nice light supper.  

John has been outdoors all day long today.  He's been on a frenzy of cutting limbs and yanking out vines threatening to choke out trees and if you think every tree in the yard is well shorn by now think again.  We are surrounded by wild growth of privet, pine, cedar, scrub oak and cherry laurel with a pecan or sweet gum tucked in here and there for good measure and we were looking very overgrown on our bordering edges.   Now it looks so neat and nice and almost as though we'd planned it all, which we must assuredly didn't do.  We've just never before had the equipment to deal with it.

He went back out after lunch saying he was going to take over a last load of limbs to Bess who has had an almost daily bonfire burning her brush and ours for two weeks now.  Well he came back and darned if he didn't start mowing our yard which wasn't on the agenda for today at all.  

John seems at last to have started hitting his stride as a retiree.  He's got a few interests now and they are keeping him occupied enough to please us both.  He has been doing some minor repairs and such on his guitars.  This is ticky work and takes patience but he's watched enough videos to feel he can do it and so far every task he's done has made him more confident.  He'd said once long ago that he'd like to take old guitars and fix them up for those who can't afford one and he's well on his way to getting that skill set down so that he might do just that.

He's also been recording some of his music which he had no audio record of.  It's surprising to me that he sometimes forgets tunes even though he's got the chords there before him.  I suppose given the number of songs he's written the big surprise is that he figures them out at all!    

And here in the past three months when it's been clear, he's put himself outdoors to work on tools or to cut branches and such and has stayed busy enough to suit me.  Now it's getting into mowing season so he'll have that task to help occupy his time.

Then there's the monthly men's group, seniors' supper, our Creatives for Christ group, and his monthly lunch out with his best friend.  It's none of it a constant fast paced social whirl by any means but it helps to keep him occupied.  He's taking time to stop and talk to people he knows when he's returning from lunch, too, so it's adding up into a life he seems happy enough with overall.

The main thing is he's found things to do that please him and he no longer looks and acts lost which makes me feel happy.  He can be overly sensitive about 'having nothing to do' so I'm very careful not to refer to his retirement as anything other than a rather blessed event.

Briefly let me tell you about my  leftovers makeover for supper last night:   Late last week I boiled a couple of chicken breasts for the Baked Chicken and Dumplings recipe I made.  I only needed two breasts, and a bit of the broth.   I had three in the pot, so I set one aside with remaining broth.  I used half the breast on Saturday to make a BBQ Chicken and Pineapple Pizza (as good as it sounds!) for our lunch but left the greater portion for Enchiladas on Sunday.

I'd thought I'd use the leftover rice (now planned into the Tuna Rice Casserole we'll eat tomorrow night) and the chicken to fill the enchiladas, but Saturday evening, I recalled I'd packed a cup of cheese grits into a small dish and put that in the fridge...I thought why not use the leftover grits?  After all the Hispanics often use a sort of corn meal mush to make tamales and tortillas, so it's not exactly a foreign ingredient.  Just another form of corn.

Rummaging in the fridge I also found a package of open cream cheese with about 2 ounces left in it and a half package of Swiss that had been in the fridge long enough to begin to smell strong.  I looked over these ingredients, took a can each of Enchilada Verde sauce and  green chilies from the pantry shelf, some of the chicken broth I had leftover from our boiled chicken and mixed up the chilies, cream cheese, grits, and chicken.   I then filled corn tortillas with this mixture and topped with Swiss cheese then poured over the Enchilada Verde sauce with  a bit of broth over the enchiladas.  I baked it all and it was so delicious.  The grits, because they were moistened with the extra broth I added to the chicken mixture, were light and creamy.  With the cheese grits, the cream cheese and the strong smelling Swiss cheese on top they came across almost like a cheese Enchilada.  John never asked what was in them, so that's a sure sign he noticed nothing unusual.  It was without a doubt one of my happier 'use it up' recipes!  This made a pan of  eight by the way.   We have four more enchiladas left for a lunch one day this week.

I can't see much going wrong with tonight's soup,  either.  As we ate our meal Saturday night I served the roast and vegetables in a bowl with lots of broth.  I realized that I really love eating soup.  There's something so nourishing about it somehow and comforting.  So I fully expect to enjoy tonight's soup.   I do love using all my leftovers!  Now I am off to see if I can't put together a small strawberry cobbler with the strawberries that really need to be used up. It will add something to our meal of soup tonight.

Tuesday:  A productive day and it's not quite over yet.   This morning, I repotted six kolanchoes.  I watered with stored water.  Then I blew all the sandy soil from the wet dogs off the front porch.  I am giving up on the idea of cushions for humans to sit upon as the dogs (River and Rufus to be specific) will sit upon them all of the time.  Neither apparently ever heard of staying on the ground.

I treated the poinsettia for white flies.  I've moved it outdoors though it's too cold to leave it out overnight just yet.  I plan to spray it with insecticide which is supposed to kill them off entirely, but first I washed the leaves and rubbed my hands over them and crushed those that didn't wash off under the stream of water.

I defrosted the freezer.  I reorganized it and used a reusable plastic grocery bag to fit in a space where no basket would fit.  That bag holds a miscellany of things.  I didn't remove much from the freezer at all, but there's room to spare now that it's all done.  I didn't use boiling water.  I found that simply running my tap hot water until it was really hot and then setting pans of this in the freezer was enough to defrost it and it was quickly done.  It was putting stuff back that took the longest.

I did puttery sorts of tasks after that and worked right up until lunch was reheated.    Lunch was heavy enough I don't want a big meal for supper.  I think I'll have to come up with an alternative meal again tonight but I know it can't be soup yet again, much as I might enjoy that, lol.

After lunch I worked on Genealogy notes and found that several I thought I'd put in my notebook aren't there.  I have a system to let me know when I last posted notes.  Today I am using a red pencil and checking those things that are there or put in today.  In front of my notebook I keep a color coded list with dates of when I last went through a notebook.  I think this shall be my last pass through this particular book for right now.  I've several more to go through though, so not nearly out of work with it all yet.

John is off to mow Samuel's yard this afternoon.  I'm going to run the vacuum over the floors and do a little dusting and such in the living room while he's gone.  I'm doing great at knocking out my list of tasks for this week so far.

Wednesday:  I set my tasks before me right away this morning.  Beyond making breakfast, I planned to clear up the kitchen and do Bible study/Prayer time, make our bed, sweep floors, work on the bill box  and run the mail to town and go to the bank.  I hoped I'd get to see Katie today.  Well by 1:30 I'd done all those things, including a brief visit with Katie and we'd shared lunch.

Katie and John are off together just now, getting oil changed in her car and then they were going to pick up prescriptions on their way home.   John was pretty pleased about getting one on one time with his daughter.  They don't do this very often.  John truly likes his kids and enjoys having time with them.

I, on the other hand, am home alone, which is fine, too.  It's given me a chance to create grocery lists for the week ahead, plan a couple of extra outfits from the new things,  sort out a gift card issue (why oh why must some companies make it soooo painful to check a card balance?!), and in a moment I'm going to go do some more work in the genealogy notebook, but I wanted to take time to check in.

My menu plans this week are all done in.  John worked late in the yard on Monday so I knew he'd not want a heavy meal.  Yesterday he went off to mow Sam's yard, and came in about 6:30 so again, no heavy meal wanted.  I  have thrown caution to the wind and gotten out cubed steaks to thaw for tonight because now I am feeling a serious lack of ambition about cooking.   So my menu is cast away and I am falling down rabbit holes.   It's not the worst way to spend time, in my opinion.

Thursday:  John and I are having a quiet morning today.  I know he's well and truly tired after his week of yard work.   He slept until nearly nine this morning.  It amused me because I was up early and was ready to prepare breakfast early but John didn't appear until our usual breakfast time.   So I guess we just are set to eat our breakfast most mornings along about 9am.  I will be at peace with that.

The morning has been lovely outdoors and chilly cool indoors though warmer than the first part of the week.  John and I have had some deep conversations, about our past hurts with church and our lives together and before we were together and about relationships that have been terminated.  It's been a morning of introspection.

I don't feel any particular need to do any thing really.  The house is clean.  The pollen outdoors is now at that bothersome stage that blocks my ear so I'm resigned to being mostly indoors.  The tasks I see that need to be done are as they come to my notice rather than being consigned to the next round of being in that zone.  As far as I can see this day requires two more meals and the dishes that follow and that's about the sum total of what will be done in it.

I could urge John to let's get out of the house and wander off somewhere but he is obviously relishing this quiet morning at home.  I could push the idea of getting groceries even though we've truly got all but bread in the house at the moment and that I can easily make.  Mostly, I want to just enjoy this day as it unfolds.  Perhaps this evening, as yesterday, we might be rewarded with a gorgeous sherbet sky at sunset.   That is enough.

Friday:  We were up really early this morning, but not before the sun.  The colors of it were flooding the living room with a soft orange glow.  We set our clocks back this week end.  I suppose I'll have to go back to setting my alarm as my body will naturally wake at the same time of light and that will be along about 8:15.  I'm not keen on that.  

The debate over whether to change time or to leave it alone, whether to be permanently on daylight savings or standard time is raging in our state senate at present.  Apparently once determined that they will keep the same time, they must then appeal to the US Congress and Senate to get a ruling on it.  Sigh.   At this point is hoped we shall have a decision by the end of November.

The most asinine of all arguments in my opinion has been that if it gets dark earlier restaurants and stores will lose business as people won't want to shop at those hours.  Admittedly, we personally do not, but the few occasions we've had to be out and about after dark points to evidence that this is an absolute untruth.   The restaurants, store parking lots and streets are packed as late as 9pm in winter and even later in summer.  They really need to put that argument aside as it's such a flat out falsehood that it makes me angry every time I come across it.

At any rate, we change time this weekend.

The smell of baking bread is wafting through the house at the moment, and clothes are out on the line.  Housework is done and I need only to plan weekend meals.  I am, at present, waiting on John to exit the music room to see if indeed we are doing anything today or if we are staying home or what.  We both seem to be of two means wanting to go and not at the same time.  We could do our bit of grocery shopping but what I'd really like is a nice long drive through the countryside, perhaps to pick up just a couple of grocery items I need (milk, potatoes, mozzarella, bananas), get lunch somewhere and then come back home.   Basically what I want is a date.  I suppose I need to make that clear, lol.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend ahead.  Ours is to be lovely weather and then we hit a week of rainy days.  Taylor will be here on Sunday with Katie and Caleb.  I'm looking forward to seeing her.

Come share all about your week!