They aren't active. Neither am I, really, but it looks like I was just active enough.

I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Or if it just is.

Anyway, ownership doesn't seem to mean anything terribly important for these communities, so I'm going to lie low. If I get a notice that I need to do something, I will - and if I don't, there are mechanisms in place that allow others to take over.

In the meantime, housework awaits!

It's been a busy few months. It looks like things are easing up a bit, and for that, I am profoundly grateful.

I've been trying an experiment: doing my housework during the week.

I have four main weekend chores: dusting, laundry, cooking, money. I was doing cooking and dusting on Saturday, laundry and money on Sunday, but I switched the grocery delivery to Thursday a few months ago. So it's cooking and money on Thursday, dusting and laundry on Friday. And the weekend is free. Freeish.

This seems to be working pretty well so far. The early mornings aren't fun, but it's done what I needed. Now to see how well this works when the weekends really are free.

I'm going to be out of town for most of the weekend. This morning, I had groceries delivered, assembled meals for the week, washed laundry and hung it to dry, tidied the apartment, cleaned the bathroom, and took out the trash.

Basically, I did my weekend chores, except for dusting and balancing the checkbook.

And I did it all in 90 minutes.

Makes me wonder what the heck I'm doing on days when the chores take forever.

She took an ordinary thing - knitting, one of the most ordinary things out there - and made it extraordinary through her passion. And extraordinarily accessible through her sense and her ability to write about it.

In my vainer moments, I hope that I can emulate her. That I can combine passion and sense and a certain dry wit to influence and encourage people.

But even if I can't, I know that people can. Elizabeth did it. Others can too.

In the meantime, I will drink a toast to Mrs Zimmermann as I knit this evening.

Thank you, EZ, for all that you've done.

Spent the early part of the week with Mama Hedgehog. We armed ourselves with a to-do list, and got a lot done. We didn't do everything on the list, but then, we did things that weren't on the list.

We cooked and froze meat servings (39 portions: just take one out and add a vegetable or two), sorted through her meds folder (she had invoices from 2007 in there), bought a new, lower, TV stand, moved the TV from the older stand to the new one (so the new, larger TV could fit under the mantelpiece and not obstruct the door), disassembled and discarded the old stand, and bought a mop/squeegee for washing windows. We didn't do the windows, but that's because we ended up making a patchwork wall-hanging. (Similar in construction to the ones at http://www.country-schoolhouse.com/twister_tool.htm , but we didn't use their kit.)

Lots of fun.

Now I need to figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my time off.

A friend was supposed to be in town, but she's curled up with Nyquil and DVDs. (I know. The nerve of her, coming down with a cold.)

So I'm at loose ends, a bit. I spent some time this morning updating my librarything account (because LT counts punctuation in authors' names, and sorts "Hedgehog, Angelina" and "Hedgehog, Angelina." as two separate entries) and now I should be able to get a list that sorts neatly. (Nice work, LT, adding the option to sort on two fields. Thank you!)

Tomorrow I'll attend the event that Friend and I were planning on going to, but that still leaves a fair amount of unscheduled time.

Time to break out my UI list again and see what I can do in... 14 hours, I think.

(Click for big.)

I really wanted junk food last evening. In a sort of half-a-box-of-cookies, half-a-gallon-of-ice-cream, and let's-not-even-talk-about-that-bag-of-pretzels way.

Problem. I didn't have any junk food on hand.

I have ingredients, of course. At any given time, I can almost always make a batch of cornstarch pudding (milk, sugar, cornstarch, flavoring) or shortbread (flour, sugar, butter).

And there's a small grocery store in the complex. Literally, there and back in under 15 minutes, and I can get away with indoor clothing if it's dry and above freezing.

Didn't feel like it. Too much work. Really wanted the junk food, but didn't want to work for it. At all.

So I didn't have any.

Took a knitting class. Learned how to make a Fair Isle tam.


Made templates so Mama Hedgehog can trim the shingles of her dollhouse so they form a (reasonably) straight line where the gable meets the main roof.

Figured out why a patchwork top wasn't fitting together well, figured out how to fix it, and did so. It's now almost done except for batting/backing/binding, and Mama Hedgehog can do those on her own.

Figured out that the vision of a different patchwork designer wasn't going to mesh with Mama Hedgehog's vision and abilities (also have strong suspicion that the designer cheated like whoa), and came up with alternative interpretation that brings that patchwork closer to the realm of doable.

So, new things learned, and progress made on projects. Good weekend all in all.

After I admitted to procrastination, I got out the forms and such.

My tax returns are now submitted. I'll be getting money back for state and federal.

I need to figure out the estimated taxes, though. From the software's estimation, I'm okay for state/local (and yes, I got back all but $60 of what I paid as estimated tax this year), but federal is a bit different. If I hadn't paid estimated taxes last year, I would have owed about $500. At that point, I think I should be paying about $125 a quarter.

I also need to sort through the paperwork and refile it, and make a folder for 2010. Because there are already things to go into it.