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.