The monday-est of Mondays

Ugh.  That's what I want to say when I think of what a rough day this has been.  Instead, I keep trying to paste a smile on my face.

Only it's not working like I want it to.

This morning I checked my work email.  I check it at least once before I head into the office. The office received a very not nice email.  In fact, it was so crappy it got the whole office a bit riled up. 

I managed to slip and fall as I was getting into my car.  The slip and fall was pretty bad.  Stunned is a good word to describe how I felt when I finally got myself into the driver's seat.  When I slipped and fell I went down hard on my left wrist and I'm sure I jammed it good. My head started throbbing immediately.  I sat in the car for a few moments holding my throbbing head and wondering if I should even go in.  The stupid part of my brain said "Let's see how this goes."

I went home after a few hours.  The head throbbing increased and pounded and then went down to a low roar. Anytime I moved my head the throbbing started up. So I came home after a short bit.

Came home and rested until my boys came home.  The whole left side of my body aches. I already decided I'm staying home tomorrow so I can rest more.  This evening when my husband was outside I went out to speak with him and managed to slip and fall *again* and land on the right side this time. That was when I decided this whole day was fired.

This evening my son made cookies by himself.  He's been after me to make more cookies.  I told him I couldn't make any because of my sore left side and wrist. He asked if he could make them and I supervise. I agreed.

Chocolate chocolate-chip cookies were settled one and he went to town making them. He was a very proud of himself when they were all cooling.

 

Daily 5 things of the day that made me happy

1. Sick days for when I need them.

2. People who care and want to mother me when I do dumb things, like slip and fall.

3. The sun was shining today.

4. Chocolate chocolate-chip cookies.  They are really good.

5. My bed is made and ready for me to crawl into. 

Getting the nest ready

I will be so happy when there is no frost on the car when I go out in the morning. This morning I thought "Oh, I don't have to worry about defrosting the car windows. It's above freezing."

Yeah ... I still had to do some scraping. Boo!

Yesterday at the library I picked up a new cozy mystery. "Pane and Suffering." I have read about 15 pages so far. The framework is still being set up. So far so good.

Last night my son had to paint something for one of his classes.  Since the watercolors were out I decided to pull out my Tiffany Stained Glass designs coloring book and started one of the pages.

I enjoyed the paining part very much. I'm not keen on how the "transparent paper" behaved under the watercolor. It started wrinkling up. I've stopped for now.  I will most definitely be whipping the watercolors out again soon.

Tonight I set up the incubator and it is currently going through a test run. Once I've verified the proper temperature the eggs will be going in tomorrow evening.  Then, in 21 days, plus or minus, I will have little baby chicks. 

And finally, I leave you with this:

Yeah baby! :-)

Daily 5 things of the day that made me happy

1. My son giving me his last chicken nugget. 

2. The first day of spring is one day closer.

3. Being able to sit and chat with good friends. 

4. Watching a few episodes of "All Creatures Great and Small" today. 

5. I have my health.

A restful weekend

Shortly after hitting publish on my last blog entry I curled up on the couch and feel asleep. At 9 p.m. on a Friday night.  Boy, I know how to party. I know it was the last week catching up to me, in addition to my body fighting off any cooties that *might* have been picked at up at the ordination Mass on Thursday. In any case, I needed the rest.

Saturday I woke up to some very mild temperatures. We took care of some stuff around the house, ran to town to shop for necessities, and had lunch as soon as we got back home.

When the weather is this nice in the wintertime I try to take care of the chicken coop.  I usually do a partial muck-out of the coop because some of the hay and pine shaving litter is frozen.  Friday was unseasonably warm so the coop thawed completely and it felt wet inside. 

I know I probably clean my coop out more often than the typical chicken mama, and that is okay with me. This time around was even easier because my hubby drove the atv dump trailer right up to the door and I didn't have to mess with filling the wheelbarrow and dumping it.

Speaking of chickens, I know I need to do a big update on them.  That's a post for later this week. I have a few photos and videos I need to sort out and load up.

My husband and I were talking Saturday about when we should start keeping eggs for hatching out. Previously it was decided to start incubating eggs at the start of March.

Well ... look what I pulled out of storage!

I'm so stoked! I still need to clear off the one table in my craft room and calibrate the temperature and all that good stuff. I'm part of the BackYardChickens Facebook group and the southern chicken keepers have started posting pictures of their little fluffy butts and I can't wait to get my own.

We started keeping Americauna eggs on Saturday. A few more days and we will have enough eggs to fill the incubator and get it started.

Other than the above, not much going on this weekend.  Even though the temperatures were mild, it wasn't very pleasant out.  The sun didn't shine. I mainly took it easy, my husband spoiled me a wee bit, and I had some time for knitting.

I worked on my sock for a bit last night, while we watched some Amazon Prime.

Daily 5 things of the day that made me happy

 

1. French sodas. Yum! I made a big one for myself tonite. 

 

2. The possibility of having baby chicks in time for Easter, again.  This would make it three years in a row we have baby chicks for Easter. 

3. A day to rest and decompress.  

4. Pizza made with cauliflower crust.  Yum!

5. Only 32 more days until the first day of spring.

If we were having coffee ...

I subscribe to The Perpetual Page-Turner blog and she had a post titled "If we were having coffee together." I thought to myself "What a clever idea." This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share.

  So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice. I've got had Rote Grutz from UptonTea.com in my cup. I chugged it down. One of these days I'll actually take a photo of myself holding a cup of coffee for these posts. ... One day. ... 

If we were having coffee ...  I'd tell you "I didn't forget to blog," with a sheepish look on my face. Work was just as busy as I thought it would be these last six weeks or so. I had been working on a special edition about our new bishop.  The special section grew and grew and eventually went to the max - 32 pages. So many people, parishes and organizations placed congratulatory statements. It was incredible, but not really surprising.  Our new bishop is homegrown and every person I've come across who knows him thinks he's the bee's knees. The paperwork on this issue nearly drove me mad. I might have danced a little when the deadline day arrived.

Now the ordination day has arrived, and we have celebrated. It was a lovely ceremony/ordination Mass. I've been to only one big-deal Mass outside of my diocese. It didn't have the feel the Mass in our Cathedral did. This ordination Mass felt like family gathered, celebrating one of their own. Which is true.

Next issue I'm working on will have coverage from the ordination and installation events.  Once it's been sent to the printer I can breathe a deep breathe and enjoy the calm after the storm.

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you how my knitting broke my heart.  Remember when I was working on the Harvest Cardigan? I was cranking along on the cardigan and was mere inches away from casting off and starting the sleeves when my knitting stabbed me in the heart.

I started my third skein of yarn and knitted a few rows when I noticed the third skein was darker then what was already knit.  I was set to call it a design element and say "I meant to do this." I kept knitting on it.  My hubby would drive to town while I knit away on this project.

See, it didn't look too bad.
 

And then. ... I saw the cardigan in the sunlight and I said "Oh no!  No! No! No!"

The colors don't match at all. Cue the sad music played on violins. I put the cardigan in time out for a while. I needed to ponder my next move. I looked at the labels to verify they all said grey.  They do.  But, ... BUT I had purchased most of this yarn a few years ago.  Then at the end of 2015 I realized I would need more yarn. I compared the skeins side-by-side and they looked the same even though the color lots were different.

I even shared a few pics on an online knit group and one person said the bottom color was no where near grey. Most definitely cornflower blue.

!

I frogged the cardigan. There was no way I was going to finish it and wear it out in public.  The mistake would have mocked me every time I wore it.  Heck, every time I looked at it.   During the Super Bowl I ripped it all back and now have to decide on a new project for this yarn.  A few people said they hoped I didn't *really* frog the whole thing. That something could have been done so the I wouldn't need to reknit the entire cardigan. Oh well. 

Meanwhile I'll need to find new grey yarn to start this cardigan again.  Then I would ask you how your knitting has been treating you? Hopefully better than mine has treated me. I have two other things on the needles. I still have a pair of vanilla socks I'm working on. I'm about six rows from placing the holder for the afterthought heel on the second sock. 

I still have the test knit vest marinating.  I think I'm going to frog the vest in the near future too. No progress has been made on it and I hate having things languish.

 

I guess it's pretty obvious that I haven't touched any of my knitting much since I realized the colors didn't match on the cardigan.

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you I've been spending lots of time in the kitchen.  I learned how to make scones!  I brought some into my office and everyone loved them. I've also figured out lemon curd and clotted cream.  Oh-em-gee is clotted cream good. I can't make it often though. I don't dare!

I'd ask you "Hey good looking, whatcha got cooking?" cause I'm hilarious that way. I have enjoyed the time I've been spending in the kitchen, despite the big clean up afterwards. I've figured out a few other things, too.  Actually, I've been tinkering a lot with low carb cooking, too. Lots of things have changed since I first went on the Atkin's plan about 12 years ago. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you about my most recent reading escapades. I did finish reading "Westing Game" way back when. It is a clever little book. The kind that when it's been finished, you think back and go "wow" the answer was right in front of me and I didn't see it. I love books like this.  It was also fun to have a short book discussion with my son.


Another book my son read in school is "Turtle in Paradise." I checked out the kindle version. Another good book for a young reader.  It felt like it skimmed the surface of what was going on.  Does that make sense?  It would have been nice if it went a little deeper.  Then I had to remind myself that this book is for young readers who like a good story, but aren't necessarily looking for deep meaning.  When I finished the book I wanted a bit more of the story.

I put "Sense and Sensibility" on hold while I read "Giants of the Earth" for the Well-Read mom book club I'm a part of. I know at least one of the club people reads my blog so I feel I can't go too deep into this book. Otherwise, what would I talk about at book club? Right?  I would recommend this book if you are looking for a solid story about the people who immigrated over to the United States and started a new life for themselves and their family on the prairies.

"Artemis Fowl" was relistened to in the car. I felt the need for a comfort story to listen to.  The audiobooks of this series are nice to listen to. The reader does such a fabulous job.

Currently "Icons" is now playing in my car. I've been wanting ot listen to this book for a while.  Now, as I looked the book up on GoodReads for a link, I see there is a second book in this series.  That means one more book I have to keep track of, so my husband and I can hear the audiobook. I'd ask you what books you have been reading. 

If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that *some* sewing has happened.

I came across a sewing website a while back called "Two Kids and a Blog."  The blog owner decided to start a sewing school group over on Facebook.

Already I'm behind. I made two out of the three quilt squares for January.

I goofed on the log cabin square. Its shy of being 11 " square. I can add a border all around to get it back to 12.

I'd ask you if you've been doing any sewing, if you are a seamstress.

Now I feel the need to come clean. This blog post was written over a few days. There was a lot more to write about than I realized. Well, now that work will calm down (I hope) I won't be coming home wore about and not having enough energy to do much other than the absolute minimum.

Daily 5 things of the day that made me happy

1. My guy getting off work early, and being able to spend some one-on-one time with him.

2. Lunch with some of my work peeps.  They are a hoot to be around and there is usually a ton of laughing going on.

3. Temperatures were in the 30s today.  Awesome!

4. We are one more day closer to spring!

5. A glass of ice cold milk, and oreos.