Moody

I’ve been missing in action for a few days – I’m not really sure what was up with that other than an overall feeling of irritation/disgust with humanity in general.  Weird, right?  But as with all moods, it passed and today feels much cheerier and therefore suitable for blogging. 

Yesterday, Gypsy, Skye and I ran errands which was quite fun (in spite of my human-driven crabbiness).  We went to the bread outlet store and stocked up on several loaves of Wonder Bread (Freddy still prefers white bread for all purposes – the nutritionally bankrupt type), for a mere 3 dollars.  I’m pretty sure that one loaf costs about that in the grocery store, so it felt like we really came out winners!  We had to buy black jeans for Skye for her job and guess what?  She found 2 pairs on the clearance rack for $8.00 a piece!  I bought them both so she wouldn’t have to wash one pair over and over again. 

On a completely different front, I’ve come to the conclusion that I must have a schedule for housekeeping.  Without it, it’s far too easy to put off housework for other, more exciting projects and it’s not fair to my family to walk into a house that isn’t clean.  I’ve always tended to be a bit of a perfectionist regarding cleanliness in the past, but working a full-time-and-then-some job made scrubbing and sweeping seem a whole lot harder than it should be.  So tidying in lieu of deep down cleansing became the habit which I now must redirect.  In the summertime I can honestly say I had very, very little time for spotlessness, but with winter practically here, there is no excuse for dog hair on the hardwood or dust on the ceiling fan!  Anyway, I’ve written a schedule and so far I’ve been sticking to it - my house has never looked/felt better!  (And it’s a wise woman who spends time tending her home when she’s too moody for socializing – it saves all sorts of snarky attitudes and hurt feelings.)

Today is for sewing – Karen Sue, where are you at with your quilts?  I’ve got to cut all the flannel/plaid (“flaid”) squares for Freddy’s quilt, and sew together all the rows for Ricky’s quilt and before next weekend, I will be able to begin stitching together and then tying all the layers!  FINALLY!

Holiday Perspective

Does anyone get the impression that retailers are scared silly about this holiday shopping season?  Didn’t it seem weird to have all those Christmas commercials and aisles of holiday candy before Halloween was even here?  Because to me, a walk through orange and black aisles, amidst the decorative skulls and mummy costumes and candy bowls with automatic grabbing hands, was made even creepier because Peggy Lee was “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” (quite loudly) in the background.

Insert mini rant here:  Can anyone tell me why there isn’t some Constitutional Amendment regarding the separation of holidays?  Sure, we have some law regarding the division of Church and State, but what about the division of Halloween and Christmas?  It should be illegal to plant all that green and red so close to the orange and black – doesn’t anyone notice how they all clash?? 

K, all done with the rant.  Now, my point to this is that if our government is saying that we’re on the upturn, that things are looking better, why are retailers bombarding us so early in hopes of making enough sales this holiday season to keep themselves afloat?  And does it make me a bad person to not support chain stores by making so many of my own gifts this year?  (I don’t really care if it does make me a bad person, actually, I’m just pondering this all)  That message of “spend, spend, SPEND (mortgage your house if you have to)” is lost on me these days, so now when I witness all this pandering for money, I’m amused instead of panic stricken. 

I remember back to when Freddy and I were just starting out, when our girls were practically babies.  We had next to no money for the holidays.  How much fun it was to sew them cute clothes to wear with sometimes matching outfits for their dollies and blankets for doll cribs!  I also remember the first Christmas we had money and how our living room looked like a pink nightmare with all that Barbie stuff strewn everywhere.  I remember that holiday feeling rushed and less authentic somehow, and it only got worse every year after that.   

But, with less income than time these days, we’ve made some changes. 

Gone are the days when I freak out over whether I’ve spent enough on each person’s gifts.  Gone are the days when I keep buying and buying and buying for every single person I’ve ever met.  Gone are the days when I purchase stupid and senseless junk for people who are already buried in stupid and senseless junk they’ve already bought for themselves.

Think hard about what’s really important in your life - are the holidays really about an endless supply of silk ties or Bob Marley t-shirts?  Do your kids still have and play with all the toys they got for Christmas last year?  If so, you are way ahead of me already! 

Combat the hype this year – sew something.  Build something with wood or clay.  Take someone to a special movie or dinner.  Bake a few cookies.  Celebrate the holidays with people you love and who love you back – it won’t cost you a thing but time and you’ll remember it a whole lot longer than you’ll be able to recall what you unwrapped from under the tree! 

This Christmas stands to be one of my family’s best ever!  Yes, there will be some money spent, but probably close to a full 3/4 less than before.  And oddly, perhaps even miraculously, I don’t think a soul will mind.

On the Quilt Front

I’ve completed front #2, with 2 more to go.  Then I can start adding the innards and backs before tying.  Looks like if I keep at it, I’ll have them all complete well before Christmas!  Go me! 

Words simply cannot express how blessed I feel to have the gift of time that allows me to create these blankets for my family this year.

Without further ado, here is what Gypsy’s looks like so far:

A semi-random pattern, with a few planned “stair steps.”

This yellow square has a doily stitched to it that my Grandma Derby tatted years ago.

Another doily in a yellow square, this time crocheted, I believe. Also, the orange flower piece is from an old sundress I had.

Oh, and one more thing.  Skye and I drove to the country place yesterday, to make sure the cats have food/water, and to grab the mail.  Apparently the property out there was as heavily hit with snow as we were in town – there were so many broken tree limbs, it will take Freddy and I days and days to clean it all up.  *sigh*  Oh well, I guess it’s free firewood for next year, once it all cures up…

Nice Rack

Heh.  Heh.  Wink.  Nudge. 

I certainly seem to be a fan of word play, don’t you think?  But alas, I’m not flirting; I’m here on official business.  The rack I am speaking of is actually more like a plural “racks.”  But “nice racks” just didn’t have the same ring – call it poetic license.

This summer, I finally invested in racks for food storage.  Official, nice, fancy shelves, that don’t require me to slump over into our semi-creepy crawl space to access cans of tomatoes or jam.  And while I do have lots of shelves in the aforementioned crawl space, as well as at the country house, I thought I would share with you the shelves that I think are just oh so purdy! 

** You’ll notice there is about 20 pounds of pasta on one shelf – we have to keep that much on hand or Skye will starve.  I keep the tomatoes right above it so she has the makings for a meal all in one place.  Pasta.  Tomatoes.  Salt.  Butter.  That’s it.  Small wonder she only weighs 100 pounds, right?  I’m really only kidding when I tell people we keep her locked in a closet and only feed her bread and water.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what I keep in the crawl space that doesn’t require me to access it daily, mostly it’s the excess that won’t fit on the pretty shelves (I just rotate it when things run low) and masses of water I keep in 2 liter bottles for “just in case.”  The kitchen cabinets are also full, as well as two refrigerators and a deep freeze (and that’s just the house here in town).  What can I say?  I really want to be sure my family is okay in the event of a food dry spell. 

One thing really made my day this summer – when Gypsy’s boyfriend Brad told me that my food storage looked more Mormon that his mom’s (and she’s really Mormon, so that just ROCKED!!!).

Feel free to click on pictures to enlarge.

I just love looking at all this stuff – please ignore the pressure canner and extra blankets on the far left.

Less pretty, but notice the COOL potato bin I built with my own two hands, on the lowest shelf you can see. And the Hamburger Helper you see in that plastic bin? That came out of Ricky’s house when he abandoned all his stuff.

Halloween

I cannot believe we pulled it off, but there we were, trick-or-treating with the rest of the juveniles and giggling madly to ourselves and each other like we were getting away with bank robbery or something.  The biggest problem was that we’re so much taller than the average 5 year old. 

So, what do the admittedly antiquated do when they are surrounded by youngsters and still want to flash back to their youth?  They dress up as Magda and Charles, two star-crossed lovers who met at a bingo parlor.  Our hope was that if we got busted, our real faces would look so young in comparison to the masks that we’d still get away with door to door candy begging.  One thing that really sucks about wearing a mask though is that you can hear your breath echoing in your ears, ala Darth Vader.  I couldn’t help myself and had to do a few “Gypsy… I am your father” heavy breathing episodes.  There is also the issue of condensation inside the mask from all that breathing, which resulted in my granny mask profoundly drooling.  Nice touch, costume-wise, but pretty gross if you think about it.  I think my main gripe about the evening was that my padded butt kept falling down.  I stuffed a pair of sweat pants into a pair of boxers and when Freddy made me run across a busy street, my fake butt kept flying up behind me and hitting me in the back.  Must have been interesting to watch!  Ah well, at least the padding kept me warm!

And poor Freddy, with his deep voice, he had to muster up a falsetto “trick or treat!” followed by an even higher pitched “thank you!”  Totally hilarious.  He couldn’t even make eye contact with our neighbors, no matter how many times I reassured him that there is no way he would be recognized.  But at nearly every door, the kids (Gypsy, Skye and Jasper) and I would get our candy and then leave Freddy standing there feeling bare naked and about to be exposed as a fraud.  I won’t even go into his constant complaints about tunnel vision and tripping on uneven sidewalks because his mask wouldn’t let him see, or about how it was so unfair that my costume got a cool name like “Magda” and he got stuck with boring old “Charles.”  He’s such a baby sometimes!

You might think to yourself, “Why didn’t these pathetic losers just go buy their own candy,” and my answer to that is, “We’re on a budget.”  Just kidding!  The masks cost more than the candy we got.  We really just haven’t gone since we were little kids and thought a trip down memory lane would be fun – and it WAS!  I hope everyone had as much fun on Halloween as we did!  Here are a few pictures:

Me. Old-ish, but not SO old…

Heavily padded.

Magda and Charles, ready for a night out on the town. Charles really knows how to show a lady a good time!

Skye with Spike (aka “Toto”) and her BFF, Jasper (wearing my dress, my bra, my stockings and my sandals). That’s right, folks! The blonde is really a boy!

The two gals, getting ready for a night of clubbing – apparently clubbing is a good excuse to wear underwear in lieu of clothes.

Ka-CHING!

“I was pretty tempted to honk the horn while he was under the hood”

That is a direct quote from my precious darling, Skye, while she was helping her dad fix my windshield wipers.  Gosh, we’re gonna miss her sparkling wit once Daddy locks her in a closet…

In other business, it’s Halloween and we are in full bore costume mode!  I have NO idea what I’m going to “be” yet, since we are all planning to go trick or treating and I can’t go with my actual face, lest someone screech in fear, “Oh my goodness!  It’s the Crypt Keeper!!!”  That would totally hurt my feelings, so I’m going to have to wear a mask.  We’ve told the kids that trick-or-treating is actually a money saving venture, so we can collect enough candy to use as stocking stuffers for Christmas.  They don’t think we’re nearly as funny as we think we are (I’m still giggling, actually).  In all honesty, though, we’re just a couple of kids ourselves and since we’re short-ish, we can get away with door-to-door candy begging (IF we’re wearing masks to disguise the fact that we’re too old enough for this).  We also like to keep our eyes out for any potential bullies who are only around to steal candy from hapless victims – we won’t have any of that nonsense!  Hmmmm…  in that case, maybe we need to wear capes?

Meltdown

One thing you’ve gotta love about Colorado is that no matter how much snow you get, it’s gone in a couple of days.  After our nearly 18″ of snow Wednesday and Thursday, here we are at Friday and it’s a balmy 50 degrees.  The sun is shining and the snow is melting into a gazillion puddles!  We can’t even blame this on global warming because the weather has been schizophrenic here my whole life!  I’m pretty sure that Colorful Colorado is Mother Nature’s testing ground – we see a little of just about everything here.

In spite of the warming trend outside, I’ve been freezing all day – once I worked out and took a shower, I’ve been a popcicle ever since!  Thank goodness for hot tea and hotter soup!  Tonight we’re going to have spaghetti and blitz bread which is just about the simplest meal that looks like you tried really, really hard.  Is there anything nicer with dinner than fresh baked bread (aside from cheesecake, but that’s a whole other story)?  Anyway, my kitchen is being filled with the scent of cheesy, garlicky, oregano-y bread as we speak and my family is hanging out in the living room, drooling.  Completely understandable, but altogether unattractive.

Anything More Than a Foot Is Showing Off

Hey Mother Nature – enough already!  I’m suitably impressed with your superior weather-changing abilities.

Well, here I am, snowed in and it’s still snowing.  I really don’t have a single place to be, but just knowing that if I want to go out, I shouldn’t, gives me a touch of cabin fever.  We’ve got about 14″ of snow right now and it’s still falling.  In fact, it’s not supposed to wrap up until early tomorrow morning.  *sigh*  Not much anyone can do about it, so I might as well try to enjoy it. 

Maybe a worthy motto is “when all else fails, bake bread.”

I’m posting a few pictures of our early winter – this isn’t our first snow this season, but it’s by far the deepest!

Shoveling out the front driveway and sidewalks.

A terrific mural my mom painted on our shed is probably the only blue sky in the entire state today!

A small piece of what WAS my summer kitchen – also the chicken coop in the background, with its fence covered in snow.

5 Inches and Still Falling

What a great day this has been!  We’ve got a good 5″ heavy snow base and it’s still coming down hard!  In my old working for a living days, I would have been filled with dread, knowing that I had a 40 mile commute in the morning and another at night, which would usually take a whopping 3 hours grand total in weather like this.  Who has 3 hours in their LIFE to surrender to gridlocked traffic on a solid sheet of ice??  Not me, not anymore!

Today was pretty productive, but let me tell ya, instinct is crazy!  Back in the days before central heat and Target shopping, folks would hole up in their caves in foul weather to conserve energy.  Seems smart, if you ask me.  So, it was hard to get motivated and accomplish some stuff instead of laying around in bed and watching daytime television (and again, who has time in their life to waste on daytime TV?).  Anyway, I did manage to stay busy!

We had to go outside every few hours to whack heavy snow off the chicken run (didn’t want the mesh to break under all that weight), as well as the trees we didn’t want to break under all that snow.  We still haven’t shoveled because it just seems so silly to me to shovel sidewalks while it’s still snowing.  Standing under the snow while whacking away was the only way to get at the chicken run and so we’ve had to change out of soaking wet clothes a couple times today, too!

I stitched up a hotpad for Gypsy – she had an earache and her sister has one and it seemed reasonable that Gypsy should have her own.  Basically, if you stitch up a cotton baggie and fill it loosely with rice, you can microwave it and end up with a super handy heated mass that you can put wherever you’ve got pain.  Neat, right? 

I finished the front of Skye’s quilt yesterday, and started to lay out the pattern for Gypsy’s today.  I think I need to figure out some cooler textural pieces for Gypsy’s because Skye’s is just SO NICE to snuggle up to already!  I went with 10″ squares because I knew I wouldn’t have much time to devote to these quilts, and they needed to go together fast.  In spite of the jumbo square size, though, I really love how they are turning out.  I also whipped together a sewing machine cover to cover the cover.  LOL  Does that even make sense?  It came with a hard plastic cover, but it was boring white and I didn’t care to look at that while it takes up residence in my bedroom temporarily so I fixed it.  So the cover covers the cover.  (it’s like reading a Dr. Seuss book, isn’t it?)

Did I mention that I’ve had to BUY eggs at the grocery store?  I haven’t had to do that in more than a year and it was WEIRD. 

I’ve posted a few pictures for grins; click to enlarge.

This measures about 11″ x 6″ and it’s filled with about a pound of cheap white rice.

I think this is really working well along the “Shabby Chic” lines.

Not exactly camouflage colored, but it sure looks prettier than the plastic sewing machine cover – I didn’t want it to be ugly while it’s living in my bedroom (which is where it lives until the quilts are done).

The proud few eggs from my own hens are being overtaken by the pitiful supermarket ones.

The rest of the seeds are finally dry and ready for storage.

The lovely Miss Phoebe in the foreground, with Skye’s disembodied chicken-legs standing behind her.

Spike, Skye’s mini schnauzer, wearing his new pajamas.

Leap

I once believed the day would never come that I wouldn’t be working for “tha man.”  I couldn’t foresee a day when I wouldn’t have a steady paycheck coming in – to even consider such a thing a few short months ago would have left me frozen with fear.  I couldn’t picture myself skipping the dishwasher or the clothes dryer in favor of lengthier processes from days gone by.  And I certainly didn’t have time back in my office days to create gifts for my family with my own two hands.

But that day is here and now.  I’m chasing my dreams of living more simply, eventually farming on a small scale out on the High Plains and figuring out with my husband just how we’re going to make that all work.   

“Leap and the net will appear,” is a Zen saying that has completely pieced together my life’s puzzle.