Carrots and Sticks

I'm ready for DH to come home. He won't be home 'til Wednesday, though. I miss him.

This is a photo-intense entry by the way....

Isn't it beautiful? The picture doesn't do it justice - it's huge and has dozens of flowers. We celebrated our eleventh wedding anniversary while he was away and he had these delivered to my workplace. You should have seen me trying to get these home. It took 10 minutes just to figure out how to fit them in the car.
That's just one of the carrots to get my work done. Here's the other - some of the things I'm promising myself when it's all finished. As you can see, the qiviuq scarf is making making progress. Actually, it's been a few days since I took this picture - half the wine's gone now.

Now for the sticks:
The accidental compost heap. We discovered the lazy way of creating compost. Just don't bother to bag up the leaves that drift down to the bottom of the driveway. By spring there's wonderful black dirt underneath it all and great big fat earthworms. (And the occasional Texas Earth snake.) The only thing required is to turn the pile every once in awhile - which is what I did on Monday.

These aren't 'before' pictures, more of like 'middle' pictures of the dining room. Large pieces of furniture got moved around. Glassware, pottery and crystal got dusted and rearranged. The wood floor got cleaned. The rug got vacuumed. A picture finally got a frame. A tapestry was hung on the wall. All in preparation for this: Mom and Dad's old oak roll-top desk. A piece of family history. A remarkable piece of engineering. (Can you tell I'm excited to have this?) Dad and I took it apart at their house, put all the pieces in my car and his car (it wouldn't all fit in mine), then reassembled it in our house.

And the rest of the room looks much better, too. This dining room suite was originally my great-aunt's and is made out of rock maple. I love it and am glad I've got a nice big dining room to accomodate it.That mirror above the buffet is incredibly heavy.


So that's how I've spent my time since DH has been gone. Oh, and I cleaned the kitchen (a fairly big deal in itself). Since I didn't end up taking any vacation time, I feel I did pretty good. Not much knitting, but that's ok, I'm going to knitting guild tomorrow night.

I just found out my violin lesson is cancelled tonight, since my teacher's got bronchitis. Guess I'll actually go to the grocery store instead. I haven't bothered to buy groceries since DH left.