Friday Photos- The living my best homebody life edition

Not a very exciting week around here and I have a lack of pictures to prove it! Nonetheless, I decided to document this week. It is the full first week that I have been able to walk since surgery and therefore one that ostensibly means that I could be out and about since mobility is not nearly as difficult as it was. However, it ended up that I didn’t go anywhere.

Last Wednesday, April 24, my cast came off and my foot was placed in a boot and I was told that I could walk. That was great news even though it was a bit painful and very awkward to walk with the length of my legs being disparate. Nonetheless, I was elated to walk! The following day my brother John came into town for a short visit. We went out on Friday, to Indiana, for a few hours and on the way back, I asked John to stop at a store for a few basics. I had not been to a store in over a month. John didn’t stay in town long and we didn’t do much over the weekend. Old Recent habits die hard apparently! I really wanted to do something about walking less awkwardly before I joined the land of the mobile.

When a shoe that I ordered came in, I thought my walking problem was mostly solved and that I would get out and about. I was right on 50% of those thoughts ;). The shoe was a good fit, literally mostly, in achieving helping me walk better but... since I can’t drive and am reliant on others who were very busy, I didn’t get out at all. Really it was not a problem- home is my happy place and I am not complaining (too much) about not getting out. 

Alyssa and I were going to go prom shoe shopping but the week got away from us. Alyssa worked a lot and on the two days this week that she didn’t work, she wanted to study for her upcoming AP exams. She has a pair of shoes she can wear for prom, the same ones she wore last year, though a new pair sounded ideal which is why we were going to go shopping. I could hardly fault her reasoning that studying for AP exams trumped getting new shoes. And it saved me from buying pair of shoes that she’ll wear one time. No, no complaining at all from me. 

Speaking of shoes, here are my new indoor-to-make-my-left-leg-longer shoes:

Stylin’ no? Seriously I have no idea if they are in style? I guess people are buying this type of platform shoe (or at a minimum, people are selling them so I assume there are buyers out there). I got them from the world’s largest retailer and there were numerous options. Since I am wearing them as house shoes solely (no pun intended), no one outside of the family will see them so it does not matter.

Speaking of the family, Donnie and Alyssa think it’s funny that I have not removed the tissue paper that covers a decorative element to the shoe. Again, the shoes are not a fashion statement for me of any kind- they’re utilitarian. When I took them out of the box that they came in, I did not bother to remove the paper. I just do not care about the shoe’s appearance!

I spent some time outside weeding in flower beds in the front of the house and in the garden out back. Oh, the garden! WOW, will not be showing a picture of the entirety of it because even after spending two hours weeding it in the course of two days, it is looking rough. It was too neglected for too long. Which isn’t to say, if I can get my hands on some plants (my seed starts failed, unfortunately. Long story, still too painful to talk about...) soon, I won’t plant them in the garden, because I will. I can work around the weeds and keep weeding. We have lots of rain in the forecast which will soften the ground nicely for weed pulling. 

Speaking of rain, one unusually warm for January day, it rained instead of snowed. In a break from the rain, I placed cardboard pieces down in parts of the garden, or technically in the grass near the, garden to create more usable garden space. Regarding the garden, nature is going to nature and one thing nature, in the way of grass, does, is encroach on non grassy areas. The garden, not a raised bed but rather a space of non grassed area of the yard bordering our house on one side, the deck on one side and the lawn on two sides, faced shrinkage issues as on the two sides of it that border the lawn, grass/ weeds had started to grow at the edges thus reducing the size of the garden. 

To attain (or reclaim)  more garden space, I could have dug up the grass and taken it away. However, that is a lot of work. There is an easier way, though, time consuming to be effective way. Placing cardboard over grass will result in the grass dying and the cardboard will eventually decompose, enriching the new area where the cardboard was placed down. So, in January, I placed cardboard boxes down on the two edges of the garden that border the yard. Over the past few months, the cardboard has mostly decomposed. I have more garden now in the spaces where the the boxes have decomposed. Yah!

Here is a picture from January. What is under the box is mostly grass- the edges where the grass met the dirt were uneven.

And here is the same area this week when I pulled cardboard up. The cardboard had not completely decomposed but it was well on its way. I love the straight line where the grass ends and meets the dirt! That line will not stay straight... the grass will start to encroach on the dirt.

Back inside the house, I did some work in the kitchen organizing items in drawers. I determined that I needed a bigger ice cream/ cookie dough scoop. I have been wanting to use a bigger scoop to make uniform, larger cookies. The problem was, I didn’t know how much volume my current, small scope held. I found some very old mashed potatoes in the back of the refrigerator and did some experimenting with my scoop and then cup measurements to see the amounts various sizes held. That helped me make a determination about which sized scoop to buy. It’s the little things... or the slightly bigger things!

And then I made cookie dough 😊

This weekend should be a *big* one. And by big, I mean I have plans to leave the house more than once!! Whoa!