A Lively Recap Vol 5: Car Troubles & Apple Picking Season

Happy Sunday! Another busy week in the books. When is it not a busy though? Not only was my week full of the regular drama of single mom, but it also included (a lot of) car troubles and taking full advantage of apple picking season.

Goodbye, Summer Garden

Summer 2020 has come to an end, which means so has my summer garden. I probably could have left stuff to continue growing for another few weeks, but honestly, I am over it. Is that a bad attitude? Maybe. Am I being wasteful? Perhaps. I don’t care though, it is what it is. The bugs sort of derailed me for a few weeks and I never fully recovered.

Oh well, all is not lost becuase I learned A TON this year. I am already planning next year’s garden and am SUPER EXCITED about it.

I’ve mentioned before my plans of expansion. I plan on adding two more 4×4 raised beds along with two 2×4 raised beds. It is going to be beautiful (and a lot of work)! It is probably best that Grant will still be gone because he would most likely try to talk me out of this massive project.

Apple Picking Season

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I am much more of an “apple girl” than a “pumpkin girl” when it comes to fall. I love the look of pumpkins from a decor standpoint, but not a huge fan of the PSL (pumpkin spiced latte). Give me apple cider and apple scented candles all day erryday (and night).

Seeing as how it is apple picking season (and that I will jump at any opportunity to cross things off of my fall fun list), we had to make a trip to our local orchard. I decided that this past saturday was officially “apple picking saturday”. It turned out to be one of the better decisions I made this week because it turned out to be the most gorgeous day. Not too hot, not too cold, nice breeze, blue sky…gorgeous.

The orchard had Golden Delicious, Matsu, and Jonathan apples ready for picking. I have so many plans for these apples.

Apple crisp…apple cider…apple cider donuts…apple dump cake…apple oatmeal cookies…apple butter…

I’m sure I’ll come up with more. I mean, we did bring home A BUNCH of apples, however we did not have a repeat of the time we accidentally brought home $45 of blueberries. I will say, that is one advantage to going apple picking vs. blueberry picking. Apples are much larger than blueberries making it MUCH MORE difficult to accidentally get too many.

Car Troubles

Vehicles have not been my friend this past month. I have had all the car troubles lately and this week they all came to a head.

On Sunday I accidentally dinged the car parked next to me in the parking lot (insert face palm). I did the honest thing and left a note with my information on their windshield. My honesty is costing us almost $600, which is much less than I thought it was going to be. Cost aside, the right thing is always the right thing. The owner’s of that car shouldn’t be out money because of my careless mistake. Consider this your PSA for the day.

On Wednesday I took my vehicle to the mechanic to have the oil changed. Easy, peasy. Turns out I was 1,000 miles over where I should have been before getting my oil changed. The mechanic was super nice about it. I told him he was my “car husband” and I think it freaked him out (insert another facepalm). Regardless, he changed my oil and replaced a few (or more) lightbulbs.

Somewhere in between Sunday and Wednesday I decided it was time to (finally) list my dad’s truck for sale. I just didn’t have the mental capacity to do it until now. Anyway, I got it posted and immediately had people interested. Wonderful, right? Wrong. Turns out I have managed to lose not only 1, but 2 sets of keys to my dads truck (insert third facepalm). I searched everywhere, EVERYWHERE, and still came up empty-handed. My plan of attack for this week is to stop looking for them and hope that they will magically appear. Probably my most solid plan to date.

How To Avoid Needing A Plumber

I noticed our bathroom sink was draining a little slow. No worries. I’ll just take the drain cleaner that is in the closet and take care of business.

I’ll spare you most of the details, but my efforts resulted in the drain not draining at all. Great. I was only mildly concerned at this point. I then found a snake/drain unclogger thing and decided to give that a go. I shoved that bad boy into the drain and gave it a couple of good wiggles. With every little wiggle a little black sludge would bubble up. Gross. Then, all of a sudden, the snake got stuck. Completely stuck. That is when I decided to call in the professionals.

I explained what I did when the professionals arrived. I left them to work in the bathroom, but I could hear them gagging, like actually gagging, as they fix my sink.

When they finish they told me the only drain cleaner I should use is THRIFT drain cleaner. They said to use it when the the sink or bathtub starts to drain slow, not when it is completely clogged.

I’m not sure what the directions on the THRIFT drain cleaner bottle say to do, but the plumber’s said to pour a little THRIFT down the drain then pour boiling water into it. Consider this another PSA.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you have a great week!