Look, I do clean!

Occasionally, anyway. This room seems so big and empty with the furniture moved around...and some of it gone...

On the other hand, it at least looks nice now!

moving is messy

This is the current state of my living room. Not exactly stellar as we've cleaned out three of the rooms in the house and closed them off so i don't have to clean them again. But hey, i'm moving. It's no big deal. I can live with a little mess.

Except the landlord called today and he wants to start showing the house on Thursday. Um...yeah. ok. Well, there are gonna be boxes all over the house. Nothing I can do about that.

But i guess i can try to keep the floor vacuumed and what not. In theory, anyway.

Moving...

Moving is no fun. Well, actually, i take that back. I think moving is lots of fun. You know, as long as it's once every 2-5 yrs or so. Moving twice in less than a year? Not so much.

But we are busy packing up for our move back to Maryland. And then wherever else God decides we need to live. If that turns out to be California or someplace like that...well...Our couch would, at that point, have something like almost 10,000 miles on it. Which, honestly, is pretty impressive for a couch. They don't usually travel that much. :)

Packing isnt so bad until you get to the kitchen, and you look at all your glass dishes and such, and go...um....yeah. ok. How am i gonna do this? Because, you know, for all that i've moved, like...in six major moves, I don' think i've ever done a kitchen. I always remember the movers coming in to pack up the dishes so that it would be their fault if they got broken. So i'm still working on figuring that one out. I bet i could find instructions on YouTube.

We sold our dining room table and got rid of our extra fridge. We've packed up books, and DVDs, and knick knacks, and most of our clothes. I foresee a lot more laundry in my future as we are both only keeping out about five days worth of clothing. We've thrown away MORE stuff (seriously. Where does it all come from?) We've filled a bunch of bags of STUFF to take to goodwill. It's pretty much insane.

As a final note; people look at you REALLY funny when you go an start pulling newspaper OUT of the paper recycling bins. But we don't get the newspaper and it makes great packing material.

Epic Saga of Awesomeness (with pictures)

OK, not really. But it's still a pretty crazy story.

I'm talking, of course, about replacing the dead battery in the minivan. Sounds simple enough, right? Take off a couple screws, loosen a couple nuts, pull out the old one, put in the new one. easy peasy.

As. If.

First off, the battery was dead, which precipitated this entire process to begin with. Unfortunately, the battery died while the van was in the garage. If you've seen our teeny tiny one car garage, you'll realize how crazy this was. Sometimes it's amazing the van fits in the garage in the first place.

So then we (and by we i mean Dan because i tend to just stay out of the way) attempts to detach the cable from the battery. only to have one of the battery posts fall off said battery while still attached to the clamps. Aw

esome. No big deal, we'll just unscrew it and it'll fall out. Except apparently the bolt melted somehow and fused itself to the metal of the clamp. How is that even possible? It doesn't get that hot ANYWHERE the van has lived. As far as we know, anyway.

So i went to auto zone and bought new clamps. No big deal, except the new clamps don't look anything like the ones on the van. So...interesting. Wonder how that's gonna work? Meanwhile, we've managed to pop the van into neutral and push it out of the garage. Now at least we can see what we're doing.

Ok, after a lot of work on Dan's part it becomes totally apparent that there's no way the corroded battery post is coming out of the clamp. Time for plan B.

With the help of the hacksaw, the old clamp is removed. Now to figure out how to attach the new one. This should be easy, as long as the wires are all touching the clamp it will work! So says my dad, anyway. Which is true, except Dan had to go buy longer screws because this clamp came with little tiny screws that were totally useless.

Finally we get the new screws attached and the whole battery put back together in the car and the cables attached and HURRAY!!!! The van Runs! We have TWO cars Again! This is super exciting!

See? I told you it would be riveting.

Random Thoughts

1. I can't believe it's august already. Seriously, how did that happen? Wasn't it just all cold and wintery outside? This part of the country doesn't have a spring and a fall. we have summer, and we have winter. and one turns to the other in about a week. it's pretty crazy. I am looking forward to cooler weather, though.

2. The heat this last week has been INSANE. insane as in, it was so hot it killed my car battery. and dan's van has had a dead battery for a couple weeks. Nothing is more awesome than having two dead cars at the same time (insert sarcasm here). however, we did replace the battery in my car (because a) it has air conditioning and b)it was in the driveway and so replacing the battery of the van which is in the garage would have been silly) so now at least we have a car to get us around town. we'll fix dan's car as soon as we can.

3. I woke up the other day and realized that honestly, my house is boring. Just because i rent doesn't mean i can't put stuff on the walls. I can't put holes in the walls, but there's a company that makes these awesome velcro hangy things that come off without even ruining the paint. Which is awesome. I think i'm going to try this tutorial on putting photos onto canvas once i can get my hands on the supplies. And pick pictures I like. which could take a while.

4. How adorable is this guy? He's the biggest

Stuffed animal I've made so far and I'm very proud of him. He's a gift for a friend's little boy who's bday is coming up soon. Feel free to ignore the slightly messy coffee table in the background. Being creative tends to be kinda an explosion in stuff lol.

Sightseeing

Last week Dan's family was here. We took them to lots of different historical places near here:

Such as the Truman Presidential Library.

As well as several other historical sites in Independence: The Vaile Museum, and the stone church, and icicle building which is some kind of temple.

Tuesday Dan had to work so we did the historic sites in St. Joseph. This is the Patee House.

And the Jesse James House, where he was shot.

It was all very exciting.

cleaning and organizing and purging, oh my!

That's what we've done this week. Dan's on vacation so we've taken this opportunity to seriously clean and get rid of stuff and organize the stuff we have. And also to do laundry. Because I kid you not, i think the dirty clothes pile has achieved sentience and begun reproducing down in my laundry room. Because it's NEVER DONE.

Organizing came after the cleaning. I *might* finally have everything pretty much how i want it. Ask me again in a month or so, yeah? I contained all those bottles that live in our linen closet. you know, lotion, sunscreen, shampoo, etc. I've finally worked out a way to fold towels so they all fit on the shelves. I got rid of nail polish (i had three bottles of black nail polish. not including the black nail polish with the sparkles in it. that seemed a wee bit excessive to me.) We rearranged closets. We rearranged furniture. We even managed to get all the baking stuff back in the kitchen where it belongs instead of in the living room where it had been living ever since a horde of ants decided to invade. It was all very exciting.

And we got rid of a ton of stuff. Goodwill should love us on account of all the stuff we donated to them. And i'm seriously still finding stuff to put in the donate pile. We've been here less than a year, where does it all come from!

Dan's currently in the spare bedroom putting together a bookshelf for us (me) to store stuff on. i'm excited about that too. Now all i need to do is convince him to let me paint a couple of pieces of our furniture so they'll be better (less ugly).

I *heart* yogurt

But I really hate paying for yogurt. that stuff is EXPENSIVE, y'all. And most typical yogurt either has WAY too much sugar in it, which i'm trying to avoid because i discovered that too much sugar gives me migraines that are terrible, or it contains aspertame or some other kind of fake sweetener in it, which i'm trying to avoid.

So i was bumming around the internets today (i do this a lot) and found several recipes for home-made yogurt. except most of them are really complicated and require things like candy thermometers and coolers and sound super duper complex. I think that takes too much effort, and also equipment i don't own and don't wanna buy.

Then i found a recipe to make yogurt in the crockpot. It takes two ingredients and a crockpot. I have a crockpot. I also have one of the two ingredients needed to make the yogurt: milk. all i need to do is get my hands on some plain yogurt and i'll be good to go!

So that's gonna be my experiment next week. I'm really excited about it!

UFO's

No, not the alien kind. Although that would be cool too. I'm talking unfinished objects here, folks. The kind where i start a crochet or knitting project and then get distracted and move on to something different. This happens more often than i'd care to admit. I've got UFO's all over my living room:

A slouchy hat: This is for winter. I started it last winter. I haven't finished it yet.

An alpaca wool Scarf: Again, i started it last winter. then i ran out of yarn. Then hobby lobby ran out of the yarn i needed and didn't restock until spring. by then i didn't need the scarf anymore.

A sock: I really do plan on making two socks. I got halfway through the first one...and there it sits.

A 3-foot Dinosaur: He's camouflage. He's gonna be really cool when i finish him. But he's also 140 stitches around at the biggest point, which is where i am now, and it takes FOREVER to complete a round.

An olive green Platypus: Platypus' are cool.

Dan's Birthday gift: This one i am actually making progress on, since i only have a month to finish it, and i'm determined...but once again...not done yet.

A Striped prayer shawl: This was started as an attempt to practice a new technique. I have since employed said technique on Dan's birthday gift and have abandoned the shawl to UFO status. It's cool because the prayer shawl ministry doesn't meet again till September.

A lap blanket: also started as a prayer shawl ministry project. Also have until September to finish it.

Tom Baker's Scarf: I'm knitting this one, y'all. To be authentic. I'm about a foot into it and have something like fourteen feet to go. I've since cannibalized the yarn i bought for the scarf to make animals. I'm going to replace said yarn on a skein by skein basis as i need the colors. SOMEDAY, i will finish this stupid scarf so i can become one of the elite; a proud owner of a handmade DR. Who scarf.

And I've been commissioned to make a blue triceratops for a three year old's birthday. That isn't until the end of October though. So i haven't started it yet. I'm already contemplating yarn color choices, however.

On the plus side; I've got something like...25 granny squares to send to charity for Crochet a rainbow, I've made...18ish animals to send to Little Hands of Hope, and I do occasionally sell an animal here or there. Plus I've made a HUGE dent in my yarn stash, which, for the record, wasn't that ridiculous to begin with. However, all typed out...my list is kinda crazy. I need to get on that.

why are titles so hard to come up with, anyway?

Dan's gone this week; he left at the crack of dark for NM with the high schoolers for their missions trip. They're driving and it's going to be a long trip, although they split it up over two days. I think he's gonna be in for a bit of culture shock when he gets there. Plus a shock over the weather. I don't think he's ever experienced heat without humidity.

I'm here this week, keeping myself busy. I just learned a cool new crochet technique called Afghan stitch and i'm using it to make a prayer shawl for the ministry i'm involved in. I'm really excited about how it's going to turn out. I'm also working on a stuffed dinosaur that's going to supposedly be about 3 feet long when i finish him. That's gigantic. In fact, that's only two feet shorter than I am. I dunno what i'm going to do with him when i finish him though. I'll burn that bridge when I come to it, LOL.

The weather here has taken a turn for the strange, again; the last couple days it's only been in the mid 70's after about a week of 90+ weather. If it stays like this all summer it'll be totally fine. I think everyone here overreacts about how hot it gets. AND they don't have anything like the humidity in MD.

Last weekend my parents were here and we had a good visit. We all went to Independence, MO and saw where the Oregon Trail had started. We've been to the other end, in OR, so we figured we'd hit up this end. It was nice, there was a cute little museum dedicated to the start of the trail and the various places the trails went. Then we drove around a bit and saw some other things, like this funky building that is the world headquarters for some type of LDS church, and the house Harry S Truman lived in, and a woman driving a horse and buggy while talking on her cell phone. That was pretty funny.

I'm teaching the 4-6 year old class Sunday school this summer, so today i made playdoh. Green, if you're wondering. It took me all of forty-five seconds on my stove. That's probably the only thing my stove has ever done in a way that was better than the recipe called for.

And as a final thought, the spell checker in Google chrome just informed me that schoolers should in fact say schooners. Yeah, right.