Tuesday: Self-Care and Errands

It is day five of break. I have five days left before I head back to our extended school year, summer schedule. Today is going to be a day for sorting out homeowners insurance things, getting my medications refilled, and taking a shower - NOT in that order!! 

Yesterday, I spent most of the day crying. I don't know why I was so tearful, but I was just crying and crying at nothing and everything. I ate a good breakfast, watched entirely too much trash social media, and then nearly finished an ugly crochet basket that I have been working on. I have to attach the handles before it is completely finished. I want some baskets for my home, so I am going to make them. I have lots of inherited yarn that I will never really use for other projects, so I am going to use those skeins to make my baskets. I do not need things to look coordinated or even pretty - just finished. So, I am going through the bags and bags of yarn that I have collected to make my baskets. This first one is made up of a variegated yarn with peach, brown, white, and green tones - what I think of as one of the 70's tone palettes. I paired it with some dark gold yarn to make the basket more rigid than floppy. When I ran out of the variegated yarn, I took some olive green and paired it with the same dark gold for the top part of the basket. I am currently finishing it up with some gold handles, and then I will have a basket for my cleaning supplies down in the basement.

I was released from occupational therapy last Friday. My hand strength is significantly higher than most folks my age (thanks, guitar playing and hand crafts!!). I am still not really happy about having to go back into physical behavior management training, but it is nice to know that I can see individual clients again once I pass my test.

This basket is a bit of a celebration of being released completely from medical oversight with my last hand injury. I will be getting my next basket started later today. Why? Just because I can!

So, I will be diving back into my yarn stash to find what I can use up for this project. I have some neutral colored, small balls, leftover yarns that aren't enough to do an entire basket on their own but that can be combined into one big project easily. It may not be the most color-coordinated of baskets, but it will be functional and completely unique, and that is what I like the best! I won't need everything to be color-coordinated for the types of things that I need these baskets for at the moment. When I am finished with the baskets, I can give them to people who will appreciate them.

I have been going through the boxes of things that I had stored in my recently flooded closet in the library room and have been discovering things that I had forgotten about. I have a bunch of puppets that I have not used in my music therapy clinic for a very long time - mainly because they have been in a box. Now I have a bit of inspiration for some of the projects that I want to restart for music therapists. 

Six things to do with a dragonfly finger puppet...

I am going to continue getting things unpacked and stored in different places around my home. I am lousy at using my closets in a functional manner, so that is my end goal this summer - using my closets for more than just storing boxes of stuff. I anticipate that I will need to buy some lumber, some bookcases, and some boxes to achieve this particular goal. I also need to make the bedrooms functional for guests because my Mom and Sister are coming at the end of the month for a visit! I need to move things around so they have bedrooms to sleep in without having to step over my boxes and piles of stuff.

Ah, organization - my old nemesis! 

I want shelves to sprout in my closets, but they don't tend to do that. I need to do some measuring and then get some lumber cut to my specifications. I like doing projects like making shelves for closets, but I get kinda anxious about it as well. Going to the lumberyard and asking someone to cut the wood for me makes me queasy - silly, isn't it?

Time to take my shower and get ready to head out into the world for some shopping and errands. After that, I want to make some food for the next several weeks. I have some meatloaf to make, some chili to simmer, and some spaghetti sauce to compile before coming back downstairs and continuing to go through boxes and throw things out. I have an extra day before trash pickup this week, so I can load up all of my trash cans and then send it out to be recycled and trashed. I am also part of my local buy nothing group on Facebook, so I can post things there and hope that someone will want what I have to give away.

For now, though, it is time to get upstairs, take my shower, and then head out for my morning shopping. Today's goals include cooking things and taking care of my clothing which is currently spread all over my master bedroom and not in any sort of storage at all right now. I need to put the winter clothing into the television room closet for the summer season, and then organize the shelving that I already have in that room to make it less of a mess. That is the goal. After I accomplish this goal (cooking day and more space in the upstairs bedroom), I will be able to kill more time with trashy social media and a nap, but first, to the shower!! Happy Tuesday.