School's out ...for Summer?

Last night the Governor of Massachusetts cancelled all school until May 4th. 

He did this on March 25th. 

That is about 6 weeks of no school.  My youngest son is a Junior in high school.  He spends 1/2 his morning sleeping and the other part of the day on the computer fighting with his friends on some game.  I've tried asking him about school work.  I even helped him with some but they just aren't giving a lot.  I've been working, pretty regularly during the day and also I've got a list of things I need or want to get done.  I'm not having all this time at home and then find I squandered it and didn't clean the cabinet or get rid of the boxes in the corner.  We only moved into the house about 2 years ago, boxes in the corner of the dining room is still acceptable, right??

Anyhow, I've never home-schooled and I don't really want to start now.  Selfish, maybe.  BUT, he's super smart and I believe he already knows the path he's going to take.  I believe he'll be following his brother. He already had the interview via Facetime this past Monday.

I decided to start the sour dough starter.  After writing about it, I realized it was the smart thing to do.  And I had the flour out making brownies.  I've made some type of sweet dessert nearly every night.  Something little and something that will just put a smile on your face.  Last night was my brownie recipe:

Mix together in one bowl the following:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp vanilla.

Heat oven to 350.  In a smallish pan, I spray it with Pam or some other type of non stick spray. 

In the bowl, I mix with a wisk until combined.  Don't overmix.  I use a scraper to pour into pan and then I bake for 25 minutes.  No more, no less.  Depending on the size of your pan (again, smallish), you'll have perfectly fudgy brownies.

This is my homemade recipe.  I found a few online and this one just really stuck.  I like that you can dump everything into one bowl, stir and bake.  No mixer, no fuss, just easy.  And delicious.  We have probably one brownie left for each of us.  They are delicious.

Tonight I'm going to use up the oranges I have in the house.  They are pre-Covid so they are old.  I do not want to throw anything away right now so I will use them for baking and what ever is left will be juice for the morning.

All these sweets have me on a edge.  Baking is my joy.  I love it.  I know my family loves it BUT it's terrrible for the thighs.  And since my job is mostly sitting all day, my butt isn't looking as toned as it could be.  I mentioned I was a bariatric patient.  Sleeved almost 3 years ago.  Actually it will be 3 years in 10 days.  It was the best decision I ever made.  And even now, while I never made it to my goal weight, I'm able to maintain and keep something I feel is reasonable.  BUT I have to work a little at it. 

Mornings are for yoga.  This morning I tried chair yoga.  Why? 

Why not.  I'm stuck in my house.  I do regular yoga every other day, why not try chair yoga?  BUT I had to convince myself to do it.  That it was worth trying.  Those internal voices need to be locked away sometimes.

Then this afternoon, I walked in my yard for about an hour.  I picked up sticks while walking.  I let the dogs run.  It is beautiful out and it really made me feel better. 

I should be working.

But there isn't a lot coming in.  And I really can't feel guilty for being healthy, especially now, right??

This is day 9 at home.  We managed to find more seasoned wood in the yard, so I should be able to keep the wood stove going for another 2 weeks, if I have to.  Yes, I have heat in the house.  But if you've ever sat near a fire, you know the instant, comforting warmth.  THAT is what I crave.  Instant warmth from all the scary shit going on.

I heard from my oldest last night.  He likes his job and I feel that is great.  Our conversation was easy and normal and in this time, I love that.  I love that he contacted me, out of the blue, just to have a conversation.  I miss him.

Patrick just wrote to say he's made 36 hours so far this week.  That is amazing.  Considering they keep cutting, cutting, cutting.  He really is my rock star.  Not just because he used to be in a band and legit WAS a rock star but because he does whatever it takes to take care of us.  I just love him so much.  My fear is that this will take him from me. 

Day 8 working from home

It's 2020. A lot has changed since I started this blog. I left it and really, it took me almost a whole morning to figure out how to log in again. Emails changed, links changed, I've changed. I know I have a handful of people who 'follow' me on this. I have no idea if you are notified via email, blogger, Facebook or what. I'm not even sure how you would unsubscribe. Apparently I was subscribed to a bunch but either they don't update anymore or I use a different email address. So maybe they won't be bothered.

I'm not here to write about what happened in 2013 or 2015 or even really 2019, although that definitely will come into play if I continue. I'm here to write about what is going on now. For me. For me to remember. For me to stay sane.

Today, I'm working from home. Although I'm doing way more than that. I've been cleaning, disinfecting, organizing, making dinners, making desserts, making things from scratch. I've even thought about making sourdough starter from scratch. I'm kinda crafty like that. BUT I haven't.

Why?

Possibly hope that this isn't going to require me to make sourdough starter and then live off it. I'm not a big bread eater and neither is Bryce or Patrick, so we won't need a ton BUT bread isn't easy to find a the grocery store right now. And I have 3/4 a loaf of white bread, 8 hamburger rolls, one refrigerated package of crescent rolls, one of refrigerated biscuits and two refrigerated french bread. BUT, it takes 5 days to make sour dough starter. Am I being smart about this? Do I have enough? I'm sure I have more than some. I counted my toilet paper rolls last night. 21 rolls. We've already used 2 in the last week. So, if this continues, we will be out in about 10 weeks. That should definitely be enough. Hopefully.

I should back up so I remember. I'm not sure of the exact date but in early March, Covid-19 was starting to show up in the US and become noticed on the news and in our government. Now, I'm a bariatric patient(possibly more on that in another post) and I've done pretty well with it. I've been within about 10 lbs of my lowest weight but really what this is about is my vitamins. I take a ton, still. Almost 3 years out. 6 chew able Calciums, 2 chew able children's multivitamins, 3 chew able glucosamine, 2 chew able vitamin c, one Vitamin D and one Monday's a Vitamin B12. I just added some biotin and something else too but those aren't part of the program. So, I was out of my Calcium Chews and close to the end of my multivitamins and thought, hey I should go grab a couple. This thing in the world is ramping up and I need it anyway, I'll grab two just to be safe. So off I went to my local Walgreens.

They had none.

What? This isn't possible. This Corona thing isn't even here, no one's really worried that I've been near. Why are they out? I'll just try CVS. Off to CVS.

They had one tiny package of chew able multivitamins. I usually buy the package of 120, this had 30 in it. I bought it.

I called Patrick. Now I was in a panic, what is going on? Why can't I find these items? He suggested I head over to WalMart and look there. He went off to another CVS on his way home.

I bought all Walmart had. And before you judge, it really wasn't much. They were out of Vitamin C and LOADS of other vitamins. So I ended up only buying 3 packages of chew able multivitamins and 3 containers of calcium. Patrick found a few others on his way home. But the supply will only last me about 10 weeks. - Wait, that's how much toilet paper I have left.... oh no....

So once I realized about the vitamins, it freaked me out. Really. I won't lie. That got me really worried. Now that I remember, my hunt for vitamins was on a Wednesday. I told Patrick that on Friday, we were going food shopping. They had already started closing schools down and with Bryce home alone, he could either eat everything or nothing. We needed to make sure there was something in the house for him to eat.

People were already talking about the stores being low or completely out of toilet paper (I had bought one at Walgreens without even knowing this information) and we get a meal delivery service so we don't really have a lot of food in the house. Thanks to EveryPlate and HelloFresh for making my life easier, although I was asked to suspend that yesterday so I'm back to preparing like a whole bunch of other people... When Patrick got home on Friday, there was more talk but still nothing too crazy. People talking about going shopping, stocking up, needing hand sanitizer. We went to our local Shaw's and dropped $330 on groceries. And then on Saturday morning, Patrick was in line at Shaw's to buy two packages of toilet paper (cause they were out the night before).

When they called the schools off, my thoughts and feelings about this went haywire. I was safe, Bryce was safe, Patrick was safe but Caleb... Two thousand, five hundred miles away from me.

AND HE CANNOT COME HOME.

Having a child in the armed forces is bittersweet. So proud but worried about 99.2% of the time. When my thoughts came to Caleb, I remembered something he had said to me in January. "Mom, this virus... please be safe. Wash your hands. Tell Dad. Tell Bryce. Stay clean." In January, I said thank you and moved on to something else. I didn't give it another thought, until sometime in March when his words came flooding back. He's not really in a position to 'know' something but did he? Was it intuition? Something they told him? I don't want to know.

Work. Thankfully we are cloud based for about 90% of the business. Well that's my guess-timate. I don't really know. But my percentage of what I have to do can be done online for about 90%. My co-worker, the Office Manager, still goes in. She's doing the 10% I can't do, plus her stuff. BUT I'm working. I'm doing the best to pull whatever weight I can from here. And, I'm cleaning. You know, all the stuff everyone else is doing here right now. They gave us the option on March 16th if we wanted to work from home, we could. I chose working from home.

After a LOT Of internal debate. I didn't make the final decision until about 1/2 hour before leaving.

While my anxiety about this was high, I'm a worker. I LOVE being busy. I have two jobs plus I volunteer for my local Boy Scout Troop, I'm taking online Real Estate Agent classes and I've got a great group of friends. I stay busy. In early March, I can remember telling someone that my first day off was going to be April 5th. But I wasn't complaining. I'm a worker. Actually what I really love to do, is teach crafting. And my second job at the Nailed it Studio really helps me with that. I can work 8 hours at the Monday-Friday job and go home miserable (it's just not what I really want to do) and then I can go on a Friday night, after working the M-F, and head to the studio to teach and it flies by. I LOVE it. But, it just doesn't pay the bills. So I do it for my own sanity. That job.... well, I'm hoping it will be there when this is over. So when I say, I had some internal debate. I did. I want to work. I'm not a I'll-stay-home-and-watch-tv type of person. Although, I am loving this working from home thing. I think it's the freedom. I'm going to have to explore this some more....

I've been out of the house 2 times since staying home from work. Once we went to Crochetti's, a local butcher, for some chicken and steak tips. And the other time to meet someone in the parking lot because I found about 100 yards of elastic string. They've been looking for elastic for safety masks and I had some. Not exactly what they were looking for but someone said they could work with it. So I bundled that up, the fabric I had and any 1/4-3/8" ribbon in the old store stash and met this Scout mom to pass off the supplies. I know they will go to a good use.

It's the best I can do right now.

Keep my son home and schooled (I didn't even mention having to learn logarithms to help him with his pre-cal homework). Keep my work up and do what I can there. Keep my house cleaned and my family fed. Patrick is considered essential, so he's at work. But they are changing that too. This is going to be a huge financial burden on us soon if things keep up. He's a flat rate auto technician. And if people aren't leaving and don't need work on their cars, he won't have any work to come into the shop to do. If he doesn't work on a car, he gets paid absolutely nothing. Flat rate means, he gets paid on the work he does. If an oil change charges 1 hour to do and he can do it in 30 minutes, he still gets paid the 1 hour BUT if a tie rod end charges 3 hours to do it and it takes him 5, he worked 2 hours for free. Regardless, if no cars come in, he makes nothing. He's not paid hourly. So this could change everything about our life as we know it. Oh, and the shop is now only open until 1. So, he's walking in now and it's 2:16, about 3 to 3.5 hours early.

I guess I should help him disinfect. It appears he's taken a customers car home. Who knows what they have.... these are the times.

Long forgotten...

My poor little blog.  Lost in lala land.  Never to be seen or heard from again...  Unfortunately I haven't had the time to devote to my little blog.  I do semi-regularly participate in the Class Schedule blog.  You can find more information about my classes at www.kdcraftyconcepts.blogspot.com 

I'll try to update more here soon...  In the meantime, why not Friend me (Kim Parkinson) on Facebook or LIKE KEP Creations?

Merry Christmas!

Happy
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Kim and Donna thank you for supporting KD Craft Concepts these past few months. We are looking forward to bringing you some great inspiration and products in 2012!

Open House Sunday, October 23rd from 12-4PM!

I'm hosting my first open house on Sunday, October 23rd from 12-4PM.  Stop on by my home and see my all new studio!  Sit down, make a little art and enjoy some refreshments!

The first 3 people in the door will receive a door prize!

I'll have some catalogs available if you feel like you need some supplies and I do have a small store for you to peruse as well.

I'd love to see you!  Be sure to stop on by and say Hi!

284 Beulah St
Whitman, MA

eBay...

Has anyone out there ever eBayed before? It's hard work, huh!

I've got several items that I've been meaning to get rid of for months and with the restructuring of my craft room and the children's room I just need to make space. Never mind not having a regular paying job this last month as well. I've given away a bunch of stuff, thrown away broken things and donated a majority if books and clothing but there is some craft type supplies I decided would be best suited to eBay. I even have a few things I might put up on Etsy but that's a different adventure, I'm sure.

So I listed some basket weaving items and some stamping items up on eBay. First, let me say.... It takes about 15 minutes to list each item. That doesn't count answering questions, packaging and mailing.

Then the fees involved are huge! 9% from eBay and the another 2.9%+.10 for Paypal. eBay even takes fee from your shipping. So I already know I'm going to have to cut into any profits just to pay the shipping to get these items to their new home. Ugh!

Really, I'm wondering if it would have been easier to give the stuff away. Or throw it away. I don't want to - goodness knows I never get anything for free and I don't want to pollute the world anymore than it already is. But if I end up paying someone to take the stuff off my hands, what good is that to me either?

If you are interested in any of my eBay items, you can look up my eBay name at zinfodel. Or try clicking here to get to one of my current auctions:

Browser URL:
http://item.mobileweb.ebay.com/viewitem?itemId=170713838364
Lot Of Close To My Heart Ink Pads

My only hope now is that something goes for big money. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky...

Copic class in November

I'm working on my November 10th Copic class. We will be working on reds and some faces. Here's a sneak peek of the techniques we'll be working on in class.
Don't worry, it will be a card. This one was just colored. Whether you are a beginner or a regular Copic user, this class is for you!
You can sign up for class via PayPal or by contacting me directly! See this link to pay via Paypal. http://www.kimparkinson.com/Class_Information.html