Off to the big city

I've been working on getting signatures on my school board petition this week and am making some progress. I love those friends that grab a couple of other people they know, so I can get four or more at a time. I'm doing everything in my power to avoid having to stand in front of K-mart or the grocery store in the heat. Around here they don't let you stand inside, which is a major problem in July!

Tomorrow I'll be off to a National Association of Social Work (AZ Chapter) leadership retreat in Phoenix for two days. I'm not sure how I got invited other than that they included a few new members for perspective. It is at a nice resort and I'm staying at the hotel Friday night. My daughter lives an hour away so I didn't want to drive across town and then back Saturday morning. Hubby is off to his blues guitar camp in Austin, Texas for a week so I'll have control of the remote in his absence :-)

My business license came in for consulting so I guess I'm official. Now I can get my bank account, join the Chamber of Commerce, get my logo, business cards and website and a few dozen other things. The geriatric care business is also moving along and we should be filing our paperwork with the state of Arizona in another week or so. It is exciting and gives me something new to look forward to.

See you on Saturday night and have a good weekend.

Lazy days of summer

It is that time of the summer in Arizona that they call monsoon. That means the temperatures drop to a balmy 105-110 and the humidity comes up from 15% to 45-50%. Having grown up in Iowa, which is very humid in the summer, I thought 50% sounded pretty wimpy. Actually, it's pretty ugly when coupled with the high temps.

I've been trying to get out and about town to get signatures for my school board petition but it seems that no one is home. Everyone that could escape to cooler climes has fled and the rest hibernate for the majority of the day. I will have to be up by 6 AM if I want to see anyone outside their house. Thank goodness for air conditioning, even if the bill will be astronomical.

One summer when the kids were little the AC went out and we only had the swamp cooler for 2 days. For those ignorant of swampers, they pull outside air through a wet pad to cool the air coming in to the house. It started in pioneer days when they used to hang wet towels on the windows to cool the breeze. Works great when the humidity is low, above about 40%, it turns your house in to a sauna. We lived in our bathing suites for those two days and jumped in the shower every half hour to get wet and then sat under the ceiling fan! YUCK.

Can't complain too much though since we haven't been flooded out like many and aren't breathing orange air like northern California. There are lots of open parking spaces at the grocery store and restaurants aren't too busy except for weekends, so the pace is pretty slow. Besides, I needed the relative down time to plan knitting projects for Christmas (which has a shipping deadline in about 4 1/2 months). I'll leave you with that cheery thought for the day :-)

A good start to a productive week

When I was growing up, every mom in our neighborhood had a daily and weekly routine for running the house. Monday, of course, was always laundry to get the sheets changed and clean clothes for the week. There was also a monthly cycle for bigger jobs and the infamous spring and fall deep cleanings. Many of these women followed their routine well in to their 80's.

As I have shared with you previously, my cleaning motivation is sadly lacking though I certainly know how to do it. Once I started raising a family and then went back to work, I tried to follow the pattern I had been taught but something always seemed to take a higher priority. I had no consistancy.

Last week I once again resolved to try to get my house back in order and keep it that way so I can invite people over without the 24 hour panic cleaning. Somewhere on a blog I read about FlyLady.com and decided to check it out. It isn't like there is anything new there but much like Weight Watchers, the reminders, testimonials and hints help keep me focused. What I like best are the reminders that my house didn't turn in to clutter mountain in a day or a week so baby steps are good. So far so good though my resolve usually weakens within about two weeks (kind of like New Year's resolutions). Today I'm supposed to be weeding out storage containers that are stained or lost lids. They are supposed to have lids? I just throw some Saran on top and call it good. Ok - I'll set the timer for 10 minutes and make a little dent.

Knitting continues to consume hours and my first grown up pair of socks are 1 1/2 completed. I worked on starting a storage tub for my small stash over the weekend and Pippin decided to help. It's a good thing I put the yarn away, because I discovered some cat has been playing "Yarn Barf" while I wasn't looking.

The other exciting thing this week is that our geriatric care business finally has a name! Hopefully it will be opening in September. It has taken us many weeks of discussion to come up with the name. We had lots of great ideas but many of them were either already registered in our state or trademarked nationally. By the time we checked both places, Googled and checked for domain names in every suggestion, it was a time consuming process. Now that we know who we are, we can start on the rest of the process.

That's pretty good considering that is only Tuesday! Upward and onward.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Having friends takes a lot of time (well worth it, but a lot of time nonetheless). I've told you this before and it shouldn't come as a surprise to me. What has been a revelation in recent weeks is that most of my friends aren't doing any better at it than I am. In my tunnel vision, I thought I was the only one that forgot special dates, let months (or years) go without contact and just generally sucked at balancing the work/family/friendship thing.

Now that I have a chance to step back and try to repair some of the perceived damage, I find that many of my working friends are too busy for me. If they aren't good with e-mail it is a particular problem. Can you imagine - some people want to talk on the phone! I think I've been spoiled by blogging. With blogs I get daily doses of what people are doing, thinking, dealing with etc. Local friends seem to think they need to save up "real" news to make it worth getting in touch. There isn't a simple solution but I'll keep working on it.

The husband's band is playing a public gig on the 12th. If I can stay up late enough to hear them (they don't start until 10 PM), I might get a snippet of video for you. He's still loving it which makes me happy to.

I've been approached about taking an interim position as exec for a local association while they do a search. I don't know if anything will come of it but it might be a good experience (and increase my yarn fund). It is at these moments my confidence wavers. I have to remind myself how many times I told someone else to "fake it until you make it".

The cats are thrilled that I am home and will not leave me alone. They think it is vastly unfair that I go away and leave them with only my husband for company. Of course they also lie about him having fed them, so I take their meows for what they are worth.

It is hotter than blazes here and I am hiding in the house. I should go run errands but it is already 116 degrees. Too bad stores aren't open at 6 AM when it is only 98 degrees. Our resort town will be overrun with boaters this weekend so I'd probably better go grab some food to tide us over before the hoards descend.

Have a wonderful 4th of July weekend!

Back to Reality

Vacation is over and I am safely back home in Arizona. Today was an absolutely beautiful summer day in Iowa to send me on my way. Of course it was about 118 at my house so I anticipate a lot of hibernating this week.

I've had some requests for photos of Blue the long haired weiner dog in his new sweater. He thinks the green goes well with his lovely red coat (or it would if his mom hadn't shaved him for summer). He wore it pretty much all weekend as he gets slightly chilled in the air conditioning.

Now I must go cuddle a very demanding cat who missed me a lot.

Greetings from the great Midwest

Today is a beautiful day, finally. Now that it is almost time to head home, the weather is going to be that amazingly, perfect June type that Iowa hasn't had this year. On the bright side it is perfect for going to the Arts Festival today or tomorrow.

Last night we went to see Wall-E, which was very sweet and well worth the trip. How can a movie without dialogue be so entertaining? It did motivate me to get out and walk more (which you'll understand when you see it) The adults in the theater all seemed to be enjoying it as much as the kids.

My son's weiner dog loves his new sweater that I knit him. I just used some stash acrylic worsted, as I've never tried a dog sweater before and wanted to get a feel for the sizeing. We tried it on the corgi too to see how much altering of the pattern I need to do for his. Stumpy has kind of a thick neck and a crew neck is going to work better for him than the turtleneck. Two sweaters in washable wool coming up for the sweetest granddogs in the world!

This has been such a relaxing and knitting productive vacation. In addition to the sweater I also am halfway through two different socks and still have two days to go on my vacation ;-) It is amazing what one can get done while being lazy.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Short and sweet

I'm safely in Iowa, land of bad flooding. Although the water level is way down, you can now see all the debris that will have to be cleared out. It is hard to imagine what an awful mess it is.

On the bright side, I got to have breakfast with my daddy and have plenty of books and knitting along.

What more can you ask from a vacation?

P.S. In answer to Knittech's question - it get days of restful knitting and don't have to help slog mud and debris. Thankfully, where my dad lives, there was no water damage.