Busy Weeks 5-6 (Before & After Photos!)

I've almost forgotten weeks 5-6 already, but I'd like to write about them before I write about weeks 8 & 9 and before grueling weeks 10 & 11 begin tomorrow.

I guess I could sum up weeks 5-6 in a few words: working out, helping refugee family, swim meets, house guests, French horn lessons, yard work and house cleaning. I guess having that followed by week 7 was perfect, no?

On week 5 we didn't have the house guests yet (my brother-in-law and his family and my mother-in-law), they arrived on Monday of week 6, but we had a swim meet (only my oldest son competed this year) and a French horn lesson and I worked out every day with my friends in the morning in addition to spending some time helping the refugees. We started cleaning the yard -- my husband began to use our brand new pressure washer and he loved it! I took tons of before and after photos and will share some below.

On week 6, the family arrived on Monday and I continued exercising in the morning (my sister-in-law joined us for two days and was really sore) and even did double workouts on Thursday going to yoga and feeling the strongest ever. SIL and I went to the Farmer's market and I helped the refugee again for several hours on Thursday and Friday. We had a swim meet in our town and Grandma got to see her oldest grandson swimming, but K was late with my younger son and our nephews and they missed Kelvin's races.

Before, WIP (work in progress), and After photos, I tried to select as few as possible, but I take too many photos!

The most satisfying before & after set: 

power washing:

 Cleaning back brick patio:

weeding, power washing, spreading new sand:

 Weeding back flower bed:

April,then June, WIP, mulched

 Last, but not least, weeding.

Raised bed, and some of the back (WIP) --

the part with the most poison-ivy.

  It was because of this weeding (and also hugging my cats) that I got some poison ivy right before we traveled. :-(

P.S. I also changed the knobs of the vanities in our three bathrooms, but I only have before and WIP photos so maybe I'll share those another time, together with the 2011 photos of the before & after of kitchen cabinet knobs! ;-P

Collateral Damage: How having a high schooler ruined my laundering & my husband's morning sleep! :-(

edited to add photos! yay!
As weird as it may seem, doing laundry is one of my favorite household chores and, frankly, one of my various neurotic obsessions! ;-P

I have blogged about it over the years, mentioning the beginning of our now long-time obsession with practice of  line-drying back in 2007 and a funny fiasco from excessive line drying in an unseasonably warm January day (in 2008 -- right before Obama took office!) -- a direct consequence of my "laundering philosophy."

I wrote quite a bit about this"philosophy" and practices in the opening and "endnote" to this really long post about little boy underpants -- it sounds like such a promising topic, right? Unfortunately, however, humor is not my forte, so the post had lots of potential that wasn't realized. :-( I blabbered on about my laundering instead! :-D

Years later I wrote a quick post praising line-drying and I have also taken countless photos of clothes in my clothesline meaning to share them on the blog, but life always got in the way and those weren't posted...

... which brings me to the present moment. A day in which I had a load of laundry washing before 8 am, before I drove my youngest son to school! My fingers are really cold typing this (at 9:30 am) because I just hung that load outside to dry. It's 42 F (6 C) right now, and it will reach a maximum of 46 F (8 C), but there's plenty of sunshine and my obsession with line-drying knows no end! So, in the aforementioned "underpants" post I wrote that I don't do laundry very often (it helps that we have lots of clothes, particularly underwear, two weeks' worth) and that I generally mix bed linen (and kitchen tablecloths) with other clothes and that I do big loads that have to coincide with sunny days when I have time to hang it all to dry.

Well... that's how it used to be until high school uniforms ruined all that!! :-(

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE school uniforms (and my husband does even more than I do), they are convenient and save lots of time in the morning. Our sons' elementary schools only required "polo-style" shirts and pants that aren't sweats, that's all. The school logo red shirt was only a "field trip shirt." Now, my son not only needs to wear polo shirts with a logo, but the khaki pants he wears need to be a choice between two specific models from one vendor. In the beginning, I wasn't sure about the sizing, so he only had one pair of pants and two polos (navy blue and dark green), then I ordered one more pair of pants and two more polo shirts (white and red, different fabric). He wears these pieces of clothing daily, with the fleece sweater the school gave all students. This requires that I do laundry much more often than I did before and makes me cranky! I've never used the drier this often before since we started line-drying back in 2007. :-( And I'm using twice as much detergent and softener too.

So days like today when I can actually line-dry three loads of laundry make me very happy! When I hung the second load at 10:30, the first one had already some dry pieces and it had been a bit over an hour! I just hung the third load [at 12:20 pm] (this time just one set of sheets and a few other items) and later I will "warm them up" in the drier set on low. Oh, and I'm going to get at least one more polo shirt for Kelvin, maybe the light pink one (all boys should wear pink!), so I can have at least two that go with the light colored loads! (I think he doesn't like yellow [the only other option] like me).

Bonus cat in this photo that I just took (1:42 pm):

Enough about laundry, right? A few weeks ago K confessed that he was exhausted, really spent, and lamented: "I'm getting really really tired from losing over 45 minutes of sleep every morning!" I hadn't thought of it until that moment, but now that Kelvin needs to be in school at 7:30 am K has to wake up at 6:45 to make him breakfast, get ready and then leave the house between 7:15-20 to drop him off. He only wakes up our youngest son on his way back -- getting up at 7:30 is perfectly OK when you don't have to be in school until 8:15! I feel bad for K and I know I should try to drive Kelvin a ride few days a week, but I always have a hard time getting up in the morning. Sigh... Today K had a final, so I had to do it, that's why I did that very early load of laundry! ;-P

Now we can't wait for Kelvin to have a license 15 months from now. I just HOPE that his schedule won't be totally different from his younger brother so he can drive both of them to school then!

Super Productive Day?

Let's see what was accomplished. Maybe a list would be best, but here is the day's chronology:

- put load of laundry to wash;
- drove hubby to work (20 minutes away, to the South);
- went to Costco and bought only what was on my list (good accomplishment!): a pineapple, cat food, and toilet paper;
- returned plastic drawers that didn't fit inside bathroom cabinets I'm trying to organize;
- purchased metal shelving that maybe will fit and cubes for cube storage shelves we already have in the living room and family room;
- went to farmer's market (I'm buying tomatoes like crazy to make sauce and freeze)

- drove back home and hung laundry, put another load to wash;
- picked up oldest child early from school and began arranging the cube storage (metal shelves didn't fit cabinets :( so I put them back in the trunk to return);
- picked up youngest son and took both boys to the dentist (20 mins. North).
- took oldest to store while youngest had teeth cleaned to buy deodorant and acne stuff;
- drove back home, first dropping oldest at school for him to work;
- stopped by the "Main street" hairdresser who was free and had time to quickly cut youngest son's hair;
- at home, hung second load of laundry (it was pretty late, after 4 pm, but the day was hot and windy, so it was ok) -- first load was completely dry;
- picked up oldest and, after a few minutes at home, drove him to another hair salon for his scheduled haircut appointment.
- picked the now dry clothes and drove with youngest son to town (20 mins. South);
- son's glasses were adjusted at the store & I bought a t-shirt and fragrance spray for oldest at popular store with teens (NEVER thought I'd give in and shop there, name begins with H); bought pretzel sticks as reward for patient kid.
- picked up  husband and drove back to the elementary school where son had forgotten homework and nice teacher met us and opened the door.
- finally back home! Only leftovers for everyone, not real dinner today.

I needed to have written emails to students and done other kinds of work, but I guess that in the parenting and house fronts the day was productive! I'll try to add some photos. :)

Crazy Changing (& Traveling & Hosting) Times (and I hate Facebook)

Sigh...

Sorry, but I have to begin with a sigh.

Can't believe it's been 20 days since I last blogged. Unbelievable.

Such few people from my old circle blog today (or read this blog), though, and I don't think I'm picking up any new readers or making any new bloggy friends, that I end up spending a lot of time on stupid facebook. I know I should simply unfollow (-->word not recognized by spell check!) most of the 600+ people in my friend list and stick to old-blogger-friends-who-now-facebook-instead and just not be there, but, yeah... blogging is so... I don't know 2004, 5, 6, 7?

And then there are other apps that allow us to talk to friends and family and too much time on my phone.

OK, quick update because I need to write two or three or more blog posts if I truly want to catch up.

My (next to) last post outlined "the crazy" from the second week of May. Well... it turns out the crazy from June would be CRAZIER than I'd anticipated, with a tragic note (next post).

The whirlwind trip to Massachusetts (for a wedding on May 29, one of those (big, huge) weddings you go to where you only know the bride and two other people, then New York City and a brief stop in Philly/PA was great. We left for New Jersey on Saturday (stayed at a hotel) -- my in-laws were here and went there too since they flew out of NYC on Sunday -- then drove to the wedding and drove back to spend the night in Connecticut. Spent the day in NYC on Monday (visited the MoMA and went up on Top of the Rock) -- that wasn't my youngest son's favorite way of spending his 12th birthday, but it was not like he had any choice. We indulged his wish to not dine in the city (OH, SO SAD! So many delicious ethnic eateries) & ate at Panera close to our friends' house in Long Island.

On Tuesday we drove back to Manhattan to park and visited the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island (GORGEOUS DAY!!) before walking back to see the 9/11 memorial and driving to Philly to sleep at our other friends' house (yes, we have countless friends at whose houses we stay, that's why we also host countless friends here). And on Wednesday, we went to see Samson at Sight and Sound and visited (our favorite!!) Longwood Gardens in the afternoon before saying good-bye to my parents (who stayed in Philly at our friends' house) & heading back home -- stopping at IKEA for furniture shopping (more on that later) & dinner (with bonus sunset!).

Sigh... wasn't that intense? But it was fun and we had lovely weather.

When we got home, I had to work on my friends' wedding shower of and that was also intense and a big success (with a small group of attendants) & I didn't take enough photos, which makes me sad.

The shower was barely over when my parents came back with our friend and her two kids (7 & 9) -- she had decided to bring my parents back and spend a few days here sightseeing and enjoying her kids second week of vacation in the countryside (they live in North Philly right now). That meant we went to the park, went to the farmer's market and shopping (mostly my mom & my friend, to thrift stores), went sightseeing at other local attractions and to the water park all day on Friday.

Since my older son's dear friend is moving to TN, we invited him to the waterpark with us and on Friday morning had a Wii & WiiU playdate with four loud boys (while my mother was sick in bed with something (some kind of digestive discomfort with nausea and dizziness) -- right next door to the family/TV room). Sigh...

Mom recovered quickly and then... and then we started the crazy process of moving our office from upstairs to downstairs so the boys can have separate rooms!! Yeah, it took me this long to get to the "changing"/moving part of the post that comes first in the title.

IDEALLY, we would have first painted the family room downstairs, then moved everything, then painted Kelvin's new bedroom, then assembled the IKEA furniture we bought, but, we didn't have all that time AND... were going to have guests again this past Thursday, so we wanted to get the bed together ASAP for the guests (twin that turns to king bed -- LOVE IKEA and foam mattresses).

We didn't do the painting, BUT we did ALL the filming. Yeah, this is the house of a YouTuber and, having enjoyed immensely our previous furniture moving time-lapse, we filmed everything again, except that this took a lot of time (WAY less than it would have taken to paint, ha ha ;-) because we couldn't find the tripod (probably lost it), then the memory cards wouldn't work, or the camera's battery would end and need to be recharged. But we finally moved most everything in time for the guests who arrived mid-day on Thursday.

This was my husband's cousin and (newly pregnant!) wife plus three friends & a baby. They all live in Michigan and came for a speaking engagement in D.C. The friend who came by himself is actually practically family to me -- he was the baby of my next-door neighbors when I was growing up in Brazil and his family remained really close to mine, so I've known him from the time he was born (the Seventh-day Adventist church community is really a huge world-wide family, you always know someone who knows someone, all over the world, especially if you're Brazilian!!) :-D

They stayed only 24h and my parents actually left for Maryland not long after they arrived. Their visit included an unexpected rain shower while on a hiking trail (which let to iPhones on rice and rice getting into charging ports and whatnot), but I didn't go on the visit to the park because I had to take the boys to have their vision checked and mine was too (another quick post for that). And yesterday I did stuff for my friends' wedding, picking up mason jars, getting nails done, YAY! loved that part!, shopping for fruit and cakes (YUMMY, can't wait to eat them!!), picking up photo booth, practicing music briefly.

YEAH... CRAZY busy. So, yeah, I'm tired and slept only about six hours, but I'm wired and can't sleep from the moment I open my eyes (generally between 6 something -7 something).

Last, but not least! I worked out three times this week with friends. They do Pop Physique & Barre. I'm lovin' it!! (but I do want to try to go back to doing Yoga every week in addition to that fun ladies' group work out).

So there you go, mostly updated about my (crazy) life!!

Restful weekend, productive day

boring post, I'm super uninspired
We had a low-key weekend and we needed it after the tiresome week and positively exhausting last weekend. We spent time with friends yesterday and that was really nice.

Today I did four loads of laundry and line dried three of them. K and the boys worked on the yard. We collected most of the leaves by using the bag on the lawn mower and then Kelvin mowed the rest of the lawn (we've been paying him 20 dollars so he can have money to use on his gaming and video making).

I needed to have done tons more or at least planted the remaining 80+ bulbs that I bought, but I've been putting that off. I'm really really depressed with our garden and yard. We basically have no lawn, it's 100% weeds and the flower beds are terrible with weeds too (especially in the back). Bushes need trimming and we don't know how to do them. It's a disasters and I don't want to say more about this right now. :-(

I still need to grade A LOT and prepare to teach this week. So I have to post this and get to work. Sigh...

I want to post some photos later. I need to write a few extra posts to catch up.

The Summer of... Nothing Done?

I can't believe it's Fall already.

Blah... you may recall I don't like the cold and though Fall is beautiful, it's also sad to me. 

This Fall I'm particularly... I don't know... disgruntled? maybe? Because the summer wasn't satisfying in a "things accomplished" kind of way. 

Some things got done, some for the very first time (like the piano):

• the boys had piano lessons and kept their progress up, and I went all "tiger-mom" on them and had them learn a really hard duet to play in churc when family was visiting. That was satisfying, but the results are not very palpable, right?

• The boys were in swim practice whenever we weren't traveling, but they didn't participate of any meets, so, again, no "results" except for better fitness. 

• Both K and I presented papers at conferences and had a good time meeting colleagues and traveling with the family -- too bad they were back to back, so we got tired of traveling!

I guess that's about it. We did travel some -- a short trip to Florida, which had to be short because of this wedding we needed to attend -- and another short trip to Canada to visit family (which was short because they all came to visit us!).

The visit from family was short and intense (hosting 8 people is a lot of work!), and it helped us clean the house some (there's nothing like pressure to get things done!) but they left precisely on the kids' first day of school and the timing was far from ideal... 

What depresses me is the seemingly endless list of things that did NOT get done:

• First, and foremost, the translation project that I started in July and which has been completely PAUSED since we traveled to Canada and classes started. :-( I won't be paid a penny until that whole things is done, so, yeah... our loss! And the worst part is that I have no idea how in the world and when I am going to finish this!!

• I never worked in the yard and removed the countless SCARY poison ivy vines that have spread EVERYWHERE in the our backyard flower beds and next to the trees in the border of the property. 

• We never cleaned/organized the garage.

• I didn't organize our books which is something I've been wanting to do forever, but maybe never will?

• I really wanted to paint the hallway and living room and downstairs, but K doesn't want to hear of those projects so, guess what, I think they'll never get done! ;-( (summer is a busy time for him and he knows painting is time consuming, but I want to do it myself, but with my "problem" who know if I'll ever really succeed in doing it. I think I could if I wanted to!)

• I also wanted (I always want to) make more photo books and stuff, but that only works out when I have a deadline (such as a free book offer). 

We did re-stain the deck -- I finished last Friday and last Sunday! -- and I got to help K significantly with it, which made me incredibly happy! "Useful manual labor" is something I truly enjoy! (except gardening in the heat and with tons of mosquitoes, I suppose). 

Yeah, it wasn't that bad. That's why I wanted to write this post, to put things into perspective! I need to be more positive, but it's hard!

Well, like it or not, Fall is here. Happy Fall, everyone!

Productive (and Freezing!) Snow Day

In our first snow-day this year, back on January 21st, we were super, mega productive! I did four loads of laundry and cooked and probably cleaned the house.

That was not the case with the 2nd & 3rd days, Feb. 13-14 (technically no snow days for the school as I explained yesterday). I don't even remember what I did, but I know it involved lots of being cozy in bed and taking naps! :) Only on Friday I think I cooked and cleaned some.

Today K got up determined to be productive! :) We first woke up at 7:40 so I could go online to find out whether U#2 was cancelled (U#1 texted us about it, so we knew as soon as we looked at our phones) and once I found out classes were cancelled, I went back to sleep for a little bit longer. K got up and started on his productivity quests, but the boys jumped into our bed around 8 and I napped and didn't get up until close to 9.

By then K had made breakfast and immediately started cleaning out his bedside table and drawer and the dressers in our bedroom, so I had no choice and began to clean too. I also loaded the dishwasher and washed most of the other dishes in the sink. It took me forever (ADHD makes all "tidying up" very challenging), but I finally cleaned my bedside table and the floor next to my bed.

I only did one load of laundry -- late in the day (and I forgot about it for a couple of hours, so it's drying only now! ;-), but I cleaned out my sons' closet and separated three full bags of their outgrown clothes to donate to friends.

I should have worked more (I have several piles of grading waiting for me), but I mostly just sent various necessary emails and announcements to my students. I'm going to try to work a bit more on the grading before I head to bed, but I'm already yawning. :)

K and youngest son shoveled the driveway and went sledding in the backyard, but Kelvin chose to read on his ipad after he'd cleaned his bedroom, studied piano and put dishes away in the kitchen. So my husband asked him to shovel  the deck and he worked on it for a while until it was getting dark.

It was SOOOO cold outside that I was truly happy to remain indoor and drink cups upon cups of hot tea. K had already taken the cars out of the garage (after cleaning the driveway) when he checked the forecast for tonight (temperatures are supposed to go down to 7 degrees!) and decided to bring the cars back in. I helped getting the cats inside and cleaning the cat litter so we could put the trash in the curb (collection is tomorrow) -- the garage door was open and I almost froze while cleaning. I shiver just thinking about how cold it was/is out there!

Last, but not least, we had "breakfast for dinner" -- yummy vegan pancakes!

P.S. I really enjoyed watching the Oscars last night. I've been watching for years. In high school when I still lived in Brazil I'd stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning to watch until the end! (it used to be 3h difference, but right now it's 2 and next week it'll be only 1 hour forward there).

A Beautiful Day For... Line Drying! ;-) (Last Sunday)

Yesterday and today have been cold and windy and tomorrow will be even colder, but Sunday was LOVELY! 64 degrees in February is great. So, it was a beautiful day for the first line drying of the year...

...Except that I suspect our washer may be on the verge of breaking again* and that completely freaks me out. Much more so than the job situation that I know will be OK eventually (and won't involve spending money on a big ticket item, sigh...)

* It may have been my fault (which is mortifying!) because I selected spinning on "Medium" for a pretty large load. The washer didn't finish the spinning cycle (some clothes were still sopping wet at the bottom) and smelled like a broken machine when we turned it off. My husband ran a rinse & spin cycle only with water and it worked OK. I'm doing a load right now, not too big (towels), but I'm doing the "heavy load" cycle and hoping it will be fine. I'm actually nervous about it! I'll let you know how it goes (updating the post).

Edited to add: it looks like washer is OK. It washed and span all the towels with no broken machine smell!

Grading Day & Fallen Leaves...

I FINALLY am grading and starting to make a small dent in my huge backlog of overdue papers, compositions and tests.

Sigh...

It does feel good to be working and getting things accomplished, but I wish so much I could be outside planting some bulbs while K & little L rake, blow & vacuum leaves...

I don't think last year I blogged about cleaning leaves, but it was a very prominent topic in this blog back in 2007-2009 when we lived in a house with huge trees & huge mountains of leaves. I will try to link to some of those posts:

Oct 2007 - leaves and job angst

Dec. 07 - "chewing" my scarf  ;-)

Feb. 2008 - (photos) Piles of leaves (wow, I only cleaned them in February? crazy!)

Nov. 2008 - raking in the moonlight (no photo)

And I hope to be back with some photos later... I'm actually surprised at how FEW posts about leaves I've written over the years, given that I always take photos intending to blog them.

Yeah, I've long given up sharing photos here, haven't I? Sigh...

Those Dreaded Summer Tasks

I actually wrote this on July 1st around 6:30 pm on my phone, but for whatever reason it wasn't published... (I can't believe I didn't have a label for "Housekeeping" or house chores or some such thing... it just goes to show how much I don't enjoy such tasks, sigh...)

I'm here poolside blogging again, look!

Just practice, not a swim meet* thankfully.

Today I'm thinking that since July is here & summer will be over before we know it I need to begin tackling those unpleasant but necessary summer tasks, some of which I haven't done for two years!

Two weeks ago I was getting ready to have guests stay at our home office when I realized that because we got new backpacks for he boys last school year their backpacks from the 2011-2012 school year had never been opened in a year!! I couldn't believe how badly I'm doing!

I need to throw out schoolwork from the last two school years that are stored in four boxes and I need to try to organize the toy storage space (under the stairs), the garage and other storage spaces.

Another disagreeable task is, of course, weeding. I have made some headway on that already, but there's tons more of weeding to do! Sigh...

I wish I could be getting ready to travel to Florida tomorrow as planned, but K's NSF grant application got in the way! :-( sigh... Now I'm scrambling to try to plan something for my birthday... Blah... 

Well, let's hope I can be productive at least! 

* That was a nightmare, BTW, my poor resilient boy is over it, though. I should NEVER ever let him compete knowing he's not good enough yet (as in not really knowing how to swim properly freestyle yet). It was disheartening... He's not competing again until he's had about year of swim lessons under his belt! (My boys haven't had lessons yet)