Diary of a Homemaker's Week: Flowers, Birds, Sunshine

Saturday:  I drove with Katie to pick up Taylor.  We've had about 6 weeks or so without seeing her at all and I was ready to see my girl.  She's lost her first tooth and has three more wiggly ones.  She was quiet on the way back until we stopped for lunch.  I can only assume she was too famished to spare any energy talking because after we picked up lunch (we had a parking lot picnic), she began to chatter and talked pretty much non-stop for the next hour.

I left them at Katie's and came home where John had his portion of the parking lot picnic.  I knew that I was never going to make pizza for lunch today.  I was tired and it was late when I got in, about 1:30pm. 

  

I missed that Saturday pizza lunch, because I am such a creature for routines,  and decided it was worth making for supper.   Today's pizza had hamburger, peppers, onions, mushrooms and pepperoni on it and I made a sort of marinara sauce using up the half can of tomatoes from the fridge instead of tomato sauce.   It was very good. I think John was a lot happier with that one than he was with the Chicken, Pesto and Artichoke pizza.   He doesn't know how lucky he is.  I watched a vlogger make a fig jam, bacon and jalapeno pizza for her family Saturday afternoon.   He'd probably never bother to taste that if I made it! 

Yesterday on the way home, John and I talked over the kitchen renovations.  He's for them one time and against them the next and we were nowhere nearer agreeing on anything than we ever have been.  Mind you we aren't exactly ready to start anything anyway at present, but we'd discussed if off and on for two or three or five years now.  

I said,  on Thursday: "Well never mind.  I'll probably never do this so why bother to fuss over it..."  after his usual "I'm NOT taking out a mortgage to redo a house..." argument.  Now nothing I've planned necessitates a mortgage or even a loan!  I'm not changing a layout, not moving plumbing and not changing up electric.  I'm talking basic model cabinets and Formica counter tops.  We can install things ourselves as it's all straight edges and no angles to join or edges to meet up.)

But yes, I was frustrated and tired and I hate that he forgets who it is he's married to.  After all I've done my whole house and life on a budget so why on earth does he think I'm suddenly putting in gold taps and onyx sinks and diamond pulls on the ceiling fan chains?

He tried to appease me on Friday and made a suggestion that I think he was pretty sure I'd reject immediately and adamantly refuse.   Well, I'm no spendthrift and I'm no idiot, either.  I know a compromise when I hear one and I could immediately see his reasoning was sound.

"Why not, instead of redoing the whole kitchen at once, start with the most obvious thing?  Find the furniture piece you want to replace the little cabinet with first.  Then you can move the dishes from the upper cabinets into that piece and we can take down the upper cabinets and patch the walls. Later, we could then put that cover over the vent..."  "And paint the walls!   That's a brilliant idea!" I said happily, while he looked sideways at my enthusiasm in disbelief.  Then he went on, no doubt waiting for me to reject his proposal,   "And later you could look for the sink you want and then we could..."   "Then we could buy the base cabinets and set them aside until we can buy the countertops..."  I said excitedly.   "So we'd do it all in stages!  John, that's a brilliant idea!"

John's enthusiasm was less than mine.  Truth is, I think he felt once the hated upper cabinets were gone I'd let go of the idea of base cabinets but I am equally as adamant about having new bases.  Our cabinets look awful.  They are sturdy, but they were not built to any standard but that of the man who put them together from odd scraps at the trailer factory.  They stand too high, the spaces between doors are barely twelve inches wide and the doors themselves are too narrow so no one but a 7 year old can really reach into them.  They are far too deep as well.  There is only one shelf and it half the depth of the cabinet.  You can't put in more shelves because there are no support pieces to rest them on.  There's loads of dead space that simply isn't useable.   The cabinets are awkward and nothing fits in them as it should and every door is crooked to boot.  

No, I'm afraid those bottom cabinets are history but I do like John's plan to ease into our remodel by starting with the most obvious thing and that is the Welsh dresser type piece I have in mind.  I'll just bet he'll be surprised when we are all done and he realizes that is the most expensive piece that went into my whole planned remodel, too.

Yes, it's a compromise I can live with to do it all in stages.   It's given me incentive to hunt down that first piece and start saving up for it.  Because of course, I mean to do all this on a budget and pay cash for it all and I mean to save that cash first and not repay any account after.  Nope.  I've learned that John will demand I budget and budget and budget to make up any expense that comes out of savings unless of  course, I've got money tucked away FIRST...You can't repay what you didn't borrow from yourself, now can you?

In the meantime, I'm looking around for a great  sale on a decent sink cabinet for our guest bath.  I figure if we're doing things in stages we might as well replace the cabinet in that bathroom and we'll do floors at a later date.    Then I'll find a mirror to replace the oversized ugly one that is glued to the wall...and before you know it my little guest bath will be pretty as can be...And I'll be watching to see what I can expect to pay for that Kitchen piece and saving towards it and...  Hoisted by his own petard?  Perhaps.  

Sunday:  I am tired.   Up early to go to early service.  Hurry home and put together our dinner and get the house arranged with spare chairs and moving tables to accommodate the children.  

Poor Josh wasn't able to come.  He and Daddy stayed home.  Josh visited the doctor on Friday for a wellness check, was deemed healthy and before he arrived home 30 minutes later he was running fever  and has been sick all weekend long.  They wanted to nurse him along today and let him get well so he can go to his awards program at school on Tuesday.   I missed him and packed him a special plate.  I made his daddy a plate, too.

Millie is walking!  She mostly walks on her knees which looks incredibly funny to see but she walks perfectly straight up and she puts those knees down hard as heels on the floor.  However, she also stood and walked a little bit today, too.   As I suspected, once she saw that Caleb was walking everywhere she kind of took notice and walked more herself.

Caleb is talky.  You can't understand a thing he says but he chirrups and gabbles and Millie seemed to think he made perfect sense because she gabbled right back at him.  But y'all...I have no babies in my family at present.  Yes, my littlest ones are still little but they are not babies.  They toddle and talk and play.  They don't want to be stopped to cuddle with anyone.   They are busy!  There's walking and playing and eating to be done and they can do all the things, at least in their own eyes.

That dimpled darling Millie wanted a kiss goodbye.  So I kissed her and she'd then lean in and give her Mama a kiss on her cheek.  Gramma didn't get a single kiss but she passed all mine right on to her Mama.

We had a family dinner today to have a brief early birthday celebration for Taylor.    Her real birthday is this next week but we won't see her then, so we had Gramma's fried chicken and I bought specially decorated purple, pink and blue swirled cupcakes with sprinkles to celebrate with.  I made green beans and a hashed brown casserole.  I decided on the hash brown casserole to use up the last of the cheese sauce from Mac and Cheese this past week.   The babies could eat the vegetables better than mashed potatoes.

Taylor was a happy little girl.  She had her three pieces of fried chicken and a salad.  Her cupcakes had all her favorite colors.   She was pleased with her simple gifts.   She was disappointed Josh couldn't come, but fortunately she and Isaac play well together for all that he's a year and a half younger.  Millie and Caleb pretty much played together on their own.

And then it was time to clear away all the foods and start a load of dishes and put the house back to rights and take Taylor back to her dear daddy.   She talked pretty much non-stop for the whole hour and a half ride up and on the way back Katie talked quietly for most of the ride back.  I don't mind.   I like listening to them both.  

I caught myself repeating something I'd said the day before and told Katie not to mind me.  It's what comes of having no one to tell things to.  She said "Oh, I talk to every body and I repeat things all the time because I can't remember what I told to whom."   Nice of the girl to try and make me feel not quite as old as I felt when I realized I was repeating myself.

After we got back, Katie cut John's hair and then he took her home and apparently stayed to talk.  I've loved my weekend, but I have to say the gift of two hours of quiet is pretty much bliss and not at all a bad way to end a busy weekend.

Monday:   I was so tempted this morning to roll over and go right back to sleep.   It's a good thing I did not because when I looked at the clock, it was already 8:20.  I had a harder time going off to sleep than I'd supposed I might last night.  I think I'd gotten over tired by the time we went off to bed.   Eventually I finally went to sleep and there I was getting up much later than I'd thought I might.

This week is meant to be hot, creeping into the mid 90's.  We've had such a lovely spring so I'll try to keep quiet about it being hot but it does mean I feel inclined to push to get up much earlier if there's going to be outdoor work done.  

Mindful of my promise to myself to clean porches this week, I took a load of clothes out to hang on the line and then checked the front porch.  I blew it off with the blower before I hung up my clothes and then I picked up the extra items that didn't need to be there.  Isaac had carried my long paint pole around and left it there.  There was a bucket I'd put there in the winter  with water  for the cat when the water buckets had frozen over.  That was pretty much it.  I took time to flip over the cushions the dogs have ruined and that other side does look better though I personally simply pick them up and refuse to sit upon them.

I watered plants and while I was watering, I noted there was a big frog sitting on the edge of the water bucket under the drip line of the house.  An ugly old toad who appeared to keep his eye right on me the whole while I worked on that porch.   Ugh!  I warned him he'd fall into that deep five gallon bucket and drown but he just sat there and stared.   

I hung up my clothes then wandered around back of the house and watered the plants on the porch and noted the mess at the end of the back porch.  I had put a second load of clothes on to wash and ended hanging jeans and capris over the porch rail out there to dry.

I puttered in the house and out.  I got hot and stopped and then I rested and drank cool water.   I got up and did a bit more.  I worked steadily from the time I got out of bed until I was sitting on the front porch reading my Bible.  I noted at that time that the toad was now submerged in the water of the bucket with eyes just above rim level.  I grimly realized I'd have to rescue him.  I groaned.

I went indoors for something and when I came out he was gone.  I just knew the stupid thing had drowned in that bucket of water!  I picked up a child's broom Isaac had left in the yard and went over to 'help' the toad get out.  Well the doggone thing leaped about four feet high and John laughed hysterically as I screamed, danced away from the leap frog and climbed up the steps.   

After I was sure toad wasn't going to attack me, I went over to empty and clean the dog's water bucket under the faucet and watered the rose bush and plumbago.   Then I warily edged back over to the steps and left the toad sitting there watching me.

Bess came up and left the truck for John to load up his brush cuttings so he could carry them over to her.  I came indoors and sat with her and John and we discussed Josh whose fever broke yesterday.  He was never sick but he had that fever and Bess said he just wasn't himself all weekend long.   We walked out the back door together and I pointed out plants I had potted for her but she was walking home and obviously didn't want to carry them across the field.   

I hooked up the wand on the hose and watered plants about the back door.   Then I cleaned the dog bucket around back and filled it fresh and moved the birdbath and cleaned and filled it.   I picked up the things on the back porch I'd scattered.  They are now all stacked neatly within one half barrel which looks considerably better than sundry things laying about.   I moved the wagon from the back steps and put it on the patio for the moment.   That was quite enough.   I was hot at that point.  Not steamy because the humidity then was lower and the temperature tempered by a slight breeze.  But indeed I was ready to come indoors to the air conditioning.   Hard to believe that just two weeks ago the heat was still coming on at 11-12am each morning and now it's the AC coming on at 9am.

Indoors I settled to work on the bill box and fill out some insurance forms that were requested while the fan blew cool air on me.   After I'd finished that task and was a bit cooler, I put together lunch.   So you all can know how I used the rest of the gathered fragments this week I'll tell you what we had for lunch that used them up.

Today I made open faced toasted Meatloaf sandwiches.  That finished off the second half of that small meatloaf, and used up the green onions I'd chopped for salads yesterday.  I served this with chips.     While that heated up I sat in the cool living room and rested and read emails.   After lunch, I cleared up behind us, then brought clothes in off the line and moved the shirts and bras I washed this morning outdoors to hang in the sun.  

I remade our bed with a set of new sheets that I've had for a long while.  I think it was last year  well before the Corona came along that I bought them.   I'd begun to bothered by seeing them still in their original package and felt it would do me well to move them into rotation.   This now brings me up to four sets of sheets for our bed and I'll not buy anymore until I am down to two.   Hoping that will not be for a good long while!

John went outdoors and I folded clothes and put things away in the kitchen again and put clothes away where they belonged.  At this point I'd altered my plans for supper tonight to incorporate the leftover chicken from Sunday dinner.    We'll have fried chicken, potato salad and Green  Peas tonight.    

I made Jell-O and poured into Oui yogurt jars.   I ordered lids to go on those jars and perhaps I paid more than I ought but I'm happy to have a use for the jars as individual dessert containers.  I made pudding and poured into four of the little jars last week and it was so handy to go in and fetch a cool treat from the fridge.   I think gelatin and instant pudding are cheap and lower calorie desserts to have on hand  and you can always go the sugar free route if you want to cut calories even further.  

I'm afraid that's as far as any kitchen prep went on this Monday.  Truth, I have worked steadily if not hard all day long and I was done by 3:30.  I stepped outdoors to take the bucket from the front porch out, having just discovered it sitting on the entryway bench, when John came up to complain of how hot it was out.  Well yes, it usually is by that point each day.  He'd missed all the cooler morning hours sitting indoors but he said he would work anyway.   I don't personally like to wait until afternoon to start my jobs but he is himself and I am myself.  He has reasons for why he does yardwork in the later hours and they aren't silly ones.  

Now that supper is pretty much planned, and only sweeping the kitchen is left of the day's chores, I am going to sit here and plan for June.  I've been keeping a running list of ideas tucked in my head and I'd like to get them down on paper, even if there is a full week of May left before we arrive in a new month.

Tuesday:  I was up early this morning but when I went in to take a shower, I was pretty sure I heard Isaac on the back porch.  I can hear quite well if someone comes on the back as that is one of the outside walls for our bathroom, hence why it is so doggone cold in winter since it's also a north facing wall.

But yes, I could hear little footsteps and hear Maddie's tail beating a quiet rhythm on the wall and I was sure it was him.  However, I was just  not in a state to go to the door, so I decided John could attend to it.   Well John paid no mind and Samuel came along 10 minutes later with Millie and at that point Isaac was washing his hands in the birdbath...

And so began our day...

It was a lovely summery sort of day.  The children went home mid-morning and Sam came here to work.  John and I went out for  lunch, a lovely surprise lunch, nicer than the one I planned.  Beyond keeping kiddos, cutting flowers and eating, I've done pretty much nothing and that too has been absolutely lovely.  I feel I needed this quiet day of doing nothing much.  I must have needed it because now at day's end I've felt ambitious enough to wander outdoors to deadhead flowers and check the sketchy growth of all those seeds I planted.  I'm hoping the ones I planted last week will come along because the dozen or so packets of seeds planted from last year's supply pretty much did nothing.   While I was deadheading roses and dianthus, I heard the first cicada of the season begin his song.   Its summer now regardless of what the calendar might say!

I have been thinking all day long that it's time to go check for blackberries.  It occurs to me that Sam might have mown them down in his clearing of land, so I'll have to wander a bit to see if I can find enough to make a small cobbler.   And I shall most certainly be watching for snakes and ant beds in my way.  I hope to do that tomorrow.

John went off this afternoon to mow the yard across the field and told me disheartening news.  The cemetery that we worked so hard to clear is overgrown.  He said it's too high to mow and since his last visit there was also an encounter with a big old snake, we neither of us really want to go in there.   He's going to spray a weed killer and hope that helps bring it down a bit.  He's doing a test patch to see.  I know if it's left all summer it will get wild and tangled but there will NOT be trees towering over our heads and cedars taking up big spaces as it was when we went out this spring.  I don't want to have to start over.   Neither am I too keen on pushing my way through weeds to try to reclaim it at present especially now that the poison is in full leaf all over the place.

I asked him what will we do?  He said once that he would love to pour gravel over the whole thing but I wouldn't hear of it because it's an old cemetery and we don't know where graves are and gravel or mulch will only further destroy the integrity of the place.  We'd talked of mowing it a routinely but the place is lousy with stumps and stobs and we've had too much trouble with the mower and far too many repairs in May  to risk using it in the graveyard.  So weed killer is our only resort at this time and then we can perhaps weed eat the place every week thereafter and keep it under control.  And if that proves too much I'll suggest it get mowed on a higher setting.  It will look leggy but it won't be lost.  It's not the way I'd like to do it but I don't see that we have much choice.

I left Sam a note today to help himself to what was on the leftovers shelf and he did.   I was glad that he took me up on my offer.   We brought leftovers home from the restaurant meal we ate today.   For tonight's supper I reheated two hot dogs leftover from Sunday children's meals.  We ate them with potato salad left from last night's meal.   I don't know if I'm really going to end up cooking this week, but I'm not complaining so far, as long as we're using up leftovers and not letting them go to waste!

Oh dear.   Samuel was still working here when John went off to mow at his place.   We spoke a few minutes as he loaded up his things to go home,  "I thought Isaac's hand felt a bit too warm when we said prayer this morning..."  Sam nodded.  "Yes, and when he got home Bess said she decided to take his temperature.  Sure enough he's running a fever.  I think he's got the same thing Josh had.  I guess it will go through the whole house."

Wednesday:  I walked the place looking for blackberries today and it's as I suspected:   I saw loads of dead dry stem ends with blossoms that never formed.  That last late frost took them all by surprise and so that is that.  There will be no blackberries for us this year off this place.  Ah well.

I sat down on the back porch to cool off and rest.   John was weed eating (the English call it 'Strimming' which I like better don't you?) around the house and I sat and enjoyed the breeze and noted that something fuzzy could be seen in the nest on the porch rafter...Four little heads and mouths popped up at once!  No wonder Mama was fussing at us to move on.   As soon as John got the weed eater operational once more I supervised him in a couple of areas where I felt he needed to weed eat and then I came indoors and left her to her feeding schedule.

I ordered my first produce bag and will receive it this weekend.  I'll get Green Garden (aka English in our area) peas, several of three varieties of new potatoes and a dozen fresh eggs for my first bag of the season.  I think those three things will be wonderful and I'm so excited to start getting garden produce this early.  I'm not unhappy about those eggs, either...

My accomplishments today are small.  I did minor housework before heading outdoors to blackberry hunt.  When I came back, I had Bible study and a glass of unsweetened iced tea.   Then I made bread and took a portion of dough to make a small batch of cinnamon rolls for us.   I didn't make many though I'd initially thought to use a whole batch of dough and put some in the freezer.  I might yet but I didn't feel like it today, so I just borrowed a bit and made the bulk up into a loaf of bread.  

I gathered the soup ingredients from the fridge: leftover roasted chicken frame, black bean and corn salsa and a few other ingredients for my soup base  I started the chicken cooking first.

I went back to the pantry to fetch something and came back to a phone call from Sam setting up his work days here this week and two special events next month that required me sitting down with my calendar and us agreeing on dates and times.

I made a big tuna pasta salad with the elbow macaroni I'd cooked extra last week.  This week it has olives, both green and black, green onions, celery, shredded carrot and tuna with mayo and seasonings.  

John was out mowing and I refilled my kitchen food cabinet from the pantry, washed dishes, and emptied the trash cans and bagged up all the trash.   It was a productive morning, as simple as my tasks were and when John came in at last, I handed him a glass of Gatorade and a bowl of salad while I had a glass of Tang with my pasta salad.

After I'd put lunch away and set the bread and cinnamon rolls to cool, he went to take a shower but stopped to call his brother before heading in.  I sat down in my chair, put my feet up and went right to sleep.   I woke  about an hour later.  I did not expect or plan to take a nap and had I been asked before hand, I slept very well indeed last night.  I didn't think I'd done so very much today that I needed a nap but there you are.  

I've been looking at our weather forecast and our first chance of real rain isn't until Saturday week so I'm saving my dishwater and tossing it over plants to water them.  The hydrangea is looking wilted after two days at present so I feel it could use the water, since it's blooming it's heart out for me.  

Tonight we'll be having Southwestern Chicken and Rice soup and more of the Mexican Cornbread.  The soup is a very full pot despite my attempt to make it a smaller dish.  I don't know how to make just a little bit of soup apparently even when I try hard.  We'll also have our tangelos and I think that will be a delicious meal.  It's one of the few that I had on the menu for this week, too.  

We skipped the steaks this week and we'll skip the salad meal too.  So far we've eaten leftovers most nights this week.   We still have leftovers in the fridge, enough to see us through the end of this week for both lunches and suppers.  I might not have to make a meal from scratch until this weekend.   I am not complaining about how food multiplies in this household.  I know that eating all those leftovers will mean we come into next week with about as much food as we came into this week with and very little has been used from the pantry at all, beyond a few cans of vegetables.   No trip to the store has been necessary either.  

Thursday:  I was out early this morning working on the back porch.  I decided it was a job worth doing in portions.  This morning, I got the top railing and one whole section of lower railing cleaned.  I also cleaned the siding of the house as high up as I could easily reach.   I didn't work more than a half hour but it was quite enough.  Not only is it hot, but I must be mindful of baby birds' need to eat and their reliance upon a shy Mama.  So I tried to work smart and work hard and limit myself.

I was happy this morning to note that the Achimenes are starting to pop through the soil.   I have my fingers crossed the zinnias will soon show up as well.  They've been in the ground just over a week now so I'm hopeful on those.  I'll have to buy more of the cosmos and sunflowers and such that I planted because it's obvious that seed was simply not going to produce at all.  Oh well.

Back indoors it took me just a short while to get housework done.

Our lunch today was leftovers of salad from Sunday dinner and the half burgers we brought home from our anniversary dinner out.   Out supper was the last of the Spaghetti ala Diable and Mexican Corn Muffins.  That puts us down to leftover pizza for tomorrow's lunch and the rest of the tuna pasta salad from Monday's meal.  And I still have Southwestern Chicken and Rice soup.

Confession time:  I am SICK of eating leftovers!  I am.  And because there was such a load of the soup left, I've used some of it to supplement the dogs' food this morning and I'm probably going to do it again tomorrow morning, too.  But never mind...It's being eaten and that was the goal.

Guess what got found today?   If you guessed it was that spray nozzle for the hose, then you'd be right.  I told you for sure if we bought a new one the old ones would turn up.   I guess I should have gone on and bought two because we've only found one...

Friday:   My pantry light failed to come on yesterday and John determined we'd need to buy a brand new.  I was in agreement as we both were convinced it was a failed switch.   

We puttered about this morning and didn't leave home until 12n which is perhaps NOT the best time to head out, but it was thankfully cooler and we were NOT hungry as we'd had a late breakfast so there was that, too.   He decided instead of going to the local hardware to head to Lowe's which was quite all right with me.    

I wish I'd thought to grab my donations.  They were sitting ready at back and shed doors but my mind just didn't click on them at all, sigh.   Lowe's is right next to Goodwill.

Never mind.  I had a list in my mind of what I wanted for plants.  I found the Penta and one Coleus that I could reach, and a bag of soil and nary a thing else on my list.  They had only 2 ferns!  And due to the way they had them set up I didn't see them at all until we were leaving the parking area.    Just as well since our total  was pretty close to $100 with the things John required.

Across from that particular Lowe's is a Publix.  Yes, my budget for the month is spent...but it's Memorial day weekend and the buy one get one sales were too good pass, especially as prices were lower than Aldi on these items which were larger than what I can buy at Aldi.  I spent $66 today with a savings of $39 overall.  I know I won't be back in the store before these condiment sales are off special and we'll certainly want them in the months ahead.

As for our leftover status...There's pizza in the fridge.  I've told John it's what's for supper tonight and then we are down to just the Tuna Pasta salad.  I took some things from the freezer to thaw for the weekend ahead.   

Hope you all have a great weekend ahead!