behind, as always

Well, I was doing good about keeping track of my days. Here it is now almost a week since I wrote last. Oh well right? It just seems some days I don’t have anything of interest to write about. Or, I just forget to stop to jot things down.

Even now, I’ll be interrupted. The daughter has asked for a ride to work tonight. So, I’m here for a few, then I’ll take her, then back here. Once she’s at work, I’ll sit here while listening to 2 of today’s soaps. Yes, I laugh too. I can’t believe I still find myself caught up in the drama of their lives. I love it. It’s an old habit that I most likely won’t break for a long time.

Ok, back home for the evening. I think the daughter is tiring of the trek to & from work. She needs to get her bike tire fixed. But even then, with her hand right now, she can’t ride it. She has said that she enjoys the job, just not the hours & the getting there & home part. I certainly don’t mind taking her, but picking her up is another story. Sorry. I’m not up at 6am. I tried going to bed earlier & getting up earlier, but it’s not working.

So on Saturday morning the hubby tried to help me get the place a little picked up, by vacuuming for me. Right. The dang vacuum we have likes to clog. A lot. That morning was no different. Not only did he have to fight with it a couple times, but he stubbed his thumb real good & busted a blood vessel. Lovely. The living room & part of the hall got vacuumed. That’s it. I think the vacuum is on it’s way out as soon as we can afford to replace it.

Saturday afternoon we tried to have a get together of the group from the mall. Only 2 ladies were able to make it. Plus me & the daughter. It was nice, but we were all kind of disappointed. Both ladies brought one of their girls so that made it seem like more, kind of. It was short, since it started later than planned. But, we made the effort. So that was cool.

Sunday afternoon the daughter & I went in search of some sunshine. Sound silly? I imagine it does. Living in a valley, it’s not impossible tho. We’ve had this inversion hanging around here well over a week now. It’s a system with stagnant air. No movement so the clouds hang around. Well, we figured we’d try going higher to see if we could get above the clouds. We headed up to Mission Ridge, the local ski resort. It’s just across the river & 12 miles up into the canyon. The base area up there is at about 4200 feet or so. The top of the mountain is 4500. I think that’s how it goes.

OMG it was beautiful!! The sun was shining & it felt like heaven. Warm heaven. Blue skies as far as the mountains let us see. There were so many people & families up there too. Wow. I could see why tho, it was a bright place above a dreary valley. We stopped up at the lodge wandered around & took a few pictures while enjoying the big beautiful sun in the sky. We then stopped at the first place that had a pull off to take some more view shots. It’s a spot we’ve stopped at many times in the past. I could have stood there for a long time. Just taking it all in. It was just so gorgeous. So perfect. Even in those brief moments we were there, I felt so connected to the Earth.

And back down we drove. In the place between the warm sun & dreary bottom was an equally breath taking place. The place where frost formed. On every living thing. Not snow, but just frost. I had wanted to get some pictures, but with the cold, my battery was dying fast. I love how pine trees especially, look when they are heavy with snow. It’s beautiful. But this coat of frost. Wow . . . it was breath taking to me. To see that Mother Nature had every detail of her creations outlined in frost took my breath away. The hubby is at a higher elevation where he works so he has gotten to see some of it every day as well. This is another side of the inversion. It keeps the cold air here. And the cold is below freezing so the frost stays. I’ll have to get some pix of it before it’s gone.

Our short trip up into the canyon, above the clouds was just what I needed. I felt so light & joyful the rest of the day. It was exactly what was missing from my life over the past week or more. I think I’ll make another trip up in the next day or so. Perhaps with a fresh & full battery in my camera. Perhaps with just my eyes. I haven’t decided yet.

just more chatter

Wow, I’m maybe getting the hang of writing again on a regular basis. I’m still getting used to being home & having time. It’s odd. Nice, but odd. I spent a fair amount of time today sorting thru coupons to share. Kinda feels nice knowing that the coupons I send to folks are ones they will actually use, since they are both from wish lists & weekly requests.
This afternoon my friend Amy came over. She picked up her check from what she sold at the mall store. We also got a chance to just visit & catch up. I always love talking with her. She is the wealth of information I wish I was.
One of the things I brought up to her was my thoughts on forming a local group to share info with & learn with. I’m loving all I’m learning about food, chemicals, organics, natural things, recycling, etc. I want to share it with the world! Well, ok, at least people I know. I thought it would be neat to have a group of like-minded folks get together once every 2 weeks or so to share info & learn. Amy thought it was a good idea too. So this is something I’ll work on putting together.
This Friday evening the hubby, daughter & I will be heading over to another friend’s house to talk about 2012. Joy has worked to keep the group going that started back when we had our Pagan shop with Leah. I’ve not had a lot of opportunity to go in the past, but it looks like maybe this year will be better. I was either going to bed early to be at the Farmer’s Market or I was running the store at the mall. Well, the mall is over & I will not be at that market this year. It already looks better!
It looked so weird outside today. And it felt almost like spring. That is just wrong for January! I really miss the snow. Especially since we had just gotten such a nice bunch of it. The weather patterns are really strange around here. Not totally surprising, just weird. I can just hope it gets cold & snows some more soon. Right now, it’s raining.
I think that’s enough for now. It’s 10 & I wanna try getting to bed earlier. I’m not quite ready, but by the time I get this posted & turn off lights & wash up, I’ll be ready. That is, if I can get the thoughts to turn off in my head.

Look at me updating 2 days in a row!!

What an interesting day, weather wise. We’ve gotten quite a bit of snow as of late. And had some cold-ass temps for much longer than usual. Now, we’ve got a storm system moving thru that has our overnight lows, above freezing. And comes with 30-35 mph winds with gusts into the 40+ mph. Oh, and rain. I’ve watched our beautiful snow blanket shrink right before my eyes. How sad. I took the daughter to work tonight & the parking lot was a sheet of ice with puddles of water. Yuck. This weather stuff is gonna bring some crap to various areas too. With rapid melt like this, & mountains & rivers, it’s not a good mix. I already heard one of the mountain passes was closed tonight due to an avalanche.

And to think I was sooo enjoying the beautiful big flakes of snow this morning as I ran a couple errands. Sigh . . . I know it sounds silly, but I want my winter back. This wind crap can stop anytime.

Oh, & we lost power this evening too. Just long enough to get everything situated. Hubby went & turned things off & grabbed the monster flashlight. I grabbed the 2 oil lamps & lit them, along with a couple well placed jar type candles. Then I went & grabbed the phone with a cord (!) in case the power stayed out or any cell towers got knocked out too. Hubby grabbed the wind up alarm clock in case he needed it in the morning. Yup, we know what to do, where it’s stashed & all that. After all, we lived in FL long enough. Ya get the hang of t after an outage or two. The daughter & I were talking to one of the ladies in the deli at Safeway when we stopped by there to grab the recycle stuff. She was amazed at the thought of a corded phone & wind up clock, with a “oh, I didn’t think of that” kind of comment. When you are without technology, you have to go back. Some forget how to go back. My family doesn’t.

Of course, it all came back on just as we had everything together & got ready to settle in for the evening. Figures.

I spent some time today organizing little things. In the big picture here, it doesn’t look like I did much, yet I was busy all day. You can’t exactly tell by walking thru the door that I worked on organizing pictures on the hard drive, or began to clean out my email. You can see that my desk is looking a lot less cluttered. You can see that I picked up here & there. The place is nowhere near where it should be, but give me another week or so & it’ll be MUCH better.

The hubby started his what sounds like pointless coughing again tonight. The bronchitis. Not again. So I told him to go use the dang inhaler. And he took some of the codeine laced cough syrup before bed too. I don’t hear him coughing. That’s a good thing. Neither of us needs him being sick again.

Christmas Day the hubby, the daughter & I went out tromping in the snow a bit & explored along a river. Of course the camera came along. I had her take a couple pix of me & the man so we could get a holiday card done finally. Well, they are ok but I don’t like them. And what sucks more, is I don’t see a timer option on my Canon 40D. Yes, my costly new upgraded camera. WTF? Totally pissed me off. I’ve “kinda” looked in the past. Never really looked hard for it. I figured it should not be hard to find. But no. I totally don’t see one. So, we had to have someone else take the pictures if we both want to be in them. I think we’ll have to do it again maybe over this weekend if the weather cooperates. Dangit!

So, whenever we get a photo I am happy with of the two of us, I’ll get some Winter / New Year cards out. And with that, I really should get to bed. I could sit here for another hour or more, but I’m trying to slowly shift my sleeping schedule so maybe I can go to bed with & get up with, my hubby.

And so it begins again in a new year

So the hum-drum of daily life is back. Hubby went back to work. Daughter spent most of the day sleeping since she works nights now. I spent most of my day … in front of this thing. I wrote out the final checks for everyone from the mall. I also wrote out nice little thank you notes to go with them. They’ll all get mailed Tuesday. Exciting huh?

We got dumped on big time with snow last night. Probably the biggest one time snowfall so far. No idea how much we technically got. It was about as deep as my hand if not a bit more. With all the snow, I figured the roads & people would be a mess. So, I stayed home. I should have gone to the store & post office. Guess they’ll both wait till morning.

I began going thru some of my digital picture files today too. I know there are tons I can just delete because they are almost identical. So I started. Felt good to clean out more of my life. Really good. Clearing out the various areas of my life of clutter & unneeded things is going slow, but well. I love the feeling of being able to let go of more & more material things. It’s one small step in the bigger quest to simplify my life.

One of my things has been to remove chemicals from my life. Chemicals are bad. Yet we put them into & onto our body’s everyday in so many forms. My big step? I went thru most of my toiletries. Lotions. Makeup. Facial cleansers. They are full of stuff that seeps into our pores, into our skin & blood stream. Well, not so much into mine anymore. I gathered up quite the pile of stuff & posted it on Freecycle last week. Even tho it was money, it felt so good to know I was taking a step towards something that means a lot to me. I didn’t let go of everything, but about 80% or more. I’ll have to find suitable replacements for things like body wash/shower gel. And shampoo. I kept the pencil eyeliners, but let go of the lipsticks. I let go of all the lotions except for 2. I want to make changes in my feminine stuff, but that’s expensive so it’ll have to be in baby steps as things get used.

Can you tell I’m trying to go more natural? Not just in food, but all areas of my life. And as long as you read, you’ll be along for the journey.

For the first time in months I popped back into the natural living community on LJ. Found a post about facial cleansing & using oil to clean your face. Sounds odd, but I’ll be looking into it. I will be enjoying getting into all the fun stuff of going organic & natural. Besides, it’ll give me something to blog about besides boring everyday life.

Started last night, finished this morning . . .

So here it is almost half way thru December already & I haven’t written anything yet. I guess I’ve been a bit preoccupied with all the store stuff. I’m pretty happy with the turnout as a whole. We’re doing well as a store, just not as good individually. Obviously some are doing better than others, but in all, we could all be doing better. The possibility of having a real store somewhere is there. Whether or not I can make it happen, is another story all together.

Something else that has come up is saving money in these times. A big way we (me, hubby & Connie) can do that is to live with another family. Amy’s family. We’ve talked about combining our households to save money. So, the hunt for a big house to rent is underway. If the right place presents itself, we all feel it might just work. But, it has to be the right place. There has to be enough room. We’ve already figured out a lot of the details too. All on paper of course. Making it happen, will be a tough job, but with a good reward for us all.

There’s lots going on in my head lately that I just can’t seem to find words for so I have not written about them. Kinda bugs me too, since I enjoy this writing as a tool to look back on.

And then enter a time gap. It’s now 12 hours later. Got distracted last night & then had to go close the mall. Came home & had some dessert & watched a little TV before crashing in bed at just after 10.

This past week I installed Office 2007 on both my computer & the hubby’s. It’s neat. And weird. The new Outlook is taking a bit of getting used to. He is using it for the new program called Groove. I kinda like the new look of the Word thing but as with all new things, it takes some getting used to.

It finally snowed on Friday. Not a lot, but the world is now dusted white. This is late for around here. Typically we have some snowfall by the end of November. We might get more today, or not. Depends on how the temps are. I’m hoping it puts people in the holidays shopping mood so we can make some money at the mall.

I made the mistake of seeing what my sales were up to last night. Ouch. Barely over 400. I should be well over the 1000 mark by now. Damn. Now there is a true sign of the times. As a store we hit the 3 grand mark tho so that is kinda cool. I also have to wonder tho, if part of the problem is being just a part of a store instead of single like a crafter. My stuff is just mixed in with everyone else. Same goes for everyone else. Would we have made more money individually if we had better individual displays? Maybe, maybe not. We are also not using any hard sell tactics. We help people when they appear to need it & are otherwise just friendly, striking up conversation if appropriate. Who knows right? If there is the perfect answer to this, I’m sure it would cost a fortune to find out.

Well, I should stop so I can go open the mall soon. This begins our longer hours. What a pointless thing to do. We now open at 9 instead of 10 and stay open until 10 instead of 9. We barely have any people between 8 & 9 as it is now. And we don’t do much if any business before 11. And Sunday . . . we open at 10 & stay open until 7. Again, pointless for around here. Unless they really push it in advertising, we’ll be open longer, bored longer without any extra sales to show of it.

And off I go to eat something real quick, get dressed & run down to the mall.

It's easy to write when the words just flow ...

Here we are in the dog daze of August. We have had some of the best weather this past week. Guess summer is coming this week tho. I hear the forecast is calling for triple digits. Fun. I have enjoyed having the windows open so very much. No A/C. No having the house all closed up & keeping the stale air in here. We’ve had some nights so cool, you wake up chilled. Yup, nice. Guess it’s coming to a temporary end this week.

So Saturday we packed up & went to Ellensburg for the first ever Etsy craft show. I could focus on the one bad thing & be bummed. Or, I can look at the positive that came out of it. The main reason we went was obviously to make some money. This was the area were unsuccessful in. Connie & I shared a bigger than normal space. She had lots of people look at her things, but sold nothing. I had lots of lookers as well, & managed to sell $40. The space cost us a combined $55. The gas to get there was … I don’t know exactly. It took about a half a tank (fully loaded Escape, 90 some miles each way, from elevation of 600 to 2600 and back down some). In the end, money wise, we’re in the hole.

On the flip side tho … we got to see a new town. Ellensburg is about an hour and a half away from here. The drive was a pretty one. We even got to see Mt Rainier in the distance when we made a quick potty stop at a rest area. It looked beautiful in the early morning light, but we were on a schedule to get there, so no pix. While we were there, Tin got to experience some of the wonderful small town feel by exploring the local farmer’s market, a few galleries & a museum.

Connie & I walked away for some lunch & also got to wander quickly thru the market. Nice. I wish we had the support of the city that Ellensburg has. They set up on either side of a local street, & the city shuts it down for the time the market is open. Wonderful! We got to check out the local Safeway supermarket. This is where she works (here in East Wenatchee) in the deli. It was somewhat of a shock to see the difference. She was amazed at how sad a few of the hot case items looked, & at how much smaller the deli in general was. Yet, the Starbucks seating area was ALLOT bigger. Guess that’s what happens in a college town.

We got to meet some of the people we have only known online that day. Most of the vendors there have a shop on Etsy & are part of our Eastern Washington Street Team. We all finally got to put a face with a name. That was a fun thing.

Most of us got to expose ourselves to a whole new venue of people. Granted, this would have been a lot easier if more people had actually shown up. The time of year for this was just off. School was not in session (it’s a huge college town) and there is no real reason to go to a craft show in August. So, they’ll try again no November 15^th. This will be geared as a holiday show & should do quite well. Unfortunately, I won’t be at that one. That’s the time to open the mall store.

I got to talk with the lady set up next to us. She paints some really cute birdhouses & stuff. Nice work. She lives in Wenatchee. How cool huh? Well, we got to talking & I told her about the mall store. She may be our final person to “buy in”. That’ll give us 7 people & bring our cost down to $215 a person. She’s really excited & we’ll talk more about it this week.

Then, on the way out of town, we passed a rock & crystal shop. With a quick turn around, we were off to ooh & ahh over rocks. Oh the fun we had looking around. Tim didn’t find any that really spoke to him, but Connie & I both found a few treasures to take home.

See? In all, we had a wonderful day. We just didn’t accomplish the main objective of making money.

So last night we celebrated the good of the day & went out to eat. Came home and relaxed a bit & Tim & I were in bed by 1030. Long day.

Today has been relaxing. We had a nice breakfast before Connie left for work. Tim & I went to Costco to get a couple things like doggie food & TP. Then over to Big R to get him some more work gloves. I’ve spent time just laying around napping or watching some TV & poking around online. He went off to see Joe for a bit. It’s been a nice weekend.

I hope tomorrow Connie & I can get over to Joe’s & get the toolbox for Tim. It’s his birthday. On a Monday even. Joe is selling a craftsman toolbox. Tim could use it but thinks we have more important things to spend the money on. So, Connie is buying it for his birthday. I hope he likes it.

Ok, I think the words have ended their flow for now.