What I did Monday night

I watched part 1 of Reckless on DVD, and made this:


It's a belt for El Burrito. Took me about 90 minutes to do - all hand-stitched, since I don't have a sewing machine, and I won't include the hour or so we spent looking for the pincushion.

I ended up making this belt, thanks to Hobby Lobby, because I can't find a belt around here that will fit El Burrito. (Can't find a small toddler-size pillow, either.) He's 2, but still wearing 12-month and 18-month shorts because he's apparently a bit on the beanpole side of things. I found some belts online, but I couldn't talk myself into spending $15 on a velcro belt that he'd only be able to wear for a year. So instead, I spent $3 at Hobby Lobby and ended up with this. $1.24 for a yard of cotton strap, $1.69 for a package of 4 D-rings. I may ask for a thimble for a partial anniversary present, though. Getting a needle through three layers of strap was a trick sometimes.

Reckless, by the way, is pretty good so far. We're only 2 hours in, and the set is 8 hours total (with the 2-hour sequel). I got a good laugh at the end, mostly because we've been watching Foyle's War on Masterpiece, and Michael Kitchen is in both series. I'm used to him being calm, wise DCS Foyle who always catches the culprit, and hearing him leaving half a dozen panicky, rambling messages on his wife's answering machine, thinking she knew he was having an affair, just hit my funny bone for some reason.

In other news, it's rained all day. My rain gauge is topped off, and I need to empty it. El Burrito insisted on walking out in the rain to check the mail, and got to play in some puddles along the way. He hit a deep one at one point and got his socks wet, but he had some fun. Yesterday, he dropped his plush Elephant (a plush Horton, $6 on clearance at Target, and a big hit here) in a puddle, but he dried out overnight.

Books and more books

Stay tuned for your regular Tuesday update:

Today's library stats: 18 items checked out, 8 on hold, returned 8 items today.

On the return list:

• Make Love! The Bruce Campbell Way - Fiction, unlike his autobiography, and pretty darn funny. Also a nice fluffy, shallow summer book, and it's illustrated. (P.S. The "Make Love" in the title refers to a movie, not any actual PG or R-rated content. )
  
• Cranford - The novel that was made into a miniseries for Masterpiece Theatre. I think so far I prefer the miniseries, but the book was equally as good. The miniseries just had Judi Dench to swing the vote. The book is slightly confusine - the Notes at the back keep referring to Appendix A & B, which weren't included in the Notes.
  
• The Frodo Franchise - Didn't finish it, may buy it. But I'm a LOTR junkie.
  
• Masterpiece Theatre: A celebration of 25 years of outstanding television - Great behind-the-scenes stuff, and may lead to a longer hold list, if any of the old shows are out on DVD now.
  
• Living like Ed - Interesting, and I may get a copy for my sister
  
• The Sneaky Chef - interesting ideas to keep in mind
  
• 2 DVDs - Reckless, disc 1 (amazing stuff), and There Goes a Fire Truck/Garbage Truck/Truck

Then we spent $1 at the book sale (because I had a grand total of $1.16 with me) on 2 books, and had to leave behind the T.A. Barron book. Oh well.

Monday

Lovely Monday.

The good news: most of the laundry was washed, dried, and folded before lunch. At the moment, there's one load in the dryer, a rug in the washer, and three loads waiting to be folded. We sorted out the under-the-kitchen-sink stuff over the weekend, and have a box of goodies to take to the household Hazardous Waste drop-off this weekend.

Oh, and while I was emptying a laundry basket of "stuff" that had been sitting around for a month, I decided to try on some of the jeans in the pile. I've got three more pairs of jeans now that come close to fitting. (Yay!) Of course, by the time I semi-retire the two current pairs that are slightly too big now, I'll be back to having more days of the week than jeans to wear every day. Ah well.

The bad news: I waited too long to order a Nene Thomas print (it's the companion piece to one I bought last fall) and it's sold out now. I thought it was an open-ended run, but apparently not. Off to Ebay I go.

What happens . . .

when Mommy goes bargain-hunting online for a tractor-crazy Burrito?

Well, El Burrito ends up with 2 bigger (1/16th scale) tractors, but no big trailers to pull with them. Which leads to scenes like this one:


One big tractor pulling a small (1/64th scale) flatbed trailer, hay wagon, and feed wagon. At the same time. :) That's Tractor Mac, by the way. The other "big tractor" is Deke (even though the "real" Deke in the book is green). And yes, the Burrito can tell them apart, although the only differences are the decals and hub color, and will correct us when we call them by the wrong name. "That's not Tractor Mac! That's Deke!" he says.

Then UPS delivers a box of small goodies today


and someone votes to skip lunch and play! (He got out-voted on that one.) Lots of duplicates - 8 hay rakes, 5 cultivators, and 4 balers is a few too many - but lots of fun. And I can probably resell some of the duplicates and pay for at least part of what this batch cost. Which was a steal, by the way, as was Tractor Mac up there. Mac cost a whopping $5 from Ebay. In contrast, there was a very similar tractor at the flea market this month, in much worse shape, for the low, low price of $22.50. Plus tax. The batch of 1/64th stuff was $18 including postage, and made it here super-fast - it was shipped out yesterday. That's less than $1 per piece, and they're all in good shape except for the silage choppers.

Anyway, today we had scenes like this one on the couch:


Grandpa will get a kick out of this one. El Burrito apparently has a lot of faith in the little Farmall there. It's pulling not one, but three disk cultivators, plus a hay mower, a grain wagon, and a tub grinder (or bale chopper, I'm not sure what it's called).

Then we added another cultivator, and rearranged the lineup:

Grandpa got to hear all about this on the phone tonight, and will probably want a copy of the pictures. He's a confirmed Farmall & International man, although he has a Massey Ferguson combine.

Needless to say, I'm on the hunt now for some bigger wagons and such at a decent price. Aside from the goofy appearance of a big tractor and little trailer, the little stuff won't stay hitched to the big tractor that well. So a few bigger implements will lower the frustration level around here. Plus, more fun!

Books

It's stopped storming, after a night full of lovely cloud-to-ground lightning, so we're going to the library. Also to Walgreens and Linens N Things (El Burrito needs a pillow).

Today's library numbers: 22 items checked out, 9 on my hold list, nothing horrendously overdue (now).

Back to the library today:

• Remains to be Scene - mentioned earlier
  
• Ready Set Crochet - interesting beginner-level book, with a lot of stitch patterns to try out.
  
• The Battle of the Labyrinth - also mentioned earlier
  
• Shooting Digital - This one is a photography book, which I read slowly because there was a lot of information in there. Also lots of examples and explanations.
  
• Fortune's Fool - a Mercedes Lackey book, but not Valdemar. This one is from her 500 Kingdoms series, which is from a different publisher. The books so far have been a mix of fantasy and romance, based on mythology and fairy tales. This one was heavily linked to various Russian fairy tales.
  
• Overtreated: Why too much medicine is making us sicker and poorer - Didn't finish that one (it was severely overdue), but it looked like an interesting bit of research.
  

Then we checked out 3 books and a DVD, and spent $7 at the sale. Found a Winnie the Pooh ABC book for El Burrito, and a couple of goodies for me: a book by Anne LaBastille (although not Woodswoman), a book by Thelwell the pony cartoonist (but not pony cartoons), and a pair of YA paperbacks.

Busy weekend

We weren't home much over the weekend.

Somehow, watching DH's niece & nephew (at their house) while the in-laws went to see a 2-hour play morphed into a 10-hour babysitting experience. Between meeting everyone at DQ for dinner and the usual chit-chat afterwards, we left here before noon and got home after 10:00.

This is why having the in-laws watch El Burrito for "a few hours" while we go look at houses or see a movie can be an all-day thing.

Well, that was interesting

Had my quarterly dental visit today, with the periodontist's hygienist. I'd forgotten that they were talking about a full set of X-rays this time. And they do mean full - about 18 different exposures, roughly 2 teeth per shot.

Yeah, that bill's going to be fun to see, insurance or not.