October Recap

Hi there. Are you wondering what happened to October? Me too. What a month.

 Nate came down with a cold at the start of the month. Right after he recovered, the baby and I got sick. And  even though that was weeks ago, we're all still feeling a bit sick. In fact, Nate seems to be starting a whole new round of illness. The baby and I have just been battling runny noses for three weeks. It is exhausting; I feel like we're running at full speed just to keep up with the bare minimum. 

I haven't put out a single autumn decoration, even though this is one of my favorite times of year. We were so tired on Halloween that we gave up early, turned off the lights and closed the curtains. (It was terribly anti-social of us and I missed seeing all of those sweet trick-or-treaters, but oh... man... it was nice to go to bed early.) Papers have piled up in our office. I haven't finished my ballot. I didn't post a single blog or even write in my journal.

But that's not to say that nothing got done. Lots of little things got done whenever we found a few minutes or a spare hour. We did a tiny bit more work on the chicken coop, on the chicken run. It's still not done. The coop/shed is partially painted, which I am just going to have to live with it until it's warm and dry enough to paint again. We (Nate) need to wrap chicken wire on the run and we (I) need to wire out a light. It's so close. Maybe a couple more weeks and we can finally bring home a pair of chickens. (I hope!)

I also got a few sections of wiring replaced in the basement. It's slow going. I still have a lot of old wire to remove and it is hard to pull the old, dirty wires through the tiny holes, and it's hard to stuff new wires back through those holes. Plus I have to drill through some of the studs to make new holes since I'm changing the configuration. With only a couple of good hours available each week (in 30-60 minute chunks), it is s-l-o-w. Slow! For the record, I don't mind, I'm not in a hurry, it is just the hallway and utility room after all. But Nate is a antsy, and oddly, I think my mom is kinda annoyed. (Sorry y'all.)

I continued biking to work, except for the week when I was totally knocked out with my cold. For a few days I thought I was finally seeing some great results, then I realized I was just dehydrated from my cold and then over-exerting myself. On the bright side (?) my friend-babysitter is moving farther away, so I will have to bike even more. Yay exercise...?

Just this morning I finished making a new toy for my daughter...

Buckle Bear (shown above pre-buckles)

About a month ago, my mom got a bunch of buckles and some sheer ribbons for us at the craft store. Darling enjoyed buckling the buckles, but the ribbons were kinda floppy and the buckles came untied often. So I dug through my stack of old stuffed animals, looking for one that would make a good "Buckle Bear." I found one, and he sat in the office for a couple of weeks. Then he was in my craft room for a week so I could work on him whenever I found five or ten minutes to spare. This morning before work I was able to put on the finishing touches:

Now, I admit that this is not anywhere near as cool as the commercially available versions (like the Buckley Boo Monkey) but I am really proud that I made the time to do it and had the courage to try this project that was a challenge for me. Buckle Bear is also a lot cheaper than the commercial version... especially since my mom bought the buckles. (Thanks mom! You're the best grandma ever!) To my slight disappointment, my daughter was not especially excited when I presented Buckle Bear with all of his new bling. But she's still learning how to buckle so I have hope that she'll enjoy him more as time goes on.

Last weekend I tried my hand at making some pumpkin creme candies. (It reminded me of college, working at the candy store. Sometimes I feel nostalgic for those days.) The candies were actually really easy to make and they taste DELICIOUS. I was surprised. But I would really like to figure out how to make the creme center so that the candies don't have to be refrigerated. It will involve cooking the pumpkin and probably leaving out the cream cheese... but I need to do more research and some experimenting. If I can make time. In the meantime, here's a picture of the beauties:

I also made bread twice this week. Twice! I haven't made bread in many months. In my ideal world, I'd make bread every week, but it's hard to find the time. I got lucky in that Nate really wanted home made bread and was willing to haul the baby away so I could get it done. Mmmm... autumn, candies, bread, pumpkins, apple cider, rain, leaves falling... wonderful time of year.

Way back in early August, I  mentioned that I offered to beta read and edit the latest novel by my author-friend, J.R. Pearse Nelson. She was hoping to publish the book this summer but then life got busy and she had to push her deadline. She finally sent me a copy this month and holy cow, it's a good one! I decided to read all the way through it once before making any edits and it was hard to squeeze in book time. J.R. is understandably anxious to get her book out the door, so now I'm trying to blast through the editing process. But I want to be a good editor and I have a lot of ideas, so it's yet another project that's going slowly. In the end, I could see this novel being very successful because it's a great story. It will be the first novel that J.R. has issued tandem as an e-book and print-on-demand. I'm planning to order a few copies and give them out to family and friends. I hope that if I send a free copy to my book-critic-friend Thalia Anderson (<<< that links to her very popular book review blog on tumblr, but she's also on Facebook), that Thalia will do a review of the book.

If you're curious, here's the cover for J.R.'s upcoming book (you know I'll be raving even more when it's published, so stay tuned):

Finally: I've been asked to take on a little bit more responsibility at church. In addition to helping in the nursery (kids ages 18 months to 4 years) for two hours every Sunday, I'm now also going to spend a few hours at the start of the month gathering information for a brief monthly status report. When I was asked to do this, I wanted to run screaming from the room, but I just took a deep breath. If it gets to be too much, I can always go back and ask them to find someone else. God's pretty funny, though... You feel like you have a lot to do, your plate is full, you're feeling overwhelmed... and He says oh no, you think you're busy now? Here's something else. Let me show you what busy looks like. Very funny, Big Guy. Thanks for the lesson.

With that, it's past bedtime, and I'm done. See you... next month?