It is delicious though.

(I ate two bowls, and it's not even 9am.)

Boy, I hope y'all aren't going to get too tired of me talking about all the home maintenance stuff, because I'm going to talk about it a lot.

First of all, I'm not great with phone calls. I'm very nervous about hiring tradespeople to do things, because I'm so ignorant about so much of it that I'm afraid people are going to try to take advantage of me.

But, you know, I'm responsible for this house, and I'm going to have to get over myself.

My backyard is a dilemma. I've got a couple of huge stumps that need to come out, and the grass is in a very sorry state.

I had an agronomist come out last week to evaluate the situation with my grass, just so I could even know what I was dealing with. Long story short, it's fescue, and when the trees were still standing it was probably healthy because it was shaded. But now the soil is compacted and hydrophobic and the grass is dying. Fescue, apparently, is pretty high maintenance anyway. So I still need to make decisions as far as the grass is concerned, and of course I have to think about the dogs.

But the stumps need to come out before I even worry about that.

I started just looking online to see what people said about how much they paid to have their stumps removed. Based on what I was seeing online I was expecting to get quotes in the range of about $800 per stump. Yikes.

Well, when I was at work on Friday I was chatting with a cubicle mate who just had her backyard resodded, because it's one of the things I'm considering. I wanted to know how much she paid. I mentioned that I would need to get the stumps removed first.

The guy in the cubicle next to her popped his head over and said "I know a guy who does that". He's a firefighter who does stump removal in his spare time. Totally insured and everything. They were friends since high school, and I went and looked at the Facebook page for his stump removal business and he's got great reviews.

My workmate reached out for a loose quote, and his friend said $200 per stump, but that he'd want to see pictures and things before giving a firm quote.

So I sent pictures and talked to him on the phone and I'm getting both stumps removed and all debris cleaned up for a total of $450, and he's handling getting the utilities out to mark their lines and everything.

There's no way anyone else was going to give me a better quote than that. I'm thrilled.

One of my favorite things about my neighborhood so far is that I can get rid of things I don't need anymore without throwing them away.

EH replaced the storm door off my sun porch with one that had a doggy door in it. I don't have any use for the old storm door, but it's still in good shape. I gave it to my neighbor across the street.

No waste, no waste, no waste!

Café Mom gave me a tub full of junk jewelry to upcycle, so I made some earrings for her.

These pieces came from a broken necklace she said she really liked.

These were made from various mixed beads in the tub.

I'm going to deliver them to her tomorrow.

I had a great day. Got a bunch of unpacking done. Completed a bunch of chores, but they don't feel like chores. They feel like a gift to my future self.

I even got some of my studio unpacked, which wasn't on my agenda for today at all. But I couldn't find my jewelery making tools so I ended up doing a bunch of unpacking just to dig them out.

I feel very satisfied by today. I'll sleep well tonight.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for wooden bowls.

When I was a child my grandmother had a Sunday tradition. She would serve a big lunch after church, and then because lunch was so dense she wouldn't make dinner.

Instead she would make popcorn on the stove, lightly sprinkled with salt, and we would eat it out of wooden bowls in front of the TV. It was the only time we were allowed to eat in front of the TV at her house.

14 karat gold in the tub of junk! Score!

I think café mom said she got the junk jewelry at a thrift store. Probably one of those jewelery jars that's so popular right now. There are whole accounts on TikTok just dedicated to buying the jars and opening them on camera.

I've only ever bought one jar, because it was at a price I could tolerate. The prices on those jars these days is nuts. Sure, you might find some things in it you want to wear or use, but there's also a lot of junk. Occasionally you can find precious metals or designer jewelry that's worth some money, but it's rare, and buying the jars hoping for that outcome is basically gambling as far as I'm concerned.

The jewelry in this tub was filthy, and I pulled the gold bracelet out of a snarl of tangled necklaces, most of which were truly junk. I'm salvaging some beads and things, but a lot of this stuff is just getting thrown away.

Still, super fun to find real gold in this mix.

I could barely see the mark, even with my readers on, but it's there.