I've found other bloggers who are into telling all the ways that they save money. Since I "pride myself" on being part Scottish and part Jewish (in terms of how it affects my frugality), I of all people should be putting hundreds of ways to save on my blog! My ethnicity comes out in my fingertips and money squeaks when it's pulled from between my fingers. Still, some of my money-saving ideas are so much a part of my DNA that I don't even know they are there.
1. Don't get loyal to brand names or stores. Buy whatever product at whatever store that is least expensive--taking into account how long a drive it is, and how many other things that store has that you need at an affordable price.
2. Make all your errands when you're on the way somewhere else. Try to arrange as many of your errands in the same area as possible so you aren't spending most of your time and gas money on driving between stores. If you need something once you're already home, have your husband bring it home on the way home from work, if possible.
3. Make it a priority to learn the usual good sale prices of the products you tend to need.
4. Buy produce "in season"--that time of year when it's growing most plentifully. It's got the best price and best flavor and texture if you buy at the right time of year.
5. Learn how to choose your produce--I worked in a produce market in my early 20's and learned that there are many things to watch for, such as pick broccoli when it's a little purple and quite firm, preferably still showing signs of having been packed in ice; pick cantaloupe when the blossom end gives a little to thumb pressure.
6. Learn what items give you the best nutrition for the money--head lettuce is practically no nutrition at all, but romaine is excellent, spinach is better, mustard greens and swiss chard are some of the best. But they still have to appeal to your family!
7. Buy according to unit pricing as long as the size of the item is workable for your family. Unit pricing is that smaller price listing on the shelf label that tells the price in smaller units, such as price per ounce, per sheet, per individual item in the package. If the price per unit is smaller, the price of that item is best if your family can use it in a timely way. If they can't, if you can share or split it with someone, if it saves you enough money it still may be worth buying, but be careful.
8. I've always bought laundry soap in the huge buckets that are just white powder, even though they recommend another type for my washer...once I did have trouble caused by it not dissolving, but only once. The cheapest detergent always works, though I do use pre-spray that I make for myself out of liquid laundry soap, ammonia, vinegar, and water.
9. Learn to use less-expensive resources for cleaning rather than the "big gun" commercial methods if possible. Vinegar, ammonia, bleach, soda and the like all have some amazing utility around the house. You can find household uses for them by googling online.
10. Go with a list, use coupons, avoid the parts of the store that are most tempting for you.
11. Make meals with less meat than you normally might. Learn recipes that use beans, brown rice, split peas, and lentils, slowly introducing them to your family so their tastes can be developed for these foods.
12. Grow some of the fruit and vegetables that you are most likely to eat.
13. When you find a good sale price on something that you use regularly, buy more of it than you need at the moment.
14. If buying ready-made fast-food dinners is a temptation for you, stock your freezer with a few ready-made frozen dinners. Then start making two of each freezable dinner that you make, and freeze one while serving the other. Pretty soon fast-food dinners will be a memory.
15. Don't eat out any more often than necessary! It costs a lot more than eating at home, takes more time, is less nutritious and higher fat, and I don't feel that the family togetherness is as great in public as it is at home.
On the other hand: No matter how frugal you are, be clever but don't let it make you chintzy. Don't refuse to tip a person who deserves a tip or cheat people of what should be theirs because you want to keep the money--it isn't a good enough reason to short another person.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Out of the Deep Freeze
When we were preparing to take our daughter Katie to college about a month ago, I was panicked with the thought all through preparations that I also desperately needed to defrost the freezer--it was already way overdue and if we left it, we were afraid it would frost to the point where it wouldn't stay shut. The freezer would freeze at the top first and there was always a patch of ice that would increasingly protrude across the top where it met with the door, sometimes hindering its closing ability.
So after almost everything else was done, I resignedly started the horrible process of removing everything (it's a huge freezer and I had it packed full) and then trying to get all the ice to melt. Well, finally we ran out of time and really had to get going on our trip. I stuffed everything back in even though only about half of the ice was removed. I thought this would get us through the week and I could deal with the rest of it later.
Well, it was not to be. When we got back, it had frosted back up, all the way to the point where the door had propped itself open and could not be shut. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, unless I actually didn't shut the door as well as I thought. We even had some boxes that I was in the habit of propping against it as a safeguard, but they weren't sufficient. I think there's some principle of having all that wet ice cooling down and refreezing that may have made it so bad.
Anyway, we had to throw almost all of the food out. I did salvage some blueberries that were still embedded in ice, and not much else. It was a big loss but also almost a freeing relief when we decided not to continue using the freezer. It's one less thing to be bad at managing! The bigger the freezer, the better the steward you must be in order not to lose half of the food at the back, less-reachable and less-visible areas. I was not very good at this.
Now I'm finding I buy less groceries. I can only fill our fridge and limited freezer at the side of it, and for the three of us, I think it may be nearly perfect. The biggest I might go is that when we replace this refrigerator (soon; there are signs of wear), we might put it in the garage for some light-duty beverage holding etc. and the freezer would turn into my surplus freezer for fruit and whatnot. Still, it would be such a lot better than trying to manage that huge box freezer! So less is more, or more is less, or something like that.
So after almost everything else was done, I resignedly started the horrible process of removing everything (it's a huge freezer and I had it packed full) and then trying to get all the ice to melt. Well, finally we ran out of time and really had to get going on our trip. I stuffed everything back in even though only about half of the ice was removed. I thought this would get us through the week and I could deal with the rest of it later.
Well, it was not to be. When we got back, it had frosted back up, all the way to the point where the door had propped itself open and could not be shut. I'm not sure exactly how this happened, unless I actually didn't shut the door as well as I thought. We even had some boxes that I was in the habit of propping against it as a safeguard, but they weren't sufficient. I think there's some principle of having all that wet ice cooling down and refreezing that may have made it so bad.
Anyway, we had to throw almost all of the food out. I did salvage some blueberries that were still embedded in ice, and not much else. It was a big loss but also almost a freeing relief when we decided not to continue using the freezer. It's one less thing to be bad at managing! The bigger the freezer, the better the steward you must be in order not to lose half of the food at the back, less-reachable and less-visible areas. I was not very good at this.
Now I'm finding I buy less groceries. I can only fill our fridge and limited freezer at the side of it, and for the three of us, I think it may be nearly perfect. The biggest I might go is that when we replace this refrigerator (soon; there are signs of wear), we might put it in the garage for some light-duty beverage holding etc. and the freezer would turn into my surplus freezer for fruit and whatnot. Still, it would be such a lot better than trying to manage that huge box freezer! So less is more, or more is less, or something like that.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
We Need all the Nutrition we can Get!
Today we watched a video that was introduced to Katie in her nutrition class last term: "Supersize Me." It was about as sickening as I expected. The premise was that a healthy young man, Morgan Spurlock, decided to feed himself only McDonalds food for one month. His health was assessed beforehand and afterward and the vast difference that transpired in that one month shocked even the three doctors he consulted, all of whom kept urging him throughout to quit, or to modify the diet in some way or another so as to assure that he would not cause permanent damage or bring about his own death in the process.
Our family occasionally eats fast food, but most of our meals are at home. Still, when I consider the nutrition of our homemade food, I go through peaks and valleys in the nutritional effort of making it healthy. I think overall that I do pretty well; however I still have a weight problem, but I think that it is primarily due to insufficient exercise. There are a number of nutritional components that we have paid attention to for years, and a few that we have added as a result of Katie's nutrition class. I thought I would enumerate these here so that if you wanted you could implement them for your family's good health.
1. Look for low-fat and high-fiber recipes. Look at the nutritional assessments of the recipes you find. If the fat content is 9 grams per serving or less, I consider that to be low-fat. The higher the fiber, the better. Fiber binds up fat before it is absorbed into the bloodstream and helps keep a person feel full for longer.I rarely serve a recipe that is listed to have over 15 grams of fat per serving.
2. Add any vegetables you can that are suitable to the recipe. I found a recipe that had ham, pineapple, and brown sugar. This would be too sweet and too low in nutrients, but not so bad if one adds bell pepper, onion, celery, and carrots. If you can add canned beans, drained, to a recipe, that will add a great deal of fiber--I find many Mexican recipes are receptive to black beans, which take on seasonings nicely. I also look for any opportunity to add parsley to a recipe. It is very high in minerals and other nutrients. Adding vegetables also minimizes the opportunity for fat and salt to prevail per serving, and raises the fiber content.
3. Avoid too much use of beef or pork and include more recipes that call for chicken. Beef and pork fat is nastier than chicken fat; it is more solid at a lower temperature, and therefore more harmful. Beef and pork are also very likely to have a lot more fat within the muscle than chicken does. If you skin the chicken (best before cooking, but flavor is improved if you wait until after cooking) that helps lower the fat a great deal as well.
4. Skim or blot the fat before serving. First of all, I remove fat from the pan after browning the meat, pouring it out or blotting it with a paper towel. I don't brown meat and vegetables together, because I don't want to coat the vegetables with meat fat; I brown the vegetables in canola oil or cook them in water. Sometimes I even rinse the browned meat under water, but that will reduce flavor somewhat. You can use a paper towel and squeeze the fat out of ground beef or pork. Fat tends to rise to the top, especially after a dish is simmered and/or refrigerated. You can skim it from liquid using a ladle or spoon, or a thin layer of floating fat will stick to a lettuce leaf which you can rinse off in hot water a few times in the sink. If you simmer a meaty dish and see fat pooling in areas, it is a good opportunity to take a spoon and remove the fat. I throw the fat if significant into the wastebasket because when it hardens in the drain it will clog it (but it's better in the drain than in your arteries!). If I serve a casserole or pizza coated with cheese, I take a napkin or paper towel and blot it until very little comes off. It's amazing how much there is; cheese is a very fatty food!
5. Avoid using too much cheese. I still probably use too much, but I try these days to use it more for flavor than for a main source of protein or filler. I don't make main dishes calling for cream cheese, and if I use a recipe of any sort calling for cream cheese, I use Neufchatel. I don't find that it has any distinguishable difference except in fat content. For main dishes, you may get a satisfactory similar effect by adding sour cream (which you can get in reduced fat form). I don't find that no-fat hard cheese substitutes are acceptable; you need a saw to cut them when they have melted.
6. Use non-fat milk (also known as skim or fat-free). I started drinking it at age 7, when my dad had his first heart attack. Even though 2% sounds like only a little bit of fat, somehow this 2% is a major misnomer. In an 8-oz. serving, 2% has 5 grams of fat! Non-fat has none. The 2% has 120 cal.; non-fat has 90. Non-fat has 9 grams protein; 2% has only 8. You can easily wean yourself off higher fat milk by mixing it more and more with non-fat.
7. Lately, we have started to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. Katie learned that the liver turns it directly to fat. And we discover it's in almost all prepared food! Pop, jam, canned fruit, gel fruit snacks, barbecue sauce, peanut butter, yogurt. But there are often alternatives that don't have it; still you may have to do some searching.
8. Don't think that other forms of sugar are healthier than white. They're no different, not even honey. Your saliva immediately breaks sugars down; that's why honey is no longer sticky when your saliva hits it.
9. Mix extra egg whites in when using eggs. Or when baking, substitute two egg whites for every whole egg. The fat and therefore extreme cholesterol is in the yolks, and you won't miss the density of flavor if you start with one egg white and add more of them as you get used to it. And while we're here, brown eggs have no inherent advantage in nutrition over white eggs; the shell color makes no impact.
10. Replace some of the oil with applesauce or pureed prunes in baked goods. You can find low-fat cookbooks that specialize in this at the library, or experiment around with some of your recipes. Start with a little and gradually increase the substitution each time until you maximize its good effect.
11. Serve oats whenever possible; add flax seed to oatmeal for breakfast and to some baked goods. Oats are high in soluble fiber and are beneficial for reducing cholesterol; flax seed reduces cholesterol and is high in fiber. This is another opportunity for experimentation. I make our meatloaf and meatballs using oatmeal rather than crushed crackers or bread crumbs.
12. Use whole-grain breads and flours, brown rice, and wild rice rather than white. These have much advantage over the white refined versions, in that the most nutritious elements are still there. They are higher in fiber, b vitamins, minerals; they are more filling, too as they're more slowly digested. Don't expect that "enriched" flour replaces it all--it doesn't.
13. Buy the lower-fat versions of ice cream rather than the full-fat version. In doing so you can eat twice as much! Just kidding. After a while you become used to the lower-fat type and they become more appealing than the high-fat version.
These are the things that come to mind. I might think of others later! I hope you find all these things helpful. Enjoy and eat in good health, and with thanks to God for His abundant provision of all this beautiful variety to which we have access. Is He not good, and are we not greatly blessed?
Our family occasionally eats fast food, but most of our meals are at home. Still, when I consider the nutrition of our homemade food, I go through peaks and valleys in the nutritional effort of making it healthy. I think overall that I do pretty well; however I still have a weight problem, but I think that it is primarily due to insufficient exercise. There are a number of nutritional components that we have paid attention to for years, and a few that we have added as a result of Katie's nutrition class. I thought I would enumerate these here so that if you wanted you could implement them for your family's good health.
1. Look for low-fat and high-fiber recipes. Look at the nutritional assessments of the recipes you find. If the fat content is 9 grams per serving or less, I consider that to be low-fat. The higher the fiber, the better. Fiber binds up fat before it is absorbed into the bloodstream and helps keep a person feel full for longer.I rarely serve a recipe that is listed to have over 15 grams of fat per serving.
2. Add any vegetables you can that are suitable to the recipe. I found a recipe that had ham, pineapple, and brown sugar. This would be too sweet and too low in nutrients, but not so bad if one adds bell pepper, onion, celery, and carrots. If you can add canned beans, drained, to a recipe, that will add a great deal of fiber--I find many Mexican recipes are receptive to black beans, which take on seasonings nicely. I also look for any opportunity to add parsley to a recipe. It is very high in minerals and other nutrients. Adding vegetables also minimizes the opportunity for fat and salt to prevail per serving, and raises the fiber content.
3. Avoid too much use of beef or pork and include more recipes that call for chicken. Beef and pork fat is nastier than chicken fat; it is more solid at a lower temperature, and therefore more harmful. Beef and pork are also very likely to have a lot more fat within the muscle than chicken does. If you skin the chicken (best before cooking, but flavor is improved if you wait until after cooking) that helps lower the fat a great deal as well.
4. Skim or blot the fat before serving. First of all, I remove fat from the pan after browning the meat, pouring it out or blotting it with a paper towel. I don't brown meat and vegetables together, because I don't want to coat the vegetables with meat fat; I brown the vegetables in canola oil or cook them in water. Sometimes I even rinse the browned meat under water, but that will reduce flavor somewhat. You can use a paper towel and squeeze the fat out of ground beef or pork. Fat tends to rise to the top, especially after a dish is simmered and/or refrigerated. You can skim it from liquid using a ladle or spoon, or a thin layer of floating fat will stick to a lettuce leaf which you can rinse off in hot water a few times in the sink. If you simmer a meaty dish and see fat pooling in areas, it is a good opportunity to take a spoon and remove the fat. I throw the fat if significant into the wastebasket because when it hardens in the drain it will clog it (but it's better in the drain than in your arteries!). If I serve a casserole or pizza coated with cheese, I take a napkin or paper towel and blot it until very little comes off. It's amazing how much there is; cheese is a very fatty food!
5. Avoid using too much cheese. I still probably use too much, but I try these days to use it more for flavor than for a main source of protein or filler. I don't make main dishes calling for cream cheese, and if I use a recipe of any sort calling for cream cheese, I use Neufchatel. I don't find that it has any distinguishable difference except in fat content. For main dishes, you may get a satisfactory similar effect by adding sour cream (which you can get in reduced fat form). I don't find that no-fat hard cheese substitutes are acceptable; you need a saw to cut them when they have melted.
6. Use non-fat milk (also known as skim or fat-free). I started drinking it at age 7, when my dad had his first heart attack. Even though 2% sounds like only a little bit of fat, somehow this 2% is a major misnomer. In an 8-oz. serving, 2% has 5 grams of fat! Non-fat has none. The 2% has 120 cal.; non-fat has 90. Non-fat has 9 grams protein; 2% has only 8. You can easily wean yourself off higher fat milk by mixing it more and more with non-fat.
7. Lately, we have started to avoid high-fructose corn syrup. Katie learned that the liver turns it directly to fat. And we discover it's in almost all prepared food! Pop, jam, canned fruit, gel fruit snacks, barbecue sauce, peanut butter, yogurt. But there are often alternatives that don't have it; still you may have to do some searching.
8. Don't think that other forms of sugar are healthier than white. They're no different, not even honey. Your saliva immediately breaks sugars down; that's why honey is no longer sticky when your saliva hits it.
9. Mix extra egg whites in when using eggs. Or when baking, substitute two egg whites for every whole egg. The fat and therefore extreme cholesterol is in the yolks, and you won't miss the density of flavor if you start with one egg white and add more of them as you get used to it. And while we're here, brown eggs have no inherent advantage in nutrition over white eggs; the shell color makes no impact.
10. Replace some of the oil with applesauce or pureed prunes in baked goods. You can find low-fat cookbooks that specialize in this at the library, or experiment around with some of your recipes. Start with a little and gradually increase the substitution each time until you maximize its good effect.
11. Serve oats whenever possible; add flax seed to oatmeal for breakfast and to some baked goods. Oats are high in soluble fiber and are beneficial for reducing cholesterol; flax seed reduces cholesterol and is high in fiber. This is another opportunity for experimentation. I make our meatloaf and meatballs using oatmeal rather than crushed crackers or bread crumbs.
12. Use whole-grain breads and flours, brown rice, and wild rice rather than white. These have much advantage over the white refined versions, in that the most nutritious elements are still there. They are higher in fiber, b vitamins, minerals; they are more filling, too as they're more slowly digested. Don't expect that "enriched" flour replaces it all--it doesn't.
13. Buy the lower-fat versions of ice cream rather than the full-fat version. In doing so you can eat twice as much! Just kidding. After a while you become used to the lower-fat type and they become more appealing than the high-fat version.
These are the things that come to mind. I might think of others later! I hope you find all these things helpful. Enjoy and eat in good health, and with thanks to God for His abundant provision of all this beautiful variety to which we have access. Is He not good, and are we not greatly blessed?
Saturday, April 14, 2007
The Value of a Mom in the Home
When I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord at the age of 29, I was working at Boeing, and the mother of Katie, almost 2 years old, who hated Boeing because she wanted to be with her mom. It didn't take long for God to impress upon me that it was more beneficial to my family and to my own health for me to stay home than it was for me to work full time. This in spite of the fact that at the time Gary was trying to break into sales after 12 years of office work; he would start a job as a sales rep at a food brokerage, and within a month or so they would put him on part-time so they would not have to pay him benefits. This happened three times; so at the time I was realizing the need to stay home he was earning $9.50 an hour, part-time. This wasn't very promising! Yet circumstances too complicated to relate made it very clear that it was the best option. So I quit, but I gave just enough notice, 3 weeks, to quit on the first day of August so I'd have just one more month of medical coverage. (A year and a half later he got a steady job that paid better than any he'd had before, with full benefits; that's a funny story in itself, for another time. Meanwhile we scraped by and learned to save like never before!)
It wasn't financially easy, but it hadn't been easy before, either. At that time, I was paying $250 per month in daycare. That sounds cheap by today's standards and I think it was fairly cheap then but not cheap like it would be now, and not cheap to me even then! I was earning about $9 per hour at Boeing after 4 years there when I quit. As one example of how desperately broke we were, we used only cloth diapers rather than disposable to save money, the wash-your-own kind, even though I was working. By the time I paid daycare, the cost of driving to work, higher car insurance, higher income tax, the various conveniences I no doubt purchased for the sake of sanity, the birthday presents and occasional bought lunches because of office festivities, the cost of dressing up, and with the inability to shop for sale prices with the remaining time I had, I didn't have much to spare by the end of the month anyway. At the time I quit I had more exact numbers than I have now, and I estimated that I earned about $80 per month by the time I paid for the expenses of working.
These days most women who work probably earn more than I did; but they are no doubt paying more for daycare unless they have a kindly friend or relative doing it as a favor. (I remember one woman at Boeing who paid more in daycare than she earned, because she had two boys; she said the daycare people could do a better job of raising her kids than she could.) If a woman has more than one child I would like to challenge her to show how it could possibly be financially smarter to work than to stay at home.
For that matter, there is the matter of stress and sanity. My health was at a low ebb by the time I quit; I had allergies that were ever-increasing in spite of taking shots, and I was constantly exhausted. My home was in dreadful disarray for lack of time and energy, and I had no significant time to spend one-on-one with Gary or Katie by the time I'd made dinner and had cleaning still to do.
I read an article that is entitled, US Mothers Deserve $134,121 in Salary. (If you are interested, go there! It will try to quantify the value of the work you do at home; in fact, if you work, it doesn't discount the value of that.) While it offered the role of daycare teacher as one facet of a mom's workday, the role comparable to homeschool teacher wasn't provided, such as private tutor or private school teacher, for which I could probably claim higher pay. It also assumed that the husband does the yard work (Gary does mow the lawn but the rest is mine), and doesn't say anything about home repairs. Well, between painting, working on plumbing and electrical and so forth, that's a whole additional category that is mine! The categories it offers are housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver (chauffer sounds a little higher pay and is more like the custom-applied driving of a mom, rather than a corporate van driver), CEO and psychologist; in previous years it also included nurse. Now I don't consider myself a CEO or a psychologist (though I do try to use verses from God's word for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training; give practical aspects regarding behavior; and also apply discipline where needed)."Laundry machine operator" and "janitor" each seem so specific a segment of my time that they ought to be included in housekeeping. Many functions I do are those of a nurse. What about personal shopper, too? The list is hardly comprehensive or perfect. Still, anything in the realm of $134,000 brings a smile to my face. Mom's presence in the home counts for a lot!
And yet, the money value on paper doesn't account for all of it. What about just the comfort that a mom's presence at home provides? The fact that a child has a parent always ready to be at home with him if he's sick, or to help make a car for the Grand Prix? Not only that but the accountability for his behavior after school. I mention that because out of about 17 kids on our street, most of them have mothers who are still at work when they come home from school, and who don't make it home until 5:30 if by then. These parents have no idea of the things their children do while they're gone. A child needs someone to account to, someone who will be his mentor, his confidante, his defender...the value of a mom's presence is impossible to quantify in dollars, but according to what I experienced and what I read in that article, a mother's value is definitely highest at home.
It wasn't financially easy, but it hadn't been easy before, either. At that time, I was paying $250 per month in daycare. That sounds cheap by today's standards and I think it was fairly cheap then but not cheap like it would be now, and not cheap to me even then! I was earning about $9 per hour at Boeing after 4 years there when I quit. As one example of how desperately broke we were, we used only cloth diapers rather than disposable to save money, the wash-your-own kind, even though I was working. By the time I paid daycare, the cost of driving to work, higher car insurance, higher income tax, the various conveniences I no doubt purchased for the sake of sanity, the birthday presents and occasional bought lunches because of office festivities, the cost of dressing up, and with the inability to shop for sale prices with the remaining time I had, I didn't have much to spare by the end of the month anyway. At the time I quit I had more exact numbers than I have now, and I estimated that I earned about $80 per month by the time I paid for the expenses of working.
These days most women who work probably earn more than I did; but they are no doubt paying more for daycare unless they have a kindly friend or relative doing it as a favor. (I remember one woman at Boeing who paid more in daycare than she earned, because she had two boys; she said the daycare people could do a better job of raising her kids than she could.) If a woman has more than one child I would like to challenge her to show how it could possibly be financially smarter to work than to stay at home.
For that matter, there is the matter of stress and sanity. My health was at a low ebb by the time I quit; I had allergies that were ever-increasing in spite of taking shots, and I was constantly exhausted. My home was in dreadful disarray for lack of time and energy, and I had no significant time to spend one-on-one with Gary or Katie by the time I'd made dinner and had cleaning still to do.
I read an article that is entitled, US Mothers Deserve $134,121 in Salary. (If you are interested, go there! It will try to quantify the value of the work you do at home; in fact, if you work, it doesn't discount the value of that.) While it offered the role of daycare teacher as one facet of a mom's workday, the role comparable to homeschool teacher wasn't provided, such as private tutor or private school teacher, for which I could probably claim higher pay. It also assumed that the husband does the yard work (Gary does mow the lawn but the rest is mine), and doesn't say anything about home repairs. Well, between painting, working on plumbing and electrical and so forth, that's a whole additional category that is mine! The categories it offers are housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver (chauffer sounds a little higher pay and is more like the custom-applied driving of a mom, rather than a corporate van driver), CEO and psychologist; in previous years it also included nurse. Now I don't consider myself a CEO or a psychologist (though I do try to use verses from God's word for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training; give practical aspects regarding behavior; and also apply discipline where needed)."Laundry machine operator" and "janitor" each seem so specific a segment of my time that they ought to be included in housekeeping. Many functions I do are those of a nurse. What about personal shopper, too? The list is hardly comprehensive or perfect. Still, anything in the realm of $134,000 brings a smile to my face. Mom's presence in the home counts for a lot!
And yet, the money value on paper doesn't account for all of it. What about just the comfort that a mom's presence at home provides? The fact that a child has a parent always ready to be at home with him if he's sick, or to help make a car for the Grand Prix? Not only that but the accountability for his behavior after school. I mention that because out of about 17 kids on our street, most of them have mothers who are still at work when they come home from school, and who don't make it home until 5:30 if by then. These parents have no idea of the things their children do while they're gone. A child needs someone to account to, someone who will be his mentor, his confidante, his defender...the value of a mom's presence is impossible to quantify in dollars, but according to what I experienced and what I read in that article, a mother's value is definitely highest at home.
My Pantry and the Abundance of Food
I am blessed with a walk-in pantry. I have to admit I kind of take it for granted--in fact, I am ashamed most of the time of the mess therein; there is such an abundance of food stocked that it often flows to the floor especially if my 9-year-old has been there. People come over and comment on how great it must be to have a pantry, and it reminds me to be thankful.
I keep it stocked out of a long-ingrained habit, buying groceries on sale, with coupons, and we eat well for a minimum of money. Grocery shopping is serious business for me; to get the best price on food is my way of making a good investment, because I can readily save about a third of the regular amount by being careful. My mom had six kids and kept lots of food on hand; I probably outdo her. But we went out fairly often as a family, whereas our family does so far less. We usually eat at home, except once in a while at Costco or a quick dollar-menu fast food item here and there. Being homeschoolers we are home most of the time.
This is something that for the most part doesn't seem strange to me; I prefer eating at home. Once in a while, though, I realize how unusual it must be, such as when a friend of my son came to stay for a few days and was astounded at the quantity of dishes we had in the dishwasher. (I sometimes think a second dishwasher would be a good thing.) I run it once or twice per day and it's always stuffed. And then Katie who took a Nutrition course at the community college comes home with statistics about how few times the average American family eats together at home, or how often they eat fast food; then there is an appalling ad for KFC chicken that makes take-out food as if it were an "at home family meal" and though I like KFC well enough, I realize all the more how much we are blessed. We get to eat home-made food together most nights of the week, except when Katie is working, and then three of us are here!
It's a blessing in terms of family togetherness, in finances, in nutrition, in efficiency. I love it so much more than when we eat out! I would so rather make the meal than have it made for me; in fact, I was thinking the other night that just as Eric Liddell, the Gold Medal runner and missionary to China (whose Olympic feat was the subject of the movie Chariots of Fire) said, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure," the same is true of my cooking. I feel that I am fulfilling a good part of God's purpose for me: to provide for my family (and perhaps guests or a family in sickness); even though it may not evangelize the lost too well unless I feed an unbelieving family, it still might glorify God in His provision for His own. (That is, if it tastes good.) I doubt I'll ever get a gold medal for it though.
I used to feel guilty about the abundance of groceries I keep on hand, feeling maybe it wasn't good stewardship; when I go visit people they don't seem to keep as much food around and it's so much tidier. But if they go out more, or don't cook from scratch as much, then it stands to reason they wouldn't need as much. I don't feel guilty about it like I used to. Sometimes it goes to waste; but not so much of the time. It's good not to have to go to the store every day, or go out to eat. It's God's blessing on our family to have an abundance and to be equipped for that good work.
"I will bless her with abundant provisions; her poor I will satisfy with food." Psalm 132:15
I keep it stocked out of a long-ingrained habit, buying groceries on sale, with coupons, and we eat well for a minimum of money. Grocery shopping is serious business for me; to get the best price on food is my way of making a good investment, because I can readily save about a third of the regular amount by being careful. My mom had six kids and kept lots of food on hand; I probably outdo her. But we went out fairly often as a family, whereas our family does so far less. We usually eat at home, except once in a while at Costco or a quick dollar-menu fast food item here and there. Being homeschoolers we are home most of the time.
This is something that for the most part doesn't seem strange to me; I prefer eating at home. Once in a while, though, I realize how unusual it must be, such as when a friend of my son came to stay for a few days and was astounded at the quantity of dishes we had in the dishwasher. (I sometimes think a second dishwasher would be a good thing.) I run it once or twice per day and it's always stuffed. And then Katie who took a Nutrition course at the community college comes home with statistics about how few times the average American family eats together at home, or how often they eat fast food; then there is an appalling ad for KFC chicken that makes take-out food as if it were an "at home family meal" and though I like KFC well enough, I realize all the more how much we are blessed. We get to eat home-made food together most nights of the week, except when Katie is working, and then three of us are here!
It's a blessing in terms of family togetherness, in finances, in nutrition, in efficiency. I love it so much more than when we eat out! I would so rather make the meal than have it made for me; in fact, I was thinking the other night that just as Eric Liddell, the Gold Medal runner and missionary to China (whose Olympic feat was the subject of the movie Chariots of Fire) said, "When I run, I feel God's pleasure," the same is true of my cooking. I feel that I am fulfilling a good part of God's purpose for me: to provide for my family (and perhaps guests or a family in sickness); even though it may not evangelize the lost too well unless I feed an unbelieving family, it still might glorify God in His provision for His own. (That is, if it tastes good.) I doubt I'll ever get a gold medal for it though.
I used to feel guilty about the abundance of groceries I keep on hand, feeling maybe it wasn't good stewardship; when I go visit people they don't seem to keep as much food around and it's so much tidier. But if they go out more, or don't cook from scratch as much, then it stands to reason they wouldn't need as much. I don't feel guilty about it like I used to. Sometimes it goes to waste; but not so much of the time. It's good not to have to go to the store every day, or go out to eat. It's God's blessing on our family to have an abundance and to be equipped for that good work.
"I will bless her with abundant provisions; her poor I will satisfy with food." Psalm 132:15
Monday, November 06, 2006
Love Lightens Labor
I picked up an old anthology book we have from 1895, Immortal Treasures of Art, Literature and Song. It is old and moisture-damaged, but it has such good things in it I don't want to dispose of it. Tim had pulled it out from the bookshelf and brought it to my attention. The first poem I turned to was so good that I really want to share it. Unfortunately it's anonymous. Maybe it will bless you today.
Love Lightens Labor
A good wife rose from her bed one morn,
And thought, with a nervous dread,
of the piles of clothes to be washed and more
Than a dozen mouths to be fed.
"There's the meals to get for the men in the field,
And the children to fix away
To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned,
And all to be done this day."
It had rained in the night, and all the wood
Was as wet as it could be;
There were puddings and pies to bake, besides
A loaf of cake for tea.
And the day was hot, and her aching head
Throbbed wearily as she said,
"If maidens but knew what good wives know,
They would not be in haste to wed!"
"Jennie, what do you think I told Ben Brown?"
Called the farmer from the well;
And a flush crept up to his bronzed brow,
And his eyes half-bashuflly fell:
"It was this," he said, and coming near
He smiled, and stooping down,
Kissed her cheek--"'twas this, that you were the best
And the dearest wife in town!"
The farmer went back to the field, and the wife,
In a smiling, absent way,
Sang snatches of tender little songs
She'd not sung for many a day.
And the pain in her head was gone, and the clothes
Were white as the foam of the sea;
Her bread was light, and her butter was sweet,
And as golden as it could be.
"Just think," the children all called in a breath,
"Tom Wood has run off to sea!
He wouldn't, I know, if he'd only had
As happy a home as we."
The night came down, and the good wife smiled
To herself, as she softly said:
"'Tis so sweet to labor for those we love--
It's not strange that maids will wed!"
--Anonymous
Love Lightens Labor
A good wife rose from her bed one morn,
And thought, with a nervous dread,
of the piles of clothes to be washed and more
Than a dozen mouths to be fed.
"There's the meals to get for the men in the field,
And the children to fix away
To school, and the milk to be skimmed and churned,
And all to be done this day."
It had rained in the night, and all the wood
Was as wet as it could be;
There were puddings and pies to bake, besides
A loaf of cake for tea.
And the day was hot, and her aching head
Throbbed wearily as she said,
"If maidens but knew what good wives know,
They would not be in haste to wed!"
"Jennie, what do you think I told Ben Brown?"
Called the farmer from the well;
And a flush crept up to his bronzed brow,
And his eyes half-bashuflly fell:
"It was this," he said, and coming near
He smiled, and stooping down,
Kissed her cheek--"'twas this, that you were the best
And the dearest wife in town!"
The farmer went back to the field, and the wife,
In a smiling, absent way,
Sang snatches of tender little songs
She'd not sung for many a day.
And the pain in her head was gone, and the clothes
Were white as the foam of the sea;
Her bread was light, and her butter was sweet,
And as golden as it could be.
"Just think," the children all called in a breath,
"Tom Wood has run off to sea!
He wouldn't, I know, if he'd only had
As happy a home as we."
The night came down, and the good wife smiled
To herself, as she softly said:
"'Tis so sweet to labor for those we love--
It's not strange that maids will wed!"
--Anonymous
Sunday, October 15, 2006
The Abundance of Things
I find it difficult to keep my day, my lifestyle, my belongings tailored to just what I suspect God has in mind rather than my preferences, which so often outpace His will for me. I conclude this, because they all tend to get out of whack at least occasionally if not almost always. I have a theory if a person does according to God's will consistently, things will fall into place quite readily almost all the time. But we as a family, perhaps as a nation, have too many belongings, almost always too much food, too many things scheduled, too many library books...a plethora of feasting and a paucity of fasting.
It is not my mindset to rein it in properly. I haven't learned the art, which is probably what many would call minimalism. I see a home with minimal furnishings and to tell the truth, it makes me restless. I want for bookcases, and choices of activities and distractions (though mine at home tends by necessity to be housekeeping...sigh). This "abundant" life makes for an abundance of things to dust, stacks to move, things to reach over, look under, lose things in...and though contending with stuff is a high price to pay, I haven't found the clarity of mind that eliminates it and changes the ongoing nature.
Eventually we will move from this house, perhaps sooner rather than later. With that possibility comes the appealing but overwhelming idea of reducing our belongings by half or so. I think in the spring we will have a series of garage sales, getting rid of a record amount of our clutter and furnishings. I want to find out what it's like on the other side, where there are margins around each furnishing, and everything doesn't have to be shoulder-to-shoulder with the next thing. Maybe I will be restless and have to refill it a bit, but it will be refreshing none-the-less to seek it and try it out for a season.
With that in mind I have been, for example, passing more and more of the garage sale signs for which I otherwise might have stopped. I have been purposefully pushing things out to the garage and boxing them up--which I can probably do for another six months before I really feel the effects of it. I haven't been on the acquisitive side for a while (though Tim does need me to buy him some pants)...I hope and expect that this will be something of a permanent and increasing (increase of decrease, that is) tendency for our lives. As a result I would expect more freedom, more time, more clarity for parenting, family life, outings, fellowship, hospitality, witnessing--in varying order. Maybe, hopefully, more time to do what God would prefer for this life He has so graciously given to me. I strongly suspect He made me for something better than to primarily dust and rearrange stuff.
Luke 12:15 Then He said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions."
It is not my mindset to rein it in properly. I haven't learned the art, which is probably what many would call minimalism. I see a home with minimal furnishings and to tell the truth, it makes me restless. I want for bookcases, and choices of activities and distractions (though mine at home tends by necessity to be housekeeping...sigh). This "abundant" life makes for an abundance of things to dust, stacks to move, things to reach over, look under, lose things in...and though contending with stuff is a high price to pay, I haven't found the clarity of mind that eliminates it and changes the ongoing nature.
Eventually we will move from this house, perhaps sooner rather than later. With that possibility comes the appealing but overwhelming idea of reducing our belongings by half or so. I think in the spring we will have a series of garage sales, getting rid of a record amount of our clutter and furnishings. I want to find out what it's like on the other side, where there are margins around each furnishing, and everything doesn't have to be shoulder-to-shoulder with the next thing. Maybe I will be restless and have to refill it a bit, but it will be refreshing none-the-less to seek it and try it out for a season.
With that in mind I have been, for example, passing more and more of the garage sale signs for which I otherwise might have stopped. I have been purposefully pushing things out to the garage and boxing them up--which I can probably do for another six months before I really feel the effects of it. I haven't been on the acquisitive side for a while (though Tim does need me to buy him some pants)...I hope and expect that this will be something of a permanent and increasing (increase of decrease, that is) tendency for our lives. As a result I would expect more freedom, more time, more clarity for parenting, family life, outings, fellowship, hospitality, witnessing--in varying order. Maybe, hopefully, more time to do what God would prefer for this life He has so graciously given to me. I strongly suspect He made me for something better than to primarily dust and rearrange stuff.
Luke 12:15 Then He said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions."
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Incentives to clean up!
In posting my iced tea recipe (see my previous entry) I realized I had started a rather preliminary rejoicing over the start of our re-siding job. For an update on that, see my Never Alone blog. It has had its bumps and isn't entirely easy to enjoy the process but that's all right, everything will turn out right in the end, at least according to God's own plan.
Having the builders around and also realizing that we have three little Japanese girls coming to stay for a month makes me motivated to clean house like nothing else. I've made huge progress in the basement, which normally is overwhelming to me. I normally ignore the fact that there are toys and games strewn all over and that the floor needs vacuuming and all. It didn't take long to make a huge difference, and there's still another day's work down there when you consider washing windows, getting the bathroom spiffy, cleaning the carpet, setting up a bunk bed (we got one halfway set up yesterday). That's okay, the idea of the Japanese girls being down there is exciting enough to make the whole process fun and a lot easier than normal.
I also cleaned up the garage a great deal though that's another bad story of disorganization. Organization is not my gift (especially when others follow around undoing my work), but at least now I have a future garage sale pretty well organized into a great many boxes all stacked in one area for quick access--even in the record heat of the day yesterday. I came in and looked in the mirror; I looked like a lobster. I think the water must have sizzled a bit on my face when I washed up.
It's a great feeling of accomplishment though it's not done yet, and I love the incentive I have of hosting little Japanese girls. The two we had two years ago were a real treat and I've heard these three are sweet as well. I am convinced that this incentive is a gift from God. I could do the work other times, but there is always something else that can take precedence. God is so good! I will update you later on furthering the process.
For further blog entries that complete the perplexing story of our Japanese girls, see my Never Alone blog at joycomplete.blogspot.com: Global economy: many trips across the ocean, many nationalities involved; There's Value in the Right Kind of Clock; I Made My Family Disappear; A Long Month Comes to an End; and A Stunning Goodbye.
Having the builders around and also realizing that we have three little Japanese girls coming to stay for a month makes me motivated to clean house like nothing else. I've made huge progress in the basement, which normally is overwhelming to me. I normally ignore the fact that there are toys and games strewn all over and that the floor needs vacuuming and all. It didn't take long to make a huge difference, and there's still another day's work down there when you consider washing windows, getting the bathroom spiffy, cleaning the carpet, setting up a bunk bed (we got one halfway set up yesterday). That's okay, the idea of the Japanese girls being down there is exciting enough to make the whole process fun and a lot easier than normal.
I also cleaned up the garage a great deal though that's another bad story of disorganization. Organization is not my gift (especially when others follow around undoing my work), but at least now I have a future garage sale pretty well organized into a great many boxes all stacked in one area for quick access--even in the record heat of the day yesterday. I came in and looked in the mirror; I looked like a lobster. I think the water must have sizzled a bit on my face when I washed up.
It's a great feeling of accomplishment though it's not done yet, and I love the incentive I have of hosting little Japanese girls. The two we had two years ago were a real treat and I've heard these three are sweet as well. I am convinced that this incentive is a gift from God. I could do the work other times, but there is always something else that can take precedence. God is so good! I will update you later on furthering the process.
For further blog entries that complete the perplexing story of our Japanese girls, see my Never Alone blog at joycomplete.blogspot.com: Global economy: many trips across the ocean, many nationalities involved; There's Value in the Right Kind of Clock; I Made My Family Disappear; A Long Month Comes to an End; and A Stunning Goodbye.
A Really Pleasant Iced Tea Recipe
I don't like Lipton powdered iced tea mix, besides the fact that it solidifies and becomes useless in the jar after a while. In fact, I don't like any commercially made iced teas that I've tasted.
A while back a friend shared an iced tea recipe that our family loves; so do so many who try it that I thought I'd share it with you. Since sun tea has been said to be risky in terms of bacteria, I like to make mine a quick way.
The recipe is Earl Grey (or Lady Grey instead), Raspberry, and Herbal Peach--any brands, at least one bag of each. I get the kettle going, and then fill a pitcher with ice; I put the tea bags in a thermos-type jug and pour the hot water into it to let them steep. When the tea is made, and still hot, I'll pour it over the ice. The pouring process melts the ice and cools the tea. Then I add about 1/4 c. sugar per 3 tea bags, and pour into glasses with ice, or add more ice to the pitcher. It's my favorite iced tea, and pretty cheap per pitcher.
Keep it refrigerated--it tastes best that way and is probably safest besides.
I hope you like it! Good for keeping cool in the hot summer sun.
A while back a friend shared an iced tea recipe that our family loves; so do so many who try it that I thought I'd share it with you. Since sun tea has been said to be risky in terms of bacteria, I like to make mine a quick way.
The recipe is Earl Grey (or Lady Grey instead), Raspberry, and Herbal Peach--any brands, at least one bag of each. I get the kettle going, and then fill a pitcher with ice; I put the tea bags in a thermos-type jug and pour the hot water into it to let them steep. When the tea is made, and still hot, I'll pour it over the ice. The pouring process melts the ice and cools the tea. Then I add about 1/4 c. sugar per 3 tea bags, and pour into glasses with ice, or add more ice to the pitcher. It's my favorite iced tea, and pretty cheap per pitcher.
Keep it refrigerated--it tastes best that way and is probably safest besides.
I hope you like it! Good for keeping cool in the hot summer sun.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Happy Summer Progress!
Now I feel as if our summer projects are progressing--maybe only because the difference is so visible! Yesterday our siding job was started. A man, Jake, came out all by himself to tear off the siding from the front of our house. He got most of it done but will come back tomorrow to finish removing it. It was really more than one person should ever be assigned; if he had fallen from a ladder it might have been a while before he would have been found. A couple of times I heard ominous thumps and went out front to check. He was fine, but I couldn't rest easy. And I could tell by certain mistakes that he was exhausted. He laid the siding on top of some of the downspouts so they got bent; and he pulled our hose reel off the siding before removing the last bolt, so it broke. I might suggest to their company having a policy of more than one person just for the safety factor. Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Eccl 4:9.
So I spent the morning clipping back plants and transplanting others to make space for him, when I found that he was coming to work. By lunchtime, I had worked myself into a crazy dither. I ordered some take-and-bake pizzas, and even by the time that they were baked, I couldn't slow down and enjoy the food. Jake the workman and our neighbor Dean had pizza with us (Dean had just fixed Tim's bike--again), and it was the first time Dean had come over for anything to eat even though we'd invited them various times. That was neat except that our house was disheveled for all our projects. They didn't seem to mind.
So now the front of our house is mostly down to the black paper that was underneath the siding, and of course has gathered the attention of various neighbors--most of whom still face having to do this inevitable job to their own houses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the underlying wood that I could see was in very good condition. It may be different in the back, where the deterioration of our old siding is more obvious. Still, I'm more encouraged that we might not encounter severe repair bills in addition to the siding work.
In addition to the progress on the siding, our vegetable plants are looking great; our tomatoes and squash plants are blooming, and the leaves turned greener after I gave them some iron. They must have had the plant-equivalent of anemia.
The nagging item is that I haven't finished painting the ceiling in the one bathroom or the edges and skylight in the other. It's just been too busy lately! But that will come with time.
We are having some Japanese exchange students later this summer for a month, and we will have to fix up the downstairs too. I might paint the main room down there if I have the opportunity (this room has awful pinkish-red paint we'll have to stain-seal first, and a strip of wallpaper to remove; we also need to assemble the two bunkbeds that are in their room--assembly should only take part of a day. When we mentioned that job, neighbor Dean said with a quirky grin as he ate his pizza, "I think I'm going to be busy that day." Gary is quick to think of asking Dean for help when the job gets challenging.
This progress is one of my favorite things, taking on the harder jobs that don't fit into the usual everyday routine. I don't like to be living in a house that needs improvement when I can't do anything about it. Even though it can be quite a mess while various things are mid-process, at least there's an improved end in view and that's a promising situation.
So I spent the morning clipping back plants and transplanting others to make space for him, when I found that he was coming to work. By lunchtime, I had worked myself into a crazy dither. I ordered some take-and-bake pizzas, and even by the time that they were baked, I couldn't slow down and enjoy the food. Jake the workman and our neighbor Dean had pizza with us (Dean had just fixed Tim's bike--again), and it was the first time Dean had come over for anything to eat even though we'd invited them various times. That was neat except that our house was disheveled for all our projects. They didn't seem to mind.
So now the front of our house is mostly down to the black paper that was underneath the siding, and of course has gathered the attention of various neighbors--most of whom still face having to do this inevitable job to their own houses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the underlying wood that I could see was in very good condition. It may be different in the back, where the deterioration of our old siding is more obvious. Still, I'm more encouraged that we might not encounter severe repair bills in addition to the siding work.
In addition to the progress on the siding, our vegetable plants are looking great; our tomatoes and squash plants are blooming, and the leaves turned greener after I gave them some iron. They must have had the plant-equivalent of anemia.
The nagging item is that I haven't finished painting the ceiling in the one bathroom or the edges and skylight in the other. It's just been too busy lately! But that will come with time.
We are having some Japanese exchange students later this summer for a month, and we will have to fix up the downstairs too. I might paint the main room down there if I have the opportunity (this room has awful pinkish-red paint we'll have to stain-seal first, and a strip of wallpaper to remove; we also need to assemble the two bunkbeds that are in their room--assembly should only take part of a day. When we mentioned that job, neighbor Dean said with a quirky grin as he ate his pizza, "I think I'm going to be busy that day." Gary is quick to think of asking Dean for help when the job gets challenging.
This progress is one of my favorite things, taking on the harder jobs that don't fit into the usual everyday routine. I don't like to be living in a house that needs improvement when I can't do anything about it. Even though it can be quite a mess while various things are mid-process, at least there's an improved end in view and that's a promising situation.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
How the Jobs do Accumulate!
Yesterday I got started on moving plants (so moving the tree, see previous post, was not the beginning of this)--so that the workmen who replace our siding wouldn't trample my favorite perennials. It's not the best time of year to do so, since it's so hot and they get stressed by the heat if not by the move itself; besides some of them are blooming which is a bad time to transplant; in addition, I don't have a lot of flowerbed with dirt and no plants there yet (whereas strangely enough I have flowerbed area with no dirt and no plants--because we have not yet ordered a second load of dirt to fill an area where we put a landscaping wall to eliminate a slope).
Moving the plants is a big job. I had two wheelbarrow loads that I moved back to the back yard, and transplanted yesterday, and I have plenty more to go.
So today we were talking to Dean (the husband of Stacia, whose blog you may have read), and he started rumbling about how he is wanting to bring a small caterpillar-machine through the yard between our houses to fix some problems in his back yard. Not only will I need to move my perennials at that point, but he's going to rework the rock wall between our properties, where even though it's not our rock wall, it's on our side of his fence and he doesn't generally show interest in it. So I've planted it with flowering plants and weeded it, and it is looking pretty good (though it needs weeding again). Now, in addition to moving all my perennials from the flowerbed in the front of the house because of siding, and at the side of the house because of the caterpillar-machine, I also need to move them from the rock wall. This is a lot to do! Well, not so bad, in a way, because I do love to garden, and I could do it forever, and replanting plants is really what gardeners kind of live to do, and it will all look better in the end, but aaaagh. We have a lot to do. Why am I sitting here blogging instead of transplanting? It's the hot part of the day and I'm still recovering from transplanting our tree this morning. Maybe tonight. Hmm. I think I have the place for some of those things after all, at least temporarily--in the so-far unused portion of our vegetable bed, under the fruit trees, where it's shady. Yes, I think this could be a good thing. Hmm. I think I'm feeling a little more energized. Now where is that shovel?
Moving the plants is a big job. I had two wheelbarrow loads that I moved back to the back yard, and transplanted yesterday, and I have plenty more to go.
So today we were talking to Dean (the husband of Stacia, whose blog you may have read), and he started rumbling about how he is wanting to bring a small caterpillar-machine through the yard between our houses to fix some problems in his back yard. Not only will I need to move my perennials at that point, but he's going to rework the rock wall between our properties, where even though it's not our rock wall, it's on our side of his fence and he doesn't generally show interest in it. So I've planted it with flowering plants and weeded it, and it is looking pretty good (though it needs weeding again). Now, in addition to moving all my perennials from the flowerbed in the front of the house because of siding, and at the side of the house because of the caterpillar-machine, I also need to move them from the rock wall. This is a lot to do! Well, not so bad, in a way, because I do love to garden, and I could do it forever, and replanting plants is really what gardeners kind of live to do, and it will all look better in the end, but aaaagh. We have a lot to do. Why am I sitting here blogging instead of transplanting? It's the hot part of the day and I'm still recovering from transplanting our tree this morning. Maybe tonight. Hmm. I think I have the place for some of those things after all, at least temporarily--in the so-far unused portion of our vegetable bed, under the fruit trees, where it's shady. Yes, I think this could be a good thing. Hmm. I think I'm feeling a little more energized. Now where is that shovel?
A Muddy Mess and Mr. Clean
Well, today Gary and I accomplished our one big daily goal--we moved a 7-foot tree from our front yard into our back. We are having our siding replaced (our house is one of those with LP, the kind of siding that rots in the rain...in the state of Washington, it almost makes good compost) and we have to pull plants out of the way so the workmen can do their thing. This tree in question, some type of cypress, was wedged between our front steps and the side of our garage--about a 2-foot square spot. The front area of the roots were free to go into a flower bed and the rest had to go fairly straight down or seep under the concrete of the front steps (which most of them did, alas!).
First we chipped a hole into the rock-hard clay soil in the back yard where we wanted to plant the tree, hoping that the hole was big enough. We filled the hole with water and went out front to move the tree.
We moved the landscaping blocks and a few smaller plants from our flower bed, and dug enough of the dirt from in front of the tree so we could lean it over and try wedging it out from its little cube-shaped home. After a long time of wedging a flat-bladed shovel in behind it, we were able to tip the tree forward and identify the roots that were hanging it up--those that were headed under our concrete steps. I clipped them and Gary and I were able to move the tree into a wheelbarrow and move it into the back yard.
Here's how bad our soil is--after wedging the tree out and moving it into the back yard, we looked at the hole. It was still completely full of water. We moved the tree into the hole, and found that it was not nearly big enough. We dug some more, put the tree in, and after bringing some more dirt by wheelbarrow from the front to the back (it must have been purchased soil; it's much better than the native stuff) we tamped the tree into place and straightened it up. It's not exactly oriented right--the pretty side is sort of cockeyed too much toward the back--but I'm hoping that with time it will look pretty all around. It was so crammed into its spot that many of the back branches had died off.
Afterward I looked at my reflection. I looked almost like I'd done a belly flop into the mud. I looked at Gary. He looked like he'd just put clean clothes on (he hadn't). I knew he'd worked as hard as I had--I guess I just like to get in there and wallow. No wonder housekeeping is hard for me. Tim takes after me, in usually being surrounded by tracks of dirt, and a little cloud of rubble and dust. I wonder what makes the difference. Whatever. At least the tree is moved, I've had my shower (it took Boraxo--Lava soap was too delicate) and now Gary and I are equally clean, but not good for much more work for now. Next I need to go pick out a pain reliever. No need for Pilates today!
First we chipped a hole into the rock-hard clay soil in the back yard where we wanted to plant the tree, hoping that the hole was big enough. We filled the hole with water and went out front to move the tree.
We moved the landscaping blocks and a few smaller plants from our flower bed, and dug enough of the dirt from in front of the tree so we could lean it over and try wedging it out from its little cube-shaped home. After a long time of wedging a flat-bladed shovel in behind it, we were able to tip the tree forward and identify the roots that were hanging it up--those that were headed under our concrete steps. I clipped them and Gary and I were able to move the tree into a wheelbarrow and move it into the back yard.
Here's how bad our soil is--after wedging the tree out and moving it into the back yard, we looked at the hole. It was still completely full of water. We moved the tree into the hole, and found that it was not nearly big enough. We dug some more, put the tree in, and after bringing some more dirt by wheelbarrow from the front to the back (it must have been purchased soil; it's much better than the native stuff) we tamped the tree into place and straightened it up. It's not exactly oriented right--the pretty side is sort of cockeyed too much toward the back--but I'm hoping that with time it will look pretty all around. It was so crammed into its spot that many of the back branches had died off.
Afterward I looked at my reflection. I looked almost like I'd done a belly flop into the mud. I looked at Gary. He looked like he'd just put clean clothes on (he hadn't). I knew he'd worked as hard as I had--I guess I just like to get in there and wallow. No wonder housekeeping is hard for me. Tim takes after me, in usually being surrounded by tracks of dirt, and a little cloud of rubble and dust. I wonder what makes the difference. Whatever. At least the tree is moved, I've had my shower (it took Boraxo--Lava soap was too delicate) and now Gary and I are equally clean, but not good for much more work for now. Next I need to go pick out a pain reliever. No need for Pilates today!
Work Out a Little, Laugh till Your Sides Split
Well, if you read before that I was going to try Pilates (see Work a Little Rest a Lot blog entry), now you have an update: I did. Try. I laughed my silly head off, till I cried and halfway flooded the room with tears. Never knew that exercise could be so funny.
It would be nice if they used real human beings for those exercise videos. Everyone knows that a real human being can't put her arms around her bent legs because the legs are too chubby. I happen to be a real human being.
So I tried the exercises, too, and never really did them the way those aliens would have liked me to, but I did them well enough that two days later I still hurt in muscles I didn't know were in my middle somewhere. In a day or two I'll try it again. Laughter is good for your health.
The rolling exercises that you may have read about in Katie's blog were funny. The aliens could roll back up without any perceived difficulty. I had to tug on my pants legs or put my elbow on the floor to achieve it.
I'm glad they didn't have me put my leg behind my head (that's for you, Barbara) or I would still be down there screaming. And laughing...and the flood would have been in the news.
It would be nice if they used real human beings for those exercise videos. Everyone knows that a real human being can't put her arms around her bent legs because the legs are too chubby. I happen to be a real human being.
So I tried the exercises, too, and never really did them the way those aliens would have liked me to, but I did them well enough that two days later I still hurt in muscles I didn't know were in my middle somewhere. In a day or two I'll try it again. Laughter is good for your health.
The rolling exercises that you may have read about in Katie's blog were funny. The aliens could roll back up without any perceived difficulty. I had to tug on my pants legs or put my elbow on the floor to achieve it.
I'm glad they didn't have me put my leg behind my head (that's for you, Barbara) or I would still be down there screaming. And laughing...and the flood would have been in the news.
Monday, June 26, 2006
An Interesting Set of Fruit Trees
We have an interesting situation with the fruit trees that were already on our property when we bought the house. There were two plum trees, a peach tree and a cherry tree. I have no problem with the plum trees, except that out of 450 plums that the tree produced last year (compared with 2 this year), they all ripened the same week. That's okay. I made some neighbors pretty happy giving them each a big bag of plums--ripe ones, since we were out of town for the first two or so days that about 250 of them fell on the ground before I could harvest them. These numbers are real--I counted them since they were so plentiful!
The peach tree was a lost cause. This climate is not extremely hot enough for peaches--there's a reason you associate them with Georgia. So the peaches were mealy and moldy before they even got ripe. I cut all the branches off of it last year since they were also diseased--thinking maybe it would be one of those wonders of nature that would come back in force if I did so. Still, no signs of life have emerged and I will have to cut it down at the base.
That leaves the cherry tree. It has produced abundantly each of the three years we've been here. The cherries are absolutely picture perfect--a bright cheery red, just the type that you see in pictures and artwork. The only problem is that they are not only not Bing cherries, which are dark and sweet and ready for eating uncooked, but even the birds don't bother them. You eat one and your face puckers at the sour bitterness of the fruit. It's downright dismal. Maybe they are pie cherries and only get sweet with cooking. It just doesn't seem very promising so far and I'm not sure I care to put in the effort. I probably ought to try, since in my ignorance I might be passing up a great opportunity. On the hottest day we've had here in a couple of years, it just doesn't sound like a very exciting experiment.
These trees could be used as illustrations of people. I think I'm a little like the plum tree--I produce a lot in a huge burst and then I have to rest for a while.
There are those like the peach tree, I never want to be one of those--who only bear bad fruit, ugly and rotten--Jesus uses this as an illustration of false prophets, who don't trust in God or do anything in His strength. They are only good to be cut down.
Then there are many people who are like our cherry tree, whose fruit is all pretty and perfect on the outside and sour and bitter on the inside. If someone will spend some time and effort on them, they may have a good sweet reward in the end.
I'm glad that many fruit trees are less perplexing than these. There are so many that reliably bear good and beautiful fruit; they are like the tree in Psalm 1 which is firmly planted by streams of Living Water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither; the man who lives emulating this tree prospers in whatever he does. I hope to, as I grow in Christ, be continually more like this tree.
An update on the cherry tree--today in spite of the heat Katie picked a number of the cherries and tried cooking them experimentally with some sugar and cornstarch; the bitter and sour taste subsided somewhat. Not that the result was all that flavorful; I still think they're a bit disappointing. To update our little "Scripture meaning" of each tree, we surmise that when someone produces fruit that looks pretty on the outside but is actually bitter and sour inside, then provided that they go through some cooking, some testing, with someone adding some sweetness to their lives, they might show some promise. So there you go. Also, don't let your first conclusion about a person be your lasting one, because like the flavor of the cherries, people can change with time and marinating in God's word and the fellowship of believers. Also if you have bitter cherries in your yard maybe you should cook some up into a pie (with plenty of sugar) and invite us over! Uh, I guess that is what we ought to be doing for you...let us know if you want to try ours. (Not promising that you'll be glad for it.)
The peach tree was a lost cause. This climate is not extremely hot enough for peaches--there's a reason you associate them with Georgia. So the peaches were mealy and moldy before they even got ripe. I cut all the branches off of it last year since they were also diseased--thinking maybe it would be one of those wonders of nature that would come back in force if I did so. Still, no signs of life have emerged and I will have to cut it down at the base.
That leaves the cherry tree. It has produced abundantly each of the three years we've been here. The cherries are absolutely picture perfect--a bright cheery red, just the type that you see in pictures and artwork. The only problem is that they are not only not Bing cherries, which are dark and sweet and ready for eating uncooked, but even the birds don't bother them. You eat one and your face puckers at the sour bitterness of the fruit. It's downright dismal. Maybe they are pie cherries and only get sweet with cooking. It just doesn't seem very promising so far and I'm not sure I care to put in the effort. I probably ought to try, since in my ignorance I might be passing up a great opportunity. On the hottest day we've had here in a couple of years, it just doesn't sound like a very exciting experiment.
These trees could be used as illustrations of people. I think I'm a little like the plum tree--I produce a lot in a huge burst and then I have to rest for a while.
There are those like the peach tree, I never want to be one of those--who only bear bad fruit, ugly and rotten--Jesus uses this as an illustration of false prophets, who don't trust in God or do anything in His strength. They are only good to be cut down.
Then there are many people who are like our cherry tree, whose fruit is all pretty and perfect on the outside and sour and bitter on the inside. If someone will spend some time and effort on them, they may have a good sweet reward in the end.
I'm glad that many fruit trees are less perplexing than these. There are so many that reliably bear good and beautiful fruit; they are like the tree in Psalm 1 which is firmly planted by streams of Living Water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither; the man who lives emulating this tree prospers in whatever he does. I hope to, as I grow in Christ, be continually more like this tree.
An update on the cherry tree--today in spite of the heat Katie picked a number of the cherries and tried cooking them experimentally with some sugar and cornstarch; the bitter and sour taste subsided somewhat. Not that the result was all that flavorful; I still think they're a bit disappointing. To update our little "Scripture meaning" of each tree, we surmise that when someone produces fruit that looks pretty on the outside but is actually bitter and sour inside, then provided that they go through some cooking, some testing, with someone adding some sweetness to their lives, they might show some promise. So there you go. Also, don't let your first conclusion about a person be your lasting one, because like the flavor of the cherries, people can change with time and marinating in God's word and the fellowship of believers. Also if you have bitter cherries in your yard maybe you should cook some up into a pie (with plenty of sugar) and invite us over! Uh, I guess that is what we ought to be doing for you...let us know if you want to try ours. (Not promising that you'll be glad for it.)
Sunday, June 25, 2006
A Couple of Fun Recipes
Here are a couple of recipes that I think you'll enjoy. Well, you certainly won't get fat using them...most likely.
THE BEST ZUCCHINI RECIPE EVER!
1 bushel zucchini
1 pair of sunglasses
1 raincoat
A moderately fast car
Go to a busy parking lot. Drive around until you find an unlocked car. Put the zucchini in the back seat and drive away FAST before you are discovered!
ELEPHANT STEW
1 Elephant
Plenty of salt and pepper
2 rabbits (optional)
First catch your elephant. Then cut into bite-size pieces. (This should take about two months.)
Add enough brown gravy to cover your elephant an cook for about four weeks at 250 degrees C.
This serves 3000 people. If more are expected, add two rabbits, but do this if only necessary as people do not like to find hares in their stew.
THE BEST ZUCCHINI RECIPE EVER!
1 bushel zucchini
1 pair of sunglasses
1 raincoat
A moderately fast car
Go to a busy parking lot. Drive around until you find an unlocked car. Put the zucchini in the back seat and drive away FAST before you are discovered!
ELEPHANT STEW
1 Elephant
Plenty of salt and pepper
2 rabbits (optional)
First catch your elephant. Then cut into bite-size pieces. (This should take about two months.)
Add enough brown gravy to cover your elephant an cook for about four weeks at 250 degrees C.
This serves 3000 people. If more are expected, add two rabbits, but do this if only necessary as people do not like to find hares in their stew.
Garden Whale Casserole
Don’t know what a garden whale is? That’s one of those big, foot-long green things that appear in your zucchini plants when you look away for a few minutes. Those work just fine in this casserole, seeds and all.
Dice:
3 c. zucchini (or more is fine)
2 lg. tomatoes
1 lg. sweet onion
Toss w/ salt and pepper.
Grate:
1 ½ c. sharp cheddar cheese
½ c. Parmesan cheese
Topping:
8 saltines
3 Tbsp. butter
Garlic powder
Finesse herbs (or thyme and oregano)
Butter a large casserole dish. In it place ½ of vegetable mixture and ½ of cheese. Make topping mixture by crumbling saltines and mixing in other topping ingredients. Top casserole with half of cheese and topping, rest of zucchini, rest of cheese and topping ingredients. Bake covered ½ - ¾ hour; remove lid last 10-15 min. (And if you’re like me, you’ll just put the veggies in and top with cheese and topping—and it will work fine.)
Here's another thing that my family loves when I do zucchini: I put oil in a pan and heat it to med. high; then slice a bunch of zucchini; scatter thyme all over the pan, add the zucchini, cook on the one side, and turn when the first side is dark; cook the other side until through. They're good! Even Tim, my pickiest, loves it.
Don’t know what a garden whale is? That’s one of those big, foot-long green things that appear in your zucchini plants when you look away for a few minutes. Those work just fine in this casserole, seeds and all.
Dice:
3 c. zucchini (or more is fine)
2 lg. tomatoes
1 lg. sweet onion
Toss w/ salt and pepper.
Grate:
1 ½ c. sharp cheddar cheese
½ c. Parmesan cheese
Topping:
8 saltines
3 Tbsp. butter
Garlic powder
Finesse herbs (or thyme and oregano)
Butter a large casserole dish. In it place ½ of vegetable mixture and ½ of cheese. Make topping mixture by crumbling saltines and mixing in other topping ingredients. Top casserole with half of cheese and topping, rest of zucchini, rest of cheese and topping ingredients. Bake covered ½ - ¾ hour; remove lid last 10-15 min. (And if you’re like me, you’ll just put the veggies in and top with cheese and topping—and it will work fine.)
Here's another thing that my family loves when I do zucchini: I put oil in a pan and heat it to med. high; then slice a bunch of zucchini; scatter thyme all over the pan, add the zucchini, cook on the one side, and turn when the first side is dark; cook the other side until through. They're good! Even Tim, my pickiest, loves it.
Further Progress on Household Work
I am continuing with my intent to accomplish significant things every day. Well, Sunday is a day of rest, and that's where I'm keeping it...but otherwise I have persisted. Latest was working in the vegetable garden. We're continuing to try to get it really going, kind of late but we couldn't help that for lack of soil.
We had soil delivered from a friend of ours; it is nicer than what we had on hand since most of the rocks and things have been sifted out. I think though that it is rather clay-ish, once it is rained on. It is hard to hoe and I will continue to amend it so that in coming years it will be good, fertile, and easy to work. So far, though, my shoulders get sore rather quickly working in it.
We are believers in composting plant matter from both our yard and our kitchen. If you contrast the compost with the clayish soil, the difference is vast. Dark, rich, crumbly soft soil is what we get. It also has a price to pay, that is, if we want to keep the remaining compost working. We take the worms out of the compost before incorporating the compost into the soil. They are red worms, which die if they don't have compost; they are no good to a vegetable garden but vital to a compost bin. So yesterday Tim and I sat together and divided the worms from the compost. There are endless numbers of them! I realize this isn't work everyone would care to do, but the resulting soil is a great reward. I drew a furrow with my hoe and added the compost, then blended it in with the clay-ish soil. We then scattered seed, put up bamboo posts at either end of each row, and labeled the rows. We also used some cassette tape tied to the bamboo posts at either end of the rows to delineate where each row went so we were less likely to walk on them--they also should discourage birds. I hate to say this that only took a minute to type took a couple of hours to accomplish.
Some of our tomatoes and squash plants were looking kind of yellow and so I added some iron to the surrounding soil. I hope it helps! I thought the soil probably was high in iron, since it has a red tone, but it doesn't seem to be--unless the yellow is from something else. A few days should show whether it is or not.
The weather is hot now so we will have to remember to water there daily. After a couple more months we should have not only the zucchini and tomatoes that we started with, but also spinach, radishes, green onions, maybe some peppers (they're turning out kind of wimpy), Swiss chard, lettuce...if we eat all that we'll be quite healthy. And we should have enough to share!
I have a great recipe for zucchini and tomatoes; I'll post it separately. I think you'll like it. Happy summer!
We had soil delivered from a friend of ours; it is nicer than what we had on hand since most of the rocks and things have been sifted out. I think though that it is rather clay-ish, once it is rained on. It is hard to hoe and I will continue to amend it so that in coming years it will be good, fertile, and easy to work. So far, though, my shoulders get sore rather quickly working in it.
We are believers in composting plant matter from both our yard and our kitchen. If you contrast the compost with the clayish soil, the difference is vast. Dark, rich, crumbly soft soil is what we get. It also has a price to pay, that is, if we want to keep the remaining compost working. We take the worms out of the compost before incorporating the compost into the soil. They are red worms, which die if they don't have compost; they are no good to a vegetable garden but vital to a compost bin. So yesterday Tim and I sat together and divided the worms from the compost. There are endless numbers of them! I realize this isn't work everyone would care to do, but the resulting soil is a great reward. I drew a furrow with my hoe and added the compost, then blended it in with the clay-ish soil. We then scattered seed, put up bamboo posts at either end of each row, and labeled the rows. We also used some cassette tape tied to the bamboo posts at either end of the rows to delineate where each row went so we were less likely to walk on them--they also should discourage birds. I hate to say this that only took a minute to type took a couple of hours to accomplish.
Some of our tomatoes and squash plants were looking kind of yellow and so I added some iron to the surrounding soil. I hope it helps! I thought the soil probably was high in iron, since it has a red tone, but it doesn't seem to be--unless the yellow is from something else. A few days should show whether it is or not.
The weather is hot now so we will have to remember to water there daily. After a couple more months we should have not only the zucchini and tomatoes that we started with, but also spinach, radishes, green onions, maybe some peppers (they're turning out kind of wimpy), Swiss chard, lettuce...if we eat all that we'll be quite healthy. And we should have enough to share!
I have a great recipe for zucchini and tomatoes; I'll post it separately. I think you'll like it. Happy summer!
Friday, June 23, 2006
Work a Little, Rest a Lot...a Perplexing Pattern
Well, on my resolution to do at least one project per day this summer, I think I've done fairly well. We have one bathroom that we've just turned from seafoam green to neutral beige...except for the ceiling, which at least is sealer-primed (I'm tired of the expressive color choices of our previous owner--and we might want to sell before long). Now we only have one room left that we have to prime to cover the previous owner's less-than-fabulous choice: the pinky red that is on the lower half of the rec room walls. The experience of priming first, and plastering major flaws in the wall board, makes us feel spoiled when all that is needed in the room is the paint itself. I painted our back bathroom most of the way yesterday (have to do the edging and some over the mirror) and it only took about an hour. Wow! Well, I do still need to do the edging...
Once I was done with painting yesterday, we went for a walk and after stopping to talk to some neighbors (who were gently berating us for not attending their Bible study...well, it's a long story)...well, after that, I could hardly move, so instead of going off the cul-de-sac we just went home. Sad when you get old and hardly fit at all for anything. I do try.
Katie's been doing her Pilates, maybe you've read her blog...and I intend to try, but I'm mentally gearing up. She just does it on the hard floor, and I don't dare until I get a good floor mat. If I did, I think I'd break a bone or something; maybe need a hospital visit. It looks intriguing, if not dangerous. She was sore afterward; thought she had an upset stomach until she realized the Pilates caused it...and she hasn't had abdominal surgeries, as I have. It does give me pause.
So I can try all I can to be tough and do the hard stuff (yes, painting is hard stuff), but then I have to stop for rest in between, which is perplexing. I hope that when I do start Pilates that I don't have to take a week off for every day I work out. If you see a short person walking in a body cast in the next few weeks, consider yourself hugged, or at least waved at.
Once I was done with painting yesterday, we went for a walk and after stopping to talk to some neighbors (who were gently berating us for not attending their Bible study...well, it's a long story)...well, after that, I could hardly move, so instead of going off the cul-de-sac we just went home. Sad when you get old and hardly fit at all for anything. I do try.
Katie's been doing her Pilates, maybe you've read her blog...and I intend to try, but I'm mentally gearing up. She just does it on the hard floor, and I don't dare until I get a good floor mat. If I did, I think I'd break a bone or something; maybe need a hospital visit. It looks intriguing, if not dangerous. She was sore afterward; thought she had an upset stomach until she realized the Pilates caused it...and she hasn't had abdominal surgeries, as I have. It does give me pause.
So I can try all I can to be tough and do the hard stuff (yes, painting is hard stuff), but then I have to stop for rest in between, which is perplexing. I hope that when I do start Pilates that I don't have to take a week off for every day I work out. If you see a short person walking in a body cast in the next few weeks, consider yourself hugged, or at least waved at.
Friday, June 16, 2006
A List of Preparations for a Plumbing Job
Well, in view of my latest post, which included my replacing a faucet, I thought I would list a few points that would be helpful to someone doing so themselves. My instructions had nothing about removing the old faucet, just installing the new, so I learned as I went.
1. Remember to turn off the water. There are probably two valves under the sink you can close off rather than the one for the whole house. If you replace those valves, though, you'll need the whole-house valve.
2. Get eye protection (I only did too late and ended up getting stuff in my eye, causing a scratch on the inside of my eyelid), a bucket, some absorbent rags; also you may need what's called a "shower valve socket wrench set"--I had to buy one. They're like hexagonal-shaped tubes so you can put them over all the pipe paraphernalia and get to the big hex nut that keeps the faucet central portion in place. You'll also need screw drivers (both kinds), a set of wrenches, maybe one adjustable wrench; and it would also be good to replace the hoses from the valves. I was happy that one of ours broke off at the connection to the valve--otherwise it might have broken later and caused huge damage. They were stiff and at 13 years old, needed replacing. Ours were only about 12" long. Measure the size of the valve connection and the connection at the other end. I didn't and ended up having to buy two sets just to be sure, and now I have a return to make.
You may also need a power saw. The reciprocating saw I used may have been overkill, but it worked better than any other option I could find. Without it I couldn't have gotten my new shower valve socket wrench over all the other stuff.
3. Get your kids busy doing other, engaging stuff. You don't want them messing with you when it gets difficult. Maybe your spouse or a babysitter would be a good intervention.
I hope this helps someone out there in the grim process, to actually enjoy the benefit of learning from my difficulty.
1. Remember to turn off the water. There are probably two valves under the sink you can close off rather than the one for the whole house. If you replace those valves, though, you'll need the whole-house valve.
2. Get eye protection (I only did too late and ended up getting stuff in my eye, causing a scratch on the inside of my eyelid), a bucket, some absorbent rags; also you may need what's called a "shower valve socket wrench set"--I had to buy one. They're like hexagonal-shaped tubes so you can put them over all the pipe paraphernalia and get to the big hex nut that keeps the faucet central portion in place. You'll also need screw drivers (both kinds), a set of wrenches, maybe one adjustable wrench; and it would also be good to replace the hoses from the valves. I was happy that one of ours broke off at the connection to the valve--otherwise it might have broken later and caused huge damage. They were stiff and at 13 years old, needed replacing. Ours were only about 12" long. Measure the size of the valve connection and the connection at the other end. I didn't and ended up having to buy two sets just to be sure, and now I have a return to make.
You may also need a power saw. The reciprocating saw I used may have been overkill, but it worked better than any other option I could find. Without it I couldn't have gotten my new shower valve socket wrench over all the other stuff.
3. Get your kids busy doing other, engaging stuff. You don't want them messing with you when it gets difficult. Maybe your spouse or a babysitter would be a good intervention.
I hope this helps someone out there in the grim process, to actually enjoy the benefit of learning from my difficulty.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
A Goal for the Summer
Well, now that Katie is graduated and homeschooling Tim will be a more occasional than daily event, life is quieting down a lot in general. Still, there is much to do of a less urgent nature, and I am resolving to do one nagging project (the project is nagging, not me!) per day. Yesterday, I replaced the kitchen faucet. The old one had an extra fountain coming out the side, because the housing had started cracking more than a year ago. First it was a nearly invisible stream, and I bought the replacement intending to replace it soon afterward. But there was never the right day that we had the ability to stay on task and attend to nothing else but run errands to Home Depot for yet one more unanticipated part or tool.
Good thing, too. I never would have anticipated the three trips I made, or how hard it was to get the old faucet off! Since there was one nut that would NOT unscrew (un-nut?) from the pipe to the old faucet, finally after trying with a jig saw, I got it off with a reciprocating saw. It lets out a really gratifying sound that is just right for the really aggravated home fix-it person. I also use this saw for pruning our trees, so it is a pretty big-scale saw. Did the job. So after a day pretty well devoted to this faucet I got it replaced and felt pretty good about it. Can you tell?
So today, second in the series...I was going to hang a curtain that I finally finished about 6 months back and haven't had time to iron and then hang in the front window of our living room--what, a 20 minute project? Exactly. Instead, though, I started realizing how many plants we had outside that were waiting to be planted--one large maple tree, one tiny snowball tree, and a few other things--plus three I promised to plant for Stacia. So after a few hours, I had accomplished digging the holes, placing the plants, replanting one because the place wasn't right, and watering them afterward. Also replanted some ferns and foxgloves that would be destroyed when we get our siding done later this summer. Pretty rewarding to get it all done, but whew! I was exhausted. Went in to make spaghetti (one of the easiest dinners in existence) afterward, and could hardly peel a clove of garlic; felt like I was 80 years old fiddling with the thing.
Maybe tomorrow I'll hang the curtain. Not tonight. Still, I feel I'm on a roll. Wha-ha! Only 4 billion projects to go.
Good thing, too. I never would have anticipated the three trips I made, or how hard it was to get the old faucet off! Since there was one nut that would NOT unscrew (un-nut?) from the pipe to the old faucet, finally after trying with a jig saw, I got it off with a reciprocating saw. It lets out a really gratifying sound that is just right for the really aggravated home fix-it person. I also use this saw for pruning our trees, so it is a pretty big-scale saw. Did the job. So after a day pretty well devoted to this faucet I got it replaced and felt pretty good about it. Can you tell?
So today, second in the series...I was going to hang a curtain that I finally finished about 6 months back and haven't had time to iron and then hang in the front window of our living room--what, a 20 minute project? Exactly. Instead, though, I started realizing how many plants we had outside that were waiting to be planted--one large maple tree, one tiny snowball tree, and a few other things--plus three I promised to plant for Stacia. So after a few hours, I had accomplished digging the holes, placing the plants, replanting one because the place wasn't right, and watering them afterward. Also replanted some ferns and foxgloves that would be destroyed when we get our siding done later this summer. Pretty rewarding to get it all done, but whew! I was exhausted. Went in to make spaghetti (one of the easiest dinners in existence) afterward, and could hardly peel a clove of garlic; felt like I was 80 years old fiddling with the thing.
Maybe tomorrow I'll hang the curtain. Not tonight. Still, I feel I'm on a roll. Wha-ha! Only 4 billion projects to go.
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