I Meant to Blog, I Did!

But oh my heavens with Life cereal on top, I have been working. I have been working and working and working and working!

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're still horribly broke, but the first invoice has been turned in and two more will be turned in later this week and in another, oh, 8 weeks or so, things will be much better.

Let me see, what has happened since 8 days ago?

Swim Practice began. The twins were not ready. Ben especially was not ready. They were very, very close to being ready--but when it comes to this swimming business--well, it's a growth thing. And growth happens unevenly. And they have hit a sort of plateau, being very good at swimming about ten to fifteen feet--and that's it. So swimming from one side of the pool to the other (which is what it takes to stay on the swim team) wasn't happening. The team was giving them the chance to figure it out, but after yesterday's practice, I pulled the plug on that. They'll be ready next summer. That will have to be soon enough.

Wednesday evening was my monthly knitting class. I went and showed off the Shetland Garden Shawl. That was fun :) Then I went home and worked some more. On Thursday I pulled off all sorts of miracles including, but not limited to, some work deadlines and compiling a 5 page list of local agricultural sources. This has been a big hit. Which reminds me, I need to go through my old email and send the finished list to all the freecyclers who helped me with it (that was a total accident actually, me spamming the freecycling board for info--it got me on moderated status and I felt like a total dweeb because I thought for SURE I'd sent it to a different local swap board where sales and info requests are allowed. I apologized profusely to the moderator and told him I didn't blame him at all for moderating me and I was soooo sorry--which I really was--and he responded with a list of like 20 local agricultural places just because I was taking the moderated status thing so well. IS THAT NOT TOTALLY SWEET?)

There are so many good people in the world.

But I digress. Back to me. On Friday we did swim practice and then I worked and then in the evening we drove out to meet this woman who raises and sells goats for meat. I was picking up some freecycled plastic bucket-type things from her to give to the Community Gardens (because it's been so hot and dry and most folks stop by to schlep water to their gardens before work, so they're mostly all there at the same time--except me. I never make it out there that early now that school is out.) And that was very exciting because one of the mama goats had had twins two days before, so we got to MEET the two-day old baby goats and they were SO cute you just couldn't stand it.

Ben got to name them--Sally and Amy. They were both girls. And they did exactly what you expected a baby goat to do--they climbed up on top of things and then jumped down. Over and over and over again. If I'd known, I'd have brought my film camera and then you could all see it and ooooh and aaaaah over Sally and Amy.

Then I went home and spent two hours trying to get those buckets clean because the last thing they had carried was MILK and that was a few weeks ago and they hadn't been rinsed out. This was quite the job (because they are like gigantic milk jugs with those hollow handles).

On Saturday I worked from 7am to 11:30am straight in the community garden. The CG has a "board" that does "weed checks" every three weeks. They're kind of like the garden's HOA. It had been two weeks or so since I had last put in more than a half-hour of weeding and we got a little rain and lots of heat and the weeds--the weeds were consuming my garden at an alarming rate. So I spent four hours weeding and pruning (33 indeterminate tomato plants = a LOT of suckers. This could have been worse though. I'd been staying on top of the suckers so there was just the normal amount.) and watering and then I went home and . . . worked some more. I worked until midnight or so and then went to bed.

And then it was Sunday and Father's Day, so we went to church and came home and knit and read books and just generally hung out. We went to bed at some reasonable hour so I could . . .

get up at 4am on Monday to finish the work that was due Monday morning. I did this, then napped for an hour and a half and got up again to finish the work that was due Tuesday morning. Because I'd already worked one 7-hour shift, it felt like a whole second day was shoved into yesterday's Monday. Very odd, but it worked.

Today was supposed to be another productive work day, but it wasn't. There was swim practice and then I took the twins to get flip flops at Wal-mart, (primarily because something or someone has eaten all of their socks. I can't find any of them. So I had a choice, buy lots of socks or flipflops and the flipflops are cheaper. $1.68 or something) and then we went to the garden to water the stressed-out plants--which just always takes longer than you think it will.

We ran home and I got about an hour of work done, but I had PROMISED the kids I would stop working long enough to take them to Whipple Dam since it was a second day of 90 degree temps and so . . . I had to do that. We went and the kids were mad when I wanted to go home after two hours--but I honestly couldn't take any more sun. (I can't find my hat.) From there we went home, I worked for another hour, and then it was off to the practice swim meet. We made it through warm-ups (the twins played with some of the other young siblings) and then it started thundering. Well, Max was going to miss the second half of the meet anyway for boyscouts, and the thunder meant an automatic 20 minute delay and I looked at the sky . . . and packed up. There was a mom with her 19-month-old twins there (she has two other littles, too. Her big kid is maybe 6 or 7.) and I told her frankly that I though it would downpour soon. I felt kind of bad as I was leaving, because they were leaving too, and I worried "What if I was wrong?" but then 20 minutes later when the rain was so heavy you couldn't see a quarter mile up the road, I felt just fine about it.

I took Max to scouts a little early. We sat in the parking lot until everyone else (including Chris, the Weblos leader, and my hubby. That is, he is my hubby and the Weblos leader) showed up.

Now here we all are, back at home and I have to (you guessed it) go work now, but before I did that I thought, "I'd better blog before someone sends out the police to check on me." And so, I did.