Weekend Stuff

Well, Squiddle's ear infection seems to be under control.  He's starting to not want to take the medicine, but I've been very clear to him that if he does not take every single last dose, it won't kill all the germs, the pain will come back and it might never go away.  A bit of a scare tactic, but this is actually important, so I can live with it.  He's also finally asked for an allowance!  So we have agreed that for a starter, he will get $5 a week, and we will see how it goes.

Jazzy and Wonderful Husband are still coughing, so at least the former will probably be out of school again this week.  I'm also coming down with something, but (thus far; knock on wood) it's significantly more mild than what the rest of the household has had.

Friday afternoon I laid out and spray-basted a quilt.  It's a top I got at St. Vincent de Paul last month for $3.  Very plain and utilitarian, but I kind of like it.  It's clear the maker was using every last scrap of the brown in it by how many pieces she used, which is the kind of thing I find charming.  There's lots of room for me to mess around with practicing quilting feathers, and it's definitely not going to be a "best" quilt - it's the kind to be snuggled under and not made a fuss of if it gets thrown up on or used for a picnic.  The green checkered backing also came from St. Vinnie's on some other trip.  Amusing thing - when I laid it out I used up the last of my batting roll.  There was about two feet left over.  So I went and checked and I had a 20% off purchase coupon from Joanns for their online shop, together with free shipping, and the 40-yard rolls of batting I get were already heavily discounted.  So the timing of that worked out well.

Saturday the weather was nice and sunny, so we picked up McDonalds and went to Sehmel Homestead Park.  The boys got to play on the equipment with other children for a couple hours, while Wonderful Husband and I did Pokemon Go things.  We were the only people there wearing masks - but given we're a household of plague, we were not going to go without.  Even the boys kept theirs on without complaint the whole time!  After we got home, I cut up the gallon milk jugs I've been saving and planted out the first eight (tiny) tomato plants, using the jugs as cloches.  It's an experiment - we'll see how it goes.

And today was sunny again, so I worked on cutting up more of the ground-eating bushes on the east fence.  I'm planning to replace them with dwarf lilacs.  There is going to be a lot of rooting out of blackberry vines in that area too, but one thing at a time.  Since this was going to be the last clear day for at least a week, and the grass was actually dry, Wonderful Husband mowed the lawns.  I imagine this caused the chickens, in their mobile run, a great deal of consternation as he went around them for several passes.  We also hung up the codling moth disruption strips in the apple trees.