Yesterday and Today

Good morning! Nice rainy day so far. A not very warm rainy day. Fairly productive except I keep forgetting I have a lump of dough in the back refrigerator I need to take care of.

I just took care of it.

Going back to my last post, Paul brought the ads home and I looked at them. This leads me to believe that my initial perception was, in fact, incorrect. That is good. Sometimes it is good to be right, sometimes it is good to be wrong.

I have been reading about women who have been forced into c-sections by their doctors. Some women are made to because a hospital will actually get a court order making the women have one. Some women are coerced into it. Many of them are told that their baby will be taken from them if they do not agree to it. Some are told their other children will be removed by child protective services if they do not agree to it. Many, perhaps most, of these women have done their research and know their rights. Shame on the doctors who take advantage of women at this very vulnerable time. Honestly, I am glad that I know not all doctors are pigs because after reading, I’m inclined to think they are all swine.

Yesterday I went to the sandpit nearest us for a lovely little hike. We were gone for about an hour and a half and went only about 2.5 miles but the up and down was something else. I was sure my legs were going to be in bad shape this morning but they aren’t. I could go do it again. But I won’t. I’d rather go letterboxing. I would have taken some pictures but my phone died. Silly boys who like to use my phone to play games.

Today is somewhat rainy. The weather forecast has changed about six times in the past three days. The only thing that has remained constant is that tomorrow we should be rainy. It has been a 100% chance five of the six times and 90% once. I’d say there’s a good chance of rain. With that in mind, we are planning indoor activities for tomorrow. Currently, it has changed again and we are back to 90% tomorrow and sun for the five days after that (well, one day is partly sunny). It has been rain on at least three of those five days previously. Good grief. The plan for them is to go out letterboxing and just be prepared for rain if it happens.

Compare this with the one below. Silly weather.

Speaking of letterboxing, I carved 19 stamps in eight days (ending Saturday) plus two that I didn’t like enough to use. Joseph carved two. That means we’ve got some stamps to plant. Five are for a series on how to keep safe from vampires. Seven are for a Star Wars series (I might have a couple of them be hitch hikers). Two are for LTCs which are letterbox trading cards. Three are for individual boxes and we know where we want to plant each of them. The last two are going to be hitchhikers and have to do with what I might be doing if I weren’t doing letterbox related things.

I’ve requested a copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker from the library for the initial clue for the vampire series. I want to plant each of the five in different cemeteries around us. There is one little cemetery that I think is very cute but it has houses so close I’m not sure it is really a good choice. There are plenty others to choose from, though, so I don’t think we’ll run into any problems. I have no idea about the Star Wars stamps. I actually think I’d like to do a couple more carves before planting and will probably just pick a spot and put two or three or four in each box and have two or three boxes. Anyway, it’s all fun to plan and carry out.

Today when the boys are done with morning school, I’m going to run over to Julia’s and borrow her screw gun so I can put together some more shelves. The sisters have come over twice and helped plant seeds in milk/water/juice jugs. I would like to do about twenty more so I need more shelves for them because there simply is not room at the moment. I think I’m going to do short ones with just two shelves.

Well, that was yesterday. Today the chance of rain is now 80% although right at this minute it is 100%.

Look at this. In the half an hour or so that I was typing between when I checked earlier and just two minutes ago when I did this, we're back to 90% today and Saturday changed from Sunny to Partly Cloudy. How fickle the weather is!

Does anyone else have routines? I mean, it’s normal to have routines, right?

I have one when it comes to laundry. It looks like this:

Wash a load.

Dry a load and wash another load.

Fold when I’m ready to and dry another load and wash another load.

Fold when I’m ready, etc., etc., etc.

Amena does her own laundry and that is great; it means that much less for me to do. The only problem is that she takes stuff out of the drier and puts it in a basket or on the couch (we have a couch specifically for this purpose, you know) and then puts the load that was in the washer in the drier and then that gets put in a basket or on the couch. And then there is more for me to fold than I ever feel like so it sits there. It sits there sometime for days. Even, occasionally, for weeks. Which isn’t to say it’s a static thing; it changes all the time as people dig through it looking for whatever it is they can’t find anywhere else (which is several times a day per person, well, per boy child).

What this means is that when I go to fold because I’ve done more washing and drying is that there is more to fold. So sometimes I will fold and fold and fold. Sometimes I will fold for ten or fifteen minutes and then not for ten or fifteen minutes, etc., until done. Sometimes, and this is really my favorite method, I will fold the load that came out of the drier and then fill the basket with stuff from the couch and fold that. Then I wait for the next load to come out of the drier and fold it and another basket from the couch. Etc., etc., etc. That’s what I was doing yesterday afternoon/evening. When I’d had enough laundry and the pile on the couch was less than half of what it had been and I decided to go to bed, there was a load in the drier and a load in the washer. Then Amena decided to do a load of laundry so this morning there were two new loads on the couch. I folded one because it was towels and therefore super easy but I really don’t want to do any more. I hate folding clothes.

At least the pile on the floor is substantially smaller today than it was at the beginning yesterday. I hate having dirty clothes piled on the floor because it’s the kitchen, they get walked on, and Misty sleeps on them. In fact, if there are dirty clothes to sleep on, she will not use her bed. If she didn’t smell so bad, I wouldn’t mind as much.

Today we have an artsy day planned. After math and reading, we’ll go to Julia’s where the boys will paint toilet paper roll fireworks and I’ll work on some letterbox trading cards. I’ve never made any before but I’ve read what I could find on AtlasQuest about them and joined an LTC Facebook group. I think it should be fun. If it isn’t, I probably won’t do it again.

Last night I told Cedric that I’d make hot chocolate and rolled oats for him this morning. That just means that when I got up at 5:00 to make sure he and Amena were awake I stayed up rather than snoozing for another 25 minutes. Some mornings I actually sleep, some I just take almost half an hour to finish waking up. This morning I think another half an hour to finish waking up would have been nice.

Speaking of waking up, yesterday morning in the wee-sma’s, at three something, Paul’s mask got catawampus and was making the most awful noise. It was like a full-blown gale in the bed. I turned the light on to make sure he was still breathing and then attempted to get back to sleep. It was long in coming; those darn machines make a lot of noise if the mask isn’t properly set. In the future, I think I’ll either kick him or go sleep in the living room.

Right now I’ll be off. Have a fantastic day!