Filed under: Art, Life, in general, The Interweb | Tags: knitting, The Interweb, The Sims
Who has the time anymore? Not me.
Okay, so it’s not busyness that has been keeping me away. It’s those darn Sims. It was a ridiculously good birthday gift that Mike bought me. Even he’s hooked. So, when the kids are occupied or sleeping, I play, and when Mike is home and gets the chance, he plays and I’ve been knitting. At least something productive was being done.
Amazingly enough, I’m not behind on my laundry or dishes and the house isn’t really much worse than it normally is. It’s just the online stuff that I’m slacking off on, and since I don’t think of this as being the real world, it’s not so bad.
So, I knitted a whole blanket. Well, a whole baby blanket, anyway. I’m pretty proud of it, even though I made a few mistakes and didn’t exactly piece it together perfectly. It was a gift for my secret prayer pal from last year who had a baby on the 24th of September. I made a pink and purple checkered blanket – size 15 needles, cast 20 stitches on and worked knit 2, purl 2 for 32 rows, then switched colours. I made three strips like this – two purple, pink, purple strips and one pink, purple, pink strip and then sewed all three together to make a square(ish) blanket. It was soft and cozy and pretty quick to make since I used such big needles and chunky yarn. I had already given her an outfit for the baby, so I thought something homemade would be nice for her baby shower. Turns out, for blankets, she only got the one I made her and the standard Olga quilt (from the mother of one of my husband’s friends who makes a quilt for just about every baby shower hosted at the church…her name is Olga, by the way). I was glad to have put the time in to make it and glad to have it finished so I can move on to other things. Next on the agenda is the sewing project that I’ve been avoiding for two months now. The one I started way back in 2007. It must be finished, so I’m just not going to do anything else until it’s done. That’s the sound of me putting my foot down, just in case you were wondering.
So, anyway, my apologies for slacking off so much here. There will come a time (I assume) when The Sims will get boring and I’ll return to the land of food blogs, crafting websites, blogging, Facebook, emails and online friendships, but for now, I’m going to go build another house…or perhaps I’ll see if I can get my Sim’s lifetime aspiration fulfilled. Wow, I’m such a nerd.
Filed under: Food Blogs, The H Word, The Interweb | Tags: cleaning, Food Blogs
While I have been devoting myself to weekly updates on my third pregnancy, today I felt the need to write and for once, it had nothing to do with being pregnant. So I thought that this would be a better place for it to land.
I have two subjects: food and housecleaning. For a messy housewife, these things are often connected by need, but lately, they have just set themselves against each other in a bitter feud. Okay, I’m getting a little overly dramatic now – moving on.
I’ll start by saying that my food obsession (yes, I know, you know about that already) is interfering with my need to clean. And when I say “need to clean” I don’t mean that I crave cleaning…I mean that my house needs to be cleaned, no matter how reluctant I am to do it. My food obsession has found its satisfaction in reading restaurant reviews on various blogs. Some of these are restaurants that I may actually get to eat at someday (i.e. those in Seattle), but most are places that are not on my list of desired destinations (Delaware, Philadelphia, etc). If anything, these blogs just make me want to eat better food than I’m eating already, and unfortunately, prove to me yet again that the restaurants in this town suck. If I wanted to write restaurant reviews for Fort St. John, I’d have something to do for a few months – until the ten or so restaurants worth eating at ran out. Then I could pretend to be “cool” by writing reviews on the breakfast at A&W or the late night service at Humpty’s (for you Americans..Humpty’s is like Denny’s..but sort of cheaper and with a better menu).
Alas, I’m confined to my little town (that I happen to love, actually) and have to be content with living vicariously through a number of foodies who don’t know or care who I am.
The latest gem in my collection of food blogs is Mac & Cheese – the girl who is writing from Delaware and Philadelphia. She’s a vegetarian, which is why this makes it so great reading her reviews. She also has recipes, but I haven’t gotten to them yet. I was previously in the habit of randomly selecting entries to read when one looked good, but then I found that I was forgetting which ones I had read – so now I do it by date or restaurant/recipe name, depending on the blog.
Some of the blogs I’ve been reading are interesting, but I would never try the things they are eating or making. For instance, over at The GastroGnome, Naomi recently made duck prosciutto. That just doesn’t appeal to me at all. My dirty little secret (shh) is that occasionally poultry of some kind sounds okay, but the truth of the matter is that every time I’ve attempted to re-introduce it to my diet, I just haven’t been impressed enough. I’d rather eat fish any day. However, duck, rabbit, veal, beef, pork, etc. don’t appeal to me at all, and I don’t expect them to anytime soon. Even with the raving reviews that some of these dishes get, I can’t imagine sinking my teeth into Ethiopian raw ground beef (kitfo) or bone marrow. Bleck.
Anyway, finding a vegetarian foodie is terrific…but it won’t be long and my obsession will have lead me to reading all of her entries, at which time I will, with a great deal of hope, check back each day to see if there is anything new, only to waste more time because often, there are no new entries on food blogs for a week or so.
So, as for the rest of it, I have three projects – no wait, four – in my house that need to be completed, preferably before the baby is born. One: the living room. This isn’t even such a huge task, although the entry way is going to need some serious sweeping up and mopping to look like actual floor surface again. The living room has been slowly getting better, but only because I got rid of a few things and finally moved some bins to the shed (or rather, had Mike move them for me). At this point, there are some various things that need to be picked up and put away – kids clothes, winter clothes, shoes that don’t fit anymore, blankets, books, etc – and a whole lot of sweeping or vacuuming. I tend to enjoy sweeping better, but it is a bit back breaking when you have a whole room to do and it’s as bad as mine is. The reason it doesn’t get done more often is because my children have decided that things look better on the floor than where they belong. Pillows, blankets, toys, books, mail, clothes, etc. all end up there, where they collect dust and dirt and crumbs. One of the goals I have in cleaning my house is organizing it as well and making it less likely that the kids things will be left all over the place every day. So far, my kitchen cleaning is sticking. All I have to do is keep up on sweeping the floor when it needs it and making sure to wipe up spills when they happen. Keeping toys out of the kitchen is another part of it, but at least Jenny can be told to take things back out as soon as she brings them in. Elias may understand, but it doesn’t mean that he learns from it.
Okay, so I went off track a little bit there. My second project is my laundry room. It’s ridiculous. It’s gotten to the point where I can barely walk into it, and the kicker it is also the furnace/hot water tank room and the hallway to the back door. We have a baby gate between the hallway and laundry room because there is no way I would want my children going in there. Who knows what they might eat or step on. At the moment, my mental image of this room includes at least a dozen pop bottles that Mike has so graciously thrown into it, various items of clothing that are either dirty or need to be repacked in the shed somewhere, a diaper pail that is currently not being used, my tool box, with contents spilling out, various bags and boxes and loose items for recycling and some shelving on the floor that hasn’t been put up yet (well, obviously). All that in a room with floor space measuring approximately four feet wide by eleven feet long. My dad put up a shelf, but it serves now to hold paint that we haven’t used yet, rather than it’s original purpose of holding some of the cleaning supplies and tools stored in this room. It needs serious work and is possibly the most daunting of the projects I have set out. Unfortunately, you also can’t avoid seeing it if you’re walking down the hall, so it should be the second room on my list.
As for three and four – I’m not yet sure which I ought to tackle first, although our bedroom is certainly in greater need of cleaning than the kids’ room. The thing is, if I have people over with kids, they will inevitably play in the kids’ room, which means that it gets seen and used more often and should be safe and clean for that reason. Our bedroom is really bad – hasn’t been vacuumed in who knows how long, because I haven’t been able to see the floor for that long. Again, lots of things that need to be washed or taken to the shed.
It is at times quite daunting to think about the remaining work to be done, but then I can be thankful for the size of my house that I don’t have more to do. This is one time when having a small home pays off. The downside is that we have no where to put so much of the junk that’s making a mess, and if we had a little more room (a basement, perhaps), we would have that available. I can also look forward to getting these projects done because I have managed to clean my kitchen and bathroom quite thoroughly (okay, except for my desk) and am proud of them. I still don’t want people coming over because the first thing they see is the living room, but at least if they glance in, they might notice the clean kitchen counters and the lack of dirty dishes scattered around. If they had to use the bathroom, they would be using a much cleaner bathroom than the one that existed a few weeks ago.
Well, I’ve carried on long enough to waste a good deal of time that could have been used to clean my living room. I’ve also satisfied my need to write, so I think I can end it there. Until the next time I fool you into reading something I wrote - good day.
Filed under: Environmentalism, Home Sweet Home, Life, in general, Mi familia, Music, The H Word, The Interweb
Yes, that’s right, it’s been far too long since I’ve written. In part, it’s because I don’t want to admit my failure at cleaning my house. I made a bit of progress a while back, but the only thing I’ve done consistantly is keep the sink shiny (Babystep number one from FlyLady) and keep the dining room table clear enough to eat supper at every night. I suppose this is progress in a way, because for the longest time, we were eating regularly on the couch, and usually watching a movie while we ate (which is not a good habit to get into).
I’ve been spending far too much time on the computer. I know it’s true, but I don’t know how to do anything about it. There is just so much on the internet. For instance, I’ve started following Lose Weight With Me and I love it. This guy knows what he’s talking about -healthy living, rather than “lose weight fast”, which is what I’ve been doing for the last six months. He’s candid and helpful in his posts. Also, I’m addicted to Facebook. Yes, first it was MySpace, then I discovered that Facebook seems to cater more to grown ups. I get really tired of some of the stuff on MySpace..although I still use it. Also, most of the people who I always wanted to have a MySpace (and didn’t), have Facebook. So there you go.
I feel like I am severely lacking in creativity today. One good thing about today is that I discovered (through the blog mentioned earlier) an awesome video by Mika – Big Girl (You are Beautiful), and then started looking for more of his music - I LOVE IT!! I like a lot of different kinds of music, and I’m not usually into pop, but this is a good kind of pop – the kind that makes you smile at the lyrics and want to dance. Seriously, it’s hard to just sit here right now with some of his music in my head. Well, except that the front shade is up, which means that if I started dancing, the neighbors would see me. On that note, you know the old saying “Dance like no one’s watching.”? Well, the only way you’ll catch me dancing is if no one really is watching. I hardly ever dance around Mike. Jenny and Elias are an exception…they love it when I dance (oooh, Mommy’s funny!!).
Also online – I found an instructional video for making fabric from grocery or trash bags. I have tons of these things, and I fully intend to make use of them and make some reusable thicker bags to take shopping with me. I am so tired of throwing away plastic bags (it makes me feel guilty). In direct relation to this subject, I also found an interesting blog: No More Garbage I wonder if this couple has heard of melting bags together to make fabric….I’ll have to leave them a comment.
I think changing my diet and aiming for better health has made me more aware of other parts of my life that need changing. For one thing, I want to start recycling more. I am not an environmentalist by any means. In fact, as some of you may remember, I once wrote a poem called “The Anti-Environmentalist Nightmare” which Brandi turned into a song for me. However, when I start thinking about the amount of garbage we produce every month and how much of it could have been recycled, I feel guilty (I said that earlier, didn’t I?).
I think this is also where the desire to clean my house comes from. I’ve been throwing stuff out left and right – whether I’m actually throwing it away or giving it to a thrift store, I have gotten rid of a lot of stuff lately. Clothes that I haven’t worn in ages, old journal entries or sermon notes that I don’t want or need anymore. I gave the Action BC thrift store about four bags of clothes recently and I still have more that I could get rid of (I’m just sure of it, even though I haven’t gone through any more of it yet). There are certain areas, though, that are very difficult for me to clean up. Bills, paperwork, junk mail…it all usually ends up laying around so long I lose track of what’s new and what’s old. This can turn into a real problem over time. I need to have a system, I know. I need to have places to put all that stuff so that it doesn’t get forgotten. So far no word on whether we will have to pay a late fee on the gas bill I lost at the beginning of the month.
I could keep writing, but I may actually try the plastic bag melting idea and I can’t do that and be on the computer at the same time (it’s a good thing, too, I need a break!).
