Hello friends!
Oh my goodness, what a whirlwind few weeks! I haven’t been home on the farm a whole lot, so now I’m more than a little behind. Lots to do, lots to do!
Well, to start, we had the Fiddle Fest and Parade. It was a hoot, my friend was visiting and we were at the park almost every night listening to music. There were some really great acts! We also went to this lemonade stand that had watermelon lemonade and I’m still thinking about it. It was so tasty we went back almost every night. It was a smaller fest again this year, but bigger than the last couple years, so I’m hopeful we are headed back in the right direction. The parade was pretty fantastic, you could tell that’s where a lot of the effort went, they had lots of different organizations and community groups, as well as some bigger corporations involved. It was a lot of fun! I helped with the float this year, but mostly kept out of the planning, letting my cousin take the reins. She absolutely nailed it, it was so adorable. The theme was “coming home” so, being the float for a Christian organization, she chose to make a stairway to heaven showing the “pathway home”. It was a pretty big hit. Of course, the candy throwing always helps too.
While my friend was here, we did a bunch of other things too. We found an army/navy surplus store in Boise that was really cool. My friend got an incredible deal on a backpack, and I found this cute little Belgium surplus shoulder bag… or, at least, I’m using it as a shoulder bag. It’s technically a claymore satchel, or so I’m told. It’s kinda a black hole inside, I need to make or buy a little bag organizer, but it was a great little garage sale-ing bag, and for $12 I can’t complain at all.
We did a ton of garage sale-ing too! I got some neat stamps, a couple books, a few video games for Christopher, and a monitor for $3. I have to buy a power cord for it, and it may be junk, but I thought the gamble was worth it. I’ll keep you posted when I find the right cord.
I got totally lucky, the Fourth of July, or Independence Day, fell on a Tuesday this year, and my company let us have it off. I had a little pto squirreled away to dip into, so I took Monday as well, combined with the fact that I currently work 4 10s and usually get Friday off as well, yours truly finagled herself a 5 day weekend using only one pto day. I’ve honestly never been so proud, and it was much needed, because between visiting friends, helping family, the festival, and one very injury heavy day helping to pull a buddy’s landscaping company out of an oops (it’s a long story), I was jonesing for some time off. Of course, my boss found it hilarious that I managed a 5 day weekend approximately 2 weeks before my actual preplanned week long vacation. It’s been a pretty fantastic July for yours truly.
The Fourth itself was pretty low key, we don’t launch fireworks because of the animals and the high fire risk being butted up against rangeland. Being up on the hill though means I have a great view of just about every legal fireworks show in 20 miles, and several of the not so legal ones too. So, I mostly eat picnic foods, dress in red white and blue, and watch the valley paint itself in colors when the sun sets. We did make toaster oven smores which made my mom exceedingly happy and still respected the burn ban.
I’ve also had that vacation from work, which was much needed. Funnily enough, it meant falling way behind on blog admin-y type stuff because I had no desire whatsoever to be at my desk, and I completely forgot the concept of filming things. Honestly, it was a nice little break even if it means some of the posts upcoming might be a little lean.
I’ve loved my little week off of work, I like my job a lot but like anything, after about 50 hours of it every week, one tends to want a break. It doesn’t help that I am currently heading a particularly nebulous project and its driving me a little mad. But hey, that’s life.
I spent most of my vacation just relaxing. I worked on some projects here and there but I am learning about the idea of rest as productivity and am treating myself to actual breaks instead of “I’m off work so lets shove as many catch up projects as possible into the space” when I can because I don’t really want to be worn out and over whatever breaks I get by the time I get back to work. The repairs, renovations, and improvements were all still there when I got back to it, and to be honest, some are still rolling over on the to-do list each day. It’ll all get done eventually. Or it won’t and then clearly it wasn’t that important anyway, ya know?
Anyways, I know this ones a little shorter, but since I am kinda buried in work catchup and blog catchup and life catchup, there’s not been much to write about, unless you’d like a detailed list of all the laundry that has personally offended me as of late. But I am so grateful I can occasionally take some “drop everything” days that the every growing todo list is 100% worth it.
Until we chat again my friends!
The Farmer's Blogger 