Win Win Mentality

I thought this was a bit of garbage, but it turns out it was a beautiful mushroom in the middle of my yard!  Bloom where you're planted and it sure did!

I took down the homemade awning yesterday.  Only found one dead spider in it. No live ones!! :)

And the major win I did yesterday...

The ice maker in the kitchen fridge had died.  It worked SOMETIMES if the door got left open a crack all night or if I put some ice trays full of water underneath it.  It's kind of like it would suddenly gain a conscience.  "OH MY!  Where's my head!  I need to be making ice cubes!"

Well that worked just a few times.

In my online research, I found that there is a little thermostat thingy inside of the ice maker and it may have gotten too much moisture on it and it broke.  I could believe that.  It cost $30ish on one site and $9 on another.  But then it occurred to me that I had a whirlpool fridge in the garage that we use for overflow for big meals.  The ice maker water line isn't even hooked up!

So I researched further and found that the garage fridge ice maker was the exact same model!

So I unplugged it and removed the ice maker, plugged it back in.

Unplugged the kitchen fridge and replaced it, plugged it back in.

Oh and I found one of the container lids that we were missing behind the microwave that I had to move!

So win win!

An hour or so later, I heard the first clattering of our first batch of ice cubes!

I threw them out.  Kind of like making pancakes.  But this ice maker hadn't been used for years.

But it's working it's little heart out now!!

CatchUp Wanna Be Irish Style

 I had a weird day yesterday.  A feeling hit me that I haven't felt in 20 years and it knocked me off my feet.  It was not a good feeling.  

So once I got home, I got busy with work, folded some clothes, got ready for a cooking class last night and the feeling subsided.  I felt "in control" again.  MUCH better!

If that's an anxiety attack, I'm going to do my best to avoid them.

Anyway, the cars have been in and out of the shop with major issues for the past few weeks.  I'll be glad when all cars are functional again without the engine lights coming on or weird noises from under the hoods or near tires.  

In the market for a new or new to me lawn mower.  My dear brother drove here from western Iowa and mowed my yards a week ago Thursday and they're about due again.  What an awesome brother I've got!

While I tried out his mower, finishing the back yard, he used his gas powered trimmer and started in around my garden.  He accidentally trimmed up two of my 3 tomato plants that I grew from seed before he realized there were "wanted" plants mixed in with the tall weeds! :) I asked him to leave the last one as it was my favorite anyway.  They are NOT being productive plants anyway this year.  I guess I don't know what I'm doing with the garden.

His mower is a zero turn and I think I may be sold on that idea now.  It was very awkward to figure out and I almost drove over him a couple times yelling, "How do I stop this thing?" "PULL BACK!  Like WHOA NELLY!"

oh!  Treat it like a horse, huh?  okey dokey.  I've always WANTED a horse!  I'll name her Nelly, of course.  Or Mr Ed.  It depends on what name hits me as appropriate when I finally pick one out.

Aggie turned 2!!!!  We had her party at the Des Moines Science Center with all the major players of her life in attendance.  So much fun!

Then cake with just the immediate family and grandparents.  Her other grandma made the cake and it was SO good!  It had a raspberry filling! mmmmm  I went off my pre-diabetic diet and enjoyed a half piece.

OH - my A1C got tested again this morning and it's 5.5!!!  Dropped from 5.9 in 3 months!  yay!  I'm still pre-diabetic though and will have to consistently watch what I eat.  Keeping it low carb as much as possible.  I think I'll wait a few more months before I bring a few more carbs into my food though.

I got 2 things entered into the State Fair that just started.  Thank goodness my son-in-law takes such good care of clothing I've made for him!  I've been out of the sewing mojo for some time now.  I've STARTED a ton of projects but haven't gotten very far in actually sewing them together.  

That might be my new hobby.  Dream up and starting projects.  I need a friend whose hobby is to complete unfinished projects and we'll be the dream team!

I've got several ideas for Christmas gifts and once I push all the already started projects off my sewing table, I'll get going on them!

Wednesday night, I attended a cooking class in town nearby and learned how to chop veggies properly with knives!  It was so much fun and I've got 2 quarts of chopped veggies that I'll eat tonight.

Thursday night, I attended the cooking class again with a widow friend and we learned how to make Spring Rolls!  OOOH!!!  Those rice paper rounds made it so easy!  However with 8 carbs per wrap, I only ate one and made two other rolls using lettuce leaves for the wrap.  They were messier and I should have had a fork, but oh well.  The peanut sauce was DELISH and the chef deliberately left out the brown sugar!  So now we know we can!  I was too shy to ask, but someone else did. Whew! Thankful for their boldness!

Oh!  Last weekend, Leon and I met up with Maddy and Meri in Waterloo for the Irish Fest!  

We watched knives being forged from railroad ties

Bohran, tin whistle demonstrations and Myth telling

Maddy and Meri were the only ones who enjoyed authentic Irish cuisine.  Leon ate up most of my Food dollar bucks on lemonade, corn dogs, gelato, burgers, fries and fried cheese curds.  No, I wasn't keeping track...  But I did end up with a burger and a few curds.

We saw the Trinity Irish Dancers from Chicago!  And reminisced about when Meri took Irish dance classes when she was really young.

Lots of quality time with my girls!

Leon climbed 3/4s of a wall!!!  The last time he'd tried this sort of thing, he only got a few feet off the ground.  So he's improving!!

Maddy wove some fabric and may have just struck on her NEW hobby!  She's got a lot of them too.  Like Mother, like daughter!

Enjoyed the Highland games!  They're throwing a 28 pound rock as if it's a discus throw!  Some got it as far as 34 feet!  Mine would have landed on my foot.

The girls got to pet some Irish dogs!

It was a fun day and I put in over 5 miles in walking. My watch confirmed!  Leon was beat!  And now he's thinking twice about attending the State Fair with me because of the walking...

:) Maybe I'll bring him in with a stroller! LOL!

Well, back to work.  Meri's car is in the shop today and I'm working from my bestie's nursing home library for at least the morning.  Trying to be inconspicuous and quiet.  She and I have lunch plans but I'm working and she's got her morning schedule.

I've got a mile in so far today just walking from the car fixing place!  

THAT should work off any carbs I picked up last night or decide to eat today.  sigh.  I have no idea how this whole thing works yet.

When Energy Levels Matter

 

Well, it's been a while since my birthday!  Seems like yesterday.

I met up with my favorite cousin Julie at the Zombie Burger!!

Oh my goodness, the fun talks we had!  It's so great to talk to someone without having to avoid certain topics and who gets me on every level of life!  I love that chick!

Afterwards, we thrifted a little and LOOK what I found!  Magnetic tiles for a road for only $5!  I sent Jen a pic and she said GET IT!  THAT'S A $50 toy!

No worries, it was already in my cart!

Got home and was playing with Aggie on it when Jen got home from work.

Um Val...  you should have saved that as a gift for Aggie's upcoming birthday! It's on her birthday wish list!

whoops.  Guess who's spoiled in MY household right now?...

but it was only $5!

:) Here she's taking care of her babies.  We sit on the porch with them a little every day and she fusses over them while trying to wrap them in a blanket and feed them. 

Then they fall on their heads on the floor.

Here's the banana tree I brought back from my Kentucky sister's house a year ago this past spring!  Isn't it lovely?!  They're not indigenous around Kentucky either, but Tammy has several pots of them on her deck, pulling them in each winter.  I'm going to try to keep that up with this one. So far so good!

Within the last couple weeks, I invested in a smart watch. It had been a while since I'd had one and the prices were a LOT lower than what I had been expecting. This one is amazing.  Besides counting my steps, it keeps track of a ton of different things.  The phone app even will keep track of my calorie intake each day.

Well, was I in for a surprise on Monday!  I had a horrible night that night, waking up half way into sleep in order to be sick for a while.  I was so miserable from several hours awake feeling icky,l that I slept in until 6!

Can you imagine?!!!

So I was sick and NO energy.  I sat on the deck with some bone broth for breakfast for over an hour before trying to start work.  Mostly lethargic.  A co-worker knew I was wanting to go take a nap but I had things that had to get done.

At 11am, my watch suddenly buzzed and said, "Your energy level is draining too fast!  You need to take a break and rest!"

Whoa.  Who are YOU to tell me what to do!?

My watch.

So I took a break and slept most of the afternoon.  Uggh.  I WAS drained. How did my watch know?!

Here's the graph from the app from when I went to bed around 7pm that night.

as opposed to my energy levels yesterday when I got a 1.5 mile walk in yesterday morning!

I guess I WAS sick, but seeing my energy all spelled out and what walks do for recovery is amazing!

So I walked again today and before work, besides the walk, I'd taken the garbage out, cleaned out the van, moved a bunch of framed stuff up to my new office and pulled some weeds!

On Tuesday even, just moving the frames would have zapped all my energy!  So I'm feeling so much better now!

Ok, so I spent the last two days working from Meri's house so that the excavation people could get into Meri's basement easily.  They didn't even come Wednesday but I was so busy with work, that I spent the entire day there anyway, working from her dining room table.

Here was my view.  We were keeping her cats in the living room so if the guys showed up, the cats wouldn't get lost under the house with the basement door open.

Reedus was roaming free with me in the dining room.  

Back to the yard issue.  The water line between Meri's house and the street hookup had corroded beyond repair and flooded her yard.  It was basically lake front property with a big water bill.  Her basement sump pump was running NON-stop and at one point couldn't keep up with 2 inches of water touching her furnace.  And the sidewalk was flooded.

Thanks be to God for other situations that made this a doable fix and His timing is always best.

They finally arrived to finish the job yesterday and her yard now looks like a missile testing site.

In that spot where the puddle is, later became a gaping hole and then buried again a few hours later.

Currently the rider mower would get lost or high centered in any of the peaks and valleys that is her yard, but they're coming back today to level it out a bit more. whew!  

It will be nice when things calm down.

Then at the local farmers market, Jen, Aggie and I went to last night. The food truck had this on their menu for a few minutes!  Yikes!  The food truck gal was scared to death of it but didn't know what it was.  It's roughly 2 inches long!

So I took the pic and did a google pic search. It's a Cicada killer wasp!

Sheesh!  I wouldn't want to be in a dark alley with that scary thing!

Oh and I need to enter some stuff in the fair a week from tomorrow.  I've started about 5 projects and don't have ANYTHING ready.  I might just enter one of the jackets I made for Matthew, but who knows what my energy level will be this next week!

Potahto

So my potatoes were looking bunky.

I wondered if maybe they were done as it had been almost 10 weeks and then I saw a post on some FB group I belong to where someone was showing off all the produce from their garden.  

"HEY!..." I asked them. "When did you plant those potatoes and did they look like below when you harvested them?"

They confirmed that yes indeedy, their plants looked like mine before they harvested.  So chances were high that I had some potatoes in them there bags!

I was excited.

So I dumped them out.

I got 5 potatoes... for ten weeks of care...

 sigh...  I've discovered where I made my mistake.

I used grass clippings as the stuffing around the plants as they grew. 

APPARENTLY  too many grass clippings can create a gas that is toxic to the plants and could kill them, so be careful using too much in your gardens...

It's probably too late to plant anymore.  

Well... MAYBE not!  Ten weeks will take us to the end of September.

THAT could work!

hmmmmm

I'll replant them and buy a bale of straw instead of grass clippings...

OH!  And I bought a new to me mower!!!  The other is still getting fixed, but the guy who's fixing it sold me his old one.  Yay!  Once my old one is fixed, Meri can have one all the time at her house and mow her yard whenever she wants and not depend on my mowing schedule!

The new to me one mows so smoothly...  And the grass doesn't have an odd plaid pattern...

It's almost like someone else's yard!

Dreaming big

Meri and I worked out again this morning.  I'm beat.  But feeling productive, like maybe I am on my way to a better shape.  

Hope so.

Maddy and Matthew's dog Zola, ate the stuffing out of a dog toy and ended up at the emergency vet clinic last night.  We find out today if everything came out ok, but that poor thing!  She might need surgery.  Please send a prayer for her!

Isn't she a sweetie?  I can't wait to meet her!

Meri and Shub came over yesterday and played Frisbee in the back yard with Leon and me.  It's a heavy Frisbee, I guess for Frisbee golf.  

I kept not catching it on purpose because I kept thinking of the boomerang on the Road Warrior and thought I'd lose some fingers.

OH!  One of my garden spots is in!  

I agonized on how to use up some of my fabric stash to line it, instead of using the store bought weed barrier.  I mean... I have SO much fabric!!!  

Found that wool fabric is the best to insulate the ground and keep the weeds to a minimum.  

I'll probably spread the grass clippings on top of it so it won't look TOO odd in the neighborhood.  I've already put weights down on the edges to keep it from blowing off.

And it wasn't enough to make a wool cape out of anyway...  So it'd probably be made into scarves or a bag anyway.  And who has time for THAT?!

I'll let you know how it works. If it works.

Pay no attention to the pile of branches on the one side and the board that is out of it's hinges.  That'll be a next year project, fixing that up.

I've got 9 cherry tomatoes in.  And about that in mini sweet pepper plants.  I started them both in my mini hot house, the pepper seeds from an actual pepper that I got at Aldi.  

While Meri was in the back yard, she gave me some ideas on how we could finish up the area behind the garage.  The grape vine might go somewhere else.  Maybe the back of the yard.  Don't know...  Maybe let it grow along the fence?  Eh... we'll see.

And we need a stairway going down the hill.  I'm imagining something like this.

But then again, if I let my imagination REALLY go, I can imagine something like this...

So many plans in the works and ideas that need to be fulfilled before I can move on to the next one.

Do you have any plans that really need to be thought out well before the next phase?

I want a new drug

We had a birthday party last night!  Our nephew, Josh, and his girlfriend Carli came over with their dog, Blue.  It was his birthday last week.  

Meri and Shub came too.

We were right up to 10 people and no hugs.  

A lot of fun tho.

After dinner, Leon, Josh and Carli played with a tennis ball in the front yard and our tree is in bloom!!!  

I love this time of year!

Oh, yesterday earlier, Leon wanted to play a game that he calls, "Inject with a virus and then a cure".

I thought, "wow!  The games these kids of the quarn come up with!"

He made little vials of both things made of Legos and then pokes you with the sharp end.

and they HURT!

Much like a real inoculation...

You have to pretend to feel woozy within seconds and then like you're dying, slumping onto the couch.

Then he injects you with the cure and you start feeling better and can finish vacuuming.

He could be practicing for when he's an important doctor someday...

I played along as did most of the group last night and thought it was cute!

So I posted it on our family group and Ryan said that he'd been playing Resident Evil with Leon and that's where that came from.

oh.

Well, it's still cute.

I wish there was a real injection that could cure everyone...

Mr Frog and other tree adventures

On Saturday, we were feeling energetic and ready to tackle the yard.  Well... I was, but Robb was my reluctant yet willing partner in crime.  

We cut down branches, cut them up and hauled them out to the landfill area in town.  We FINALLY took down the one that's been scratching the tops of all the cars.  Yikes!  Stripes of rust someday on those cars.  

Sometimes the branches would hang so far out the back of the van that they scritch scratched the pavement as we drove.  It's not far.  We must have taken eight loads out there.  

The land fill is only for yard waste, so it's burnable.

 Some days when they're burning out there, we can see the smoke and it smells like a bonfire.  Get me some marshmallows!!!

As I mentioned, it's close by.

You can tell which way the wind is blowing by the smell.  If it's a bonfire, then the wind is coming from the south.  If it smells of hog manure, then it's from the north. or east or west...

This was the last load.  Isn't it cool?  I'm seeing some potential yard art, like a giraffe!  Just need a little giraffe-y type paint job...

Robb doesn't think so... 

so it stayed out at the landfill. 

I even got ambitious and tackled the remaining stump of the tree that was taken down over a year ago.  I was sick and tired of mowing around it.  A new tree is growing beside it and I think that one will be it's replacement.  Leon calls it the baby tree and pets it.

So I got the chainsaw and cut the stump into small cake piece sizes and it just broke apart.  It was basically rotten underneath anyway.  So now I have a hole full of sawdust in the yard, next to the baby tree.  

Gotta find me some dirt.

Then I spent the rest of the day sewing on a shirt for Meri.  Back to my one trick pattern because she doesn't like any of my creative bits that I wanted to add.  Oh well, I can make this shirt in my sleep now.  I'll have her model for you when I get it done.

On Sunday when Leon got home, all he wanted to do was play outside and dream about the branches that are no more.  I wasn't going to argue with him so I let him climb a couple trees and play swords or magic wands with the twigs while I gathered up the remaining twigs on the yard and picked tomatoes.

 I mowed yesterday over lunch and happened to mention the glutton of frogs in the yard to Meri.  It wasn't quite Biblical proportions, but notable.  She wasn't able to get the dogs to come in last night and that's when I remembered them.  OHHHHH.. 

They're huntin' dogs!  for frogs, but what else are they going to hunt for in our back yard?  I haven't seen baby bunnies for a while and birds try to avoid our yard these days...

She and Leon were finally able to get the dogs inside, then went a-huntin' themselves.  I could see Meri's cell phone lighting the way as they followed the same path around the yard that our old Bassett used to trod.  I heard a "GOT ONE! GRANDMA!" and then I made them come back in.  

It's been named, Freckles.  But this morning, Leon said that it's nick name is Mr. Frog.

According to Leon, the frog's habitat (his words) needs a piece of wood slice and a lid from an ice cream bucket full of water.  AND a branch from the lilac tree.  and scented pine cones. We found an old aquarium of Meris, for the habitat. I need to research it, but from what I'm remembering with Meri's pet frog, Hopalong Cookie Checkers, they eat small crickets.  I'll need to stop at Earle May and pick some up tonight.

Don't know about you, but crickets are too small a game to go hunting for in the yard...