Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Another Day in the Life of Isderf

(A/N: This was written for January 5th. Sorry it took so long to post, but life gets in the way!)


Okay, so I've been dealing with some whining lately. Isderf still claims that my last blog was not a good representation of weekend life for us. After I laughed myself silly and picked myself up from the floor, I agreed to write another blog about one of our weekend days.


To be fair, I picked the exact same date when he decided to complain again. So I didn't go trolling for days that were exceptionally busy... I just wrote down the things we did that day. And here it is...


Project #1: Fat

Isderf's day started early. As he'd spent most of the evenings during the past week rendering fat (that's just taking pieces of fat and frying it up, then draining off the liquid to solidify for later - which makes your entire house smell and draws every animal in the neighborhood to your door). The night before, he'd added water to the solidified fat and clarified it (boiling the fat with water and allowing it to cool, helps to separate any impurities from the fat). So this Saturday morning, he broke up the solid mass of fat floating on top and cleaned it off. He then cleaned the pan out and placed the fat back into it, to clarify it again (it still had a strong odor with it).


Project #2: Shopping With Kids

Our kids received money for Christmas and had plans for spending it, so Isderf and I spent two hours trying to explain the concept of not purchasing the first fun thing they came across and the idea that shopping around can be beneficial. Bizarrely, the youngest understood this too well. He knew what he wanted (a Dora or Diego Movie) and while we shopped around for the best price, had no problems putting other toys back once we explained that he wouldn't be able to afford the DVD if he purchased the toy. Our eldest didn't really care about what she originally wanted, she just wanted to SPEND HER MONEY. And even though she was drawn to more expensive toys, she wasn't willing to save her money for later to purchase them. She ended up with a handful of cheap things that probably aren't going to hold her interest for long.


This was a long and tedious process, but I feel it was worth while to give them a taste of how real life can be when dealing with money.


Project #3 Painting

Once home and fed, Isderf decided to spend some time in his garage. Which means that the children usually find themselves out there with him - at this point I'll have to say, I don't know if he eggs them on, or vice versa - and this time they found wood farm animals that obviously needed painting. So then the hunt begins for paints, brushes, and anything else that might need painting.


Project #4 Furnace

Once the painted has finished up and every else is mostly paint free, I send the kids downstairs for a while so that Isderf might actually get some free time. This time, the noises from the garage draw my attention. He's rolling sheet metal around wood frames, making another metal melting furnace. And my grass had finally come back from the last attempt.


Project #5 Fleshing Stand

The furnace gives away to hacking up a piece of wood for fleshing a deer hide. Isderf used a saw horse, attached a piece of wood to it and lowered the front legs so that a deer hide would lay across it.


The deer hide is sitting on our garage floor, thawing from its hibernation in our freezer, and earns a second look every time I see it. Looks like some weird animal curled up on the floor - even the dog isn't too sure about it.


Project #6 Games

This really isn't a project, but we took a good hour or so to play some games with the kids


On top of all this, we did our weekly grocery shopping. Now, I know that this wasn't as busy as the last day I decided to outline. But really, isn't it enough?


And to show that not every weekend is filled, this last weekend (Feb 20th & 21st) was fairly laid back; we only made cheese, two different recipes of soap, went thrift store shopping with the kids, Isderf spent an evening playing DND, visited Isderf's favorite butcher, went to the library, spent two hours trying to get the kids to pick up 15 minutes worth of stuff, we got our grocery shopping done and even spent two hours at a family birthday party (buffets with two kids 5 and under are more work than it's worth!).

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.