Goings On and Not Goings On

So what have we been doing with ourselves, other than trying to buy a house?  For starters, we have been going to the pool a lot.  I have spent more time at a pool this summer than I have since I was about 11, I think.  The pool we belong to (the same community center that has the gym we're using and where Grace is going to school in the fall) is great for little non-swimming kids with a big zero-entry area that they can walk around in.  Grace is so brave this summer about putting her head in and has enough motor skill to actually kick and pull her arms and whatnot.  Violet likes to walk in to about knee-depth, then turn around and walk out, then turn around and walk in, then wander off and try to steal some other child's pool toys.

I've also been exercising a lot more than I have in YEARS.  I exercised today, making it now a full week with doing something every single day, even if it was just 30 minutes of yoga on Saturday.  I don't naturally like exercising, but hopefully I can make it a habit and find some things I sort of enjoy and feel physically better.  (And maybe look better too?  I weighed myself this morning and I am FOUR POUNDS heavier than I was last week.  I know that there are many good benefits to exercise that are not weight loss but still, that is a bit discouraging after being really disciplined this week.)

I also have been missing Abbey a lot.  Between when she died and when we moved out of our house in Dallas, I kept thinking I heard her nails on the hardwood floors or her tags jingling on her collar.  I didn't think about it all as much during the really insane period of driving and having no furniture and whatnot, but now that things are settled down, I miss her.  It's been over a month now that she has been gone.  I especially miss having her around late at night when the girls are asleep and we would often be petting her or taking care of her.  Sweet girl...

And now I shall tell you what we have NOT been doing.  I have not been cleaning very much, that is for sure.  I have had some huge mental block about cleaning here.  I think it is partly that it is a rental and thus I don't have much sense of belonging here, and partly that it isn't the nicest of houses so I don't feel motivated to try to keep it nice.  This is counterproductive, of course, because letting the house get dirty makes me like being here even less.  I finally gathered some gumption this past weekend and made Rob help me and the house is now clean.  Now I resolve to not let the kitchen floor ever get as disgusting as it was before I cleaned it yesterday.

Also, I have not been cooking much.  The kitchen here in the rental does not really lend itself to grand culinary exertion and then there is the lack of air conditioning.  We had a spell of quite hot weather that was even a bit humid (well, humid for here) and I just could not bear to turn on the stove or the oven or anything like that.  I have been using the rice cooker a good bit, and we've been eating salad a lot, and we've still been going out to restaurants more than we normally do.  I keep trying to check out raw food websites, but a lot of those recipes (at least the ones that aren't just salads) seem to involve a mandoline (which I DESPERATELY want) or a dehydrator (which I do not).  Anyway, today at lunch Grace declared she was tired of peanut butter and jelly so I may have to step up my game here soon.  Hopefully this won't be too painful because the heat seems to have broken and we have more temperate, arid weather which is much more comfy in our non-air-conditioned house.

And lastly, I have not been sewing, which is a bit of a bummer.  When we started unpacking our boxes, we realized that there wasn't really going to be room for my sewing table and all the associated stuff that goes along with it here in the rental.  By that time, we had also adjusted our timetable so that we would hopefully be in a house of our own within a few months so I decided to just leave it all packed up in boxes in the basement, along with half our kitchen stuff and all our books and so forth.  I am missing it, for sure; the latest issues of Ottobre and Burda came and it was sad to realize that I won't be able to sew any of it for quite a while.  The lack of sewing has motivated me to get out my knitting needles, though; knitting takes up much less space and isn't nearly as involved, equipment-wise.  I decided to try to make a Kina for Grace and went to check out a fun independent yarn shop here in Salt Lake City to buy some very pretty yarn.  The sweater is looking really good so far and I feel quite optimistic about my chances of actually producing a wearable garment within a reasonable timeframe.  I am possibly the worst, slowest, most unproductive knitter in the world, but I am here on Ravelry, if any pals out there want to be my friends.