Everything Rots Eventually, and other life lessons.

So much to say, so little time. . . . 

My plants are looking so happy out in the garden, the beans have reached the fence and are starting to grow UP it now.  The lettuce looks cute, and the tomatoes are okay, I guess.  There are a bunch of baby tomatoes on there, I guess I can't really expect them to perform like summer tomatoes. 

Last night I was reading a homesteading blog, and I decided to take another go at sourdough starter.  Kaleigh and I are making bread pretty regularly now, so I want to give it another try.  After reading this particular book and recipe, I realized I was trying to do too complicated a process.  It's kind of like compost.  Once I got over the idea that it had to be complicated, I had a revelation--EVERYTHING ROTS EVENTUALLY.  Without my help.  This is a fundamental truth of the universe.  So pile crap up in a corner of the yard and it will happen.  And guess what?  It happened.  Without my help.  Never underestimate a human's capacity for making something natural complicated.  But I digress.  My point is, all I REALLY have to do is mix flour and warm water and feed it every day, and wait.  It will happen.  Without my help. 

Last night our cable went out for what I assume was most of the evening, and I had to resort to figuring something else out to do.  I think it was the last straw in the cable's back, so to speak.  I had such a pleasant evening after I figured out what to do.  AND I GOT A LOT DONE.  Figures.  I think the time has come for me to part ways with cable.  I will miss Sons of Anarchy, though.  I ended up taking out the remainder of the English paper piecing hexagons out of the back of my Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt.  It's ready to hand quilt.  I think I will machine baste it this weekend, and start hand quilting it.  It will definitely be gorgeous when it's finished.  Picture below. 

No comments about my name over my bed, please.  Unless you absolutely have to tell me how much you love it.  My bedroom is very self-centric these days.  I spent a lot of years with a bedroom that I hated in muted non-gender-specific colors, so I like a little me in there now.  Sue me.  I'm embracing the Amie. 

I also spent a lot of time reading last night, which I enjoyed so much that I am going to do it again tonight.  I got a new book called "A Homemade Life", which is a woman's story about how food and her life are intertwined and everything good in her life happens with food around.  Her life story with food.  And it has recipes.  Looking forward to it. 



The stupid dog threw herself through a window on Monday, which really pisses me off since she doesn't have a checkbook to reimburse me for the $130.00 I'm out now to fix it.  Bitch.  i also had to take Tuesday off since nobody could come fix it until then, so I decided I could spend the day crying--again--or I could do something productive.  So I opened up my etsy shop.  Nothing has come of it yet, but somebody marked me as their favorite.  That's awesome.  Considering that I kind of feel worthwhile when people re-pin my pins on Pinterest, this is like the holy grail.  (Geek Reference).

A Little of This and That. . .

I finally remembered to cut a bunch of herbs from the school garden and bring them home to root.  I have had success rooting lavender and rosemary in water, so I got those, and lemon balm and tarragon.  I'm not sure if this is going to work with those, since they aren't woody stems, but I'll try.  They are now happily relaxing on my kitchen window sill.  I've been referring to them as "the girls".  I'm not sure why.  My goal this week is to bring some of my worm compost from school and add it to my seedlings' dirt.

I need a theme song.  I started doing this when the show Ally McBeal was on and she always had a theme song, so I started doing it.  I haven't had one in awhile, so I'm trying to think of what a good one might be.  Hmm. . .  I'll think a little about it today and get back to you (all three of my readers).

Yesterday I went out into the garden (which I feel I may have over-glorified in my descriptions, it's really only two raised beds and a bunch of pots right now), and dug around a little bit, watered the seedlings, and I SAW WORMS IN MY DIRT!!!  A LOT of worms.  Yea Me!!  That means my dirt is healthy and doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing.  Makes me happy.  Amazing how what makes me happy has changed over the years.

When I got home from work last night I washed my sheets and put clean, lovely smelling sheets on my bed.  (Not that my previous sheets smelled bad, lol).  There is nothing better than that.  I watched a couple of DVR'd shows and read a little.  Nice to get enough sleep. 

  

 

Another Sunday. . .

I feel like I accomplished NOTHING this weekend.  How can that be?  I start out with such good intentions.  Yesterday I had lunch with two of my favorite people in the world, and a little shopping ensued.  After I got home, K. had a friend spend the night.  I cleaned the kitchen and got some laundry done, but no major progress is any of my big projects.  This is a sadness. 

Today I have no excuse.  I took K. and two of her friends out to play today (they mini-golfed and shopped and I ran errands).  Of course, this was in the middle of the day so by the time we got home and I played around online a little, took her friends home, had dinner and did some grocery shopping, it's pretty much time to go to bed. 

When I write it out, I guess I did get some stuff done, just nothing about any of my big projects.  When will I feel like I have a life?

Research--my new normal.

I've been reading a lot of blogs about sustainability in central Florida, and I'm actually learning a lot.  Yesterday I stopped at a couple of nurseries and bought a few tomatoes and cucumber plants for the beds.  They look really good, and the beans I planted last weekend are a couple of inches tall already thanks to some weird rain we've been having this week.  The lettuce is just starting to come up and also looks good.  I will get the tomatoes and cucumbers in later today. 

I visited my mom at the hospital yesterday, which was a little upsetting.  She is very confused and has been combative, although she wasn't yesterday while I was there.  She did introduce me as Mary Kay several times, so she has a little hospital dementia. 

Kaleigh and I have started the massive organizing project of our house.  I am doing SOMETHING towards this every day.  This weekend I'm going to get in the sewing room and try to get it together.  I'm trying to find a way to sell the antique bedroom set--I adore it, but nobody else likes it and if I'm not going to use the spare room as a guest room, there is no good place to put it.  My next big project is going to be organizing the laundry closet.  There's a lot of stuff in there that could go, and I want it to look nicer.  Reinforcing the shelves is going to be important too.

More later.  Gotta go have lunch with two of my favorite people in the world.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

I got out in the yard today after doing some more research about what to plant for a Florida Fall Garden, and planted some pole bean seeds and some lettuce seeds that I've had good luck with  in the past.  I will get some tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs next week.  I don't really want to plant those from seeds.  I've never had much luck with beans but I think I've been trying to plant them too late in the spring so it gets too hot for them pretty fast.  Who knew.   I am going to go online and order some seed catalogs tonight to peruse. 

Kaleigh and I are going to put together two more raised beds, one for herbs (a small one), and one for tomatoes.  It's just laziness that we haven't done it yet. 

My pots of lavendar and basil are looking a little wilty and stemmy, but I'm going to try to cut them back and see if that helps any. 

Mom is back in the hospital again, I am having some really awful anxiety about it.  How much can a body take?  (I'm talking about mom's body.)

I puttered around the house, did a little laundry, washed dishes, organized a few things, but did little else today.  I really needed that.  Cari called this morning and said that her mom said Kaleigh can come over today, which truly irritated me.  I'm doing all the driving (two trips each time one of them wants to go to the other's house), and HER mom says it's okay.  Isn't that nice of her?  Who asked me?  I want to do things I WANT TO DO sometimes. 

I think I'll go read and make dinner.

Embracing the Amie. . .

At the beginning of the year, I made a commitment to embrace the Amie.  To stop fighting who I am and be more accepting of myself.  How am I doing?  Well. . . I"m not.  It's fall, a new school year, and I'm thinking a lot lately that I'm not doing a very good job of it, which is making me a stressed out, unsatisfied, restless person.  I feel a little overwhelmed by the enormity of doing this, so I'm doing nothing, which is very stressfull to me.

So I have decided to embrace my mid-life crisis (my sustainability obsession), and just accept it.  I've already made a lot of changes, so I will continue to do those, and add small things until I feel I'm there.  So to start off my new attitude, I'm going to make a little list of the things I've already done.

• I made raised beds and planted a small garden
• Made a compost bin and started REALLY composting
• Made reusable lunch bags (to replace plastic zip-lock bags)
• Recycled men's shirts to make plaid quilts
• Made cloth napkins
• Turned the airconditioning up a few degrees (saving me substantially on my electric bill)
• Line dry laundry (sometimes--not really consistently)
• Make laundry detergent
• Make dishwasher soap
• Make salad dressing (more for taste than anything else)
• Make brownie mix
• Make makeup remover

I've also decided that I need to do ONE SMALL THING at a time, and when I get a handle on that, then I can do another small thing.  Hopefully this will keep me from feeling so overwhelmed with the work of it, since I really only have to work on one thing at a time. 

On that note, my one small thing for now is going to be making sure to use reusable bags, although I need to find a pattern and MAKE some fabric bags.  I'm not sure the reusable bags (that are plastic) from the store are much better than the cheapy plastic bags. 

And. . . because I'm an overachiever, I'm going to  be working on my next small thing too, which is going to be planting a fall garden.  More tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, and herbs.  Right now I'm doing research (mostly consisting of looking pretty gardens up on Pinterest--lol), so I really won't work on that for a week or two yet. 

Will check in again soon.

I'm Back. . .

Well, I'm back.  My life has been crazy chaos for a few months, but things are going to settle down now, so I will make a commitment to write more.  It means a lot to me to write, it certainly has gotten me through some difficult times in my life as well as documented how I felt during great times, so I will make a real effort.

I have decided to re-start my quilting business, but I feel myself being pulled into more environmentally friendly practices (my hippie-ness rears it's head again!).  For example, I bought several men's plaid shirts at Goodwill, washed them (of course!), and cut them up to make baby quilts.  Out of the six shirts I bought (for a total of less than $7), I have so far made three adorable baby quilts in different patterns, two of them are pictured below.  

Of course, they aren't quilted yet, but they will be soon.  I've been doing a lot of projects lately--reusable lunch bags, lots of quilts, baby doll diapers for my classroom, and I've made a couple of sets of really nice cloth napkins from large tablecloths that I found at Goodwill also.  I really like the idea of upcycling stuff. 

Kaleigh gets home from her vacation this morning--I'm going to pick her up at the airport in about 40 minutes.  I've really missed her, and I know Lucy has too.  Here she is looking forlornly out the window, waiting for her mommy to come home. 

I really enjoyed my daughter in law's visit with my granddaughters--it was lovely. 

Aren't they gorgeous?  I wish I had some makeup on, but oh well.  I love the picture of Bianca, she doesn't look at all possessed in this picture (not that she IS possessed, but she usually looks like it in pictures).  She is definitely gorgeous. 

I've been super-busy getting my classroom ready for the new year, my assistant and I have made a lot of changes this year, and hopefully they will help things settle down a little--this year's group seems so YOUNG!  

Well, I better go pick up my baby from the airport--will check back in soon.