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| This is what happens when you get Canva on your phone and nurse a lot... |
1.) Babies, Babies, Babies
I don't know what it is about this year, maybe it's Covid related, but it seems like a lot of people we know are having babies.
I have a sibling having a baby this summer, Chris had a sibling who had a baby about the same time I did last month, and we have a friend who just found out they're pregnant.
Some years are just baby years, and I guess this is one.
2.) Ants
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| Every dot is an ant. This is after finding them in the kitchen. |
It has been a VERY wet summer, and so legions of fire ants have launched a full scale invasion.
For you (insanely lucky) people that live in climates too cold for these demon spawn, a quick primer. They're brown, about half the length of a pinky nail, and like to swarm up your leg or onto your foot and then sting you all at once in a coordinated effort. Each ant leaves behind a welt that can swell up to mosquito bite proportions (especially on small children) and then matures to a small liquid filled blister about the size of a whitehead. Seeing a trail of these dots up someone's leg or all over a small child's feet is pretty common, and seeing a toddler suddenly stop near a mound of dirt, swat at their feet a few times, and then scream bloody murder is a Southern parenting right of passage. (And, fun fact, when there's a ton of rain and a colony gets caught in rising water, they all cling together to form little living islands of pain. Like ship mines you have to dodge while wading into the muck).
So you understand how deeply frustrating and rage inducing it is to see these things crawling all over your kitchen counter or table as you're trying to prepare a meal. The yard has been in and out of a state of flood, so the ants have been crawling through any crack or hole they can find to get to a higher elevation and reliable food source. I had one sting me in bed last night.
So far we've tried vinegar and orange oil, boric acid, and ant traps. We hit a new set back this morning when we found them enjoying a feast in the butter dish, but found the particular crack they were invading through and hit it with everything we had.
Stay tuned for further news from the front.
3.) $10 Well Spent
I just gotta show off this changing table Chris found at a garage sale awhile back.
Solid wood with a foam pad, probably cost someone $200 originally. The guy selling it was asking $12, then knocked a couple bucks off when he spotted some damage.
We've turned it into a baby command station, with Bitty Baby's clothes as well as diapers and bedding, and it has simplified life in our tiny house significantly.
It's nice when you get a win like that.
4.) Chlorine
We bought that cheapy pool awhile back, the one Chris put the shade structure over.
Well, we made the unfortunate but fairly obvious discovery that untreated well water mixed with a plastic container and 90 something degree weather is a no-fail recipe for slime and algae growth.
Chris (God bless him, he's been doing a lot lately), emptied it out (which took a couple hours), scrubbed it out, and refilled it. Then, to avoid having to repeat the multi-hour, yard flooding process, he went to Walmart and bought some pool chemicals.
We now have one of those chlorine tab floaty things in the pool. I find it a little amusing that we're doing "real" pool stuff for a pool that goes only up to my knees and won't last beyond this season, but there you go.
5.) Figgy...pudding.
Our fig tree is LOADED this year. We brought in a first harvest, and it's a lot more than we can eat raw in a reasonable amount of time. And there's still lots of unripe ones on the tree.
So I decided to make a cake. I followed the recipe-- and then it was way too moist because of the fruit, sticky with lots of sugar, and fell apart when I tried to take it out of the bundt pan.
Next time, I'll toss the fruit in flour and grease AND flour the pan. This time i just plucked it on a plate, filled in the middle with the fallen-apart bits and drowned the whole thing in glaze.
Tasted pretty good.
6.) Sewing Adventure
For whatever reason, I decided to sew a little toddler shirt.
The pattern I used is from 1976 and was a thrift store find. You can tell that people still sewed clothes as a matter of practicality at the time: it was a ridiculously easy pattern to follow.
I used some fabric I scored on clearance at Walmart and an old sheet that had been retired. It's currently too small for little girl and too big for Bitty Baby, but I'll hang onto it and I'm sure it'll find a use.
And it was fun to make.
7.) I wrote another "serious" post.
A conversation with a friend prompted a post on how we identity ourselves, and if our thoughts and temptations ought to be a criteria for that. I've noticed a lot of those themes in the current conversations about race relations in our country, so I tied that in as well.
Its been awhile since I wrote anything like that, but I was pleased with the end result.
See the rest of this week's takes here.
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