Monday, October 14, 2024
Feeling sorry for myself
Saturday, October 12, 2024
Busy October
This week has been filled with the sounds of sawing, drilling, nail guns, and hammering. All of the furniture from the room being worked on is crowded together in the rest of the house, which makes me feel a little stir crazy. Other than that, the renovation is going really well and will be done either this afternoon or tomorrow. * There's no way we'll be able to paint before I go back to work. We plan to pick a couple of paint colors we're interested in and buy small samples to try on a wall before we commit to one. Then there's the pre painting prep work, then the actual painting, etc. If we're lucky we may be able to finish by the end of next weekend.
The timing of all this isn't the best, because my sister-in-law and niece will be visiting for a few hours on Thursday afternoon. Our niece Melissa will be flying in from across the country to visit family next week, and Thursday is the only day that works for them to drive down from North Carolina to see us. The house will still be in some disarray, but it can't be helped. They of course understand, and I don't feel too bad about it, but it isn't ideal.
Then on the Sunday after that (the 20th) I'm having a postcard writing party. (It's been planned for over a month now, since before I knew about the room remodel). Luckily, one of the friends who's coming offered to move it to her house when she heard about all this work we're having done. We should be finished painting by then, but if not it's good to know I have that option.
Speaking of postcards! I ordered 400 total, 200 to the swing state of Michigan and 200 to the swing state of Georgia. That's a lot of postcards. Especially since the three suggested scripts are somewhat lengthy to print out (they recommend printing everything so it's easily readable). Here are the three scripts they recommend as being the most effective in getting out the vote:
1. Hi (voter's first name),
Thank you for being a voter! Who you vote for is private, but whether you vote is public record. Please vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election!
-- (first name)
2. Hi (voter's first name),
Thank you for being a voter! Your friends and family may need your reminder to vote. Please ask them to vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election!
-- (first name)
3. Hi (voter's first name),
Thank you for being a voter! When will you vote in the Tues, Nov 5th election? Please plan ahead!
--(first name)
As you can see, any of these is a lot to print out on 400 postcards! To make it so that my friends don't have a mountain of work in front of them, I've been chipping away at the lists a little bit each day. So far, I've managed to complete over 250! My goal is to get to 300 by the time we meet up. With four friends and me, that will only leave 20 for each of us. I'm grateful that they're willing to help me write them, and also that they're chipping in for half the postage costs. I bought the first 200 postcard stamps, and it came to well over $100.
October is turning out to be really busy with all this going on. When I get back to work on Monday it's going to be really busy there, too. It's just one of those times in the school year. The great thing this year is that since Gregg's (mostly) retired now, he'll be home a lot and can continue with painting while I'm at work.
Maybe November will be a little more relaxing!
* The work so far looks really good. I thought about sharing a picture of the progress, but decided to wait until it's done. We're really pleased.
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
More home improvement
I'm on fall break this week. It's nice to be off work, especially now that it's getting cool outside. Lots of pleasant dog walks are happening at the moment.
Speaking of lots of things happening.....this is my den right now:
Thursday, October 3, 2024
Randy does it again!
Randy Rainbow's newest parody video--using Taylor Swift's song "Blank Space"--is another gem!! I just had to share it. Enjoy!!
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Double jab, hoarders, and Halloween lights
Every year about this time our school district offers employees a free flu shot. I always take it, and usually have no aftereffects other than a sore arm. Monday was the day. This year was a bit different than usual, because the pharmacist giving the shot had brought along Covid boosters to offer as well. I was super happy to get both at once and have it all done. I also read somewhere that getting a flu shot and Covid shot at the same time is thought to boost the effectiveness of both. It was something about a more vigorous antibody response. I think that's probably accurate, because for the first time ever I felt like crap after a vaccination. I developed a low-grade headache, muscle aches, and a feverish sort of feeling that lasted from late Monday afternoon until this morning. That never happened to me with either of those vaccines alone before!
I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon. That's a good thing, because I had to go all over town trying to find toilet paper! Yes, toilet paper. Since yesterday afternoon everyone around here has been suddenly buying up and hoarding toilet paper along with other supplies. I had to ask around to find out what the hell was going on.... apparently, the port strike has people in a panic about supply drying up and they're rushing out to grab everything they can get their hands on, with toilet paper being the number 1 (ha!) thing they're desperate for. It's crazy! I don't know if that's mostly around here or all along the east coast. Gregg and I were literally on our last roll of toilet paper (!!), and I had to go to three places to find any after work today. People are being the same jerks they were in the pandemic...buying up far more than they need and stockpiling it. The girl ringing me up at the dollar store (where I eventually found some) said that one woman had just been in and spent $140 on toilet paper!! People are ridiculous! Not to mention selfish and thoughtless. I bought enough to get my house through a week or so and left the rest for others. Hopefully someone didn't swoop in after me and empty the last of the shelves, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out they did. People just tend to suck sometimes, don't they?
Since this week has been a bit...bleh...I decided to order myself something cheap and cheerful on Amazon so I'd have something small to look forward to. It got here today: a string of bright purple and orange Halloween lights!
The original plan was to string them up around our little front porch area to welcome the trick or treaters, but I like them so much on the mantle (along with some of the other Halloween junk I had Gregg drag down from the attic) that I might end up keeping them there and ordering some more for the porch. They were only $10, and they're making me smile.
Tuesday, October 1, 2024
Happy Birthday Mr. President!
Happy 100th Birthday President Jimmy Carter!
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
September book club selection: North Woods
This month it was my turn to host book club, and since we've begun letting the hostess pick the book, I had to choose something. Lately we've read a lot of what I consider "fluff" fiction, light and mildly entertaining but not all that literary. I decided that this time, I wanted something with a little more meat to it. I did an internet search for the best books of the past couple of years and came up with three titles that I thought sounded promising. Last month I told the group a little about the three books I was considering and put it to a vote. North Woods by Daniel Mason was the winner.
What a joy this book was to me! It's the best thing I've read in ages. I think it's going to join my list of all-time favorite books, and that's a short list.
From Goodreads:
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.
Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?
North Woods was so beautifully written that I found myself reading and rereading passages and wanting to take my time and savor them. Since I'd bought a copy and offered to let my friend Marian borrow it before book club, I had to read it much faster than I wanted to. To give you an idea of how much I loved it, when she brought it back to me the night of book club, I immediately started to re-read it. I'm taking my time and finding so many wonderful things I missed the first time.
Spanning centuries from the perspective of one small piece of land in northwestern Massachusetts, it's the history of a place, with the human characters coming and going across the years alongside the changing flora and fauna of the area. From NPR's review:
And from the Washington Post book review:
Indeed, to read “North Woods” is to suffer the sweet sorrow of falling in love with fresh residents only to see them swept away by the passing seasons. Persist. The silent spaces between these stories articulate what the residents can’t. Their errant lives begin locking together in a winding chain of unlikely history. And when the moonlight strikes just right, you may even see some past homeowner flit across the corner of a page once again.
As you may have guessed, North Woods made for a really nice discussion. I even printed out a "book club guide" from the publisher's website.
I also had several bottles of wine, as well as a cooler filled with ice and hard apple cider, assorted sodas, and bottled water.
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Equinox harvest
From my garden this weekend: dried zinnia seed heads and sweet, ripe pomegranates.
Happy Autumn Equinox!
Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Hobgoblin
So, that pretty bag of homemade granola I showed you yesterday? Somebody else thought it looked good, too.
I swear you can't turn your back for even one second in this house.
(We got to him in time to save the granola, but not before he chewed holes in the bag and got a little taste).
Monday, September 9, 2024
Recipe
I made my second batch of granola yesterday, and I stayed right by the oven to ensure I didn't accidentally burn it this time.
Success! It turned out so much than the batch I scorched.
It tastes so good with yogurt and frozen raspberries! I also cored and sliced apples and dried them in the dehydrator overnight. Some dried apple pieces will get added to the mix later today.
Ingredients:
Oats
Walnuts
Almonds
Pumpkin seeds
Raisins
Dates
(Dried apples)
Coconut oil
Honey
Salt
I used about a half cup of coconut oil and a half cup of honey, mixed with the oats, walnuts, and almonds. I baked them at 325F for about 30 minutes, stirring constantly. The rest of the ingredients were added after it cooled.
Monday, September 2, 2024
Postcards
Today my friend Karen hosted a small postcard writing party with lunch. We wrote postcards supporting a Democratic Senate candidate in Arizona, Ruben Gallego.
Karen made food inspired by Tim Walz and the state of Minnesota. First up, a Midwestern casserole (or "Hot Dish")
Then that typical Midwestern side: jello fruit salad. She even had a pretty mold for it!
And for dessert, her mother's recipe for chocolate sheet cake. Karen's family is from Missouri.
It was a tasty lunch and we got a lot of postcards done and ready to be mailed!
I'm planning my own postcard writing party early next month. I got the postcards and voter lists from Postcards to Swing States. I picked Georgia and Michigan, and got 200 for each. I'm going to have to invite lots of friends over to help me get through that many!
Sunday, September 1, 2024
Start of September
The start of September is really welcome to me this year. It's been a long, hot summer that I'll be happy to see the back of. I've had some struggles both with mental health (set off by a change in medications that had to be sorted out) and ongoing family issues. Things seem to be improving now, though. I've been working hard on taking better care of myself and it's finally starting to pay off. A change of seasons will be nice for moving on.
And I can't wait for better weather! Today is still warm and humid but starting tomorrow we're supposed to have nice temperatures for more than a week--mid-80s for highs and 60s for lows. I'll be spending more time on the back porch as the weather cools down. The past couple of mornings (before it got too hot) Gregg and I spent two or three hours out there watching the birds at the feeders and the butterflies around the zinnias. Marco and the dogs are usually out there when we are, enjoying some fresh air and sunshine. Here's a short clip I took the other day of Marco climbing his porch play gym. Everybody loves to see Marco, I think.
It's Labor Day weekend so I'm off work tomorrow. I really appreciate the three-day weekend; the extra day feels like a luxury.
Happy Labor Day to my fellow Americans, and happy Sunday to the rest of you!
Sunday, August 25, 2024
Sunday stuff
Since I shared a picture of smiling George in my last post, I wanted to do the same for Poppy. I took this picture yesterday afternoon, and it's as close to a smile as I could get. She hates it when I point my phone camera at her and won't cooperate! Trust me, though...she had a big grin on her face both before and after I snapped this.
Last night I decided that today I would spend the afternoon in the kitchen, baking up treats for the week. I had to go to the grocery store for a few items I was lacking. I decided to make banana bread (to use up the three overripe bananas in the fruit bowl), buttermilk blueberry muffins (blueberries were on sale and looking good), and a first attempt at healthy homemade granola.
Monday, August 19, 2024
Weekend pictures
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Sweeties
Yesterday when I had coffee at Paulette's house, I finally got to spend some time with her sweet new dog. This is Pixie:
I've had cats that were bigger and heavier than Pixie! She's teeny-tiny, and unlike so many small dogs, she never barks and isn't mean. In fact, she's very gentle and eager to be petted. I liked her a lot. But it's funny how living with my two 60+ pound ruffians make her seem like some creature other than a dog, you know?
Here's another thing that happened the morning I had to go to jury duty. I got a private Facebook message (very early) from the mother of two of the little kids that have made friends with me at work. It said, "A-- and E-- have a surprise for you today!" I responded that unfortunately I wasn't going to be there and explained why. She said, "No!! Tell them you can't have jury duty! Your babies at school need you!" That really made me smile. Then when I got back to work yesterday, the kids had brought their surprise for me: homemade chocolate chip cookies! Their mom had helped them bake them on Sunday. It was the sweetest thing ever.
I shared this photo with mom yesterday afternoon and thanked her. She said they wanted to do something for me because I'm always so kind to the children. How nice was that?
Monday, August 12, 2024
Wasted time
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
End of summer wrap up
Taken last night in my office at my school's Open House. I'd picked up the new glasses that afternoon while on a break. After an 11-hour day, I was exhausted, and looked it. But I like the glasses!