Friday bullets - Oct. 30, 2020

It feels as though it has been a very full week.

• With the snow that arrived on Monday, I decided that perhaps it would be a good time for everyone to go through the outerwear. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh? This year it took very little time. This is a huge improvement on how long this task used to take when everyone was younger. Then, it was a full afternoon affair. This year, it took only as long as the slowest person at trying on their snow pants. And the tally for what I need to purchase this year? One decent everyday winter coat for Y. That's it. That's it despite the fact that at least three people had outgrown their snow boots. Some boots we shifted around and the final pair was found when we discovered a pair of unclaimed snow boots in the closet that no one remembers ever seeing. This is not the first time mysterious items of clothing have appeared in our closets, but I'm not going to complain.
• Take a look at the photograph TM took of our street. I'm not sure how he got it looking as though it was flooded because we haven't had that much rain. But it is a beautiful photograph.

This is down out street just a little from our house.

And one more photo by TM

• The bulk order arrived on Tuesday, so driving two hours round trip to pick it up was one of the things I did on Tuesday. There have been so many shortages recently that I was pleasantly surprised that my entire order came in. One of the things on my list was more bay leaves because we were out. I wasn't expecting quite this many bay leaves!

This bag is larger than an 9x13 baking dish. It's a lot of bay leaves.

• Also having to do with the bulk order, I evidently didn't actually look in the buckets that hold oatmeal before I ordered and just ordered fifty pounds of oats assuming we needed them. I realized my mistake when I went to gather the supposedly empty oat buckets to fill them with the new oats. They were not empty, but the majority of them were filled. I guess we didn't eat many oats over the summer. I also don't quite know where we're putting the extra fifty pounds of oats, either.
• When I showed you the various Greek vases that children drew, I didn't include H.'s. There had been a misunderstanding about me wanting to keep the drawings. We sorted out the misunderstanding, and now I can show your H.'s Greek vase.

• In my horse class on Monday, we were learning the names of the various parts of the horse, so we practiced finding them by sticking post-it notes with the part name on Bristol. She's a good horse.

• We discovered today that the younger half of the family have never seen Back to the Future. We will need to remedy this oversight.
• I don't know about you, but the election on Tuesday is filling me with more than a wee bit of dread. 
• I was able to take my new spinning wheel up to the spinning store yesterday. I now know I have a traditional Ashford spinning wheel from the 70's, which has a great reputation of being a great wheel. The woman who owns the store put a new drive band and break on it and helped me figure out how it is different from my other wheel. The name of the store is The Fold and not only do they carry spinning supplies, they have an amazing quantity of yarn. If you love to knit, you should go check it out. They are so very nice there!
• Also related to my new wheel, it is so easy to spin on! Far easier than my other wheel (a Louet) I have been using. I expect that once I finish the project I'm using my Louet wheel for, I will probably me using my new one most of the time.
• Our electric tea kettle died. This is very sad as it is used multiple times per day. Since we don't have a regular kettle for the stove, people are forced to heat water in a pot on the stove. This is not ideal. I will probably go get a new electric kettle tomorrow. You'll note this is far less time than I was able to go without a microwave. Having hot water for tea is very important here.
• G. now wears the same shoe size that I do. We discovered this when her new shoes from last month were too tight for her to put on yesterday. She wore a pair of mine. She likes the pair that she used. I'm going to have to keep an eye on my shoes.
• Our fall break was not quite as relaxing (for me) as I had hoped, thought I did cross quite a few things off my to do list. I'm kind of thinking that my ideal school schedule would be two weeks on, one week off. There is just so much that piles up around here when we are focusing on school. Plus, I like to have the break as I grow weary of school if we have too long a stretch without a break.
• I am two books away from finishing (again) the Amelia Peabody series. I'm needing a brief break before the last two books, so I went to the library to find something different to read. I only came home with two books, which seems like a very small amount for me. 
• If you leave buying candy until too late, all the peanut butter cups will be sold out. This is sad.
• I worked on driving a dressage test again in my lesson today. It was not spectacular. It was better than the last time I tried it though, so that's something.
• Probably one of the best things I have to write about this evening is that we are NOT in the hospital with R. It was this day last year that we took her to the ER and she was admitted while they tried to find something that would help her. Knowing this was the one year anniversary of last year's fun, I didn't know what today would bring. I am happy to say it was a calm day. 
• Also of note, a couple of days ago, R. voluntarily switched back to carrying around her baby doll that has been so beloved. At the hospital last year she was given a Tinkerbell doll which became number one in her affections. (I never liked it. It was not terribly cute, and was hard and pokey. In truth, I would have headed that particular bit of swag off at the pass had I known it was coming.) I'm happy to see her with her baby doll again.
• Why is it always the laundry that people are so fascinated with asking about when it comes to large families? It's not as though I have some super secret high tech machine that requires no effort on my part. I do it the same as everybody else. It's just not that interesting.

And with that, it's time to get people tucked into bed... myself included.