I’m not very good at keeping up. With anything, really.

Since Friday, I’ve been cleaning out my den. I got some new-to-me bookshelves from my sister last Monday. I’m still double shelved, but books are off the floor. She has more bookshelves for me, so I decided to do a thorough deep cleaning to see if I have room. I do. It’s involved getting rid of a lot of junk. What I have left to do is sort and empty the boxes of “stuff” that are left. I hope to get that done by Wednesday. We’ll see.

I’ve been doing some stitching. … I thought I took some pictures, but they neither uploaded to the iCloud nor downloaded to my Pictures file. Since they’re not on my phone, either, I guess I only thought about taking them. … OK, so I took one.

This has been a make-it-up-as-I-go-along project. The button is about an inch and a half across. It’s stitched in with craft thread and some holographic thread is woven around the center of the attaching stitches, Around it are four layers of various perle and crochet threads in buttonhole stitch. The trees are a “yarn” for making dishcloths couched with feather stitching in a brown perle 5. The spaces created by the feather stitch are filed with a feather stitch in a matching green single strand of floss. (The tree thread under the button sun is merely pinned out of the way.) I’m hoping to put an owl above the trees and setting sun.

I want to have a small vegetable garden. For that I need to get outside and prepare the beds. I’s time (or close to time) to get the early, cool crops in.

I’m writing this on my exercycle. So far, for the past two or three weeks, I’ve ached after being here. I don’t know why. In January I had no problems. It makes no sense. I don’t eat a lot of sugar, but I did change my cereal and switched from plain nuts to a nut bar. I need to go back to 0 sugar except for an occasional treat. We’ll see if that helps. It should help weight control, at least. I can’t think of anything else.

It boggles me how much sugar is in the American diet. There is sugar in so many things that don’t need sugar. I won’t buy brand name peanut butter because it has sugar, Nothing tastes quite as good as freshly pressed peanut butter, anyway. And I don’t like sugar in tomato foods (like spaghetti sauce), either. It doesn’t cut the acid as some people think. (For me sugar creates a lot of acid.) I guess some people like sweet tomato sauces, but I’m not one of them. When I subscribed to a dinner service, I left out the sugar in their recipes for a lot of things. They tasted fine. A lot of sweet things have too much sugar (or high fructose corn syrup), too. I like sweet, but too much is overwhelming. I’d much rather flavor with spices.

Well, I’ve long ago finished my cycling and have showered, dressed, and eaten. The sorting in the den is still there, so I’d best get to it.