The last few days have seen a few changes and stuff outside our normal routine. The first major change was some bad news for Raider King. He and Dh have both been home sick a lot with some sort of nasty bug - one that a lot of people seem to be fighting, but which the girls and I have managed to avoid. Unlike Dh, Raider King's health troubles did what we're always slightly afraid will happen to Dh. He lost his job. He'd only been there a couple of months. So now he's back to job hunting. He had been looking for his own place, using the savings he's managed so far, and had some good leads, but I told him not to worry about it until he's actually got an income again.
I got all autocratic on my family recently, booking medical appointments for all of us. Dh has been procrastinating getting the medical release his physiotherapist wanted to see before doing any more work on his back and Eldest has been looking at the possibility of being gluten intolerant. None of us have gone for physicals in ages, so I booked appointments for all of us. We had to split it up between two days, with Eldest having her appointment this morning. Our appointments were supposed to be me, Dh, then Youngest, over the cours of 1 1/2 hours. Youngest, who wasn't comfortable with the whole thing, came in with me for my physical (we skipped a certain invasive examination in the process). Our doctor ended up just getting her file and doing her physical right after, then he saw Dh, and we were done before the time Youngest's appointment was booked. Kinda nice, when it goes all so smoothly. We've all been written up for blood tests, plus Dh is to get a chest Xray because of the cough he's been having so much troubles with lately (and the reason he's been missing more work lately). No appointments necessary, and all can be done in the same place, so the next time Dh can take a morning off, we'll spend a night fasting and all go in at once.
After this morning's appointment, I dropped Eldest off at the library so she could do her studies. Today, she was focusing on feet. She's a bit perturbed by the differences between the reference images and real feet and hands, though. The length of the fingers and toes, space between them, even the directions they lean, all seem off to her in the books. The toes on the men's feet, for example, were all sort of leaning inwards towards the big toe in the reference photos, but when looking at our own feet, they don't do that. I thought perhaps it was because we never wear fashionable pointed toe shoes - ever. It's a possibility, anyhow.
Youngest, meanwhile, is going to be doing some hair modelling soon. Through one of the local home schooling families, we've been in contact with a woman who it taking a beautician course. Students always need real heads to practice on, and she's got exams coming up. Youngest has long thick hair that's never been dyed, so next week she'll be having her hair and make up done. The woman doing it has to do 5 different upswept styles, plus make up. I think we'll have to split it between two days, but we'll see how long it actually takes. As I was chatting with her, we got to talking about commercial colours. She told me how, since taking this course, she now will never use boxed home dying kits - some pretty nasty stuff in them, apparently. I told her Eldest is currently bright pink, and it turns out she and I both have also gone quite the variety of bright colours. I mentioned my own hair is currently half coloured - I'd used henna to colour my hair, but the store I found the powder in no longer seems to carry it. I haven't found another place that sells it yet - at least not just the powder. I've found some mendhi kits, but I just want the powder. Anyhow, my hair has grown out quite a bit since then and is quite long, but the henna colour is still very much there, so I'm half a red-head right now. *L* I mentioned it in jest, but I seemed to get her wheels turning, because she started saying that perhaps she could colour my hair for me - something else she needs to be tested on. We'll see how that works out once we finally meet in person. Should be interesting. I've got very thin hair and it's going silver, which requires different time and attention than she might have available. Some of her tests have to be done at the school within a time limit, but the work she'll be doing on Youngest is actually for her employer, and she can do it in her own home. She just has to get all 5 styles done and photographed by Dec. 6. I might even be doing the photography for her, as she was planning to use her little point-and-shoot. It should be interesting.
Another recent event has been a spice mix exchange we hosted in our co-op. Counting myself and Eldest, 7 people took part, so we all ended up with 7 different spice mixes. We decided on having 1 cup of each mix per person. The recipes, of course, didn't come in even 1 cup quantities, so we all had to recalculate our quantities. The recipes were all in Imperial measurements, so we had to figure out things like how many teaspoons in a tablespoon (3), how many tablespoons in a teaspoon (16), work out how much we had to increase our recipes to get 7 cups, then work out how much each ingredient had to be increase individually. What I found funny is how we'd go from fractions to decimals and back again. Then, when it came time to actually but the spices, everything is sold in metric quantities. It could get rather confusing! One of the participants did an extra mix for her husband, who'd made a mistake calculating one of his ingredients, and she ended up way too short. Thankfully, I had enough at home I could give her.
We all got together at one of the multi-purpose rooms at our co-op, where there was plenty of space to spread out, then put together our mixes while drinking tea, having cookies and chatting. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad we did it. I'll be jarring some of them up to make gift sets, but we've also been using them in our own cooking. I'll have to share some of the recipes here later on. :-D
The next few days should be a little more routine. We do need to get going on some of our Christmas plans. I'm not sure how we'll rearrange the living room this year to fit the tree, since we've got a couple of armchairs now. We've also got to get started on this year's Christmas decorations soon. I've got stuff to crochet for a craft sale first, though.
Speaking of crochet, Youngest has been rather productive. She made a great scarf for Raider King in a fluffy pink yarn he picked out. She's making another giant blanket for herself, all in variegated yarns, plus she's starting another shawl. This will be the first shawl she's making for herself. All the others have been gifts. It's been a bit difficult for either of us to get the work done, though, since our usual work space is now Raider King's bed. *L*
Tomorrow is our regular errand running day, so I expect to be quite busy. I don't like running around, but it needs to be done. :-P I like things when they're quiet and boring! *L*
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