The weather's been crazy here again, as I'm sure it's been for most of us. From the early part of the week with highs in the 80s, to the end of this week with temps literally near freezing, it's been insane. We even had SNOW Friday. I was surprised, as was everybody else that made it in to work, that the plant didn't call it off on account of weather, because it was sleeting like crazy. I slipped and slid down the mountain road so much that I called the hubster when I got to work and told him he might have to come down the road to get me at the bottom by the cow pasture when I got home. It was just that nuts. The roads were awful, too, on the pavement. Sleet was sticking everywhere and making for some seriously spooky driving. And that comes from a gal who grew up in Michigan and learned to drive through winters there, which are pretty nuts in and of themselves. But this had me spooked. The temps are so cold right now that they're what, when I was in college fresh out of high school, my compatriots and I back home in Michigan called "Ohbrrr." Mainly because it was, we joked, too cold to go, "Oh, brrr." So cold we had to condense it to one word. (By the way, it's 1030ish Saturday night as I write this, and Quentin just came into the bedroom, where it's warmer so I'm hunkering down, to tell me that the weatherman said today's "high" broke the record for lowest high. It had been standing since 1888, which essentially means that today's "high" was the lowest high pretty much since they'd started keeping track of the temps around here. Yeesh!!!!!!)
Good thing I don't have a garden in yet, though, because the crazy weather would have killed most of it off. Things are still green, though, and one good thing to come out of the crazy temps is that the freeze will have killed off all the emerging ticks. We've both found a couple on us already, but not too bad. Clearing things up is helping a lot with that, as many of you will remember last year at this time, we were doing "tick patrol" every day nearly for me from coming here after work to clean things up for moving in, and on weekends when we'd both come down to work on things.
I look back at the last year and realize, especially looking at pictures from this time last year, just how far we've actually come. It doesn't seem like it when you live in it, and can only piecemeal the cleanup and repairs and everything, but when you can look back at photos and see the changes, it's quite amazing to have it slap you in the face just how far you've come in a year's time. Even our neighbor Eric has stopped by and told us what an improvement everybody is seeing. That we've only managed to burn about half the trash piles off the deck and by the easement doesn't seem like a lot when you consider how big they were in the first place, but when you consider that size, and that there's actually some bare ground now where last year there was nothing but trash, it's incredible. Sadly, there's still the trash pile at the end of the trailer (not too bad - mostly old tires I can use for the garden beds and a big bunch of soda cans), and the trash pile behind it (bad but not impossible), and out the back doors of the other two trailers on the place (again, not TOO horrible, just really bad) ... and all the scrub brush and such to cut down ... but as the old cigarette ads said, "You've come a long way, baby."
And a long way it's been for me to get to homesteading. It's been a dream for many years, and it took moving several states away from home, dealing with homesickness (Michigan will always be the home of my heart, but I'll likely never live there again, it's not nearly as homesteader friendly as the Ozarks), job gain, job loss, job gain, job quit, job gain back at the first place (and yes, I'm incredibly happy to be back at Tysons, and apparently so are a lot of other people there happy I'm back - it's great to be remembered after nearly three years wth so much affection!), and an awful lot of being willing to deal with what others would consider horrible inconveniences to get here.
Okay, I grant that the place is still a serious mess. I grant we still have to run extension cords for everything electrical and can't run a lot of stuff that draws major power until we get even a small gennie. I grant that we have to haul water from the local gas stations, and use a solar shower bag to even HAVE a shower. I grant that we have to heat up the water on the hot plate for doing dishes, because we also don't have a water heater, or a range/oven. I grant all our cooking is hot plate, electric skillet or microwave. But we have a sound roof over our heads, entertainments, a lot to keep busy with, the kitties, each other and a steady income. And I do like the hours at my job much better than the hours when at Butterball. Tysons runs a straight eight for hours, and I start and end later than I did before. This means I get an extra hour of sleep, still have around 90 minutes (instead of barely an hour) to pull together and eat before I have to leave, a shorter commute by half the time (and 5 miles less - but a lot less curves so I can keep my speed up more towards the 55 range rather than barely making 40 most of the way), and I still get out at 5 PM every day, so even with a quick stop for fill-ins when needed, I can get home while there's still daylight during warm weather to get things done outdoors. Add in that it means that I don't have to drive to work in the dark anymore, and you have a very happy camper when it comes to work.
One thing about this crazy weather is that it's allowed me to get a bit more done on my socks and afghan. The socks are plowing along slow but sure. They're plain but kind of not holding my interest right now for some reason, even though I need them. One sock of each of two pairs of my handknits went bye bye somehow while in the laundry and can't be found, and the one full pair I had left I had to darn one of them. That means I take the one with the hole in it and hold it over the trash can and say "Oh, darn!" as I drop it in. I know, it seems a waste to trash it rather than fix it for something that takes so much time and creativity to make as a sock, but I hate darning, and I hate grafting toes closed. Probably why I always do toe-up socks off JG's Generic Sock form and call it done, because I really, REALLY hate grafting sock toes. It's boring and it takes me forever, even though I can get it right every time. It's just boring. I much prefer working my way up the sock to the cuff and just binding off the thing and being done with it.
The afghan, however, has taken a sad turn. I hadn't gotten more than a few inches on it, and I realized it was boring me to death. I do boring socks enough (plain foot, ribbed leg/cuff and call it done). I didn't really want to do a boring afghan, too, though all the color changes were pretty. So I ripped it allllll back and started over from the cast-on. I found a pattern for Feather and Fan and put in my stitch markers so I could keep track of stitch repeats and off I went ... I had to rip out a few cast-on stitches to make it come out right, but that's okay, it'll still be pretty good sized when it's done, and a lot more interesting visually as well. Big afghans on medium needles take a loooong time to work up, so I've only gotten one pattern repeat done so far, but thankfully, FaF is self-bordering, so I don't have to go back afterwards and pick up stitches all the way round to knit on a border, too. (Oh yeah, I'm kind of lazy with my afghans, too ... I like to work the border as I go rather than after so when I bind it off, I'm done. Never mind me and sweaters, in which I take flat patterns, add in markers on the needle, and knit them in the round to avoid seaming the things as much as possible, even on sleeves. Did I mention I hate seaming, too?)
So that's my week. It's going, going, gone, and I can't wait to see what this week brings, besides more cleanup and maybe starting to FINALLY get my garden set up a bit!
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