It's been a quiet week at the farmette. Good thing, after the ice storm of last weekend and the turmoil of the week before. While there is still a lot of snow on the ground, it's slowly melting, and the patches of grass are showing through again. Yesterday, we got our first glimpse of a full-grown coyote, loping through the west side yard. Poor thing - while it seemed large, it did look a little worse for wear. It kind of reminded me of we humans, and how, after a long, hard winter, we, too, need to do a bit of regenerating for spring. So here are some things that I'm doing for a refresh.
The big cleanup. We finally got down to tidying the upstairs back room yesterday, after I got completely distracted last week with old photo albums. We actually found some floor space under the detritus of the 'flung' things that 'I'll take care of later', and took about an inch and a half of dust off everything.
We also found the carcasses of many a ladybug. For whatever reason, they decide to have a convention in our house every year around the time of the winter melt. This results in us finding crunchy little bodies all over the farmette house. Anyway, they were fairly unceremoniously discarded with the rest of the dust.
Re-energized exercise. Among the goodies we found was a set of hand weights I bought at a second-hand store and promptly stored a number of years ago. Given that I'm reaching late-middle-age (shall we say), I've somehow acquired these flabby, fleshy bat wings that hang from my upper arms.
They need to go. It's not that I want to be Wonder Woman, but getting a bit of muscle won't hurt, especially when gardening season comes around, and I'll need to swing a hoe, dig in with a trowel and push a wheel barrow.
Renewed volunteer work. Last week was volunteer appreciation week, and by coincidence, it was also our local Chamber of Commerce's annual general meeting. After three years of being on the board (two as the secretary) I've decided to step down and let others do good work.
Instead, I'm thinking of helping at the local animal shelter. I do enjoy working with, petting, feeding and even cleaning up after (!) the homeless furry ones. And, I find that I get back way more than I give.
Double down on the weight loss. So I seem to have 'plateaued' since I started eating smarter and moving more last fall. After taking off about 20 pounds, the scales have not continued a downward trajectory for about a month. And there is a ways to go. So here's to reintroducing a bit more discipline in spring 2018.
It's good to do a spring cleanup, not only for the house, garden and buildings, but also for me, I figure.
Today, the sun is shining. It's supposed to going well into the double digits today and I'm raring to get out in it. Until next week.