Great Stress Relief!!!

Yesterday and through this morning, it's been good to come by various blogs I follow of people who I know that reside in what was Irene's path and know, so far, no one has been hurt and only a few have experienced what would be probably classified as "minimal" damages! Of course, even minimal damages from water can still be a bit costly but that still much better to have than to lose everything, be injured even slightly or worse, lose life/limb of a friend or loved one!

So, that is a big stress reliever for sure, isn't it?

And, the fact that this morning I also received the needed information in order for me to ship the recipes I have labored long and hard over for the past 6-8 weeks now off to the publisher and that has now been done too! Saturday a.m., I got the paperwork needed to order the cookbooks all packed into a nice little mailer at the post office, sent it out via Certified, return receipt requested priority mail, and the postmistress guaranteed me that the publisher would have this packet there, waiting for them to open it by this morning! YAY, YAY! That was a huge stressor off my shoulders, for sure! Now, I just have to wait and see how many errors there are in my paperwork or the recipes and where we then stand on getting the cookbook published and returned to us by November 1st! Say those prayers that all that comes about in the time span we'd been promised!!!

Because of this cookbook project, my embroidery hobby got put on a big "HOLD" for the past few weeks but this past week, I finally managed to complete the project I had begun before getting totally engrossed in "Ye Olde Cookbook" project. It was a very easy-to-do set of pillowcases in a sort of mod cross stitch design that normally, should/would have only taken me 3-4 days at most to complete. However, it ended up taking me about 6-7 weeks before I finally was able to get the last stitches done on that, There's yet another bit of relief, albeit a rather smallish one.

I have however already begun work now on my next embroidery project -which will be a tabletopper that is done in cross stitch and is of Christmas Trees. Let the Christmas stitchery begin! I'm really way behind on getting more than a few projects done up in that department now so hopefully, I can begin to catch up a bit there.

Over the past couple of days, I had fallen way behind on my blog reading. Finally, Saturday afternoon I got started trying to get my reader cleared out. I had it down from a little over 300 posts to be read Saturday a.m. to fewer than 100 posts left by late Saturday night. So Sunday evening, I sat down again to work on cleaning house in my reader -getting those blogs read, comments made, etc., etc.

I had figured even with a few new posts that might have been done between late Saturday night and Sunday afternoon/evening, I would only have maybe 130-140 posts on my reader to go through.

Well, boy did I ever get a major surprise though when I logged into my reader and saw the total number of unread posts there read an incredible number -like 686 NEW UNREAD posts!

Say what? That just couldn't be true, could it?

As I scrolled down to see which posters had left new stuff there I soon discovered the culprit was one of my favorite bloggers -Terri Terri -who writes a great blog from her vantage point up in Minneapolis way! What the heck was going on here with her showing as having 500 plus new posts -in less than a day? Then I finally figured it out -she had transferred posts over to her current blog and those 500 plus -well, not for me to worry about them because I'd already seen, read and commented on them along the way! Then, this morning I saw too that she had put up a post -after I had logged in late last night -explaining what she'd done. That, after she'd just about scared the living daylights out of me though about 2 a.m. ya know!

So anyway, hopefully now my life will return to my being blissfully very lazy with only the embroidery and perhaps a few books I have laying around here that I had intended to have read by this time but just never had taken the time to do that either over the past several weeks and even months. A little catch-up in that kind of reading department needs to take place soon now too!

This week marks a big event in my house hold though as the kids -note that is plural there -start school on Wednesday of this week. Yep, both kids will be going to regular school beginning this week now. Maya will be in 2nd grade -already! And, Kurtis -well he is about to embark on the real beginnings of a whole new ballgame for him as he will start kindergarten -all day variety of that no less -on Wednesday too! Maya will ride the regular school bus again this year but Kurtis will be going to school on the special van and will be picked up directly in front of the house. This is the same procedure we followed with Maya when she started kindergarten two years ago and it worked very well for her so we're hoping this process will work equally well for Kurtis now too! He just isn't focused enough nor does he have the maturity level needed to ride the "big" bus with ALL the elementary students from this neck of the woods. Actually, I think if he were to ride that bus, with his big sister there, it would be really detrimental for him because you see, his sister is often his biggest nemesis these days! She would no doubt be the one most likely to bully him on the bus if he were to be there with her as she's not exactly prone to being a nice sister, guiding him along, keeping him out of harm's way. Sibling rivalry ranks quite high in her book, you see!

So this Wednesday will be quite a day for both Mandy and for me as we say good by and wish both kiddos lots of good luck as they begin the new school year. And, after we get them loaded on their respective buses and come back inside, I'm pretty sure we'll both be shedding more than a few tears -some of joy, some of fears -over seeing them off and realizing one chapter in our lives with them -well, Kurtis, in particular -will be coming to a close that morning as that van/bus he will be riding pulls away!

So, as the month of August draws to a close, September and fall is in close range, here's hoping things work all for the best for all of us in these days ahead!