Chores, Charms, and Cat Food Woes

This morning kicked off at 3 a.m.—well, sort of. I got up, got dressed, and quietly edited yesterday’s blog post before curling back up in bed for another 45 minutes of rest. Thankfully, the pain wasn’t nearly as intense as it had been the day before, so I crossed my fingers that today might actually be a bit more productive.

I pulled today’s tarot from the Luminous Void deck and was greeted by the Nine of Cups—a promising sign of satisfaction, abundance, and things falling into place. Maybe, just maybe, today would be a good day after all.

The fulfillment of all aspects of life internally and externally, celebration.

The past two days brought some heavy storms through our little slice of Tennessee, and today’s forecast wasn’t looking much better—with more storms predicted after 4 p.m. Still, I made the call to let the goats graze for the early part of the day, but decided the farm stand would stay closed, just in case the rain came in early.

Unless Dameion had to run out for something (usually helping Dad), I wanted him back out in the garden beds. It’s almost time to prep for fall planting, and the weeds aren’t going to pull themselves.

The girls’ school work was simple today—yesterday had been a rest day, so we were just catching up. I clipped the new August calendar pages to their boards and called it good for now. But sure enough, the discomfort from yesterday started creeping its way back in.

I checked the game cam, made the announcement about the stand closure on Facebook, and since it was still dark outside, I decided to knock out some cleaning while the house was still hushed. I managed a decent tidy-up of three rooms before the sun climbed just high enough to give me the light I needed to start the animal chores.

With both girls still fast asleep, I took advantage of the quiet and moved right into chores. I started with the sourdough starter—our discard jar in the fridge was getting out of hand, so I made a mental note to remind Charlie it was definitely a baking day.

Snappy got fed, then it was time to start the dog rounds. One by one, I got them out without waking a single child—a miracle in and of itself. If the girls wanted to sleep in today, I was going to let them.

snappy

Jezebel got her morning bottle, the chickens got their grain scattered, and the colony cats… well, they’d have to be patient. We were out of cat food, so I added it to the Walmart cart to be delivered later. I went ahead and fed the dogs for the day, and with the house still silent, I returned to cleaning—stealing a few more peaceful moments while I could.

Eventually, little voices stirred. It was time for cereal, cups, and morning snuggles.

While they munched breakfast, I laid out outfits for the day and finished up the last bit of morning chores. Once their room was tidied, we got started on school.Once their room was tidied, we got started on school. One of our August books was queued up on the TV, ready for listening.

flower dye expirament

We finished our name and cover pages for our August journal before Charlie joined us, groggy and slowly easing into the day. Once he was up and about, we gave him a few minutes of quiet, then picked up where we left off.

Dameion was soon up and headed to his tasks. The girls moved on to a flower experiment, and we practiced our 3 times tables. They flew through number 3 word problems, then played a matching game with 3s in both addition and subtraction. We wrapped it all up with our “count by 3” puzzle, just in time for lunch and nap.

Dameion had wrapped up his morning chores and was headed out for his afternoon walk before taking little Harley for her turn and bringing up the new toilet from down below.

count by 3 puzzle

While the girls napped, Dameion ran out to the post office to drop off a package for Dad, then came back to tend to his bottle lamb. I poked away at the living room cleanup, slow but steady, and toward the end of nap, I gave in and rested a bit myself. Fair is fair, right?

After nap, the girls headed down to Mom and Dad’s while we worked on installing the new toilet. Dameion took a quick trip to Home Depot for a needed part, then picked up some donated tin to use on the animal pens before jumping back into the project. Franklin took care of the final dog walk of the day.

new toilet in the dark

Once the girls returned home, it was time for bed—though Aria had opinions about the new toilet. She’s not a fan. At all.

Maybe she’ll warm up to it… maybe tomorrow will be even more productive. Here’s hoping.