April 2025 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

I didn’t realize the power was out.

I realize, even in the United States, this is a privilege. But even this privilege has quirks.

You may recall that we had solar panels installed last summer, including a backup battery. (I did incorrectly say we weren’t pushing power back into the grid.) On Saturday morning, as I lay in bed cuddling the cats and scrolling my social media feed, I heard the power go out, and immediately kick back in. As is customary when our power flickers noticeably, our 2.4 GHz network dropped, sending a notification from our thermostat app that it couldn’t communicate with the thermostat. (The thermostat and printer only work on the 2.4 GHz network; almost everything else runs on the 5 GHz.) When I eventually got up, I knew I’d need to reset it through the admin portal.

When I did get up, my first responsibility was to feed the cats. This is where I noticed things being weird – one of the lights in the kitchen weren’t working, others were fainter than usual, and on one, two of the three bulbs weren’t lit. I wondered what sort of power outage would knock out some – but not all – of the light bulbs. This was before caffeine and it didn’t click yet that the power was still out.

While taking my morning shower, the water pressure dropped. That worried me – the well circuit was supposed to be on the battery, so why hadn’t it come back on? (Noting that the circuits were supposed to be accurately labeled shortly after I bought the house; now I’m fairly sure the “well” circuit is actually the water softener’s outlet.) After my shower, I scrambled to check the circuit breaker and the reset by the well. You may recall I gained some experience with our water pressure about a year and a half ago, when a pipe rusted through on Christmas Day. All I was sure of at that point was that the water pressure was really low, and it was way too early to call anyone to help troubleshoot it.

The display on the solar battery, showing a green power light and a blue electrical plug or something similar.

Eventually, I looked at our solar battery and realized that the blue icon I was seeing was not its normal display. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find anything online explaining what the different icons are. That display combined with having to manually light the gas stove are what made me realize that our power was still out and the solar battery was working as designed.

I made myself a micro breakfast to minimize water usage – I had water in the kettle from Friday and grabbed a snack bar. About twenty minutes after I finished, the power kicked back on with all the normal beeps and clicks that come with a power flicker. Including the need to reset the 2.4 GHz network again.

Spring 2025: fruit trees!

Shrubs, bushes, trees… whatever. We thought it would be wise to grow more food in our garden, so in addition to the vegetable beds (which we are not currently planning to expand), we added several fruit-producing, well, twigs at the moment. Except the peach, that is almost as tall as me, and we have an American plum that just arrived today that is taller (and not pictured, since it’s not in the ground yet).

A blueberry surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
The other blueberry, also surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
A hazelnut tree
The other hazelnut tree
A peach tree, with the mulberry tree behind it.
A shrubbery! Wintergreen, to be specific, with a fingerful of pink berries.
A red currant bush

The holiday tree remnants around some of the twigs are to increase the acidity of the soil… yes, we deliberately saved pieces when we discarded the tree in January. Where there are two of something – hazelnut and blueberries – it’s because that’s needed for cross-pollination; otherwise, we’d just have a couple sad bushes with no fruit. And now we return to the bit where gardening is built on hope… and patience.

Tiny Art: Weaving on a toothpick loom

What the hell was I thinking?

Tiny sculpture of a woman (made from black foamy stuff) with white hair (also foamy stuff) weaving on a toothpick supported loom, supported by a tiny brown (painted) post.

When I started the sculpture for this year’s Tiny Art Exhibit at the local library, my intention was to use some of the clay to make something that looked like weaving. As I started assembling the pieces, I changed my mind – the instructions said we could use other materials besides the ones provided, which in this case were white and black foam clay, and tan (normal?) air-drying clay. I’ve never worked with the foam stuff before, it was weirdly poofy, and I didn’t think I could replicate a weaving pattern with it. Shaping a human-ish body was difficult enough.

‘Ah-ha!’ I thought. ‘I have toothpicks and embroidery thread! And I did take like two weaving lessons in middle school.’

I was already committed to this plan before I remember that my weaving lessons involved the actual weaving rather than setting up the warp to work on. And my goodness, toothpicks are tiny. Setting up the warp was a bit aggravating, the weaving less so once I found a rhythm to it. Since my intended title was “Weaving her next story,” I knew when I started that I didn’t need to fill the entirety of the warp, just enough to show some color variations… you know, show that it’s actual weaving.

I love how this turned out and have dropped it at the library already. That said, I do not recommend weaving on a toothpick loom… pick a large template.

Temperature Blanket update

47 days of a temperature blanket - 3 rows of 15 squares, all connected, and 2 squares separated from the rest.

45 (connected) days in, I effectively have a usable shawl as I work on my temperature blanket.

I’m actually 47 days into it, but as you can see in the photos, 2 of those squares aren’t connected to the rest. I connect each square to the previous day when I finish it, and when I complete a row of 15, I connect it to the other rows.

You may be wondering why a couple of the squares have more than one color. I decided at the beginning that I wanted the blanket to reflect where I was – rather than my home address – for each day. The multi-color squares reflect the highs for travel days, where there was a difference between my starting and ending locations, with the added bonus that one of them ended up with my university’s colors. Specifically, those are for our trip to Florida for a cruise at the beginning of March. I suspect travel in winter or summer will have less temperature variance than our spring trip did.