Iced In

We were hoping for a pile of snow Sunday night, but instead, we got ice. Chris had a busy week planned at work, but stayed home. He thought about getting out this morning to help a friend with a downed tree, but couldn't even get down the driveway.

Icicles were hanging off Beefy, but he wouldn't let me get a good shot.

 I always think it's funny to see the chickens standing on one leg, trying to keep at least one foot warm.

I took Joe and Z over to the neighbor's pasture yesterday to go sledding, the freezing rain making for a faster ride than fluffy snow. We had to dodge the rocks and frozen cow pies, but they had fun, so we went back again this morning. Finley decided to come along this time. All was well, until Joe caught some air off a clump of grass and landed on his shoulder. My tailbone is also feeling the effects from the rough rides.

And in other news, Z is growing up. Last weekend, she decided to start making PB&Js all on her own. The a few days later, she lost her second top-front tooth, the first one already growing in at a crazy angle. It didn't bother me when she went off to Kindergarten a year and a half ago, but for some reason, this week left me feeling sentimental. 

The Closet

Somehow or other, I just spent the last ten minutes of my life contemplating the sometimes-silent 'n' in the word 'damnation' and all its derivatives. The English language both awes and irritates me.

There are other things that awe and irritate me. The quantity of my husband's clothes is one of those things. There is no good reason for a man who's standard outfit is a t-shirt and jeans with the occasional flannel to own as many clothes as he does. But we all have to put up with some of our loved-one's quirks, don't we?

When we lived in the trailer, almost all of his clothes were piled haphazardly on shelves and other random things in the cave of a walk-in closet we had. The door was kept shut, and I was able to ignore it. Because I didn't have to see it, the only thing that really bothered me was that one of my favorite shirts of his was lost in that mass of chaos. Every once in a while (maybe once a year), he would rummage through his clothes and "reorganize" them, but the navy blue t-shirt with the cool tractor printed on the back never seemed to surface.

When we moved into the house, our closets were not built out yet, so the pile moved into the corner of our bedroom where it sat and taunted me daily. Although the kitchen cabinets still lacked painted doors, I decided the pile of clothes had to be dealt with, and I began work on the closet. We finally got it finished a couple days ago. Most of his clothes have been moved to the closet, a bin of sentimental clothes was moved to storage, and I can actually vacuum the carpet in the corner of the room where the pile lived.

Design inspired by our neighbor, Terry

Now all we need are doors so that if he musses up my neat stacks, I won't go crazy.

January Is Nearly Gone

I'm not sure how it happened, but we are already at the end of January. 2015.  Was it yesterday I was telling myself that I had "plenty of time" to order some seeds before I needed to get them started for spring planting? Ha. The best laid plans... 

It has taken me 38 years to admit it, but I am not the most disciplined of people, though I have found that "proper prior planning" helps a great deal. So I've been trying to schedule out my week in my head so that I know what to do and don't feel as overwhelmed by my "to do" list. My plan has been to spend Mondays on major house cleaning, then use Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for painting cabinet doors, writing, or other miscellany. Fridays, I balance the check book and do the shopping. Of course, this only works if the universe cooperates with my plan. Usually, it doesn't, so I haven't done a lick of painting since before Christmas.

Take, for example, Joe. He has a mild peanut allergy. Earlier in the month, I made a big pot of delicious lentil soup. At suppertime, Joe took one look at his bowl and told me it looked disgusting. But he tried it, decided he liked it, then proceeded to shovel a bunch down his throat. A minute later, his mouth was itching and his stomach hurting. The next day and a half, chunky liquids periodically came out both his ends, and any plans I'd made were thwarted.

In other disruptions to my schedule, Joe got braces. That in itself didn't throw me off so much. It was the two subsequent visits to the orthodontist to get wires trimmed that were tearing up the insides of his cheeks.

 Speaking of teeth (and completely unrelated to my rant), Zivah is about to lose a top, front tooth. This picture doesn't quite do it justice. It is currently so crooked, it is a constant temptation to reach in her mouth and yank it out. I tried this once, but the tooth is hanging on tightly for dear life.

 Last week, we finally got some snow. It was gracious enough to come on the weekend and did not disrupt the school schedule. It stuck around just long enough to let the kids roll around in it and make some snowballs.

January hasn't been wholly unproductive, though. I finally got some things hung on the wall in the kitchen.

This arrangement makes me happy, as I have a thing for birds, and most of the items remind me of people I love. The nest picture is cyanotype made by a former neighbor and artist friend of mine. The birds were embroidered by my great aunt, Lillian, and the butterfly cut-outs were a gift from another friend. 

So here's to February and momentum. May I see the end of the paint brush by Valentine's Day- or March.

Five Degrees

Woke up this morning and consulted the internet via my iPhone from the comfort of my warm bed. It said it was five degrees outside. How thankful I am for a warm bed in a warm house. Last year, we would wake up shivering in that tin can trailer.

Now that the kids are off to school, I am shamelessly feasting on coffee and the tin of Royal Dansk cookies gifted to us. My theory is that I need some extra weight to stay warm.

Last night, we put what animals we could in better shelter. The horses went to a stable with a fresh bale of hay. Daisy spent the night in the shop with the cats, probably fretting all night long that she couldn't get out of her pen to pester them. I was a little worried about the chickens. They don't all get along, so some of them stay in the safety of the chicken coop while the rest roost in the rafters of our open-air stable. I expected to walk out this morning to a half dozen bodies, frozen and fallen from their perches. But animals are far more resilient than I give them credit for. The chickens were fine.

Our sole loss was Duck, who insisted on spending the night out at the pond. We worried that he would get stuck in the middle as the pond froze, like the many stories we heard about last winter, but that isn't what did him in. We are assuming a fox nabbed him. Chris found some feathers, and is kicking himself for not making an extra effort to try to put him up in the chicken coop.

It's the End of the Year (as we know it)

And I would feel fine if all this mucous would stop clogging up my sinuses and airways.

We had a great Christmas, in spite of our colds, with both sides of the family coming out to spend a part of the day in our new house. The weekend before, we had a gathering at Chris's grandmothers, and got to spend time with family we only see once or twice a year.

Speaking of the new house, we finally-FINALLY got our official certificate of occupancy. Over the weekend, Chris nibbled away at all the little things that needed to be done, such as disconnecting the trailer's sewage lines and installing a clean-out for the line from the house, putting up the railing that will keep anyone from falling into the stairwell, slapping up some ugly railings for all the steps leading into the house, and putting numbers on the house (as if anyone could see them from the street). It's nice to know we can legally live in our house now. Chris was especially happy to have accomplished this goal by year's end.

We are into week two of the kids' winter break. I had grand plans of all the things we would do, but between the snot and Christmas festivities, it was quite an accomplishment to fulfill just one of those plans: making gingerbread houses.

On a side note: it is almost impossible to get a "normal" picture of the kids these days, thanks to the influence of their father. But I guess goofball is their normal.

One day last week, Finley slipped this note to Chris after supper:

I felt bad, remembering a word I let slip when I thought the kids were out of earshot, and thought there might have been a time or two when she might have misheard my under-the-breath mumbling. I'm not one to get bent out of shape over a cuss word or two, but I really don't want my kids to think swearing is an okay habit to develop, so I went to Finley to find out exactly what she heard and to apologize. "What did you hear me say?" I asked her when I got her alone. "You said 'I SWEAR...'!"

So I have one more week of walking on eggshells until the kids go back to school and I can let the blue-streaks fly without worry.