Me...in the kitchen, frying chicken and cooking broccoli for supper, scooping handfuls of small garden tomatoes into a serving dish, and spooning marinated yellow bean salad into a bowl. What a beautiful palette of colors to enjoy--red, green, yellow. Makes it such a pleasure to cook.
My hubby...just home, resting his hurting back with a heating pad after a long day at work. He really did a number on it it while getting ready for our camping trip a few weeks ago, reinjuring an old trouble spot, and it's been quite a siege of pain, ice packs and massages, pain pills and chiropractor visits, physical therapy and lots of prayer. Thankfully, we're seeing daily improvement and yesterday got the good report that it's not a disc involved.
SweetPea...in the kitchen preparing the broccoli, helping pick up the house for a friend's visit this evening. She's had to do school pretty much on her own since we began four weeks ago since I was quite distracted taking care of Dad, but she's done a super job and is right on track. (I think I'm working myself out of a job here. Sniff.)
Mysterious jars labelled "rice, hay, egg, soil" sitting on a family room table...a biology experiment in process. We took a lovely little field trip the other day to collect pond water and see what would grow in those cultures. Pretty gross, smelled bad after a few days so I made her do her microscope work out on the patio.
A mess on our dining table...at least three sewing projects in process: 1) A skirt SweetPea needs to hem so she can wear on Sunday, the fruit of our summer's sewing class; 2) a quilting project I'm trying to work on--two pillow shams to match a quilt I did years ago for our guest bed (problem: new pieces look pretty vividly colored next to the faded quilt; I'm thinking I need to run them through some hot-water & soap cycles in the washer to force-fade them); and 3) several little fleece jackets for our little black dog--her short hair just doesn't keep her warm and she's already huddling in her bean bag to keep warm.
A lovely pile of watercolor supplies in my workroom...new paints and another brush to round out a nature journaling kit I'm putting together, sitting alongside a stunning how-to book from the library, The Watercolorist's Essential Notebook--Landscapes by Gordon MacKenzie. And to further inspire me, I'm loving a garage-sale find, The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady by Edith Holden. Not sure when I'll find the time to dig very deep into this stuff right now, but it's such a refreshing pasttime that I think I need to work it in. While on my current sewing roll, I'm going to make a denim field kit with pockets and ties to carry everything in. A wilting pile of squash plants in my garden...after a heavy rain last night and some too-cool weather for them. I'll have to clean them out this weekend. But I'm happy to still be harvesting beans, collards, tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, and kale. Hope that first frost won't happen for a while!
A very cute little black dog called Sadie...bumping my leg and wondering why I'm not paying attention to her. 
A pile of books, papers, and notes on my desk...no, not homeschooling stuff--writing stuff! I came home from our summer trip to Arizona with a new and very exciting project to work on, helping my mom get a book published! We are going the self-publishing route, which is now a direction many authors are going, given the publishing environment (hurting). If you are interested yourself, I'd highly recommend the book, The Indie Author Guide ("indie" stands for independent)--a fantastic resource for DIY publishing. We're going with a self-publisher who also handles a lot of the marketing. In case you haven't heard, marketing is something that authors have to do themselves now, no matter which way your book gets published, traditional or self-published.More books, papers, and notes on my other desk...yup, homeschooling stuff. I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm still working on SweetPea's grades from last year, but it conveniently fits the "later--much later" pile, so I keep ignoring it. My goal is to keep up with all the record-keeping and transcript stuff for this high school thing and not panic in her senior year because I was derelict in duty, but I don't have to do it today...
In the basement...no, sorry you can't go there. That's The Place where no matter how hard I try to keep it organized, it defies me. Today a search for some yarn and a turtleneck wrought some chaos that I can't get back to 'til the weekend. Beside, there an irritating cricket that somehow got lost down there, and we can't find him. He seems to give voice to the general mockery of my noble attempts at order. He, too, might win--I can't stand squishing a cricket.
That's our snapshot of today. "Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox." (Prov. 14:4) Lots of 'oxen' here...but I love the promise of much increase!
