No Remnants on the Rack

The remnant rack at Joanns is 75% off right now, so the selection is pretty thin. I did manage to snag a couple of Christmas prints, including this blue and purple snowflake one. DD#2 spotted the fabric and asked for a Christmas tree.

She says she thinks she can leave it up as decoration through January because it is more winter-themed than Christmas themed.

I cut and sewed several of these the other day and will leave them to stuff when people are here and I need some handwork to do. DD#2 and I have a pile of mending between us. I think we will set my mother to hemming pants. She is good at that and likes to have something to do when she visits. (I come by that inability to sit and do nothing honestly.)

DD#2’s tree is a slightly different pattern than the pattern I used previously. I am trying to decide which one I like better. I think my final version may end up being an amalgamation of the two.

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Yesterday started with an early-morning meeting of our pastor search committee. Our pastor has indicated that he would like to retire within a year, and thus we begin the process of finding someone to fill that position. Fortunately, he intends to stay in the community, where he is an active member of our Mountain Brook Homestead Foundation. We also hope he will continue to come help us butcher our chickens.

After the meeting, I came home and canned up 10 quarts of chicken stock that had been simmering in the roaster for two days.

I started making stock that way for convenience’s sake, because I can do three chickens at a time and the roaster sits on top of the dryer, out of the way. This batch yielded 10 quarts of some very nice, very rich stock. Our chickens tend to be on the skinny side, but I took the meat that was on them, chopped it up, and put it in the freezer.

The canner finished processing just before I left again for quartet practice. Our quartet consists of two brothers (Ken and Steve), their sister (Elaine), and me (the honorary sibling). We met at Elaine’s house to go over some of the music for this morning’s service. I like singing with them because the four of us know enough about music that our practices often involve not just singing, but taking the music apart and putting it back together. We are comfortable singing together and that makes a big difference.

While I was gone, DD#2—bless her—cleaned the bathrooms and the living room. I still have a lot to do in the next three days, including taking a load of stuff to the thrift store, cleaning the other two bedrooms, and making a last-minute grocery store run. We also have to get the Christmas tree put up and sort out DD#1’s ornaments to send them to her in Alaska.

People often comment that I seem to get so much done, and I was thinking about that again yesterday. Some of it is thanks to my energy level, but a lot of it is due to good planning and working efficiently. The couple of hours between the meeting and quartet practice was just enough time to eat lunch and run that canner load. I was motivated to do it partly because I couldn’t let the stock cook forever and partly because I have a good canning system. I set the pressure canner on the stove with water in the bottom to heat up while I strained the stock and filled the jars (which had been run through the dishwasher earlier). By the time the jars went into the canner, the water in the bottom of the canner was boiling, so it didn’t take long for the canner to come to pressure. I turned the stove off before I left, and by the time I got back from quartet practice, the canner was cool enough to open.

Most people have more time than they think they do. A lot of people fritter away time they could be using on productive tasks. And I am always thinking three or four steps ahead. I know I’ll be sitting and visiting this week. What can I work on while I am doing that? Where are the bottlenecks that are keeping me from working efficiently? How do I fix those? What can be automated or done in such a way that I don’t have to babysit the process? That’s just the way I think. Also, it helps to be married to someone who thinks exactly the same way, because I am motivated to keep pace with the husband, and he outworks most 20 year olds. He is feeling better, by the way. Thank you to everyone who has been asking about him. The shingles are healing up and the pain has lessened considerably. He is able to sleep better at night.