Anyway, here is the summary of a week of my life:
Tuesday, October 8
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| the naked chair |
Wednesday, October 9
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| taco sauce |
This morning I picked the last of the stuff that might be usable from my garden—it's supposed to freeze tonight. Then I made some taco sauce (which is pretty fabulous, by the way). Tomorrow morning I will have to bottle it up. But what on earth do I do with the gazillion Serrano peppers that are left?
I also started cutting out the new upholstery for the chair.
And Kaylie came home from school to visit for Fall Break! I guess that I didn't do that, but it's pretty cool. :-)
Thursday, October 10
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| ready to start cutting |
I spent this morning canning the taco sauce. I've been hearing the lids "pop", letting me know they actually sealed—one of my favorite sounds during canning season.
In the afternoon I cut out more upholstery pieces; I had to cut one of them twice because it was wrong the first time. :-/
And our family book club met this evening to discuss Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Everyone (who actually read it) enjoyed it. Now, in honor of the month of Halloween (which is weird, because Halloween isn't really our thing) we are reading The Screaming Staircase, a Lockwood & Co. book. A lot of the kids are excited about this one. My family may not go out and play ball together (or go out at all...), but at least we can all get together in our geekiness.
Friday, October 11
I have been having the hiccups for the last three days. What's the deal with that!
This morning I spent a lot of time doodling around on Photoshop. Well, GIMP actually, because my Photoshop program and my computer hate each other. Each program has some things that I like, that the other doesn't have, but I do miss my Photoshop.
I am making a ...sign? ...a home decor item with a saying printed on it. Well, I'm going to...soon.
Then I actually cleaned the kitchen—which I haven't done seriously since just before the taco sauce happened.
And I cut out the last three upholstery pieces. When that chair is all finished I can do the dance of joy! And then start on the ottoman.
Saturday, October 12
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| ready to go |
Let's see... I ran to the bank this morning only to discover that it is no longer open on Saturdays. Then I took Rachel to her bank—which is open on Saturdays. We went to Lowes and I bought a 1x8 board so I can start another project. Then I took Rachel shoe-shopping, and then we went to the grocery store where we bought chicken on a fabulous sale. It was nice to spend a couple of hours just with Rachel. She is smart, and she's funny—witty, but she's quiet, so I enjoyed the time to talk with her.
In the afternoon I sewed all the chair pieces together! Then it was dinner—roasted chicken and wild rice. After dinner I put the chicken carcasses into the crock pot with some veggies, some of the drippings from roasting, and some water to start a broth simmering.
Family time! We all settled down to watch a show, and I promptly fell asleep. I woke up—maybe twenty or thirty minutes later—feeling so exhausted and ready to go to bed. Well, my body was ready for bed; I still had to get my pajamas, brush my teeth, etc. There's more to the story of getting ready for bed, but it's coming later.
Sunday, October 13
Church in the morning. I play the organ for our ward. I have played the organ (in our two previous wards) for about fifteen years, I guess, but I am new to this particular organ, and I am still learning its ways (for example, sometimes it turns the volume up and down all by itself).
My music today was kind of pathetic—the wimpiest stops ever for "Called to Serve", because the stops I chose didn't turn on, and one of them that had been on turned off. So imagine the organ playing as a whisper instead of as... the exuberant march that it should have been. I'm actually still cringing over it. It's frustrating because we live in a ward where the same lady played the organ for forty-five years; despite her many years, I do play as well as (maybe better than) she did. But now that I've taken her place these nice old people in the ward come up to me and say, "You're really getting the hang of it." or, worse, "You will get the hang of it." I know how to play, but I do keep having silly mishaps with this organ so it's hard to tell.
After church we had a nice lunch with our girls—except for Lindsey who goes to the young adult ward. Then we went to visit the Rays for a little while. Kaylie's ride showed up to take her back to school around 4:00. It was nice to have her home for the weekend.
Dinner (soup and rolls) around 6:30—which is a little later than I like, but earlier than it has been lately. Then we sat around talking for a while. We had a family scripture...study? More like a book review (where only Mom had read the book...of Ephesians). And then I was wiped out and ready for bed.
Monday, October 14
Here is the promised story:
Saturday night I sort of did some self-surgery—or actually, a ligation. I would not confess to this now if it didn't seem to be turning out OK. And I do not recommend DIY surgery. Just so you know.
I have this HUMONGOUS skin-tag on the corner of my left eyelid that's been annoying me for ages. This growth is a product of rubbing my eyes too much. I try not to, but my eyes are so stinking sensitive since I stopped wearing contact lenses! Everything makes them hurt and itch, water and burn, even just the air! (We won't even talk about onions...)
Anyway, a more recent product of rubbing my eyes too much is that this skin-tag started to tear, so now it hurts me when I rub my eyes. Hmm...
Also my hair gets snagged on that tag sometimes, and if I use mascara I end up painting the darn thing black.
I started thinking about just snipping it off—my mom told me once that she used to "get a scissors and cut them off"—but that was just too creepy. And it's on my eyelid.
Then I thought I could just tie a thread around it—tightly—and that would cut off its blood supply and it would die and fall off. That was a little creepy too so I wasn't going to really do it—truly I wasn't.
But I was sooooo tired Saturday night, and the stupid thing was stinging, and I really, really hated it at that moment. I went and got some thread...
As soon as I tied and tightened the thread around the skin-tag, I thought, "This was a bad idea!" But there was no way to cut the thread off without cutting the skin-tag too, and I couldn't loosen it to untie it either. The deed was done. I snipped the ends of the thread as close to my eyelid as I could, and then went to bed.
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| This is not me. This is some smart person who went to a doctor to have their skin-tag removed. But this is about how big and flappy mine was. |
I woke up around 4:30 a.m. on Sunday with my cinched-up skin-tag foremost on my mind, keeping me awake. It was stinging a little, and I was sure I'd done a really stupid thing. I had visions of finally going to see the ophthalmologist and having to explain why there was a brown thread tied to my eyelid. So I grabbed some fine tweezers and went into the bathroom to see if I could somehow get the thread off. After several tries and a little prayer it did finally come loose. And now I had a little cut that went all the way around the stupid skin-tag instead of just a bit of a tear on one side. Oh well. Then I had my Sunday.
But this morning, the beginning of this Monday, today, when I looked at it I saw that the tag had shrunk considerably, and it looks like it will, indeed, die and fall off. Yay! Would I do this again, or recommend that anyone else do it? Nope. Go see an ophthalmologist.
After that little...triumph? ... this morning, I went to get my groceries. Monday had really started.
I don't like putting away the groceries. I couldn't say why, but I don't. I did put away the frozen and refrigerated stuff this morning. The rest of it sat on the table until dinner time.
Throughout the day I finished taking foam off of the arms of the chair so that Bruce could do some repairs before I put the upholstery on. Unfortunately Bruce had to leave for work before he got very far with the repairs, and he had to take the drill with him so I couldn't fix it myself. The chair still waits. So I took the ottoman apart.
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| underneath—and inside—the ottoman |
I took two pounds of my Serrano peppers—one pound of red and one pound of green—and seeded them and chopped them up to make hot pepper sauce. Well, I still have to do the green ones. And I still have two more pounds of peppers left! I'm supposed to let the chopped peppers ferment in salt water for a couple of weeks before making the actual sauce. This—fermenting the peppers—feels a little worrisome. I have to keep reminding myself that the sourdough starter I made, and use regularly, is really just fermented flour and water. We'll see how the hot pepper sauce turns out.
Chicken Parmesan for dinner. Yum! Then we watched a movie with Rachel—"Selma"—which she had to watch for her political science class. I stayed awake for this one. And I finally strained and bottled up the chicken broth. It will keep in the fridge for a week or two.
I checked my eyelid several times throughout the day. By bedtime that tag was tiny—about the size of a chia seed, and kind of purplish-black. It rubbed off while I was washing my eyelashes before going to bed. The monster skin-tag is all gone!
Tuesday, October 16
And this is Day 8; it is 8:07 a.m. My eyelid growth is all gone, and it doesn't hurt, and it looks so much better!
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| That's where it was. There's still the tiniest bump, and it's still a little red. But it is so much better now! |
I've already taken Rachel to school, and now I'm finishing this post.
This morning I need to clean my kitchen (why does that happen over and over again, all day long, every day?). Then I'm going to fix and upholster the living room chair; this will probably be an intermittent process because there are other things to do—like make the green Serrano stuff, and go shopping with Lindsey. If I finish the chair I might start on my new "home decor" project, or work on the ottoman. We'll see.
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| 3 1/2 quarts of chicken broth 3 cups of red Serrano peppers starting to ferment 1 pound of green Serrano peppers, waiting their turn Products of one week. |
And that's a week in my life.
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