Work

So for the last week and a half I've been cleaning out the storage shed/new sewing room. While cleaning out the inside part of the shed I found Christmas ornaments that were missing, a newspaper from November 23,1963, and pictures of Dad when he was a teeny little boy. He looked like Judah. :-) He was cute! So after I cleaned the floor, it was time to fix the door knob and the windows. One of the windows was broken by yours truly (I told you I couldn't aim well), and the other one was broken by Timmy. He has no excuse for bad aim. Come on, he plays baseball. He has no excuse for hitting the window instead of the tree. ;-) I successfully removed what remained of the bottom window without any thing or any one getting hurt. Then I moved on to the top window. Removed the glass but not without a trip to the house for some hydrogen peroxide and band-aides. Ouch! So now I'm working on cleaning the outside portion of the shed, which has been used as a place for the bikes, lawn mowers, spare washing machines and dryers, and in the rare event of a hurricane ever hitting us, a goat shelter. I've also found out that this is where our dogs bring the little "treasures" that they find in the woods. You can not imagine all the things that they've brought back from their daily wanderings. So by tomorrow evening I'm hoping to have the entire shed cleaned out and organized so that on Tuesday I can start moving my sewing stuff in there. I can't wait!! :-)

Cleaning

OK. So yesterday I was forced to do a job that I had been avoiding for quite a while. I had to clean out any and all junk that had accumulated under my bed in the last three to four months. How and why was I forced to do this? Well (this may sound a little weird to any city person) I had a goat sleeping in my room. Yes a goat. He was not feeling well and the cold weather was making it worse. So he got to sleep inside. And that goat sure did make a mess out of my room! He decided that he was going to show his appreciation for the warm room by making a mess on the floor. Guess who got to clean it? :-) So I pulled the bed away from the wall and began to clean. You never know what you might find under a bed. So what did I find?
Here's a list:

8 books (of which only two belonged in my room)

 2 laptop chargers

$1.51 (wow, look! Mom was right. It pays to clean your room.)

 a fabric marker
 
and 11 of Seth Logan's toy farm animals

I should clean out from under my bed more often. :) And now my floor is clean again.

Noise

Hmmm. Noise for me is a funny thing. When it is a normal day around here, noise is ok.
Except when I'm working on a difficult part in my sewing project. Then I must have complete silence in my room. COMPLETE silence. But when it is not a difficult part in my project, I have to have noise. I am so used to the noise of little voices talking and yelling, and not so little voices talking, and little feet running up and down the hallway, that when that noise is gone the house just seems........ well, quite. Too quite. Now you may be asking yourself "When is their house quite? With four kids under the age of 10, how could their house EVER be quite?" Well I'll answer that question. On Saturday when almost everyone is at market. Or when they go to a friends house and some people stay home to keep a eye on the goats. Or when it is 11:30 pm and they are all in bed and I'm up late sewing. Because I reasoned to myself earlier that day that it would be easier to sew at night when the noise level is down. Only to find that when they are in bed and the house is quite, that it is simply too hard to sew without background noise. :) So what do I do when I want background noise? I have several options. I can invite any one who is home or still awake to come and keep me company. Doesn't work. I always end up getting distracted by the conversation. And it is hard for me to work and talk at the same time. Or I can put some music on to play and turn the volume up. But the thing that I do most often is turn a movie on and listen to it while I work. That way I have music and a voice to listen to. But it can't be just any old movie. It has to be a movie that I know by memory. That way I won't get distracted by watching it. I'll know what's going to happen and I don't need to see the screen to enjoy the movie. And I get the noise. Have to have the noise. :-) So that is why I find myself listening to The Return of the King while working in my room on this cold December night.