The Homemaker Plans Her Week: July Fleeting

 

In my home this week, as I am writing out this post it is July 15.  This month is half done...And how quickly it seems to have gone!  

Our weather this year has been hot enough but mild, too.  We've had plenty of rain, enough to keep thing looking green and lush and keep John mowing lawns at least once a week and sometimes twice.  We admired the greenness of it all the other day as we returned home from an errand.  My little patio garden, while not producing much of anything at present (the tomatoes appear to be done), still looks lush and lovely.  The gardenia keeps pushing out just one or two more blooms, something it's never done before.  The hydrangea is a pale blue sea of flowers.  I really ought to cut some of those to bring indoors.  They last very well if I take care with them.  Roses are blooming away in all sorts of coral colors.  I didn't realize I had such an affinity for coral roses...

And yet, there's a tinge of something in the air, too.  Of a season progressing rapidly away.  The landscape about us changes.  There are fewer wildflowers at roadside and now there are blooming grasses waving gently in the lightest of breezes.  Trees in the swamp are changing color, not to autumn colors, but the deeper shades of green and some are lighter green tinged with red but that is summer wear for those particular trees.  Morning glories are beginning to twine and bloom.  

And school is just two weeks away for Taylor, three weeks for the boys. 

Work:  

Zone 3 Beds and Baths this week.  There's little I can do about the guest room.  The floor is clear and we have added storage but there's just enough extra stuff that there's nowhere to put.  It's not all Katie's stuff.  There are stacks of boxed up books I've no home for at present and the boxes are protection against a little boy prone to pull them from the shelf in the bedroom.  The shelf itself is a tv stand, and show shelf for them.  

But here I am anxiously thinking I should tackle the wall and doors...Seriously.  Not going to happen.  To soothe the beast whimpering that it 'ought to be done', I am going to focus on our room which is stacked up with boxes filled with kitchen goods that I've packed up for the renovation, whenever that will happen.  I've heard absolutely nothing from the contractor.  Time to be a squeaky wheel I think...But in the meantime, I can surely find ways to make things look better in that room?  Again, I'm thinking of general surface decluttering.  Removing the 'things' that I call decor that are visual clutter at the moment.  There's plenty of it.  

Also, I want to start seeking some new pillow shams for the winter bedding.  I waited last year until October to think of it and then everything I really liked was sold out.  

I have a grandchild's birthday this week that I need to send a card and gift card code to.  I've tried sending virtual gift cards through his dad but my oldest son is prone to forget he has it in his email or text.   Daniel will be 14 this year.  He's old enough to handle his own gift card code at this point.

Keep the kids on Thursday.  Keep Caleb at least twice this week as Katie has appointments two different days.  One of those falls on Thursday afternoon.  

Visit Mama.

All the usual meals and housekeeping and sundry jobs that pop up or draw attention to themselves.

Start my frugal bootcamp.  I didn't get started last week but I'd like to do so this week.  I will likely extend my study time through the month of August.  Will I learn something new?  Perhaps.  Most likely I'll stumble on something I used to do that I'd forgotten or at the very least, I'll learn a new skill of some sort.

Kitchen:

If nothing else last week, I saved the heat in the kitchen and bought bagels for Saturday breakfast.  That was $6 for two weeks' worth.  It makes heating the kitchen up look mighty tempting, but you know what?  Not going to do it.  I noted the other day that even using the stove top to make spaghetti and chili warmed the living and kitchen rooms more than you'd think and those were on a very low simmer.  It makes cooking less and less attractive, something I notice happens every single summer.

So, this week, I want to focus on meals that are easily prepared in the morning and reheated for supper, or which require no heating at all.  That will be my menu focus when I'm planning meals.

Also, the big upright freezer is fairly heavily laden at present and there are odds and ends of foods that I'm just not sure about.  Perhaps I had good intentions about using up a few leftover veggie items.  Perhaps I thought I'd use an item that I simply didn't like.  Goal this week is to sort it all out, determine what I have and figure out how I can use it, or not.  And if not, get rid of it and use that space in a better manner.  

Personal/Leisure:  

I have looked at only one of the magazines that Dale sent me.  That was a July issue.  I will choose another this week to look through.  I also have the Emilie Loring book she sent me, In Times Like These which I know from experience will last a few hours at best.  

I must add a note here.  I finished Pip Williams' book, The Dictionary of Lost Words.  The portion I'd read and questioned if I'd move on through or not, was not the sum total of the book at all.  I finished the book, and it was quite good, well worth re-reading.  And it was language that I objected to not intimate descriptions.  In reviewing what I've read, the parts I objected to were a necessary part of the story, signaling a growing loss of innocence of the main character and it 'fit' whether or not I liked it.  

I really do judge books in this manner.  There are so many authors these days who toss in foul language or explicit scenes because they seem unable to fill the page without them and in the end, I've gotten no understanding of a character nor felt the book belonged on my shelf or in my life.  I've tucked this one on the shelf to be read again.

Continue to color each evening.  Something interesting has happened to me.  I'm not an artist and have no real understanding of color, but in coloring I'm growing to understand the need for contrasts in intensity, and the importance of white space.  I've always had a sense of complimentary colors but not the vital understanding of how differing intensities of color play their role in creating a pleasing whole.  

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                                                      Endless Summer...and mine does indeed bloom all summer long!