Like molasses in January

Only, it's hot as hell in July.  However, there's been a hitch in my giddyap.  There's been no giddyap at all, frankly.  After much pressure from the Mothership, I took last week as vacation (now in a permanent state of staycation).  I am very frugal with my personal days (or PTO, in firmspeak), so I was rather smug with getting an entire week for only three and two-thirds days out of my PTO bank.  Ha!  The good news is that it rained almost every day of my vacation.  This means that I could take a break from daily watering of the garden and get to all the indoor things on my list.  I achieved one out of two and I bet you can guess which one.

The garden is going gangbusters, thanks to my having more time to tend to it.  I spent Saturday and Sunday weeding, as those were the only two days with no rain forecast.  However, the temperatures have been climbing steadily, along with the humidity, and, as we all know by now, the higher those numbers, the lower my energy.  There was a lot of napping and as much showering as is prudent with my well.

I finished a stack of muslin produce bags for my friend, Marianne's, new business venture - a general store that carries only local, regional and US-made goods, along with their organic vege, mushrooms and eggs.  While I am often the supplier of good ideas, that fact does not always go hand-in-hand with my being the producer of the outcome of those ideas.  I am not a seamstress, by any stretch of the imagination.  And my sewing machine(s) often let me down.  Such was the case.  I have a middle-aged Husqvarna machine that should have worked fine, as it was just serviced at the end of last year.  And these bags only require straight stitching.  Did I mention that I decided to go with French seams?  And that I had no real idea of what that was, other than a) French, therefore fancy, and b) the thing to use when you don't have a serger.  This required a LOT of thread and much bobbin-winding.  Which would have just been slightly annoying had it not been for the fact that I could no loosen that knob thingy on the big wheel thingy that powers the foot mechanism.  It would not loosen, no matter how hard I tried and what tools I plied to it.  I ended up pulling out my mother's elderly 1946 Singer Featherlight to finish the job.  That required much consultation on YouTube.  But the job was done and product delivered.  Heaven help me.

Given the weather, not much knitting has gone onto or come off of the needles.  I did whip up a very cute bunny doll for Marianne's granddaughter - and since, as usual, it wasn't finished until a half hour before I was going to leave to deliver it, no photos were taken.  I am currently working on a bear version of the doll.  I am, apparently, in my "Stuffie Phase".  I will be sure to take a pic of this one.  Which I will take up again when the temperatures drop below 90 with 99 percent humidity.  Sometime in September.

Other than that?  Not much.  I did manage to find homes for a carload of items I had winnowed out before the pandemic.  That was a bonus.  Thrift stores are slowly coming back to life, but with so many caveats that it's almost not worth the effort.  The Goodwill I frequent holds all donations for a period of 5 days before processing them - in large cardboard boxes...outside...  I have pared down my grocery shopping to once every three weeks.  Now that the garden is in second gear, I am able to provide all my salad greens, with zucchinis coming in soon.  Of the eight squash plants I planted - four zucchini and four yellow squash - all are zucchini with one lone yellow squash plant.  I really do have to work on my labeling for next year.  I have a pint jar of half sour pickles in the fridge and enjoyed a stir fry last night with one tiny zucchini, three kinds of kale, rat tail radish pods, and red onion.  Once my photos show up on Blogger (why, oh, why am I still only able to access May pics???) I will show you the fruits of my labors.

I'm back in the saddle this week, with its usual parade of endless Zoom meetings, conference calls and other techie delights.  Speaking of Zoom, I will introduce you to my Zoom persona once I can access the photos I've been amassing.  My sisters, mom and nephew in NC did a Zoom meeting to celebrate Father's Day - the first one without dad.  My mother, bless her, peered over my sister's shoulder and cried, "oh, look at all your little faces!"  She's 96 and a pip.

I hope you are all staying safe - not surprisingly, a lifting of lockdown has created the illusion that all is the same as it was before Covid.  It is not.  I know that I am much better suited (both by personality and lifestyle) to ride out extended isolation, but I also have no intention of spreading this killer to anyone in my family or elsewhere.  Let's hope consideration and empathy win out.