Slowly getting back into routine. (Which still, unfortunately, involves waking up too early. I am just trusting that will work itself out over time, for all three of us.)

Since we were going to miss the first three weeks of classes for this term at the community college and city programs, we didn't sign up for some of them. No Monday yoga, no Saturday morning belly dance for me and gymnastics for Squiddle. It's been sort of relaxing, really, to only have four classes on our family schedule. And after my first couple days of frantically making the front yard and garden beds look, well, not abandoned, I've eased off on what I'm trying to accomplish each day.

(Wonderful Husband has, several times in the past, accused me of overloading my to-do list. He is correct about this tendency.)

Today's to-do list included a CostCo run, watering the kitchen garden and my potted plants, baking bread, and de-cat-hairing the sofa. All this has gotten done. Dishes are washed and the dry ones put away. I'm nudging at the kitchen over the next couple days because I'm at a point where I look around the house, and though there's space, there's clutter. I figure if I try to tackle one room each week, maybe I'll be able to make headway.

And as part of trying to slow down, I'm trying to cook more. Last night I tried a recipe from one of the Jamie Oliver books I brought back from the UK. It was... okay. The steamed coconut buns didn't turn out, but I later figured out why - the dough was too wet. The hoisin mushroom and chicken mixture was okay. The cucumber "pickle" needed something more, but I haven't yet figured out what. Tonight's meal is going to be simpler, and more familiar. Grilled bratwurst, homemade sauerkraut, and probably rice pilaf from a package. Wednesday dinners tend to be fast and simple, as I have writing class tonight.

For just now, however, I'm going to get a refill of my tea, and go lie down next to the napping Squiddle.

I had absolutely no energy when I got up this morning, and actually made the decision to skip Squiddle's class this morning in favor of R&R and cleaning. Mostly cleaning. But at least the temperature has dropped back down to the low 80s for a couple of days, so I was able to leave the doors and windows open and do the laundry during the day. And Wonderful Husband entertained the Squiddle for a few hours this afternoon while I experienced unconsciousness. And then he cooked dinner, and helped me pull weeds (and the dead corn) from the kitchen garden, filling the yard waste bin for this week. Hmm. And yet the lawn needs mowing this weekend... will have to see if the weeds can squish down.

The crane quilt is steadily being quilted. Two orange panels and two black panels remain. If I manage one of each a day, I can then bind it on Monday, wash it on Tuesday, and turn it in the the next person in the challenge Tuesday night. Then I will be free of deadlines.

Been on a bit of a tear today. Finished all the laundry, including the bathroom mat. While it was washing, I deep-cleaned the bathroom. I changed the fish water and started the algae treatment. The contents of the linen closet have been hauled out, reorganized, and replaced. Squiddle and I did the grocery shopping. Made sun tea, washed lots of dishes, coiled hoses, filled the fountain and cleaned its filter.

I finished quilting the Science Fair baby quilt (a different pattern in each hexagon) and sewed the binding on. Or tried to. Got three-quarters of the way around and realized that because of the ziggy-zaggy ends, I didn't have enough binding, and I didn't have any more of the fabric to make more. Wonderful Husband seam-ripped some of the binding off while I made more from a different fabric. And I have just finished seam-ripping off the rest.

Things I did not do: my homework. Any writing. Que sera sera....

Tomorrow: sewing on the new binding, and doing homework. Alternately, collapsing because I used up my entire energy allotment for June on the first day.

Title: the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing
Author: Marie Kondo
Length: 206 pages

( Review )

My mother-in-law is a baby whisperer and has managed to get the fractious Squiddle calmed down and asleep over Skype. All hail!

According to the guy at the sewing machine shop yesterday, the needle hitting the foot is what broke the foot. He would not accept me saying that the needle didn't start hitting the foot until after the foot broke. Wonderful Husband thinks he's trying to get me to buy a machine specifically for quilting. Which I would love to do, but since the $4K Babylock Tiara is no longer there, there's nothing in that shop I'm interested in.

So I wait, and hope I win that auction on eBay for the old all-metal foot that will work on vintage Singer machines. No more free-motion quilting for me until I have one of those.

Instead I turned my attention to my crafting shelves yesterday while it rained (.2"), and cleared out my old WIPs bin. I pulled out the pins, kept the pattern pieces, and threw all but three of the projects into the trash. At this point, I was never going to finish them, and I need the space and sanity more than the silent reproaches of the ghosts of Kristins past. I also pulled out probably another 16-inch cube of fabric to pass on to others, a few more specifically quilty things to donate to the Guild, and managed to snaffle three bins of quilt stuff down into two. Thus a little more space has been made.

I did not do any editing on Queen's Choice yesterday, and probably won't today either, as I need to edit my classmates' story submissions instead while the Squiddle is sleeping. And bring the bins in from the curb. And figure out what I'm making for dinner....

I'm on a cleaning/purging kick at the moment. Have been for a couple days, actually, and I'm hoping it sticks around. I've pulled a pile of stuff I'll never actually use/don't love anymore off my fabric shelves and hope to yank more. Still doubting I can purge enough there to "earn" that $4K Tiara quilting machine, though. I tried quilting on my mother's singer 201 only to find that the FMQ foot that fits my (newly serviced) Babylock doesn't work at all for a vintage Singer. And the foot that does will cost $30+. Thus, I've shifted back to the Babylock for the current quilting project, and just one and a half squares in, am back to dreaming hard about that Tiara, its table, the lovely lovely 18 inches of harp space....

But today I ended up working on my desk instead of sewing. I know it has a surface down there somewhere.... I've gone through a bunch of magazine issues, ripped out the few pages I want to keep, and tossed the rest into recycling. Ditto for swathes of "why do I even have this?" bits of paper. So far the left side of my desk has gone into four stacks: "priority to be dealt with," "books to read," "miscellaneous to be dealt with later," and a box of photos and cards. The right side is still a foot and a half stack of novel edits. I've done twenty pages worth today. If I manage to average ten pages a day... it'll be clear in a month. God that's depressing. My own fault for letting them pile up for so long.

Right now, though, I'm hitting the wall. Time to put the Squiddle to bed, and then find sleep myself. 'Night, all.

Somehow, though you would not usually think it to look upon the mess that is my house, tidying before going to bed has become a bastion of my sanity. So, my inlaws being out at the theater tonight, Wonderful Husband having packed it in at eight, and the Squiddle going down at nine, I'm still up, sitting in the lounge. It is much neater now than it was two hours ago (Squiddle mess everywhere), and my mind is calmer. Time to turn in and see if I can get a night of sleep tonight.

It's been a hot weekend, so we've mostly been hiding inside until the heat of the day dies away. By opening doors and windows in the early morning, and evening, and then keeping them closed during the heat of day, we manage to keep the inside of the house about fifteen degrees cooler than the outside. The difference between 100 Fahrenheit and 85 Fahrenheit is significant!

That said, I feel like I've gotten a fair amount done this weekend. We had my parents up yesterday for brunch, the last chance we'll have before they sail off for six months in Mexico. I went through twenty pages of edits on Field of Stars. I made sun tea, swept two rooms, and realized my Italian plums weren't going to last another day, so put up four and a half half-pints of Peach-Plum Ginger Jam.

Today I've gotten less done, so feel like a bit of a slacker in comparison. I've done the laundry, swept two more rooms and the hallway, made chicken cacciatore for dinner, and edited ten pages. Wonderful Husband and I also did a bit of grocery shopping.

But mainly we've been staying cool.

Thursday and yesterday, I pulled down my stack of "patriotic" themed quilting cottons and cut some donations for the quilting guild next week. July's Opportunity Basket raffle will be patriotic fabrics, so I'm donating a total of ten pieces, all at least half a yard long. I also auditioned various fabrics and cut out and sewed five Stashaholic's Dream Blocks for that block raffle. Pics of my blocks to be posted... eventually. I'm amused that my mother and husband both loved the yellow/red one I made, but had completely different reactions on the purple/green one.

I also have continued on with the process of pulling fabrics I no longer want from my shelves. Still not done, and it's depressing how little visual difference my pulls (nearly a two-foot stack at this point) make to the shelves. And, of course, now that Squiddle is fully mobile and has found his way into the sewing area at least once, I'm doing a full reorganization, moving all things that little hands can grab and do damage with/to, up. So now all my patterns are on the third shelf, and I've gone through my spools of thread and tested and discarded a lot of the old ones on wooden spools. The threads are starting to rot. So I'll be on the lookout for another interesting glass jar to put those in. I've got another couple large tubs from Target, so time to start organizing the bottom-shelf items into those.

Baked the sourdough bread today, it came out quite well. Got about half of the ironing done, and finished today's every-other-day wash/dry of Squiddle's undies. I also made lemon pudding cakes for dessert at my parents'... my mother and I thought they were too sweet, while Wonderful Husband thought they were just right. What's that saying about you can't please all the people...? :)

Right in the middle of baking, of course, while Wonderful Husband (still not 100% recovered from sickness) was napping, Squiddle had an MSE. He managed to go all over his diaper, diaper cover, onesie, leg, sock, my sleeve while I carried him to the changing table, and the high chair cover, straps, and buckles. Boy is DETERMINED!

Tried again to register for my writing class. Today the whole school website is down. I am unsure which direction this is progress in, but if I can't do it online tomorrow morning, I'll resort to going there in person and waiting in line to do it.