TNT: No Rest for the Weary

 

I sat down for a very few minutes yesterday and stitched the name of the author and started a new tree on the garden sampler. Between kitty sitting, stiff neck and holiday cleaning there wasn't any time for sitting and stitching this week. 

I was tired from Sunday's festivities and I was looking forward to a lazy day to get some crafty stuff done but instead it started with a bang. That was the sound of my mother's and grandmother's china hitting the floor....

...when the shelves in the cabinet that I keep it in collapsed. Somehow nothing broke. We spent the morning trying to figure out how to fix the shelves. Upon examination it seems that we had the pegs in the wrong way. We flipped them over and hopefully that was enough to keep everything where it's supposed to be. 

Then there was this. At 8 am a dumpster was delivered. We had a giant pile of debris from the bathroom remodel that needed to go. We always do this type of clean up in the winter before the critters and bugs wake up but most of our winter was covered in ice so we didn't get it done when we wanted it to. The Mister decided this was the week so we spent the rest of the day hauling stuff and cleaning out sheds. I am very happy to report that at this writing The Mister is as tired as I am. Maybe tomorrow will be a day of recovery. I sure hope so. I'm really tired.

Hippity Hoppity

 

Look who we ran into yesterday.

He made a big impression on Baby Grand. Big Grand had seen enough big bunnies this week to be wary of a random one just taking a stroll. Smart kid. 

The egg hunt we had planned with the Grands in our yard got rained out so we took them down to the boardwalk and hid the eggs among the benches and the flower beds. It was just as wet but there was much less mud. 

The kiddies didn't seem to mind getting soaked. 

Finding eggs was okay but it was puddle jumping that really got their attention. 

Before all that excitement, I tried out the oven for the first time on a ham. It worked perfectly. The rest of dinner was my pathetic attempts at potato salad and coleslaw. In all my years, the proper execution of both eludes me. The deviled eggs and roasted asparagus were good though.

Daughter brought a bunny cake from her favorite gluten free bakery....

...and some fancy chocolate bunnies from a chocolate shop she discovered in Connecticut last week. 

Eggs were dyed.... 

....and crafts were done. Without any of the other Grands, it was a scaled down version of our usual holiday festivities but we made it work.

Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail

 

Happy Easter!

Cleaning Up

 

I did a whole lot of this yesterday and I will be doing a whole lot more today. 

When this comes out of the closet you know I mean business. I'm having Easter here this year and making the place presentable is going to take a lot of work. 

I did sneak in a bit of this in the late afternoon while The Mister was out mowing. After a night of sleeping sitting straight up on my couch so as not to do any crazy twisting in my sleep, my neck is feeling much better today. SNL is new tonight so I think I'll repeat that sleeping arrangement just to be on the safe side. 

Friday Fluff: A Pain in the Neck

 

When I stay at Daughter's to kitty sit, I sleep on the couch. She has a lovely guest room with its own private bathroom but I'm too spooked to go way upstairs in her big empty house. On Monday morning I woke up with a stiff neck that I haven't been able to shake all week. It's getting better but I can only find relief when I'm upright and on my feet. I've spent the week doing lots of odd jobs around the house but little of anything else. I did get three more sections done on the handspun Pi Shawl before I came home. Four more sections to go but I can't look down to knit right now. 

I hadn't gotten very far on my latest spinning project before I left and I didn't add anything to it this week either. I did get all my winter clothes cleaned and packed away. Pup's too. I hand washed and hung all the woollies out to dry when we had sun and warm weather. It's back to cloudy and cold which is fine by me. 

My first little loaf of the reanimated Betty White turned out to be a good one. Cooking and cleaning I can do. Sitting and knitting or anything else that I have to look down to do, I can't. That includes sleeping and even watching TV so I'm a pretty grumpy mess right now. I just can't get comfortable and my other body parts are now trying to join in the fun. It's always a domino effect when you get old. The misery starts in one place and just keeps on traveling.

Touch and Go

 

When I got home I had to resurrect the refrigerated Bettys and at first it didn't go so well. I was worried. Then after a day of 80 degree heat they came back to life with a vengeance. 

Look at those bubbles. That's a first. Betty was really happy so I put her to work.

We made waffles in the morning.

I finished off the last two pieces of Betty White that I had in the freezer for lunch so I started the process of making more bread. She made an excellent tomato sandwich.

After we turned on the AC I made crackers. I hated to have to turn it on since the Bettys were performing like crazy in the heat but when the thermostat hit 80 it had to happen. The Mister said so. 

April Wednesday WIPs and a Mystery Solved

 

The only knitting that I took with me besides socks was the Hue Shift. I had to rip out the second row so I could line up those intersections better and I did. It's not perfect but I'm happy with the improvement. I get better at this with every square. 

As for the mystery...those of you who have been here a long time probably remember the drama I had with the big kitchen remodel that took 3 years thanks to Covid supply chain issues. In the winter of 2022 I finally got my stove only to discover the oven smoked and filled the house with noxious fumes. We had the service people out at least 4 times with no results and neither Lowes nor Frigidaire would let me exchange or return it even though it was under warranty. 

Well....fast forward four years. You see those blocks of Styrofoam? While I was gone I told The Mister to open the windows and crank the stove up again to check to see if it still smoked. If it did I was going to replace it with my tax return money. In his boredom he took the whole thing apart and what did he find way up underneath? Yep. Those two blocks. We had paid extra to have the stove set up and it seems they neglected to remove all the packing. That was what was burning. You would have thought the service guys would have checked for just this kind of thing especially since I kept harping about it every time they came out.  I turned the stove on this morning and.....no smoke. No fumes. Crazy, right? 

Since it's just the two of us, the little toaster oven I keep inside the big oven is more than enough but it is nice to know if I want to bake something bigger I finally can.