Month: March 2013 (Page 1 of 2)

Hope you are all having a meaningful and fun Easter. I miss the days of hiding baskets the night before. But I make up for that by being super involved in church things. So I was up at 5:15 a.m. to get ready to leave by 5:50, to be ready for playing organ by 6:10, so I could do a quick run-through with the choir before I started the prelude at 6:20. Everything went like clockwork. The choir sang beautifully! We had a decent turnout for the sunrise service and the church was packed to the front pews for the second service.  Dad slept through it all, but he hadn’t returned from Erica and Tim’s until well into early this a.m.   I guess he left there right around midnight. But they got everything done that needed doing.

The rest of the day has been very quiet. I finished a book I was reading. We tallied the results of the Chinese food vendor survey we are presenting at the City Council meeting a week from Tuesday. Dad went to do some stuff at the youth center. And I’m just relaxing and wasting time – a treat I only allow myself sometimes!

I can’t believe tomorrow is April already. It looks warm and springy outside, if you can overlook all the snow, that is! But it hasn’t been anything like warm yet.  I have confidence it will be eventually. Last winter really spoiled us to what spring is actually like.

I know Erica has because Tim’s mom uses their products.  But has anyone else? It has been around for a couple decades at least and I just now heard of it. A piano student’s mom introduced me to their products which are all made without harmful chemicals, etc.

It is like a shopping club which you join, then place an order every month. They sell 5 categories of things – household and cleaning supplies, vitamins and supplements, drug store type items (pain relievers, etc), health foods, and beauty items. The cleaning items are really concentrated, so they are actually cheaper than name brand products you would buy at Walmart.

I went on line and researched the company and it has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and has received a number of awards. I listened to people talk about the products and the company and it sounds really good. I’m waiting eagerly for my first order which is mostly laundry supplies, but also some cleaning supplies that I was almost out of.

I guess one of the biggest selling points was that their products don’t have phosphates that are so hard on our lakes up here. Also, there is nothing harmful in any of their cleaning supplies, so you don’t have to worry about breathing fumes or wearing gloves to protect your hands. I’m anxious to see how they compare to the things I have been using. I’m saving my cleaning for the week until the stuff arrives. Silly to have a clean house when you get a shipment of cleaning supplies!!

Just as a side note – this shouldn’t be as concerning to those of you who look out for me (e.g. my dear son, Nathan) as my last venture, which I’m still doing, but don’t actually know what I’m doing, so am basically paying $5 a month…. I need to sit down with Pete K. and have him get me started, so I can at least earn my $5 back. I’ve discovered it has an advertising part to it, that would be good for people that don’t have an advertising budget and would be interested in just advertising to other members. Anyway… life goes on.

Also, I’m holding a catalog sale for Sentsy and wondered which of you already have Sentsy burners (if you don’t know what they are, obviously you don’t have one!) They would make great Christmas gifts (I’m thinking ahead!), and if you already have one, I want to make sure I don’t get you the same one, plus you could tell me which fragrances you prefer. If you don’t have one, just let me know if you like fragrances that smell like fruit (think tangerine, lemon, etc.), flowers (like lilacs, roses, etc.) food (my favorite – like coffee, vanilla, brown sugar, baked apple pie), or other (things like leather or outdoor smells).

(If you have a burner and need some refills now, I could do that for you, too, and bring it when I come later next month. My order has to be in a week from today. The best deal is the 6 pack for $25. I’m not trying to get you to order – I’ll have plenty with what I’ve collected, but if you are out and want some, feel free to let me know.)

I can’t quite believe it is Friday already tomorrow.  Technically I have the day off because it is one of my holidays. But I’m going to go over and lead my two aerobics classes, since I have to exercise anyway, so I might as well do it there! And it confuses people when I cancel classes, then attendance drops off for several weeks.

Erica, Chloe and Josiah were here for a couple days while work was done on their house to prepare it for listing. I guess the work went much more quickly than expected, though, so when they left here, they were headed home, rather than elsewhere. But the kiddos still get to spend the next couple days with their cousins, which will free Erica up for more packing.

We were looking at listings, both in Shakopee and here in Chetek, and stumbled across a listing for 610 Ridgeway, which actually just went on the market at around 10:00 this a.m. They are asking $134,900, in case anyone wants to move back to  Chetek (just kidding!). Of particular note to me was that they painted the entire dining room and kitchen the very same color that our realtor made me paint over in the dining room before we could list it – that cobalt blue. No accounting for taste, I guess. Actually most of the house is painted one shade of blue or another. The solarium is painted a nice green, though, and looks beautiful as a nursery.

Dad is heading over to Shakopee on Saturday to help Tim with some carpet laying and stair re-treading, and I am staying home and relaxing. I wouldn’t get to see the kids anyway, since they will be at the Baker’s, and I’m sure there will be more work I could do right here at home.

We have one more performance of our New Auburn choir cantata and that is on Easter evening down in New Auburn. It has been fun, but I’ll be glad to have the Monday evenings free now until next fall.  The Rice Lake Choir rehearsals at the college will also be over soon – we just have this coming Thursday, dress rehearsal on the following Monday and the performance on that Tuesday. Then I’ll have my Thursday evenings back, too!

Today was “Shop Chetek For Goodness Sake” which involved, among other things, craft fairs at both the Senior Center and the Garage. I sold bars and coffee at the senior center and Dad sold hot beef plates and hot dog plates at the Garage. Business was really slow, but it was the first year, and hopefully the organizers learned something about advertising. Anyway, it was a long day, followed by us each having to clean up our respective buildings for regular activities. Tonight we sing our first Easter concert with the New Auburn Community Choir, which we are both in.

Well, I think the end is in sight. If we can make it through the next two days of bitter cold (like around zero at night and up to 20 during the day), we finally get to a stretch of teens at night and 32 or a little higher during the day. Still no 40’s or anything remotely warm, but not so cold and not so snowy will be a welcome relief.

Sherlock got his stitches out today, so he is better from his surgery. I’m glad that awful hanging do-hicky is gone. I don’t know that he cares, but I do!

We finally got the bill from the lawyer for all the work getting our rental situation in Toccoa handled and I was really worried that it would eat up most of the money we ended up getting. But it didn’t! It was under $600, and I think it was definitely worth it! So now I know not to worry about getting a lawyer’s help because, even though they are $200 an hour, they work fast!

AAAGGGH! It is snowing again today. Huge amounts again. I just got home after spending most of the time not in actual classes outside trying to keep the walks safe for the people dumb enough to come out today, which was actually a lot of people. I had 9 in my first class and only 3 in my second. But people came for lunch – about 8 of them. And they came in for cards and some others are coming for a homemaker’s meeting. It wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t so much glare ice under the snow where you can’t see it. I fell hard again today and another gentleman also fell. He got up on his own and seemed all right, but he is 84 years old, so I’m sure he will be bruised and sore tomorrow. The main problem is the ice in the alley (which is where I fell)  and the ice along the curb (which is where he fell). It covers so much area that it is impossible for me to shovel all of it in order to find the places that need salt. I went through about 1/2 of a big bag of salt today as it was.

We had a party at work from 3:00 – 5:00 and it went quite well. About 16 people came, which is good for the first year. I made all the food except for the Irish soda bread that one of my front desk volunteers offered to make. Then her car broke down so Dad had to drive way out beyond the golf course to get it! But it was good.

I made Irish apple cake, Irish tea cake, Irish something-else-that-I-can’t-remember, but it was made in a bundt cake pan and was sort of dense and had dried fruit in it. It was peoples’ favorite thing, though, even if it didn’t look the best. For drinks I made an Irish creme that you put in your coffee, plus a green ice cream drink that we had for dessert after our other desserts. And I also made a ton of corned beef dip which we had on pumpernickle rye bread.  That was probably my favorite thing, although the green cold drink was also pretty awesome.

We played some limerick games and a little trivia regarding famous Irish-Americans. We had a sing-along of Irish songs and the rest of the time, we mostly visited and ate. But people seemed to have fun, so I count it a success.

So now I have about 5 hours to rest up from this crazy weekend and get ready for another week. Whew….!

This is the big contest weekend, so pray for that, too, will you?

We are going to Waukesha today and coming back tomorrow. We try to go quarterly and we are overdue, but we are also getting Mom Fritz’s car to use for the trip south in a month. Neither of our cars is trustworthy for such a long trip – the Jimmy simply because it is way over 250,000 miles now and the Buick because you never know when it will decide not to start. We are taking the Buick down today, though, so hopefully we will make it! Dad does drive it to work every day, so it is not totally unreliable.

Sure wish it would stop snowing. We keep getting a dusting every night (sometimes more) and it covers the ice patches from where it melted the previous day and froze overnight. I fell twice yesterday morning warming up for my run. Twice. How I hate winter! Today my back is bothering me, and I don’t know if that is why.

Everyone, pray without ceasing for Amy and Nathan’s house to sell, okay??! God is able.