The Take Back

Washing piles and piles of sheets and towels doesn't sound like fun,

but actually it was so satisfying to restore order around our home.

And of course, I didn't do the washing, the machine did.

(Can you imagine washing sheets by hand?! I think I just wouldn't do it.)

I ended up washing all the bath mats and duvet covers as well because, you know, I was on a roll!

Today is Marge's birthday, so I got a fun lunch interlude with Marge, Mom and Dimitrios at Brio.

(I had so much fun with my mom and Dimitrios while they've been here!)

I only needed a few groceries, and since we can't use reusable bags and I organized the bag cupboard and am trying to reduce all the extra plastic, this is how I've gone shopping lately.

I just fill my cart back up with the groceries and put them into my reusable bags when I get to the car.

And as I was spending so much time in the laundry room, I decided to do a little work on my orchids.

A while ago... who knows when that was -- could have been when Covid lock down first started in March or could have been last month -- I've lost all track of time.

So, once upon a time, I realized my orchids were getting too much water. And the surrounding plant material was too wet and half of them were dead sticks rotting in wet dirt. So I pulled all the orchids out of their individual pots to dry out. One or two didn't have plastic liners, so I just pulled them out into the plain air and let them sit in the laundry room window until I got back to them. 

Which, like I said, could have been six months ago or only a month.

Today, as I was getting back to them, I noticed a new shoot on two. 

Even though they weren't actually planted in anything.

So I got busy replanting and repotting and trimming the dead. 

Now they look pretty again and we'll see what happens!

What I loved most about getting stuff done today was that I wasn't in a hurry and I didn't have a deadline. I was just doing. I even stopped to work on my book for a couple of hours.

Then got back to chores.

I also went for a bike ride at 5:00 and LOVED being out at that time.

The weather turned cool today -- from 93 yesterday to 75 today -- and it felt like Fall.

Nick had lacrosse practice as well, so he got out to play this evening too.

For dinner we had zucchini noodles with chopped tomatoes and basil from the garden.

We added ground beef (not from the garden) and it was SO delicious!

Because it was family night and because I'd been in every room in the house today, 

I remembered about Nick's broken bathroom cupboard door and figured that was a great Family Night project. It actually only took Dan and Nick two seconds to fix it. 

It was done before I even made it up the stairs to his room. (But Nick did the fixing!)

So they worked on another project -- attaching Nick's new license plate bracket.

We were in bed by 10:45. I'm trying to get to bed earlier. 

It felt so nice crawling in bed after a super productive day!