Happy Spring!

Disclaimer: My keyboard is still broken so please excuse anything that should be capitalized and isn’t it only responds to the shift keys when it wants to.

It’s March, late March, and it’s Spring. This is what’s going on in my world.

I am working on a few goals this year;

1. getting a garden going for real this time,

2. becoming a “Fuck Yeah!” friend,

3. getting more movement into my days, (as I sit here blogging like a slug…)

4. eating more veg,

5. becoming more competent at my job, and

6. Decluttering!

There is some progress in all areas, however slight. The beds are in as of last Fall and I hope to get planting (with guidance) soonish. I am saying “Fuck Yeah!” as much as seems safe to friends asking if I want to do stuff. I am on my feet more for sure even if my phone isn’t showing the steps. It, like my little laptop, has issues and it dies a lot. I am eating slightly more veg and focusing on just making sure it happens every day. Tougher than I thought it would be. At work I am taking on some new responsibility, nothing huge, just helping cover while my boss is out on maternity leave. I am practicing to get better at commcat, trouble-shooting when there are issues with computers and printers, planning for Summer Reading as best I can. I also keep signing up for webinars but I have been missing most of them. I am just so burnt out on zoom and all that. I have a few coming up that I plan to actually attend and I intend to view the recordings of the ones I’ve missed. Decluttering is still stupid and complicated because my usual drop off places are still not taking things. meh. I do have some stuff ready to go and I will do more when it makes sense to.

One of my niece’s just got married! ^_^ YAY! So nice to have something to celebrate. She and her new husband looked gorgeous and I was so glad that we could at least be there remotely. My eldest daughter is taking a couple of online classes and doing well. My middlest is getting a little money in with a kind of online gig type thing and took over dish washing and it really helping me out. My youngest is in the final stretch of his senior year and is doing well, sticking with it, getting ready to ease into the future. My husband is still working remotely but is finally scheduled for his first vaccine. (YAY!) We will be celebrating 24 years together later this week. WOW.

Gaming is still the main source of entertainment around here, I think we are in and/or running about… 6-7 games. I am using Pathfinder 2e to run my husband in a one-on-one game. We used to run one-on-one a LOT when we lived far from anyone and had a young child. I’ve missed it like crazy and apparently he has too. ^_^ So I am still struggling with constructing encounters that won’t kill him. LOL. Even with all the charts and whatnot encounters are so brutal. I think I have been thinking about it wrong, like my math is somehow backward or twisted. I’ll get it sorted out. One-on-one is not a thing Pathfinder is super designed for so I am pretty much making my own “adventure path.” It’s fun and challenging and I am enjoying all the prep work. I have part one pretty well finished and have started part two. I’m not sure how many parts it will have. I was thinking two, taking the PC from level one to… 8? 9? 10? But I might keep it going. Have the main quest die down for a while, let him “Witcher” it up monster hunting all over Golarion and then bring the main quest back later. I don’t know, we’ll see how he likes the main quest as he hasn’t even started on it yet. He’s travelling to investigate a rumored event and I’ll have to see if he likes it or if it’s too weird for him. I can do grim and gritty just fine but it’s always leavened with chaos and whimsy which he doesn’t always “get.” If he doesn’t like it I know some people who will so I’ll just save it and rework it for them later and cook something else up for him. I love him so much.

Anyway, I need to get ready for work.

XXXOOO

i am a gemini=full of contradiction

note; please excuse lack of capitals and a partial lack of proper punctuation. my laptop is being a beast.

i aspire to live in a tiny home. it’s insane how drawn i have been to this idea since the very first time i came across it and yet it may not be something i could actually live with. on the one hand, i can see paring down on many, many possessions. i can see getting by with minimal kitchen gear that all nests together as much as possible, minimal dishes and cutlery/utensils, no problem. minimal wardrobe wouldn’t be an issue for me, i could digitize the movies and shows i ‘need,’ i already use a little laptop not a big desktop, i can totally see minimizing down to essential towels, bedding etc, i can see one day living with just a single cat or smallish dog instead of constantly cohabitating with a minimum of 3 furry fellow-travellers. shoes are not an issue. i can get by with a single pair for each function; snow boots, hiking boots, sandals, work shoes, and one dressy pair. i don’t even need a bunch of make-up i wear it maybe a few times a year. i’m sure there are other areas i could easily pare down as well, but…

it all falls down when i consider;

books. i have lots and i am forever acquiring more despite my best intentions. i have a nook, and there are many books i could handle having only digitally… but i ‘need’ a shocking number of books as physical objects. i love them so completely. books.
art supplies. paints, canvases, sketch books, colored pencils, bags crammed with odds and end i intend to use in some nebulous future project, adhesives, brushes, etc etc etc. it is hard to imagine paring it all down enough to keep in a tiny home.
crochet and knitting gear. holy crap. i have lots. lots. i can honestly see paring this particular hobby down a fair bit, getting rid of items i don’t really need, of which there are many. this one might be doable; a single bin of yarn, a basket for scraps and all the hooks and needles.
also sewing stuff. i have a sewing machine, a serger, and tons of fabric and hand sewing items too. just the basics of this one is fairly bulky.
games and gaming books, minis etc. we have a lot. we have several game platforms and tvs for video games, multiple bookshelves of rpg books, endless, boundless bins and bins of minis, etc. plus board games, card games and on and on. we could probably halve the amount without pain but it would be awfully difficult to divest ourselves of much more than that.
fandom stuff. yeah….. i do not, we do not, have a vast epic collection of museum worthy, collectable amazing fandom stuff, but we do have more than it seems at first glance. i have made tons of cool harry potter/hogwarts stuff for wearing, decoration etc. i have tardis string lights and a dalek pepper pot. in brief we have; marvel stuff, star wars stuff, doctor who stuff, game of thrones stuff, star trek stuff, fruits basket stuff, ruroni kenshin stuff… and many, many more. how would i even begin to pare that stuff down…

plus, i keep a lot of food on hand in case of emergency/illness/etc. i am not sure how low i could manage and not induce anxiety in myself. i tend to have at least a few months worth of food on hand. they wouldn’t be the best months we ever got through but we damn sure wouldn’t starve.

oh, and stuffed animals, using the term very loosely, i have more than would likely be great in a tiny house. henry, rocket, cap, and yix all live in the bedroom and i have a doll crib overflowing in the hall with more. i have pared down in that area, wildly. my remaining collection is ‘bare-bones’… for me.

so i want to live a minimalist lifestyle in a tiny house …but… i will also need another tiny house for my books, another for arts and crafts, and we’ll need a dedicated gaming tiny house as well.

yeah.

sigh.

i think that many tiny houses probably equals pretty much a regular house.

disappointing.

Snag

My idea of reopening my shop in March has hit a snag. Well, snagS, to be honest. A lot has been going on in my world.

Ramping up crafty productiveness made me suddenly decide to make my first sweater… I think. I have vague memories of maybe trying before? Eh, likely not terribly successful, or why isn’t my wardrobe chock-a-block with cute sweaters I made? So, I found a tutorial for a super cute sweater I totally want to wear ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYHF8e8q1hY&list=LL&index=4&t=14s ) and bookmarked it. Then I searched for “super easy beginner sweater tutorial” and landed on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xl-O8RC_g8. So, I made a sweater. Not just any sweater, MEGA SWEATER. It is huge! I didn’t actually watch much of the tutorial, I used the linked text pattern, if there was a swatch/scale I missed it completely. My sweater is unstoppable.

It’s so huge I couldn’t get it all in one shot.

That ate up basically all my free time for a week. On the plus side it could be layered over the most massive of other sweaters. (Mega Sweater has no equals.) Yeah, so I’m calling it a modest success and a great learning experience. Meanwhile I have moved on to making the next sweater and I did do a swatch and it worked out fine. I’ve finished the front piece and started the back.

Despite my efforts with the swatch it is clearly wider than intended…

There will be some scalloping added in the neckline and I hope to use it to make the sweater more reasonable. If it comes out really wonky I am considering trying again with different yarn and hopefully whatever lessons I learn/knowledge I get from this first try. Crochet is tricky! But I’ve had it with being afraid to try things. Fuck it! Life is not a dress rehearsal.

I also got side tracked making a baby present for my beloved boss. She’s having her first baby like any minute now and I wanted to make something nice as I know she appreciates heartfelt handmade items. I made these adorable stars that were going to be a mobile but ended up being a wall hanging. and it looks like “insert pic into text” is just a well-oiled machine! Anyway, she loves it and already hung it near the crib. I’m glad I went with ‘wall hanging’ because she is making a mobile. Here’s a bigger pic:

These little things are fun and easy to make. Fast too!

So, I still have a couple of weeks, or more if I open later in March, to get things done. I have several pairs of mittens that need liners, (that I still need to make) a basket full of cloth waiting to be made into cloth napkins, a couple of boxes filled with handmade envelopes, and lots of plans to make more mittens in new and exciting colors. I’m just not sure I will get enough done to be ready to actually open. The liners are a big project as are the napkins and our place is currently cluttered all to heck since I haven’t been able to purge things we don’t need for almost a year. I really need to box up major amounts of clothes, books, etc and get them to the thrift shops to find new homes. It’s getting ridiculous. No, I won’t soon be seen in an episode of “Hoarders” but clutter is basically everywhere at this point and no room really looks nice anymore. Yeah. I need to get to work on the clutter even if it has nowhere to go. I need to figure out something to do with it all!

All Outta Rooves

Today is another headache day which is tragic as I was hoping to get back on track today, things continue to slide. BLEH. I am actually sort of keeping up. My cleared spaces are remaining cleared and I’m keeping up with laundry and dishes. That’s just all I can ask of myself right now. I’ll have to make dinner and go get the farmshare as well so that is plenty to do when I’m feeling this way. I want to make more progress but I have reached the city limits.

For those that might not know, I suffer from frequent (almost daily) headaches and from mostly controlled migraines, I have been on daily medication to keep my migraines away (mostly) for YEARS. Lately I have been trying to fight my headaches without resorting to acetaminophen as much as possible because my liver has some sort of issue. I drink lots of water, sleep regularly as best I can, and use heating pads and ice packs. It, my life, used to be much worse. This morning I took some meds. They haven’t worked yet. I still attended the ComCat webinar and answered a bunch of work emails so Go Me.

We all have our burdens, am I right? Yeah, it’s tough getting through some days without going on some kind of pain-related spree but I keep trying. I wanted today to be super productive. I wanted to declutter one or two more areas, get some more regular chores done and spend time reading. I’m down to: maybe I can watch an episode or 2 of Vera tonight. I hope you are all having a better day than I am. XXOO

Goals for a Renewed Earth

I am not a fan of all this heat, it is horrible, I wish I could live somewhere cooler and more pleasant. I do love a lot about where I’m planted though. It’s beautiful here though I’d like to live wilder. We get a fair amount of wildlife, have a bunch of wild edibles growing in the yard, have some room to garden in if I can ever overcome my lack of skill in that area. I got mint established after 3 years of trying. Don’t laugh! Ok, you can laugh, I suck at gardening, I know it. I have a wild mint that won’t fill the area I gave it but is branching out, finally! I thought it was supposed to take over? I am at the point I can manage not to kill it.

We need some rain too, please, when mint is wilting in the shade it is well past time for some RAIN. I keep having to water the “chocolate mint” in the front yard because it is just suffering. It gets too much sun I think. Didn’t know mint wanted some shade when I put it there. It is spreading a bit though so there might be enough to harvest for tea! The wild blackberries are looking like they will be abundant this year, if we get some rain for them, gods, I want blackberries! I also have some golden raspberry plants my son and I put in that are doing better than you’d think seeing as I’ve been looking after them. Maybe 4 years ago (?) we bought a little plant and put it in the yard, it put out about 7 berries and then winter came and it was gone, I thought it was dead, done, finished, but it came back up! So in late fall I buried the little plant in leaves and put some cloth over it held in place with a few rocks I think. Uncovered it in the spring and it grew bigger that year, gave us some more berries, not many. So I’ve been finding ways to sort of insulate it in the winter since then and it seems to work! It’s spread a bit, sent out its little runners, and it’s a real bush now. I hope we’ll get berries in an amount I can maybe brag a little about. “Yep, a whole pint. I’m a farmer now, one with the land…”

I want to grow my own food! My actual goals are:

To keep encouraging, while somewhat containing, the wild edibles in my yard (like the blackberries!)
Bolstering the mint until it becomes a problem and then I’ll weed it around its edges
Keep the roses productive
Get the golden raspberries established into a berry patch that produces usable quantities
Raised beds, or maybe even mounds, for veggies and such
Lots of productive veggie plants in the raised beds (squashes, onions, potatoes, beans, garlic etc)
A real, awesome herb garden
A little orchard: an apple tree, pear tree, maybe a persimmon tree
a pepper tree!
Maybe some chickens because I love them, and eggs are nice, and chickens eat ticks
Maybe ducks? So, also a little pond for them, they are cute and hilarious, and they eat slugs
Some pretty serious fencing or hedges for privacy mostly
Cold frames too, to extend the growing season!
Maybe a small greenhouse
If I get all that there won’t be any lawn so, yay! no lawn, another thing I want

I just want my little paradise where I can harvest some food and eat it super fresh. I want food I grow myself, that I can preserve and use in the winter. That would make me smile.

Random items of progress and frustration

It’s been a big day so far. We had to take trash and recycling to the transfer station and buy more bags from them. Our town sells town branded trash bags for $2 a piece instead of a flat fee for the year. I like it because it motivates me to produce less trash. Then, because the tree by the driveway has been going just crazy and the car has barely moved, we took the car to no-human-interaction car wash to clean it off, then realized we needed gas too so we took care of that too. That is as big an outing as we’ve had in a month. Crazy. While we were out about 90% of the people we saw out walking and doing things (seen from the relative safety of our sealed car) did not have masks on.

I’ve continued to work on my shed, using things we already own, junk I chucked in the basement and things like that. I’ve got more lights out there now, and I brought out loads of art supplies and a string of purple lights. I found a bunch of teas in metal tins at the back of the tea cupboard and brought them out there, it’s nice to have a variety and these teas haven’t been seeing any use. They are also distinct from the teas I use in the house so it creates more of a feeling of getting away. Most of them are blends I created myself too, makes me feel good to consume things I had a hand in creating, or to use things I created, I love that feeling.

This far into the day and I have no idea what dinner will be. Bad mommy. LOL. At this point I am so burned out on cooking it is just crazy. I don’t know what to make! I am so sick of having to decide, having to come up with stuff, it’s so relentless. I mean, not ALL the time. Some times, especially right after we get a delivery of groceries, I feel inspired and excited to cook again, for a night or 2, sometimes for a breakfast and lunch or 2. I look at what we have and I want to make stuff again. A few days later and here I am… uninspired, cranky, and ready for anyone else in the world to do the cooking. I forget to thaw things on time, I forget to order key ingredients or they just aren’t available… what is that? My whole life has been lived with the potential to just go and get anything, maybe I couldn’t afford to do that, but the foods were all there. I wanted a couple of cans of lentils the other week and the store was out of them, lentils. Nothing in my life prepared me for how utterly weird that is. That’s the kind of story my parents used to tell us kids about Russia. Like supposedly Russian people would wait in a line forever and ever and just get whatever the hell they were selling or giving out or something, because communism. (hold on, I need to add lentils to my order again, see if I can get any)

In 24 hours, or thereabouts, I have cut back on web surfing, TV and so forth. Proving nothing, anybody can do anything for a day. We’ll see how I get on. I think our savings are about to dip again, we had to have the septic system cleaned out, omg so expensive, and we need to pay all our bills again. One of our bills actually went up $10/month for no reason, the jerks just want to charge us more so we’re stuck with it. WTF? I thought we weren’t supposed to have monopolies in this country. To keep not spending money, as I want to do, I need to plan some kind of dinner tonight. Ummmmmmmmm…. I suppose that’s a question better answered or pondered in front of the open pantry.

knitting by the book update 2/13

snowy weather and illness means i’ve had more time to knit lately! i’ve finished 3 of the horcrux washcloths and started a 4th.

completed: cup, diadem, and nagini. started: ring.

so, i finally ventured out to the greatest yarn store to get supplies for upcoming projects. i’ve got yarn to finish all the horcrux washcloths, for the house colors mug cozies, the nagini lariat, the beaubatons capelet, and i jumped the line and bought a bag of yarn for the order of the phoenix throw blanket because it was such a good deal. at the moment i am slightly bored with the washcloths and keep reconsidering my plan to knit all of them, but i’m about halfway there anyway so i am going to try to stick with it. my plan is still to make items for each house when a project calls for it… at least through the scarves. when i get to more advanced projects, like the house cardigan and all the socks and such, i may pick one house and move on. i would go back and make the other houses later because of course i want to make all of them.

i’ve also finally packed away almost all the harry potter xmas decorations. i still have the house banners up because the dining room always looks so sad once i take them down. everything else is back in boxes in the closet waiting for next winter.

first project finished

i’ve finished the first horcrux washcloth and am working on the second. i finished the hufflepuff cup and have started the ravenclaw diadem. we ventured out today to get yarn and needles for upcoming projects and failed pretty hard. i was able to get approximate colors for all the washcloths and some to make an upcoming nagini project but that was it for yarn. i’ll have to head down to webs to get expensive yarn i guess. oh well, it will be much nicer yarn too so it’ll work.

more later, i’m beat and need to make dinner. cheers all! and happy knitting.

Games and Goals @ the Library

I spent yesterday at the library with my husband. He runs a Pathfinder RPG for the tweens and teens once a month, usually while I’m working, I fetch snacks and print things for them because I’m almost always on the clock. Yesterday we reset the game to level one in the new Pathfinder 2.0 and started the new one shot module designed to teach players the new rules. It’s the same module we ran at home and the kids at the library jumped right in and did a better job sorting it out than the we did. ^_^

Progress is going slowing on all fronts around here. I’m not tending to my goals very well, except my reading goal which I’m still ahead in, I haven’t had time or money yet to get it together to work on things like soap or lotion making and it’s not exactly gardening season here in the North East. I’m also spending more time working on the upcoming Summer Reading Program than I’d have thought I would at this point in the year. The Cultural Council grants came through and it looks like I will get to offer both the stained glass and teen paint night workshops I wanted to. Yay! I thought I hadn’t gotten the painting grant but it was just late because of a typo or something in the council’s answer. For those 2 things I’ve just dashed off some emails to the instructors. What I’ve really been working on are my plans for other activities. I plan to run a Fairy Tale Writing Contest, plant some sort of fairy garden, offer a workshop on Wee Folk house-making, and hopefully a few other things as well. Last summer’s Book Cover Contest was a complete and utter bust and I am going to do my best to make sure the writing contest is a success. I definitely made some mistakes! (it was my first time running an SRP and my first time running a contest so it was inevitable I would mess it up pretty big time) How I will improve this year’s contest:

RULES: I will NOT leave things wide-open. It turns out that saying “do whatever you want!” is not the best way to inspire creativity. I will make sure there are clear guidelines for what I want submitted.
Examples: I will absolutely make sure I have at least 2-3 examples of what submitted tales could be like. Last year I had no examples whatsoever because I was swamped and kept putting off working on it.
Publicize the contest outside the library with flyers in the local middle schools and high schools, with a press release and with a very nice flyer I have been working on for ages already.
Prizes: I will tailor the prizes to the contest and not offer the generic one-size-fits-all prize I attached to last year’s book cover contest.

Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming learning this job as I go but I think I’m really starting to get the hang of it after a whole year. The collection is coming along. I’m starting to find areas of nonfiction to focus on that I think will interest local teens and be of help to them, I’m still working on getting more clear direction from them on what sorts of fiction they want in the collection. I put out surveys and got a far number of responses that were pretty diverse so I can only make sure I try to order a wide selection of books across all the genres at this point. The budget is such that I can’t really order more than 1 or 2 of any genre each month but I am able to supplement that with donated books sometimes. People who love books are so generous to the library, I often get books that have just come out within a few months in perfect condition, it really helps. I’m making progress in the programming I offer too. After each one I sit down and sort out what worked and what didn’t and why. I think about what I could change to make it more successful or about why it failed.

I love this job and I want to make sure my boss feels like I am worth the chance she took hiring me. In my job description it states that I am to run at least 2 programs per month, one being the Teen Advisory Board and one other of my own devising, and that attendance should ideally be 3, 4 or more teens (we are a small, rural library, larger libraries probably get a lot more participants). Starting this month, with the new year and all, I am offering every month:

Teen Advisory Board: pizza, small projects, and talking about what interests those who show up. I usually get 4-8 teens for this.
Pathfinder Role Playing game: 4 hour session, snacks provided, usually attended by 3-4 players.
Monthly Movie: tied to the summer reading theme, this year fairy tales, with free popcorn. My first and only screening so far had 7 attendees.
Book Boot Camp: a book club where we each read whatever we want within a certain genre and discuss them over cocoa and baked goods. (I’ll switch that up if I’m still running it once it gets warm out) This month will be Mystery and it happens next weekend. I believe I have 5 sign ups but we’ll see if anyone shows up.

Last year at this time I was running TAB and attempting to continue the Young Writer’s group started by my predecessor. Unfortunately the writing group fell apart in short order and it took me a few months to begin to offer my own programs. So, progress! I am definitely doing better than I was a year ago and I’m still working on it so I have to be happy with that.

2020 day 3

I have read every day of 2020 so far. I wrote a fair bit yesterday, blogged here, started a recommended Tarot Journal on paper. Also started learning about Tarot reading, so double duty there. My reading is also doubling as working on learning to garden properly. I feel so efficient! ~_^ I managed to work in a little crafting yesterday, I ate pretty healthy, and failed to make progress on any other fronts, which is fine, I need to pace myself and be realistic. Fighting my instincts here. This is day 3 of just kind of winging here, on the goals, I may need to set an actual structure up at some point.

I’m currently reading a gardening book and a mystery novel. Our first Book Boot Camp is going to be Mystery so I should really get cracking on that sucker. My TBR pile is ridiculous.

Reviewing my goals this morning I realized that I have no professional goals listed. I need to think about it for a bit but I think I should have some of those. Right off the top of my head, one basic goal is just to have my programming planned out and publicized at least 3 months in advance, beyond that I need to figure out what else makes sense. Maybe to try to take in one seminar a month or something on professional development? I should have goals, some kind of plan, or vision for my job. That seems awfully grown up.

Oh, hilarious development yesterday, it turns out my youngest had school yesterday and I blithely let him sleep until 1 pm thinking he didn’t go back till Monday. Ha ha ha! I am such a bad mom! Oof. My husband thought so too and, apparently, so did lots of other parents from our kid’s school… the one that prides itself on communication but is really bad at it. Yeah. I just don’t feel too bad about it. I mean, it ate up one of his allowed sick days, but I think the school must have been pretty unclear about this winter break. If it was just me, sure, my fault, but the school was, reportedly, a ghost town yesterday so I’m not taking it on. My kid wasn’t exactly broken up about it either. LOL

I’ve got a new trick for getting him out of bed now! My old method involved loud, poor singing, bright lights, and getting the dog riled up. Now I bring him tea or food. How civilized! I should have thought of it sooner. I bring my husband tea, and occasionally breakfast, in bed every day. He used to get breakfast in bed every day, if you can imagine. That fell apart at some point, I think 18 years ago when I was pregnant. It’s been sporadic-to-rare ever since. Maybe I’ll start that up again? Add the boy to it and bring up tea and breakfast on weekdays. Hmm, maybe I will, it always made for easier mornings for my husband, and it made him feel super appreciated, loved, and looked after. I suppose I worry about spoiling the lad and giving him insane expectations which his future partners will hate me for. Hmmm, maybe we’ll try a limited test of it?