Check Me Out!

I am so totally on vacation. Yesterday I thought I was due to start another batch of workwork for Client du jour, (du many years, actually) so in a panic and a bit of New Year's mania (I am so ready to kick 2007 to the curb. Not that I'm not grateful for its spiritual bonanza, but I'd really like to be able to pay bills in a more timely fashion. Just sayin'.) I dug in and dug out my office from it's volcanic ashes of writing-gigs past. I threw away four trash bags of materials from this year's projects (technically, I bagged them up and then called Chris to haul them away. He was sweet about it.)

Then I took the pile of "things to do something about" and went through that. Next, I updated the wipe-off calendar over my desk and the kitchen calendar and my desk calendar, which also doubles as a "due dates" calendar. Then I balanced both checkbooks, paid a ton of bills, and then, surprise, it was night and still no fedex package. So I pulled out the schedule again, realized that I'd gone up a line on the tiny little excel chart that was the master schedule and that I'm not due to start working again until the 2nd!

So today I did a meal plan for the next week, put together a shopping list, and took the kids to Target to spend their Target gift cards (and then we went grocery shopping, of course). Since Santa brought me a new sewing machine, I got a sewing kit to go with it. It comes with a bunch of thread (LOL, I had to search for the right term for that: yarn? string? What's that sewing stuff called? Oh, yeah! Thread. Right.) When I got home I spent 20 minutes going through all the notions that came with the machine and my new kit. I felt like a little girl lining up all the tiny shoes that came with her new Barbie. "Oooo! Lookit this little brushy thing!"

So instead of working half of each day for the next five days, I get to, well, clean my house and knit and sew--which I think is a fine trade off. My mother did most of my laundry while she was here, so a significant portion of the "mess" in the living room is just putting away clean laundry.

Speaking of domestic stuff--another gift I received for Christmas is a new iron. Our old one was a Black and Decker work-horse that still did a pretty decent job of ironing out wrinkles, as long as you weren't too picky about these things. Chris did his homework in researching irons and got me a nice one. Nothing too spendy or flashy--we only have our church clothes and the occasional dressy occasion to iron for. But he was thoughtful enough to get one with a steaming function so that I can also use it for the occasional bit of blocking. I used it on the sample I finished for the yarn shop today. The steaming thing was fast and fun.

My plan for tomorrow is to get Ben and Milo's new church pants hemmed up, Max's old church pants hemmed up, and the living room picked up. That about covers it :)