Minutiae, Saturday Edition

Wake ahead of the alarm.

Take morning meds, rejoicing that this month's antihistamine can be taken with fruit juice if I choose.

Collect the fabric for the quilt blocks from the hangers where they've dried overnight. Deposit on ironing board.

Turn on lights in dining room and studio

Grab phone from charger and water bottle from bedside table. Deposit both in studio.

Turn on lamps in living room. Discover that one bulb has given up the ghost. Replace bulb. Make small noise of triumph

Call-out from Middlest's room: Mom, are you OK? Explain that that was a noise of triumph, not distress.

Make myself a no-brainer breakfast. Cottage cheese and cherry pie. Ask a blessing on the food. Sit down at computer and pull up solitaire.

Middlest politely and reasonably interrupts: Would you mind logging onto our bank and verifying the deposits and withdrawal for PayPal? Of course not. Middlest's doll luck has held, and my kid has won both doll lotteries for our friend Andi. New bank account must be verified. I'm a doll collector, and I have my priorities straight.

Middlest apologetically departs for bed, having been awake all night for no explicable reason, but helpfully depositing my dishes in the sink before retiring.

Press fabric. Make quilt blocks. Finish eight minutes before we said we were going to leave. Middlest has slept through the alarm. Wake Middlest. Get dressed. Leave house about five minutes after we had planned.

Firstborn and Fourthborn are having breakfast inside a little cafe on the square. Firstborn buys us hot chocolate. I buy ginormous cherry Danishes for Middlest and me. We go over the details of the phone plan.

We walk over to the quilt shop, show our finished blocks, and pick up the February blocks for free. (I love free.) I pay for the finish kit in the largest size, enjoying my discount card. I put my name on the waiting list for a pattern that's been ordered (one huge strip-pieced star; I live in the Lone Star State, so it seems apropos).

Firstborn invites us to follow them to her house, so we can knock out the new blocks together. Middlest and I demur, because our bodies are screaming for sleep. They go their way. We go ours.

On the drive home, I inform Middlest that we are stopping at Trader Joe's to replenish our supply of all things ginger, because Middlest loathes surprises and would be startled and confused if I turned off our usual route with no explanation. I am wearing Beloved's Packers sweatshirt, because it is chilly out, and not because I love football. Guy staffing a register finishes taking care of his customer, and comes to help our checker bag up our stuff, making small talk about how he wishes that the Packers had made it to the Superbowl (which I think is tomorrow?), and I said that I was just glad that they'd beaten the Cowboys.

There is a Hobby Lobby in the same shopping center. Middlest wants to see if they have fold-over elastic to finish those EID shorts. I am hoping not to find anything that wants to come home with me. Neither of us gets what we hoped for. No elastic for Middlest, and an MSD-sized table in a soft teal for Steadfast, Honor, and my twins. Not on sale, but I decide that that will be my splurge for this payday.

When I get to the checkout counter, the clerk quietly scans their 40% discount coupon as if I'd brought one.

The table is now sitting on my dining room table. The small plates are on it, with the silverware I bought in the scrapbooking department at Michael's two or three months ago, and a very old drawn-work handkerchief as tablecloth. I need napkins and drinking glasses in the proper scale.

I go online, searching for "1/4 scale doll dishes" and get a lot of 1/48 scale items (because 1/48 is one-fourth of dollhouse scale, which is 1/12). I search again for "MSD doll dishes" and find no dishes, but I do find a lovely pair of harlequin leggings that will fit Honor. $11 and free shipping if I am willing to wait a couple of months for them to arrive on a slow boat from China. Which I am. (See I love free, above.)

Make a cup of easy-mac for myself. Embellish it with halved grape tomatoes and a slice of rosemary ham.

Middlest wanders out to the kitchen for something, sees the ham that I've left out, and puts it away, saving me much chagrin.

Middlest lies down for a nap and promptly falls asleep.

I finish the mac and cheese, dispose of the cup, set my phone to update nine apps, and lie down with the covers over my head.

I wake five hours later, too late to make a Costco run, and vaguely hungry. I fix a snack.

At this point, sensible people are making dinner. I am deciding what needs to come first: loading and running the dishwasher, because the sink is reaching critical mass in terms of carefully rinsed dishes; starting the first load of darks, because the hampers are also reaching critical mass; run to Kroger for more bottled water, bananas, guacamole, etc.; preshrinking the fabric for the next quilt block; reading the lessons for church tomorrow, because that has not happened all week.

So I do it all, a little bit at a time. Fill and start the dishwasher. Preshrink the fabric and hang it to dry on my shower rod. Start the darks. Make a shopping list. Throw the darks into the dryer. Start the lights. Make a batch of mashed potatoes, because I am inexplicably hungry again. Extract the darks and put the lights in to dry. Start the whites. Fold Middlest's stuff and put it on the table in the hall. Throw my socks onto my side of the bed, so I will have to deal with them before bedtime. Put on leaving-the-house clothing and make the grocery run. Come home at 10:00p.m. (how did that happen?) to a wide-awake Middlest. Empty the dryer again. Fill it with the whites. Make pigs in blankets. Listen to Middlest. Complete the straightaway on the Frankensocks. Read my Book of Mormon (after midnight, but I'm designating it as Saturday obedience, because I plan on reading more of it when I wake up again. Come to the computer to finish this post. Answer a question from middlest about my circulatory system as compared to my kid's. The answer being, chiefly, I don't know. Finish this post.

Good night, Gracie. (Although it's nearly 1:00a.m., and I didn't properly study the lessons for tomorrow.)