Falling Tuna Cans and Other Harzards

I spent the morning cleaning and filling up the recycle bin, Finishing up the laundry from yesterday and making phone calls. Followed by some errands. I picked up Eric early from his program to get his afo's fixed and trimmed for his tennis shoes for winter. The best part was they were able to fit Eric's feet and the old tennis shoes so I have 1 less errand for this weekend. No shoe shopping. Happy dance time.

Today was going surprising well until about 4 pm. Then there were a slew of phone calls. I was trying to make dinner. We were out of meatballs for the spaghetti. When I went to look for the spaghetti a stack of tuna cans fell on me, they hit me smack in the glasses. If I look at you funny tomorrow it will not be because it Pirates Day according to Jo-Ann's Fabrics, it is because I am tiring to line up the old tri-focals. Did I mention that all the spaghetti in the house had expired too. I was ready for a melt down but held it all together.

So I made a stew out of the chicken, spaghetti sauce, mushrooms and olives. I served it with Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and mixed vegetables which turned out to be mostly carrots. It was pretty good, but I do think I will get some pasta for the last of the sauce tomorrow.

I should cut it short tonight, as I have a busy day tomorrow. If anyone knows where I can find a time turner like Hermonies please let me know, I will need to borrow it for tomorrow.

The Quandary

I am in a quandary. I love to get out of the house and knit with my friends. I consider that a wonderful treat to say the least. We have fun. We check out each others progress. Trade yarn back and forth. Some times we knit in silence and sometimes chatty. We teach each other things we have picked up along the way. We like to consider ourselves a happy fun group.

The problem is that we have picked up a new member. She assumes that since most of us stay home alone working on chores or projects that are necessary or near and dear to our hearts that we need constant chatter. This has gone beyond the boundaries of normal social chatting. Today it got to the point of droning and not letting anyone get a word in edge wise. Today I had to skip lunch with friends because her constant drone and constant questions ( to read if I don't get the answer I want, I will keep asking the same question over and over again until you relent ) gave me a migraine that is now just going away. I am talking about the sun glasses stayed on for hours today, 2 bottles of cola and 2 doses of Excedrin.

I really don't want to be rude to her because 2 wrongs don't make a right. I know that everyone has a need for other people in their lives. Who am I to judge her? I really, really, really want to give her a book by Emily Post but fear it might be to rude or worse just go over her head.

I am open to Very Gentle suggestions. She is a few years younger than I am, so she must have gotten some of this in school and church. What would you do?

The last Monday of Summer

Today was a very mixed day for me. I got off to an early start a 6am with a lot of energy. I got 3 loads of laundry washed. Then packaged and addressed 2 parcels. Wrote a slew of checks and got them addressed. By the way in case you missed the last postal rate increase like I did the current 1st class letter rate is 47 cents, not 46 as I had thought. It must be a common problem because they had an envelope of penny stamps at the post office for that very reason. I also did some house cleaning on top of all the other activities.

By 10 am it was nap time which lasted until lunch time. Followed by a little more cleaning and a trip to the post office. I still had an hour before I needed to pick up Eric so I walked around the Brandy Fenton Park. I spent a little time in the butterfly garden. There were a few butterfly's. Then a lap around the rest of the park. I have decided that the water play area is nice and I need to borrow a friends son so I can go play in it. She suggested that we find a way to cover Eric's chair because we do not have a stroller for Eric to get wet and that he might like it too. I just hate to see what a stroller would cost that would fit Eric.

Eric and I watched the new episode of Sesame Street today. I think that they may have up graded their cameras over their break. I also did some finishing work and row counting so that I could update my counter for the 1 million row challenge. I added 970 rows to give me a total of 16,931 rows.  Here is a picture of one of the blankets that I did. Don't look for the pattern because it is a one off and I did not write the pattern down as I went. This one is a favorite and will go to a local hospital for a preemie.  After dinner it was more knitting and watching TV with John. For those keeping track of the World Challenge walk, I did manage to get in my 10,000. steps today. Well it is getting late, everyone else is asleep so I should be too.

Progress is Good

I have been very busy with cleaning around here. The master bathroom is 99.9% done. It is just a few very small things that I have to figure out where they go. I have made enough progress in the craft room to set up the sewing machine. I got 1 repair  and a blanket modification done for some one, that makes 2 things out the door of the craft room today.

For some unknown reason I had a very productive day around here. The bills were paid before anyone one else was awake. I brought at least 2 baskets of recycling out to the bin today and got it hauled to the street tonight. By the way I managed to fill it 3/4's of the way full, not bad. I also started working on my Mondays to do list. I know, what was I thinking? I will never get ahead of the curve ball on this one, but at least I have a plan for tomorrow. The laundry is 3/5 done for today, but then again I know there will be more than 2 loads tomorrow...

John and I stole an hour together and went out for dinner. While we were eating a a cricket ( I think, I am not an bug expert ) hopped on the hood of our car. It must have found a sweet spot on the hood because it made it from the restaurant all the way home with out flying off the hood. I did have to shoo it off the hood before we drove in to the garage.

I also had time for a lot of knitting and a little spinning. I would like to write more but I think I will call it a night.

Busy is Good

It has been a very busy day around here. I am almost caught up on sleep. The master bath reorganization is 99.8% finished, with only a few things left to be put away. 4 loads of laundry done. 

My goal was 5 minutes of cleaning in the sewing room, I landed spending 30 minutes. I find that when I limit my time on a tiresome chore I work a lot faster and manage to not notice the clock.  I almost have things ready to set up the sewing machine.  That act in itself will clear a lot of things out of the sewing baskets. Yes, you heard it right. I have almost got to the bottom of the sewing table.  

In the course of 3 hours, I managed to do 2 full hours of spinning on the Ashford Traveler.  I have also decided that the Ashford Spinning chair is going to be on my holiday list.  I have also found that I can spin pretty slim yarn on the Ashford. 

I got a lot of knitting done today.  I should be able to finish another prime blanket 

I am having trouble keeping my peeper open.  

I Need Shorter Work Days

Eric had a rough night last night. So I was up with him for about 2 hours. This left me totaly out of sync for today. I even managed to sew a poncho the wrong way, but was way to tired to rip it out.  Well there is always tomorrow. 

My biggest accomplishment today was taking all Eric's old cloth diapers and turning them into rags with the help of my serger.   I think that I will use them as packing material for Teri's next box.  I am quite sure she won't mind.  Here is the pile before John cut them apart. I did a daisy chain to save on thread, and John had volunteered to cut them apart before he knew that I was going to use the serger.  So the cutting was not as bad as he thought.  

Eric is having another rough night so I think I will get some charity knitting done while I count my blessings.  

Cartwheel by Target

I very rarely write about apps. This is one that is fairly new and the wonderful folks at Target got this app right. You start off with space for 10 special coupons. All areas of the store have coupons.  You can  earn more coupon slots by getting your friends to join and earning badges. I currently have earned the following badges: Shopping Buddy because a friend started using Cartwheel. Star Collector, I added an offer to the card. Super Scanner, I used my Cartwheel for the first time. Smart Saver, I have saved over $10.00  (actually $14.73 of of this writing) using the Cartwheel app. I can now use 15 special coupons at a time.

It is very easy to down load to your wifi enabled iPod, iPad or iPhone. The Target stores near me have free wifi so I can use this app on my iPod to add more offers while in the store. You can get extra savings from 5 to 30% for things you already buy. You can combine one manufacturer coupon, one Target coupon and one Cartwheel offer can be combined on 1 item. You will not get cash back if the total of the coupons exceed the sale price, but an occasional free item is a good thing in my book. This app does not work in Canada as of this writing.

I have used this app for savings on housewares and grocery's so far, but I still have all the other departments to explore. Maybe clothes shopping is next.

This is the app description from the app store:
  

Welcome to the early release of Cartwheel by Target – a whole new spin on saving! It’s the first of its kind, and it’s super-simple. Just sign-up using your Facebook profile and instantly save on things you already buy in Target stores by adding offers to your Cartwheel. Select from hundreds of exclusive discounts (starting at 5% and up to 30%), all available on your iOS device. Best part? These aren’t one-and-done discounts. Use them as many times as you want before they expire. You can even use Cartwheel on top of the 5% you save everyday with Target REDcard.

The app keeps your discounts neatly organized, all ready for your next Target run. Your discounts are all attached to one barcode that you can pull up on your iPhone or iPad, or print from cartwheel.com on your desktop. Just scan your barcode at any U.S. Target store and see your savings add up! Here’s another cool part – invite friends to join, or share deals with them, and you save even more.

• First-of-its-kind savings app
• Discounts from 5%-30% on hundreds of products
• Save on top of other coupons and offers, like Target REDcard
• Share discounts with your friends on Facebook for inspiration
• Fully-customizable privacy settings, including Facebook posting
• Personalized offers, tailored to help save more on what you buy most
• Average discounts are valid for 60 days – longer than our Weekly Ad
• Check out cartwheelsupport.target.com for feedback or questions
• For Facebook app users, requires Facebook version 6.0 and above

What's New in Version 1.2

- Updated tutorial
- Improved experience for adding an offer when your Cartwheel is full
- Added the Cartwheel barcode number to offline barcode screen for easier redemption with no connectivity
- Allowed for deep-linking from Facebook for smoother navigation between the apps
- Added the menu icon for easier access to the nav menu in iPad portrait
- Fixed bugs for "offer list full" and miscellaneous crash issues

Just to be perfectly clear. I found out about this app on facebook ( which you must have to use this app) The app can be downloaded for free. Here is the link to the Cartwheel by Target App. Target has not paid for this review and ALL the views are my own. I did not make any purchases that I was not going to make in the first place, the app savings were just the icing on the cake.