After months of debate and diliberation (with myself) I finally decided to take advantage of the Black Friday/Cyper Week sales and buy an upright freezer. I hate spending money, especially lots of it on one thing and went back and forth with whether this was a wise choice. But in the spirit of provident living, health, and frugality I laid down the cash, and cleared out a spot in our pantry for our new frosty member. I can’t tell you how many times I said this fall “Ah, if only I had another freezer!” If I’d had the iniative to act earlier it would certainly be full of plums, apples, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, blueberries… you name it. All acquired at their peak ripeness and for minimal expense. But alas, I’ll have to wait until next fall to preserve those lovelies. For now, I’m excited to have big bins/bags of soft white wheat, hard white wheat, and red wheat ground and ready to add to anything from pastries to homemade bread. I’m eager to fill it full of freezer meals to ease our transition back into parenting a new baby. And I’m hopeful that I can take advantage of a few more bulk sales that have previously been unavailable to me, because I couldn’t store them.
Our electric bill was super high this month. What would you expect when darkness blankets us at 4:00 and we turn on every light in the house to avoid seasonal malaise. Not to mention the increase in baking that always seems to accompany colder weather.
I recently got released from my calling as gospel doctrine teacher and called as the Mia Maid advisor. (That means I’ll be something like a youth paster to the girls ages 14-16.) It’s a much more time intensive calling, and I’m feeling the weight and responsibility of helping a diverse group of girls find spirituality and truth in our ever increasingly secular world.
We spent a few hours at the community pool on Monday. It was divine. Dunking oneself in a large tub of warm water always feels like such a luxury, but doing so while pregnant only takes that impression to the next level. The ability to exercise my body with out the pain so often accompanying exercise in this stage of pregnancy was a welcome delight. This life jacketwas one of the best purchases of my mothering life. Scotland can swim completely independantly- and LOVES it.
Our pellet stove runs overtime these days. Sitting near its hot flame, my feet up, gazing at our Christmas tree is my new favorite activity. We’re trying to rely on the heat of the two stoves, instead of lighting up our archaic and expensive oil furnace. Unfortunately, we’re waiting for a part to fix the stove downstairs so our play has moved upstairs (where it’s warm) and it’s been a nice change of scene- especially since our living room is the center of our festive display.
I worked hard to prepare and finish our advent calendar in time for December. (Well as you can see I’m not exactly finished I ran out of red thread at 18, so I still have seven more numbers to go.) I’m thrilled with the results. The challenge now is actually doing the activities in each bag.
I am in charge of a group of carolers for our ward Christmas party. We are supposed to dress up in Dickens era clothing. Trying on various outfits tonight I got a feeling as to why women in my “condition” were not to be seen in public at that time.
I’m realizing more and more that I have a strong sense of how things “should” be done, and a tendency towards absolutist thinking. I have a hard time understanding why others don’t see the value in, say, always putting the toothpaste back in the medicine cabinet or keeping their stuffed animals in the arranged basket at the end of the bed. I go around all day fixing these little foibles, putting things back in their place, only to return to the task the next day (or in the case of the stuffed animals, the next 15 minutes.) Order is very important to me. There are few things that thrill me more than an organized space. That being said, I’m certainly not immune to the weakness of leaving ones stuff around. It’s just that others people stuff registers as ‘junk’ far sooner than one’s own! wink, wink.
Seattle’s beauty continues to delight me. The mountain ranges that surround us, that play hide and seek depending on the clarity of the day combined with the tall pines and golden horizontal light make quite a majestic scene.