A Day in My Life

How do the days get away from me? I wish I knew. My grandma would always say at the end of the day that there was so much she wanted to accomplish and didn’t and I always took that to mean she had wasted time but she didn’t. Those were the days when she was up before daylight fixing breakfast for my grandpa, fixing his lunch to take to work, washing clothes on the old wringer washer, hanging them on the clothes line to dry. They didn’t have indoor plumbing (yes, that means we used an outhouse!) til I was in high school. She had to draw water from the well with a bucket and bring it into the house for cooking and cleaning and fill the old washer that way. The washer sat out on an open porch so boiling hot summers in north Louisiana or cold winters, she was drawing water from the well outside and doing the laundry outside. Their house wasn’t air conditioned. There were zero modern conveniences but she always knew life was easier for her than it had been for her grandma.

So, when she said she had things she wanted to get done, and didn’t get done, it wasn’t because she was lazy.

For me . . I think it’s the computer and it’s distractions. I am so easily distracted.

This morning I had to do some real cleaning in the kitchen. I had jars sitting on the counter – quarts of green beans, pints of green tomato relish, jam I had made during the summer that was still in the laundry room closet and it needed to go downstairs. It probably took a dozen trips downstairs to get all that moved. I can’t carry a whole case of jars that are full down the stairs and carrying a partial case, they slip around too much so I carried four jars at a time. Done.

Then the solar panel guy came. Still not sure they’re communicating correctly but that’s Vince’s forte. He was in and out.

We were low on bread so I made a loaf of bread. The cast iron pan is my favorite and it’s kinda small which is good because sometimes we eat a lot of bread and sometimes we don’t. I use the Amish White Bread recipe (with half the sugar and make one loaf at a time) and it’s so easy to stir up a loaf of bread but after about three days, I’m ready for fresh bread so the smaller pan works great but . . there’s always bread dough left over, even with half the loaf.

We both love fried bread dough so there was enough extra that I debated about whether to make a few cinnamon rolls or fried bread dough. I figured I’d make the fried bread dough and be done with it so we each had a hunk of that. Vince puts cinnamon and sugar on his. I put butter on mine.

Got the bread baked. A near perfect loaf. We had buttered toast with our dinner and the loaf is almost half gone. I think I’ll be making more bread tomorrow. I surely don’t mind using the oven on cold, damp days!

Dinner was Mississippi Pot Roast, carrots with dill, wild rice with gravy. That’s my plate. Obviously, I can pass on the meat . . just give me rice and gravy and I’m happy.

Next, I decided to get with Vikki Clayton for a silk conversion for G. Leger. She had told me that when I was ready, to send her the list of called for floss and she’d take care of it. She did and she’s now added a packet for G. Leger to her website. We must have had a dozen or more emails back and forth but this will be such a pretty project. When I first saw it months ago, like in February . . . I had only been stitching about a month and thought it was so far beyond my skill level. It probably still is but I’m brave enough to try it now, though I doubt I start it right away.

I thought I was going to be stitching by noon. Then I thought . . surely by 2:00. Look like I’ll be doing good to be stitching by 5 but everything I’ve done has been productive . . something that was good to do.