Today's news

Well, there's good news and bad news about work.

Found out from our old GPM, Jamie, who is now the day shift APM, what our schedule is supposed to be for the next few weeks.

This upcoming week - 4 days, Friday off.
Week after - ditto.
Labor Day Week - 4 days, Monday off (Labor Day). If you're off probation, like me, you get paid for the holiday, IF you work the last full shift before and first full shift after.

So two more weeks of SHORT checks, I need that new battery, and can y'all believe he's still telling me to go ahead and drive the car? Don't worry, I'll jump your car with the truck if it won't start! Granted, once it starts, it stays running just fine, it's sometimes the getting it started that's driving me up a tree. It started hard before leaving for errands, fine at Wal-Mart after groceries, lunch at McDonald's, then it didn't want to start at all, so came home, got the food unloaded and put up, shifted laundry to the truck and used it to do that. The truck is having minor issues as well, but nothing that can't be worked around. The car ... this is going to drive me crazy.

I know it's not the starter (no clicking solenoid) or the alternator (no battery light). It's just I'm starting to occasionally get that nyeh-nyeh-nyeh you get from a dead or dying battery. Now, part of it has to be the terminal ends, as the one especially is corroded (today was the first time I really looked under the hood good in broad daylight), so I'm going to have to replace those, too. Do that and likely SOME of the issue will be solved.

But both O'Reilly's and Wal-Mart suggest a new battery ASAP, because it's old enough that it has the punch outs on the battery sticker for age, and the WM guy told me flat out that they haven't done those kind of stickers in five years, so the battery is at least that old and definitely going to need replacing.

Thank you to those sharing my "battery funds sale" in my Etsy shop - lots of tire kickers, a couple of sales, but a long ways to go. Time to add more stuff to the shop, right? If you want to go shopping, lots of pretty finished jewelry pieces and plenty of beads, charms and more. I'm particularly fond of making earrings, so there's nearly 100 different kinds in there.

Homestead Crafter on Etsy

Of course, once I get back to full hours AND on a better-paying job, I'll be looking at opening the standalone store back up and adding not only the stuff I sell on Etsy but other items as well - home decor, holiday/seasonal decor, more jewelry but not stuff I make (I have to get a lot of things wholesale, like any other retail shop), candles, spa sets, lotions and potions, etc. Things that if I made them myself or they were supplies, I could sell on Etsy, but who has time to make over 100,000 items themselves? I'm barely going to be able to keep up with making the 2000 or so different jewelry pieces and holiday decor things from kits! Whew!

This is turning out to be a grand adventure despite the recent setbacks. Because you know what else happened today? Errands got finished up with daylight still going, despite the issue with the car, and so once groceries were put up and laundry in the house (still have to put it up), I grabbed the mattock and broke a 4x4 foot plot for the last of those squash seedlings and crammed all 17 in there. Some, I don't think will make it because they've had to sit for a couple weeks longer than I wanted and the heavy rains lately that I couldn't completely keep them out of have left them a bit waterlogged and yellowish. If anything survives, great. If not, I tried. It wasn't raining, so I hurried and got it done.

The rain has been good for what garden there is, though. The older tomatoes are setting a lot of fruit, but I wish they'd ripen up some, lol. Beans are about done, and I have four full packages in the freezer from the little bit I grew. Corn is trying to ear up, my two pepper plants I bought are stunted but I have lots of blossoms and one actual pepper! The yellow squash I just threw out there as they were pretty overripe anyhow ... two are just sitting and one rotted and exploded. About a dozen of those have sprouted and are trying to grow. I'm going to leave them alone and see what happens. A friend at work gave me some kind of tiny watermelon that is about softball size, along with some seeds. I tossed the melon out there, too, and it has exploded, so I'll see if anything comes of that. The two squash and all the dozen or so tomato seedlings (mixed varieties) that I plopped out a few days before all this rain hit are looking good. Nice and green and perky!

So once this round of rain stops, I'll break more ground, use some of the ratty styrofoam cups laying around here, and soak some seeds for the fall garden to sprout them. Onions, peas, maybe more beans if I have any left, lettuce, turnips, radishes, maybe some more peppers. No idea right now what I have left to plant for a fall garden, lol!

Time to get back to work on the shop and get some dinner and whatnot. I'm promoting the shop sale like crazy in my Etsy groups - maybe I'll get some sales that way, too!