August 11th and 12th

It is Sunday evening Aug 12th and I am reflecting back on a nice productive weekend.  Well, I say productive.  Maybe I should change that to the start of productivity.  We are currently getting a little relief from what was 100 degree weather a week or so ago and upper 90's following that.  First order of productivity involved cleaning and reorganizing the garage.  I should specify because we actually have two; one for cars and my storage and one for him.  They are both the same size, his maybe a bit larger, and yet I get the one where the cars are parked with less storage room.  His garage houses all the yard tools, lawn mowers, rakes, our kayaks, hunting and camping gear.  Now that I think about it, maybe I got the better end of the deal.  His garage may be larger but it is full of dirty stuff and lots of spiders.  Because we use my garage everyday with coming and going and having items on shelves for storage, it gets disorganized pretty quick.  I usually take time between semesters to gut it out, reorganize and throw away junk. So the weekend was not productive yet, it is still a job in progress.  Tomorrow it should be back to a nice neat organized happy room. When a room has everything in it's place, it is a happy room, which makes me happy.

Other productive tasks included getting my school calendar organized.  Yes I said school. I am a granny in college, so what's it to ya?  Anyway, the new semester begins this week.  Yay! I am such a nerd.  At the beginning of every semester, I always take the syllabus and schedule from all of my classes and merge the schedules into one calendar.  That way, I can look at one calendar and know what I need to study each day and what the focus in class will be in all my classes.  With "some" things, I tend to be somewhat of an over achiever.  That is a nice way to describe someone who has OCD tendencies and just doesn't know when to quit, lol.  So... I worked on my calendar this weekend which I thoroughly enjoyed (maybe too much).  It is an expression of creativity...creating my own calendar on the computer, making columns, changing the landscape, adding graphics which correlate with the season, changing out the font to my liking (curly and cute), highlighting where I have exams scheduled, printing, slicing with my paper cutter for perfect lines, and lining up the hole puncher. A creation that brings much satisfaction. Are you currently giving me a diagnosis?  Well, if only I could get paid for creating things like that.  Oh wait...yes...I did have a job doing just that.  A great job working for a CEO for about 5 years making very good money.  I enjoyed it, but I left and went to work elsewhere thinking the grass is greener on the other side.  It wasn't by a long shot, but what did happen is God was paving a path to where I am now, and I couldn't be happier. I will be even happier when I finish school so that I can start working as a nurse and helping people, and the Mr. will be even happier to have another paycheck coming in.  Almost there.  Sometimes it is hard to see the future, we doubt, we become afraid, we try to take things and make them work for what we think is the right plan; but talking to Him and asking for His guidance (you know, the big guy who knows your future already) definitely makes getting to the goal a much happier ride. 

The other productive thing we did this weekend involved rubbing down a couple of very large juicy butts and smoking all day.  What's that? ..... Bbq people! My word! Bbq!  As I mentioned before, I am all about finding a bargain.  I typically shop at Ingles for basic necessities.  Lately I have been shopping at a local fruit and veggie stand as well as the State Farmers Market.  Inside the Farmer's Market, they have a wide selection of fresh fruits and veggies as well as a market that carries dairy and meat products.  Long story short, the Boston Butts were a very good price, so I snatched up about $30.00 worth of pig yesterday, rubbed it down with Barry's secret bbq rub recipe which he has shared with only the dog and I, and the dog isn't talking.  For a price, I have a hard time keeping secrets.  So the butts got rubbed, wrapped, and refrigerated overnight.  My alarm went off at 4:00 a.m. to pull them out and to allow them to begin to come to a room temperature.  At that point, I was seriously thinking that this was a stupid idea.  It was my idea, I know, but my eyes don't focus at 4:00 a.m.  After my work was done, I went back to bed and the Mr. got up around 6 a.m. to get the smoker started.  The aroma of smoked oinker filled the air all day (exactly 10 1/2 hours for my folks that like it concrete).   While the pig smoked, I started the process of making what turned out to be a giant pot of Brunswick Stew.  I don't have a secret recipe for this, but I am very picky about how I like it.  I Googled a few recipes and decided to tweak several recipes to make my own.   Now that we have all this bbq and stew, I won't have to cook as much this week and I can put some in the freezer for another time. 

So Friday was a relaxing ME day where Saturday and Sunday was productive days so that I can have more of those relaxing ME days in the future.  I guess it is true, if you work hard, good things happen.  If you don't work, you don't eat.  All that bbqing and cleaning this weekend was alot of work, but now I get to enjoy the fruits of the labor.  Now if you will excuse me, I hear forks and spoons rattling in the kitchen.  That means it's time to eat.  

Have a wonderful night, and don't forget to talk to Him (you know who, we have already covered this).

Nighty night.