Busy Monday, November 18

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Coke Sale pick-up
• Groceries
• Make menu
• Laundry
• Lunch with Peter

I'm making a short list. I haven't been feeling well on top of the medical stuff I've got going on. 

Menu

(Yes, I'm being lazy and didn't feel like typing it out twice.)

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• 4-H STEM Club
• PTO - Science Fair (evening) 
• Doctor's Appt - I my blood work should be in from the Mayo Clinic
• Try to find someone to take care of the gutters and rake the leaves for me (I'm half tempted just to run everything over with the lawn mower. My husband pulled out the leaf blower last night so I guess I'll have to get that all ready to get going. It's always a bear to get started and I'm the only one that uses it. He was being stubborn last night and was going to try and start it at like 7 o'clock at night! I was not overly pleased with that idea. Thankfully it needed more fuel and I'm the only one that knows where that stuff is.)

Last Week

Well last week I did in fact get the car tags though not on Monday as I had planned to with my husband but we both forgot that the courthouse would be closed. We then spent the rest of the day trying to hook up TV antennas to try and pick up some local stations. we had some luck with an inside pair of huge rabbit ears but it required taking over my desk of nicknacks and I like my desk of nicknacks it makes this space 'mine'. We then proceeded to try an outdoor one before it got too late but noticed the old cable line was spliced and we didn't want to drill through the house siding to insert a new one so now we have to figure out how to put a new end on the old cable without the proper tool.

Most of last week is a blur. I know work was exceptionally easy since no one had anything hot to put on my desk and I had already been told to stop field checking things because I'm too far ahead. I may grab an old drawing this week and take it out to just double check things because maintenance doesn't like to give me an MoC form (Management of Change) when they do work out there and some of these drawings have been up for review for 6 years now (Yes, the engineers are VERY behind on their end.) So I pretty much spent most of the week organizing files, purging old sketches and trying to get my work area a bit more organized. I inherited several boxes of files so I came into this job behind on organization so every little break I can get that's what I use it on. Other than Friday friday I had to dig through 50 year old prints to try and find a foundation drawing for a dike. Yeah, talk about some grand ol' fun. 

The good thing about Friday is due to having to put in extra time here and there and just how things fell and getting to work so stupid early that one of the engineers that is normally there very early about fell out of his chair when he saw me is that I got out of work at 11am! Seriously! That's stupid early so I took my tired though motivated self down to Hobby Lobby. 

For S&G's I tried to make a wreath. I didn't buy enough deco mesh so it came out very funny looking. Also, by this time I was so exhausted my whole body felt like it was going to fall to pieces so I'm going to take the wreath apart sometime later and buy another roll of deco mesh and see if I can fix this disaster. Of course my girls liked it and my youngest daughter said to me, "Don't call it bad! I think it's really good! You did a good job so don't call it bad." I about broke down in tears it was the sweetest thing I've heard in awhile. 

Yesterday I melted down some wax a friend of mine gave me about 20 old candle jars some filled to the top with wax others near the bottom all various sizes and scents. I've been in the slow process of trying to process the wax and get it into a manageable size. I got two jars of wax done yesterday. 

I've still been excessively tired but did manage to vacuum which was much needed. The vacuum felt like a 60 lb weight! Being tired all the time has made me a wimp! 

I also poured some more wax and found out what happens when you overheat soap too quickly (my experiment with leftover soap).

(Makes awkward beeping sounds)

Back it up a little this week we also had 4-H and in the mist of 3 days of craziness I decided to pour my first trial with soap. I tried for orange I got ... yeah whatever that color is. I found blending colors just doesn't work well with soap coloring. 

Did I mention 4-H week was crazy? The first day the kids sanded, nailed together and painted reindeer and wood burned little disks that were suppose to be keychains but the 4-H folks didn't buy enough keychain like wood pieces. Needless to say I was nervous about the kids using wood burners but they did good. Sadly no pictures I can get to easily of that.

The second day the kids made gifts in a jar which was coloring a coffee mug, mixing cake mix so a person could pour it in and cook their cake in their mug and making little baggies of cocoa.

The third day was candies and cookies. We did these CUTE mice. 

We also made 'Holiday Candy Munch Mix' (popcorn, white chocolate, andies candies and M&Ms yum!)

The girls cut out shapes in sugar cookie dough though the recipe they used liked to spread out thin so it was more like blobs bit the kids had fun with it.

And then Holiday wreath candy which think rice krispy treat just with corn flakes instead. They had us use red hots for the candy but I think if we make these at home (which there is a good chance) that we will use M&M's instead. 

**Additional** Also, earlier this week one of the engineers at work was cleaning things out at home and gave me a very nice juicer and a fairly large George Foreman grill. The girls right away had me juicing fruits we had around the house which I didn't mind because the fruit needed to be used.