Monday Menu & notes.

Hi there folks!

I've been somewhat all over the place the last few weeks. Some of it is because it has been really busy with the boys doing summer school and some of it is because my ability to focus right now is kinda sketchy. Hypomania means I get a lot of stuff done all the time because I can't sit still and I jump from task to task. At the same time, however, it makes it hard to sit down and work on something that is not super active. Like folding clothes, washing dishes, or scrubbing the bathroom. Right now, I am forcing myself to sit here and type this.

Why, you may ask, and the answer is because I am tired of not posting anything anywhere. I want to get back to my writing. So, when the boys are doing things like playing legos at the table, I am going to do my best to get some writing done. But, as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go fold laundry and wash some dishes because the feeling I need to move and do something is like an itch I can't scratch.

I forget where I put down my master list for this week with the meals planned out for everyday.

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Mon	Pancakes	Pizza leftovers	Hamburgers with fixings Tossed salad & fries
Tues	Cereal	Sandwiches & Chips	Chicken fajitas & 'Mexican' rice
Wed	Pop-tarts	Burrito bowls	Pulled pork & apple slaw
Thurs	Waffles	Sandwiches & chips	Sweet & Sour kielbasa fried perogies
Fri	Cereal	Sandwiches & chips	Chicken jalfrezi & rice
Sat	Eggs & bacon	Birthday party potluck	Leftovers
Sun	Eggs & hash	Leftovers	Pizza

Eh, I tried using a table generator off of a random site on the internet. I'm not sure how pleased I am with this result.

The 'Mexican rice' recipe is on my Pinterest cooking page. That is also where the apple slaw recipe is bookmarked and the sweet and sour kielbasa recipe is too. I'm pretty sure that Friday's dinner is going to be a situation where I eat dinner before the guys so that I can get out to Buffalo for LARP in time.

I have been trying out this business of batch cooking food for the rest of the week. So far, I am pretty pleased with the results. Taking the time to cook up a bunch of chicken breasts and shred them last week left me with some cooked chicken to use this week. I also am using the leftover pulled pork from two weeks ago this week. (I am also going to be cooking pork roasts as well, to shred and stuff for next week.)

I think I like the fact that it opens up a little more time for doing stuff with the kids.

Tour de Fleece: Week 1

So, I am participating in Tour de Fleece again this year. I have taken the raspberry colored fiber that I was spinning a while back out of the cupboard. I dressed my distaff and am spinning singles on my Ashford student spindle. I have gotten in about four hours of spinning over the course of the week. The weather recently has been very humid and it makes spinning wool somewhat unpleasant.

When I wasn't spinning, I was plying. I have plied the two singles that I had from my drawer pull spindle - the middle weight one. I also wound the singles from the Turkish spindle into a ball for plying. I am trying out that technique I read in Spin Off a while back where you take your two singles and wind them into a ball and ply from that. If it goes well, I may just do the same with the singles I have from my French spindle. I am still trying to decide what I am going to use to ply that. I think I am going to ply the singles from the Turkish spindle on my kick wheel. I would be using the Ashford student spindle, but that is currently occupied with spinning that raspberry fiber. I finished the whole braid of the rainbow colored fiber. When I was winding balls for plying, I wound up with stuff getting tangled up. I estimate my loss on that being around two yards.

I am trying to decide what my goal for TdF is going to be this year. A part of me wants to try to spin that full mile of thread again. The rest of me looks at the pile of fiber I have and says 'I need to use some of this up.' So, I am thinking that maybe my goal will be a certain amount of time spinning every day, like an hour or something and the secondary goal would be using up the fiber I have languishing.

I have one problem, though. My fiber keeps trying to slide down the distaff. I'm not sure how to fix that. I have been doing some reading but what I find is inconclusive. I am thinking about switching over to the skinny stick that I was initially using as a distaff, but I don't think that is a great idea because it wasn't very comfortable to use.