A Time For Everything

 

 

Doin' pretty good at this point... :0) And I'll tell you why at the end. But misc updates in the meantime:

Most of the country was besieged by various levels of UGLY COLD weather when the last post came out on January 15th, but we survived. I read that 80% of the country had temperatures below zero degrees that day. WOW!

DD and I had started a Harry Potter re-watch right before the end of the year as Peacock was showing the extended versions of the films. We got through the first days of the nasty freezing weather by finishing up our HP fest. DH even joined us each evening.

Speaking of Harry Potter...last weekend (the 20th/21st) I took the official sorting hat quiz and was officially sorted into Hufflepuff House. DD and I are House mates... :0)

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So the "year of doing" started off pretty good...

I began a couple of 30-day challenges to help me stay motivated. One challenge is to do yoga every day and the other is to do (or start, for longer tasks) one of those to-do list items I've been meaning to get around to. I've only missed two days of yoga (both Saturdays) but, sadlyy, I've missed too many days of to-do items thanks to the weather.

If my stride gets thrown off too soon, I struggle to get back to it. Having to hunker down because of the cold pushed me off track, so I'm trying to get back on it. I did, however, get one thing done...

The junk drawer next to the back door has been cleaned out, and inexpensive shallow baskets have been purchased to keep the remaining items tidy. I have no before picture because that drawer was nasty.

On a side note... Several months ago I bought some contact paper to cover the ramen boxes I save to use as organizers.

Although now that I'm thinking about it...buying the inexpensive baskets at Dollar Tree is cheaper than the contact paper and I get more of them for the price of the contact paper that only covers three boxes... Hmm... I was gonna use up the remaining contact paper but it's not sticking well to the one box I covered, so into the trash it went. I'll just go straight for the Dollar Tree baskets next time I need to sort and organize anything.

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On a random note--I've discovered the ease / convenience of depositing checks via my cell phone. In the last six months, my bank, which is centrally located between the office and the house, did away with one of its ATMs. Now, that branch gets a decent amount of traffic, especially around paydays, so you can imagine one ATM with tons of traffic. And, occasionally, it's just plain out of order. The next closest branch isn't far, but it's definitely out of the way so it's very inconvenient.

A week or so ago, when the ATM was out of order again and I just didn't want to drive to the other branch, I tried out the mobile deposit and -- easy as pie -- I'm a convert!!

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Last but NOT least and the reason I'm feeling pretty good is that my mom's house has finally sold. I'm so relieved that the house and the property will have someone to take care of it and find pleasure in its beauty.

The selling price is way below the original sales price, but between Oregon state property tax invoices and one very thorough appraisal, I've come to the conclusion that we were asking too much. The final sales price was a couple grand below what the state said it was worth, so I'm going to count my blessings and wish the buyer well and happy trails.

And that's all for now folks... Have a super couple of weeks.

N--looking forward to seeing you!!

 

Long time, no post... Okay, it's been a week, but it's been a busy week and I didn't plan well. I spent four days out of five down at the fireworks store and the one at the office trying to catch up on everything it was too difficult to do working remotely or that I just couldn't get to.

Whew.

Weekend before this past weekend I was at a writers retreat I was going to tell y'all about, but it just didn't happen. It was a good time with a small group of writers, most of them from my actual writers group. Our hostess is always willing to share her knowledge and the things that have worked for her as well as answer questions. I'd heard most of her success-story before, but a refresher is never a bad thing. I gleaned a couple of tips and made some progress on a WIP, so a good weekend, all in all.

This recent past weekend, I got all caught up on household chores that had been neglected for the last couple of weeks in the run up to getting DH off to the fireworks store as well as being gone myself last week. Much as I hate chores, it felt good to get everything crossed off the list.

In addition to a copy editing job and updating a book series guide, I've also been trying to get books one and two formatted for printing. That's not the hard part although it is rather tedious and I'm having to create a how-to so they'll all be formatted identically when I get around to doing the other four books. The covers are the biggest challenge...but my hostess from the retreat had an answer for that as well, so I'll see how that turns out.

Summer arrived with a bang, didn't it?? Hope you're keeping cool.

I think we're almost caught up now, so one more day. We'll see what the weekend holds for Monday's post, but for now...

I bought a new camera a few months ago and though I'm no photographer, I've been taking pictures of sunrises, seeing if I can capture some cool shots. I won't bore you with them all here, but I created a photo album on my Shutterfly. If you're so inclined, you can check them out here. Also, feel free to use any of my pictures for any purpose. Credit is nice, but not required. Feel free to share with others as well.

As for the rest of what I'm going to share...

Wednesday, Handsome the tree lizard was featured. I consider him to be sort of granddaddy-ish as he's the biggest one. There are two other smaller ones I've seen around and then a couple of weeks ago, I spotted this little guy! He's maybe two inches in length.


And I have a flag on my house. Finally! After I don't know how many years. I bought the flag two or three years ago. It's been in the hall closet and I finally made Sonshine put the bracket on the house. It was almost too far up. As you can at the top of the picture, the pole is right in line with the gutter. I just bent the bracket forward a wee bit and now the pole has a couple of inches of clearance.


As you know, Sonshine is a senior in high school this year. I did get a grudging picture of him on the first day...


And last but not least, I've been cross stitching again. I started a new project for myself -- a table cloth. Sort of. I have these two boxes of real old fashioned silver. (DH's grandmother's) The boxes were in my closet for years, but when I re-did the closet, I put them on the top bunk of Sonshine's bed. And then when I had him clean his room, I had him move them into my office/craft room. So when I tidied up my room, I decided to use them as a platform for Sonshine's wooden rocking horse. But, of course, they needed to camouflaged as well as protected. So...I dug out some large count blanket type aida cloth. It's probably five or six squares per inch and very loose.


Then I found an outline of a dala horse and created a pattern...



And then I started stitching!




I miscounted up on that fist one, so I'm going to have to pull it. But the second one has turned out perfectly aligned. It'll post pics once it's finished and in place.

Oh--are you asking why dala horses?? Well, my mom is from Denmark and when I visited my grandparents, they started my collection of the Swedish wooden horses. Which are called dala horses. I've expanded my collection over the years from the first two to ten.


(The huge one was a gift.) And I love them and thought why not?? I chose the orange and green because those are the primary colors of my room.

And I close now--it's almost the weekrnd. Do you have big plans??

Of course, I have a football game tonight, but the rest of the weekend will be devoted to cleaning house, me thinks. It's been far too long since I've done major damage!

See you Monday.

I thought up several, but they'd been done before so rather than waste too much time on a title, I figured I'd go straight for the blog.

Catching up...

a) My writer friends and I had a lovely time Saturday afternoon/evening visiting and doing a little brainstorming/plotting. The food was good too.

b) The home improvement project schedule has slowed down some after a visit with a counselor Friday regarding our oldest daughter's return home. But we're still making progress even if it's slower.

c) On the home improvement front, Sonshine's closet has been painted. He and I will be going through all the stuff we pulled out of it--old notebooks and binders, toys, books, etc. What he wants to keep will find new homes in storage containers or bookshelves.

The kitchen just needs a tiny bit more work, a few minutes' worth of paint touch-up, and a few decorator touches and it will be done. Today, the dishwasher will be diagnosed and, hopefully, repaired. YAY! It's been so nice to walk into my kitchen now that it's almost finished. It looks finished even though it's not really.

d) We received more rain yesterday morning, which was welcome, though our yard is still saturated. I just hope central Texas, where our fireworks store is, is also getting some much needed precipitation.

e) Revisions are going pretty well. Yesterday, between laundry and painting, I worked on my manuscript. Most of the things I worked on were easy surface fixes. In addition, I was able to add just over 600 new words, which also pushed my total word count up over 22K. This morning I began the more in depth revisions. So far, so good. It was a very productive morning. And after Saturday's session, I am getting closer to having a handle on the plot for the second book, which I will start working on next Sunday.

f) No decisions yet on whether or not to move. We also discussed this with the counselor and she said not to do it on our daughter's account. If we want to/need to for other reasons then fine. The second biggest reason was/is getting Sonshine into a better school.

Well, I think that's it for now. Time to get the work week started.

How was your weekend?