Friday Fun

I'm so happy! Today I got my first paycheck for my new "substitutoring" job.  It's small, but every little bit helps. Plus, I think my new job is really fun. I went in to sub again on Tuesday and the time just flew by. I'm hoping that I get to sub more during the next semester.  Not that I want the regular tutors to get sick....really.

Here are more cards from Aunt Nell's box.  The one below was sent to her from my Uncle Otto and Aunt Mary. Uncle Otto was my great-uncle. He was my grandfather's brother. I love that I had an Uncle Otto. His name is a palindrome!  Palindromes are cool.

This afternoon I made a loaf of oatmeal bread. I'd post a picture, but my camera battery is having to re-charge. Trust me. It looks good and tastes wonderful, especially warm from the oven.

Today was The Boy's last day of school and he got home right before lunchtime.  So far he's reported making nothing but A's on his final exams.  He also came in 2nd place in the school spelling bee earlier this week, and 2nd place in the school book-fair. I posted a picture of him diligently working on that project here.

Have a blessed weekend!

The Nightly Routine

As I'm thinking and writing about my struggles with developing good housekeeping habits, I'd like to mention that I had no trouble getting into a routine when The Boy was still The Baby.  I was a teacher before The Boy was born and I knew that children need  a certain amount of structure and routine in order to thrive.  Of course, when The Baby came along, my routine was based around Nursing and Naptime. I was highly motivated to develop a good routine for my precious baby.

After The Boy started school I did make sure we had good routines for getting up and off to school, afternoons, and bedtime routines for him.  I knew children need a certain amount of structure and routine in order to thrive.

The Professor is one of those people who is naturally very orderly, and he seems to thrive on structure and routine.

I guess I thought that structure and routine were great for babies and children or for people like The Professor, but not for me.

It has taken me a long time to finally realize that I need a certain amount of structure and routine in order to thrive.

Here's my Nightly Routine:

Clean Kitchen
Look at Calendar and make To Do list for the next day
Wash face/brush teeth
Set out clothes for the next day
Make magnesium supplement drink
In bed to finish my drink and read by 9 or 9:30

I resisted a nightly routine for a long time. In fact, I spent many nights up late on the computer until 11 or 12.  Then I'd just fall in to bed, sometimes without even putting on my pajamas. Foolish, foolish me.  The Professor finally convinced me to start shutting off the computer at 9 pm.  Just to make him happy, I did. I'd shut off the computer at 9 and head for the bedroom to read and drink my Natural Calm.* Then I began to realize that it wouldn't take me 5 minutes to do the face/teeth thing after I shut down the computer.  And so the nightly routine ball began to roll.

Now I generally start the nightly routine around 8:30 by making sure the kitchen is clean and washing up the supper dishes if I haven't done it already.  Most of the time I'm totally finished with the routine by 9.

*Natural Calm is the magnesium supplement that I take every night. It's a powder that dissolves in hot water that I sip as I read before bedtime. It really helps me get to sleep and get a good night's rest.

The Morning Routine

As The Boy and The Professor have gotten back into their school/teaching routines, I have also gotten back into my own routine here at The House.  One of my goals for this year was to re-commit to my housekeeping routine and I have to say that I'm chugging right along on this.  I have to be quite strict with myself once I'm home alone again during the day because I have the tendency to waste lots of time browsing the Infinite Store of Knowledge that is the internet.  So far I've really been able to stick to my morning and evening routines which are really the backbone of all my housekeeping. The weekly stuff, the decluttering 15 minutes a day a la' Flylady, has all sort of fallen into place over the last few months.

I know that there are plenty of other mothers out there with more children at home, who do a lot more than I do during the day, plus homeschooling. I love those other mothers. I admire them. I read their blogs with a thankful heart. They are contributing so much to their families and communities. My contribution is much, much smaller.  But, it is my responsibility to contribute to my family what I can.

Here's my usual Morning Routine:

Up by 6:30 at the latest. I usually end up getting up around 6:20.
Cook breakfast for us all, make lunch for The Boy.
The Boy and The Professor leave for their schools about 7:15. (The Professor walks The Boy to school every morning before he walks to The College.)
Have COFFEE :)
Make the bed.
Shower and dress for the day.
Wash up the breakfast dishes and straighten up the kitchen.
Put in a load of laundry.
Sit down to check e-mail and Facebook and download a podcast to listen to while I'm doing my major project of the day.

This is a very simple routine, but believe me when I tell you it has taken me YEARS to figure out that getting up early, and doing a few simple but necessary things really does set the tone for a productive day.  Yes, I have to write down on my list "Make the bed" every day.  I have learned from sad experience that if it is to get done I must Write. It. Down.

Now, I love FlyLady and you can tell that I use her system to help me, but you can also tell, if you know anything about FlyLady, that she recommends making the bed as soon as you get out of it and getting dressed etc. before everybody else gets up.  I don't do it that way. Maybe it would be better if I did. I don't know. This is working for me and has been for a while now, so I'm not going to tweak it right now.

This morning I finished my coffee about 7:35 and I was through with my Morning Routine and sitting at the computer checking e-mail by 8:04.  In the not too distant past, I might take my coffee into the den, before doing anything else, "just to check e-mail" and find myself at noon, still sitting here in my bathrobe, with nothing accomplished around my house and feeling like a failure. It has taken me a long time to learn that the discipline of routine really does open the door to freedom.

Back to School, Back to Blogging

Well, it's that time of year again. The Boy started back to school (8th grade already!) on August 4th, which I thought was waaaayyyy too early. The Boy didn't seem to have any difficulty getting back into the routine and he is happy with his teachers, so that's going well enough.  The Professor starts teaching again on Thursday.  Things have already perked up around here, though. The college kids who live in the dorms on campus moved in over the weekend and they are busy these next few days doing fun college stuff.  I always love this time of year when the college kids move back to campus and our little community bursts with extra excitement and energy.

With The Boy and The Professor back at the academic grind, it's time for me to get some of my own projects going again.

Here are a few things I'm working on:

The Boy and I will be getting back to studying German. We've been very slack all summer and I am ready to finish this program.

I'm working my way through a math curriculum, which will be another post.

I need to rearrange the living room which will involve taking down and rearranging pictures and art. The arrival of The Piano has thrown that room out of kilter. I'm really dreading this job, so it probably will be two or three years before I get to it.

The Afghan I started last fall is languishing half finished in a corner of my bedroom and I really need to get that project done.

I'm going to start doing more cooking "from scratch." Actually, I already do a fair amount of cooking from scratch, but there are a few things that I have been purchasing that I really want to start making myself. For instance, bread, which I don't eat, but The Boy and The Professor eat it every day.  Back in the summer, before we left for our two week trip to Arizona, we had a half a loaf of bread (Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat) that I meant to put in the freezer.  There's always something that gets forgotten, and I forgot to stick that bread in the freezer.  We were gone for two weeks, the house was pretty warm and humid, and when I got back and found that bread I was shocked to discover that it looked exactly the same. There was no mold. Not even a hint of that "moldy" smell. It was the George Hamilton of bread.  Uh, call me crazy, but that just ain't natural.

The other two things I plan to start making for myself are mayonnaise and yogurt.  Mayo, because I really don't like the use of soybean oil that is the basis for all commercial brands.  Yogurt, because I like full-fat, plain, Greek-style yogurt and I'm sick and tired of only finding no-fat, plain yogurt where I do my grocery shopping.

We finished the last container of  "store-bought" mayo last week, and so I made my first batch of homemade mayonnaise for our BLT salads for lunch today.  I found the recipe in my handy-dandy 1948 edition of The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer. I made the mayo with my little hand blender while the bacon was cooking in the microwave. It did not take long at all, and although it didn't taste like Hellman's, The Professor gave it a "thumbs-up."  According to my Nourishing Traditions book, my homemade mayo should keep in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Here's a random picture:

Beethoven with Legos
Not even The Piano is spared from the Lego take-over of my home.

Play Us a Song, Piano Man...

A few weeks ago I walked in to pay a bill at our local gas company, and sitting in the lobby was a lovely little Kimball piano.  We've been looking for a piano for The Boy for a while, and it's been difficult to locate a nice used piano at a price that wouldn't make The Professor cringe and in a location that is not too far away, because moving a piano is no small feat.

So, lo and behold, there was this piano. I wondered why it was in the lobby of the gas company office.  The couple who own the gas company also attend our church, so I told Mrs. Gas Company one Sunday after church that I had noticed the piano in the lobby and asked if she'd be interested in selling it.  She told me that a lady from Memphis had been in our town to clean out her mother's house and had come by to see Mrs. G.C. at the office on her way back home. Memphis Lady had the piano on a trailer behind a truck and when Mrs. G.C. saw it, she offered to buy it from her.  They moved it in to the lobby and there it sat. She didn't really have a place in her house for a piano.  When I asked her about selling it, she quoted me a ridiculously low price and I almost fainted.  It was a price that would not make The Professor have hang-bangs, plus we would only have to move it a few blocks to our house.

The Professor worked out the details for getting the piano moved and he and the helpful piano moving volunteers from the college maintenance staff got it over here this morning.

I am going to have to re-arrange my living room furniture now,

 but I'm so happy The Boy has a real piano to play.   Thanks be to God!

One of these days I'll get around to posting about the second half of our vacation, my latest project around the house, and what I have been reading this summer.

At Last!

I just got a call from the new maintenance supervisor at the college and it looks like we are finally going to get a new air conditioner for the downstairs.  We had to replace one last summer and the one they used to replace it has just NOT done the job. It barely cools one room and we need it to cool our entire downstairs. They'll be bringing us the new AC this afternoon. I know it's not the most efficient way to cool a house, but it's worked pretty well for the time we've lived here.  I could have gotten them to put another AC in the front of the house, but we have wiring issues and we thought it might be too much of a strain on things to have two units working at the same time.   (During certain cycles of the washing machine the house lights will dim and flicker. Weird.)

When this house was originally built, there was no air conditioning, but it was built with the windows and doors in strategic places to take advantage of cross breezes to keep the house comfortable. Unfortunately for us now, we can't open all the windows, so without air conditioning it would be unbearable in the house during the summer.

I think I've mentioned before that we don't own this house. It belongs to the college where The Professor is employed.  It's been a nice arrangement for the most part, but on the other hand, this house is pretty much low priority for maintenance and improvements.

I would love to live in a place where I wouldn't need the AC in the summer time...like Flagstaff! Or up in the mountains of North Carolina around Maggie Valley.

Maybe someday...

Snow, Again? Plus, Planning for Summer Vacation

Can you believe MORE snow in the forecast for us tonight, with a possibility of 1-3 inches?   It's inconceivable! And yes, I do know what that word means. :)

I'm off to make my weekly trek to the grocery store a day early, and maybe I'll get there early enough to avoid the crazy bread and milk buying frenzy that I'm sure will be happening today.

In other news, I've been working on vacation plans for the summer.

We usually like to take a big trip during our summer break. I love to travel, but for the past several years the thought of trying to fly out on a vacation has not been appealing to me.  I used to love going to the airport. The whole process of air travel was exciting and fun (well, most of it) and I loved planning our trips.   But lately all the hassle and expense of air travel has over-shadowed the fun for me.  We took car trips the last couple of years, which were just as fun and a lot less expensive. But, The Professor informed me that he really wants us to go somewhere out west this year, if we possibly can. This means flying.  I've spent the past several days researching possibilities and working out potential itineraries for us.  I have three potential trips planned, and now we have to decide which one is the best option for us this year.  This is the part of the process I like the least, since it involves a LOT of back and forth, hemming and hawing by The Professor, who never, ever, rushes in to anything. (We dated for SIX YEARS before we married - talk about not wanting to rush into things!)  The Boy and I have already decided where we would prefer to go - but it will take The Professor about twice as long to come to the same conclusion.

In planning our vacations I have found Vacation Rentals by Owner to be a very good source for great houses to rent, at reasonable prices, at almost every destination we have visited.  I love using rentals for our travels instead of hotels, unless it's for a one or two night stay.  I've had good luck with the owner managed rentals, but I've also had good luck using real estate offices that manage rentals and other types of cottage or vacation rental management companies.

Where ever we end up going, I'm sure we'll have a wonderful Summer Holiday.

Everything old is new again...Reconditioning Cast Iron

  A couple of months ago I was looking for a small cast iron skillet that I thought we had around here somewhere and, lo and behold, I found the mother lode of cast iron cookware hidden way back in a kitchen cabinet.  There were four skillets of various sizes, and two dutch ovens. Ok, maybe not exactly "the mother lode" of cast iron, but I had certainly forgotten their existence.  None of the pieces were in good condition - in fact, they really looked like they might be beyond help and destined for the scrap heap.  Fortunately, a little googling around led me to this post at  Black Iron Blog about restoring cast iron.  Wow!  I've been slowly but surely reconditioning my pieces and I'm so happy to be able to use them again.  I started with the small skillets and just finished with one of the dutch ovens and I thought that I'd post about my latest project here.

Here's what I used: oven cleaner, vinegar, heavy duty plastic bag, 000 steel  wool
(Ignore the container of ammonia on the left - it was NOT used in this process.)

Here's the grody dutch oven and lid. Is that white stuff mildew? Gross.

Ok, I got my trusty kitchen gloves on, moved to a well -ventilated area, put the D.O.w/L in the large bag, and sprayed it down with the oven cleaner.  I then set the whole thing into an old roasting pan and left it for a week.  That's right. I left it alone. Did not touch it. At all. Practically forgot about it. Then today I pulled it out and scrubbed it down with hot soapy water and a scrubby sponge.  The old coating mostly came off. It came completely off the inside, but there were still areas that didn't come off of the outside.

Here's the DOw/L stewing in the oven cleaner. 

What they looked like today after I scrubbed off the oven cleaner.

Since the D.O. didn't have very much rust on it, I simply rubbed off the rust with the steel wool. The lid got to soak in the vinegar/hot water bath (1 quart vinegar/1 gallon hot water) for about 20 minutes, then I rubbed it down with the steel wool as well.

Here's the lid taking its bath.

I followed Black Iron Dude's instructions for oven temp, rubbing the heated cast iron with oil, etc., and ended up with this:

TaDa!  Lovely almost like new reconditioned Dutch Oven.

I'm cooking our supper in my "new" cast iron dutch oven.