Ordinary

I've been back from my jaunt to Florida for a week and a half - and it seems like only yesterday. A good friend called me the other day, and asked what I had been doing...... I actually had to pause and think - nothing really came to mind that was big enough to share.. life is ordinary.
So I began to truly contemplate what 'ordinary' is....... here is an average day for the fiberwizard here in the rainy Autumn of the Pacific Northwest.

6 am: awake, make coffee, feed kitties (and of course play a bit)
answer some emails, read a few blogs

7am: wash the dye pots, refill them with a new batch of fiber

8am: skein off yesterdays dyed fiber, label the fiber from the day before

9am: shower, get ready for work and head out

10am office time: prepare billing for insurance companies, see clients, answer a gazillion phone calls, and hopefully spin and knit a bit between the clients. I also chat with the landlord and neighbors about felling the dead tree that is threatening to land on my garage, return calls from a local doctor's office about potential clients, water office plants, dust and vaccum the office..

7 pm: stop at the grocery store for odds and ends that we need, cook and eat dinner (fortunately K does the cooking during the week - hurray-)

9pm til bed: spin a bit more, talk on the phone with spinners-in-training for Sock Hop, play with the kitties, and read a bit before falling sound asleep.

Somewhere in those average days, I also talk with my daughters, parents and friends; K and I discuss new products, restocking of hand dyed fiber, and make the plans for what we need to order up and prepare (dyes, fiber, trips to the processing mill, post office trips, etc etc)

Every now and then there are a few 'glitches' thrown in - perhaps it is the fairies just keeping me on my toes:
* Yesterday on the way to work, I drove down our hill and spyed a sheep stuck halfway out of a fence. Her head and one leg were sticking thru - as she danced back and forth. The cell phones don't work out where we live, so back up the hill I drove - rounded up K to come down and rescue her. By the time we got back down (in the rain) she had freed herself :-) Back off to work I went.

* earlier in the week, I left the office around 7pm, and began driving home.. a flat tire. sigh. I did pretty well in the changing of it -jacked the car up, freed the never-before-used-spare tire from under the car, and began... well,sort of, all except for the fact that the lug nuts were on too tight for me to loosen, (despite jumping on the arm of the tire iron). makes a funny picture in your mind doesn't it?.. me all dressed up in skirt and heels, jumping on a tire iron.. a few choice words were spoken. I ended up calling K and he came to help. thank you!

* three of my clients yesterday called to cancel or reschedule.. sick kids, work conflicts etc. I didn't mind at all, since I have lots of Sock Hop Yarn to spin, and it meant more time with my Rick Reeves wheel at work :-) I happily began my spinning and plying with the three hours I now had free - oooppppsss, the drive band on the wheel broke.. sigh... it broke once, twice, three times, four times, and finally FIVE times. I ran out of cotton drive bands, and then resigned myself to no spinning today...I sighed again, and picked up my knitting with a smile. It seems that what I had time for was holiday knitting instead!

So when my friend asked... "whatcha' been doin'?" I answered........ "Oh, not much - a bit of this and that."
The days roll by, the leaves are still sitting in the lawn at the office. It has been raining here this week. I love it when it rains - because it means more time for me to sit and spin / knit without the tug at my heart from the garden work that needs to be done before winter.

Today the wind is strong. The weather forecasters are predicting a power outage. I put the dye pots in early, and hope that the power stays on for a couple of hours so they can finish cooking.
this is ordinary time.
Ordinary is good.