Perfect Sized

Good morning happy Tuesday! It is warm outside already. I opened the windows for the kitties but it makes this room hot in the morning.  Had my older two enjoying the sunshine for a minute.

Yesterday I had 0 mask orders (but sold a lot of the ones I made up) so I worked on cleaning up my fabric some more. I went through over 100 of the boards so now I have to wait until some more get here in a couple days.  I'm down to one shelf on the big book case to put them but will have to move my scrapbook albums first. I think I am going to put all the paper stuff in the closet area so I can move those but it will take some rearranging since that is a mess too.


I have 1 mask order to make up today. Trying to decide if I should just work on sewing up some more or just work on other things. I think I might do a bunch of black fabric ones.

I also cleaned my box fan (so so gross) and vacuumed my sewing room. What are the chances of getting the perfect sized button stuck in the vacuum? 100% for me. Took me forever to get it unstuck.

Nothing else exciting going on here so far today which is just fine by me. I'll take a quite day any day!

Weekend Hangover

I have a hangover from the weekend. Probably because I stayed up so late every night. Now back to getting up blah.

Friday was interesting, look at what was in the news. What they actually posted was that if the rioters came to rob their farm and mess with the school they'd be ready for them. BUT look at this picture.

This guy was the principal when Jessica was in K-8 (or part of those years anyways, he was a teacher during that time too). Jessica got bullied a lot in that school and at one point this asshat made her do a handwriting analysis to prove that she didn't write "Jessica is a bitch" on the wall in the girls bathroom.

Yeah lost all respect for him after that. It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm glad my kids don't go to school there anymore. They went from a nice country school to this huge charter school system with a regular K-8 kind of in the background.

I just read through a bunch of posts from 2008 looking to see if I blogged about that but couldn't find it. I did find some funny stuff though.

I spent all weekend sewing. LOTS of masks. I finally finished sewing up ALL the ones I had cut out to offer up. They sell much better made up haha. So now I'm trying to decide if I should just continue sewing them up to add to my stock or just do orders and work on other stuff in between. Maybe a bit of both.

I've now made 861 masks. Pretty crazy since I was adamant that I wasn't going to make them haha.

Oh and I'm pretty sure we killed our oven this weekend. I was making some little frozen pizzas my friend gave me and the house got all smokey. There was some crap on fire in the bottom of the oven so I was like guess it's time to clean it! I ran the cleaning cycle and now when we turn the oven on it just wants to be in clean mode (minus locking the door). Sigh. Always something. I kind of just want to get a new stove/oven though since the burners on ours are all jacked up and the new one we bought doesn't sit right.

One of my neighbors is grinding something. SIGH. I can't ever have the flipping window open because they are making so much noise. Yesterday it was a chainsaw and then I think they broke their water line and every one in the club was over there fixing it. Just looked out the window and there is a crew over there working on that again. One of the guys that was helping yesterday lets his dog roam all over. It roamed over to my yard so I yelled at it to get. Jesus why can't people keep their dogs with them or on a leash.  I'm about ready to fence in my whole yard. So tired of people's dogs wandering into it.

Motivational Wrappers

Woohoo we made it to Friday!

I don't have a whole lot to talk about since yesterday. Mother in law got discharged from the visiting nurse (they only get so many visits) . So I'm done running over there for those visits for now.

This morning I realized I have no milk or creamer so I am going to attempt another Instacart order, lets all pray they can find my house this time.

I did a lot of sewing last night, I decided to just assembly line all the stuff I needed to do and then decided I'd just do all the stuff I had cut out since I had already prepped it all. So I only got 2 orders completed while I worked with the "white thread" group lol.

This group is almost done, just need to add the elastic and tack it down

Yesterday when I was sewing I was cracking up at the neighbor. He has this tiny little Yorkie he walks down the street. Next thing I know he's walking back (with no shoes on) holding the leash and no dog. Then he gets in the car and goes by but the Yorkie met him in front of my yard and hopped in the car. Dogs always have to pull things when you don't have your shoes on haha.

I noticed this for the first time last night. WTF Always? How about putting things like "it's ok, eat the chocolate" and "this too shall pass" or Aunt Flo is a Bitch. Keep Playing, how about you keep playing.

Did anyone else platform go back to the old blogger? I just noticed mine is.

Here is today's stats for my county. 136 new cases since yesterday. Thankfully my brother and nephew's tests came back negative.

Well here's to a productive weekend. I'm closing in on 800 masks!

Working All Day Is Hard

Happy Thursday! We're almost there!

So when I left off I was going to go down to the office to find out what I need to do for the septic.

1. Get the woman who has the lot next to mine change to another lot (the lot just goes with her membership to the Club since she doesn't have a house out here)
2. Write a letter to the board requesting 1/3 of the lot next to mine and hope it gets approved
3. Get the plan back from the septic guy to put with my "building permit" for the Club (he will take care of county permits)
4. Once 1-3 happens hopefully it will be approved and then we can get it going
5. I'm a little excited about having 1/3 more lot that I can fence in after we get this done since it will give me more room in the back yard to put up another shed (and of course just more yard!)

Hopefully all that will be happening by next month. The next board meeting is the 3rd Saturday in July so it isn't going to happen very quickly.

I went to work for the full day yesterday. Unfortunately so did the gal in the other department that I don't care for. She spent all day huffing and puffing with all the stuff she couldn't figure out or did wrong or wouldn't work. God she's annoying. I need to remember some headphones the next time I go in. I was pretty busy all day so that was nice. I need to go in for a big next week to work on packets again since I never got to that yesterday.

This is me with real pants on yesterday

I'm just going to rename this road "Garbage Road". This is what happens in areas where we don't have "bulk pick up" like they do back East.

My morning faucet drinkers

After work I went to the bank, which was closed. I don't understand why banks have to close early because of Covid. I mean, yes, limit the people inside by why do you have to close at 4pm? Makes no sense to me.

Then I decided to brave the thrift store. There were no uncut sewing patterns but there was a bunch of holiday soft doll and a few quilt patterns. I got this big pile for $5 and the little fabric pack goes with the pattern on top. The fabric has a $30 price sticker on it! Crazy someone paid that much and then didn't even use it. Just happy to have some new stock for my Etsy store, I haven't listed anything new on there in forever.

Check out this lamp! I didn't have to imagine how much dust that lamp shade would hold because I could see it.

After I got home I laid down for a little bit and took a nap. I had WAY too much lunch and today I'm still not quite right from it. Maybe some day I'll learn. I swear it expanded like 5x after I ate it. 

I think I maybe slept a half hour when it because apparent that was all I was going to get. I spent some time working on my fabric organization some more. I have all but one shelf in the big bookcase with fabric on it now. I emptied a small box of fabric and filled it with some paper stuff for my 3rd Etsy shop that I need to list some day when I get in the mood. Lots of stickers and stuff that I tried on Ebay but they aren't selling much. I think they will do better on Etsy.

Finally I made Melissa two more masks for work

Then I stayed up til after midnight getting the rest of my orders cut out. I need to cut 2 more for my sister law who was forced to buy a mask to go into a store the other day. I was wondering when she'd need one.

Here is my COUNTY Covid cases. They are exploding.  I fear that death toll is going to go up quite a bit in the next couple weeks.

 And here is my Rusty dog wanting to go out for the THIRD time before noon today.  He sure is getting gray.

Septic Masks

So today in the life and times of Julie Tuesday edition

The guy that does leach lines came yesterday. Nice and chill guy which is nice for something that's super stressful haha. Of course Scott wasn't home from work yet so I had to go out and talk to him about it. My next job is to go down to the club office and find out how I can get part of the lot next to me so we can run the lines over there. But first I need to take a shower.

After work  yesterday I finished up one order for masks and did another order for 10. I only need to make about 750 more to have enough money to pay for the septic (kidding kind of haha). As annoying as it is that we have this pandemic it's been nice to continue making some side hustle money.

I got a few more orders yesterday so not anymore caught up but that's ok!

Tomorrow I have to go into work for the entire day. That's probably going to feel like a really long day. I don't have a lot to work on but I'm sure I can find some stuff to scan and folders to organize.

Father's Day Sunday

Saturday morning I did an Instacart order and got the worst delivery person yet. She got SO Lost before she even got to the complex where I live. I've never had anyone get lost on the 6 mile straight road before. Holy cow that takes an extra special person. She was acting like it was my fault too. I thought about leaving her a bad review but then remembered she knows where I live lol. I always tip extra well for Instacart since it's a 12 mile ride from town and I really appreciate people doing it for me but man I kind of wish I didn't give her so much after all her drama.

I spent all of Saturday sewing, except for when Jess came over to make some Father's Day T shirts and needed some help with the printer/computer not talking to each other. I'm not quite sure how it happens but she always has problems with whatever printer I have not working for her. Works just fine for me though lol

Sunday morning Scott was like "it looks like the ceiling in the living room is falling down". Well hello, that's exciting. The ceiling and the two outside walls in the living room are the only sheet rock we have not removed and replaced. Scott seems terrified of the blow in insulation that is in the attic area and just does not want to deal with it. To me it seems like it would be like a good idea to remove that and put in something that actually might help our house but what do I know. He came up with a plan to use some 2x4's to hold up the ceiling so he could screw it in. Apparently it just had tiny nails holding it up. Here is Trevor making sure the 2x4's don't fall while Scott goes outside to find his screwdriver and extension cord. He never puts anything away, I don't know how I'm married to him for so long. 

Yes the room is a mess, I've given up temporarily. I shall take it back at some point.

So then he made the ceiling look like it just went through an allergy test. Guess we'll be painting the living room soon. It's ok though it really did need to be redone anyways so this will just get things moving.

In the morning while he was thinking about how he was going to fix that I made him pancakes and bacon for breakfast (he usually makes us breakfast every weekend), then made potato salad, mac salad and fruit salad for dinner later.

We went over to my mom's cabin where Jess is staying and had dinner with all my kids plus Daniel (Jess' boyfriend) and his dad, his dad's girlfriend and their other kids. I know, we had a get together, during a pandemic. But the kids are always going to both of our houses so I'm sure we are getting our germs spread back and forth on a regular basis.

It was a nice evening. We were maybe going to do s'mores but we were all too tired and just came home. Sucks having to get up to work the next day. Wednesday I have to actually GO to work since it's my once every 2 weeks to help out to cover the office. We'll see how that goes. I have to go pick up the mail for the office at the post office. I don't know why they don't just get it delivered again since we have someone there every day.

Here's Tubby napping in front of the fan, so funny how they do that. Must feel good to them too.

I saw someone post this and I'm like TRUTH! This will be Scott's siblings when his mom is gone, with their hands out.

Plans for Monday include work, than more mask sewing. The septic guy is coming to look at our septic situation. I hope he has better ideas than the last guy that came out a couple years ago.

Sweet Saturday

My sister in law asked me if I could make masks for her and her daughter, but out of chiffon. I thought maybe she was joking but she wasn't.

Friday while working I answered about 10 questions before noon that people could have figured out on their own if they would have just searched their email for my previous answer.

Also the dumb girl in the other department told me to PLEASE make sure I don't transpose numbers. Sheesh sorry. Maybe I should call her out on all her mistakes..

So Thursday California made it required to wear masks so now I have a ton of mask orders. I've been chipping away at them one order at a time, that makes my brain less stressed than trying to do them all at once. Feels more productive!

I don't know WTF I'm doing with this new layout stuff. Why can't I get the pictures back to the center? Now I have lines here and there. Oh well I give up.

This fabric is really cool if you like skulls 

Woohoo Friday!

Well the septic tank got pumped out. It is confirmed we need new leach lines. I'm going to have to sell more masks haha. Lucky for us the pumping was free since we had a gift certificate we won at a club party last August! As soon as I saw a few of those in there I bought a lot of raffle tickets! Saved me $350 (for now). The guy gave us a number of someone to call. I gave Scott that tasks so I will probably have to call in a couple months.

I sold a bunch of masks yesterday. I'm going to need to get Scott to sew with me since none of the kids will (kidding..kind of). The Governor made it mandatory to wear masks now (finally sheesh) and I instantly sold almost all of the masks I had made up. I have a couple small orders to make up now too. 

Is anyone else amazed at how many people are like "no one can tell me to wear a mask!" Like you have to wear a shirt and shoes in the store, what's the big deal about a mask. 

My nephew has been practicing for baseball and one of the other kids mom's just tested positive. My mom is super concerned since my nephew has been over their house. Hopefully he didn't pass it around.

Here is the stats for today for my county, 88 more cases than yesterday. Also yesterday we can now get our nails done! Is this madness ever going to stop?

                                     

Anyhow, here are my 10 fabrics I wound up yesterday. I've actually been pulling a few back off the boards to use for masks. Maybe I won't even need anymore book cases to store my fabric and I will just use it all haha.

The girl in the other department is already driving me nuts at work today. She's so f*cking lazy. Instead of just calling the person with the questions she has she tries to get me to do it. Do your own job. Seven more hours til the weekend woohoo! 

Today Trevor is going to go pick up his year book in the drive through pick up station. He's supposed to bring his school ID which of course he can't find. It's been since March since he used it. He even cleaned his room. Hopefully he can get it with his Driver's license/off campus pass and or bus pass. I think that should cover who he is. Hopefully they aren't assholes about it.

Well have a good day!

Smelly Day, Fabric Shopping and Random Thoughts

Hello there, happy Thursday!

Started my morning by listening to Scott gag while he uncovered the lid to the septic. Poor guy haha  No idea what time the guy is going to come. Apparently he had one other person in the morning. I'll enjoy the window being open for a little bit longer I guess!

So yesterday I went to work at 1 and everyone there was wearing a mask when they were up walking around so that was good. There was only 4 of us there at one time (well 5 when I first got there but that gal didn't stick around long)

I ended up working an extra hour and a half since I spent most of the time I was there doing stuff for my boss and not what I actually went into the office for. I was thinking while I was there that it wouldn't be so bad to be at work with only a couple other people in the office, no customers coming in, etc.

The county where I work is expected to make masks mandatory since the numbers keep going up. Apparently the state is also thinking of doing the same. Bring out all the conspiracy people who think that the virus is fake and that America is free and they can't make them wear a mask. People are just stupid. Stupid. Stupid.Stupid. Don't want to wear a mask? Stay the f*ck home. They probably don't wear seat belts either since that's their right!! I'm actually old enough to remember when we didn't have to wear seat belts and people freaking out about that haha.

Anyhow, after work I decided to give JoAnn's a try. First I had to wait about 15 minutes outside while someone spoke really loudly on the phone behind me in another language. I was wishing I knew what she was talking about so it would be more entertaining. They were only allowing 10 people in the store at a time (masks not required though), limiting to 10 bolts of fabric to be cut and a maximum of 2 yards of each fabric.

Which is all REALLY funny since look how much fabric they had! They had one small bit with red/orange/yellows and that was about it in the cotton section.

They did have a few character prints (surprising) so I got these

They were fully stocked in thread which was good to see since that was what I really wanted (besides black fabric)

When I got home I had a package from an online place I buy from. The skeletons should sell well. The cats just crack me up.

I was a good girl and wrapped them all on boards to put away. I also did 10 more from the stash. 

Then finished up these 3 masks for an order.

Scott keeps beating me to bed and then I lay there listening to him snore for a couple hours. Maybe I should just stay up later so I'm extra tired before I go to bed haha. 

So thought I'd share our "cases" like Chris over at Diet Coke Rocks does. We are SO not New Zealand. 

This is just for San Joaquin County where I live (I'm very close to the Stanislaus County border, which is the county I work in)

733 new cases in the last 14 days. I guess when they start running out of hospital beds they close it back up?

 

Hump Day

Good morning, what do we have going on today?

I am going into work around 1 today to see one of the girls who is getting laid off. Today is her last day. Also to print off some packets to mail to customers. Other than that I don't really have much work to do today. I need to scan some more files when I go in so I have them if I need them. I wish we were paperless, things would be so much easier.

Yesterday after work I wrapped up 10 more pieces of fabric. Not too exciting colors here. I thought the bottom left would make a cool looking boho bag. Other 3 on the bottom are vintage sheets. I made a cute kids dress with the butterflies on the right once. (aww looking at those pics I miss making little girls dresses but I have no one to really give them to and they don't sell well for me) The rest would most likely just be used for linings on bags.

Peggy this made me think of your dog post

I got all these done last night. I have now made 699 masks. I should have counted them to make it 700 when I was working on them haha. I have a couple orders so I'll be there in no time. Already sold 5 of these this morning. (black/one money/Avengers/Route 66). 

Maybe I'll be brave and try JoAnn's on the way home from work today. I doubt they have what I want in stock but I could try maybe. Fabric is in short supply We'll see how over stimulated I am after going into the office haha. 

More organizing

Good morning how are you guys all doing today? Tuesday, better than Monday but not as good as Friday.

Just a little bit of work to do today. Waiting for my boss to send me some emails to "load" stuff into the data system. Exciting.I need to go to the office one day this week to make some packets for new contracts. Requires me to print and do mail so can't really do that at home unless I want to waste all my ink on my cheap printer with not so cheap ink. Not going to happen.

Rusty was so funny yesterday, he was looking at my chair like he wanted to sit in it so I told him go ahead and he jumped up. Look at his face when he saw he could see out the window. Too funny! Right after Jess and Daniel drove up so he had a great time barking at them. He loves to bark. Drives us all crazy.

I've been trying to wrap up at least 10 pieces of fabric onto the comic boards every day. Which leads me to reorganizing. Always moving stuff around in here. The little white book shelf is all my books I have on Etsy. It used to be jammed packed but now there is some wiggle room. So I moved the stuff I had on top of the shelf into the empty space (thread) and cleaned up all these random papers I had put there. I found a check I hadn't even cashed go me.  Then I put all the mailing stuff I had on the 2nd shelf on the tall cabinet onto the top of the small white cabinet. Then I was like hey I should swap that with the stuff I have on the brown cabinet so that's what I did. So now I have another shelf for my mini bolts on the big cabinet. I need 2 more shelves on that I think. I wonder if I can just buy some at Home Depot?

The next shelf down on the big bookcase is a box of stuff that SOME is on eBay. That's a box I need to work on. Plus some trains I bought at Goodwill to resell but haven't actually listed them yet. Debated just putting them back in the donation bag. We'll see which wins lol.

In the white basket on top of the small book case are small pieces of fabric. Pretty sure I'm going to put those in the pattern cabinet I have, I think they will fit perfectly in the divided sections.

Mailing envelopes on top of the brown cabinet, messed up organization in the cabinet lol. I think I am just going to make this one all colors and put all the cute prints on the tall cabinet. That's the plan for now.

Eventual plan is no more boxes. I got rid of one more small one yesterday. I've been rotating fabric into the dresser drawers I have, then pulling from the drawers to wrap them up and then put on the bookcase or the basket with small pieces. A couple boxes are not fabric. Working on selling the box of stamp stuff I had on eBay.

This window is the main source of entertainment in the house lol. These three looking at something. What? I don't know. Bugs? They love bugs.

Didn't finish my little stack I was working on last night. Made myself go to bed. Of course I still didn't fall asleep forever because Scott went to bed before me and was sawing some major logs.

Should be able to finish those today. I have an order for three others to work on too.

The nurse is coming to see my mother in law today so I'll make a trip to town. Maybe I'll pick us up something for lunch.

Yesterday Scott went over there to pay some bills (man they get sooo worried about paying bills!) He was looking at his mom's bank statement and she has not been getting her social security for months. WTF. I'm assuming this is because his brother changed her bank (can't use Wells Fargo!! anymore!!) and either didn't notify SS or something fell through the cracks. That happened quite awhile ago so no idea how many checks she has missed. Awesome.

added..

So I went to her house and the nurse came, apparently they are discharging her Friday. Probably got the full payment they could get from Medicare. 

While I was there we looked at her bank statements. She has been getting her payments, but some months it does not show up on the statement since it will be on the 3rd and the statement cut off is the 1st. So say for April she has 2 on the statement, one on March 3rd and one on April 1st. So weird. Also she has a savings and a checking so it will say 0 for monthly deposits but that is one of the accounts not the other. Totally confusing looking statement. At least it is all there. (also this is why I pay the bills in our house)

While I was there she slipped a couple times and was mean to my poor sister in law. I think she mostly keeps that in when I'm there. I was looking down but I was like you should be nice to her so she doesn't go in her room and not come back out. Jesus the woman is taking care of you and you yell at her because she asks you if you want to take your 2pm meds. Grouchy girl! Also told my sil to tell her not to yell at her. I'd never put up with that. Good grief.

I got In & Out for Trevor and I on the way home. Put some ketchup on my fries and then dumped them all over my lap. Woohoo that was awesome.

What's Happening Now

Remember when my weekends were full of obligations, craft shows and parties? Man the days sure are different now.

Pretty much just sewed all weekend, although I did mop the kitchen floor too. I need to make myself a chore chart so I stop just hiding in my little room here and the rest of the house goes to shit. I remember when I used to do Fly Lady, man my house was super clean back then. I think I was laid off or not working  yet at the time. I wonder if they still have that. It was on a yahoo group back in the day. I always do better on things when I'm on some kind of program.

Saturday I finished up all the little tooth fairy pillows I made. My friend had asked me to make one for her granddaughter so I went ahead and made up a dozen. I always think they are so cute with their little faces and bows.  I sold a few on Facebook. I think I will put the rest on Etsy.

I finally got some poster board to use as backdrops for my pictures again. I used to use foam board but it got all dented up and who wants to actually go in a store? My daughter is always out and about so I asked her to get me some.

Next up? I hemmed and hawed a bit about what to work on next and decided just to go back to sewing up the fabric I had prepped for masks. I sold most of the pre-made ones I had over the weekend so it doesn't hurt to keep adding to the pile. I had put some on Etsy before but I had to keep editing my listing for the ones I sold to the neighbors and such so I finally just took it down. If anyone wants one just send me a message and I can either send you an invoice through Paypal (preferred) or make an Etsy listing for you.

I went through and made up all the "pinks" this is what I have available as of this morning

Now I'm working on solids and dark thread ones, always faster to work when you don't have to keep changing the thread out. I did get an order for 2 more grape masks so I will work those in too.

Did I tell you guys that they are laying off the two girls at work who share my position? The plan is that everyone is going to take turns going into the office to be the office person. We'll see how that goes. I signed up for every other Wednesday in July. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be getting a lot of phone calls from people needing help. We'll see how it goes. Now I will also be doing all the admin stuff in the office myself so I will be more busy. They are taking away me ordering supplies for half of the area offices which I am super happy about because it's a big pain in the ass. Especially with this ordering COVID stuff. Do not ever order anything off of Amazon that you need to reconcile in a month. Holy shit what a mess.

So far today is a what am I actually supposed to be working on day. It's like the slow day before the panic day hits.  Going to enjoy it lol.

In other news the "shitter is full" and we have to have the septic pumped out again. I asked Scott to call the guy back since it's his job to open the lid and supervise that whole disgusting process.  We really need to get our leach lines redone but the last guy I had come out ghosted us so now we have to get someone else. Hopefully we can just pump it out and it will be good for a bit again. Right now it's working but if you take a shower the water takes forever to go down and then the toilet makes fun gurgling noises. The joy of country life!