Long Thursday post again

I had no computer access until yesterday evening...and I survived. ;) Just kidding, I knew it wouldn't kill me, but I'm used to being able to look up something when I think of it, or see if anyone's blogged, or check my email... That's okay though, it's good for me. :)

So anyway, I worked all day yesterday, and got a lot of reading done while the baby slept because there was nothing else for me to do! I told the mom she needed to find other things for me to do while the baby's sleeping! :) Not that I'll always have that much time, but a list of things to do if there's time would be nice. I was thinking this morning that I should have taken a cook-book I borrowed from a friend and finished copying down the recipes I wanted out of it.

She had a lady there cleaning for part of the day, so the lady kept popping in once in a while and making various comments... She also failed to dust the lights in the bathroom that were very close to eye-level and greatly in need of dusting...but oh well. It seems like if you pay someone to clean they should get everything clean, right? I just wouldn't have paid for the cleaning job she did...if I was cleaning a house I'd make sure everything was dusted and I'd move stuff and vacuum around the edge of the room. BUT, that's not my job, and it wasn't my house she was cleaning, so that's that.

I also am going to have to figure out some way to refer to these people on here, other than "the mom" and "the baby"... "Mommy" and "Baby" would work I guess, but that's a bit cheesy. :p

I had fun yesterday, although since I had to get up early, I was tired last night, but I hadn't done much physically, so I was fidgety when I needed to go to bed! Hmm...exercising would be an option I guess. Either while I'm there, or as soon as I get home (except then it's time for supper).

I think I see why Dad has so many different routes he can take to work...it gets a bit tiresome to drive the same way a lot...I mean, I really like driving, but variety is always nice! :p Of course when I start working in September, I think Dad's going to drop me off and pick me up, so I'll just knit on the way there and I won't notice which way we're going anyway. :)

So I worked all day and then I went to prayer meeting last night...and I slept in a bit this morning. I probably would have slept later, except that before Dad left he came in and was trying to ask me about a restaurant and whether it was quiet enough in there to talk (he was meeting Pastor Beasley for lunch), and do they serve things other than sushi, and I was trying to figure out what he was talking about and whether any of those things were true. "Yes... no...oh wait... yeah they do...yeah, Chinese sort of stuff...mmfph". It's certainly quieter than my bedroom is right now!! But it was okay really, I had slept enough and I did want to get up and work in the garden, so I got up after that. :)

I got my dead green bean plants pulled up and dumped a bunch of compost in their spot to finish composting. I also finished digging up a spot that I'd cleared all the weeds out of, and I added some peat moss to lighten it up. I dug all the stuff out a couple weeks ago, and then Dad made it bigger, but the grass was starting to grow again, so I thought I'd better deal with it. I'm not sure what we're going to put in there. There were some miniature boxwood bushes that we could put back and there's still a crape myrtle that seeded itself there. I'm not sure that it can stay there though, because I don't think there's enough room.

I took the baby for a walk yesterday and there is lots of nice landscaping in their neighborhood. Most of it's trees and bushes and lawns (I saw lots of lawn-service trucks yesterday), but there were two places that had normal gardens. One house had a side yard that was a vegetable garden and they also had a lot of flowers planted. It had a little sign on the garden gate that said it was certified as a wildlife preservation or something like that...I guess because it was natural and they had bird feeders. Then another house had a whole back yard full of wildflowers and various perennial flowers...it was so pretty! Now I'm inspired to plant a bunch of flowers next year. :)

This morning I also made an over-flow compost bin. We have an old trashcan that we use for a compost bin, but it's been filling up lately, so I've been dumping out the more composted stuff in a pile to make room. Well, there have been a bunch of pieces of old porch sitting back in the woods for quite a while now, so I thought I'd put them to use. I'm not sure if it's Grandma and Grandpa's old porch, or ours, but they put the stuff back there so Colin could play with it, and Grandma thought she might sometime build something with it. Dad was getting tired of seeing it back there, so at least I got some of it out of there! :) And Grandma was happy to see that I came up with something to do with it, and admitted that she wouldn't have ever gotten around to making anything...for one thing she doesn't have the right tools. (?) I used a drill and a power screwdriver. I thought we'd gotten Grandpa a power screwdriver at some point, but I guess they forgot about it. Apparently there was a good screwdriver and other useful tools in the toolbox that got stolen when they moved.

They had some great big toolbox full of very nice, useful tools, and it was stolen; so whenever a tool is needed for something, that toolbox gets mentioned, because there was probably one of whatever we need in that toolbox. :p

Anyway...she doesn't have tools and we do, so it was good that I made something. Okay. It's not perfect by any means. I didn't want to cut anything, so the blocks of wood in the front are bigger than they need to be, and some of the wood posts were rotting on one end, but it'll work for compost. And then I spray-painted the outside with the only can of spray paint we had in the garage which was a can of bronze/gold/brown metallic paint. So we now have a metallic gold compost bin...how glamorous! :p Actually, it pretty much looks brown and it doesn't really matter even, I just sprayed a rather messy layer on so it wasn't so obvious as the white was. I also got spray paint all over the fingers of my right hand, so now it looks like I have dirt around my fingernails. Yuck....I'll wear gloves next time.

















Gold:










My friend Zoe gave me a dress at prayer meeting last night (weird transition!) and it's really neat! I think I'll probably make a pattern from it too and try to make another one. I wonder if cotton would work if I made it on the bias? This is that slippery nylon or polyester sort of fabric, so it drapes, but I don't know if cotton would work.

Anyway, Zoe's grandma came to visit and brought a bunch of clothes from a lady she knows, for Zoe and her mom to look through and this didn't work for either of them, so Zoe gave it to me. I really like the empire-waist and gathering and stuff...very Jane Austen-ish! :) It's not really the sort of color and pattern I would wear usually, but it's nice, and I certainly like the style of the dress.






















Hmm...from a distance it kind of looks like a giraffe, or leopard or something...I don't know if that's good or not.

So...another long Thursday post...and now I should go work on supper. Italian sausage penne...something or other...supper, that's it. Skillet Penne and Sausage Supper. How do they come up with these names??