So just a short post tonight after all. Probably going to be short posts all this week. Busy days.
Thought this was going to be the 100th post of the year. However, it turns out my count is off. This is the 102nd day of the year so I messed up my count somewhere along the line.
Hooray for posting 102 days (almost) I suppose!
Too tired to write a proper blog post. Worked, came home, went back to a (rather short) CPR class, came home again. Watched an episode of Spring Baking Championship. Surprised by who went home this week, I’d have gone the other way if I were the judges. And now, time for a blog post.
Well, at least this list isn’t rattling through my brain at midnight, right? Do you ever get the million (I didn’t give you the full list) thoughts rattling around in your brain?
Day 99/365
Just now getting to my post as today ended up a bit busy. Work, supposed to end at 3:45 but asked to stay until 5. Then, off to J’s baritone lesson. Followed by a 30 minute driving lesson. Finally, I have a few minutes to put up this post.
Things this week just keep changing to a bit busier than anticipated. So, let’s get to planning the week with Sandra over at Diary Of A Stay At Home Mom.
Spring is in the air! And so are warmer temperatures. And *clears throat, sneezes a bit* so is tree pollen, especially the blooms from those stinky pear trees. Exciting news was that we got a bit of rain today! Rest of the week is supposed to be clear and our highs are predicted to be in the 80’s with sunshine.
Dark now, wasn’t home earlier. However, the preschool kids spotted a caterpillar as they looked outside one of the preschool doors. Very observant!
Working on this post.
Quite a bit. Stuff I need to do. Some sad news from yesterday. A possible job opportunity at my work.
Lamp, old and new phones, charger cable.
Husband is watching The Handmaid’s Tale, not my thing so I’m down here working on my blog. Probably glance at the news later. Over the weekend, we watched the complete season of Night Agent on Netflix. It was pretty good.
The dryer. Hooray for husbands who help with laundry!
Macaroni and cheese at work
A second hurrah for husbands who help with dinner. I wouldn’t have done it but he deep fried some frozen chicken nuggets and made rolls. (No vegetable in sight is the trade-off here)
No idea. Might be a lot of husband’s choice/lack of vegetables this week.
MONDAY: chicken nuggets and rolls *I worked 8-5* *J had a baritone lesson at 6:30*
TUESDAY: No idea, husband’s choice. Easter leftovers? *I work 8-3:30 and then, have a CPR class at 5:30*
WEDNESDAY: Spaghetti?
THURSDAY: Pepper steak and rice or husband’s choice *Mom’s Night Out*
FRIDAY: Turkey sausages on the the grill maybe? With pasta salad? *I work 8-4:30*
Just started one called The Accident by Chris Pavone.
This is likely to be a week where not much on the to do list happens so keeping it short.
Work, Go to the CPR Class, Visit with friends at Mom’s Night Out, Put away Easter things, Try to not eat all the leftover Easter candy in one sitting
Impossible way over budget both in terms of space and finances garden plans and ideas?
Leaving the house without needing a coat!
It’s not awful.
I did pick it up a bit last week. 
My sister in law who battled throat cancer during 2021 and was cleared. They’ve discovered small spots in her throat and one in her lungs. Prayers they are able to deal with them quickly and she’ll be clear again. For family, friends, and strangers.
Well-suited quote for my garden plans:
Day 98/365
Happy Easter!
Our holiday is winding down and it’s been a nice one. Nice weather, nice company, and nice food.
I’d say our day started with church but really my day started earlier than that. Showered. Filled the boys (they’ll always be boys to me) Easter baskets. 
Baked a lemon meringue pie. Dropped J off at church, returned to pick up my husband and G. G had slept in a bit so we did it that way instead of all going together as J had to be there an hour before the service.
Enjoyed a wonderful Easter service especially the music 🙂
Yesterday, my other older brother who is here locally called. He’d missed my text but said he’d come over for dinner in the afternoon. So when we get back from church, he was already here waiting for us. (Think we had a miscommunication somewhere as I’d said after 1 and it was 12:30. Never complain about extra family time though.)
Easter lunch was good. We had bbq brisket on buns, corn on the cob, and baked beans. Lemon meringue pie for dessert. Pretty simple. A very strange and different realm from the big all out Easter morning brunches I used to host. I missed the large gathering of family and G missed the food. Still, it was nice to not spend all day yesterday and the wee morning hours today cooking up a storm. A lot less stress.
My brother stayed and visited pretty much all afternoon. Now, it’s 5:30 and dinner time I suppose. We’ll see if anyone is hungry. Plenty of sugar choice throughout the afternoon in addition to the pie.
How was your Easter?
Day 97/365
Just a quick check in post so I don’t forget again!
Awoke to the cat bugging me to go outside. Then, I heard the owl in the maple tree. Quite loud. Quick denial of the cat’s request.
Today’s been mostly a yard work day. Took a load of brush/extra trash to a city wide drop off event. Happens every spring/summer. Helps a lot of with yard clean up.
Then, off to Home Depot to rent a heavy duty garden tiller. Got the garden ready. Husband did most of the tilling as the tiller was a bit heavy for me. And tilled up a new little area in the yard to try an extra garden.
Read my book a bit/took a nap with the cat. I mean what else are you going to do when a purring cat jumps on your lap in the middle of the afternoon?
Back outside for raking some leaves and clearing a flower area under the bedroom windows. Had slowly started this project last year. Bleeding hearts are coming back in that area. Planted my wild blue phlox there. And put down a bit of impatiens seed from the Dollar Tree. If it comes up and flowers, great. If not, not a huge loss and I’ll figure something else out.
Now, it’s time for laundry and figuring out tonight’s dinner. And tomorrow’s Easter plans outside of church.
Day 96/365
Decided to just keep it simple again for today. Just some spring sightings from this week.
These tiny grape hyacinths sprang up in an essentially a very random part of the backyard. A few do every year it seems. I don’t think I planted them. Maybe some in the past but definitely not in the middle of the yard. Still just another happy spring sighting.
I’m not denying they are pretty but oh, how they stink! Bradford pears also known as Callery Pear trees. It’s the time of year they bloom with pretty white flowers. The catch? The wind blows right and they smell like sewage to me. One of my preschool friends who was at the time showing me a little bud she’d swiped off a similar tree (it didn’t stink so it was either a dogwood or cottonwood or ?) said: They smell like fish!
They’re non-native and invasive around here. And yet, I still saw them for sale at a local nursery last year. Why? And I also wonder, did not anyone notice as they planted these trees everywhere years ago, how stinky they were when blooming? The photo above is of the tree in the yard across the street. As I said, pretty but also stinky.
This is a crow’s nest, best I could get for now with the zoom and the lighting the day I was taking photos. You can sort of see the crow in the nest.
I spent quite a bit of time one late afternoon simply watching the nest. This is actually the exact same spot the crows built their nest last year so it must be a good one. They’ve been busy lately, at night, fussing at the owls and in the day, chasing away the local Cooper’s hawk who sometimes hangs around the bird feeders.
Also, nest building somewhere in the yard are starlings. 
They are never going to be my favorite birds but after our yellow jacket invasion last year I’ve softened toward these nuisance birds a bit. It turns out they eat the pesky wasps (I don’t mind the paper wasps and a few others as I know they do good things). That said, I still don’t like that they are quite messy in large numbers so hopefully, we won’t see droves of them around here.
One day during the course of the week, Tuesday or Wednesday perhaps, we had slight severe weather predictions. I think we got a small bit of rain, other areas in town more. One thing I’d forgotten was the wonderful smell of the coming rain. The earth just smells different in the spring does it not? And we have more much needed rain predicted for Monday. I do hope we see it, not necessarily severe weather or a thunderstorm but the simply the rain.
Finally, these lovely flowers completely surprised me this morning.
I thought my tulips were a few weeks away from blooming. Apparently, not. Such a lovely surprise to see out the front door this morning. More photos later, the neighbor was outside and I was not quite invested in enough cups of coffee for conversation. Also, apparently, yellow was my color of choice for fall bulbs! Love seeing the blooms after forgetting what colors/flowers I’d even planted there.
Day 95/365
Oops, I totally forgot to post on Thursday! So here’s a little place holder for it. I mentioned I picked up a pot of my favorite spring flowers in an earlier post. Here they are:
Wild blue phlox, my dad called these flowers sweet William. And they are my favorite spring flowers.
day 94/365 (posted a day late on day 95)
Just a short one today. Not so sure how well I’m doing with the wellness thing this week.
It makes perfect sense to fill this with Easter candy when trying not to eat so many sweets, right? 
And it makes perfect sense to be making a cake using Peeps Pepsi when trying to accomplish the same goals does it not?
What? It does not.
Well, at least we’re having a chicken and spinach skillet for dinner. Perhaps the spinach will cancel out some of the candies and sweets? I can only hope.
This morning’s breakfast was a flip yogurt due to time constraints of getting to work. Need to plan out making the shakes the night before on work mornings. Can’t quite bring myself to wake the family with a blender at 7 AM. And today’s scale number was not in the right direction, see above, reason: candy consumption.
Sometimes it’s better to focus on the sweet things in life that aren’t tempting things like jelly beans, Hershey’s cookies and creme eggs (I don’t even like white chocolate but these are so good and addictive), and Reese’s peanut butter filled easter eggs.
Day 93/365
It’s been a somewhat interesting Tuesday. Couldn’t sleep last night and then, woke up to a 6:30 a.m. call into work. Could only go in for about an hour as J had his appointment but I went ahead and helped out for that short time. And doing it again tomorrow, however, this time I know in advance and won’t have to be there quite as early.
Took J to his appointment. He didn’t want to go out for lunch afterward. Who is this kid? So, we made a quick grocery store run and ended up having homemade pizza for lunch. Spent some time messing around in the backyard. We also tested the a/c in the house. Works.
Heard the crows fussing at the owls late last night. Seems the crows chased them off successfully. We’ll see if I hear the owls (or the crows fussing) again tonight.
Pretty slow basic day over all. Tacos for dinner. We (well, my husband helped with mine) set up our new phones. The kids ran to Target and I spent time watching the crow’s nest. Talked to one of my brother’s about Easter, they already have plans. Not a huge deal as invite was very last minute.
Somewhere in all that I started a new book, Two Days in Lisbon. Very good so far, probably going to go back to reading it after I finish this brief post. Not sure why this post almost feels like a rather unexciting diary entry. Just missing the fuzzy cover and little padlock with the key. Did you ever have one of those? I think I even had a little pink one with no security like the padlocks at one point. Back before they were called fancy things like journals.
Well enough of a diary/journal entry/blog post for now.
day 92/365
Ah, it’s finally April. Getting closer to that spring and summer weather with blooming flowers everywhere. My favorite.
Today, my mind is full of all the projects and things I’d like to get done. However, my body isn’t quite keeping up after a not so restful night’s sleep and a bit of achiness (the weather, I think).
Let’s just get to planning the week with Sandra over at Diary Of A Stay At Home Mom.
It’s cloudy with a slight chance of rain today. It’s currently 57 but feels a bit cooler to me. Still was warm enough overnight that I left my outdoor house plants outside for an extended vacation. Soon enough they’ll be moving out there full time. Tomorrow the high is supposed to be in the 80’s (!!!) with another slight chance of thunderstorms. Then, back down to highs in the 50’s for the rest of the week. Lows in the 30’s, plants back inside for a bit. Weekend, however, looks perfect with sunshine and highs in the 70’s.
I see birds that are a bit upset that the feeders are close to empty. However, let me tell you what I heard outside my window in the super early morning hours. The calling of a couple of barred owls. Very close, likely in the Maple tree. That never gets old.
Working on this post, doing a bit of laundry, and thinking about lunch.
Easter plans, if we’ll have any outside of church, all the projects around the house I’d like to get done.
The usual. Here’s a couple views of my dresser though as it tends to get stuff on it more often than the bedside table which I limit to only the lamp, phone charger, and phone. (Of course, underneath it, I currently have all the Easter basket goodies hidden) 
Probably just The Voice. And I’ll watch my latest Doctor Who episode while folding laundry. Should probably do another books/movie/tv post soon as I’ve watched some great things and read a few fun books.
The dryer. Probably going to hear the cat complaining as she wanted outside, she’ll soon change her mind.
I’m leaning toward chicken tortilla soup (from a can)
Pork chops, potatoes, and salad
Kind of worked this one out while grocery shopping…
MONDAY: pork chops, potatoes, salad *J has a lesson at 6:30*
TUESDAY: burritos (using a simplified version, we’ll leave out the beans of this recipe) *J has an appt at 11:00*
WEDNESDAY: chicken spinach skillet
THURSDAY: pepper steak
FRIDAY: Spaghetti, or OUT
Just started reading The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell, seems like a promising thriller so far.
Um, all the things!
Finish the Easter baskets (I went with an overwhelming/overkill on it Peeps theme plus I’m giving them some new shirts/shorts), Work on cleaning the porch/yard-take things to the city wide trash/brush drop off on Saturday, and get J started driving again (plus look into local driving schools)
Starting to plan out the garden areas and front porch/deck areas. So excited that it’s almost time to add the flowers. 
Walking around the yard seeking out small signs of spring 
Started to clean on Saturday before becoming distracted by the weather so it’s not awful. Still see lots of heavy winter blankets and such to put away. Always needs tidying as well.
Unknown neighbor who posted on the neighborhood site, seemed to be having a very tough time of things, friends who are not feeling well (we had to postpone our monthly game night due to illnesses), a few sick teachers (strep is going around our area apparently), family. Kindness, peace, and healing to spread throughout the world.
Seems fitting to my mood today:
day 91/365