Monday Musings

Today has been a recovery day from yesterday's time change!  Hopefully we will get used to the new time quickly...never seems to be easy!  Woody said that it took him forever last night to finally get to sleep...not till the wee hours.  I didn't sleep well either.  And, I'm pretty sure that we both dozed off this afternoon.

I had school this morning...back to routine after they were away last week.  Everyone seemed to easily get back into the school groove.  Elijah had his long time today.  He experimented with various items sprinkled on ice cubes to see what would make them melt the quickest.  While waiting for them to melt, he learned about the Pythagorean theorem using a special set of Magformers that we have.  It gives a very good concrete example of the  theorem so one can then work into the abstract.  Not Montessori...but the way Montessori works = move from concrete examples to abstract thinking. Even Woody was impressed as to how this educational set of Magformers showed this concept.  I'm really glad that I got this set for the pickle present a couple of years ago.  Elijah is the first one who has used it in this way.  The younger boys have just made the 3-D solid shapes with it.

I think that I have avoided a bout with gout.  Last night I couldn't figure out why my sock and then the throw was making one of my toes hurt so much.  I finally realized that it was the toe that I originally had gout in...and, when you have gout anything touching that joint hurts...socks, covers, etc.  I decided that I would use my "rescue drug" that I have had to take in ages.  And, within a few hours the pain had gone.  Thank goodness!

After school today, I made a pot of chicken gumbo and cooked some rice to serve it over.  It tasted pretty good as we hadn't had it in a long time.  I try so hard to give Woody variety, but I don't think that he thinks that he gets enough variety!  Which is pretty hard with the limited items that he is supposed to eat!  But I try.

Woody worked on planting some more grass seed around the stepping stones that form a walkway between our house and Nathan and Kathy's.  I think he wanted to get it planted before our next rain which I think is predicted for tomorrow.  He is now at the Monday Night Furnace Room Prayer meeting.  When he gets home, we will batten down the hatches and be in for another quiet evening.

I had a surprise delivery today that I'll share with you in tomorrow's blog.

Tonight's photo shows one of several barns that we saw wth quilt blocks on them. Here's a little information that I found about quilt blocks on barns:

While barn quilts have been around for many years, there's been a spike in popularity in the last two decades. In Adams County, Ohio, in 2001, Donna Sue Groves set out to honor her mother Maxine and her quilt art by painting a quilt block on her tobacco barn. The idea was a hit and soon friends and neighbors wanted barn quilts of their own. And, now this tradition has spread to over 40 states and Canada.

Scattered Saturday

Well, my evening went totally off kilter and I am just now thinking about blogging.  I got a call while making supper that I needed to go pick up a friend at the hospital.  I picked her up and then ran all over town trying to get her prescription filled...decided that wasn't something that you can do in Tullahoma on a Saturday evening after six.  So I took her home and got her settled and then came home.  I needed to fill in a couple of friends on what was going on.  Then I decided to change the downstairs clocks...springing forward.  Then I decided that it was time for supper...all confused.  Just thought about blogging.  That pretty much sums up my day...all else has sort of been forgotten.  Woody and I did run an errand together this morning.  Other than that...not sure any more!  Surprises in my day can throw me a bit!  Thankfully...as Scarlett would say, "Tomorrow is another day!"  And, that day will have us off kilter as we get used to the time change.  I will move an hour more away from my sister as I sleep tonight!

Dry and Wet

Woody did our grocery shopping early this morning.  I brought the groceries in and out them away after he got home.  Not long after he got home he headed off to run errands with his friend.  While he was gone I decided that it was a good time to dust/dry mop and then wet mop them...so the kitchen and three bathrooms all have clean floors.  I also washed towels and got them folded and out away...guess that brought to a close my little vacation of doing close to nothing!  After doing that I decided it was time to go back to my reading and my recliner!

Woody was also ready to head to his recliner once he finally got home on into the afternoon.  He has done his crossword puzzles and, of course, got reading in both here in his recliner and in the car while he waited on his friend at the various errand stops.  

Thursday

When we travel on our barn trips, most of our photos are taken from the car...sometimes through the windshield, sometimes the side window (sometimes with window rolled up and sometimes with the window rolled down).  We end up taking some of the barns from several vantage points.  The above photo was taken as we approached the barn and we are snapping photos at both the cows and the barn...when I took this one, it was raining a bit so there were some raindrops that the camera wanted to focus on.  This one I made blurry on purpose, when I was working on it with the photo app...making it blurry sort of took care of the raindrops and ended up making it look more like a
painting.

Here's one the camera focused too much on the raindrops on the windshield.  It will end up deleted, probably.  But for the moment it stays as it shows that it rained on the trip.

Here we are a little closer...still through the windshield, but perhaps the rain had stopped or I snapped it just after a windshield wiper swipe.  The next will show us next to the barn even closer.  I never know which photo angle will please me the most when I look closely at them after getting home!  This barn was well photographed.  Some barns we get coming and going and sometimes we turn around just to get a better view!  Glad for low traveled country roads!  

Today has been another rather slow day for us...not a lot going on...just a lot of this and a little of that.  I haven't done a lot this week.  I probably should have, as I had the week off from school.  Nathan, Kathy, and family except for Graham were in Indiana on a ministry trip.  I decided to treat it like a "real" vacation and just took it easy.  I did a lot of reading and just a little in the way of work around the house.  They arrived home this afternoon.  Woody got to take Elijah to baseball practice as Nathan, Kathy and some of the older kids headed off to the Smyrna Motlow  campus to have a worship service tonight.  They are trying to get a Baptist Collegiate Ministries started on the Smyrna campus.  We waited supper till after Elijah's practice.  I headed off to Walmart shortly after Woody and Elijah left for practice.  I just had a couple of things to pick up so was back well before they were and had our supper ready for Woody when he got back.  Now we are settled in for another relaxing evening...reading, TV watching, etc.  just another very quiet evening in our household.  I'll end with a close up of the cows that belong with this barn!

Here, Piggy, Piggy!

This cute little piggy came out to greet us at one of our stops on our latest barn trip.

Around here we call, "Here, Kitty, Kitty."  And usually two kitties come running, but since Saturday only one has come when called—Georgia, the short haired of Esther's sister kitties.  But this morning when I called both came running.  If only Peaches could talk and tell us where she has been...just glad that she is back and looking none the worse for wear for her disappearance of several days.

Here is this little piggy's home.  Looks like she met a man with good building materials...looks like it is big bad wolf proof!

We started the day off fairly early...but at an easy pace!  Woody came upstairs and printed off his daily crossword puzzles and checked out things on the Internet.  I woke up early, but decided to read for a while.  Woody had a morning appointment at Tullahoma Oconology for is monthly anemia and B-12 shots.  Then he went for a haircut.  I emptied the dishwasher and got the dishes out away and left the kitchen straightened out.  Today was an off-day for cooking since I did so much yesterday.  We had choices for both lunch and supper with only having to warm things up.  

Speaking of warming things up...today was a nice enough day...in other words warm enough for Woody to sit on the front porch and soak in some fresh air and sunshine.  Peaches sat next to him and washed herself...guess she is cleaning up after her travels!

I planned to go to the library this afternoon, but in the end got busy working on transferring photos from my iPad to my laptop's external passport drive and let the time get away from me.  I hated to stop once I figured out how to do it.  I was afraid that if I didn't get them all taken care of I would forget how by the next time!  So at the moment I have removed almost all the photos except for the 

latest barn trip and as I use them for blog posts then I am deleting them from the iPad.  So I won't have a big back log.  I rarely use my iPad to take photos, but end up transferring photos from my cameras to it so I can use them in the blog and most of the time I just leave them there.  I figure that as old as this iPad is, it would be a good idea not to bog it down with extraneous photos.  I do use the iPad to take screen shots at times so today I decided which ones I wanted to keep and which to delete.  I had a lot of photos on the iPad for the kitchen renovation so today I either deleted them or transferred them over to my Passport drive in their own folder so I know that they came from the iPad.  Some are duplicate photos do I will at some point delete those.  But the iPad photo folder of the renovation is a good "from start to finish" set of pictures and screen shots of my thought/planning 

process throughout the renovation.  It was fun to peruse it once again and it made me very happy to know that those plans have been finalized and we are enjoying a completed kitchen.  At this time last year I was still just dreaming and adding to my ideas all the while waiting for the work to get underway...probably still emptying out kitchen cabinets and living in a mess of stacks of kitchen things all over the house.  I like being at this end of that project...being able to look back at the whole process!

The March Lion Roared!

The March lamb turned into a lion in the overnight hours.  I'm sure that most have heard the devastating news out of the surrounding Nashville and Cookville areas of TN.  We only had heavy rain and lightening and thunder for a very short period...those north and east of us did not fare so well.  The latest count is 25 dead...and that number has risen almost each time a new tornado update comes out. All in our family are safe and weren't in the area of the storms.  

We had a guest for lunch today.  We invited Graham to eat with us.  I made spaghetti with meatballs and rosemary-garlic focaccia bread.  We had an enjoyable time together.  While the bread was rising, Woody and I headed out to vote on this Super Tuesday.  We were in and out fairly quickly.  I was back in time to do the next step for the bread and get it in the oven so it would be ready for our lunch.  I had quite a mess in the kitchen.  I got it part way cleaned up and the dishwasher running and then had to rest for a while before I tackled the dishes that had to be hand washed.  We are fending for ourselves (scrounging) for supper. Truthfully, I'm still not hungry after our afternoon Italian feast!   We ate later because we ate after Graham got home from his Motlow classes.  

Tonight's photo is another of my favorites of this barn trip...these two structures are connected.  Here is a closeup of the weathervane on top of the small "barn:" a walking horse.  I enjoy capturing barn details almost as much as capturing the whole barn.  

In Like a Lamb, But...

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working with the photos that I took on Friday on our barn trip.  This time I used Photo Shop Express, an app on my iPad to work with them to tweak exposure a bit.  Our laptop is not cooperating very well with my Photo Shop Elements program.  On Friday the program shut down six or seven times for me to just get three photos the way I wanted them...frustrating to say the least.  I remembered that I have a memory card reader adapter that works on my iPad so was able to upload them from that onto the iPad.  The only problem is that I don't like to put a large quantity of photos on my iPad...so I ended up deleting some old ones that I had already used on the blogs.  One newer point and shoot camera connects wirelessly to the iPad so I don't have to connect anything for that one...but, I have the most on that camera.  So at this point I have uploaded the photos that I took on my three other cameras and have worked on those and will upload as needed from my newer point and shoot.  I used that one the most on the trip due to the variance I can get with the zoom lens on it. So at the moment I have a little over 100 on my iPad and more than 100 on my newer point and shoot.  I have been very pleased with the photos that I have worked with so far...this was a very good trip for exposure for the pictures...the cloud coverage was helpful.  Tonight's photo is, I think, at this point anyway, my favorite of the barns that I took this trip.

Today has been a day to do a little of this and a little of that.  I decided to space my day out between reading and doing things around the house...I probably ended up doing more reading than housework!  But I did get some of both accomplished and a nap got fit in to boot.  I also made a birthday call to my sister Cheryl...she joined those of us on Medicare today...and for the next week I am only six years older than she!  Happy birthday, Cheryl!

Woody has had a stay-in day except for going out to get the mail and tonight going to the Monday night Furnace Room Prayer meeting.  He has read, watched TV, done crossword puzzles and probably various and sundry other things!

As far as yesterday is concerned, we can say that March came in like a lamb.  We did have rain, but the temperatures were mild and it didn't rain the whole day!   But that lion may show up in the
overnight hours...more rain and some strong storms are predicted.  Time will tell!