Diary of a Homemaker's Week: And It Was

 

Saturday:  Grand plans for planting this morning went right out the window though it would have been ideal since all the plants got soaked really well with rain yesterday.  I, however, did not sleep at all until 7am this morning and was up around 9am.  

We've had a bit of upset here in the household. Just married folk sort of upsets but it was very tense at times.  I was not well the past two days and probably more upset than I ought to have been over a variety of things.  John and I could barely be civil to one another because he was upset over the same issues.  Not saying he was wrong nor that I was right.  We were both acting badly, and it made for a tense evening yesterday and an equally tense morning and afternoon.  Adults behaving badly are ridiculous.

We also couldn't afford to go out this week, simply because it's just a tight month and we're hyper focused on getting the stuff for the renovations together in addition to six months of insurance coming due, unexpected bills to pay, etc.  However, I really wanted to go out. I didn't want to continue to argue.  We sat here in silence at a complete impasse.   I asked if we couldn't at least take off trash and just go for a ride.  John allowed that we could.  Mind you we were barely speaking at that point.

We headed off up the road, just he and I.  I was surprised when we came to a crossroad, and he decided to go straight ahead.  I figured we'd go to the next crossroad and turn around to head home.  I was very surprised when John said, "Let's get ice cream..."  The only ice cream place we know of in that direction was another thirty miles away in a little mountain before you get to Warm Springs.  I secretly hoped we'd go to the mountain...It seemed to me that going there was exactly the answer to our current state, but I said nothing because you know you can't give a man the silent treatment and then ask them to do you a favor.

Well, we missed the ice cream place, but John did drive on to the mountain where we've sat and prayed many times over the years.  When we pulled up my prayers were spoken silently while we waited for others to leave the spot.  Later we prayed out loud over the situation we were both laboring over.

Did it help?  It did.  We needed just that and how wise of John to figure out that we did.  Our hearts were lightened, as they so often are when we take time to turn over to God the hurts, frustrations and upsets that we don't know how to deal with.  I'll say, too, that disappointment is always difficult to deal with, be it of the relationship sort or the life sort or a combination of the two.

When we left the mountain, we went to get ice cream.  He ordered mine with extra strawberries.  

It took us an hour to drive home.  How different we were with one another and how much brighter the world seemed though we had sunshine all the way over for our ride.  

Sunday:  Just as we neared the end of the sermon this morning, my phone blew up with messages.  Eight to be exact.  I panicked a little, imagining all sorts of horrid things, but I reasoned whatever it was would wait for five more minute and cut off my phone.  And what caused all the commotion?  Sam had been in his garden and brought in an ample harvest of all sorts of things and wanted me to see it, so he took photos and sent them to my phone.

It was so pleasant outdoors that on the way home, it was easy to plan a big afternoon outdoors.  Back to that in a moment.  John stopped to get gasoline and we contemplated the rise in prices.  $3.29/gallon here.  I pointed out that I'd thought perhaps it was worth driving the sixty-mile round trip to get juice cheaper at the big city groceries but in light of fuel usage we'd be down two gallons, even though we get excellent mileage in our car.  $7.58 added to an item suddenly doesn't make it seem such a bargain to go buy the cheaper juice...Unless of course, sales, coupons and a larger amount of purchasing overall is done.  Then yes, we might consider it worthwhile, but for the one item?  Definitely NOT.

We planned to stop in the local grocery to pick up a pound of ground chuck.  I came home and made slider for our lunch.  It is so good to go into our local store once more! I noted that some things were low (like ice cream) but considering the store has only been open 10 days? I guess they've held their own pretty well.

After lunch, I went outdoors and planted the two pepper plants I'd bought, transferred a tomato plant I'd managed to grow from a side shoot.  I hung hummingbird feeders with water in them.  John had told me I could do that instead of having feeders full of nectar everywhere. I suppose he got the info from his partner who has loads of hummingbirds about his house.   I cut the Stargazer lilies since I'm sure this is the last of them and two zinnias that came up in a flowerpot so I could encourage them to rebloom.  

I've made a pretty little arrangement of coleus, zinnias and stargazer lilies.  They are on the mantel now and are scenting the room.   I was going to do more outdoors but I was pouring sweat.  I always run out of energy really quick when I'm sweating that heavily.  I came back in and after I'd cooled off, I made myself some Gatorade.  

Supper's in the slow cooker, meals are planned and I'm ready for my Sunday afternoon nap.

Monday:  John said I barely laid my head on the pillow last night before I was sound asleep.  I know I didn't wake until the dawning hour this morning and then I rolled over and went right back to sleep.  I finally woke to the sounds of rain on the roof.  No cutting grass today.  Nor working in the yard for me.

It's a lovely leisurely feeling to lie in bed and listen to rain.  Even if you know you really should rise and attend to the day, sometimes it's worthwhile to just lie there and close your eyes and listen.

After coffee and breakfast this morning, I took the filled compost cans outdoors to the bins.  After I emptied them, I pushed the flowers that are dying back over the flower bed so they could drop their seed heads there instead of all over the yard.  

I wandered over to the patio garden and puttered about.  The coral rose has suddenly got dozens of buds about to burst open.  The tiny tea roses are budding, and one has rebloomed.  The orange rose is loaded, too.  We'll leave the discussion of vegetables to the savings blog...I'm not having great success there in the least.  I'll accept that flowers and herbs are flourishing here within this post and tell you how very glad I am of it.

We received a portion of an order from Lowe's this morning, instead of the third item.  We were assured that the third item would arrive as planned on Wednesday and that it was perfectly normal for them to spread a delivery fee over two deliveries...This was a surprise to us.  We are awaiting arrival of the shower pan, the shower faucet/head set that we've ordered from another supplier and now we must decide upon flooring for that room and we will have all those components on hand.  

We did look at flooring at Home Depot but could not get a sample to bring home.  John happened to mention recently that he has a good=sized roll of carpet in his music room closet that has been there since we installed carpeting in the bedrooms.  I just asked him if we couldn't cut a square from that and take with us to lay against tile flooring samples and he agreed that would be the easier thing to do.  

Once I have every single item, I will start looking at knobs/doorpulls for cabinets.  I do not know how many I need at the present moment, until I can count doors and drawers on the cabinetry pieces.  I will also call the contractor back and let him know that as far as we are aware we have every single major piece we need for all the work to be done and insist upon a renewed start date.

If I sound a bit testy at the moment, I am.  I mentioned some time back that we had been ordering checks from Bradford Exchange and that each time I'd been billed an additional amount of money after the check was cashed.  The last billing was highly suspect as it stated I'd paid $20 less than I did and then went on to say I owed less money than I'd paid overall.  When I said it appeared they owed me money instead, I was told I still owed $15 more but they would give me a $5 credit for the aggravation.  I wasn't happy but I mailed them, at their clerk's urging, another $10 check.  They then sent me my checks followed a few weeks later by a refund check of another $5.  Last week I got a new bill from them demanding payment of $5.  

I spent roughly an hour and a half on the phone this afternoon assuring him that I would not be paying that $5.  I was told they'd credited it to my credit card.  I told the clerk that I'd like to know how they accomplished that since I'd never given them my credit card number!   This sent her into a tailspin.  She spoke to her supervisor and the $5 is being written off.  John asked afterwards, "So it's done?"  I told him I'd never do business with them again (this is the third order they've insisted I 'owed' extra funds on, prior to the whole $5 refund situation), I didn't trust it to be over.  I'm afraid that if it comes down to it, I'll just have to be sent to the collection agency for that $5!

Tuesday:  Another day. 

To slip back to yesterday we had a tough evening here at home.  Nothing but life stuff but you know it does weigh mighty heavy at times and can cause upsets whether we mean to let it or not.  So we were sitting on the front porch, John and I, and it was pleasant.  The gnats weren't pesky, the mosquitoes nowhere to be felt.  A hummingbird came and sat on the rose arbor on the patio and rested before flying off once more.  There was no breeze.

The grass is overgrown and air was fluid with little golden dots of light (bugs that the sunlight was hitting just so) slowly flying over the tall grasses.  I wonder why they all hover over the grass as they do?   Whatever their reason, it was peaceful and calming and centering to sit there, with the birds calling now and then a gentle call.  Not the frantic busy daytime calls but more end of day, good tired sorts of calls.  We needed that time on the porch, truly we did.

This morning, we all slept in.  There's a lot of sleeping going on at the moment.  Not really sure why.  Perhaps it's the atmosphere of the house itself?   The weather continues to be pleasant at first steps out the door then proves to be heavily humid and warmer than expected when the breeze dies down.  I went out to empty compost, spoke to the lizard, who was sitting atop a romaine lettuce butt that had sprouted surveying the world about him.  I pulled weeds from the shed Iris bed.  Suddenly that bed looks a lot less full than it did and not nearly in need of division as much as it did last night when we were sitting on the front porch gazing across at it.

I walked over to the patio garden and looked things over.  I took up a tomato plant that has made no effort at all to recover from the horned worm's feast.  I harvested another tomato that was beginning to blush.  This one was a decent size.  I found another that had been eaten at and brought it indoors to throw away.  I noted another tomato plant is actually putting on new leaves along the stems where the worms stripped them.  The flowers are looking lush. I counted another 8 buds on the coral rose from Aldi that currently has at least that many blooms.

I came in the backdoor and Caleb immediately began to cry because he wanted to go out.  I told him I'd called him to go, and he'd said plainly he wanted to watch tv in his room.  I wanted to go outdoors and so I went.  I was far too hot to go back outdoors at that point.  

I've puttered about the house.  I cannot lie.  The clutter on counters and such is getting under my skin.  I cleaned the kitchen counters super well but there are also things on top of the fridge and freezer.  I'll get those removed this evening and find homes for them.  

My creative efforts today went into creating a new recipe.  I was asked to make a certain dish.  I've no idea how to make it nor what did I bother to look up recipes.  Instead, I thought what I'd like and put it together according to my tastes.  It certainly did smell yummy when I was assembling so we'll see how this turns out.

Wednesday:  Though I had no desire to rise early this morning, it was necessary.  I wanted to get our monthly bill work out of the way and have that ready to go out with me later when I was running errands.  As well we had a 9am pest control appointment.  

Despite the early start, I underestimated the time required to get it all done and that was without any interruptions.   John came in with a cup of coffee moments before I'd finished, to tell me, "Pest control is here."  I'm sure he was relieved to see me dressed and made up and the bed made.  I know that he dislikes having anyone see a mess in our house and was glad that I'd taken the time to tidy quickly after I'd gotten dressed.  I knew the rest of the house looked well because we'd left it presentable last night before we headed to bed.

If bill paying is disheartening, the sum total of groceries and the subsequent realization that I didn't get all I need by any means (I have one onion, just used the last of the potatoes, for instance, things I can't substitute for or really do without for a long spell) is always a bit of a letdown and automatic anxiety inducing experience.  We do have enough, just barely enough, to make it through the coming month. 

This is due to unexpected increases and a few unexpected expenses.  That's just life, isn't it?   I read Patsy's post on The Working Pantry blog and agreed wholeheartedly with her comments about the same sort of situation.  Then I scanned through an email from Jenny of Elefantz and she too was speaking of unexpected things arising that changed their financial outlook.  'Tis a season, and it's one that many of us just walk through, doing what we've always done.  It reminds me of a sentence my friend Carolyn shared in an email this past week:  

 "I seem to find as I focus closer and closer on my attempts to save money, time and resources, that much of my savings comes from things we DON’T do, as opposed to things we DO to save.  Such as the things that we don’t buy or the single purpose errands that we don’t run, etc."  ~Carolyn Suchecki

And then, also from this weekend's reading was a quote from Katy Wolk-Stanley on her blog, The Non-Consumer Advocate:    Although some of my frugality is impressive, most of it is just a series of small rather dull actions. Repeated ad infinitum. Katy Wolk-Stanley

Both of these statements resonated with me.  Add to that something Lana shared on the same post on Patsy's blog mentioned earlier in this segment that they were going to be 'skimming the budget'.  We all know where we can skim off a few dollars here or there.  It might be unpleasantly tight, but we know we can do it because we've practiced at it often enough over the years.  We do it because we know that this season, too, will pass after a while.  Some of those cuts made now, may never be added back to the budget.  We'll find that after all we're quite comfortable and though we thought it might mean privation, it somehow didn't.  And for those areas where we find it is unpleasant, we'll seek out ways to make it less unpleasant or find a way to smooth the rough spots out just a little by one means or another and just perhaps never go back to that previously known place simply because we've learned yet again to 'make do'.

Thursday:  The Kids as Caleb calls them have all just walked off home.  They went carrying a tub of Tang because I have loads on my shelf and Josh just loves the stuff and a portion of the Jello I'd made for snack, Millie's change of clothes, stuffed animals, Kindles and two pieces of 'tandy' each which they got at Millie's request.  She opted to make both of hers 'DubbleDum' today.

The children came over early this morning and had breakfast, ran through the house like elephants on rampage for an hour or so then settled to play quietly and then up to repeat their previous elephant stampede act.  Then Millie declared herself hungry and wanted lunch.  It was easy enough to prepare.  Between my bit of planning ahead when I bought individual packets of cookies and chips for just these days, and the Uncrustables Sam had given us from school lunch programs, I only added half a banana and a glass of Tang.  Everyone pretty much cleaned their plate except Millie who had asked for a ham sandwich and then left it.  

Then we did the potty round with Millie and Caleb.  He is far more willing to go potty when he sees that she is going too.  I wish I could say he was an influence on her, but it seems that a 3-year-old's tantrum must accompany our potty going every single day regardless of which 3-year-old it is.   Caleb went off to his room with his Mama and then sobbed hard because she closed the door.  Truth, he'd have been quiet and happy just knowing the others were in quiet time and rested if the door had stayed open.

Our quiet time here in the living room was accompanied by Isaac humming and singing to himself.  He's always hummed away when he's playing or watching videos.  When he left off, Millie began to sing softly and then to pretend and I heard her plainly say angrily at one point, "I don't want a nap!"  Regardless I do find that all the children benefit from the downtown from 3 to 9.

Millie, Josh, and Isaac had just begun to play quietly together when Sam texted me that they could be sent home.  We picked up toys and went potty one more time and off they went home dragging their laden bag and walking a lot more slowly than they did coming over this morning, when we spied Millie first running hard through the gap in the hedgerow and across the yard.  I'd like to think they are less eager to go home than they were to come, but truthfully, it's too hot and heavy outdoors to want to run unless you happen to see a snake.  Then running is absolutely appropriate.

I've no idea what supper might be tonight.  I am loath at this point to go make anything though I dare say I could readily enough whip up something.  I just realized yet another week has nearly passed, and I've not dusted this living room or even thought of my to do list for the week.  Sigh.  I suppose I must really exert myself and try to do something though it feels I've been busy enough all week long.  But first, coffee...

Friday:  Today is cloudy and cooler than it's been. 

I felt last night that I simply had to do something in the house even through when I went through my work lists, I hadn't done too badly.  I decided I would absolutely dust the living room and do the surface decluttering at least.  And I was quite right.  All those little things that seem to make the room appear so cozy in the cooler months, are not at all missed in the warmer ones.  

I noted as I went in to prepare my supper that the fridge was looking worse for wear.  So yesterday evening, after I'd given my dinner time to settle, I went in and swept the kitchen hard, removed and shook out rugs, ran mop water and a dishpan of warm soapy water.  Then I cleaned the fridge before I mopped and am I glad I decided to do it in that order.  Because of course, I had to drop and bust an egg, and spill a bit of something here and there.   

The fridge looked so much better.  I know I've given it a good clean this year, perhaps even more recently, say in the past quarter, but I just can't remember when.  At any rate, I had to change water out halfway through.  There were more little messes hidden behind things than I could see.  It was only the ones I could see that made me tackle the job in the first place.

I took my time and got it all cleaned up and organized.  I can say it looks 100% better than it did when I started.  After that I started mopping the kitchen.  John came in while I was right in the middle of that job and asked, "What made you tackle all of this tonight?"  I told him it was two-fold.  For one thing I saw it needed to be done and I didn't want to push it all off onto Friday (today).   My second reason was that I was little bit peeved and a little worried over things totally out of my control and work always soothes and quiets my mind.  It doesn't solve a thing, but it makes me feel better.  

John asked me later if I had plans for the next day (today) and I said only to do my usual Friday cleaning.  He wanted to take Katie and Caleb and me out for breakfast at Burger King.  Caleb could play at the castle while it was cooler in the morning and he himself could walk next door to the lawn mower place and see if he could get his blades cheaper than what he's found online.  

I thought that sounded like a nice plan even though it meant getting up early another morning.  And of course, though I was well and truly tired last night I couldn't go to sleep for anything.  My lower back hurts so much after a day with two 3-year-olds to lift on and off the toilet.  They do have a step stool and it's a help, but they still need to be lifted over the hump on the potty seat we have.  Honestly, it's a lot easier if they forgo the use of the thing entirely and opt to just sit on the usual toilet seat and hang on tightly to me.  Nothing I did last night would ease that pain enough to let me doze off to sleep.  I couldn't find a comfortable way to lay in the bed.  I took pain relievers, and John put the TENS unit on my back, but I got no relief at all.  

I found at 3:15 that I was both slightly hungry and simply longing for a cup of coffee.  It sounds counterintuitive to have a cup of coffee if you're not sleeping but I've noted in the past if I have a cup, I somehow seem to relax and can finally doze off.  I sat in the dark in my chair, sipping coffee and getting chilly since the outside temperatures were now lower than the interior temperatures.   About 4am, I went off to bed, wrapped up in covers and apparently went right to sleep.  

 I was still up by 7:30 this morning.  Katie declined to go with us, but Caleb kept telling me he was 'cited' and said that repeatedly as we stood in line ordering breakfast.  And funny boy, as we neared Perry, he said from the back seat, "Gray castle.  Find gray castle, Grampa.  One job!  Find castle!"  That made me laugh and John chuckled.  A couple of minutes later he asked Caleb, "Is that the castle?"  "Good Job!" Caleb told him.

At one point he'd climbed up the stairs and was looking out the castle windows. He called out "Queen! Queen! Help, I'm in trouble!"   Later when we'd come back home and stopped at our local grocery store (still so excited to say that!) I told Bess, "I've never been referred to as 'Queen' before, but I think I could get used to that title pretty quickly," which made her laugh.

At home once again, Caleb went down for a nap right away and has apparently gone to sleep.  He's had no lunch, but he ate a good breakfast.  I went about the house attending to my usual Friday duties.  I went outdoors and harvested two more tomatoes, noted the bell peppers and Sweet Potatoes seem mighty happy together in the same bin.  I blew off the porch and patio which made them look loads better.  John and I gathered leftovers for a late lunch.  I have NO clue what supper might be tonight. I failed to get the wings out of the freezer before we left home, failed to text Katie to tell her to do it as I'd meant to do and so I shall have to come up with something else.  We've got plenty of fried chicken left from the other day, so perhaps we'll have that...Or maybe I won't.  I have no clue.

It's been a week here in the household and a fairly busy one overall.   How did your week go?