You know who you are. Your Christmas shopping is all done, and everything was wrapped and ready before December even hit. AND your Christmas cards are handmade and mailed with perfectly matching holiday postage stamps. Arggghhhh. My Christmas list isn’t even complete. I mean, I went shopping last week, and spent one month’s salary stipend in an alarmingly short period of time. And while I suffered some amount of "AAaahhhhhh" over the bill that will be coming, I felt some satisfaction in being pretty much done. A few online orders to place, and I thought I was SET. But as the days have gone by, I’ve realized this small detail:
My LIST isn’t even done
Meaning, I didn’t have a complete list, so my shopping is not complete.
Unfortunately, all the money I’ve set aside for Christmas is long spent. So, I’ll just have to THINK about the things I would want to give to the people who didn’t yet make it onto my list. Because it’s the thought that counts, right!? RIGHT?!
And you KNOW those people aren’t going to be getting any truffles!!
Every week I swear I’m going to blog more faithfully. I mean, there’s so much going on - it’s not like I’m lacking for information. But I have this feeling of needing to have "stellar" writing - something witty or amusing or clever. And my life just isn’t that witty or amusing or clever. So here’s the ramble.
This past weekend my kids participated in a choral festival in Georgia. There were over 200 kids there from all over the place. I went down with a friend to listen to their performance and was totally blown away by the quality! Granted, their teacher here worked with them for the past several months so they’d be familiar with the music. But bringing that hodge podge of miscellaneous groups together and getting them to sound like something decent is quite the feat. Here’s a poor-quality iPhone shot of part of the group.
The empty chairs are where the strings came in during some of the pieces - they added quite a lot to the overall effect. We drove home after the program - which means we got to bed somewhere around 1:30am. Maybe that’s how come I feel so totally wasted today (my dad always said "you paint the week red on Saturday night - we were out on Friday night, but it’s having the same effect).
A project that has been looming for a little while is getting our chickens OUT of the garage and into a new dwelling somewhere on the farm. I’ll take pictures of them soon - but just know that chickens do not take a long time to grow up. Prince Farming is quite fond of his chicks and is worried about what wild life might not respect chicken life as much as he does. I told him we might need to appease the Raccoon and Hawk gods with a sacrifice or two, but he’s wanting to take a chance without that pay-off. Last Thursday we started working on getting the small barn ready for chickens. It’s been a bit of a dumping ground since we moved here, so there is a lot of clean-up to do. It’s not done. I did spend some time helping to stack some HUGE logs. They were HEAVY. And after only 2 hours of work out there my back ached. And my wrists haven’t been the same since. We were going to do more work on the chicken house on Sunday, but . . . . I’ll have to tell you about that another time. Brace yourselves. It just might involve a cow story.
This week we have a cooking class - actually we call it a "Lunch & Munch" - don’t know where that term came from, but it’s stuck. In my non-farm, non-home life, I am the coordinator for a Wellness program which is grant driven (not-for-profit). We do all kinds of lifestyle classes, including smoking cessation, healthy living, dealing with diabetes, cooking classes, and wellness lectures in public schools, among other things. It’s a fairly new program, and from year to year we never know how much work we’ll have to do (or get paid to do - there’s always a lot to do). So tomorrow is a short class - we’ll do the same thing twice (11am and 12pm). We have to have everything done in short order because people come through on their lunch hour and hope to get interesting information and a good meal out of the deal. So today we prepped and cooked. And we video-taped the demonstration so that people could be eating while they watch how to prepare the dishes. I am also responsible for the recipe cards - had to get them printed, cut, and collated. It’s been a FULL day. And tomorrow will be the same.
Next week I have committed (advertised and everything) to having a Christmas Card stamp class. I’m very excited about doing a class again - it’s been over a year already (can’t believe I said that out loud!). So I needed to figure out what I’m doing so I could get an order placed so my materials would be here in time for the event. I’ll post about that soon - I want to have the cards done so you can see what I’m up to. It just added to an already full day today. I placed an order. I just hope I have thought it all through enough to have what I need.
This week is full speed ahead. Thursday is going to get here and I’ll be ready to take a nap, but I’ll have the chicken thing to contend with. Unless Prince Farming gets distracted by something more pressing. One can only hope. Although I’m REALLY ready to have those smelly things (chickens) OUT of the garage. It just doesn’t seem fitting to have 25 fully grown chickens roosting in the garage, does it?!
