July ran the gamut of emotions just about as much as it could have. We started the month off with the incredible high of being on our long-awaited family vacation in Hawaii, and we came home to do an ultrasound for my pregnancy that showed that everything sounded perfect.
Although I felt sick with the usual first trimester exhaustion and nausea over the course of the month, we did a lot of crisis weeding and massive harvesting for the flower farm once we got home from vacation, and I was elated that all of my careful planning and learning from last year’s mistakes had paid off — I’ve had MUCH more of an abundance of flowers to fulfill our bouquet subscriptions than I did last year at this same point.
The end of the month brought another ultrasound, which brought us the devastating news that I’d lost the baby just a day after the previous ultrasound. It’s my second miscarriage in a row, my third miscarriage overall. I went in for a D&C procedure at the end of the month.
Since we were gone for the first week of the month, I felt sick and exhausted throughout, and then I was dealing with our loss at the end, I’m sure it will come as no surprise that July stands as one of my worst goal months ever. I don’t really care since I obviously had a lot of other stuff on my plate, but there you have it.
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July Goals
- Get a haircut
- This ended up just not being in the budget. Rollover for August (since I desperately need one!).
Take Onyx in for a haircut and groom- He always looks beyond ridiculous when he gets back, but that’s okay 🙂
- Read 3 books off my Summer 2022 Reading List
- I’m in the middle of three from this year’s list (The Anthropocene Reviewed, Garden Maker, and Love and Saffron), but I haven’t finished any of them. Ironically, the titles I finished or made the most progress on were actually from last year’s summer reading list.
- Order gift certificates for the flower farm
- Now that we’re reaching the last couple months of the season, I figured this doesn’t make a ton of sense to worry about now. If someone really wanted one, I could always design something on my computer.
- Start all the seedlings that will be overwintered
- I basically missed the window on this, but that’s okay. I can always direct seed things next month, and I think I’ll have a lot of things from this year overwinter again.
Print pictures out for at least two family photo albums- I was so proud of myself for getting this done! I am the worst at printing out photos, so the fact that I finally stopped procrastinating doing this was a Big Deal for me. (Of course, now all the photos need to be labeled and actually put into the two albums they were purchased for, but…baby steps.)
- Finish editing photo session
- Nope. I’m so out of the habit of doing photo sessions for people that I actually keep forgetting about this. Rollover goal.
- Start setting up watering system
- This is such a massive project because it involves fixing our current sprinkler system, which has multiple leaks/breaks. Matt spent many hours during the month to try and fix it and get to the root of the problem, but we’re still not there.
- Take off painting tape in master closet
- I did at least start, but there’s still the majority of it left to go. Rollover goal.
- Thoroughly declutter, tidy, and clean master bedroom
- My mom helped me get through a ton of the laundry that had been cluttering up our bedroom when she came and stayed with us the day of my D&C procedure, which helped me at least get the urgent stuff out of the way. This is a massive project that I’ve actually broken down into smaller steps, but it is something I’m planning on finishing entirely in August.
- Fill up water storage barrel
- This is a total logistical nightmare, I’ve decided. Once full, the barrel weighs several hundred pounds, so we need to basically fill it where it’s going to sit, which is in our basement. Which has no access to a sink. Hmmm…
- Put beans and rice in 5-gallon storage buckets
- Nope. This was just not a priority.
Glue kitchen drawer front back on- Yay for one item that got crossed off the list!
- List Buick
- This will for sure happen in August. For reals.
- Fix doorbell
- This will also happen in August. (I hope.)
- List hot tub (?)
- We made another attempt at selling it to someone we knew, but no bites. As of now, I’m taking this off the list. We’ll reevaluate in the future if we still want to pursue this.
August Goals
My motivation is all over the place at the moment, which is hardly surprising considering everything that’s been going on. August is truly an insane time on the flower farm, just because it’s the month when we by far have the most abundance, and it’s also the month we start going to the farmer’s market.
I’m trying to keep the goals pretty low-key this month, but there are some house projects I’ve been putting off for months because I haven’t been feeling well, which I want to get done ASAP.
Considering we’re not even a week in, I’ve actually gotten a ton done in the house, but I’m still totally leaving the items on the list so I can get that satisfying check mark through them at the end of the month 🙂
August is also obviously back to school time, so there’s always that pull of wanting to fit in as many fun summer things as possible together as a family before we have to get back into the much more strict fall routines. One of the things that helped the very most after my last miscarriage back in February was that we took an impromptu weekend getaway together as a family and just spent a lot of time outdoors and relaxing together. The budget is a lot tighter now, but I’m still hoping we can fit in a few last magical times together before our oldest heads off to start her second grade year and our middle child starts his last year of preschool. We’ll have to see how August shakes out!
Onto the goals, though:
- Get a haircut
- My hair has gotten sooooo bad. I really can’t put this off anymore!!
- Give Matt + the kids haircuts
- We’re all looking pretty unkempt at the moment. This definitely needs to happen before school starts.
- Finish editing photo session
- Rollover goal.
- Make a trip to the donation center
- I’m not motivated to do everything at the moment, but I HAVE been motivated to just get rid of all the things lately. We made a gigantic trip to the donation center in July, but I feel like it barely scratched the surface. I’m also seriously considering renting a gigantic dumpster for a week and just completely tossing everything we can, especially from our garage and workshop areas.
- Paint and hang new laundry doors
- Our laundry doors have kind of been broken from the beginning, and it finally got to the point that we just removed them because they were driving us crazy. The only problem was…that means that you’ve been able to see our washer and dryer and laundry situation 24/7 for about 5 months now. This is the exact kind of thing I tend to procrastinate forever, but we actually did finally purchase new doors the other week. Now we just need to get the right shade of paint for them, paint both, and hang them. We’ll see if it actually happens this month 🙂
- Remove painting tape in master closet
- Rollover goal…especially since we painted the closet back in December. Whoops.
- Price out and measure for baseboards
- We ripped out the flooring and baseboards before we even moved into our house, which was all the way back in fall of 2020. While we did finally get the majority of the new flooring put down last August, we still have never put in baseboards. I don’t know that we’ll actually purchase these anytime soon, but I would like to at least have a figure in my head for what it’s going to cost in the end.
- Entirely declutter and organize master bedroom
- Spoiler: I’ve already made MAJOR progress on this one this month. Super excited to show you some before and after pictures in a few weeks!
- List Buick
- I’m actually crossing my fingers that we’ll not only LIST the Buick, but that we’ll actually SELL it in August. With the unexpected costs of having to pay for another D&C procedure on top of not one, but two car repairs (luckily both just battery related and not something worse), AND an unexpected dental bill…we could use the extra cash. Time to stop being lazy once and for all!
- Fix doorbell
- Because it’s really starting to get annoying that we can only hear if someone is at our door if we’re basically in the next room…
Hope you have some fun plans for the end of your summer! Are you excited/ready for school to start back up again, or are you wishing you still had a few more weeks of summer left?
