Who knows where the time goes

I am always amazed at how quickly time flies and I wasn't doing anything much. I'm spending most days hibernating and trying not to go out into the freezing cold. As the years spin by I realize how cold it gets here. My days of building snow forts all day are over. I'm more of the short bursts of snow play broken up by hot chocolate and the wood stove. #1 LOVES the snow and plays on the back hill with the sled, saucer and toboggan for a few hours at a time. #2 is more of the go in the snow to wait for the bus, eat a bit of snow and get on the bus. He's not a sled kid. Snowmen hold no interest. He doesn't like hot chocolate. It can make playing outside after school a bit hard on me. The constant back and forth from house to yard always brings more snow into the house than I intended but #2 is willing to eat it all.
The kids new bedrooms will be done soon and then comes the mammoth chore of moving all their stuff . We're down to floor molding, varnishing the doors and touching up any trim paint. This is all being done by Dear Hubby so it's done after work and weekends. It's been a long process but will be worth it in a few more weeks. I have no idea how #2 will react to the changes but it should be interesting. They will also have a new playroom for all their stuff. The idea is to corral most of the toys and detritus so that some of the downstairs doesn't look like I run a home daycare.

Renovations March On

This is drywall the upstairs of the extension week. That means I am tied to the house so the work can be done. Have you ever noticed how, as soon as you can't do something (leave house) you have a bunch of things pop into your head that you could be doing (school shopping)?? The work is moving along well and looks good. Since I am not trying to hang the drywall I am happy. That stuff is heavy!! I'm splitting my time at home this week between trying to do a bunch of things I've been putting off while Hubby was home (he's travelling for work this week) and fooling around on the computer. Guess which group is going to get more of my time.....

#2 has 1 1/2 weeks left of his summer program and then it's a break and off to kindergarten. I'm still getting all the stuff ready for both to go to school and haven't really had the chance to stop and think about the fact that the baby is going to school. I think I'm supposed to feel sad or like I want another but it's just not there. I tend to be very matter of fact and not prone to sudden tears so I'm betting this is like #1's first day of kindergarten 2 years ago- hang out and wonder what I've forgotten to put in the backpack and hope she makes nice friends. And take a dozen photos of her in front of the house waiting for the bus in her cute first day outfit. Note to self- gotta get #2 a first day of school outfit. We got the backpack and lunch bag- the back pack is almost as tall as he is and twice as wide so that ought to make a great picture- my kid the turtle. Both are taking after me in the skinny lanky look. Either of them would have to stand up twice to cast a shadow (as my step father so eloquently described me once- but I was an adult and beyond the self conscious phase). Hey Richard, too bad you didn't get to meet these guys- they are quite a pair and I'd bet they would give you a run for your money. My step-dad died in 1998, my mother had worried that he and I wouldn't get along. We were opposites in many ways- He was VERY tall (6'7!!!) and I'm NOT, he was a hunter and I'm a take care of the little critter kind- not that I'm against hunting but I can't eat it if I knew it. The list of opposites goes on and on while the only similarity was that we are both opinionated. The recipe for clash was writ large here, folks. Oddly enough, we got along quite well- once we worked out that we could have differing opinions without the world ending. We both got a kick out of the darndest things. He could laugh with or at me for my softie tendencies without my hitting the ceiling and I had no problem saying things like "sit down I want to look you in the eye". Perhaps it was finding out that we both knew lots of bad words and could use them really well without being offended by the others use- shock value is not reserved for teenagers- it works equally well far into the adult years. As a matter of fact it gets more shocking to hear certain words fall out of someones mouth as they get older. I think it was mostly the fact that we were both adults (ok with some tendencies toward childish pranks) when she met him, plus my parents weren't divorced- my dad died unexpectedly and young when I was in college. I didn't view him as competition for my mothers attention as much as a great diversion for her. And of course there was no question of my parents getting back together if not for him- a dead parent doesn't have the same emotional turmoil as a divorced parent. The upshot here is that he would have gotten a real kick out of these two. But then I have a whole cadre of dead relatives I think would have loved these two (not just because of the family thing, either). Ok, enough dead family for today.

So I'm spending most of my free time doing needle felting for a fall festival in town. I've got to put together a display of items, an information display and will be demonstrating the technique. #1 is helping me with this project and will have a scrapbook of her flat work there. Needle felting, for those who have never heard of it, is the use of specially designed barbed needles to poke wool and cause it to tangle. The tangling is what causes it to dry felt. Dry felting is different from wet felting in many ways- one being no water used. For a detailed explanation visit my website-
http://electricmomma.googlepages.com/home and click the needle felting page. I have to get some photos on the website and maybe a video if the basic techniques. #1 is very keen on making a video since she discovered You Tube. Most of what I do is 3D animals. Some are done over a wire armature and that allows some gentle posing. The rest are static pose animals. They aren't meant for children to play with so much as for collecting. It's amazing how quickly the creative well runs dry when there is a deadline on the horizon. So I need to run off and make an armature of a small squirrel that I want to get working on.

All by myself

Today I am all by myself. #1 is at Grandma's house for the last day in her three day stay. #2 is at school and Hubby is away traveling in the great wilds of Upper Ontario, Canada for his work. So far I have cleaned up one attic and sorted through some of the seasonal storage in that one. Boy do I have a lot of Halloween stuff for this year. I always pick up some decorations after the holidays to add for the next year and store it away. I also discovered that for some unknown reason I put a bunch of empty boxes in the lower attic. No wonder it looked so full. Some day I hope to have a subfloor in the entire lower attic. Right now only about 40% is floored for storage. I'd also like to insulate the heck out of there but that will have to wait for at least one more year. We are working on drywall for the kids new bedrooms and play area so that takes priority. Home renovations can be such a treat. The mess, the frustration, the emergency trips to the hardware shop for forgotten and critical supplies (drywall screws, anyone?), it makes me wonder if we will ever be done up there. The target is Christmas for drywall and beadboard in the bedrooms with hardwood floors. I wonder which target item will change first. I can't wait to get them in their new rooms. The original rooms were very small and only one of them had a heat register. I have high hopes for the finished products. Hubby is really quite handy around the house and I can wield a mean paint roller.

So what exciting things will I do with myself for the next 3.5 hours of alone time? Laundry, load dishwasher, clean bathrooms, mop kitchen, the list of things to do goes on and on. I think I will mop later, toss in a load of laundry soon, load the dishwasher and get some general picking up done. I am also amazed at the general level of cleaning to be done when you have kids and pets. There must be some really scary mathematical formula for this. It must involve calculus which I never really got the hang of. Something like the square footage of the house times the number of small creatures (kids and pets)raised to the 42nd power divided by number of hours in the day less sleep time of pets ( we all know kids don't sleep so much as recharge their batteries quickly) and somewhere is a coefficient of the times needed for other things (cooking, travel, nervous breakdowns, ER visits, and searching for car keys last seen clutched in small hand headed to the toy box). I haven't even figured on the complex stuff yet. But that is the probable formula for house work. Also something about the size of yard, quantity of rainfall for depth of mud tracked over what distance of the house. Yep, I'm blogging to procrastinate. I've gone to great websites which promise little steps to a cleaner house but no joy. I'm obviously ADD- definitely without the hyperactivity (I wish I was a bit more hyper- maybe I'd get more done in a day) I get side tracked from the little steps and then forget it- I'm done. My problem is I'm a bit of a packrat and I get bored quickly. Once I'm bored my mind wanders and soon my feet follow. In my family we refer to it as "Oh look, a chicken". There is a long story about a person(probably me) who is going on and on about a topic of interest only to get totally sidetracked and lose the entire train of thought upon seeing a chicken out the window. I'm pretty sure it's just an analogy since I grew up in the city. Long story short- new thought, new action while abandoning the old mid stride. Happens to me all the time. Add a fair dose of impatience and it's a nightmare.

So I'm setting the timer for 10 minutes and then going to quit blogging and start working. I think I'll start with laundry and go to the mopping. Then when the mopping is done I can load the dishwasher, move wet laundry to dryer and start a new load. I got a new washer and dryer about a month ago. The old guys just started dying and finally the washer decided not to spin or rinse anymore. I really loved my Asko set but they were very small so we went with an LG set which are almost 2x the size. They work great and I'm very pleased with them. If Asko made larger sizes I never would have left them. I loved that washer and the fact that it only hooked up to the cold water, had an on board heater up to 205 degrees, and was very water conscious (good for our septic!!) while spinning out most of the water so they could dry very quickly. I'm getting used to the fact that the new set is much larger than the old and leaves less room on top for folding and the basket. Eventually the laundry room will get overhauled and who knows what changes will be made but I'll be wanting enough room for the basket to fit under whatever shelves we replace these with.

Oops- timer going off- must work now. Take care.