Yesterday, I went through my current “Holler Happenings” notebook, and I wrote down a list of unfinished tasks — things I’d planned to do throughout the month but hadn’t yet accomplished. Sadly, it’s quite a long list, but I’m hoping that something I found in Jill Winger’s book, “Old-fashioned On Purpose: A Homesteading Manifesto” will help me turn all of the afore-mentioned tasks into completed ones.

“That something” is what she calls “The Result Road Map”, and it’s an exercise that’s designed to “break giant undertakings into small, bite-size steps”. That’s exactly what I think I need since I’m often overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of some of the “giant undertakings” I’ve been trying to accomplish!

Hmmm… I just realized that “The Result Road Map” five-step process reminds me A LOT of what I did as a special education teacher. When working with my students, I would create goals for my students that we’d work on together throughout the year. These annual goals would be broken down into “short-term objectives”, which are the equivalent to the “small, bite-size steps” mentioned in “The Result Road Map”. Don’t know why I didn’t think of breaking down my annual goals into the “short-term objectives” objectives like I did while I was teaching. Anyway…

“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything up close.”

Yesterday, I had to use Vanity Post #14 because I had myself on a strict schedule in order to make sure I was able to get to my EARLY doctor’s appointments on time today. I’m happy to report that I did, indeed, get there on time — fifteen minutes early, in fact. Even though I was stressing a bit about it, the procedure went well — though I haven’t heard the results yet. However, I was reminded of something after one failed attempt at having an IV inserted into my arm: I MUST remember to request an “ultrasound IV” whenever I have such a procedure done in the future!

Anyway… Since Sweet Thing also had a doctor’s appointment later this afternoon, I had thought that we could have a picnic between appointments, especially since today is International Picnic Day. Sadly, the “picnic between appointments” didn’t happen, but I WAS able to celebrate International Picnic Day — with a “picnic on the porch” overlooking my beautiful pond. While I ate, I did nothing but enjoy the sights and sounds of “my holler in Kentucky”: ripples on the pond’s surface from the rain and a bunny grazing “al fresca” in the front yard, seemingly oblivious to the pouring rain, along with the chirping of nearby birds and croaking frogs. It was a relaxing — and enjoyable — way to end the day of many appointments!

Nothing worth and/or no time… Vanity Post #14

This is my official “I have nothing worth writing about and/or no time to write it” vanity post. From now on, whenever my schedule is so busy that I don’t feel I have time to come up with something interesting in a timely manner, I’ll publish “Vanity Post #14 — my version of Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111.

This is my official “I have nothing worth writing about and/or no time to write it” vanity post. From now on, whenever my schedule is so busy that I don’t feel I have time to come up with something interesting in a timely manner, I’ll publish “Vanity Post #14 — my version of Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111.

For this vanity post, I am borrowing the concept behind Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111, which begins as follows:

“This is the official ‘I have nothing worth writing about’ vanity card. It will run whenever I have nothing worth writing about.”

However, I am going to add to it by saying:

“From now on, whenever my schedule is so busy that I don’t feel I have time to come up with something interesting in a timely manner, I’ll publish “Vanity Post #14″ — my version of Chuck Lorre’s vanity card #111.”

Because I’m borrowing from the original creator of “vanity cards”, it didn’t take me 110 previous vanity cards to figure out when I either have nothing to say or no time to say it. It only took me 13 previous “vanity posts” AND one very busy day to realize that I needed my own version of #111.

Just know that more original vanity posts WILL be “coming soon”, so stay tuned for more.

Happy “National Sewing Machine Day”!

Did you know that…

• “before the invention of the sewing machine, tailors and sewists [seamstresses] created clothing by hand, one stitch at a time”?
• “the invention of the sewing machine brought about revolutionary change”?
• many men, such as Thomas Saint, William Newton Wilson, Walter Hunt, John Greenough, Isaac Singer, and Elias Howe, invented various kinds of sewing machines — going all the way back to 1790?
• “industrial use of the sewing machine reduced the burden placed on housewives, moving clothing production from them and seamstresses to large-scale factories?” [Because I don’t like much of what these “large-scale factories” (especially those located overseas) are putting out these days, I’m going to be putting MY sewing machine to work as I start making my own clothes again.]
• “quilters across America [of which I am one] are also known as sewing machine experts” AND that not all quilters use sewing machines?

Well… According to the folks at nationaldaycalendar.com, all of these are true!

While perusing my e-mail this evening, I came across a message from the GreenStalk folks, which mentioned something I want to try this year:

a “Pizza Sauce Planter”.

I would dedicate one of my eight 3-tier GreenStalk vertical planters to be a “Pizza Sauce Planter”, and it would contain all of the plants needed to make homemade pizza sauce, including:

• Roma tomatoes,
• Basil,
• Oregano,
• Thyme,
• Rosemary,
• Marjoram, and…
• a couple of others that I WON’T be putting into MY pizza sauce: jalapeno peppers and sweet banana peppers (since I don’t like either of them.).

I think I’m going to like growing the makin’s for my own homemade pizza sauce because Sweet Thing and I definitely LOVE pizza.

Hmmm… I think I’d better also have a planter that’s dedicated to salads since I always try to have a big bowl of salad whenever I eat pizza. So, yeah… I see a pizza sauce planter AND a salad planter in my garden this year.

To end this Vanity Post about gardening, I’m going to share a quote from Gertrude Jekyll (pronounced JEE-kill), a famous Victorian gardener/garden designer:

“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfullness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all, it teaches entire trust.”

~ Gertrude Jekyll ~

This morning, I was reading the local newspaper that Sweet Thing had brought home for me, and I discovered an article that made me angry, which had this headline:

“Postal rates are expected to go up 4.8% in July

Here’s the text of that article:

“The U.S. Postal Service has announced mailing and shipping adjustments that, if approved by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), will go into effect on July 12, 2026.

Mailing rate changes include:

• First-Class stamp: Increase from 78¢ to 82¢
• Metered 1-oz letters: Increase from 74¢ to 78¢ maintaining the 4¢ savings
• Domestic postcards: Increase from 61¢ to 65¢
• Certified Mail fee: $5.30 to $5.55
• Average increase: 4.8% across mailing services
• Forever stamp: $0.78 to $0.82 (+5.1%)
• Postcard stamp: $0.61 to $0.64 (+4.9%, pending final tables)
• Additional-ounce price: Unchanged at $0.29
• Marketing Mail letters (commercial): 5-6% increase, varies by presort
• Nonprofit Marketing Mail letters: Lower increases, varies by presort
• Periodicals (Newspapers): Increases averaging 5-7%.

The 4.8% average is one of the larger mailing-services increases of the past decade.“

This article was the main cause of my “anger before breakfast”, but close to the above-mentioned article was another that caught my attention — about “traffic safety checkpoints” being announced. I just hope they don’t pop up on my way to/from one of the many upcoming appointments I have in town! Don’t want to be late to any of these appointments by being stopped at one of these “traffic safety checkpoints”!

Maybe I don’t want to read any more newspapers…