Yall are awesome!
My grandfather can do needlepoint, though he usually sticks to the repetitive patterns in the background, and my grandmother would do the designs in the middle. My mom also worked as a paramedic, and there was a guy that used to cross stitch, it was his form of moving meditation to de-stress from the challenges of working the job. He carried it with him. My mother is a knitter, and almost always has several projects going at a time, usually one easy one that she can carry around with her and something more complicated. With her arthritis in her hands, though, she's taken up weaving, and bought a loom, so now she's exploring that (I think I know what all the gifts are going to be this christmas....)
I enjoy working with my hands, and I do knit, but not that often. I have a habit of deciding to do projects that are outside of my skill set, so I struggle for a while before I can manage to get them figured out. I have a pattern for a drop dead gorgeous Aran coat that I want to do, but I fear that it will be the death of me if I attempt it because it is SOOOOOOOOO freaking complicated. It's made up of vertical stripes that are made of different patterns, but none of them have the same number of rows to repeat. The longest repeat is 32 rows, and most of the others are 8 or 10. So I'm going to need to figure out a way to manage the patterns together so that I don't go crazy. There's also quite a few complicated stitches in them as well, including cables and weird slip/stitch/twisty crap. Someday.
The courthouse wedding was lovely. It was disappointing not to be able to celebrate with them, but I'm really glad that we went. We didn't have to wait long at all. It took longer for his dad to park and walk back to the courthouse than the wait for the ceremony. The ceremony took even less time LOL. Then I went to the office and struggled with computers for the next 4 hours. They didn't want to place nicey nicey and do the upgrades that we needed to put on them due to an old program that had been loaded eons ago. Finally got that straight and I headed home, even though I knew Monday morning I was going to have to deal with a lot of crap to get the rest of the setup done. I wasn't staying any later than the 4:30 that it already was though.
Saturday the BF worked, which was a good thing to help offset the vacation hours. Vacation hours don't count towards your total of 40 that meets the requirement to make overtime. Which is really freaking annoying. So the extra hours were a helpful thing. I puttered around and worked on getting the winter clothes moved into their places and the summer clothes packed up. The BF helped me with some of that when he got home, and then he mulched the leaves (I love our little tractor!). We got cleaned up and then ran by Joann's to pick up a bigger wreath for outside for the holiday, and also some winter garland to use after we take down the christmas stuff in the house. I have cute lights that I hang and change during the seasons, and I like to have garland up with some of them, but I didn't have anything for winter. So it will be nice to have something to use now. We went down to TW's for dinner, which was amazing, as always. Stayed way too late, as always. We did get to look at the furniture she had sitting in the barn, and we took 3 end tables. They are all beautiful pieces made of solid wood, so that is nice to have those. I need to get them wiped down and cleaned up, and probably oiled, and then the can go where they will live. I'm looking forward to that, but I haven't had the time to slow down long enough to get it done.
Sunday the BF was kind enough to come with me to do barn chores, which cut my time in half. I'm SO grateful when he helps me because I know he really doesn't like doing it, but he would rather see me get home faster so he helps. We finished all the work and headed back home and had another bit of breakfast, and then I got in the tub and soaked for a bit. Then we napped (see note about way too late Saturday night), and then we got up and headed to his Aunt's for thanksgiving #1. Not having to cook all weekend was nice, but then I didn't have anything for lunches either. I should have tossed together chicken salad, but I wasn't thinking that clearly about the entire situation, either. So it goes.
The BF took off this week, well, until Friday, and he managed to get the threshold replaced on the kitchen door, so that was a good thing. The door frame is a little rotten, but hopefully it will hold out a bit longer so that we can get some funds saved to buy a new door to replace it. The door needs to be replaced anyway, the window is only a single pane of glass, which means it's not really insulated at all. Now he needs to fix the weather stripping and that should be much better!
This afternoon we have to go move a load of hay at the barn. TW is magically fine with us getting 5 bales again. Imagine that. It did fit. And it fits WAY better than the 3 giant round bales that she has sitting in the front. So it's clearly not about how much space the hay takes up. Whatever. At least she's letting us get 5 more. That will last 2 months, and I'm just hoping that we will be able to get another load in there at the end of January. I'm not going to be pleased if we can't get there due to the weather. We'll see how that goes. After we finish stacking that we'll head down to Cowboy and Coyote and clean up manure again so that will be taken care of.
Tomorrow is the BF's birthday, so we're going to do fun stuff tomorrow. It should a relaxing day, which we both need. Thursday we have dinner at his mom's, which I'm kind of glad it's only going to be his immediate family and nobody else. I'm not interested in another huge meal with lots of people. Not that there won't be too much food anyway, but still. Hopefully that morning we can get some other things done. I think I might like to steam clean the carpets since I want to get that done before we decorate, since we'll move furniture around for that anyway. I'd like to build a fire when we do it so that the floor will dry faster. Speaking of that, we still need to clean the stove in the basement, that never got done. He did sweep the chimneys, but we never vacuumed out the stove or cleaned the stove pipe on the inside. Guess that needs to be done soon, too.
Friday morning I'll have my usual barn routine, and then I'm going to have to go to the office for a few hours to have a meeting with someone, and get a little work done. It's extra hours, so I'm not complaining. I should probably argue for extra time and a half for that or something. Who knows what we'll get done this weekend, it looks like there is more rain in the forecast, so we'll see how it goes. We still haven't been able to finish the driveway, hopefully the BF can move some dirt today if it dried out enough. We need to do the final leveling, then get the landscape fabric down, and then get the gravel. Hopefully soon!!!
