What the heck, October, why are you so overwhelming this year?! This past week felt like one ineffective effort after another to dig out of the pile-up from our month of mystery illness. I feel like I’m on a treadmill and I’m just not quite making the progress I need to get out ahead of things.
I hate this feeling. I’m trying to take it one day at a time and just remind myself that there are only so many hours in each day, and I can only do what I can do, but I seriously feel like I’m falling a half-day behind for every day that passes.
That’s not a very positive intro. Sorry.
Anyway, here’s this week’s list of accomplishments. Please join in, and list your own weekly (or monthly, or whatever!) achievements in the comments, or if you have a blog and want to do your own post and link it up, that’s great too.
Planted & Maintained
- Nothing. Grrr. I meant to plant garlic but it just hasn’t happened.
Harvested
- Tons of tomatoes
- Lots of peppers
- The last of the zucchini
- All the butternut squash
Preserved
- Fermented Peppers (Related Patreon video)
- Began curing butternut squash
- Moved cured delicata and long pie winter squash to the garage
Cooking & Eat Down The Larder
I went full cook-ahead this week. My days are so full between homeschooling and just, you know, life ‘n crap, that I’ve found it difficult to keep up.
A few things I made:
- Roasted Curried Chicken Salad
- Roasted Chicken and Celery Salad
- Big batch of tomato sauce
- Chicken Chili Verde
- Brown Rice
- Cheese and bacon quesadillas
- Cottage cheese lasagna filling
- Chicken and cream cheese stuffed mock-calzones
Animals
The sad news here is that our absolute best, most favorite chicken Goldie (above) passed away this week. She was quite old and her passing was peaceful as far as we can tell. I found her in the coop when I put the birds away and Oliver and I buried her.
Oliver was pretty upset because Goldie was his favorite bird. He dealt with those feelings by being very engaged about making a grave for her.
Other than that, just basic maintenance of the birds.
Business, Finances & Frugality
- Over $550 of direct funding on my Patreon page. A lot of new folks have joined as supporters because of the Preparedness Series. Thank you guys! That series is not over yet – more in depth info is coming. I promise!
- Frugality? Um…I guess we mostly ate in? I really can’t point to any big wins here.
Energy Use & Solar Panel Production
- Total electricity used: 194 kWh
- Total solar energy produced: 97.2 kWh (= $52.23 in production incentive)
- Energy purchased: 86.8 kWh (= $10.16 in net spend)
- Total earned through our solar panels this week: $42.07
Home, Homeschooling & Family
- Nick sat for and passed his Technician Class Amateur Radio exam. This means he can official be a Ham Radio Operator. I made him a nice traditional steak dinner to celebrate (photo above).
- Our month of irritating family mystery illness seems to finally be over. Everyone wrapped up their course of antibiotics this week and the various skin lesions that afflicted 75% of us are on their way to full remission.
- Regular tablework with Oliver continues. Reading is just going great. Something clicked in him last week and now he’s like, “here, let me read all the things.” It’s fantastic.
- I’ve been really struggling about the right way to format our history-tied humanities spine with Bella. I have so many great resources and I really genuinely just love history. It’s a question of deciding what is worth leaving out. In addition, Bella retains a ton more from comprehensive deep-dive projects than she does from daily and weekly assignments, so that’s the direction I’m trying to move.
- Hours and hours of feedback, debate, etc. with Bella on countless topics. She has a teacher who incorporates current events into her lessons, and this always leads to lots of interesting dialog and discussion.
- Helped out at school by proof-reading the school’s emergency plans.
Other Stuff
Every minute seems to be pre-allocated right now, which is not a feeling I like. My home and schedule is just slightly too chaotic for my tastes, and I feel like I keep running into walls trying to get ahead of things.
I just feel like I’m not meeting all my obligations, and that’s a pretty negative feeling for me. I’m hoping as the routine of school gets easier some extra hours will open up to me.
• • •
Hang in there! You are managing so much! Really appreciate your blog!
Thank you!
Cut yourself some slack woman! You are doing so much amazing work. When you keep piling on the obligations it is no wonder you feel as if you cannot meet them all.
For pete’s sake… try ‘catching’ ‘whatever’ is whispering ‘faster, faster; didn’t do this; look at this mountain of work; feel behind, etc etc etc’ … and ‘watch it’. What happens? Did it fade away, and ‘right here now’ become very bright and real?
Also, it is amazing how slowing down results in my getting more done. (Well, it brings the monkey mind back ‘here’… the only place where anything ever gets done! : ) Just a reminder…. you know all this.