Thursday, September 5, 2024
Dear Diary,
I woke up at 10:30 PM and I let the dogs out. Then I filled out applications online for Brundage ski resort. It might be fun to work at a ski resort this winter. We will see how many pet sitting clients I get. At 12:30 AM Angel woke up and I asked her if she wanted me to read to her some more of her book The Christmas Pig. She said yes, I read to her until 2:30 AM. We turned off the light and went back to sleep.
At 7:15 AM, I woke up and responded to some text messages. I prayed my morning gratitudes: Good morning God, I am grateful for Hot Springs pools. I am grateful for good friends. I am grateful for the abundance of money in my life. I am grateful for beautiful weather. I am grateful for my blog. I am grateful for good books. I’m grateful for the smell of pine trees. I am grateful for prayer and meditation. Thank you I love you.
Angel woke up and we cuddled for a few minutes. Then we got up. I got dressed and went downstairs. I asked Angel what she wanted for breakfast and she said, waffles. I made tea for myself and waffles for Angel. After she ate, I told her it was time to get dressed and start school. After school, we are going to the library in McCall for Story Time.
She got dressed and came downstairs. The first thing she did for school was measuring, which is one of her favorite things. After measuring Angel decided she didn’t want to do school the rest of the day and fought me on it. I told her that she didn’t have to do school but if she didn’t then she wouldn’t be able to be on her phone until her schoolwork was done. She cried and carried on but then agreed to do school. She tried bargaining by saying that she wanted a break after doing 2 pages. I told her she could get a break after every 3 pages. She huffed at that but agreed.
We finished 3 pages before it was time to leave to go to story-time at the library. I told Angel we could finish school later in the day. She wasn’t delighted about this news but she was happy to be going to story time. We arrived at the library 5 minutes early and as I expected, Angel was the oldest one there. The girl named Lucy that Angel had played with at the library a couple of days ago was there and she called Angel over to sit by her. The lady who led story-time was great. Her name was Debbie and she was very animated. She kept the kids engaged and sang songs with them in-between books.
After the stories were read, the kids colored a picture and played with the toys. Angel’s friend left and she played with the animal toys while I chatted with a couple of the other mom’s.
Angel asked if I would play chess with her and I said yes. I hadn’t played chess in a long time but I thought it was a great game for Angel to learn. There was a chess board set up near the front desk. I taught Angel the rules and she caught on right away. She didn’t like it when I won and I told her, you have to practice a game a few times in order to win, you can’t expect to win the first time you play. Debbie at the front desk overheard our conversation and told Angel that losing is the best way to learn. She then told Angel a story about a boy who lost right away at a chess tournament they’d had at the library. She had asked him if he was upset that he lost so quickly. He said no, because he watched what the other guy did and he’s going to do the same thing the next time he played. Angel scoffed at that but brightened up when she was asked if she wanted a sticker. Angel picked out a sticker and I chatted with Debbie and another librarian working there. Debbie asked for my name and phone number. She said there were a lot of people that came in asking about a homeschooling group in the area. There wasn’t one but she asked if she could give them my number and we could all get together. This was great and I happily said yes.
After leaving the library, Angel and I walked a block down the road to a thrift store. I found some winter boots and gloves for Angel, as well as a nice pair of pants. We then drove across town and picked up a free table-saw that a man was giving to us. He had advertised it on Facebook this morning and I had messaged him. He owns a construction company and had bought a new one. He said his old one still worked great, he just didn’t need it anymore. My sisters and I will make good use of it doing projects.
On our way back to our pet sitting house, we stopped at a cute little cafe called Alpine Pantry and Provisions https://www.facebook.com/share/2PRV7r1UiawHADXq/?mibextid=LQQJ4d to see if they had anything good for lunch. I was so glad we stopped there because this was my kind of place. I ordered a salad and fresh squeezed OJ. The salad was one of the best salads I’d ever had at a restaurant. Angel ordered an apple strudel and was happy with her food as well.
When we arrived at the pet sitting house, I walked in the door and there was shredded newspaper all over the house. I know it was Little Bit that had done it because he usually goes with me and this time I left him with the other dogs. The other dogs had been left alone before with full access to the newspapers and hadn’t torn them up. Little Bit has done things like this before when he’s been left at home. He throws a fit and makes a mess. When I accused him of being the culprit, he looked at me defiantly. I was glad the newspapers had been mine and didn’t belong to the people I’m pet sitting for. I let the dogs outside and cleaned up the mess while Angel finished her school work. I got out the vacuum which wasn’t working right, so I took it apart and cleaned it. I couldn’t use it though because I had washed the filters and they needed to dry. So I crawled around on my hands and knees and picked up all the newspaper by hand.
Once everything was cleaned up, we took the dogs on a walk to the lake. Angel played in the sand and the dogs ran around and played. Here’s a video:
I threw myself in the cold water to take my evening bath. Once I got used to it, it didn’t seem that cold anymore. We hung out and enjoyed ourselves until the dogs started running too far away and not coming back when I called them. I put them on their leashes and we walked back.
I made Angel waffles for dinner. I was still full from my salad at lunch and didn’t eat anything. After dinner, we got ready for bed. I read Angel a few chapters of The Christmas Pig. Then we turned out the light and went to sleep at around 9 PM.
Friday, September 6, 2024
Dear Diary,
I woke up at 4:30 AM. I’d had a fearful dream and my stomach was in knots. I had been searching for someone and couldn’t find them. I did a prayer and meditation session to get me centered. Then I wrote my blog until 6:30 AM. I posted it and looked at things on my phone.
At 7:30 AM Angel woke up. I asked her if she wanted me to read to her some more of The Christmas Pig. She said yes, and we finished the book. We got up and got dressed. I made Angel waffles for breakfast and tea for myself. I still had one more 64 ounce jar of watermelon smoothie left. I prayed my gratitudes. Good morning God, I am grateful for sunshine. I am grateful for Pet Sitting opportunities. I am grateful for sleep. I am grateful for coaching clients. I am grateful for libraries. I am grateful for yummy salads. I am grateful for fresh squeeze orange juice. I am grateful for joy. I am grateful for waffles thank you. I love you.
Angel and I sat down at the table and did her schoolwork. She enthusiastically did school today. Yay! She did 5 pages of multiplication and 4 pages of reading and phonics. We learned about syllables and Angel had a lot of fun clapping out the syllables in words. I am really enjoying spending so much one on one time with Angel. She has a great personality and knows her mind.
After Angel completed her schoolwork, we hung around the house for a couple of hours before going ice-skating. The ice-skating rink was open from 1 pm to 4:30 pm. on Fridays. I planned on getting there at around 2 pm. I was meeting a lady outside of McCall at 4:30 pm that was interested in having me pet sit for her in October. I didn’t want to drive to McCall twice so I figured we could skate for 2 hours and then go to meet my new pet sitting client right after.
It was a nice and relaxing afternoon. Angel played on her phone upstairs while I went outside with the dogs and sun bathed. I fully relaxed my body and basked in the feel of the warm sun. I felt grateful to be alive. I finished writing my blog and ordered some new business cards that had my Idaho phone number on them. I finished drinking the last of my watermelon smoothie and made a banana, cacao, homemade almond milk and fresh pineapple/wild apple juice smoothie.
At around 1:30 pm, we hearted (headed) to McCall. We parked in front on the ice-skating rink and it looked like no one was there. We checked the doors and they were locked. I called and the message said they were open during this time. Then I saw a sign taped to the door that said they would be opening at 2 pm. We had 10 minutes to wait. Angel wanted to sit on a bench nearby while we waited. The view from the bench was spectacular despite all the smoke in the air from the fires. The view was of the Payette Lake with the mountains behind it. A sailboat was passing through just at that moment and I took a picture of it all.
There were about 10 young men in line in front of us when we went inside the ice-skating rink. We got our skates and put them on. I haven’t ice-skated in over 20 years and I wasn’t sure how this would go. Angel has ice-skated once before when her older sister took her but she used a skate helper. This ice-skating rink doesn’t allow skate helpers. I stepped out onto the ice and my first thought was, why am I choosing to get onto a sheet of solid ice with metal blades on my feet? Why did I think this was a good idea? Angel and I shuffled along the wall. There were a few of the guys that had been in line in front of us doing the same thing. When I started remembering how to skate on the ice, I slowly began moving away from the wall. Angel did the same. There was a girl whizzing around the rink that stopped to give Angel some pointers. I talked to her a little and found out her name is Cody and she is 13 years old. She does ice skating performances and likes to skate any chance she gets.
Within a half hour, I was comfortably skating around the rink. I did have one graceful fall that went smoothly with no injuries. The group of young guys that had been in front of us, were leaving already. I asked one of them why they were leaving so soon. He said his ankles were hurting and it wasn’t his thing. Another guy said that they were all going out tonight and they didn’t want to have any injuries. I chuckled to myself.
We skated for an hour and a half and had the rink to ourselves other than Cody and her instructor. She was practicing doing turns and other fancy moves. It was fun watching her. Angel was doing good and getting better and better. I would hold her hand and help her go all the way from one side of the rink to the other. Then she had a fall and hurt her arm. That was it, she was done. We turned in our skates and I saw they were offering beginner lessons on Monday evening. I signed Angel up for them.
We had an hour before going to meet my new pet sitting client, so we walked around downtown. We stopped in at the thrift stores we had already visited earlier in the week but it was still fun to look around. Then we drove outside of town to the pet sitting house. They had girls close to Angels age and she played with them. I talked to the lady and her husband and they showed me around. They have dogs, cats, chickens and horses. We seemed like a good fit and she might also hire me to clean for her which will be great. I only want to take on a few cleaning clients to supplement pet sitting. With no more than 3 houses a week. I was cleaning way too many houses in Texas and I got burned out on it. Mostly I want to do pet sitting and I’m already getting clients. Yay!
I drove the back roads to our current pet sitting house. I had never been that way before and I loved looking at all the farms and houses. When we pulled up to the house, I let the dogs out and made Angel waffles for dinner. We took a bath in the big bathtub. While we were bathing the power went out. That was strange, the power rarely goes out in Idaho. My pet sitting client sent a message saying that they had received a notice that the power company was doing some maintenance and the power would be back on soon. We went to bed early and I read to Angel from a new book I got at a thrift store called Prairie School. While I was reading, the power came back on. I read until it got dark. Then we turned out the light to go to sleep. Angel kept squirming and flopping around. I asked her what was going on and she said she couldn’t sleep. I had a feeling it was from a few dark chocolate almonds she had eaten before bed. We turned on the light and I read to her some more. When we turned the light off again, she was still squirming and flopping around. After an hour or so, I put her out on the couch and tucked her in. Then I went back to bed and fell asleep at around 11 pm.
Thank you for reading my blog and being a part of my life. I appreciate you.
Love, Victoria
P. S. This blog post was inspired by the Holy Spirit.