Critical Mess

 I was talking to my friend about being retired, and she said it takes about a year to figure it all out, and I have come to believe she is right.

My whole working career I was doing so many things at once that I always kept a very well stocked kitchen pantry, but now that just seems a bit ridiculous, so I have been meticulously planning my menus and only buying ingredients I need for the meals I have planned. I figure it's going to be a while before I get down to the bare shelves, and it will be MUCH easier to find things in my freezer, but that's my plan. The side bonus is that my grocery bills have been much smaller, and that's been fun.

While working through my pantry, which lives in the closet in my office, I've also realized I've got papers and boxes and stuff in there that needs cleaning out, so I've been spending an hour in there each day going through stuff. Today I found a stack of old pay stubs from 2018!! Needless to say those went directly into the shredder.

There are Art books I may never need, so I have to rethink all those too. And I found, count them, NINE boxes of notecards! I think getting that room reorganized will take all summer. That's OK. It's overdue. I've got a TV in there, and I can stream something mindless while de-cluttering, so I don't feel like a lazybones when I sit down on the couch and actually WATCH something.

I've been listening to the tennis at the French Open (Roland Garros) and that's always fun. It means I haven't been getting as much reading done, but that's fine too. I have to keep telling myself that I am retired, and I earned this time off, so I don't have to feel guilty if I am not as "productive" as I used to be.

I don't know what my next quilt project will be, but I have decided to let that sit for a bit and not worry about it.  (Ergo, pillow covers.)

I've also been writing the quilt stories of quilts I have gifted in the past. That's been fun and interesting. I'm glad I was blogging because half the time I go back and read about what I was doing and discover things I had completely forgotten.

The garden is shaping up. The zucchini is doing well, as are all my herbs, but the basil and some of the peppers do not seen to like being planted in the ground. So I moved them to pots and have my fingers crossed.

I have been trying to walk at least a mile each day. Very easy in my neighborhood, except for when it rains. After my walk, I water the garden. On not so hot days I go out later and weed and do the other things the garden requires,

As I was cleaning the studio after my pillow cover making extravaganza, I found this fabric. Don't remember WHY I bought it (except that it so reminds me of Millie...) but I realized it would make a perfect pillow. So I stopped cleaning and made the pillow. 

Working on a jigsaw puzzle is the perfect thing to do while listening to the radio. This is the most recent.

So that's what's been happening in my neck of the woods.