My calendar

The pandemic caused my long time hair stylist to rethink her life. She switched careers and moved to a warmer climate. 

I found a new stylist, who I love. The forced change was very good for me. 

New stylist has a very full schedule and that requires advance scheduling. During the first two years, I scheduled two appointments forward/in advance. And we determined 8 weeks is my needed/preferred schedule. 

Every other appointment I get cut and highlights. The in-between-appointments are cut only. 

This third year, we scheduled all of my appointments for 2023 at my last 2022 appointment in December. That felt really fabulous. I love my calendar. 

I do the same thing with my doctor’s appointments. Some appointments are annual, some are every six months. Almost all the offices allow me to schedule a year in advance. I bundle my appointments, 6 mos apart, targeting May/June and December. 

I started this proactive medical calendar in 2019 and as we entered lock down in 2020, I was current on all my appointments, tests and shots (shingles, pneumonia, etc) and very relieved to have been proactive.

Dog bed covers using boxed corners

At my house, my 9’ window seat, the cushion covered with marine vinyl, is basically a very large doggy bed. Bonus - they love to look out the window. 

We bought two new dog beds for middle’s house. They are orthopedic beds with a very good/firm cushion. We bought one sleeping bag pad/mat and cut two pieces out of it. These are in the bed/under the cushion for added support and warmth. We made two covers using no pill premium fleece from JoAnn’s. 

Then we made a new no pill premium fleece cover for a dog bed we already had - 

We boxed the corners, on this one/above, and it turned out great.  (Instructions - https://youtu.be/B6NNi0wZJvc ). 

The cover fits snuggly. 

There is a zipper in the back seam on all the fleece covers.

I have one more dog bed, under the counter in the computer room at my house, that needs a cover. That is the next project. 

The story of two benches

This post is about two benches.

I am 61, the red bench (below) is probably at least as old as I am, maybe much older. My mother says my paternal grandfather made many of them. I wonder how many are still in use, loved.

The red bench, in my kitchen, serves several purposes:

I set grocery bags there to unload.

It keeps my husband from kicking the dogs’ water bowl, which is actually a huge problem.

We pull it up to the end of the kitchen table when we have a crowd. 

It is a safe haven for one of the puppies. 

That is a puppy with a fresh haircut. She loves to lay under the bench. 

A woodworking neighborhood came and looked at the red bench and I also sent him photos. 

He made a second bench for middle’s new house, six feet long and slightly larger scale. 

The 6’ bench is made with a 21’ long 100+ year old board stored in his family barn. The board looks new because it was  planed and sanded. Middle plans to paint it. 

The 6’ bench is made with pegs and the legs are inset with dado joints. So in other words, the new bench is made with very old wood and is constructed with old school techniques like the red bench. 

Middle is very pleased. And my guess is she is the only great grandchild, of that Grandfather, who knows of and loves his benches. He died in 1982 at the age of 66.

Suddenly too small

I used to be able to buy tall kitchen garbage can bags/liners and they worked perfectly. 

Sometime in the last couple years, maybe Covid manufacturing related, the bags are too small. Or what my store stocked, changed and I did not realize it. 

I looked and most tall kitchen bags are 13 gallons. 

Trash bags are 30+ gallons, too big. 

I found 20 gallon x-large tall kitchen bags on Amazon -

They seem to be working perfectly. 

My old 13 gallon tall kitchen bags fit perfectly in a slightly smaller tall kitchen can in the garage. So they will not go to waste. 

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good

I had Bose blue tooth earbuds for a while (2019-2021) which worked great for me. 

They were connected to a U shaped collar which I loved. I used them every day. After two years of daily use, I wore wore them out. Since they had a warrantee (purchased thru Best Buy), I tried to replace them, but by that time they were obsolete/no longer made. (Best Buy refunded me $400 which went toward a new living room TV.)

And here is the problem - the Bose were expensive and in a class all to themselves. There was nothing else made with the same features at that time. So I went back to wired gummy ear buds. And they drove me nuts for over a year. 

I went back to Best Buy in early October 2022 and got help. There was a product similar to the Bose style for $50. 

And here is the important part. 

The guy helping me said - no they are not the same quality as your old Bose, but they are good. 

In other words, Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. 

And, I cannot tell the difference in the sound quality or the features. The $50 pair (now) feels the same as the old $400 pair. 

A professional sound engineer would probably not agree, but the new ones are perfect for me. And it is such a relief to be wireless again. 

Bonus, at $50 each if I wear them out every couple years, it will not be nearly as sad to replace them. 

Yes, the kids all have small wireless blue tooth ear buds that sort of sit next to their ears. I need something that goes IN the ear and is more noise cancelling. Plus I like being able to pull them out of my ears, but still have them available for quick access around my neck, like if my phone rings while out walking.  

Every thirty years

One of my husband’s uncles was a family genealogist like I am. 

At least thirty years ago he organized his materials, typed/copied/distributed his research work. 

In those papers, one page talked about the contemporary family. It was first name and birth year only. 

At the wedding in Chicago in October, one of the oldest members of the family asked for that one page to be expanded/updated. 

I volunteered. 

It was been quite the project. Frankly it would never have occurred to me to do this. But it is an extremely valuable collection of data. Consider the records a family would have if every 30 years someone updated/recorded. 

There are now 58 members on this side of the family starting with my husband’s father and two uncles, and including their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and all the spouses. This 58 does not include the short term spouses of two of the 11 cousins. Both guys are embarrassed by these marriages. I was willing to let them go, a marriage of just a couple months with no children, okay. 

I am including full names, birthdates/locations, parents names, spouses full names/birthdate/location/parents names/mother’s maiden names, wedding date/location, and educations for everyone. I have everyone’s high school name/location/graduation year. And I have everyone’s college name/location, degrees and graduation years.

As I gathered information and typed, I sent screen shots to the specific individuals to proof. 

This is all rolled into a pdf to send to the extended family. 

This project has also updated my address book greatly, which added names to my holiday card list. So we are better in touch with extended family. 

Shutterfly policy change

 I received an email from Shutterfly, last week, warning me of an important policy change. 

This is very major for me. Shutterfly is one of my backup photo storage places. 

Instead of getting irritated, I did my photo holiday card from start to finish on that Friday. And my plan is to order from Shutterfly every year, so I have an automatic order every 12 months. 

I ordered 120 custom 5”x7” cards with envelopes with free shipping. They should arrive today.

I think, this is the least I have spent for the most amount of cards. 

I did not special order rounded corners. I did not special order photo/print on the back. I did not special order off white stock/envelopes.

Having a total of four photos and very limited text on the front was helpful. I had to edit my text very tightly to convey our year in about 105 total words, including greeting and signature. 

I embraced the editing challenge and am very pleased with the card order. 

Using the $5, not spending more, not adding clutter

We do our Amazon returns at Kohl’s. Each time we return something we get a $5 coupon. 

I know the Kohl’s marketing plan is give customers a $5 coupon and they will wander the store looking for something and end up spontaneously buying all kinds of things. 

I do not fall for that. 

But I take advantage of the $5. 

The gift wrap section is right next to Customer Service at my Kohl’s. It is also a store location that is very easy for me to use/close to my house, with a good/safe/not busy parking lot. 

This is what I buy with my coupon each time. 

It uses up most of the $5 without going over. I buy a generic print and color each time, not event specific. The girls and I use the tissue paper with gift bags. 

The transaction adds very little time to my trip, like under five minutes to grab two packages of tissue paper and check out. 

Someone not wanting tissue paper could use this same philosophy with socks or hair accessories or greeting cards. 

Marine vinyl

We have a large window in our living room that the puppies love. 

Early on, I bought marine vinyl to protect the cushion on that window seat. The cushion protects the wood from the puppies’ nails. 

Marine vinyl is the stuff used to make seat cushions on boats. It is thick/sturdy, water proof fabric. I bought it at JoAnn’s. I bought enough length to cover the window seat plus a little extra on both ends. 

We then spent months straightening the marine vinyl that was just wrapped around the window seat cushion loosely. 

Finally, a few weeks ago, I took the matter in hand. 

I laid the vinyl on the floor, right side down, and put the cushion on top of it. I then carefully wrapped the vinyl around it to see just how close the two edges were to touching  in the back. It was shockingly close, like just a 4-5” gap. 

I added about an 1” to my calculations and then went to hunt for something sturdy in my sewing supplies to bridge the gap. 

I found a long piece of canvas and cut a 10’ x 5-6” strip. I can’t remember the exact numbers. 

I was able to sew through the vinyl fairly easily. The only difficulty was the awkwardness of the huge volume of stiff vinyl fabric on my little sewing table.  

Youngest was home, so after I sewed the vinyl into a large tube with the muslin filing in the gap, I flipped it right side out and started feeding the cushion through the long tube. Youngest stuck her arms up into the tube and pulled the cushion while I guided it from the other end. The vinyl is slick, it slid in surprisingly easily. 

I did not sew the ends. We just tuck them under. 

This was a very quick project. And it is very nice to have the cushion stay tidy all the time. As long as we have dogs, the vinyl will stay in place. If I was ordering cushions now, for another house, I would use marine vinyl. It is very sturdy. 

I still have to adjust the vinyl, but now it is just every few weeks. 

The canvas/gap fill started out in the center bottom/underside of the cushion. The puppies, jumping up, nudge it every time they jump up, so the canvas/gap fill slides to the front over time. 

Then I flip the whole thing to put the canvas on the bottom against the window wall. When I start to see canvas peeking out the front edge, I flip it again. It takes several weeks. 

My actual anniversary was a month ago, Thursday, September 29th

The words rotator cuff surgery still make me shudder. It was a very tough experience. It took me 14 mos to recover, they had suggested it would be at least 12. 

Back in regular yoga classes now, I do dolphin instead of down dog most of the time. I am very careful about holding/lifting heavy things out from my body or up high. 

When I woke from surgery that day, 9/29/2020, I was pretty sad. I thought I knew what I was in for, but frankly, it was (much) worse than I thought. 

That was a very long road. 

Having that surgery/recovery during Covid lockdown definitely helped, Middle was living at home, my husband was working from home, I had the round the clock help which I needed desperately.

Yes that is a fire truck at the end of my driveway

 

In August of 2021, youngest and I serviced all the smoke detectors in our house. Some of the detectors had hit their expiration date and were replaced. All the batteries were changed.

August 2022, all the smoke detector batteries were changed again. 

A week ago today, 10am, I was sewing in my little sewing room under the stairs, middle was in her shower, my husband was in the kitchen, and all the smoke detectors in the house went off. 

My husband was not cooking. 

He looked, I looked, inside/outside/attic, we could not find anything amiss, but they continued to blare. When we were confident there was no fire, we opened windows and doors. They continued to blare. 

I called 911, who told us to evacuate and the fire department was on the way. 

After checking the house again inside and out, including the attic, fire department started checking smoke detectors. It was the one in middle’s bedroom, which was one of the new ones we installed August 2021 with a new battery added August 2022.

I had a new smoke detector still in the box ready in the garage. They replaced the faulty detector. I pitched the faulty one.

I went to the store and bought a new back up detector the very same day. 

It felt good that I knew exactly what the history was with all our smoke detectors. When the fire chief asked I was able to say - replaced expired equipment/all batteries August 2021, replaced batteries again August 2022. 

Company for PT

I mentioned in a previous post, I do PT neck exercises in the bathtub almost every morning. I soak my legs and hands in hot water/epsom salts while I do my neck exercises. This process/pairing (hot water, epsom salt, PT) helps my day get off to a good start. 

The daily neck exercises allow me to continue to do two important things: head checks while driving, tipping my head back to gargle after brushing my teeth or doing my inhaler (asthma). 

These two are my company each morning - 

 

An excel program helped

At a family wedding in August 2022, two of my husband’s cousins mentioned quilts I had given them for wedding gifts (which I did not remember) long ago. 

These two were siblings and the aunt and uncle of the October 1, 2022 wedding’s bride. That put quilts into my brain. 

I was not sure I could manage it, my left hand is quite bad (arthritis). But the thought was persistent - quilts, wedding gift, delayed wedding gift for the bride’s sister, using up fabric I had loved/kept. 

I had a fabulous pile of flannel already cut in 9.5” squares that went together nicely. And I thought that if I was very careful, I could get two large lap quilts out of it. 

Youngest built me a very simple excel program to expedite fabric placement. 

The goal was to lay out one quilt, only using half of each fabric, leaving enough for an identical second quilt. The excel program made it accurate and simple. I laid out the colors on the left (above) and the program kept track of used/remaining on the right (above).

I sewed the 9.5” squares together fairly easily. Middle pressed the seams for me. My long arm quilter quilted them on her machine. I sewed the binding on by machine, I am no longer able to do handwork.

The whole process was humbling. The quilts were so basic/simple that it was almost embarrassing (so far below my previous skill set). 

And it is sort of a sacrilege to sew the binding on by machine. (Normally it is sewn to the front of the quilt and then flipped around to the back and hand sewn so no stitches show.) I had to top stitch it, stitches showed. 

But finished, the quilts were nice. The solid gold fabric on the back is actually pin-whale corduroy, so the flannel quilts are thick/heavy. I did not have enough corduroy, I added a cotton print and used the same fabric for the binding. The colors are both fall-ish and Christmas-y. 

The excel program speeded up the process in an easy/accurate way. It also prevented errors. One of my concerns was making a mistake and then middle having to rip out seams. With the printed plan in hand, I was able to check each square carefully before I sewed, and prevent errors. 

My previous method would have been to lay all the squares on the floor and then run back and forth to the sewing machine. This would have been very time consuming and inaccurate since I was making two identical quilts. 

The excel program allowed me to figure out exact placement for both quilts and be confident I had enough of each color.

We had a wedding today

The wedding was out of town and we took the train. 

I made two, identical quilts for this event. One was a wedding gift. One was for the sister of the bride, whose wedding we missed, five years ago.

Standing at the dentist’s reception desk on Friday morning, the day before the wedding, paying a bill, I just happened to ask if they had any ideas for very strong gift bags to transport two quilts to Chicago via train. 

They did - reuseable shopping bags from Tuesday Morning. It was a fabulous idea - only $1.99 each, large and very sturdy. 

I wrapped each quilt in tissue paper and put a large decorate sticker to hold it. The bags had cute designs and are made from recycled water bottles, very sturdy.

When we got to the hotel, the uncle of the bride/her sister relieved us of the bags and put them in his hotel room. 

At the cocktail hour, I told both girls there were bags for them in their uncle’s room. The aunt of the two girls also knew. 

So, these were fabulous wedding girls. One on time, one five years late. I used up a big stack of fabric. The bags were clever and dependable on the train. I was pretty pleased with the whole process. 

Physical therapy

Update - 

If you missed it, I added to my last post. 

Calculated out to an annual cost, (machine) Pilates was a serious annual financial commitment. 

If I find a mat Pilates class, I will reevaluate.

I picked up a second yoga class, Tuesday nights, instead.

Today’s post - 

I met with a physical therapist in late September to reevaluate my needs and update my custom physical therapy app. 

My app program contains multiple sets of exercises. I do one section at a time. 

I do my neck series, first thing in the morning in the bathtub with Epsom salts, nearly every day. I keep my hands relaxed in my hot water while I do the neck series/seated extras. This is now an established habit. Pairing the hot water/soaking my hands, and the PT series, is very effective in helping me to this nearly daily. 

The bath tub extras? We added a few other things to this “bath tub” set, like twists and a modified seated pigeon pose, a modified seated mountain, and a seated cat/cow. 

Then we updated my standing arm series, my floor arm series, my standing leg series, my floor leg series. My goal is to alternate these so I do one section a day, in addition to my bath tub routine. 

My challenge with this is to pair it with something else so it becomes a daily ritual. And to find a set place in the house where this works for me. 

I am relistening to Gretchen Rubin’s book, Better Than Before, to help me with this. 

My bathtub ritual took a lot of creativity. It is an unusual answer and a unique pairing. But it works!

It started because I had Covid mid summer and was on my nebulizer machine several times a day. My husband realized the machine had a long tube to the mouthpiece. The machine could sit safely (far) away from the tub. And the hot water helped my pain. I was very motivated to soak in hot water while I breathed. It was very meditative-like for me. 

yoga and pilates

I restarted yoga in early August by working with an instructor one on one. Things started to come back pretty quickly. And I was able to test my right shoulder (I had rotator cuff surgery in September of 2020 and it took 14 months to heal, I am still careful). 

I am now in a yoga class each Thursday afternoon. This class is a special needs/older women group. 

A little later in August, I started with a Pilates instructor, again one on one, with the goal of participating in a Pilates class on Tuesday afternoons. 

Added later - I went to Pilates one time. Then my shoulder was tender from yard work and I cancelled the next two Pilates sessions. That gave me a pause button. While it definitely would have worked, it was too much of a financial commitment when I multiplied Pilates individual instruction and class fees to an annual cost. 

So instead I picked up a second yoga class on Tuesday nights. 

I have not been in classes since December of 2013. 

In my 40's I remember an yoga studio owner announcing she was available to work one on one if anyone had a friend who was timid about starting in public. I appreciated the fact that was an option, for other people, but could not conceive of needed that myself. 

Now, it has been an absolutely wonderful option. 

We switched dog hammocks for the car

 We had two dog hammocks from Pet Smart. These are covers which protect the backseat of your car from wear/tear/nails/dirt from dogs. 

We wore them out, washing them in the washing machine. 

We bought a different kind (below)  from Amazon which is waterproof. 

After a trial run in middle’s car, we bought one for mine too -

These, we are not putting in washing machine, instead we are using wipes or removing from the car and washing on the driveway with the hose. 

By the way, our dogs are in harnesses and buckled into the attachments for seatbelts ALWAYS. A harness must be used (not a collar). 

Our dogs do not unbuckle on purpose, but unbuckling was happening accidently as two sets of four feet each stepped all over the backseat. These are great for toddlers/preschoolers and dogs.

 

All this would make a good gift idea. 

the boxes are still going strong

My window boxes, last week, they were planted with the same things and watered/fertilized equally. 

Here are inside views of the kitchen box -

My planter under the side windows, the big pots in front of them are massive tomatoes -