Ever notice how the longer you're away from your regular routine, the harder it is to get back into it? That's what's happening to me now ...
I spent almost four weeks coughing to the point where I could only sleep, at most, an hour at a time. Now, even though the cough has eased off considerably, I'm finding it really difficult to get to sleep. Consequently, once I do finally fall asleep - usually somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning - I have a tendency to either sleep until noon, or wake up early and then have a long nap in the afternoon. I need to get back on track in keeping (more or less) "office hours" ... I also need to re-book all the workshops I missed, and get the job search up and running again.
The switch to Daylight Saving time this past weekend didn't help much, either; my body keeps insisting it's an hour earlier than it really is. It always takes me at least four days to make the mental and physical adjustment; oddly, though, it doesn't take any time at all to adjust to putting the clocks back in the fall. Of course, then I can just roll over and sleep for another hour - and as a person who's chronically short on sleep anyway, that doesn't hurt a bit!
I'm happy to report zero food wasted this past week! There was one sad-looking forgotten apple in the back of the veggie drawer, but the guinea pigs leaped on it and it was gone in about three minutes, so not really wasted at all.
The work on my new room - shifting, weeding, organizing - is still going quite slowly. Even though I'm not coughing much any more, I still get tired awfully fast. I can work steadily for about half an hour, and then I have to stop and rest; if I don't, pretty soon I have to stop to cough for ten minutes. Baby steps. It will be finished before the end of the month. Most of the furniture is in, the computer gets moved tomorrow, and the last bookcase goes in next week. After that, it's down to organizing, and making the curtains. And I already have two big bags of donations ready to go the next time we're headed that way.
It snowed this morning! I was, naturally, utterly disgusted. But by early afternoon it had stopped and pretty much all melted, so we were able to do the Costco run for the things that are (according to my price book) better value for the money at Costco than anywhere else in our area: milk, coffee, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and toilet paper. Big Guy pouted a little when I said "No" to a $20 beef roast, until I reminded him that he had insisted we should eat out of the freezer instead of buying more meat until at least one of us is back to work. Frugal win for me!
Big Guy spent yesterday pruning the huge old evergreens along the west side of the house. Now we have a lot more daylight in the yard, and more light in the house. He was worried that the sunshine might make the yard and the house too warm in the summer, so I reminded him that in the summer the sun follows a different path in the sky and we'd still have plenty of shade.
I was checking some of my old posts earlier today, and ran across something that may have appeared to be a big contradiction, so I'd like to clarify the house-heating situation at present.
When there is no tenant downstairs, we heat with the wood stove, since we only need to keep the main floor heated. When there is a tenant, we use the furnace, since there is only electric baseboard heat in the bedroom of the suite. And since we'd like to have the suite occupied all the time - after all, that's why it's there - we invested in the new furnace. I'm happy to report that since its installation our gas bill has dropped by almost 35 %. Combine that with the almost 45 % savings on the annual water and sewer bill since we had the (free) meter installed, and the huge drop in the gas bill we saw when we had the tankless on-demand water heater put in, and you can see why I'm not as unhappy about the cost of home ownership as I used to be! Now, if we could only agree on what style of double-glazed window to put in the living room ...
I've given P the go-ahead to plant whatever she likes in the raised bed along the west side of the yard, and she has all kinds of alien-looking flowers and ornamental grasses planned. Considering how little of what we've planted there in the past actually came into the house (as opposed to being eaten by the local wildlife), it's not really a loss for us. My plan for this spring is to hang planters all along the chain-link fencing, with chicken-wire cages to keep the squirrels out of my herbs. Fresh vegetables will be dirt cheap all summer at the farmers' markets, so I can buy and freeze enough to last a long time without going over budget. Now, here's hoping the sun will shine the whole time our fruit trees are blooming!
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Showing posts with label projects. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Feeling Better, Sort Of ...
Wow. I don't remember ever being sick for this long ... it's been three weeks so far, and I'm still coughing, though not nearly so incessantly or painfully as last week or the week before. The doctor thinks I probably have/had pertussis (also known as whooping cough). Oddly enough, though the cough was a killer and left me raspy-throated, achy-ribbed, and utterly exhausted, I had no other symptoms. No fever, no rash, no green goop, no digestive upsets ... just the damn cough. Said cough, I'm told, could take another week or two to finally disappear. I'm finally starting to feel more like myself, though, and getting a lot of my energy back at last. Which is nice after weeks of being too tired to pick up the remote and change the channel!
Of course, the job search had to be put on "pause" along with everything else; there's no mileage in applying for a job you can't go to the interview for, is there? "Yes, I'd love to come in for an interview. How about three weeks from now?" That, I figured, wouldn't make a very good first impression. So the plan right now is to spend the rest of this week getting the new workroom in order, and gear up the job search again next Monday morning ... including rescheduling all the Resource Centre workshops I missed.
Big Guy, bless his heart, tried to take care of me. He made chicken soup, brought me Benelyn (with codeine for the aching ribs), intercepted phone calls ... then again, he also did his usual You-are-a-plague-rat-and-I-will-feed-you-with-a-slingshot routine.
And ... he painted my new workroom. Just got up one morning, grabbed a roller, and did it. Over my protests that I would do it as soon as I could stand up long enough, He claimed he only did it because my new desk is taking up too much room in his workshop, but we all know better. And I love him too.
So ... the painting is done, the windows are sparkly clean inside and out, the curtain rod is back up. We're still working on the floor; it really needs professional refinishing, but for the moment all we can do is try to get all the paint splatters and scuff marks (from J's furniture) cleaned away. I'm hoping to get the desk in there some time tomorrow; after that I can start shifting everything from the current room. And yes, I'll be sorting and tossing/donating as I go ... nothing is going into that room until I'm absolutely sure it will be used. I refuse to move things in that I'll just end up taking back out!
Our downstairs tenant gave us notice for the end of March. Whereupon daughter P and son-in-law N promptly asked if they could move in on April 1st! The suite is pretty small for two people and a dog (and two cats), but the price is right as P is still looking for work (she was laid off last fall), and N likes the closeness of the Skytrain for his daily commute. So they have given their notice to their current landlord, and the weekend of March 31st - April 1st is going to be interesting, to say the least. Oh, and did I mention that March 31st is daughter J's birthday? "Interesting" may turn out to be far too mild a word for it ...
On the frugal front, things are going well. Instead of buying paint for the workroom, I used primer and paint we had left from painting the living room a couple of years ago. It's a lovely soft, warm oatmeal colour, with a white ceiling to reflect more light. For drapes, I'll be using some fabric Mom gave me; a sheer lightweight silk patterned with pastel flowers. Not my first choice, but it will work well with the room and is mild and inoffensive. And if we can't get all the paint off the floor, I'll check out Freecycle and the local thrift stores for a couple of nice light-coloured throw rugs or sisal mats.
Convincing Big Guy to cook in smaller quantities is going to be harder than I thought. Good thing we have that big chest freezer - which he now says we should be eating out of instead of grocery shopping! I've been saying it for months - but now that it's his idea, it's a good idea! ::sigh :: But it looks like he might be back to work soon, which means I'll probably have to take over the cooking. Now, I hate cooking. Frankly, I'd rather scrub toilets than cook. But if I do the cooking, I can control how much gets cooked, which in turn means I can cut the food waste way down. We ended up tossing a quart of homemade chicken soup last week, because he made a huge pot of it and then stalled on batching it up for the freezer, and I was too exhausted most days to eat more than a tiny bit.
I was enormously amused by something I got in the mail a while back. Last year I joined BC Hydro's "Power Smart" project; a couple of weeks ago I got a little package from them in the mail. I opened it up to find ... half a dozen wooden clothespins accompanied by an estimate of how much I might save by hanging laundry up instead of using the dryer! I giggled madly as I tossed them into the basket with the hundred or so I already have - I guess they had no way to know I've been hanging all my laundry for years!
Anyway, back to the floor cleaning. I've been taking pictures at each stage of the room conversion; I'll post them when the room is finished. Can't wait!
Of course, the job search had to be put on "pause" along with everything else; there's no mileage in applying for a job you can't go to the interview for, is there? "Yes, I'd love to come in for an interview. How about three weeks from now?" That, I figured, wouldn't make a very good first impression. So the plan right now is to spend the rest of this week getting the new workroom in order, and gear up the job search again next Monday morning ... including rescheduling all the Resource Centre workshops I missed.
Big Guy, bless his heart, tried to take care of me. He made chicken soup, brought me Benelyn (with codeine for the aching ribs), intercepted phone calls ... then again, he also did his usual You-are-a-plague-rat-and-I-will-feed-you-with-a-slingshot routine.
And ... he painted my new workroom. Just got up one morning, grabbed a roller, and did it. Over my protests that I would do it as soon as I could stand up long enough, He claimed he only did it because my new desk is taking up too much room in his workshop, but we all know better. And I love him too.
So ... the painting is done, the windows are sparkly clean inside and out, the curtain rod is back up. We're still working on the floor; it really needs professional refinishing, but for the moment all we can do is try to get all the paint splatters and scuff marks (from J's furniture) cleaned away. I'm hoping to get the desk in there some time tomorrow; after that I can start shifting everything from the current room. And yes, I'll be sorting and tossing/donating as I go ... nothing is going into that room until I'm absolutely sure it will be used. I refuse to move things in that I'll just end up taking back out!
Our downstairs tenant gave us notice for the end of March. Whereupon daughter P and son-in-law N promptly asked if they could move in on April 1st! The suite is pretty small for two people and a dog (and two cats), but the price is right as P is still looking for work (she was laid off last fall), and N likes the closeness of the Skytrain for his daily commute. So they have given their notice to their current landlord, and the weekend of March 31st - April 1st is going to be interesting, to say the least. Oh, and did I mention that March 31st is daughter J's birthday? "Interesting" may turn out to be far too mild a word for it ...
On the frugal front, things are going well. Instead of buying paint for the workroom, I used primer and paint we had left from painting the living room a couple of years ago. It's a lovely soft, warm oatmeal colour, with a white ceiling to reflect more light. For drapes, I'll be using some fabric Mom gave me; a sheer lightweight silk patterned with pastel flowers. Not my first choice, but it will work well with the room and is mild and inoffensive. And if we can't get all the paint off the floor, I'll check out Freecycle and the local thrift stores for a couple of nice light-coloured throw rugs or sisal mats.
Convincing Big Guy to cook in smaller quantities is going to be harder than I thought. Good thing we have that big chest freezer - which he now says we should be eating out of instead of grocery shopping! I've been saying it for months - but now that it's his idea, it's a good idea! ::sigh :: But it looks like he might be back to work soon, which means I'll probably have to take over the cooking. Now, I hate cooking. Frankly, I'd rather scrub toilets than cook. But if I do the cooking, I can control how much gets cooked, which in turn means I can cut the food waste way down. We ended up tossing a quart of homemade chicken soup last week, because he made a huge pot of it and then stalled on batching it up for the freezer, and I was too exhausted most days to eat more than a tiny bit.
I was enormously amused by something I got in the mail a while back. Last year I joined BC Hydro's "Power Smart" project; a couple of weeks ago I got a little package from them in the mail. I opened it up to find ... half a dozen wooden clothespins accompanied by an estimate of how much I might save by hanging laundry up instead of using the dryer! I giggled madly as I tossed them into the basket with the hundred or so I already have - I guess they had no way to know I've been hanging all my laundry for years!
Anyway, back to the floor cleaning. I've been taking pictures at each stage of the room conversion; I'll post them when the room is finished. Can't wait!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Hunt Continues
The job hunt, that is.
Yesterday I went over to the Employment Resource Centre, and got a referral to another local centre that does various workshops on resumes, cover letters, interviewing, and so on. I signed up for six of the workshops - it can't hurt! My work history - and job acquisition history - has been so full of serendipity over the last fifteen years that I really have very little experience with things like crafting a winning resume and acing an interview. All my jobs to date have either been through temp agencies, or through being sought out by employers. Flattering, but not presently useful!
Funnily enough, I actually had an interview today. A forwarding company had found my current resume (such as it is) on monster.ca, and called me to come in on about five hours' notice - was I glad I'd touched up the grey roots last week! The interview went well, though rather quickly, but I don't think I'll get the job. They seem to want someone with a lot more forwarding and NVOCC experience than I have. But you just never know ... as I told Big Guy when I got home, "It's always a fifty-fifty chance - either they hire me or they don't."
* * * * * *
Moving J went more smoothly than I'd expected, all things considered. We had everything loaded, moved, and unloaded, and the truck back at the rental place, by about 6 p.m. Friday. Her helpers were willing and able, nothing (that I know of) got broken, and I only hit my knees on the trailer hitch six times. My hands and wrists are still kind of sore, but I suspect some of that may be from a weekend spent almost entirely either knitting or winding yarn. Once I can get some clear table space (don't go there!) I now have three completed sweaters to sew together.
The room proceeds, albeit a bit more slowly than I'd originally planned. The walls, ceiling, and woodwork have all been washed, but I won't be doing the primer until my right wrist is less stiff and achy. So it looks like I'll be priming on Friday, and painting on Sunday and Monday. Furniture etc will start shifting Tuesday or Wednesday, since I want to give the paint plenty of time to harden up first.
* * * * * *
We got up this morning to another dry, sunny, beautiful (but very cold) day. I spent the time before I had to get ready for the interview wandering around the yard, making mental notes of everything I'd like to do to prepare for this year's garden, and thinking I'd get started on the winter debris cleanup tomorrow morning. All the fruit trees need pruning, the lawn needs a good raking to get rid of what the evergreens have been dropping on it all winter, and there are monster weeds everywhere. Naturally, the morning paper is predicting rain for the rest of the week ... It rains with monotonous regularity this time of year, especially on those rare occasions when I have the energy, the motivation, and the time to get out there and do something. Sigh. I may have to console myself with graph paper and seed packets.
Or maybe I'll start another sweater.
Yesterday I went over to the Employment Resource Centre, and got a referral to another local centre that does various workshops on resumes, cover letters, interviewing, and so on. I signed up for six of the workshops - it can't hurt! My work history - and job acquisition history - has been so full of serendipity over the last fifteen years that I really have very little experience with things like crafting a winning resume and acing an interview. All my jobs to date have either been through temp agencies, or through being sought out by employers. Flattering, but not presently useful!
Funnily enough, I actually had an interview today. A forwarding company had found my current resume (such as it is) on monster.ca, and called me to come in on about five hours' notice - was I glad I'd touched up the grey roots last week! The interview went well, though rather quickly, but I don't think I'll get the job. They seem to want someone with a lot more forwarding and NVOCC experience than I have. But you just never know ... as I told Big Guy when I got home, "It's always a fifty-fifty chance - either they hire me or they don't."
* * * * * *
Moving J went more smoothly than I'd expected, all things considered. We had everything loaded, moved, and unloaded, and the truck back at the rental place, by about 6 p.m. Friday. Her helpers were willing and able, nothing (that I know of) got broken, and I only hit my knees on the trailer hitch six times. My hands and wrists are still kind of sore, but I suspect some of that may be from a weekend spent almost entirely either knitting or winding yarn. Once I can get some clear table space (don't go there!) I now have three completed sweaters to sew together.
The room proceeds, albeit a bit more slowly than I'd originally planned. The walls, ceiling, and woodwork have all been washed, but I won't be doing the primer until my right wrist is less stiff and achy. So it looks like I'll be priming on Friday, and painting on Sunday and Monday. Furniture etc will start shifting Tuesday or Wednesday, since I want to give the paint plenty of time to harden up first.
* * * * * *
We got up this morning to another dry, sunny, beautiful (but very cold) day. I spent the time before I had to get ready for the interview wandering around the yard, making mental notes of everything I'd like to do to prepare for this year's garden, and thinking I'd get started on the winter debris cleanup tomorrow morning. All the fruit trees need pruning, the lawn needs a good raking to get rid of what the evergreens have been dropping on it all winter, and there are monster weeds everywhere. Naturally, the morning paper is predicting rain for the rest of the week ... It rains with monotonous regularity this time of year, especially on those rare occasions when I have the energy, the motivation, and the time to get out there and do something. Sigh. I may have to console myself with graph paper and seed packets.
Or maybe I'll start another sweater.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Time Flies ...
... whether you're having fun or not.
So far today has been a complete waste of clean underwear.
The job search, of course, continues. I'm not finding many jobs to apply for, but I keep looking. One that I did apply for last week - a reception/customer service position - actually came through with an interview, for which I dutifully coloured my hair and shaved my legs last night. The interview was today, and I had fairly high hopes going in; everything listed in the posting was stuff I can almost do in my sleep. They seemed quite impressed with my resume, and it sounded like a job I'd want, and it was fairly close to home - ten minutes by car, just under half an hour by public transit. All in all, pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. Until they mentioned that the salary is $11 per hour. I was polite and didn't actually say out loud what I was thinking: Are you freakin' serious? I'm getting more than that from EI! I thanked them nicely for seeing me, indicated that I'd wait to hear from them, and came home hoping I don't. Hear from them, that is.
Upward (with luck) and onward, as they say. I'll keep looking.
It took three weeks, but I finally got through to a real human on the phone at EI. Yes, they do have programs for women over 55, for retraining and assistance getting back into the workforce. No, I can't come in and see someone about the programs, I need a referral. Yes, the local Employment Resource Centre can give me that referral. So I called the Centre. "Yes, we can give you that referral, but first you need to do at least one session with one of our counselors. No, you can't just come in, you need an appointment. Yes, we are taking appointments now - yours will be for Monday, February 6th." So now I have to hope that the time limit between applying for benefits and applying for the special programs doesn't run out before I can actually take my referral to the EI office, where I will no doubt have to make another appointment some time in the nebulous future. So far, the only saving grace is that both offices are within walking distance of home.
J moves on Friday, so tomorrow I'm off to the liquor store for as many boxes as I can cram into the car; I might make two or three trips. I'd rather have too many boxes than not enough! If there are any left over, well, that's what our recycling boxes are for. I still have the tape gun and some rolls of both tape and bubble wrap from when we moved here, so there's no need for her to buy any of the supplies U-Haul keeps trying to talk us into. Thursday will be for finishing the packing, and staging everything so that once her friends/helpers arrive on Friday it will all be ready to go into the truck. The truck will be here around 9 a.m. (I set up the rental for her last week, and she'll be paying cash when we return the truck) and her friends will start arriving around 10 a.m. or so.
We will miss her dreadfully, of course - she's the last one to leave home, and the place is going to seem pretty quiet for a while. But at the same time, she's almost 27 - it's time to empty the damn nest already. And as previously mentioned in other posts, I have plans for that room - and this one! I have the action plan all mapped out in my "Projects" notebook, the primer and paint are in the basement, and all that's left to do is draw a scale plan of the room and decide where the furniture etc will go.
An unforeseen consequence of having so much of her stuff staged in the living room already is that I have no flat surface left anywhere that's big enough to lay out the pieces of the green shell so I can sew them together. So I've modified my original resolution accordingly; I've started another sweater and will sew them both together as soon as there's space to set up my layout table. The new sweater is a classic vee-necked pullover with elbow-length sleeves, in a lovely soft caramel colour. I did break down and buy the yarn - for $4 at the thrift store. I was there to drop off a box of donations, but when I saw that yarn and realized there was enough to actually do something nice with, well, I just couldn't resist. The pattern is very plain, so it knits up fast; and I've used it before, so I know it will fit well and look good. The pattern is also old enough that it gives yarn amounts in ounces and needle sizes in the old British range! It calls for #9 and #11 needles; after some swatching I find that 3.25 mm and 3.75 mm are the ones I'll be using.
I've come to the conclusion that one of the really difficult things about J moving out will be getting Big Guy to scale back on the amount of food he cooks for every meal. We both hate waste, and I pointed out to him yesterday that I'd just had to throw two week-old baked potatoes in the compost. He cooked too many, the two left over got shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten ... I can see that kind of thing happening more and more often if I don't find a way to stop it. In a way the potatoes aren't a total waste - we do use the compost in the vegetable garden - but it's the habit of cooking too much and then tossing it that I want to eliminate. There will just be the two of us from now on; there's no reason to cook six pork chops, or bake four or five potatoes, or open two cans of corn.
So the short- and long-term goals are:
Get J moved, which will basically be finished by Saturday.
Relax after the move by setting up my layout table and sewing together the pink sweater that's been ready for a while, the green shell I finished last week, and - if it's finished - the brown pullover I'm currently knitting. Sans interruptions, I should have at least the first two done by Monday.
Turn her old bedroom into my new workroom, turn my old workroom into a den/guest room. I think I'm looking at about a month, maybe two. Both rooms must be finished before mid-April, as that's when my good friend S arrives from Indiana for a two-week visit.
Persuade Big Guy to cook less and thus waste less food. I foresee an ongoing struggle with this - could take years. I'll keep you posted ...
This week's food waste tally so far: two smallish potatoes, six olives (they're not supposed to be hairy, right?) and a baby dill pickle that was turning blue.
So far today has been a complete waste of clean underwear.
The job search, of course, continues. I'm not finding many jobs to apply for, but I keep looking. One that I did apply for last week - a reception/customer service position - actually came through with an interview, for which I dutifully coloured my hair and shaved my legs last night. The interview was today, and I had fairly high hopes going in; everything listed in the posting was stuff I can almost do in my sleep. They seemed quite impressed with my resume, and it sounded like a job I'd want, and it was fairly close to home - ten minutes by car, just under half an hour by public transit. All in all, pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. Until they mentioned that the salary is $11 per hour. I was polite and didn't actually say out loud what I was thinking: Are you freakin' serious? I'm getting more than that from EI! I thanked them nicely for seeing me, indicated that I'd wait to hear from them, and came home hoping I don't. Hear from them, that is.
Upward (with luck) and onward, as they say. I'll keep looking.
It took three weeks, but I finally got through to a real human on the phone at EI. Yes, they do have programs for women over 55, for retraining and assistance getting back into the workforce. No, I can't come in and see someone about the programs, I need a referral. Yes, the local Employment Resource Centre can give me that referral. So I called the Centre. "Yes, we can give you that referral, but first you need to do at least one session with one of our counselors. No, you can't just come in, you need an appointment. Yes, we are taking appointments now - yours will be for Monday, February 6th." So now I have to hope that the time limit between applying for benefits and applying for the special programs doesn't run out before I can actually take my referral to the EI office, where I will no doubt have to make another appointment some time in the nebulous future. So far, the only saving grace is that both offices are within walking distance of home.
J moves on Friday, so tomorrow I'm off to the liquor store for as many boxes as I can cram into the car; I might make two or three trips. I'd rather have too many boxes than not enough! If there are any left over, well, that's what our recycling boxes are for. I still have the tape gun and some rolls of both tape and bubble wrap from when we moved here, so there's no need for her to buy any of the supplies U-Haul keeps trying to talk us into. Thursday will be for finishing the packing, and staging everything so that once her friends/helpers arrive on Friday it will all be ready to go into the truck. The truck will be here around 9 a.m. (I set up the rental for her last week, and she'll be paying cash when we return the truck) and her friends will start arriving around 10 a.m. or so.
We will miss her dreadfully, of course - she's the last one to leave home, and the place is going to seem pretty quiet for a while. But at the same time, she's almost 27 - it's time to empty the damn nest already. And as previously mentioned in other posts, I have plans for that room - and this one! I have the action plan all mapped out in my "Projects" notebook, the primer and paint are in the basement, and all that's left to do is draw a scale plan of the room and decide where the furniture etc will go.
An unforeseen consequence of having so much of her stuff staged in the living room already is that I have no flat surface left anywhere that's big enough to lay out the pieces of the green shell so I can sew them together. So I've modified my original resolution accordingly; I've started another sweater and will sew them both together as soon as there's space to set up my layout table. The new sweater is a classic vee-necked pullover with elbow-length sleeves, in a lovely soft caramel colour. I did break down and buy the yarn - for $4 at the thrift store. I was there to drop off a box of donations, but when I saw that yarn and realized there was enough to actually do something nice with, well, I just couldn't resist. The pattern is very plain, so it knits up fast; and I've used it before, so I know it will fit well and look good. The pattern is also old enough that it gives yarn amounts in ounces and needle sizes in the old British range! It calls for #9 and #11 needles; after some swatching I find that 3.25 mm and 3.75 mm are the ones I'll be using.
I've come to the conclusion that one of the really difficult things about J moving out will be getting Big Guy to scale back on the amount of food he cooks for every meal. We both hate waste, and I pointed out to him yesterday that I'd just had to throw two week-old baked potatoes in the compost. He cooked too many, the two left over got shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten ... I can see that kind of thing happening more and more often if I don't find a way to stop it. In a way the potatoes aren't a total waste - we do use the compost in the vegetable garden - but it's the habit of cooking too much and then tossing it that I want to eliminate. There will just be the two of us from now on; there's no reason to cook six pork chops, or bake four or five potatoes, or open two cans of corn.
So the short- and long-term goals are:
Get J moved, which will basically be finished by Saturday.
Relax after the move by setting up my layout table and sewing together the pink sweater that's been ready for a while, the green shell I finished last week, and - if it's finished - the brown pullover I'm currently knitting. Sans interruptions, I should have at least the first two done by Monday.
Turn her old bedroom into my new workroom, turn my old workroom into a den/guest room. I think I'm looking at about a month, maybe two. Both rooms must be finished before mid-April, as that's when my good friend S arrives from Indiana for a two-week visit.
Persuade Big Guy to cook less and thus waste less food. I foresee an ongoing struggle with this - could take years. I'll keep you posted ...
This week's food waste tally so far: two smallish potatoes, six olives (they're not supposed to be hairy, right?) and a baby dill pickle that was turning blue.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
One Week In
A week into 2012, and not a lot to show for it so far ... except on paper.
I've been on the internet for at least four hours every day, and so far have found exactly three jobs worth applying for. The rest are all either minimum-wage, which wouldn't even come close to paying my share of the mortgage let alone anything else, or commission-only sales, or jobs I'm not even remotely qualified for. I can hear you now ... "Take the minimum-wage job while you look for something else!" No. If I can't find a job that pays enough to live on, I'm better off collecting EI and not working. And believe me, minimum wage would be far less than EI. Besides, that's why it's called Employment Insurance. I've paid more into it over the years than I will ever collect, and I'm not taking anything I'm not entitled to.
Apart from the job search, I have been getting things done, though you'd never know it by looking around the house! All the holiday paraphernalia is packed up & stowed away and the mending pile is shrinking visibly at last. And I've been making plans ... not just in my head, but in my "Projects" notebook ... complete with action timelines.
One thing about cleaning out the basement really hit a nerve with me. We found a tall stack of boxes that had been shoved way in a dark back corner behind the old furnace when we first moved in. After seeing what was in them all, I sadly realized that it all had to go, due to age and potential health hazards ... nine cases of home-canned fruit, jams, and relishes, all dated 2004 or earlier. Lids into the recycling, contents into the compost, jars washed and stored away ... that much waste just hurts. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that it will never happen again; as soon as the shelving is all put up in the basement, I'll be organizing the "home-canning centre" to make sure all the home-canned food gets properly rotated and eaten while it's still good. Which also means that since there's just the two of us (as of the end of this month), I won't be canning in massive quantities any more, except for the jams and jellies I plan to give as gifts. I suspect that when the boxes were first put there - not by me, I assure you - they were moved with a dolly as one stack, and someone thought they were boxes of empty jars. That won't happen any more either; all the empty jars are being packed into milk crates, so we can tell at a glance that they're empties. The full jars will go into labelled and dated cardboard boxes, with a tally sheet on the front of each box so we can also see right away how many jars we have left of pickles or salmon or applesauce or whatever.
Tomorrow's afternoon project is a pantry cleanout and inventory. Since Big Guy does almost all the cooking, he also does almost all the grocery shopping. But he's short on patience and has admitted he can't see what he's looking for if it isn't exactly where he expects it to be, and the result is that he tends to go out and buy stuff we already have. Case in point: in various cabinets in the kitchen, while helping him look for egg noodles, I found eight - yes, eight - packages of elbow macaroni ... but no egg noodles. The really tricky part will be persuading him to mark something off the list when he uses it, so we can keep track of what we have plenty of and what we're almost out of. I can see myself going through the shelves every week and updating the inventory. Sigh.
I've also begun making a detailed inventory of all my sewing, knitting, and craft supplies and equipment. As soon as I've completed the move into J's old room, I'll be able to start putting things together for next fall's craft sales and this summer's Renaissance Faire booth, as well as the items I want to make as gifts for birthdays and next Christmas. I've already gone through my clothing-fabric stash, and paired up each length with the pattern I plan to use it for, and the necessary notions such as thread, buttons, and zippers. Next week I'll do the same with the yarn stash and knitting patterns. I must admit I'm not looking forward to measuring myself all over and adjusting my dressmaker dummy accordingly. But it will be so nice to be able to look at the "to make" list, pick something from it, and actually have the working space to do it!
This year, as stocking-stuffers for Big Guy, I knitted some wool frypan-handle holders. His mother used to send him a batch every few years, but since she died the collection has gradually eroded down to two, both very ratty and almost completely worn out. Well, he loves them! Not only that, but he's going to take a couple with him on his next trip to his favourite outdoor store, to see if they'd be interested in buying them from me as a regular thing. I told him even if they are, whether or not I go for it will depend on how much they're willing to pay me for them; they're a business, not a charity, and will need to put enough markup on them to make it worth their while to carry them. So the main considerations are how much they'd pay me, and how cheaply I can find a source of good-quality pure wool ... definitely not something I can pick up at thrift stores! In the meantime, I can use up the rest of the wool I bought for a few to put away for the craft sales; I can easily knock out six or eight of them a day.
Have I mentioned the university courses I have on DVD? Earth sciences, economics, oceanography, anthropology, history, climatology, and astronomy - now I have to decide where to start! Each course is a series of half-hour lectures, with accompanying guidebook and suggested reading list - but I want to start them all first! And I have a lovely tall stack of new books, all received as Christmas / Yule gifts ... does this qualify as an "embarrassment of riches"? It does to me! I'm sorely tempted to put the job search on hold while I read, and watch lectures, and work on all my future craft projects and wardrobe additions ... sometimes being a responsible adult has a downside.
I'm ending this post with a question, and hoping someone out there has read this far and perhaps can answer it.
This year, I want to learn to knit socks. However, I can't wear wool ... do knitting patterns for wool socks work just as well with synthetic yarns? I'll be grateful for any and all advice received!
I've been on the internet for at least four hours every day, and so far have found exactly three jobs worth applying for. The rest are all either minimum-wage, which wouldn't even come close to paying my share of the mortgage let alone anything else, or commission-only sales, or jobs I'm not even remotely qualified for. I can hear you now ... "Take the minimum-wage job while you look for something else!" No. If I can't find a job that pays enough to live on, I'm better off collecting EI and not working. And believe me, minimum wage would be far less than EI. Besides, that's why it's called Employment Insurance. I've paid more into it over the years than I will ever collect, and I'm not taking anything I'm not entitled to.
Apart from the job search, I have been getting things done, though you'd never know it by looking around the house! All the holiday paraphernalia is packed up & stowed away and the mending pile is shrinking visibly at last. And I've been making plans ... not just in my head, but in my "Projects" notebook ... complete with action timelines.
One thing about cleaning out the basement really hit a nerve with me. We found a tall stack of boxes that had been shoved way in a dark back corner behind the old furnace when we first moved in. After seeing what was in them all, I sadly realized that it all had to go, due to age and potential health hazards ... nine cases of home-canned fruit, jams, and relishes, all dated 2004 or earlier. Lids into the recycling, contents into the compost, jars washed and stored away ... that much waste just hurts. I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that it will never happen again; as soon as the shelving is all put up in the basement, I'll be organizing the "home-canning centre" to make sure all the home-canned food gets properly rotated and eaten while it's still good. Which also means that since there's just the two of us (as of the end of this month), I won't be canning in massive quantities any more, except for the jams and jellies I plan to give as gifts. I suspect that when the boxes were first put there - not by me, I assure you - they were moved with a dolly as one stack, and someone thought they were boxes of empty jars. That won't happen any more either; all the empty jars are being packed into milk crates, so we can tell at a glance that they're empties. The full jars will go into labelled and dated cardboard boxes, with a tally sheet on the front of each box so we can also see right away how many jars we have left of pickles or salmon or applesauce or whatever.
Tomorrow's afternoon project is a pantry cleanout and inventory. Since Big Guy does almost all the cooking, he also does almost all the grocery shopping. But he's short on patience and has admitted he can't see what he's looking for if it isn't exactly where he expects it to be, and the result is that he tends to go out and buy stuff we already have. Case in point: in various cabinets in the kitchen, while helping him look for egg noodles, I found eight - yes, eight - packages of elbow macaroni ... but no egg noodles. The really tricky part will be persuading him to mark something off the list when he uses it, so we can keep track of what we have plenty of and what we're almost out of. I can see myself going through the shelves every week and updating the inventory. Sigh.
I've also begun making a detailed inventory of all my sewing, knitting, and craft supplies and equipment. As soon as I've completed the move into J's old room, I'll be able to start putting things together for next fall's craft sales and this summer's Renaissance Faire booth, as well as the items I want to make as gifts for birthdays and next Christmas. I've already gone through my clothing-fabric stash, and paired up each length with the pattern I plan to use it for, and the necessary notions such as thread, buttons, and zippers. Next week I'll do the same with the yarn stash and knitting patterns. I must admit I'm not looking forward to measuring myself all over and adjusting my dressmaker dummy accordingly. But it will be so nice to be able to look at the "to make" list, pick something from it, and actually have the working space to do it!
This year, as stocking-stuffers for Big Guy, I knitted some wool frypan-handle holders. His mother used to send him a batch every few years, but since she died the collection has gradually eroded down to two, both very ratty and almost completely worn out. Well, he loves them! Not only that, but he's going to take a couple with him on his next trip to his favourite outdoor store, to see if they'd be interested in buying them from me as a regular thing. I told him even if they are, whether or not I go for it will depend on how much they're willing to pay me for them; they're a business, not a charity, and will need to put enough markup on them to make it worth their while to carry them. So the main considerations are how much they'd pay me, and how cheaply I can find a source of good-quality pure wool ... definitely not something I can pick up at thrift stores! In the meantime, I can use up the rest of the wool I bought for a few to put away for the craft sales; I can easily knock out six or eight of them a day.
Have I mentioned the university courses I have on DVD? Earth sciences, economics, oceanography, anthropology, history, climatology, and astronomy - now I have to decide where to start! Each course is a series of half-hour lectures, with accompanying guidebook and suggested reading list - but I want to start them all first! And I have a lovely tall stack of new books, all received as Christmas / Yule gifts ... does this qualify as an "embarrassment of riches"? It does to me! I'm sorely tempted to put the job search on hold while I read, and watch lectures, and work on all my future craft projects and wardrobe additions ... sometimes being a responsible adult has a downside.
I'm ending this post with a question, and hoping someone out there has read this far and perhaps can answer it.
This year, I want to learn to knit socks. However, I can't wear wool ... do knitting patterns for wool socks work just as well with synthetic yarns? I'll be grateful for any and all advice received!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Three Weeks On A Roller Coaster
I've been struggling to get this post done for about three weeks now, and I'm still not sure exactly why. True, I've had a lot going on in the real world, but I've been tired before and still managed (mostly) to post as scheduled. It's been three weeks of inner and outer ups and downs ... at work, at home, and with both my physical health and my moods / emotions. But I've blogged through those before, too. So what's different this time?
The weekend after my last post was our office move. Not a bad thing in itself - the space we were in was far too big for just the six of us, and the new office not only fits our needs better but is in a much nicer building, with a gorgeous view of Coal Harbour and Stanley Park. True, it means getting a bus to and from the downtown Skytrain in bad weather - it's a lovely walk on a nice day, though! - but that only adds about ten minutes each way to my commute, and the views alone are worth it. But the moving process itself was fraught with frustrations. On the Friday, we had no phones - that was the day our phone service was shifted to the new office. And naturally, in spite of spending two weeks warning everyone (and adding a warning to our e-mail signatures) that we'd have no phones on Friday but would still be in the office and reachable via e-mail, we were deluged with offended e-mails complaining that we weren't answering the phones ... sigh. Then on Monday, we had phones but for most of the day we had no internet. Now, literally everything we do, every program we use, is internet-based. So we could take calls, but that was pretty much the only thing we could do. And within an hour of finally getting the internet working, our booking system went down for the rest of the day ...
The weather has been cold, wet, and gloomy. One or two nice days, but overall not pleasant at all. I did manage to salvage enough apples for a dozen quarts of applesauce, but the tomatoes are pretty much a write-off, and nothing else even tried to grow - except the ubiquitous chives! I don't think they can be killed!
Right after the move I caught a nasty cold, probably from one of the all-too-numerous people on the Skytrain who think it's okay to cough in other passengers' faces. Nothing too serious, but by the time I got home every evening I was feeling pretty washed-out and used-up. I kept my germs to myself, and didn't give the cold to anyone else, which pleased me.
As I expected, nothing more happened in the basement until literally the night before the installers were coming to replace the furnace. I'd already moved everything I could handle without help, and having Big Guy lose his temper with me because he actually had to shift his big heavy things himself ... let's just say his running commentary was not well received. However, during the whole process I did get four more big bags of donations weeded out, and I'm still working on adding to them.
If I'd been told when they started that the furnace guys wouldn't be finished the same day, I think I might very well have packed a bag and spent the weekend at my Mom's place. Ditto if I'd known that Big Guy had not, after all, lined up a gas fitter to reconnect the gas lines after the installation was done. Yeah ... two days with no heat, no hot water, no stove, and all the microwaveable meals we'd bulk-cooked and frozen were inaccessible because, apparently, the best place to pile all the toolboxes, spare furnace & duct parts, etc was on top of the chest freezer. I suppose it could have been worse - I still had my coffeemaker. Still, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner two days in a row didn't do a lot for my mood or my digestion. He finally did find a gas guy willing to come out on a Sunday afternoon, so at last we have heat, hot water, and a working stove again. The best part? I'll get to watch our winter heating bill come in at not quite half of last year's, since the new furnace is more than twice as efficient as the old one. And it's so quiet you can't tell it's on unless you stand on a heat vent!
Righteous indignation being a great motivator, I got a lot of cleaning and clearing-out done in my workroom over those two days ... the family refers to my bouts of anger-based activity as "working furiously". I'm not quite ready to post the "after" pictures yet, though (you can see the "before" pics here).
My birthday had its ups and downs, too. Mom got me the lecture series on geology, tectonics and climate interrelationships I'd been jonesing for, and daughter J gave me beautiful flowers and a gift card to Chapters - she knows what I love! Big Guy brought home three birthday desserts - he said he couldn't remember what I like and wanted to cover all the bases, so there were cheesecake, Nanaimo bars, and a coffee-almond torte. Seriously? Almost thirty years and you don't know what I like for dessert?? So I was torn between being charmed by his thoughtfulness and resentful of his lack of attention. And then I felt guilty about the mixed feelings. And later I felt more resentment, and more guilt ... he'd bought me not the one fall hoodie I wanted, but two - black and super-dark brown, just like I wanted - but he didn't bother unfolding them or looking at the tags, so they are both about three sizes too small. And he promised we'd go exchange them today, only now he's suddenly "too busy". Busy with what? Reading a cookbook. Yes. He's decided he wants to deep-fry our Thanksgiving turkey. Should be ... interesting.
I've decided to scale back a bit on Hallowe'en this year. We'll still put up some creepy fun stuff around the front door and hand out treats, but I just don't feel up for our usual all-out over-the-top decorating. Partly because this year everyone will be at work all day except me, and I want to use the quiet time for more appropriate Samhain reflection. And partly because Big Guy's job has lasted months longer than it was originally supposed to and we don't know when the axe will fall and want to spend as little as possible on non-essentials as we prepare for his layoff. Oh, and of course we'll do several pumpkins - which will get cut up, cooked, and frozen the next day, as usual. I've never cared for pumpkin pie, but I make a pumpkin-cinnamon-raisin loaf that's very popular with family and friends. I might even give some frozen pumpkin puree to sister S for her pies, if she asks nicely!
Next weekend the guinea pigs will come inside until spring; the indoor cage sits in front of the living room window, so they still get fresh air and what little sunshine there is. Now that we have three of them (female-free-to-good-home, we couldn't resist!), the old indoor cage is far too small. Luckily, the vet clinic daughters P and J work at was tossing a perfectly good indoor cage big enough for all three, so she called, Big Guy drove to Kits, and the pigs have a nice roomy safe space until they go back to the outdoor hutch next spring. And the price was right - free.
Yes, even though J is back to cooking full-time, she's decided to hang on part-time at the clinic for as long as she can stand to; she wants to get those student loans paid off quickly, and more power to her! Like me - and unlike Big Guy - J sees debt not as just a to-be-expected part of life, but as something to be dealt with and eliminated as soon as possible.
I got a letter from Visa last week, telling me that they had doubled my credit limit. Since I never ever carry a balance, it really doesn't matter; whenever I use the card, I go online as soon as I get home and transfer the same amount from my chequing account, so my statement balance is always zero. And I only take the card shopping when I know in advance what I'm going to buy and how much I'll be spending. I suppose I'm fortunate in that I've never been tempted to be a buy-now-pay-later shopper ... I just don't like to carry large amounts of cash. It's good to know, though, that if a true emergency arises I have enough credit (I hope) to take care of whatever it is.
Right now, though, I have to go deal with three loads of laundry and a grungy kitchen floor.
The weekend after my last post was our office move. Not a bad thing in itself - the space we were in was far too big for just the six of us, and the new office not only fits our needs better but is in a much nicer building, with a gorgeous view of Coal Harbour and Stanley Park. True, it means getting a bus to and from the downtown Skytrain in bad weather - it's a lovely walk on a nice day, though! - but that only adds about ten minutes each way to my commute, and the views alone are worth it. But the moving process itself was fraught with frustrations. On the Friday, we had no phones - that was the day our phone service was shifted to the new office. And naturally, in spite of spending two weeks warning everyone (and adding a warning to our e-mail signatures) that we'd have no phones on Friday but would still be in the office and reachable via e-mail, we were deluged with offended e-mails complaining that we weren't answering the phones ... sigh. Then on Monday, we had phones but for most of the day we had no internet. Now, literally everything we do, every program we use, is internet-based. So we could take calls, but that was pretty much the only thing we could do. And within an hour of finally getting the internet working, our booking system went down for the rest of the day ...
The weather has been cold, wet, and gloomy. One or two nice days, but overall not pleasant at all. I did manage to salvage enough apples for a dozen quarts of applesauce, but the tomatoes are pretty much a write-off, and nothing else even tried to grow - except the ubiquitous chives! I don't think they can be killed!
Right after the move I caught a nasty cold, probably from one of the all-too-numerous people on the Skytrain who think it's okay to cough in other passengers' faces. Nothing too serious, but by the time I got home every evening I was feeling pretty washed-out and used-up. I kept my germs to myself, and didn't give the cold to anyone else, which pleased me.
As I expected, nothing more happened in the basement until literally the night before the installers were coming to replace the furnace. I'd already moved everything I could handle without help, and having Big Guy lose his temper with me because he actually had to shift his big heavy things himself ... let's just say his running commentary was not well received. However, during the whole process I did get four more big bags of donations weeded out, and I'm still working on adding to them.
If I'd been told when they started that the furnace guys wouldn't be finished the same day, I think I might very well have packed a bag and spent the weekend at my Mom's place. Ditto if I'd known that Big Guy had not, after all, lined up a gas fitter to reconnect the gas lines after the installation was done. Yeah ... two days with no heat, no hot water, no stove, and all the microwaveable meals we'd bulk-cooked and frozen were inaccessible because, apparently, the best place to pile all the toolboxes, spare furnace & duct parts, etc was on top of the chest freezer. I suppose it could have been worse - I still had my coffeemaker. Still, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner two days in a row didn't do a lot for my mood or my digestion. He finally did find a gas guy willing to come out on a Sunday afternoon, so at last we have heat, hot water, and a working stove again. The best part? I'll get to watch our winter heating bill come in at not quite half of last year's, since the new furnace is more than twice as efficient as the old one. And it's so quiet you can't tell it's on unless you stand on a heat vent!
Righteous indignation being a great motivator, I got a lot of cleaning and clearing-out done in my workroom over those two days ... the family refers to my bouts of anger-based activity as "working furiously". I'm not quite ready to post the "after" pictures yet, though (you can see the "before" pics here).
My birthday had its ups and downs, too. Mom got me the lecture series on geology, tectonics and climate interrelationships I'd been jonesing for, and daughter J gave me beautiful flowers and a gift card to Chapters - she knows what I love! Big Guy brought home three birthday desserts - he said he couldn't remember what I like and wanted to cover all the bases, so there were cheesecake, Nanaimo bars, and a coffee-almond torte. Seriously? Almost thirty years and you don't know what I like for dessert?? So I was torn between being charmed by his thoughtfulness and resentful of his lack of attention. And then I felt guilty about the mixed feelings. And later I felt more resentment, and more guilt ... he'd bought me not the one fall hoodie I wanted, but two - black and super-dark brown, just like I wanted - but he didn't bother unfolding them or looking at the tags, so they are both about three sizes too small. And he promised we'd go exchange them today, only now he's suddenly "too busy". Busy with what? Reading a cookbook. Yes. He's decided he wants to deep-fry our Thanksgiving turkey. Should be ... interesting.
I've decided to scale back a bit on Hallowe'en this year. We'll still put up some creepy fun stuff around the front door and hand out treats, but I just don't feel up for our usual all-out over-the-top decorating. Partly because this year everyone will be at work all day except me, and I want to use the quiet time for more appropriate Samhain reflection. And partly because Big Guy's job has lasted months longer than it was originally supposed to and we don't know when the axe will fall and want to spend as little as possible on non-essentials as we prepare for his layoff. Oh, and of course we'll do several pumpkins - which will get cut up, cooked, and frozen the next day, as usual. I've never cared for pumpkin pie, but I make a pumpkin-cinnamon-raisin loaf that's very popular with family and friends. I might even give some frozen pumpkin puree to sister S for her pies, if she asks nicely!
Next weekend the guinea pigs will come inside until spring; the indoor cage sits in front of the living room window, so they still get fresh air and what little sunshine there is. Now that we have three of them (female-free-to-good-home, we couldn't resist!), the old indoor cage is far too small. Luckily, the vet clinic daughters P and J work at was tossing a perfectly good indoor cage big enough for all three, so she called, Big Guy drove to Kits, and the pigs have a nice roomy safe space until they go back to the outdoor hutch next spring. And the price was right - free.
Yes, even though J is back to cooking full-time, she's decided to hang on part-time at the clinic for as long as she can stand to; she wants to get those student loans paid off quickly, and more power to her! Like me - and unlike Big Guy - J sees debt not as just a to-be-expected part of life, but as something to be dealt with and eliminated as soon as possible.
I got a letter from Visa last week, telling me that they had doubled my credit limit. Since I never ever carry a balance, it really doesn't matter; whenever I use the card, I go online as soon as I get home and transfer the same amount from my chequing account, so my statement balance is always zero. And I only take the card shopping when I know in advance what I'm going to buy and how much I'll be spending. I suppose I'm fortunate in that I've never been tempted to be a buy-now-pay-later shopper ... I just don't like to carry large amounts of cash. It's good to know, though, that if a true emergency arises I have enough credit (I hope) to take care of whatever it is.
Right now, though, I have to go deal with three loads of laundry and a grungy kitchen floor.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Projects And Updates
Yes, I know it's been longer than usual since my last post. I could go on about getting caught up in other things, or delayed by events outside my control, but the truth is I just kept putting it off until here I am, a week later than I planned.
It's true that a lot has been going on here - some of it good, some not so much.
I'll start with a good thing - a finished project. Yes, a sweater is actually finished! And here it is:
Please ignore the mess behind it - the "get-the-workroom-cleaned-up-and-organized" project is not going as quickly as I'd hoped. But hey, one finished project is better than none - isn't it? And the second sweater is almost finished; I just have to assemble it and darn a few ends in. So maybe - with luck and hard work - more things will get done.
This year's food garden was almost a complete loss, thanks to uncooperative weather and steady rain through almost all of pollination season. So far we've managed to harvest one stalk of rhubarb, two tomatoes, and a handful of chives. The apple tree, however, contrived to bloom during the only dry few days we had all spring, and the apple crop was so abundant we were afraid branches would snap from the weight of the apples before we could pick them. One five-gallon pail at a time, they're coming into the kitchen to be canned as applesauce. We'd hoped to slice a bushel at least and run them through the dehydrators, until we realized that every one of them has had at least one bite taken out of it by the squirrels.
Every. Single. Apple.
You'd think that after the first, oh, hundred or so bites, the furry little buggers would have figured out that all the apples taste the same, but no. Apparently our squirrels, while handsome and sometimes entertaining, are not very bright.
And the basement project is almost at a standstill through no fault of my own. Or anyone else's, really ... accidents happen. It's not my co-worker's fault he had a bicycle accident last weekend. But because of that, instead of having a week off to really clear out the basement, I was called back into work. Yes, I'll get the days off some other time ... but probably not until next spring, since we are coming into the busiest / most hellish time of year for my department.
This slows the basement work down rather seriously, since the only time left for it will be weekends, when Big Guy always manages to have something "more important" to do and I can't move the big heavy things that need to be moved without his help. Why do they need to be moved? So that our huge old clunky noisy 43 % efficient furnace can be replaced with our new (still in its wrappings in the basement) small quiet 93 % efficient furnace. I would really love to see that happen before we actually need to turn a furnace on again this fall, but I know if I leave it up to Big Guy it will be at least another year before anything happens.
So my plan of attack has morphed into a plan of sneak attack. I'll be down there in the evenings clearing out all the small stuff, and on the weekends I'll just cajole him into helping me with just one or two large things at a time. Wish me luck!
In other news, J has rounded up two potential roommates, and their plan is to find somewhere to rent by the end of October. We'll miss her, and the move to paying rent will slow down her debt repayment plan, but I can understand her reasoning. She's working two jobs now, one full-time and one part-time, and the almost-two-hour commute each way is killing her. She goes to work, comes home, sleeps, and gets up and goes back to work, seven days a week. Living closer to work will give her a little time to actually have a life. Maybe even get some laundry done ...
This project has had side effects, of course. Big Guy is not happy with the last "baby" leaving home, of course. And all the bins and boxes of her stuff from the basement and the attic will be all over the living room until she makes time to go through them all and do the keep-trash-donate sorting. But ... the day after the last of her possessions leaves that big sunny front bedroom, I'll be in there with a bucket of paint! That room will become my new workroom, this little 8-by-11 room will become the den / guest room, and she already knows that if things go south and she has to move back in, she gets the den and not her old room.
Some people have said I'm unnatural, or a bad mother, for actually wanting my nest emptied ... but hey. She's twenty-six, she has a good education and a good profession (chef) ... it's time. Time for her to spread her wings in the real world, and time for Big Guy and I to be able to sit back, watch our girls all out on their own and independent, and know that we did a good job as parents making sure they could make it on their own.
It's true that a lot has been going on here - some of it good, some not so much.
I'll start with a good thing - a finished project. Yes, a sweater is actually finished! And here it is:
Please ignore the mess behind it - the "get-the-workroom-cleaned-up-and-organized" project is not going as quickly as I'd hoped. But hey, one finished project is better than none - isn't it? And the second sweater is almost finished; I just have to assemble it and darn a few ends in. So maybe - with luck and hard work - more things will get done.
This year's food garden was almost a complete loss, thanks to uncooperative weather and steady rain through almost all of pollination season. So far we've managed to harvest one stalk of rhubarb, two tomatoes, and a handful of chives. The apple tree, however, contrived to bloom during the only dry few days we had all spring, and the apple crop was so abundant we were afraid branches would snap from the weight of the apples before we could pick them. One five-gallon pail at a time, they're coming into the kitchen to be canned as applesauce. We'd hoped to slice a bushel at least and run them through the dehydrators, until we realized that every one of them has had at least one bite taken out of it by the squirrels.
Every. Single. Apple.
You'd think that after the first, oh, hundred or so bites, the furry little buggers would have figured out that all the apples taste the same, but no. Apparently our squirrels, while handsome and sometimes entertaining, are not very bright.
And the basement project is almost at a standstill through no fault of my own. Or anyone else's, really ... accidents happen. It's not my co-worker's fault he had a bicycle accident last weekend. But because of that, instead of having a week off to really clear out the basement, I was called back into work. Yes, I'll get the days off some other time ... but probably not until next spring, since we are coming into the busiest / most hellish time of year for my department.
This slows the basement work down rather seriously, since the only time left for it will be weekends, when Big Guy always manages to have something "more important" to do and I can't move the big heavy things that need to be moved without his help. Why do they need to be moved? So that our huge old clunky noisy 43 % efficient furnace can be replaced with our new (still in its wrappings in the basement) small quiet 93 % efficient furnace. I would really love to see that happen before we actually need to turn a furnace on again this fall, but I know if I leave it up to Big Guy it will be at least another year before anything happens.
So my plan of attack has morphed into a plan of sneak attack. I'll be down there in the evenings clearing out all the small stuff, and on the weekends I'll just cajole him into helping me with just one or two large things at a time. Wish me luck!
In other news, J has rounded up two potential roommates, and their plan is to find somewhere to rent by the end of October. We'll miss her, and the move to paying rent will slow down her debt repayment plan, but I can understand her reasoning. She's working two jobs now, one full-time and one part-time, and the almost-two-hour commute each way is killing her. She goes to work, comes home, sleeps, and gets up and goes back to work, seven days a week. Living closer to work will give her a little time to actually have a life. Maybe even get some laundry done ...
This project has had side effects, of course. Big Guy is not happy with the last "baby" leaving home, of course. And all the bins and boxes of her stuff from the basement and the attic will be all over the living room until she makes time to go through them all and do the keep-trash-donate sorting. But ... the day after the last of her possessions leaves that big sunny front bedroom, I'll be in there with a bucket of paint! That room will become my new workroom, this little 8-by-11 room will become the den / guest room, and she already knows that if things go south and she has to move back in, she gets the den and not her old room.
Some people have said I'm unnatural, or a bad mother, for actually wanting my nest emptied ... but hey. She's twenty-six, she has a good education and a good profession (chef) ... it's time. Time for her to spread her wings in the real world, and time for Big Guy and I to be able to sit back, watch our girls all out on their own and independent, and know that we did a good job as parents making sure they could make it on their own.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Much Ado About Something
It's been an odd couple of weeks - a lot to do, no time to write about it, and a lot of up-and-down-and-back-and-forth without really getting anywhere.
I did get to spend a weekend with my friends in Seattle, though, and it was wonderful. I just wish I could afford to get down there more often.
Why do some men seem to go out of their way to find the most difficult, time-consuming way possible to do the simplest things?
All I wanted to do was pick the ripe apples off the old Gravenstein tree in the side yard. So I went out back and asked Big Guy for one of the dip nets from the fishing gear. Well, no, I couldn't do that, because the net was too big and I'd knock down too many apples that weren't ripe and on and on ... but he'd fix me up something much better. Okay, fine. Two hours later, after much banging and cursing which I studiously ignored from indoors, he proudly presented me with a new, hand-made-just-for-you-dear ... dip net. Yep. It's slightly smaller around than the one I would have used, and the handle is almost a foot longer, but overall ... it's a dip net. Well, after thirty years with him I know when to keep my mouth shut except to smile sweetly and thank him.
So this evening I have a few gallons of apples to wash, peel, chop, and cook down. The actual canning (or freezing, if I get too tired) will happen tomorrow night. And by the weekend, lots more apples will be ripe and I'll start over.
There isn't much progress to be seen in other projects. The pink sweater sits forlornly on the needles, no longer than it was two weeks ago. The basement doesn't look any different, although a fair bit of stuff did get either tossed or relocated. Lots of laundry got done, but no mending, and my workroom is pretty much untouched. And yet I feel like I've been working non-stop on all kinds of things ... trouble is, most of what I've been doing has been just catching up on the housework that didn't get done while I was in Seattle. Because of course, Big Guy and J "meant to do it" but somehow it never happened. Story of my life. Sigh.
The apples and the basement have to be the top priorities for the next couple of weeks. The apples because, well, once they're ripe they won't wait, and the basement so that the guy who's coming next week to give us an estimate on installation costs will be able to see what he needs to see and measure where he needs to measure.
Oh, and can anyone tell me how I managed to acquire the head cold from hell this week? My head is pounding, my sinuses are throbbing, and my nose has already been wiped raw. Total misery - but I'm doing my best not to share it with anyone.
I did get to spend a weekend with my friends in Seattle, though, and it was wonderful. I just wish I could afford to get down there more often.
Why do some men seem to go out of their way to find the most difficult, time-consuming way possible to do the simplest things?
All I wanted to do was pick the ripe apples off the old Gravenstein tree in the side yard. So I went out back and asked Big Guy for one of the dip nets from the fishing gear. Well, no, I couldn't do that, because the net was too big and I'd knock down too many apples that weren't ripe and on and on ... but he'd fix me up something much better. Okay, fine. Two hours later, after much banging and cursing which I studiously ignored from indoors, he proudly presented me with a new, hand-made-just-for-you-dear ... dip net. Yep. It's slightly smaller around than the one I would have used, and the handle is almost a foot longer, but overall ... it's a dip net. Well, after thirty years with him I know when to keep my mouth shut except to smile sweetly and thank him.
So this evening I have a few gallons of apples to wash, peel, chop, and cook down. The actual canning (or freezing, if I get too tired) will happen tomorrow night. And by the weekend, lots more apples will be ripe and I'll start over.
There isn't much progress to be seen in other projects. The pink sweater sits forlornly on the needles, no longer than it was two weeks ago. The basement doesn't look any different, although a fair bit of stuff did get either tossed or relocated. Lots of laundry got done, but no mending, and my workroom is pretty much untouched. And yet I feel like I've been working non-stop on all kinds of things ... trouble is, most of what I've been doing has been just catching up on the housework that didn't get done while I was in Seattle. Because of course, Big Guy and J "meant to do it" but somehow it never happened. Story of my life. Sigh.
The apples and the basement have to be the top priorities for the next couple of weeks. The apples because, well, once they're ripe they won't wait, and the basement so that the guy who's coming next week to give us an estimate on installation costs will be able to see what he needs to see and measure where he needs to measure.
Oh, and can anyone tell me how I managed to acquire the head cold from hell this week? My head is pounding, my sinuses are throbbing, and my nose has already been wiped raw. Total misery - but I'm doing my best not to share it with anyone.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Random Bits, Large And Small
I can't decide which I dislike more - the days when life is just one damn thing after another, or the days when life is just the same damn things over and over and over ...
Now, I'm not talking about my job, which is pretty much a combination of those two kinds of days. I knew it would be like that when I went in, and there's enough variety to keep it interesting, and I'm pretty darn good at it.
I'm talking about the time I don't spend at work. The hours spent in the arms of my loving family. The hours that went pretty much like this, every two minutes, all weekend long:
Mom, I need you to ...
Where's the damn ...
Mrow ...
Honey, can you come out here and ...
Why isn't there any ...
MROW!
Which is why I didn't get back here to post over the weekend. Honestly, a five-minute stretch without anyone wanting anything would have done wonders for me!
There's a good chance that some time in the next few days I'll be posting big signs all over the house that say, in large red caps:
THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER FAIRY.
THE MAID QUIT. DO IT YOURSELF.
DON'T PUT THAT DOWN, PUT IT AWAY.
I went to work yesterday morning secure in the belief that at least there I could pretty much know what to expect and get some actual work done ... Not so much. The phones just would not stop, the problems popped up like mushrooms after a rainy night, and the whole day's work was done in ninety-second increments between phone calls and frantic e-mails. By the time I got home last night, all I managed before I fell over was getting changed and stuffing a sandwich in my face. Today was a little better, but I'm not holding my breath for tomorrow.
On the home front, I just keep chipping away at things. Every time I walk into a room - any room - I look for one thing that needs doing, and do it. Wastebasket full - empty it. Cat bowl empty - fill it. Something out of place - put it away. Something missing - go find it. You get the picture. At the end of the day it doesn't seem as though I've done much, but by the end of the week there's a noticeable difference. Works for me.
I've booked a vacation week mid-September to have the old furnace hauled away and the new one installed. I'm optimistic about having most of the cleanup done before then - or at least enough of it that nothing will impede the installation process. The real hurdle will be getting the Big Guy's cooperation; he won't do anything during the week because he "worked hard all day" (so did I, son) and he won't do anything on the weekends because he "needs to get the truck running to haul all the crap away". Sigh.
Since this is a three-payday month, I'm also pushing the idea that the single-glazed living room window can be replaced this month - or at least, before October. I've even offered to use the third paycheque to pay professional installers. Of course, Big Guy is no end offended by this ... he and his buddy G replaced all the other windows in the house, and did a fine job. But the truth is, if I left it to him to install this one, I'd be waiting until about this time next year for him to "get around to it". Not to mention that his favourite time of year for big projects involving exposing the whole house to outdoor temperatures is ... the week before Christmas. I can't figure it out. Last winter, he decided on December 21st to paint the kitchen ... doors & windows wide open for days, during the coldest week in the recorded history of this area. Granted, December 2009 was not his fault - we'd had it on good authority that the roof could wait until April, which turned out not to be the case, and we had roofers up there ripping everything back to the bare rafters and replacing it all, right up through December 23rd. December 2008, he refused to put up the Christmas tree until the living room was painted ... I'm scared to even think about what he might pick as the pre-Christmas project this year. Probably the damn window.
And something that warms my thrifty little heart:
March 2010, after paying a $900 annual water & sewer bill, I decided to take advantage of the city's free water meter program, and had one installed. May 2011, I got the quarterly metered water & sewer bill ... and found that since were were no longer paying the city's "flat rate" but only paying for what we used, we still had - ta daa! - almost $300 credit. I got the August bill today - and we still have a $22 credit. I'm a very happy water-conserving camper tonight!
Now, I'm not talking about my job, which is pretty much a combination of those two kinds of days. I knew it would be like that when I went in, and there's enough variety to keep it interesting, and I'm pretty darn good at it.
I'm talking about the time I don't spend at work. The hours spent in the arms of my loving family. The hours that went pretty much like this, every two minutes, all weekend long:
Mom, I need you to ...
Where's the damn ...
Mrow ...
Honey, can you come out here and ...
Why isn't there any ...
MROW!
Which is why I didn't get back here to post over the weekend. Honestly, a five-minute stretch without anyone wanting anything would have done wonders for me!
There's a good chance that some time in the next few days I'll be posting big signs all over the house that say, in large red caps:
THERE IS NO TOILET PAPER FAIRY.
THE MAID QUIT. DO IT YOURSELF.
DON'T PUT THAT DOWN, PUT IT AWAY.
I went to work yesterday morning secure in the belief that at least there I could pretty much know what to expect and get some actual work done ... Not so much. The phones just would not stop, the problems popped up like mushrooms after a rainy night, and the whole day's work was done in ninety-second increments between phone calls and frantic e-mails. By the time I got home last night, all I managed before I fell over was getting changed and stuffing a sandwich in my face. Today was a little better, but I'm not holding my breath for tomorrow.
On the home front, I just keep chipping away at things. Every time I walk into a room - any room - I look for one thing that needs doing, and do it. Wastebasket full - empty it. Cat bowl empty - fill it. Something out of place - put it away. Something missing - go find it. You get the picture. At the end of the day it doesn't seem as though I've done much, but by the end of the week there's a noticeable difference. Works for me.
I've booked a vacation week mid-September to have the old furnace hauled away and the new one installed. I'm optimistic about having most of the cleanup done before then - or at least enough of it that nothing will impede the installation process. The real hurdle will be getting the Big Guy's cooperation; he won't do anything during the week because he "worked hard all day" (so did I, son) and he won't do anything on the weekends because he "needs to get the truck running to haul all the crap away". Sigh.
Since this is a three-payday month, I'm also pushing the idea that the single-glazed living room window can be replaced this month - or at least, before October. I've even offered to use the third paycheque to pay professional installers. Of course, Big Guy is no end offended by this ... he and his buddy G replaced all the other windows in the house, and did a fine job. But the truth is, if I left it to him to install this one, I'd be waiting until about this time next year for him to "get around to it". Not to mention that his favourite time of year for big projects involving exposing the whole house to outdoor temperatures is ... the week before Christmas. I can't figure it out. Last winter, he decided on December 21st to paint the kitchen ... doors & windows wide open for days, during the coldest week in the recorded history of this area. Granted, December 2009 was not his fault - we'd had it on good authority that the roof could wait until April, which turned out not to be the case, and we had roofers up there ripping everything back to the bare rafters and replacing it all, right up through December 23rd. December 2008, he refused to put up the Christmas tree until the living room was painted ... I'm scared to even think about what he might pick as the pre-Christmas project this year. Probably the damn window.
And something that warms my thrifty little heart:
March 2010, after paying a $900 annual water & sewer bill, I decided to take advantage of the city's free water meter program, and had one installed. May 2011, I got the quarterly metered water & sewer bill ... and found that since were were no longer paying the city's "flat rate" but only paying for what we used, we still had - ta daa! - almost $300 credit. I got the August bill today - and we still have a $22 credit. I'm a very happy water-conserving camper tonight!
Monday, July 25, 2011
Projects, Plans, And Possibilities
Projects. Of the many currently in process, I'm starting to see actual results on a few ...
The sweater is finished. Actually, it's been finished for some time, but I keep forgetting to charge the camera batteries. Maybe next week - in fact, definitely next week, along with pics of ...
Next weekend's Renaissance Fair costume. I have all the pieces cut out for the underskirt, blouse, hat, and most of the vest. All that remain to cut out are the outer vest surface (the layer that shows) and the overskirt; but since they are plaid, and I'm a little obsessive about matching the plaid lines perfectly, I'll be putting the rest of the outfit together over the next three evenings, and tackling the plaid from start to finish on Friday (I have Friday off in exchange for working BC Day on Monday), when there will be lots of nice bright daylight to work by and plenty of time to get it absolutely right.
The mending pile seems to be stuck in some sort of recurring time loop. I mend and I mend but the pile never gets any smaller. I suspect my family of sneaking items into the middle of it when I'm not looking.
Replacing what I lost when I hard to wipe the hard drive is slow going, but I'm chipping away at it. Most of it is re-entering and updating files from hard copies - bank statements, insurance inventory, and so on. And yes, this time everything is being backed up on CDs. My friend D (the tech wizard) thinks he may eventually be able to retrieve most of the photos I hadn't put on CDs yet.
I've started another sweater - just a nice casual cotton/acrylic hoodie, simple but pretty - but I suspect it will end up being a birthday gift for my sister S, because it's pink. Strawberry-ice-cream-pink, which is one of her favourite shades. And since her birthday isn't until the fall, I might even get it finished in time!
The basement cleanup is moving along, though rather more slowly than I like. I'm rapidly approaching the point where I will just haul everything that's not mine - in other words, pretty much everything that's still down there - out into the back yard. Anything that's still out there a week later will go straight to either a local charity or the dump, depending on what it is, what condition it's in, and what mood I'm in by then. Whatever it takes to get that space cleared out so that we can install the new high-efficiency furnace before it's time to turn the heat on again.
I have to confess, as much as I love the Big Guy, this is one area where he makes me want to beat him about the ears with a brick. He talks endlessly about the things he's going to do - replace the furnace, clean up the back yard, replace the old single-glazed living room window, put the new box on the truck, finish painting the kitchen ... but none of it ever actually happens. The living room window is the last one left to be replaced and it's a huge heat sink in the winter. Combine that with an ancient, huge, loud, clunky, dreadfully inefficient furnace, and it's no wonder our winter gas bills are so high. Before the suite in the basement was done, we only went downstairs to do laundry or get something from the freezer, so we heated the main floor with the wood stove. But now we have a tenant, and when a tenant's rent includes heat, we need to provide said heat. Hence the new furnace.
Thanks to a cold, wet spring that continued right through June and the first half of July, the garden I had such high hopes for is pretty much a wash. The rhubarb is looking good, and the chives thrive, but I don't think the tomato plants are going to produce much besides leaves. One planter of strawberries looks promising, but we'll have to figure out a way to keep the birds and squirrels out of it if we're going to get any ripe berries.
But the apple tree! My lovely, antique Gravenstein apple tree! It's covered with baby apples - the branches are already starting to sag under the weight, and they're still no bigger than golf balls. If I can keep the local wildlife (and lowlifes) out of that tree, we'll have applesauce and dried apples all winter. At least, that's the plan. Meanwhile, I'm going to go baste a blouse and underskirt.
The sweater is finished. Actually, it's been finished for some time, but I keep forgetting to charge the camera batteries. Maybe next week - in fact, definitely next week, along with pics of ...
Next weekend's Renaissance Fair costume. I have all the pieces cut out for the underskirt, blouse, hat, and most of the vest. All that remain to cut out are the outer vest surface (the layer that shows) and the overskirt; but since they are plaid, and I'm a little obsessive about matching the plaid lines perfectly, I'll be putting the rest of the outfit together over the next three evenings, and tackling the plaid from start to finish on Friday (I have Friday off in exchange for working BC Day on Monday), when there will be lots of nice bright daylight to work by and plenty of time to get it absolutely right.
The mending pile seems to be stuck in some sort of recurring time loop. I mend and I mend but the pile never gets any smaller. I suspect my family of sneaking items into the middle of it when I'm not looking.
Replacing what I lost when I hard to wipe the hard drive is slow going, but I'm chipping away at it. Most of it is re-entering and updating files from hard copies - bank statements, insurance inventory, and so on. And yes, this time everything is being backed up on CDs. My friend D (the tech wizard) thinks he may eventually be able to retrieve most of the photos I hadn't put on CDs yet.
I've started another sweater - just a nice casual cotton/acrylic hoodie, simple but pretty - but I suspect it will end up being a birthday gift for my sister S, because it's pink. Strawberry-ice-cream-pink, which is one of her favourite shades. And since her birthday isn't until the fall, I might even get it finished in time!
The basement cleanup is moving along, though rather more slowly than I like. I'm rapidly approaching the point where I will just haul everything that's not mine - in other words, pretty much everything that's still down there - out into the back yard. Anything that's still out there a week later will go straight to either a local charity or the dump, depending on what it is, what condition it's in, and what mood I'm in by then. Whatever it takes to get that space cleared out so that we can install the new high-efficiency furnace before it's time to turn the heat on again.
I have to confess, as much as I love the Big Guy, this is one area where he makes me want to beat him about the ears with a brick. He talks endlessly about the things he's going to do - replace the furnace, clean up the back yard, replace the old single-glazed living room window, put the new box on the truck, finish painting the kitchen ... but none of it ever actually happens. The living room window is the last one left to be replaced and it's a huge heat sink in the winter. Combine that with an ancient, huge, loud, clunky, dreadfully inefficient furnace, and it's no wonder our winter gas bills are so high. Before the suite in the basement was done, we only went downstairs to do laundry or get something from the freezer, so we heated the main floor with the wood stove. But now we have a tenant, and when a tenant's rent includes heat, we need to provide said heat. Hence the new furnace.
Thanks to a cold, wet spring that continued right through June and the first half of July, the garden I had such high hopes for is pretty much a wash. The rhubarb is looking good, and the chives thrive, but I don't think the tomato plants are going to produce much besides leaves. One planter of strawberries looks promising, but we'll have to figure out a way to keep the birds and squirrels out of it if we're going to get any ripe berries.
But the apple tree! My lovely, antique Gravenstein apple tree! It's covered with baby apples - the branches are already starting to sag under the weight, and they're still no bigger than golf balls. If I can keep the local wildlife (and lowlifes) out of that tree, we'll have applesauce and dried apples all winter. At least, that's the plan. Meanwhile, I'm going to go baste a blouse and underskirt.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Things I Learned The Hard Way Part Three: Making Something From (Almost) Nothing
How do you define creativity? Apart from things like composing music, creating works of art, writing ... I mean creativity in everyday life, creativity that adds something to your life. There are creative cooks, gardeners, home decorators; there are people who can host a perfect party, or trim a perfect Christmas tree, or accessorize everything they wear with unique flair.
And then there are people like me. People who can take something old, something worn out, something discarded, and turn it into something attractive or useful or practical. People who don't have any money but somehow always manage to find or produce what they need. And most of those people, like me, had to master the fine art of squeezing a loonie until the bird laid eggs. People who've figured out, of necessity, how to turn that sow's ear into a silk purse, or a pair of slippers, or an Easter basket for a child.
When I was at my most impoverished - suddenly divorced, with a two-year-old - I discovered ways to turn other people's trash into our personal treasures. A broken umbrella picked up from the side of the road became a colourful kite for trips to the park. A discarded roller skate, a slightly bent freezer basket, and a couple of wire hangers combined to make a doll carriage. A huge garbage bag of old jeans and shirts hauled home for a dollar from a yard sale? All those clothes were carefully picked apart at the seams, and the fabric became overalls, shirts, and dresses for my daughter. The pieces that didn't metamorphose into child or doll wardrobes went into a quilt for her bed (stuffed with clean, shredded old socks and pantyhose), stuffed fabric holiday ornaments, quilted potholders, patchwork cushion covers, stuffed toys ... not a scrap was wasted. Zippers and buttons were traded to a seamstress friend for spools of thread; even thread trimmings all went into stuffing. Odd half-skeins of yarn from freebie boxes at yard sales went through my corking spool to become braided bath and kitchen mats - unless the yarn was cotton; then it was knitted into dishcloths. Frayed bath towels were quartered and hemmed to become kitchen towels or facecloths, and when they wore too thin to use they were shredded for toy or cushion stuffing, or layered and quilted for hot mats, oven mitts, and potholders.
Tuna cans were carefully bent and shaped into cookie cutters, or used as individual muffin or meat loaf pans - the perfect serving size for a small child! The skeleton of that aforementioned broken umbrella made a great hanging drying racks for socks and other small items. A yard-sale laundry hamper became a patchwork-covered toy box. The lids from two large cookie tins were used for baking sheets; the bottoms made good casserole pans.
We'd make a game of it, sometimes. What do we need? What do we have that we could adapt or re-work into what we need? What can we find that could turn into a good whatever-it-is? What is this, or what was it, and what can we make with it? A stack of outdated swatch books found next to an upholstery shop's dumpster - bonanza! Tapestry shopping bags, silk patchwork pillowcases, satin Christmas ornaments and velvet stockings, a colourful harlequin costume for Hallowe'en!
The point - and it took me a long time to realize this - is that being cash-poor doesn't have to make you feel poor; penny-pinching doesn't have to feel like a chore. There can be a lot of fun in being creative with whatever resources you have.
And then there are people like me. People who can take something old, something worn out, something discarded, and turn it into something attractive or useful or practical. People who don't have any money but somehow always manage to find or produce what they need. And most of those people, like me, had to master the fine art of squeezing a loonie until the bird laid eggs. People who've figured out, of necessity, how to turn that sow's ear into a silk purse, or a pair of slippers, or an Easter basket for a child.
When I was at my most impoverished - suddenly divorced, with a two-year-old - I discovered ways to turn other people's trash into our personal treasures. A broken umbrella picked up from the side of the road became a colourful kite for trips to the park. A discarded roller skate, a slightly bent freezer basket, and a couple of wire hangers combined to make a doll carriage. A huge garbage bag of old jeans and shirts hauled home for a dollar from a yard sale? All those clothes were carefully picked apart at the seams, and the fabric became overalls, shirts, and dresses for my daughter. The pieces that didn't metamorphose into child or doll wardrobes went into a quilt for her bed (stuffed with clean, shredded old socks and pantyhose), stuffed fabric holiday ornaments, quilted potholders, patchwork cushion covers, stuffed toys ... not a scrap was wasted. Zippers and buttons were traded to a seamstress friend for spools of thread; even thread trimmings all went into stuffing. Odd half-skeins of yarn from freebie boxes at yard sales went through my corking spool to become braided bath and kitchen mats - unless the yarn was cotton; then it was knitted into dishcloths. Frayed bath towels were quartered and hemmed to become kitchen towels or facecloths, and when they wore too thin to use they were shredded for toy or cushion stuffing, or layered and quilted for hot mats, oven mitts, and potholders.
Tuna cans were carefully bent and shaped into cookie cutters, or used as individual muffin or meat loaf pans - the perfect serving size for a small child! The skeleton of that aforementioned broken umbrella made a great hanging drying racks for socks and other small items. A yard-sale laundry hamper became a patchwork-covered toy box. The lids from two large cookie tins were used for baking sheets; the bottoms made good casserole pans.
We'd make a game of it, sometimes. What do we need? What do we have that we could adapt or re-work into what we need? What can we find that could turn into a good whatever-it-is? What is this, or what was it, and what can we make with it? A stack of outdated swatch books found next to an upholstery shop's dumpster - bonanza! Tapestry shopping bags, silk patchwork pillowcases, satin Christmas ornaments and velvet stockings, a colourful harlequin costume for Hallowe'en!
The point - and it took me a long time to realize this - is that being cash-poor doesn't have to make you feel poor; penny-pinching doesn't have to feel like a chore. There can be a lot of fun in being creative with whatever resources you have.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Ever Have One Of Those Days ...
... where you just can't seem to get moving? I'm having one today. And although I feel like I've earned a lazy day, this is not the best time for one. But every time I think about the things that need to get done today ... I sit back down here and start another game of solitaire, or read another blog/social site thread/news article.
And there are a number of things that do need doing today; the litterbox and guinea pig cage need cleaning, the dishes are piling up and so is the laundry, the bathroom is grubby, the whole house badly needs sweeping and dusting, the mending pile keeps growing, I still have a few more loose ends to darn into the "project" sweater, and my workroom is still chaotic. Don't even ask me about the basement ... and here I sit.
Why? I'm tired. Deep-down in my bones tired. Overtime every night at work, family who meet me at the door with things they "need" me to do right that second, a computer on which I need to replace/rebuild a gazillion files because we had to wipe the main drive and reinstall Windows (some files might still be recoverable, but it will take time); it all adds up. It seems like the only time I had to relax for the last week was during my train ride to work and back, when I could lose myself in a book or put my headphones on and ignore the world for a little while. That's not enough.
On the plus side, I have tomorrow off. Even though our office is in Canada, the ports I handle are in the US, so I work the Canadian holidays and take the American ones. Instead of Victoria Day, I get Memorial Day. This is actually a good thing, because tomorrow I plan to get my passport pictures taken, get J to sign one (she works an afternoon shift tomorrow so she'll still be here when I get back with them), go downtown to use the birthday gift card the girls gave me last fall for a manicure & pedicure, then take in my passport application. I'll be putting the fees on the credit card, but as soon as I get home I can transfer the amount out of chequing and so pay no interest and get the card back to zero again. The passport office, like the photo place, is within walking distance of home. So are the bank, the library, the computer store, and two grocery stores, all of which I will also be stopping at ... all in all, a very busy day, but a very productive one.
Oh, yes, the bank.
I have a little piggy bank on my desk here, into which I drop all the coins I accumulate during the week. When it's full, I empty it into an old toffee tin, and when the tin is full, I roll up the coins and deposit the lot into my savings account. So my trip to the bank will be to deposit - drum roll, please! - $233.00 !!! Which more than makes up for having to tweeze my eyebrows into submission and touch up my grey roots tonight so I'll be ready for the passport photos in the morning.
Now, if only the weather would lighten up a little. It may be the end of May on paper, but it's still March outside.
And there are a number of things that do need doing today; the litterbox and guinea pig cage need cleaning, the dishes are piling up and so is the laundry, the bathroom is grubby, the whole house badly needs sweeping and dusting, the mending pile keeps growing, I still have a few more loose ends to darn into the "project" sweater, and my workroom is still chaotic. Don't even ask me about the basement ... and here I sit.
Why? I'm tired. Deep-down in my bones tired. Overtime every night at work, family who meet me at the door with things they "need" me to do right that second, a computer on which I need to replace/rebuild a gazillion files because we had to wipe the main drive and reinstall Windows (some files might still be recoverable, but it will take time); it all adds up. It seems like the only time I had to relax for the last week was during my train ride to work and back, when I could lose myself in a book or put my headphones on and ignore the world for a little while. That's not enough.
On the plus side, I have tomorrow off. Even though our office is in Canada, the ports I handle are in the US, so I work the Canadian holidays and take the American ones. Instead of Victoria Day, I get Memorial Day. This is actually a good thing, because tomorrow I plan to get my passport pictures taken, get J to sign one (she works an afternoon shift tomorrow so she'll still be here when I get back with them), go downtown to use the birthday gift card the girls gave me last fall for a manicure & pedicure, then take in my passport application. I'll be putting the fees on the credit card, but as soon as I get home I can transfer the amount out of chequing and so pay no interest and get the card back to zero again. The passport office, like the photo place, is within walking distance of home. So are the bank, the library, the computer store, and two grocery stores, all of which I will also be stopping at ... all in all, a very busy day, but a very productive one.
Oh, yes, the bank.
I have a little piggy bank on my desk here, into which I drop all the coins I accumulate during the week. When it's full, I empty it into an old toffee tin, and when the tin is full, I roll up the coins and deposit the lot into my savings account. So my trip to the bank will be to deposit - drum roll, please! - $233.00 !!! Which more than makes up for having to tweeze my eyebrows into submission and touch up my grey roots tonight so I'll be ready for the passport photos in the morning.
Now, if only the weather would lighten up a little. It may be the end of May on paper, but it's still March outside.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Joining The "Not Buying It" Crowd
I really didn't accomplish much this week besides going to work, doing my job, and coming home to collapse. I've had a horrendous cold since early in the week. On Tuesday I was just sneezing and a little sniffly, which prompted me to wonder if I was finally developing the hay fever that the rest of the family suffers with every spring. But no ... Wednesday at work I went through one boxes of tissue in eight hours, Thursday's count was two boxes, and by Friday afternoon I'd lost count. Friday night I started to cough, and I spent Saturday on the couch hacking, wheezing, and going through a couple more boxes of tissues. (good thing I got them in bulk, on sale, with a coupon!) It's tapering off now, but I'm still exhausted enough that today I did the dishes in several installments, because after ten minutes standing in front of the sink I just had to go sit down for a while.
Big Guy did what he always does - he made a big pot of from-scratch chicken soup and kept bringing me bowls of it - lovely stuff, full of bite-sized chicken chunks, onions, celery, carrots, lots of garlic and ginger, and egg noodles. It makes me feel better, at least for a little while ... in fact, I'll be taking a thermos of soup to work for lunch tomorrow.
I spent a lot of the weekend browsing a variety of blogs, following links from one to another, and I was surprised at how many bloggers are on the "Not Buying It" bandwagon. Not because it's a novel idea - I've pretty much lived that way for most of my life - but because so many people use that particular label. Is it easier to be frugal as part of a group? Does not spending money feel more comfortable if you can see how many others aren't spending money either? I'm not putting them down for it - in fact, I can't help wondering if I'd do better at the whole saving/not spending/paying down debt thing if I followed their example.
So ... as of today, I'm going to actually track every cent I spend, and post the details - starting with the generic cold capsules I hauled my poor aching, wheezing self out to get this morning. Maybe someone can suggest areas where I could spend less, or even items I could eliminate entirely. I don't pretend to be an expert, and I'm always open to new ideas. Oh, and just so the tracking will make more sense - Big Guy and I have an arrangement. Since he does almost all the cooking, he pays for the groceries, and I pay the household bills - hydro, gas, phone/cable/internet. So those categories won't show in the sidebar, and neither will our mortgage payments. What I'll be tracking is just my own personal spending, not the household budget. The goal is to make myself more aware of what I'm spending on "extras"; we're already pretty darn careful about what we lay out for necessities. For instance, the coffee we buy as part of the regular groceries won't be listed, but if I treat myself to a pound of a specialty blend I will show it. I'm still debating whether to show what I spend on my monthly transit pass - it's expensive, but it's necessary. Driving to work (especially with the cost of parking downtown) would cost at least three times as much ... so I don't think the pass can really be called an "extra". What do you think?
I'm also making a list in the back of my current all-purpose notebook of all the things I have enough of that I don't need to buy more no matter how good the sale price is. Thanks to my long-standing habit of stocking up when the price is right, it should be at least two years before I'll be buying office supplies, shower gel, deodorant, hair ties, shampoo, sewing notions, underwear, garbage bags, greeting cards ... the actual list is far more detailed, but you get the idea.
I will have to bite the bullet very soon and buy a new pair of running shoes. Actually, skateboard shoes, which are far more comfortable (they're wider, and I have square feet and a ridiculously high arch) and don't have the big ugly clunky soles that almost all women's "running" shoes seem to have these days. I pretty much live in those shoes, unless there's snow - our neighbourhood doesn't have sidewalks except on the main streets, and I'm not about to ruin my good/dress/office shoes by commuting daily through mud, gravel, and roadside dirt in them. A pair of the brand I like best will run me about $75.00 on sale, but once every two years or so turns that from an extravagance into a practical budget item. Especially since it allows me to make a nice pair of dress shoes last up to ten years. Yes, seriously. Shoes I like, that fit properly and don't hurt to walk in, are hard to find; when I do find a pair, I make them last as long as possible. I don't care about fashion - and some of the recent and current styles are downright ugly - my "good" shoes are plain, comfortable classics that will always look suitable for whatever I wear them with.
Apart from the shoes, there won't be any clothing in the list. This goes back to my New Year's "resolutions" - to work with what I already have. As each new garment is started, it will be added to the "Current Projects" section of the sidebar, and I'll try to post a picture of each one when I finish them. The sweater is almost finished, so (touch wood) next post will include a picture. I'll also be adding a "Finished Projects" section - sometimes I feel like Alice, "the faster I run the behinder I get", and it will be nice to look at that list and reflect on what I have accomplished.
Big Guy did what he always does - he made a big pot of from-scratch chicken soup and kept bringing me bowls of it - lovely stuff, full of bite-sized chicken chunks, onions, celery, carrots, lots of garlic and ginger, and egg noodles. It makes me feel better, at least for a little while ... in fact, I'll be taking a thermos of soup to work for lunch tomorrow.
I spent a lot of the weekend browsing a variety of blogs, following links from one to another, and I was surprised at how many bloggers are on the "Not Buying It" bandwagon. Not because it's a novel idea - I've pretty much lived that way for most of my life - but because so many people use that particular label. Is it easier to be frugal as part of a group? Does not spending money feel more comfortable if you can see how many others aren't spending money either? I'm not putting them down for it - in fact, I can't help wondering if I'd do better at the whole saving/not spending/paying down debt thing if I followed their example.
So ... as of today, I'm going to actually track every cent I spend, and post the details - starting with the generic cold capsules I hauled my poor aching, wheezing self out to get this morning. Maybe someone can suggest areas where I could spend less, or even items I could eliminate entirely. I don't pretend to be an expert, and I'm always open to new ideas. Oh, and just so the tracking will make more sense - Big Guy and I have an arrangement. Since he does almost all the cooking, he pays for the groceries, and I pay the household bills - hydro, gas, phone/cable/internet. So those categories won't show in the sidebar, and neither will our mortgage payments. What I'll be tracking is just my own personal spending, not the household budget. The goal is to make myself more aware of what I'm spending on "extras"; we're already pretty darn careful about what we lay out for necessities. For instance, the coffee we buy as part of the regular groceries won't be listed, but if I treat myself to a pound of a specialty blend I will show it. I'm still debating whether to show what I spend on my monthly transit pass - it's expensive, but it's necessary. Driving to work (especially with the cost of parking downtown) would cost at least three times as much ... so I don't think the pass can really be called an "extra". What do you think?
I'm also making a list in the back of my current all-purpose notebook of all the things I have enough of that I don't need to buy more no matter how good the sale price is. Thanks to my long-standing habit of stocking up when the price is right, it should be at least two years before I'll be buying office supplies, shower gel, deodorant, hair ties, shampoo, sewing notions, underwear, garbage bags, greeting cards ... the actual list is far more detailed, but you get the idea.
I will have to bite the bullet very soon and buy a new pair of running shoes. Actually, skateboard shoes, which are far more comfortable (they're wider, and I have square feet and a ridiculously high arch) and don't have the big ugly clunky soles that almost all women's "running" shoes seem to have these days. I pretty much live in those shoes, unless there's snow - our neighbourhood doesn't have sidewalks except on the main streets, and I'm not about to ruin my good/dress/office shoes by commuting daily through mud, gravel, and roadside dirt in them. A pair of the brand I like best will run me about $75.00 on sale, but once every two years or so turns that from an extravagance into a practical budget item. Especially since it allows me to make a nice pair of dress shoes last up to ten years. Yes, seriously. Shoes I like, that fit properly and don't hurt to walk in, are hard to find; when I do find a pair, I make them last as long as possible. I don't care about fashion - and some of the recent and current styles are downright ugly - my "good" shoes are plain, comfortable classics that will always look suitable for whatever I wear them with.
Apart from the shoes, there won't be any clothing in the list. This goes back to my New Year's "resolutions" - to work with what I already have. As each new garment is started, it will be added to the "Current Projects" section of the sidebar, and I'll try to post a picture of each one when I finish them. The sweater is almost finished, so (touch wood) next post will include a picture. I'll also be adding a "Finished Projects" section - sometimes I feel like Alice, "the faster I run the behinder I get", and it will be nice to look at that list and reflect on what I have accomplished.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
One Step Forward, How Many Back?
It's been a difficult and disappointing week here at Chez Chaos ...
J catered a big party last weekend. Apparently the party itself was a great success, her food was a huge hit with the crowd, and the word-of-mouth advertising will certainly pay off in the long term. However ... the friend who was helping her with setup and cleanup wasn't really paying attention, or something. Whatever her reason, all the clean kitchen utensils got wrapped in dirty, damp towels before going into the bins for transport back here, and some containers of food that should have been in the cooler were down in the bottom of the "clean stuff" bin as well. Now, due to a hectic work schedule, J didn't get to unpacking what should have been a bin full of clean, dry things until Friday. Result: mildewed towels, moldy food, and two sinkfuls of dishes and utensils to be scrubbed free of mold and disinfected. Between all of that and a massive post-birthday-celebration hangover, J is not a happy chef this weekend.
My workplace was seriously understaffed all week, due to one vacation and one nasty case of flu. Between working through lunch and staying late every night, by the time I got home in the evenings I didn't have the energy for anything other than wolfing down a sandwich and collapsing into bed. So nothing got done here on ongoing projects, and nothing by way of housework other than the absolutely unavoidable minimum of animal care, dishes and laundry. To make the week even more hectic, our highest-volume ocean terminal lost all their computer systems for three days, which meant I was deluged with phone calls from truckers who couldn't get what they needed because "the terminal has no record of it". Every one of those calls meant I had to print out what was originally booked, call the terminal, and read it to someone who would them write it down and send someone to the main gate with it. Every three minutes. For three days. On top of a doubled-plus workload. Fortunately, the usual IBS reaction to stress held off until Saturday - which was a blessing at the office but has kept me from accomplishing much of anything at home this weekend. Even the sweater that I'd hoped to have finished by now is still in pieces in my knitting bag.
One of our downstairs tenants is having a really hard time finding work, and for the last two months they've only paid half the rent. I'm sympathetic, but at the same time the money shortage is more stress we really don't need right now. I'm going to sit back and let Big Guy deal with them about it; I already have more than enough stress to keep my innards in an uproar. But if we don't see some more money from them this week, I may resort to cutting off the cable television and internet to the suite - after all, both are included in the rent, and so (in my view) have not been paid for. "Need" internet access to look for a job? It's free at the public library, which is within walking distance.
I've also come to the unhappy realization that no matter how much organizing and purging I do, there will never be enough space in my workroom to do what I'd like to be doing in here; the room is just too small. The only way to create enough space would be to move everything I work with to another part of the house, and that's just not an option. Somehow, I just can't see myself climbing the ladder to the attic to go through boxes every time I need a reference book or a spool of thread ...
We're not sure if this spring is really colder and wetter than usual, or if we're perceiving it that way because every time we finally have a little time to work on the garden, it rains. In either case, it's frustrating ... we'll go outside and get started on something, and within ten or fifteen minutes the weather changes and drives us back under cover. Eventually it will all get done; it's just hard to maintain any enthusiasm for it when progress is measured in slow, damp inches.
There were a few bright spots in all the gloom, though ...
J was very happy with her birthday gifts; I gave her a gift card to her favourite frilly-girly-girl lingerie store and a month's supply of transit tickets, and Big Guy is taking her shopping for three new pairs of jeans.
The ornamental trees downtown are all bursting into bloom, and tomorrow is supposed to be fairly nice weather-wise, so I've already tucked my camera in my bag. Every year I tell myself I'm going to get pictures when the trees blossom, and every year I either forget the camera, or it rains, or both. This year, I'm ready!
Sister S and I get together at Mom's on Wednesday evening instead of the usual Friday, and it was a really nice evening. I had to leave pretty early, but Mom had some good news for a change ... although the changes are small and slow, her health is gradually improving. She may never get all the way back to where she was two years ago, but the improvement is noticeable now, and gives hope for more. We're all very happy for her, and looking forward to doing more with her in the future. Maybe another road trip ...
Friends D and J came over Saturday night as usual, and we had a very pleasant, relaxing time with several episodes of "The Mentalist". When we run out of episodes we might move right on to "Stargate SG-1", or possibly take some time out for a few board game nights. Either way, fun evenings with good friends, and without spending money - it's all good. Next week it's my turn to provide the snacks, so there will either be homemade cookies or coffee cake, or maybe a big tub of popcorn and a plate of homemade fudge. Good times on the cheap!
J catered a big party last weekend. Apparently the party itself was a great success, her food was a huge hit with the crowd, and the word-of-mouth advertising will certainly pay off in the long term. However ... the friend who was helping her with setup and cleanup wasn't really paying attention, or something. Whatever her reason, all the clean kitchen utensils got wrapped in dirty, damp towels before going into the bins for transport back here, and some containers of food that should have been in the cooler were down in the bottom of the "clean stuff" bin as well. Now, due to a hectic work schedule, J didn't get to unpacking what should have been a bin full of clean, dry things until Friday. Result: mildewed towels, moldy food, and two sinkfuls of dishes and utensils to be scrubbed free of mold and disinfected. Between all of that and a massive post-birthday-celebration hangover, J is not a happy chef this weekend.
My workplace was seriously understaffed all week, due to one vacation and one nasty case of flu. Between working through lunch and staying late every night, by the time I got home in the evenings I didn't have the energy for anything other than wolfing down a sandwich and collapsing into bed. So nothing got done here on ongoing projects, and nothing by way of housework other than the absolutely unavoidable minimum of animal care, dishes and laundry. To make the week even more hectic, our highest-volume ocean terminal lost all their computer systems for three days, which meant I was deluged with phone calls from truckers who couldn't get what they needed because "the terminal has no record of it". Every one of those calls meant I had to print out what was originally booked, call the terminal, and read it to someone who would them write it down and send someone to the main gate with it. Every three minutes. For three days. On top of a doubled-plus workload. Fortunately, the usual IBS reaction to stress held off until Saturday - which was a blessing at the office but has kept me from accomplishing much of anything at home this weekend. Even the sweater that I'd hoped to have finished by now is still in pieces in my knitting bag.
One of our downstairs tenants is having a really hard time finding work, and for the last two months they've only paid half the rent. I'm sympathetic, but at the same time the money shortage is more stress we really don't need right now. I'm going to sit back and let Big Guy deal with them about it; I already have more than enough stress to keep my innards in an uproar. But if we don't see some more money from them this week, I may resort to cutting off the cable television and internet to the suite - after all, both are included in the rent, and so (in my view) have not been paid for. "Need" internet access to look for a job? It's free at the public library, which is within walking distance.
I've also come to the unhappy realization that no matter how much organizing and purging I do, there will never be enough space in my workroom to do what I'd like to be doing in here; the room is just too small. The only way to create enough space would be to move everything I work with to another part of the house, and that's just not an option. Somehow, I just can't see myself climbing the ladder to the attic to go through boxes every time I need a reference book or a spool of thread ...
We're not sure if this spring is really colder and wetter than usual, or if we're perceiving it that way because every time we finally have a little time to work on the garden, it rains. In either case, it's frustrating ... we'll go outside and get started on something, and within ten or fifteen minutes the weather changes and drives us back under cover. Eventually it will all get done; it's just hard to maintain any enthusiasm for it when progress is measured in slow, damp inches.
There were a few bright spots in all the gloom, though ...
J was very happy with her birthday gifts; I gave her a gift card to her favourite frilly-girly-girl lingerie store and a month's supply of transit tickets, and Big Guy is taking her shopping for three new pairs of jeans.
The ornamental trees downtown are all bursting into bloom, and tomorrow is supposed to be fairly nice weather-wise, so I've already tucked my camera in my bag. Every year I tell myself I'm going to get pictures when the trees blossom, and every year I either forget the camera, or it rains, or both. This year, I'm ready!
Sister S and I get together at Mom's on Wednesday evening instead of the usual Friday, and it was a really nice evening. I had to leave pretty early, but Mom had some good news for a change ... although the changes are small and slow, her health is gradually improving. She may never get all the way back to where she was two years ago, but the improvement is noticeable now, and gives hope for more. We're all very happy for her, and looking forward to doing more with her in the future. Maybe another road trip ...
Friends D and J came over Saturday night as usual, and we had a very pleasant, relaxing time with several episodes of "The Mentalist". When we run out of episodes we might move right on to "Stargate SG-1", or possibly take some time out for a few board game nights. Either way, fun evenings with good friends, and without spending money - it's all good. Next week it's my turn to provide the snacks, so there will either be homemade cookies or coffee cake, or maybe a big tub of popcorn and a plate of homemade fudge. Good times on the cheap!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Weekend Reflections
Today is Ostara, the Spring Equinox. The sun is shining, birds are chirping on the clothesline, buds are coming out on the trees, and the rhubarb actually survived the winter.
It feels like a good day to reflect on where I've been, where I am now and how I got here, and where I want to be and how to get there.
Spring - a traditional time for new beginnings of every kind. A good time to take a look at what my goals were when I started blogging, and decide what worked, what didn't, and what new goals might be more appropriate.
Goal - get another job.
DONE!!! And I couldn't be happier with it!
Goal - quit smoking.
No success there yet - I have cut down some, though, and I feel myself getting closer to actually being ready to quit.
Goal - lose weight.
A little success, but I think it's time to stop focusing on the numbers on the scale, and put the energy into an overall pattern of living a healthier life. Yes, I know, that would include giving up smoking. But it also includes things I'm ready to do now. Giving up "junk" food / empty-calorie-laden snacks, and walking more instead of jumping in the car. That will be much easier now that winter is pretty much over. Walking with my shopping cart to do all the errands didn't have much appeal when the weather choices were icy cold rain, icy cold windy rain, below-zero windy slush ...
Goal - de-clutter the house and keep it that way.
Progress is being made, but so slowly it's hard to see without referring back to my "before" pictures. There are days when I want to pile everyone else's junk in the middle of the yard and tell them to deal with it without just scattering it randomly back in the house. There are days when I firmly believe that the house won't look the way I'd like it to until J moves out and Big Guy dies. But every now and then there's a day when someone actually agrees with me that something can go, or pitches in and cleans a little of their mess themselves. Those are days I treasure, rare as they are.
Goal - use what I already have to expand / improve my wardrobe.
That's going very slowly, due to constrains of time and available working space. The "improve" part is moving along nicely ... this week I weeded more clothes, and have two more bags of donations to drop off. I've decided that it doesn't matter how much I like a garment - if it doesn't go with at least three other things I own, I'm not keeping it.
For office wear, I'm down to a base of slacks and jackets in neutral colours - greys, black, dark blues, and creams/tans/khaki. Shoes? Three pairs black, one pair navy, one pair tan. Maybe later this year I'll throw some dark forest green or bitter-chocolate brown into the mix. This neutral base will give me a lot more leeway in choosing colours and patterns for tops and accessories ... I'm all about scarves, actually; I have them in all kinds of fabrics, patterns, colours, sizes, and textures! Now I'm looking forward to making myself lots of nice sweaters, shells, tanks, and tunics to coordinate with the neutrals.
My current sweater project fits so perfectly into this plan that I must confess I've even done a little gloating about it! It's a longish tunic-y style pullover in shades of cream, charcoal, dusty pale blue, and cafe-au-lait that will look great with every pair of office slacks I have. It'll look great with jeans. It'll look great under a blazer or by itself. And by this time next week, it'll be finished - last night I got the shoulder seams sewn up and the neckband knitted on, which just leaves the sleeves and side seams. I can't wait to post a picture of it!
Goal - to spend less time just watching television and more time actually doing things.
This one shouldn't be that difficult. These days there are fewer programs I actually enjoy enough that I'd miss them if they disappeared. I need to get back into the habit of not sitting down in front of the television without something to occupy my hands, whether it's a knitting/sewing/craft project, or mending, or laundry to fold. Or maybe put some music on, instead of the television, when all I really need is background noise.
Goal - get the basement cleaned out so we can start putting in the family room we've been talking about for years.
This is going very slowly - in fact, it's almost at a standstill right now. I'm breaking it down into " mini-goals", for lack of a better word. First, I want to get all of my own stuff out ... except for the big steel rack holding all the canning jars and gear, and the boxes of home-canned food. Technically, the canning stuff is all mine - but in actual usage it's for the whole family's benefit, like the freezer.
I've been working with J - when she can spare the time - to get all of her stuff out, whether it's organized into bins in the attic, donated, or whatever.
What I'm aiming for is the day when Big Guy once again claims that he can't do anything in the basement yet because "there's too much crap in the way." I will smile sweetly and reply in dulcet tones, "Yes, dear, and all of it is yours."
It feels like a good day to reflect on where I've been, where I am now and how I got here, and where I want to be and how to get there.
Spring - a traditional time for new beginnings of every kind. A good time to take a look at what my goals were when I started blogging, and decide what worked, what didn't, and what new goals might be more appropriate.
Goal - get another job.
DONE!!! And I couldn't be happier with it!
Goal - quit smoking.
No success there yet - I have cut down some, though, and I feel myself getting closer to actually being ready to quit.
Goal - lose weight.
A little success, but I think it's time to stop focusing on the numbers on the scale, and put the energy into an overall pattern of living a healthier life. Yes, I know, that would include giving up smoking. But it also includes things I'm ready to do now. Giving up "junk" food / empty-calorie-laden snacks, and walking more instead of jumping in the car. That will be much easier now that winter is pretty much over. Walking with my shopping cart to do all the errands didn't have much appeal when the weather choices were icy cold rain, icy cold windy rain, below-zero windy slush ...
Goal - de-clutter the house and keep it that way.
Progress is being made, but so slowly it's hard to see without referring back to my "before" pictures. There are days when I want to pile everyone else's junk in the middle of the yard and tell them to deal with it without just scattering it randomly back in the house. There are days when I firmly believe that the house won't look the way I'd like it to until J moves out and Big Guy dies. But every now and then there's a day when someone actually agrees with me that something can go, or pitches in and cleans a little of their mess themselves. Those are days I treasure, rare as they are.
Goal - use what I already have to expand / improve my wardrobe.
That's going very slowly, due to constrains of time and available working space. The "improve" part is moving along nicely ... this week I weeded more clothes, and have two more bags of donations to drop off. I've decided that it doesn't matter how much I like a garment - if it doesn't go with at least three other things I own, I'm not keeping it.
For office wear, I'm down to a base of slacks and jackets in neutral colours - greys, black, dark blues, and creams/tans/khaki. Shoes? Three pairs black, one pair navy, one pair tan. Maybe later this year I'll throw some dark forest green or bitter-chocolate brown into the mix. This neutral base will give me a lot more leeway in choosing colours and patterns for tops and accessories ... I'm all about scarves, actually; I have them in all kinds of fabrics, patterns, colours, sizes, and textures! Now I'm looking forward to making myself lots of nice sweaters, shells, tanks, and tunics to coordinate with the neutrals.
My current sweater project fits so perfectly into this plan that I must confess I've even done a little gloating about it! It's a longish tunic-y style pullover in shades of cream, charcoal, dusty pale blue, and cafe-au-lait that will look great with every pair of office slacks I have. It'll look great with jeans. It'll look great under a blazer or by itself. And by this time next week, it'll be finished - last night I got the shoulder seams sewn up and the neckband knitted on, which just leaves the sleeves and side seams. I can't wait to post a picture of it!
Goal - to spend less time just watching television and more time actually doing things.
This one shouldn't be that difficult. These days there are fewer programs I actually enjoy enough that I'd miss them if they disappeared. I need to get back into the habit of not sitting down in front of the television without something to occupy my hands, whether it's a knitting/sewing/craft project, or mending, or laundry to fold. Or maybe put some music on, instead of the television, when all I really need is background noise.
Goal - get the basement cleaned out so we can start putting in the family room we've been talking about for years.
This is going very slowly - in fact, it's almost at a standstill right now. I'm breaking it down into " mini-goals", for lack of a better word. First, I want to get all of my own stuff out ... except for the big steel rack holding all the canning jars and gear, and the boxes of home-canned food. Technically, the canning stuff is all mine - but in actual usage it's for the whole family's benefit, like the freezer.
I've been working with J - when she can spare the time - to get all of her stuff out, whether it's organized into bins in the attic, donated, or whatever.
What I'm aiming for is the day when Big Guy once again claims that he can't do anything in the basement yet because "there's too much crap in the way." I will smile sweetly and reply in dulcet tones, "Yes, dear, and all of it is yours."
Monday, February 28, 2011
Connections
Lately I've been thinking about connections. More specifically, about how a random thought, a phrase overheard by chance, a glimpse of something caught in passing, can lead us to renew connections with people or places or things that we hadn't even realized we'd missed.
I was walking from the Skytrain station to the office last week - taking the same route I always take - when I looked up at a building I'd been passing twice every day and suddenly realized that was where my friend E was working when I was at my old job. I wondered if she was still there; later that day I made a call and found out she'd left that job at about the same time I was laid off. But ... I didn't know that the person I talked to would call E the same day to let her know I'd been asking asking. End result? E learned where I was working, called me, and we're getting together next weekend. As it happened, not long after we lost touch, E had moved out to this area and now lives about a ten-minute walk from my house! I'm looking forward to renewing the friendship, and I think E is too.
*****
On the "Projects" front, the sweater is coming along nicely. I finished the sleeves on Saturday, yay! So now it's back to the workroom cleanup, with added motivation - until it's done, I can't set up the ironing board to block out the sweater pieces before I sew them together.
*****
Elderly Cat had her every-six-months checkup and blood work done last week. The vet says she's doing exceedingly well - she's even gained weight! We're all very pleased, even Big Guy who pretends he doesn't care for cats. She still needs her meds every day; one pill for her digestion, a quarter of another pill for her kidneys, and an eighth of a pill for her heart; I crush them all into her food every evening and so far she hasn't caught on. She may be eighteen years old, but she's still happy and active; when she thinks we're not looking she plays like a kitten, and I still catch her jumping up on the kitchen counter to drink from the sink on occasion. Not bad, considering that in human terms she's about ninety and the counter, proportionally, if she were my height, would be about twenty feet over her head ...
*****
I stopped at Costco on my way home from work today, to pick up a month's worth of my work breakfasts and lunches - two boxes of sausage rolls, two dozen apple-oatmeal muffins, a bag of apples, a bag of bananas, and two tubs of yogurt. (I love my wheeled shopping bag! It folds up to fit into the tote bag I carry every day, and holds a lot.) My co-workers think my diet is really dull, because they see me eating pretty much the same things every day - a muffin for breakfast (the office provides coffee), a sausage roll and some yogurt for lunch, and a piece of fruit mid-afternoon. S, who goes out and buys her lunch every day, asked me if I don't get bored eating the same thing every day. The truth is, I don't. It's nutritious, it's fairly balanced, and it's a huge time-saver in the mornings, when I am definitely not at my best. I just grab a sausage roll and a muffin from the freezer, a pre-filled one-serving container of yogurt and a piece of fruit from the fridge, and I'm good to go. Plus it's cheap ... I sat down and did the math one day, and discovered that the two meals and snack I eat at work every day cost me roughly $2.10 per day. That's not much higher than what S spends on whatever pastry she picks up for breakfast in the mall every morning, and about a third (or a bit less) of what she usually spends on lunch. So while I'm spending $10.50 a week to eat breakfast and lunch, S is spending, on average, $40.00. And most weeks my total is lower, because sometimes there are some pretty nice leftovers to take the place of the sausage roll. Then I did some more math, and found out that buying good bread and sandwich makings would cost me closer to $3.50 a day, plus the muffins, yogurt, and fruit. So I feel both well-nourished and virtuously frugal.
I was walking from the Skytrain station to the office last week - taking the same route I always take - when I looked up at a building I'd been passing twice every day and suddenly realized that was where my friend E was working when I was at my old job. I wondered if she was still there; later that day I made a call and found out she'd left that job at about the same time I was laid off. But ... I didn't know that the person I talked to would call E the same day to let her know I'd been asking asking. End result? E learned where I was working, called me, and we're getting together next weekend. As it happened, not long after we lost touch, E had moved out to this area and now lives about a ten-minute walk from my house! I'm looking forward to renewing the friendship, and I think E is too.
*****
On the "Projects" front, the sweater is coming along nicely. I finished the sleeves on Saturday, yay! So now it's back to the workroom cleanup, with added motivation - until it's done, I can't set up the ironing board to block out the sweater pieces before I sew them together.
*****
Elderly Cat had her every-six-months checkup and blood work done last week. The vet says she's doing exceedingly well - she's even gained weight! We're all very pleased, even Big Guy who pretends he doesn't care for cats. She still needs her meds every day; one pill for her digestion, a quarter of another pill for her kidneys, and an eighth of a pill for her heart; I crush them all into her food every evening and so far she hasn't caught on. She may be eighteen years old, but she's still happy and active; when she thinks we're not looking she plays like a kitten, and I still catch her jumping up on the kitchen counter to drink from the sink on occasion. Not bad, considering that in human terms she's about ninety and the counter, proportionally, if she were my height, would be about twenty feet over her head ...
*****
I stopped at Costco on my way home from work today, to pick up a month's worth of my work breakfasts and lunches - two boxes of sausage rolls, two dozen apple-oatmeal muffins, a bag of apples, a bag of bananas, and two tubs of yogurt. (I love my wheeled shopping bag! It folds up to fit into the tote bag I carry every day, and holds a lot.) My co-workers think my diet is really dull, because they see me eating pretty much the same things every day - a muffin for breakfast (the office provides coffee), a sausage roll and some yogurt for lunch, and a piece of fruit mid-afternoon. S, who goes out and buys her lunch every day, asked me if I don't get bored eating the same thing every day. The truth is, I don't. It's nutritious, it's fairly balanced, and it's a huge time-saver in the mornings, when I am definitely not at my best. I just grab a sausage roll and a muffin from the freezer, a pre-filled one-serving container of yogurt and a piece of fruit from the fridge, and I'm good to go. Plus it's cheap ... I sat down and did the math one day, and discovered that the two meals and snack I eat at work every day cost me roughly $2.10 per day. That's not much higher than what S spends on whatever pastry she picks up for breakfast in the mall every morning, and about a third (or a bit less) of what she usually spends on lunch. So while I'm spending $10.50 a week to eat breakfast and lunch, S is spending, on average, $40.00. And most weeks my total is lower, because sometimes there are some pretty nice leftovers to take the place of the sausage roll. Then I did some more math, and found out that buying good bread and sandwich makings would cost me closer to $3.50 a day, plus the muffins, yogurt, and fruit. So I feel both well-nourished and virtuously frugal.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Random Ramblings
I've had a few things on my plate the past week or so, and a lot on my mind, so tonight's post will be a little jumbled ...rather than try to put events in order, I'm just going to ramble about whatever occurs to me.
The job continues to be very good. My office wardrobe could use some upgrading, but I'm very fortunate in that there isn't really a dress code as such, except that we only wear jeans on Fridays. That takes a lot of pressure off, since any additions this year (other than shoes and underthings) will be made by yours truly. I'll try to remember to post them all in the "Projects" sidebar, but don't expect too much all at once! Since one of my semi-resolutions was to finish everything I start, I think my best hope of doing that will be not to let myself start a project until the previous one is finished. In the past I've had a tendency to start a dozen garments at once and take forever to finish any of them ... I don't have the space for UFOs to accumulate any more, and I no longer have the time or the patience to sort through a big pile of pieces figuring out which piece goes with what.
* * * * *
The memorial service for L was last Saturday, and I must confess I found it a little depressing. Partly, I think, because apart from Big Guy, his brother and nephews, and one friend, I didn't know anyone there. Partly because although the service itself was fairly dignified, I'm not a fan of organized religion, especially when its adherents natter on interminably about "God's will" and "in a better place". How can there be a better place than the home she'd worked hard to make and keep with her loved ones? How can it be "God's will" that she go through what she did because a doctor she trusted misdiagnosed a malignant lump as "just a cyst, don't worry about it"? And did the video presentation really need so many photos of L in a hospital bed, dying? I don't think so. But ... it's not my place to judge; if that's what gave her husband and sons some comfort, I certainly would never dream of telling them what I really thought.
Anyway, on our way home, Big Guy and I agreed that whichever of us goes first, the other one will not do that kind of thing. We're both pretty much set on "give away whatever parts still work (organ donation), burn the rest, and have a party when the ashes get scattered". And in the meantime, enjoy each other's company as much as we can, because who knows what might happen tomorrow?
* * * * *
I spent most of Sunday happily knitting away, thinking I'd have the back of the sweater finished and the front started by bedtime, and then ... I discovered that I'd left out one small but critical step at the beginning of the armhole shaping, and had to rip out about eight inches of work. I'm calmer now, but still feel rather foolish. After all, I've been knitting for almost fifty years - how could I have not noticed something so basic? Can I plead a mental hangover from Saturday?
* * * * *
Daughter J volunteered at a foodie event a few days back, and for her trouble brought home, among other things, a huge bag of assorted exotic mushrooms. After work today, I helped her get them all set up in the dehydrator; when they're done, we'll vacuum-seal them for future yummy goodness at her hands. That vacuum sealer has to be the best $5.00 yard-sale purchase I ever made!
* * * * *
Big Guy is finally back to work, for which we're both grateful. We don't know how long it will last - in construction, when the building (or whatever) is finished, that's it until he gets a call for the next one. So as long as he is working, we're putting as much $$$ as we can toward paying down debts. The mortgage is set up so that we can keep up with it on just one income - I insisted on that from day one - and still eat and pay the bills. I also insist that whenever one of us is not working, the credit cards don't come out except for the most dire of emergencies - the ones that can't be dealt with any other way and can't wait until we can afford them. Like the roof that started leaking four months before we had planned to replace it ...
At least the past year of dual unemployment showed him that maybe some of the things I'd been trying to tell him all along weren't so "out there" after all. Things like:
never shopping without a list
never shopping without going through all the flyers first, or without checking the kitchen & pantry to see what we really needed
never shopping hungry
never shopping without my coupons
Actually, the tricky part isn't making a list - it's persuading him to stick to it. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've said "Put it back, it's not on the list." Or "I don't care what a great deal/sale/price it is, we don't need it." At this point, I count any shopping trip that ends with us bringing home fewer than four "off-list" items as a victory of sorts.
I also counted it as a real victory when he finally agreed to let J and me clean out the big chest freezer in the basement. He's always had the firm belief that anything frozen stays good forever, and that a little freezer burn never hurt anybody. Um ... no. J pointed out to him how many of my bad IBS flareups coincided with him cooking something he thought was still perfectly good, and that I wasn't just being "picky" about food that he ate without any ill effects ... I'm told she said something along the lines of "Come on, Dad, we all know you could eat pureed tin cans and be okay!" So we dug and sorted and defrosted while he sat in the workshop and sulked, but in the end we threw out a lot less than I'd been afraid we might have to. But folks, I don't care how well-wrapped and solidly frozen something is - if it's dated 1999, I am not letting anyone eat it. And I don't want to hear about that edible mammoth meat they dug up somewhere in Siberia.
* * * * *
I've started a list of blogs I read along the side; I'll be adding to it periodically, once I'm all caught up on the ones I try to read regularly. Right now, though, I'm going to go and knit.
The job continues to be very good. My office wardrobe could use some upgrading, but I'm very fortunate in that there isn't really a dress code as such, except that we only wear jeans on Fridays. That takes a lot of pressure off, since any additions this year (other than shoes and underthings) will be made by yours truly. I'll try to remember to post them all in the "Projects" sidebar, but don't expect too much all at once! Since one of my semi-resolutions was to finish everything I start, I think my best hope of doing that will be not to let myself start a project until the previous one is finished. In the past I've had a tendency to start a dozen garments at once and take forever to finish any of them ... I don't have the space for UFOs to accumulate any more, and I no longer have the time or the patience to sort through a big pile of pieces figuring out which piece goes with what.
* * * * *
The memorial service for L was last Saturday, and I must confess I found it a little depressing. Partly, I think, because apart from Big Guy, his brother and nephews, and one friend, I didn't know anyone there. Partly because although the service itself was fairly dignified, I'm not a fan of organized religion, especially when its adherents natter on interminably about "God's will" and "in a better place". How can there be a better place than the home she'd worked hard to make and keep with her loved ones? How can it be "God's will" that she go through what she did because a doctor she trusted misdiagnosed a malignant lump as "just a cyst, don't worry about it"? And did the video presentation really need so many photos of L in a hospital bed, dying? I don't think so. But ... it's not my place to judge; if that's what gave her husband and sons some comfort, I certainly would never dream of telling them what I really thought.
Anyway, on our way home, Big Guy and I agreed that whichever of us goes first, the other one will not do that kind of thing. We're both pretty much set on "give away whatever parts still work (organ donation), burn the rest, and have a party when the ashes get scattered". And in the meantime, enjoy each other's company as much as we can, because who knows what might happen tomorrow?
* * * * *
I spent most of Sunday happily knitting away, thinking I'd have the back of the sweater finished and the front started by bedtime, and then ... I discovered that I'd left out one small but critical step at the beginning of the armhole shaping, and had to rip out about eight inches of work. I'm calmer now, but still feel rather foolish. After all, I've been knitting for almost fifty years - how could I have not noticed something so basic? Can I plead a mental hangover from Saturday?
* * * * *
Daughter J volunteered at a foodie event a few days back, and for her trouble brought home, among other things, a huge bag of assorted exotic mushrooms. After work today, I helped her get them all set up in the dehydrator; when they're done, we'll vacuum-seal them for future yummy goodness at her hands. That vacuum sealer has to be the best $5.00 yard-sale purchase I ever made!
* * * * *
Big Guy is finally back to work, for which we're both grateful. We don't know how long it will last - in construction, when the building (or whatever) is finished, that's it until he gets a call for the next one. So as long as he is working, we're putting as much $$$ as we can toward paying down debts. The mortgage is set up so that we can keep up with it on just one income - I insisted on that from day one - and still eat and pay the bills. I also insist that whenever one of us is not working, the credit cards don't come out except for the most dire of emergencies - the ones that can't be dealt with any other way and can't wait until we can afford them. Like the roof that started leaking four months before we had planned to replace it ...
At least the past year of dual unemployment showed him that maybe some of the things I'd been trying to tell him all along weren't so "out there" after all. Things like:
never shopping without a list
never shopping without going through all the flyers first, or without checking the kitchen & pantry to see what we really needed
never shopping hungry
never shopping without my coupons
Actually, the tricky part isn't making a list - it's persuading him to stick to it. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've said "Put it back, it's not on the list." Or "I don't care what a great deal/sale/price it is, we don't need it." At this point, I count any shopping trip that ends with us bringing home fewer than four "off-list" items as a victory of sorts.
I also counted it as a real victory when he finally agreed to let J and me clean out the big chest freezer in the basement. He's always had the firm belief that anything frozen stays good forever, and that a little freezer burn never hurt anybody. Um ... no. J pointed out to him how many of my bad IBS flareups coincided with him cooking something he thought was still perfectly good, and that I wasn't just being "picky" about food that he ate without any ill effects ... I'm told she said something along the lines of "Come on, Dad, we all know you could eat pureed tin cans and be okay!" So we dug and sorted and defrosted while he sat in the workshop and sulked, but in the end we threw out a lot less than I'd been afraid we might have to. But folks, I don't care how well-wrapped and solidly frozen something is - if it's dated 1999, I am not letting anyone eat it. And I don't want to hear about that edible mammoth meat they dug up somewhere in Siberia.
* * * * *
I've started a list of blogs I read along the side; I'll be adding to it periodically, once I'm all caught up on the ones I try to read regularly. Right now, though, I'm going to go and knit.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
New Year, New Goal
Well, not exactly a new goal ... actually the resurrection of a project that never quite got off the ground last year.
Those of you who are familiar with my old blog, My Life After Layoff , might remember my plans to de-clutter and organize my workroom (you can see the "before" pics here ). Right now it's a disaster ... bags, boxes, and loose piles of fabric, yarn, books, clothes, craft supplies, patterns, sewing machines, dress form, ironing board, computer stuff, fishing rods & tackle (don't ask) ... the room itself is seven feet by ten, and it seems like almost everything I do is done in here. Or would be, if I had space to do it ...
Well, life got in the way, as it so often does, and nothing in here has changed. Yet.
I was making progress. Really I was. But then ...
My computer died; actually, a component of the power source failed and took out part of my motherboard in the process - the part that says "Why yes, you do have hard drives, and here they are." That happened mid-September, and I was without a computer of my own until late November. It's my very good fortune to have a dear friend who is also a tech wizard, and he was able to slave my main hard drive to (daughter) J's computer long enough for me to copy the files I really needed (job-hunting can be difficult without access to one's resume).
On reflection, I must admit that the biggest hindrance to the timely completion of the project was a stroke of amazing good luck - a former colleague called me out of the blue and offered me a job! Naturally, I accepted with grace and gratitude. And then did the "Happy Dance" on the downtown sidewalk outside Dressew (which is where I happened to be when my phone rang), followed by a celebratory shopping spree at their 99-cents-a-ball yarn sale (I got some gorgeous stuff, too - Nashua Cilantro and Schachenmayr Nomotta Punto for 99 cents? A dozen pattern books for 99 cents each? Heaven, I tell you!). And after thirteen months without work, a call on a Thursday afternoon asking "Can you start on Monday morning?" merited some celebration! I believe my response was something along the lines of "If you want, I can find a way to start yesterday! "
Get-up-in-the-morning-and-work-on-the-room turned into get-up-and-go-to-work and work-on-the-room-on-the-weekend. Good.
Work-on-the-room-on-the-weekend turned into do-something-about-that-damned-attic-so-there's-somewhere-to-put-things and do-the-laundry-and-housework-all-at-once-instead-of-staggered-through-the-week and yell-at-the-people-who-had-all-week-to-do-their-laundry-and-chose-Saturday-and-I-am-not-going-to-work-on-Monday-without-clean-underwear and well, you get the picture. Frustrating.
Time constraints, attic temperatures, and family life being what they are, the attic turned into a much bigger project than I had foreseen, but I finally finished just in time for
Christmas. Baking. Cleaning. Decorating. Gift making / shopping / hiding / wrapping. And the Big Guy picked December as the perfect time to paint the kitchen and replace the stove ... The coldest week on record for the last umpty-dozen years, doors and windows wide open (therefore also the coldest week on record in the house) and no way to cook. Uber frustrating.
Well. Upward and onward.
The holiday dust has settled, the pine needles have all been swept up (well, all the ones I could find), and it's time to finish what I started in here.
Step one: weed the bookshelves. Difficult, that. Done.
Step two: weed the yarn and fabric stashes. Even more difficult, and involving some lip-quivering, but ... Done.
Step three: hit the dollar store for zip-close bags to store yarn and fabric, with the patterns I intend to use tucked into the bags. Mostly done.
Step four: inventory all the knitting needles and related gear so that I know what I have and what I need. Done.
Step five: weed the craft supplies and office supplies, then hit the dollar store again for clear plastic bins / boxes to store the keepers in. Weeding is done, dollar store trip will be later today.
Step six: go through the small Alp of mending and sort by type of repair needed, then swing by the local fabric store for any necessary supplies not already on hand (like the new zipper for my fleece-lined hoodie). Partially done. In a perfect world, this would be followed by
Step seven: Do all the mending. In a perfect world ...
At this point, someone is sure to be wondering what all that shopping and all those plastic bags, boxes, and bins have to do with making my life "greener, healthier, and thriftier". Well, life is full of trade-offs and compromises, and that's one of mine; an investment in plastic now will save me money, time, and stress. Fabric and yarn won't be ruined by exposure to dirt, dust, bugs, or mildew (it's happened before). Craft supplies won't get lost, broken, or damaged. I won't tear my hair out trying to find things I know are "in here somewhere", nor will I spend money duplicating what I already have. And having all those projects visible means I'll be far more likely to actually do them, which in turn means a better wardrobe for me and nice gifts for others, all without spending more money on materials. And ... I only buy plastics that are on my city's acceptable-for-recycling list, which is what will happen in the unlikely event that I no longer have a use for them and can't find someone else who needs them.
I don't usually make New Year's resolutions - mainly because I know how unlikely it is that I'll keep them - but this year I've made a few and I think they're going to work.
1) I will work with what I have.
2) I will finish what I start.
3) I will step up my efforts to reduce, re-use, and recycle.
Remember I said last week that blogging keeps me accountable? Well, putting that together with resolutions 1 and 2, every time I start a project I will post it in the sidebar, along with the start and finish dates. If I get really ambitious, I might even put up pictures. Yes, including "after" pictures of my workroom ... if only in the hope that someone, somewhere, will check out the "befores", compare them to the "afters", and say "Wow! Great job!"
Those of you who are familiar with my old blog, My Life After Layoff , might remember my plans to de-clutter and organize my workroom (you can see the "before" pics here ). Right now it's a disaster ... bags, boxes, and loose piles of fabric, yarn, books, clothes, craft supplies, patterns, sewing machines, dress form, ironing board, computer stuff, fishing rods & tackle (don't ask) ... the room itself is seven feet by ten, and it seems like almost everything I do is done in here. Or would be, if I had space to do it ...
Well, life got in the way, as it so often does, and nothing in here has changed. Yet.
I was making progress. Really I was. But then ...
My computer died; actually, a component of the power source failed and took out part of my motherboard in the process - the part that says "Why yes, you do have hard drives, and here they are." That happened mid-September, and I was without a computer of my own until late November. It's my very good fortune to have a dear friend who is also a tech wizard, and he was able to slave my main hard drive to (daughter) J's computer long enough for me to copy the files I really needed (job-hunting can be difficult without access to one's resume).
On reflection, I must admit that the biggest hindrance to the timely completion of the project was a stroke of amazing good luck - a former colleague called me out of the blue and offered me a job! Naturally, I accepted with grace and gratitude. And then did the "Happy Dance" on the downtown sidewalk outside Dressew (which is where I happened to be when my phone rang), followed by a celebratory shopping spree at their 99-cents-a-ball yarn sale (I got some gorgeous stuff, too - Nashua Cilantro and Schachenmayr Nomotta Punto for 99 cents? A dozen pattern books for 99 cents each? Heaven, I tell you!). And after thirteen months without work, a call on a Thursday afternoon asking "Can you start on Monday morning?" merited some celebration! I believe my response was something along the lines of "If you want, I can find a way to start yesterday! "
Get-up-in-the-morning-and-work-on-the-room turned into get-up-and-go-to-work and work-on-the-room-on-the-weekend. Good.
Work-on-the-room-on-the-weekend turned into do-something-about-that-damned-attic-so-there's-somewhere-to-put-things and do-the-laundry-and-housework-all-at-once-instead-of-staggered-through-the-week and yell-at-the-people-who-had-all-week-to-do-their-laundry-and-chose-Saturday-and-I-am-not-going-to-work-on-Monday-without-clean-underwear and well, you get the picture. Frustrating.
Time constraints, attic temperatures, and family life being what they are, the attic turned into a much bigger project than I had foreseen, but I finally finished just in time for
Christmas. Baking. Cleaning. Decorating. Gift making / shopping / hiding / wrapping. And the Big Guy picked December as the perfect time to paint the kitchen and replace the stove ... The coldest week on record for the last umpty-dozen years, doors and windows wide open (therefore also the coldest week on record in the house) and no way to cook. Uber frustrating.
Well. Upward and onward.
The holiday dust has settled, the pine needles have all been swept up (well, all the ones I could find), and it's time to finish what I started in here.
Step one: weed the bookshelves. Difficult, that. Done.
Step two: weed the yarn and fabric stashes. Even more difficult, and involving some lip-quivering, but ... Done.
Step three: hit the dollar store for zip-close bags to store yarn and fabric, with the patterns I intend to use tucked into the bags. Mostly done.
Step four: inventory all the knitting needles and related gear so that I know what I have and what I need. Done.
Step five: weed the craft supplies and office supplies, then hit the dollar store again for clear plastic bins / boxes to store the keepers in. Weeding is done, dollar store trip will be later today.
Step six: go through the small Alp of mending and sort by type of repair needed, then swing by the local fabric store for any necessary supplies not already on hand (like the new zipper for my fleece-lined hoodie). Partially done. In a perfect world, this would be followed by
Step seven: Do all the mending. In a perfect world ...
At this point, someone is sure to be wondering what all that shopping and all those plastic bags, boxes, and bins have to do with making my life "greener, healthier, and thriftier". Well, life is full of trade-offs and compromises, and that's one of mine; an investment in plastic now will save me money, time, and stress. Fabric and yarn won't be ruined by exposure to dirt, dust, bugs, or mildew (it's happened before). Craft supplies won't get lost, broken, or damaged. I won't tear my hair out trying to find things I know are "in here somewhere", nor will I spend money duplicating what I already have. And having all those projects visible means I'll be far more likely to actually do them, which in turn means a better wardrobe for me and nice gifts for others, all without spending more money on materials. And ... I only buy plastics that are on my city's acceptable-for-recycling list, which is what will happen in the unlikely event that I no longer have a use for them and can't find someone else who needs them.
I don't usually make New Year's resolutions - mainly because I know how unlikely it is that I'll keep them - but this year I've made a few and I think they're going to work.
1) I will work with what I have.
2) I will finish what I start.
3) I will step up my efforts to reduce, re-use, and recycle.
Remember I said last week that blogging keeps me accountable? Well, putting that together with resolutions 1 and 2, every time I start a project I will post it in the sidebar, along with the start and finish dates. If I get really ambitious, I might even put up pictures. Yes, including "after" pictures of my workroom ... if only in the hope that someone, somewhere, will check out the "befores", compare them to the "afters", and say "Wow! Great job!"
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