February in review – Adventures in a Messy Life

Okay February, this is the shortest month of the year and it already feels like it’s been 3 months long. Not that you can tell from the pictures I took.

(there are affiliate links in here)

Week 1

Jeff and I have been slowly clearing out the random debris in the loft so the carpets can be replaced and before that so I can paint the trim and touch up the paint. That is all that is left up there. It is amazing how much time it takes to just deal with that last little bit (as I write this on the 16th and I spent an hour just figuring out what to do with those little things, and lots of bins that are missing lids and you try to decide should I hold on to them in case they go with the random lids I have elsewhere, what should I do with them?).

Decisions are difficult.

Thursday I went into downtown Austin and was reminded quite handily why I never do this. I-35 is in one of its rather bad cycles of construction and the whole thing was horrible to drive through. Then the coffee place I had picked claimed to have a “parking lot,” what they really meant was it had a parking garage nearby that was very expensive to park at. That’s what that picture of the parking lot is, because as I was driving up it I started panicking because it was so tight and narrow and clearly not designed for a car my size. I did a whole lot of praying as I drove up there, and was so thankful I found a spot I could just pull through into, and then it was empty as I pulled out no one was driving up as the same time as I was going down because my car could not make those narrow turns without going into the other lane.

Terrifying.

But, I had a blast meeting with my friend for the first time, we’d gotten to know each other as we both write for Lorehaven, so we’d talked a lot online, but she lives up in Canada, so this was the first time we talked in person. Two hours later, I had the nerve wracking drive out of the parking lot, and the less worrying drive on I-35, and I was home.

There is a reason no one who doesn’t live in Austin drives into there. The entire town is just horrible for traffic. [dramatic shudder]

But, I got to have baby cuddles as I held her baby for her for a while as she grabbed something, and that was pretty awesome. My kids are clearly not little babies anymore.

A couple of years ago I gave Jeff a copy of Mice and Mystics, which seemed like a campaign type of game that we might enjoy playing, but…. so far I’m more or less enjoying it, and he is tolerating it for my sake. We’re 3 or 4 games in and he is just barely tolerating playing it with me.

Books read:

• White Night– I always think this happens later than it did, book 9
• Dead Beat– book 7, and introduction of a popular character
• Regency Guide to Fashion– This is kind of my nonfiction for January because I only had one chapter left
• Proven Guilty– book 8, it’s interesting I assume this happens earlier

Games played:

Week 2

I finished painting the boys’ room. Leezard tried to help.

She was not a help. Not at all.

Also, on a bit of hilarity, I had the window open because it was pretty that day, and I figured it was good to air out all those paint fumes, and Leezard was having fun staring out the window, and then she got so excited about looking out the window that she knocked the screen out of the window. All the way down to the ground.

Then Superman came down for the weekend so he could take a pre-test for his black belt coming up on Wednesday. He did well and was given a few tips for practicing for the actual test.

When he wasn’t taking his practice test we played Shadows of Brimstone, and we had Mom over to watch the David animated movie that came out back in December, which was really fun to do.

It was also interesting to talk with him about different reading philosophies. See when I was meeting with my friend from Canada she was talking about how the Canada educational system was still teaching whole language to teach reading, which the US had used back in the early 80s and had figured out was a terrible idea because it doesn’t teach so many things. So we got into this great discussion of why it was bad and then had to explain to Jeff why this is bad.

That final picture I realized after I made the collage was from the 15th [shrug]. But, this was a cool activity from our Sunday School lesson on the Transfiguration that the kids really took to well and they did so well with it. I really enjoyed seeming them talk about it.

Books Read:

• Blood Rites– I clearly didn’t bother putting these down in order since this is actually book 6
• Turn Coat– book 11
• Small Favor– book 10, I know because of who the villain is, this should be book 10, but it’s interesting to think about

Games Played:

Week 3

Okay, it’s March 8, and I’m finishing up this post because life got busy.

This week Jeff headed up to Dallas because he needed to go up and help his parents. There were some big decisions to make about his Dad’s health, so he headed up there, and I stayed behind to take care of the dog, and just generally keep the house running. This means, I finished getting the loft all cleaned out, which was a big deal. It took a lot of work to finish that last little bit.

I got my sewing machine back from a little bit of work it needed done, and I decided to get a skirt made I’d been wanting to get done. Leezard decided she was going to be a big help. In case, you’re wondering, she was not helpful sitting on top of my fabric.

Superman came home to test for his 4th degree black belt, it was a 30-minute-long test that came at the end of all of the other people who had to be tested, this meant his test didn’t start until after 9:00, and he still had to drive back to college, which was rather crazy. He got home around 1:00 that night. But, he is now a 4th-degree black belt.

Jeff got home on Friday, and then on Saturday we went into downtown Austin, and saw Hadestown together, that was a lot of fun to do. I’ve seen it before, but he hadn’t, so we enjoyed watching it together and then going out to discuss it afterward.

And the final picture is of my notebook, I’d dried some flowers last spring, and I taped them in randomly throughout my notebook, and they showed up in this part of my notebook as I took notes on the mystery I’m covering with the 4th graders.

Books read:

• I continued through the Dresden Files, but don’t have my notebook to write down which particular ones I read this week

Week 4

The pictures are uploaded all out of order.

So, starting with the bottom left corner. On Monday, we were up in Dallas as we moved Jeff’s Dad into a group home for memory care. I stayed with his Mom as Jeff, and his sister helped move him in. One of the people who lives in the senior apartments they lived in had this wildly amusing decoration in their apartments I had to get a picture of. As you can imagine, this was a bit of an emotional time for everyone.

Next, I took a load of stuff over to Salvation Army. They wouldn’t take my old office chair, which was rather silly as it’s still functional, but because it’s cracked on the seat, they wouldn’t take it.

And then I spent some time repairing Leezard’s bed, as there are a few parts that have been worn through, so I took towel scraps and just quickly sew it on.

And then the final picture is the lab we did for Academy 4. This is actually a really funny story, and this may have taken place the week before, now that I think about it. Okay, so I needed to prepare this cup with the fingerprints and I’m out to dinner with my Mom and Superman. I had very carefully prepared where I got Superman’s fingerprints I needed in the correct location, and then I needed her to give me a fingerprint but only on the inside of the cup. But she grabbed the cup and got fingerprints on several sides of the cup. I had to wipe the cup clean and have both Mom AND Superman put their fingerprints on again.

It was an interesting project to put together the fingerprint cups, and I messed up one of them, but I turned that into a “sometimes the evidence is tainted.”