Archive for the 'Childhood' Category
November 29th, 2007 - Black Friday purchases
I should have written this last week, but I forgot about it. I did indeed go out shopping on Black Friday.
At PJ’s Patch, which is closing and had 70% off everything (unfortunately, I forgot my key tag which would have given me an additional 20% off), I spent about $25 for
- a set of wooden doll house furniture ($6). Don’t know if Maggie will ever have a doll house, but the furniture can be used without one of course. Or maybe she’ll make her own out of shoe boxes like I did as a kid. It includes beds, chairs, sofa, vanities (one with a mirror), end tables, and dressers. At least 20 pieces, maybe more. A wonderful future birthday or Christmas gift!
- a new Melissa and Doug Egyptian floor puzzle. I think this was about $3 but it looked so neat. And brand new. Another future gift.
- two skorts for next summer, two dresses for this winter and next (one is corduroy), some shirts and some pants. And a green short sleeved shirt for me.
I could find any of my consigned items so it looks like they all sold. Probably won’t make much money, but even a little bit will help. I wish I’d remembered to go yesterday–the final day–but oh well.
I also returned things at two stores, bought peanut butter, and spent $26 on three Gamma Seal Lids for the 5 gallon buckets for wheat berries and sauerkraut (or other things I might make with the third bucket next summer). And found some things at St. Vincent’s for $6–some wool items for felting, cool orange gloves for Maggie’s stocking, two pairs of mittens for Maggie (she had no kid ones that we could find! she loves to wear my magic gloves, but they aren’t quite appropriate for playing at preschool!), and a green sweater for me.
May 26th, 2006 - Thanks to mulch!
I’m so glad Mom and Dad taught me about mulch! We had a torrential downpour for about 30 minutes yesterday at 1:10 (I was eating lunch in the Union and got stuck). Everyone with a garden said they figured they would have to replant as all their seeds would have been washed away. Not me–I was pretty confident that they wouldn’t. Indeed, when I got home, I found that just one line of mulch had been washed around. Everything else looks fine. Luckily, I had put my tomato and pepper plants along the west side of the garden, next to the bushes. The rain mostly came from the west, so they were protected. They didn’t even get knocked over!
My parents use grass clippings for mulch. My brother Michael had allergies so he usually didn’t have to mulch the garden. He also had this little problem…. We used newspapers underneath the mulch (a fantastic addition to keeping weeds at bay) and he would always get interested in articles and especially the comics and stop mulching and sit there and read! I was thinking about these times as I mulched and paper over the weekend. (Hi, Michael! Please don’t shut down my blog due to little embarassing stories from childhood…..)
Unfortunately, we don’t have grass clippings here. Three-fold problem. 1) The backyard is where the dogs poop and we can’t ever manage to find every bit of it. I do not want to handle such grass clippings. 2) We bought a mulching lawnmower that chomps the grass fine enough to leave it on the yard. 3) Our yard isn’t big enough to provide enough clippings anyway.
(If this sounds familiar, I wrote about mulch last year, too. It’s s thing of mine….I just don’t understand why more people don’t mulch! One addition: I’ve found that shredded newsprint and phonebooks work the best. Regular paper stays very bright white, which reflects sunlight needed to warm the soil (and later on, the reflected light could hurt the plants). The newspaper and phonebooks are a darker, thinner paper than darkens and degrades more quickly. I didn’t remember this over the winter so didn’t shred much newspaper. I’m making up for it now. I also realized that a mix of the two kinds of paper might work nicely. I was going to layer newspaper on the top, but that’s a pain. I will use my first mix tonight I hope and see how it compares to the two beds I have in that used just office papers. Another great mulch materials is weeds. Two of my beds have been mluched this way. I collected weeds and grass from the areas we spread wood chips as well as grass in the beds. As the summer goes on, I also use the weeds from the garden to mulch. Just lay them right back down where you pull them up.)
January 12th, 2006 - Hot cereal
Rebecca, just ask and you shall receive! Most recently, she wondered why I don’t eat hot cereal. When I was a kid, we ate hot cereal about 5 times a week–oatmeal, cream of wheat, Malt-o-Meal, 7-grain, etc. I hated them. Hated them all. Mom usually put nuts or raisins in them and we could put as much sugar in as we wanted. I sort of like Malt o Meal, but not really all that much. We had to eat them, of course, but I didn’t like them. When I’d go home from university in the winter, Mom continued to make hot cereal for the family and I continued to eat it. Until one day in grad school, when I realized, “Wait a minute! I’m an adult. I do NOT have to eat what my Mom makes anymore.” I threw it down the drain and haven’t had hot cereal since.
I firmly believe that hot cereal can be an inexpensive and wholesome meal. Maggie has it every single day and I hope she grows to love it. Her Dad also loves oatmeal. (Maggie gets an assortment of grains in her cereals.) I just have absolutely no desire to eat it myself. Interestingly, I appreciate whole grains in other formats–oatmeal cookies are my favorite, I enjoy fried rice, etc. Just not as hot cereal for breakfast. (And grits? Heavens, no. I tried them as a teenager and they are just nasty. But Eric likes them and got some for Christmas!)
Michael, remember the time two or three of us added salt since the other people always forget? YEEEUK! We loaded that batch with sugar and it still wasn’t good enough to choke down.
I much prefered the breakfasts of cereal or toast, our staples during the summer. And which I continue to eat now. Mostly it’s toast or fruit bread, with the rare bowl of cereal (typically homemade granola).
March 16th, 2005 - Mulch
I have grand plans for my garden this summer. One thing I’m missing is mulch. Growing up, we always used grass clippings from our fairly substantial yard to mulch around plants. It’s a great idea and I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do it. You only have to weed a little bit if you mulch promptly!
But we have dogs, so we can’t use grass clippings from our yard. We also have a mluching lawn mower, so my husband really doesn’t want the hassle of collecting the clippings from the front yard (which is fairly small, and will be getting smaller as I develop part of into a fruit garden). I don’t know anyone who collects their clippings, and I’d have to make sure they didn’t use chemicals (or have dogs). My Dad gave me the solution: shredded paper!
I was already shredding receipts and financial papers. Now, instead of putting them out for the recyclers, I’m recycling them! I’ve saving all of my office paper and junk mail that isn’t glossy and shredding. I think it will take a lot of paper for this to work. So far, I have three garbage partially full. It’s hard to fill them up because the paper flies out very easily! Now that I’m back at work, I’m saving my recycled paper here as well.
And under the shredded paper, I’ll place newspaper. We did thiswhen I was a kid, too. It doesn’t work on it’s own because it’s too easily caught by the wind. But it’s a fantastic layer under mulch. It doesn’t last the whole summer, usually, but a fair while. A second layer can always be placed when the first layer and mulch disintegrates. Mulch is also a great way to add additional nutrients to the garden soil. I’m not sure that paper is the best for this–but my soil is so poor anything added to it in the way of bio-material has to improve it!
March 14th, 2005 - Heating
Growing up, my family turned the heat nearly off at night. I think it was down to 50 or 55, and rarely did the house actually cool off that much. During the day, the thermostat was set to 68 or so. Some days it never came on–we had a passive solar home that had wonderful southern windows. During the day, vents were closed in the bedrooms (we were gone to school after all). The vent in the extra room was only opened when we wanted to work in there (it was the sewing/prayer/guest room). I got up around the same time Dad did, and he turned on the heat in the morning. So I got used to sleeping in a very cool room!
Unfortunately, our house has only one southern window–in our baby’s room. Makes for a lovely, sunny room. But doesn’t help heat the rest of the house on sunny winter days. Two bedrooms (ours and the guest) have no vent in them. Regardless, the upstairs rarely heats or cools efficiently. We’d love to redo the heating system, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to put in new vents! (We have one other room in the house that is also unheated, although it does have an intake vent–one of THREE in the downstairs.) Eric has always preferred a much warmer house than I. But this year, he was willing to turn it down, sometimes cooler than I wanted! Woohoo! For the most part, we turn it down to 60 overnight (knowing it will be colder than that upstairs). We start out at 63-65 during the morning/afternoon. By evening, we usually have it up to 67 or 68. When we’re sick, it might go as high as 70, but I can recall doing that only once this winter. When I was home with the baby, I usually had it at 67 all day long.
The past couple days, I’ve been turning it up to 63 when I get up for the nighttime feeding (between 3 and 4 am). I’d thought that would take the chill off of getting up at 5am. But it doesn’t really seem to make a difference in the bathroom in an hour or two. So I’m going to stop doing it.
Two summers ago, we outfitted every window with cellular shades (mostly double-celled). That made an enormous difference in the temperature. We also temporarily caulked the windows–last winter just downstairs; this winter all the windows. That made a difference in cutting drafts! The caulk cost only 99 cents per container; it took two, including some major caulking in the basement. I can’t say our heating costs reduced–gas prices went up this year so our bills have been about the same. But imagine how high they may have been had we not made these changes?
March 9th, 2005 - Recycling clothes
As a child, we always handed down our outgrown clothes to my cousins. My brother and I were the oldest by 5+ years than anyone else on that side. My cousins on my Dad’s side were both older and we often got handmedowns from them. I wonder if I will carry on this tradition with my cousins? (I have only one neice and she’s 10. A little too old for her to hand down to M.!) The second great-granddaughter will be born in June. Perhaps we’ll do it!
For now, M’s outgrown clothes are being given to St. Vincent’s. The things she’s been given that she doesn’t need will be given to The ChristChild Society (for which I am a volunteer–we make layettes for needy infants). I can’t believe the number of outfits she’s been given for these first 6 months! Far too many clothes to store and use. We’re trying to keep it to about 7 outfits, altho she needs more at the 3-6 mo size since we straddle winter and spring. I wish more people had included gift receipts! Oh well, another baby/mother will be delighted in them instead. We have plenty and I get joy from blessing others.