Gratitude Lounge

I regret some words I wrote yesterday on another forum. My words may not have been mean, and they were not personal or untrue, but they could have been more kind or not said at all, and that is the part I regret.
For the first part of my life, people would often say of me that I was kind, and then I had some hard years when I was very strained and I focused on doing what had to be done and getting us all through the day, and a bluntness and sarcasm crept in. I didn’t like that. I have been trying to bring back kindness.
I suppose what I said yesterday is really not that important and will soon be forgotten, if not already, by the other person… but it still bothers me. So today I wish to remember kindness as a practice, and to remember there are more important things than knowing what is true and teaching others.

Good morning!
The house is pleasantly cool on the beginning of this hot day, and I am just back from a lovely walk around the block. I think I will make pancakes for myself this morning, as a treat. I found a WW!! rationing recipe a couple of years ago, that is very simple and doesn’t need eggs, and I absolutely love it. Per person: 1/2 cup flour, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of baking powder if you have it, and then enough milk to make the batter. I use saved bacon grease to fry it. It only takes me about 3 minutes now to mix it up, get half of the dishes done, and sit down to the table for pancakes. ☺

Whiskers – We found two grants to help us fix up our old house. The first was through our utility company, which helped us to update our furnace to a new 95% efficient one, and to get blown-in insulation. The second was through our county, and gave us a whole house electrical renovation. Considering we had a pipe in our bathroom wall for GAS LIGHTING, lol (no longer used), and knob & tube, we were very thankful for that, and didn’t have to pay one cent, which helped us have money for the roof and some plumbing. So go to your city offices and ask about grants, and ask through whatever company is providing your heating. The grants are not always low income based. The heating and insulation was through Federal money marked to reduce energy needs, as it is cheaper than say, putting up another nuclear plant. So give it a try!
As for gardening, I also have a very shady yard, and there are walnut trees on the neighbor’s property to the south, which I could do nothing about. But my husband is Scottish, and in Scotland, they are big gardeners, even though it rains 250 days in the year and they don’t get a lot of sun. So I took heart by that, and realized that most vegetables grown in northern countries don’t need as much light… greens, Swiss chard, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, carrots, beets, rutabaga, onions, garlic, etc. The only vegetables that need more light are the “heat loving” ones: tomatoes, peppers, squash, melons, corn. So where I do have tiny patches of sun, I put the tomato plants and peppers, and I have a shady raised bed between two walnut trees for greens, radishes, chard, carrots, etc. You can totally do this! 😊🌱🌱🌱 Thank you for the compliment. My garden is still wildish, as I was always working on gardens on other sites and less on my own. But I love that you have a great picture in your mind of it! I have the same in my imagination! 🤣

Today I am grateful for feeling like I need less and I am attached to less. The last few days I have been working on getting my kitchen back together in some sort of order, and finding places to put things, and in the process, I have been able to put a number of things into the give-away pile that had previously been “precious.” This isn’t an intentional sorting right now, just casually deciding I don’t like or don’t use some things, and would rather have space. The kitchen is not done yet, but getting much closer, and I am starting to sort my craft room, too, which had become a dumping ground for the kitchen things while I had the cabinets empty to paint. I am realizing how much this chaotic environment, which has been going on really since our whole house electrical reno a year and a half ago, how much it has been weighing on me. I am a dynamic creative type, who doesn’t like clutter and disorder… not a comfortable combination of personality traits! 😂
Anyway, the project progress. I have SOME things clean and fresh! I am so happy!