As Much As I Would Like To Be....

...I'm just not a daily blogger!  Life gets in the way, and so I am an occasional blogger! 

Yesterday was one of those mad days where, all of a sudden, after weeks and weeks of seeming to make no progress, a million things get done! 

I planted some fuchsias in the hanging box outside the kitchen window - it's such a lovely place to have flowers!  

The first peony of the year burst out of the bud...

The first rhodo hit full flower...

and it's a beauty! 

We hauled home a bit of wood for the woodstore - I put my size 7 shoe on there so you can see just how big that log is - it was quite the workout!  We brought home almost an entire tree - we left just one small piece about 12 inches long and 6 inches across... the ominous buzzing noises and the fact that it appeared to have been hollowed out and stuffed with moss did NOT lead me to want to put it in my car! 

It's last year's wood, so it should be good for burning soon if we can get it cut and split at the weekend. 
And the daffodils that we unearthed from the ivy pile out the front have burst into life, too...

Add to that the fact that we now have 3 healthy rhubarb plants in the veggie patch -

and Bri spent Sunday fencing it in,

it looks like Spring might have made it to our house! 

...and there went March!

Well they do say that time flies when you're having fun, but this is ridiculous!  Where did March go? 

I think it must have got lost somewhere in between birthdays (mine and Brian's), an anniversary (21 years since we started dating), a spring break (Becca's, and she really needed it), various late winter coughs and colds, and an outbreak of kitchen redecorating. 

The kitchen was inspired by a beautiful piece of beech countertop that Brian and Caity found at a scrap wood place, they brought it home, cut it to size, refinished it, and it's now installed on my cut-down island.  We lost the old cooktop, removed one stack of drawers, and turned the island 90 degrees, also removing the doors so that the pans are easily accessible and they look pretty, too!  Then I got to work with a can of paint and refinished all the lower cabinets.  This really needs pictures...hang on a minute, let me go and find the camera...

First, and most important, here is Connie, in all her beautiful Aga glory!  Guess where everyone likes to sit....

Here's the new island.

 and the newly painted cabinets....

next on the list will be new countertops and white trim! 

 and here's where I'm blogging from!  With knitting, of course!  ;-) 

You can see which part of the floor is refinished and which hasn't been sanded back yet - there was no wood underneath the old island, so we're going to use the torn out bathroom flooring to tidy that up and make it all match nicely.  The refinishing of the rest of the floor will happen after that, probably in fall when we want to be back inside again. 

The ceiling needs paint, and one of the new light fittings hasn't been installed yet, but it's coming along nicely, and we're enjoying the new brighter space. 

Ups and Downs

It's a bit bumpy, this life thing, isn't it? 

It's been a good news, bad news, happy news, sad news sort of a month so far, and most of the stories are not mine to tell, so we'll just leave it at this - I have a lot of dear and lovely people held in my heart right now, you know who you are, and you know why you have a special place, I'm thinking of you. 

Everything else is rolling along as usual, except for the snow this morning, which was a little unexpected.  We've had more days of snow this winter than the combined snow-day-total of the other 3 Washington winters we've experienced - and today was just one more.  Drove to school in falling snow, drove home in falling snow - sometime mid-morning snow gave way to blue sky and sunshine and this afternoon was really quite pleasant.  Bri is outside splitting kindling though, just in case...  you never can tell around here! 

I had planned to come here daily and tell you about my self-improvement challenges - I guess I failed at the first challenge, which was to share the challenges with you!  Oops!  maybe we'll try that one again...  yesterday was an 'eat well' day, and we had chinese veggie soup for supper, which was fabulous even if I do say so myself.  In fact it was so good that everyone took leftovers for lunch today (thus foiling my evil plan to have made 2 dinners at one time, but never mind that now) and it's pretty much gone now!  All those excellent veggies were very healthy, and tonight's chicken with peppers, onions, herbs and tomato sauce wasn't too shabby either. 

Today's challenge is the exercise challenge and that will be taken care of tomorrow morning when I go to the fitness club.  Yep, go ahead, read it again, I know, you're shocked, I have taken up exercise!  I have not yet worn my 'I'd rather be knitting' t-shirt to the club but it's tempting some days.  I go 3 days a week, and do cardio and strength training and it's all computerised and online and gadgety so it keeps me entertained and I barely notice how boring the whole thing is.  I have learned that my body is currently operating at the rate of a 36 year old, excellent news indeed for my 43-next-week self, and that I have only a very tiny amount of fat wrapped around my organs, also excellent news - inspiration to not eat the crispy skin off the chicken! 

Tomorrow's challenge will be to tidy up a miniature disaster somewhere in the house, and there are plenty to choose from!  Who knows, I may even remember to come back and tell you about it...

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Lies.

It says here that your policy has been cancelled for over a year, Ma'am, just like you said.  I do not know why you have been sent a renewal notice. 

So spoke Julie, the lovely lady who answered the phone yesterday at our ex-insurance agents office.  We ditched the agent, a year ago, because of his poor communication skills and terrible record-keeping - it seems nothing has changed! 

Your policy is still active, and we did receive payment for the full amount last January, Ma'am, this is why we have sent you a renewal notice.

So spoke Jenny, Julie's manager, about 20 minutes later when she called me back.  Clearly both women cannot be speaking the truth...and so I tried to explain 'but my mortgage company says that they did NOT pay you, and I know I didn't, because I paid Pemco instead. 

If you send us the insurance document from your new company, we will issue you with a refund for policy you had with us last year.

Ooh, well, I'll be quiet about believing that I didn't pay it then.  The jury, however, is still out on the possibility of there being any truth in her statement, I'll let you know what happens...

Damned Lies

You have walked 672 steps so far today.

So claimed my little pedometer when I got home from the morning school run.  I use the word 'run' loosely, since I really mean 'drive'. 

Not true, says I, since I clipped the pedometer on and reset it to zero right before I walked out the door this morning, took an absolute maximum of about 80 steps and got in the car.  When I got home, I checked the pedometer to make sure that I HAD reset it after yesterday's thousands of steps.  672.  It seems that the pedometer also counts bumps in the road, which is very bad news on our terrible tarmac!  And so I have an indeterminate number of steps to deduct from my total, since I have no way of knowing just how many it racked up per car trip today...

Statistics

If you get an excellent score on the PSAT, you can expect to get spammed by dozens of colleges, all begging you to apply! 

Rebecca took the PSAT a few weeks ago, because the students who score highest can win money to help pay for college, so all the kids in her class take it every year.  Since the results were issued she has been receiving daily emails from colleges and early entrance programs all over the country - and today even our snail mail box was under attack from The Bard School at St Simons, wherever that might be - an information packet bearing the question 'if you had a chance to leave high school and go on to college early, would you take it?' to which, of course, the answer is already a resounding YES but clearly The Bard has not yet received notice of WHERE Rebecca was when she took the PSAT test.  She's already on campus, people, you are too late. 

Methinks there may have been a teeny tiny little box somewhere on the front cover of the test booklet that said something like 'tick here if you do not want to receive mail from every college and university in the contiguous 48' - it is possible that Becca did NOT tick this box!  Luckily she is young enough to enjoy the attention of being spammed by the .edu community, and I'm thankful for the firestarting materials, so it's a win for us, but not so much for the colleges.  With all this paper flying around the country every time the PSAT results are issued, you'd think the Post Office would be turning a profit, but the statistics show that it isn't so...

Today's challenge was about being sure to drink enough fluids, so I'm off to get a cuppa, want one? 

I, The Accused...

I went to Safeway today, and bought some eggs.  I have bought these local farm eggs many times, they are good, they are inexpensive, and buying them is a small way of supporting the local farmer, rather than the monstrous battery farm.  I like these eggs. 

Today, however, I was accused of trying to steal another, more expensive, brand of eggs by sneaking them into these boxes!  Seriously! 

I picked up a box, and it had a broken egg in it, the cardboard was wet and slimy, and had soaked several other boxes, too.  So I picked through until I found 2 dry boxes, checked the eggs inside for cracks, and put the boxes in my cart. 

When I reached the checkout, the lady on the till checked the boxes for breakages and asked 'do you want those brown ones?' to which I replied, 'oh I don't care, they're all eggs, it's all the same to me'.  I have bought this brand of eggs many times, as I said, and have had brown, creamy, speckled and white eggs, and have never thought much of it, they're farm eggs, one doesn't expect them to be all the same, one is actually quite charmed by the little egg personalities exhibited by their shells...

The checkout person then began a tirade of 'just so you know, those brown eggs come from a different place to the white ones and they're worth more money so you can't put brown eggs into the white egg box and expect to be charged the cheaper price for them'.  What? 

I pointed out that I hadn't put any eggs into any boxes, I had just picked up 2 boxes of unbroken eggs, and she continued ' now there's another box back there that has some brown and some white eggs in it and that poor person is going to get charged brown egg price for your white eggs' - and again I told her 'but I haven't moved any eggs, I just picked up 2 boxes with eggs in them, it's not my fault if there are brown eggs in my white egg box.  I have bought these eggs before, and there have been brown ones in the boxes, I just thought that's how they came from the farm', I said. 

Oh she wasn't having it, she told me again that she had scanned the boxes and 'let me' have the eggs for the cheaper price 'just this once' but warned that 'next time' I was to leave them how I found them and not swap eggs around from box to box!  She told me that the only reason I'd 'got away' with it before was that no-one else was checking the boxes - I can't remember the last time my checker did NOT look in the box, they always check for breakages, but never mind, I'm an egg thief, nothing I say can be trusted.

I pointed out that there were quite a few broken eggs back there and that it was possible that staff were reboxing, so as to be able to sell as many as possible, and my lovely lady went off again 'well, I'm just going to have to talk to the dairy manager about this and find out what's going on back there!' 

- and at this point I zoned out, realising that it was hopeless, I was not going to be able to get my point across, everything I said was not going to be heard, I had been accused, and that was all there was to it.  I vaguely considered leaving, with all my goods still spread across the conveyor belt, but then realised I had already scanned my debit card (curse my efficiency!) and so I stayed, smiled and waved, and left, with my five contraband brown eggs. 

I'm going to eat one tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure I'll REALLY enjoy it! 

P.S.  No photo of todays walking, but according to my little counter I have logged 6363 steps today - hurrah!  Probably the egg thievery contributed a couple of hundred steps as I paced back and forth waiting for my opportunity to switch eggs around between boxes while no-one was looking ;-) 

A Challenge A Day...

For the last 4 weeks I've been posting a daily challenge on Ravelry, in my favourite group, where we try to knit predominantly from the yarns we already own, rather than buying yet more lovelies for our ever-growing collections.  Most of our conversations revolve around yarn, fiber, patterns, techniques, tools, etc but we have one conversation going where we talk about the rest of our lives, our health, our homes, our lifestyles. 

My daily challenges have been met with various levels of energy and enthusiasm, obviously the 'one size fits all' style of this sort of thing doesn't always gel with everyone's plan, and sometimes people have already done the thing that I lay out for the day.  I've noticed, reflecting on the month, however, that I don't do the challenges every day myself. 

And that needs to change. 

So, here, I'm going to record the challenges each day, and tell you what I did for that challenge, on that day. 

Today, the challenge was to makeover dinner by changing one or more of the ingredients to make it more healthy.  I roasted a piece of pork, with no oil and no salt, and then shredded it and served it with wholegrain pasta baked in tomato sauce (no added salt) and mixed steamed vegetables that were supposed to be served in a pesto, but I just remembered that part, and it's a little late now!  ;-)  

Tomorrow's challenge is to take my camera for a walk and take a picture of something while I'm out - I'll let you know how that goes...

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2012! 

What a year 2011 was for all of us, so many changes, so many things needing our time and attention, it felt so hard at the time but now, looking back, it seems like it flew by! 

The Aga has had a wonderful Christmas, she has baked and roasted and warmed, and we are all completely in love with her, we even went to visit her at midnight en route between letting the old year out of the back door and the New Year in the front... Connie is a member of the family now. 

Today she is hosting a leg of lamb, which is slow roasting on a bed of potatoes, carrots, onion, garlic, and parsnips.  The whole lot is dusted with rosemary and drenched in white wine, and in a couple more hours, it will be perfection! 

Resolutions for me include losing 12 of the pounds that have crept on over the past 3 years, so that my capri pants fit next summer (it was tragic when I couldn't get them on this past summer, I really like my capri pants!), finding new healthy ways to feed my family a greater variety of foods, and getting more projects completed on and for the house.  I'm also one of several thousand voices in an online group for knitters who are focused on knitting with what they already own (you'd be surprised how many of us knitters are also yarn hoarders!), and around 100 of us have gathered together to attempt a good 'spring clean' of our lifestyles and habits, in order to be healthier, fitter, stronger, and less cluttered, both in body and mind.  It's a privilege to stand up and lead a group of women like these, they are all amazing people with amazing stories, and I am hoping that the journey we undertake together in 2012 will be another amazing story to add to each and every one of our lives.  We have grand plans, now we need stamina, courage, and determination, so that we live our plans every day and don't let them fall by the wayside. 

What about you?  What do you have planned for this new and brightly shining year?