….or, “What do stay-at-home moms do all day?”

I’m looking ahead at my next two weeks and am already eager to greet October when it gets here. I stared at my calendar a good couple of minutes and figured that I better just do what I’m best at when I start to feel overwhelmed: make a list.

So, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, these are the things that are clamoring for my attention before the month ends:

• my children need to attend speech therapy, music lessons, an introduction to a Lego Robotics class (combined with a spinning class for the young ladies), and, for the 4 and 6 year olds, an appointment with the dentist to get the “thumb sucking talk” and encouragement to quit (with prizes, of course). Ruby just got her new updated program so I need to organize that and set it in motion, too.

• I am picking up 150 lb of wheat berries that I’ll throw (or, “gently place into”) the deep freezer for a wee bit (to kill off any hitchhiker bugs), and then blend into the mix I like to keep on hand for baking. If I could remember off the top of my head what it was, I would share that with you. Maybe I’ll leave it on a comment. When I catch my breath and can actually visit my own blog again.

• And speaking of my blog (thank you for visiting me :), I have a new podcast to upload on first aid kits, hopefully in the next day or two. And, oooh, are you gonna like the one the one that comes up after that! It might just rock your grocery shopping world!

• I decided that, yes, I would buy 20lbs of tomatoes to try my hand at tomato preservation. I’ll be borrowing my friend’s canner (mwah!) and giving it a go. I would love to try preserving my own salsa! And no, I’m not going to skin all of those tomatoes. And I ought to mention I have boxes of peppers and apples coming as well. All on the same day.

• I was offered a trip to go mushroom hunting, and after I learned that my new mushroom friend had picked almost three quarters of a five gallon bucket of Chanterelle mushrooms in two hours…well, you can see that I can’t pass that up! Those will all be dehydrated. I hope.
  

• I’ll be running off to the beach this weekend to scrapbook. Doesn’t that sound delicious? Well, yes….but my old photos and whatnots were stuffed into a closet about a year ago because I just didn’t have the time (or, rather, the inclination…) to deal with it. So I signed up to go on this retreat so I’d be forced to. And that means, well, I now I AM forced to dig everything out and actually *deal with it!* If it’s sunny this weekend, I’m afraid I’m going to be a grumpy scrapbooker who’d rather be walking the beach instead of cutting and pasting (that’s a figure of speech, of course, don’t send your consultants to me to try to keep the paste away!)

• My dog is getting “fixed”. I’m not sure why they call it that when in reality he’s gonna get BROKEN, but somehow I’m going to have to train my 100 lb puppy to want to jump into my car, go for a ride, and then happily greet the vet and staff in an indoor setting. I’m wondering if chamomile or valerian works on dogs. Maybe a chanterelle would do the trick.

• I need to harvest the honey from my hive and prepare my bee’s house for winter soon! This is a definite AFTER scrapbooking retreat deal, and I am hoping to have a nice, sunny, dry, warmish day to do it. And if you live up here, you can stop laughing or there’ll be no honey for you! (You know who you are!)

• A few “would be nice….” things. One is to finish my basket; it’s very close but I haven’t touched it in a couple of weeks. And it’s definitely the time of year for me to make my homemade tinctures and teas for the cold and flu season. I’m just saying that when I DON’T prepare these things for my family, they end up sicker than sick. Something about Murphy. Lastly, we need to finish the mulching around the property to winterize the gardens and keep them looking spiffy for that buyer who, if he or she wants to buy our house, immediately cancels all of the above items to make room for packing, finding a place to live, and moving.

I ought to mention that in between all of this, I still need to maintain a house clean enough for any showings (for that buyer….yoooo hooo, where are you?….) and manage the homeschooling as well. And cook, because we all like to eat. So if you don’t hear from me in a while, it’s not because I’m in a daze over our new pregnancy (HA! AREN’T YOU GLAD YOU READ TO THE LAST WORD?!), but because real life is calling and if I don’t answer, I’ll get run over by my circumstances.

May you be blessed in the midst of your doings!