Simple Pleasures

I like to have a lot of variety in my days, so my role as a homemaker seems imminently suited to me.

• Some days I want to clean like a crazy person, deep and wide, venturing where no woman has gone for months (years?) before me. 
• Other days I want to cook everything in the house, which is why stock-piling food seems like a recipe for disaster for me!  
• Other days I am in the mood to focus on financial and business matters
• Others I have such a need to organize something that nothing in the house is safe from my ministrations!  
• Rarely, but on occasion, I am content to just sit and read for hours. 
• When the weather is nice (between 55 and 80 degrees) I like to be outside puttering in my yard

When it is hot like it has been here (in the low 100's + humid) I don't even want to venture out to check the mail.  So, yesterday, I didn't! I stayed in all day and spent several glorious hours in my kitchen. I cleaned out the refrigerator, washed a bunch of dishes that I dirtied while cooking almost everything in the house, and organized a few things in my fabulous room-sized pantry!  I made menu plans and a shopping list, and in general had a grand time.

I also spent some time in my studio creating birthday cards, wrapping gifts and preparing them to mail, and re-framing some of my posters in wood frames. My studio is almost done, and then I will post some pictures. It is a very pleasant room, but not quite as fun as my room at Miller Manor. Once we are ready to tackle it, we will be doing some radical redecorating in there, but for now, I am happy with what I've got.

The only sad part of the day was that Elizabeth had to have her cat put to sleep. He got really sick last Thursday night and never really got over it. By yesterday morning she knew he was not going to make it.  He was her favorite cat ever, and it is always hard to say good-bye.  No matter how old my kids get, I still wish I could make things better for them, so I shed my own crop of tears throughout the day in sympathy of her loss and pain, wishing she lived closer so I could hold her.

Since I stayed home yesterday, I need to run errands today. Ornery took the deposit to the bank on his lunch break, but I need to do my own grocery shopping.  He is not safe alone in the store, and while it is lots of fun to go shopping with him, I rarely send him alone lest I end up with a lot of things I can't use, and few of the things I need. I don't mind, though. Shopping in general is one of my least favorite things to do, but I can spend hours in a grocery store reading labels and thinking of creative ways to use foods.

So I am off to the wonderful world of Whole Paycheck to fill in the gaps on my menu plan. I just wish it was about 15 miles closer!