hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

frustratedearthmother

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I would have to have me some squirrel pie if it ate into a loaf of banana bread! Cool that you were able to give the woman some ideas a out working with her filly! That is so fascinating to me!
 

hqueen13

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@baymule that sounds really yummy!! I'll have to remember that!

It rained all weekend. Again. It started late on Friday, and rained all the way through until the middle of the day on Sunday. The mud is back and it's as gross as ever.
Saturday morning we got up and cleaned the house. We needed to get a bunch of old junk out of the pickup truck so we can use it again, so we made a dump run. If we were going to the dump we figured we'd better clean everything as much as possible. So we got the house cleaned, and got all the trash and recycles together and headed out. In the rain. Thankfully that meant there wasn't a line at the dump at least. Got that finished and then grabbed lunch before we headed back home. We didn't do much of anything the rest of the afternoon or evening, really. Sunday I had to do barn chores, so I got up and out of the house as quickly as I could, and got that done, while dodging all the rain drops. It was only heavily misting while I was turning the horses out. Got back home and soaked in the tub for a while and then worked on Christmas cards until I started making mistakes. We had a pretty lazy evening, we did do a little more decorating on the tree now that the cats have mostly decided to ignore the tree.

So not much to report, it's mostly slow, and I'm totally ok with that after the week I had. I need to finish up christmas prep this week and get all that done and then we'll bake cookies and such next weekend. I need to dig out the dog treat recipe that I had, and probably find a horse cookies recipe, too so I can give some to the girls. I might have time to work on that this week if things don't go too nutty... We'll see how it goes!
 

frustratedearthmother

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Rain - argh! I know how you feel....

Mostly slow is ok in my book sometimes. Gotta enjoy it while you can!
 

baymule

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Our rain fall for September, October and November totals 38.83 inches, the average is 12.20 inches. It has been wet, rainy, gloomy and cold. Many days have not been a hard rain, just that never stopping drizzle that has kept us inside. :barnie
 

hqueen13

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@baymule whoa, that's a lot. I do know that down in DC they've now surpassed the record for total rainfall which was set in 1880something. They've had over 63" of rain this year. I'm POSITIVE that we're right along with them, I just don't know our total numbers. I believe we average 40" in a YEAR, I don't know if that includes snow or not.
More rain on the way this afternoon and tomorrow. Fun times. Very tired of sliding around in the mud.

Not much to report. I've still not been feeling great, so I took it easy yesterday. I got some errands run for Christmas stuff, but not much else. I've been fighting tension headaches, which I know are self induced, and I haven't taken the time to sit and meditate and I haven't been doing as much yoga as I had before, so I need to focus on getting back to that. I had hoped to wrap some of the BF's christmas presents, but I didn't get to it. I hope I can do that tomorrow afternoon instead.

We have our "christmas party" for the office today. Instead of going out to a NICE restaurant like we usually do, they're catering it in the office. Apparently "they" (I have no idea who because no one asked me... there's only 10 of us anyway) couldn't decide between Mission barbeque and Italian... neither of which are very swanky in my book. I'm going to suggest that next year we close the office early and do the meeting at a restaurant during business hours. Lunches will be cheaper than dinner, and I'm sorry but a catered lunch meeting just isn't IT. I'll be a little less disappointed if they spent the extra $$ they're NOT spending on taking us all out on gift cards for each of us. Our usual "gift" is a $100 visa card, so if it's more than that I certainly won't complain about the lunch. Of course, as a result of said lunch and meeting I have no idea what time I'm going to leave. I have to care for Cowboy and Coyote on the way home, and it's supposed to be raining by then, which likely means it'll take me over an hour and a half to get home when it should only take an hour. I'm prepared for it and will be surprised if it takes me less. We'll see. I'm expecting that traffic will be bad due to people already heading out of town.

Not much else to report. Nothing can really happen while it's muddy. So here we sit.
 

hqueen13

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Well, we didn't end up getting a bigger bonus, but oh well. The $100 comes in handy anyway.

Whew, I think I'm almost ready for Christmas! I wasted a bunch of time on Saturday, so I didn't get as much baking done as I wanted, but I managed to finish it up on Sunday without too much trouble. Apparently my mixer thinks that 2 batches of cookies made at the same time is about as much as it can handle. It did it, but whew. That made 128 cookies. At least I got it finished.

The BF has bitten off more than he can chew with the Christmas presents he decided to make for his brothers and parents. He started his mom's present, which is a shelf to hold liquor on their bar for their new house. It wasn't PERFECTLY square, and he was trying to make it so, and it cracked. He hasn't attempted to work on it since. He then started working on presents for his dad and brothers, which were going to be wooden carriers for a 6 pack of beer. They're going to be super cute once he gets them finished... but in deciding to do so, he bought a jig that makes dove tails so he could assemble them that way. Then he decided to stain each piece a different color so that the dove tails would stand out because of the contrast. He went ahead and polyurathaned the pieces that didn't need stain. And then when he tried to put them together they were too big, because the poly was just thick enough that it made the pieces not fit together anymore, so some of the dove tails broke off as he was trying to get the pieces put together. So now he has to go back and sand all those grooves to make sure they're wide enough.
Bless his heart, he's just like me. I found a scarf pattern that was highly technical that I wanted to make him and it only took me a year to finish it... We're two peas in a pod, I swear. It's just costing him a lot in both time and money to get this done. I hope he can finish them today, we'll see. I plan to help him when I get home after the few things are done that I need to get done.

I'm hoping that he'll want to skip the Christmas Eve stuff in favor of staying home together and working on the presents. We'll see, though. I don't know what I'll cook for dinner if we stay home, but I don't really care because we'll be at home and that will make me happier than going out.

Hope everyone has a lovely Christmas, and you get everything you asked Santa for!
 

frustratedearthmother

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Oh man - nothing like that last minute rush to get things finished. Hope everything comes together for ya'll! Have a wonderful Christmas!
 

hqueen13

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He got them done! I was so pleased that everything came together just right. His brothers and dad loved the beer caddys that he made them. I was even able to find 2 bags that his brothers could go in, and then we found a box that fit the one for his dad. His mom's shelf wasn't finished, but that was ok, he just took it over there without wrapping it, and she was still thrilled.
It was a fast holiday, as per the usual. But we were so blessed. The BF loved his presents. I got him a laser measuring tool, which is cool, you just stand there and put it against a wall, and point it at the other wall and it tells you how far away it is. We now know exactly how big everything in our house is. I also got him a work shop radio, and he's thrilled with that, too. He got me a corset, and some of my favorite pens, and the traditional ornament that he gets me every year. After we opened gifts at our house together, we went to his parent's house. His brother made breakfast, like he does every year, and then we opened presents. His mom really loves to have lots of gifts to open, and she goes all out. She gave me a beautiful scarf, and a fox pin, a cheese tray, and a bottle of wine, and a gift card to Kohl's. She also gave the BF and I some money to help with the hot water heater. So that was a nice thing. It was a really lovely Christmas, but of course we had to go over to his uncle's for dinner after that. I was just tired of socializing and didn't want to really be around people at that point.
I feel really blessed, and grateful for all the loving support that we have received this holiday.
 
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