Here are a few musings from this week’s entries.

The plants are okay

Good Monday morning! It’s hot and humid already today.  

I spent some time weeding the beds around our house after breakfast.  I hope to get outside with my kids early to beat the afternoon heat. Our flowers, tomatoes and herbs we planted are doing pretty well.  My son also planted some bird seed in the flower bed, so he’s pleased to see that thing – possibly a sunflower grow taller than anything else in that bed.  

We’ve enjoyed using fresh basil in some recipes – tomato based pasta sauce, grilled tilapia, and a butter basil salmon.  I had seeds for herbs stored in the freezer, and we planted them in May to see if they were still good, and they are! Soon we’ll have to figure out what to make with the dill and sage we planted. 

I don’t have much of a green thumb, so the fact that plants are doing well is kind of cool.

Early mornings thanks to our ferret

We had a good day yesterday.  It started earlier than expected.

Blaze woke up my son at 2:30 a.m.  I caught him watching tv at 3:00 a.m.  I told him to go back to bed.  We will likely need to relocate her cage.  She can be loud, and ferrets are more nocturnal.  Later in the day, I managed to convince him to lay down to rest.  He ended up napping for over an hour.  I can’t remember the last time he napped!! He must have needed that!

My daughter, on the other hand, slept in. 

Loving our local library

I roused her from bed to head to the library at 10:00 a.m. We had a book on red pandas on hold at the circulation desk to pick up.  The library also creates “take home activity kits” for kids on Mondays.  In past weeks, they have run out, so I wanted to get there early. 

While we can’t browse books on the shelves, the library really offers a lot of options for reserving online, getting “librarian’s choice” books for kids, scheduling curbside pick-up, or picking up at the main circulation desk like we did.  They also offer activities online, including our favorite, the summer reading program.  My kids are all over that program, and I’m entering in my reading time too.  The more you read, the more entries you earn in drawings for gift cards.  It’s pretty cool. I love our library! 

Taking our chances with a grab bag

On a whim, we decided to pick up a library “grab bag” of books.  A few books are in a brown paper bag labeled by category.  My son picked a young adult nonfiction bag.  I donated $1 for the books, and we opened up the bag when we were in the car. 

The books were hilarious: a GMAT test prep book, a sleep & dreams book, story of a transplant patient, girl’s weight loss guide, a skateboard book, and a role play game guide (some version of dungeons and dragons). I guess my kids are NOT at all young adults. We all laughed, not likely to read many (or any) of these titles!!  They may end up at Goodwill because the library explicitly said we cannot donate them back.  

Running errands during the week

After that, we made a few stops around town.  I tend to run errands during the week instead of on the weekend when it’s not as busy.  We stopped by a flower shop, went through the car wash, bought some craft supplies at Michael’s, and stocked up on ferret supplies at the pet store. We learned that pet stores are having a shortage of ferrets (and likely all types of pets), so we were lucky to find Blaze back in May.  She was the runt of her litter and the only one left at the store. Here is one of our first pictures of her:

We all wore masks in the stores. My kids are doing okay with them, overall. 

We hung around home in the afternoon. 

I had a client project to finish up.  I sent the final email proof early in the morning, heard back when we were running errands, and made the final changes after lunch.  I really am glad to keep working with this client, a small electrical distributor.  We easily shifted our meetings virtually and have kept work going monthly. I can fit work into my schedule and time with family, which is the main reason why I started my own business three years ago. 

July will be a slower work month, but that’s okay. Back to school will be here before you know it!

Until then, I will enjoy time with my family.