Diary of a Homemaker's Week: A Fresh Start

Saturday:  Summer Pleasure:  I sat on the porch this morning with my coffee and listened to a Quail calling "Bob White!" from the field.  I've so enjoyed listening to the quail this summer but here of late I've only heard the tree frogs calling up more rain, lol.  Nice to hear the bird for a change! 

A very relaxed and easy day.  I made it a point not to do any work.  I did my nails, Bible Study, pizza, looked up some genealogy work, flipped through the Ball Blue Book looking at recipes for hot water bath canning, found a notebook of inspiration pages I thought I'd lost, and just generally relaxed and enjoyed myself.  

Do you know what I'm just longing to do, right here as I finish up my summer pleasures?  Get out my clothes and see what I'd like to wear for September with a leaning towards Fall.  Oh yeah.  I'm ready for the next month and that fresh new start.  Are you?

Meals today:  Bagels for John, Croissant for me

Pizza

Fried Rice which was made from everything I found in the fridge at that time that might remotely belong in a fried rice dish.

Sunday:  Summer Pleasure: A morning ride through sunny countryside.  After church today John took the long way home, running along lovely little paved backroads that meander through fields and woods.  Morning glories tangled with weeds at roadside and on one steep hillside of a home's yard was a glorious display of golden colored cosmos blooming.  

I was ahead of myself this morning.  I'd chosen and accessorized my outfit for church last night.  I had cleared the kitchen sink last night.  I made the bed before I left our room this morning and I'd planned ahead both breakfast and lunch.  Please let me remind myself next Saturday that these are goals at the end of the day and make next Sunday morning as easy as this morning was.

I've put out my first post for this week.  Officially, I'll continue to share my Summer Pleasures through the last day of August, but I'm through with time off.  I've had four weeks and it has been lovely.  I am itching to get back to work writing and cleaning and accomplishing projects.  

Before I have coffee this afternoon it is my intention to go outdoors and get up some debris on the front patio and dump them out at the edge of the yard.  It is a small task that will make a big difference, I assure you.

When I come back indoors, I will make John and I a cup of coffee and fix us a piece of cake.  And then I'll work on getting something started for supper tonight, right off my menu plan.

later:  Cleaned up the mess more or less.  There's plenty of work to be done out there yet, but I did take time to make myself a pretty pot to sit next to the steps.

I used the pot of coleus I'd bought in the spring and from which I've taken copious cuttings (there's a fresh lot rooting on the kitchen window shelf just now) to fill in the back of the planter, then put in one of the mums and the pot of asters I bought the other day.  I tucked Dusty Miller I'd neglected to plant in the middle.  I think it turned out really pretty and this should last well into frost, with the added bonus the mum and the aster will return next year. 

Meals:  Banana Muffins, Boiled Eggs

Shredded Bbq Chicken Sandwich, Dill Pickles, Chips

Pizza, Salad.  We weren't very hungry, and this was a lighter meal than any I'd planned for this week's dinners.  I had only 3 slices of leftover pizza, but we had a big salad which filled our plates.

Monday:  Summer Pleasure:  A cold tinkling glass of ice water after working outdoors and getting hot.  Add to that the aroma of freshly mown lawn and you've got the quintessential summer experience in my opinion!

I contemplated the plethora of things I might do today and needed to do and got overwhelmed early on.  I finally said to myself that I'd just go on outdoors and work on the patio some more.  I blew all the dirt off it (might as well have waited) and then I used some older soil to fill another planter and repotted the basil from three pots that were crammed too full.  My basil has simply not done well. I suspect it's because we've had so much rain that the soil is wetter than it requires.   Fingers crossed that it would like the new planter, that rain will now be once a week instead of once every few hours.

I had to blow off the patio again after messing with the soil.  Again, I might as well have waited, because I then went to work trying to scrub the lichen off the metal table.  I'd gotten it looking better but not lichen free, but that too ended being a bit of wasted work and I'll tell you why in a moment.  By this point, I was sweaty and tired of working outdoors.  John wanted to run into town to get gasoline for the mower anyway, and I needed to mail a bill.

I have an issue with this company.  They want us to do away with paper billing and set up an automatic payment.  I prefer paper bills, paid with paper checks.  This company sends out their billing exactly 1 week prior to it falling due.  I should have run it into town to mail on Saturday, but I didn't.  I meant to take it with us on Sunday, but it wouldn't have mattered because no mail leaves town on Sunday.  So, I've now got about 5 days for my bill to arrive before it is due.  And since it is due Labor Day, the odds it might arrive on time are certainly slim.  

Back to the table, I'd planned to look up what I needed to use to remove the lichen.  A wire brush is only getting a portion of it off.  But I realized something this evening that I've been thinking about it all afternoon long and I've decided finally that I need to let the table go.  We have never, in all the years I've had it, used it.  I've spent money on paint and umbrellas for it.  We still didn't sit at it.   I tried it on the front porch last summer and we had to remove it because it took up the whole of the porch. The truth is the table is too big for the patio.  The patio is exactly as wide as the porch...It's not ever going to fit right and it's time I admitted it.  It's such a sturdy table it's a shame to have it just sitting here unused.

Without the table on the patio, I'll have more room to work with and we can always put a smaller cafe sized table out there if we determine we want one at all. 

As we were walking out to the car, I walked down the backside of the house to see how the planter with the mums from previous years looked.  The mums haven't done much but the mix of balsam and coleus were stunning.  You can't even see it from the rest of the yard, so tomorrow I'll be pulling some plants out of hidden areas and putting them in a space where we can see them better!

We took half the chocolate cake I made on Friday over to the house across the field.  We've got two more servings for each of us from the other half and I certainly didn't see us keeping that cake here all week long.

I made lunch when we got back home and then John went off to mow our lawn, though he still needs to finish the lawn over across the field.  I decided that today I wouldn't do much more.  Golly if only I'd listen to myself!  I decided it would be worthwhile to prep supper since it is a long cooking oven baked dish (really must try this in the crockpot but I waited too long today).  I brought out foods to make meals this week from the pantry and freezer.  And then I felt I could just start on the kitchen cleaning.  Woo Boy!

At one point, about two and a half hours in, I looked around and saw messes everywhere I looked.  I was tired and starting to feel pain in my ankles from standing so long.  I was irritable and approaching whiny, but I just told myself "All you have to do is this one thing then you can sit down."  Over achiever that I am, I did three or five more things and then John came indoors to rest a bit.  I was having little accident after little accident.  I came very near cutting my finger badly with a knife, almost dropped a glass, spilled water as I walked across the room and did something else...John said, "Are you having a hard time?"   I explained I was beyond done.

We sat and drank cold glasses of water together and talked over this and that.  Looking out the window at the beautiful lawn, discussing some tree branches that are hanging a little low.  I said "There's a few branches on the Faith tree that need to be trimmed, too.  They're blocking my view to the driveway from the kitchen window."  John got up immediately and I begged him, "Please don't go do that...It can wait!"  Nope, off he went to fetch his new pole saw.  I figured I'd at least ought to go out to direct him which branches were the issue and offer moral support even if I was tired.

I stepped out the door and the entire patio was covered with a thick layer of grass...SIGH.  I got the blower and blew the film of dust off the front porch then went to work on the patio.  That made the fourth time today I'd blown off that patio.   I was about half done when John came around the corner of the house.  We got the branches I wanted cut down.  

I laughed as I told John, "Remember our first summer here when we thought this tree was dead?  Did you have any idea we'd end up cutting as many branches off it as we have over the years?"   He just shook his head.  He had his hands full of branches that he was trying to pull around the back of the house to our ongoing dump pile, which eventually will go over to Bess' burn pile.

Back indoors, did I sit down?  No, I did not, not for at least another 15 or 20 minutes but I did finally and every bone in my body and every muscle sighed when I did.

John finished up mowing around 5pm.  I'd been sitting down about 40 minutes by then, had given myself a cup of coffee and a tiny doughnut to carry me through the hunger I was experiencing, and I didn't even get up when he walked in the door.  I usually go to greet him with a cold drink.  Fortunately, he knew I was as weary as he was. 

After he showered, he talked with his brother on the phone.  I finished up our evening meal.  I declared it was a no dishes night.  Not as dramatic as it sounds.  I rinsed them and stacked them neatly, put away the food, etc.  

Meals:  Sausage Gravy, Biscuits.  I've been eking out a pound of turkey sausage. I used a bit for our pizza on Saturday.  I used about 1/3 of it for gravy this morning.  There's another portion of the sausage left.  I made a full batch of biscuits, but flash froze all we weren't eating this morning unbaked.  I'm telling you...Take a little out of the freezer, put back a little more.

BLTs, Apple

Oven Baked Chicken and Rice, Green Peas, Pear Salad, Pineapple Sherbet.  I used chicken legs as the meat in our rice bake.  Next time I'll cut down on the amount of rice because it made far more than we needed.  Must remember to adjust my recipe to reflect how it would work best for us.  I put two legs and a LOT of rice into the freezer tonight.  

Tuesday:   Summer Pleasure: While I was in the yard this morning, a hummingbird came along to join me.  He didn't seem to mind my presence in the same space at all.  

 I tried to use common sense today and not overdo as I did yesterday.  I'm not sure I succeeded that well.   All of my work this morning was done outdoors.  I picked up the sticks in the bed under the Faith tree, swept grass out of the flower beds from yesterday's mowing, moved three huge pots, planted some things out and cut small (? does six feet tall still count as small?) trees out of the lantana and rose bush. I tried to dig up the Stargazer lilies buried amongst those plants too, but the roots have wrapped all around the bulbs, so I will likely just have to watch them bloom right there.

Everything from there was just puttery sorts of things.  I really have done very little hard work after my morning of work outdoors.  The house held up well after yesterday's big push.  

John and I rode over to the next town to make a deposit and stopped to pick up Subway sandwiches while we were in town.  As usual, John insisted on going in and he came out with TWO footlong sandwiches.  Do we need two?  We do NOT, but he wants to pretend that we might eat that much at once.  I must remind myself in future to tell him we need only one.  Obviously, we have a lot of sandwich leftovers, so I guess we'll be eating that again this week.  

I've gotten two grocery store ads this week and both underwhelmed me with the Labor Day sales.  I won't say that prices were considerably higher, but they certainly aren't sales worthy either.  I'll see what Publix has to offer tomorrow and then there are two stores I want to check out where I haven't shopped and we'll see if anyone lures me in with a real sale on any item.   How have the Labor day grocery ads looked in your area?

Meals:  Cold Cereal, cheese toast

Subway sandwich, chips

Vegetable Soup, Cornbread, Cake

Thursday:  Dear folks...Please forgive this shortened post.  We've had quite a day here.  Caleb is sleeping in the guest room.  I'll share another time about the shenanigans before he went to sleep.  

Please, please, please, PRAY.  Katie's boyfriend was in a horrible accident this morning on his way to work. At present he's in a medically induced coma.  He has head injuries; his hips were broken at the very least and he's on a ventilator. Katie's at the hospital and has been for hours now.  She is waiting on his mother to arrive from out of state.  This young man has already been to surgery late this afternoon.  Bess has gone up to sit with Katie now that her home duties are taken care of.

There are a few scheduled posts coming up but I don't know when I'll be posting the usual weekly ones for right now. 

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