In retrospect, my last post ended up being more negative than otherwise. It happens ... and I'm not going to apologize for it. This is the one place where I can say exactly what I think and how I feel without being told how /why / to what degree I'm wrong. That's not to say I feel negative toward my family very often, but when I do, I really don't appreciate having my feelings discounted or pooh-poohed with responses that translate to I'm either crazy, delusional, stupid, or a liar.
And now that I've got that off my chest ...
Last week was super-hairy-crazy-busy-overloaded stressful at work. To the point where my IBS flared up so badly that by Friday I was spending half the day in the washroom and eating ibuprofen and loperamide like jelly beans. Well, I knew that this week wouldn't be any better, but I was determined not to let it aggravate my system again. So today, whenever I felt myself starting to react I just turned my chair around to face away from the desk, took three slow, deep breaths, and told myself not to take it personally. And it worked! I felt fine all day, and I still do. Physically, mentally, emotionally. So tonight seems like a good time to think about the positives in my life instead of the negatives.
Cloud: super-hairy-crazy-busy-overloaded days at work.
Silver lining: a job I love and that I'm really good at (and that incidentally pays pretty well too!). And every now and them, a client actually expresses appreciation. It means a lot, folks. If someone has done a good job for you - tell them so! You'll make their day, I guarantee it.
Cloud: man and daughters who think they are and will always be my number-one priority.
Silver lining: man and daughters who are and always will be my number-one priority.
Cloud: elderly cats who yarf up dead bugs in the living room.
Silver lining: elderly cats who are still healthy, active, and interested enough to chase and catch the aforementioned bugs.
Cloud: house that never seems to get clean no matter how much I clean it.
Silver lining: it's home, and it's mine, and what doesn't get done today will get done another day. (Besides, cleaning a house with a man living in it is like shoveling the walk while it's still snowing. And he cooks.)
Cloud: never enough time or working space to do all the things I want to do.
Silver lining: I am never bored. I really mean that. Never.
I may not have achieved as much as some people in worldly or material ways, but I have everything I need, most of what I want, and the freedom to enjoy it. I have more, in most areas, than ninety-nine per cent of the people on this planet. I have education, security, personal safety and freedoms, health and health care. I have a roof over my head, suitable clothing for the climate, enough to eat, clean water, reliable transportation, and work that pays a wage I can live on. What I don't have (except when the IBS is really bad) is any good reason to feel sorry for myself. Compared to most of the world - and any number of people I know - I am fortunate. And, most of the time, grateful.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Monday, April 18, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
One Step Forward, How Many Back?
It's been a difficult and disappointing week here at Chez Chaos ...
J catered a big party last weekend. Apparently the party itself was a great success, her food was a huge hit with the crowd, and the word-of-mouth advertising will certainly pay off in the long term. However ... the friend who was helping her with setup and cleanup wasn't really paying attention, or something. Whatever her reason, all the clean kitchen utensils got wrapped in dirty, damp towels before going into the bins for transport back here, and some containers of food that should have been in the cooler were down in the bottom of the "clean stuff" bin as well. Now, due to a hectic work schedule, J didn't get to unpacking what should have been a bin full of clean, dry things until Friday. Result: mildewed towels, moldy food, and two sinkfuls of dishes and utensils to be scrubbed free of mold and disinfected. Between all of that and a massive post-birthday-celebration hangover, J is not a happy chef this weekend.
My workplace was seriously understaffed all week, due to one vacation and one nasty case of flu. Between working through lunch and staying late every night, by the time I got home in the evenings I didn't have the energy for anything other than wolfing down a sandwich and collapsing into bed. So nothing got done here on ongoing projects, and nothing by way of housework other than the absolutely unavoidable minimum of animal care, dishes and laundry. To make the week even more hectic, our highest-volume ocean terminal lost all their computer systems for three days, which meant I was deluged with phone calls from truckers who couldn't get what they needed because "the terminal has no record of it". Every one of those calls meant I had to print out what was originally booked, call the terminal, and read it to someone who would them write it down and send someone to the main gate with it. Every three minutes. For three days. On top of a doubled-plus workload. Fortunately, the usual IBS reaction to stress held off until Saturday - which was a blessing at the office but has kept me from accomplishing much of anything at home this weekend. Even the sweater that I'd hoped to have finished by now is still in pieces in my knitting bag.
One of our downstairs tenants is having a really hard time finding work, and for the last two months they've only paid half the rent. I'm sympathetic, but at the same time the money shortage is more stress we really don't need right now. I'm going to sit back and let Big Guy deal with them about it; I already have more than enough stress to keep my innards in an uproar. But if we don't see some more money from them this week, I may resort to cutting off the cable television and internet to the suite - after all, both are included in the rent, and so (in my view) have not been paid for. "Need" internet access to look for a job? It's free at the public library, which is within walking distance.
I've also come to the unhappy realization that no matter how much organizing and purging I do, there will never be enough space in my workroom to do what I'd like to be doing in here; the room is just too small. The only way to create enough space would be to move everything I work with to another part of the house, and that's just not an option. Somehow, I just can't see myself climbing the ladder to the attic to go through boxes every time I need a reference book or a spool of thread ...
We're not sure if this spring is really colder and wetter than usual, or if we're perceiving it that way because every time we finally have a little time to work on the garden, it rains. In either case, it's frustrating ... we'll go outside and get started on something, and within ten or fifteen minutes the weather changes and drives us back under cover. Eventually it will all get done; it's just hard to maintain any enthusiasm for it when progress is measured in slow, damp inches.
There were a few bright spots in all the gloom, though ...
J was very happy with her birthday gifts; I gave her a gift card to her favourite frilly-girly-girl lingerie store and a month's supply of transit tickets, and Big Guy is taking her shopping for three new pairs of jeans.
The ornamental trees downtown are all bursting into bloom, and tomorrow is supposed to be fairly nice weather-wise, so I've already tucked my camera in my bag. Every year I tell myself I'm going to get pictures when the trees blossom, and every year I either forget the camera, or it rains, or both. This year, I'm ready!
Sister S and I get together at Mom's on Wednesday evening instead of the usual Friday, and it was a really nice evening. I had to leave pretty early, but Mom had some good news for a change ... although the changes are small and slow, her health is gradually improving. She may never get all the way back to where she was two years ago, but the improvement is noticeable now, and gives hope for more. We're all very happy for her, and looking forward to doing more with her in the future. Maybe another road trip ...
Friends D and J came over Saturday night as usual, and we had a very pleasant, relaxing time with several episodes of "The Mentalist". When we run out of episodes we might move right on to "Stargate SG-1", or possibly take some time out for a few board game nights. Either way, fun evenings with good friends, and without spending money - it's all good. Next week it's my turn to provide the snacks, so there will either be homemade cookies or coffee cake, or maybe a big tub of popcorn and a plate of homemade fudge. Good times on the cheap!
J catered a big party last weekend. Apparently the party itself was a great success, her food was a huge hit with the crowd, and the word-of-mouth advertising will certainly pay off in the long term. However ... the friend who was helping her with setup and cleanup wasn't really paying attention, or something. Whatever her reason, all the clean kitchen utensils got wrapped in dirty, damp towels before going into the bins for transport back here, and some containers of food that should have been in the cooler were down in the bottom of the "clean stuff" bin as well. Now, due to a hectic work schedule, J didn't get to unpacking what should have been a bin full of clean, dry things until Friday. Result: mildewed towels, moldy food, and two sinkfuls of dishes and utensils to be scrubbed free of mold and disinfected. Between all of that and a massive post-birthday-celebration hangover, J is not a happy chef this weekend.
My workplace was seriously understaffed all week, due to one vacation and one nasty case of flu. Between working through lunch and staying late every night, by the time I got home in the evenings I didn't have the energy for anything other than wolfing down a sandwich and collapsing into bed. So nothing got done here on ongoing projects, and nothing by way of housework other than the absolutely unavoidable minimum of animal care, dishes and laundry. To make the week even more hectic, our highest-volume ocean terminal lost all their computer systems for three days, which meant I was deluged with phone calls from truckers who couldn't get what they needed because "the terminal has no record of it". Every one of those calls meant I had to print out what was originally booked, call the terminal, and read it to someone who would them write it down and send someone to the main gate with it. Every three minutes. For three days. On top of a doubled-plus workload. Fortunately, the usual IBS reaction to stress held off until Saturday - which was a blessing at the office but has kept me from accomplishing much of anything at home this weekend. Even the sweater that I'd hoped to have finished by now is still in pieces in my knitting bag.
One of our downstairs tenants is having a really hard time finding work, and for the last two months they've only paid half the rent. I'm sympathetic, but at the same time the money shortage is more stress we really don't need right now. I'm going to sit back and let Big Guy deal with them about it; I already have more than enough stress to keep my innards in an uproar. But if we don't see some more money from them this week, I may resort to cutting off the cable television and internet to the suite - after all, both are included in the rent, and so (in my view) have not been paid for. "Need" internet access to look for a job? It's free at the public library, which is within walking distance.
I've also come to the unhappy realization that no matter how much organizing and purging I do, there will never be enough space in my workroom to do what I'd like to be doing in here; the room is just too small. The only way to create enough space would be to move everything I work with to another part of the house, and that's just not an option. Somehow, I just can't see myself climbing the ladder to the attic to go through boxes every time I need a reference book or a spool of thread ...
We're not sure if this spring is really colder and wetter than usual, or if we're perceiving it that way because every time we finally have a little time to work on the garden, it rains. In either case, it's frustrating ... we'll go outside and get started on something, and within ten or fifteen minutes the weather changes and drives us back under cover. Eventually it will all get done; it's just hard to maintain any enthusiasm for it when progress is measured in slow, damp inches.
There were a few bright spots in all the gloom, though ...
J was very happy with her birthday gifts; I gave her a gift card to her favourite frilly-girly-girl lingerie store and a month's supply of transit tickets, and Big Guy is taking her shopping for three new pairs of jeans.
The ornamental trees downtown are all bursting into bloom, and tomorrow is supposed to be fairly nice weather-wise, so I've already tucked my camera in my bag. Every year I tell myself I'm going to get pictures when the trees blossom, and every year I either forget the camera, or it rains, or both. This year, I'm ready!
Sister S and I get together at Mom's on Wednesday evening instead of the usual Friday, and it was a really nice evening. I had to leave pretty early, but Mom had some good news for a change ... although the changes are small and slow, her health is gradually improving. She may never get all the way back to where she was two years ago, but the improvement is noticeable now, and gives hope for more. We're all very happy for her, and looking forward to doing more with her in the future. Maybe another road trip ...
Friends D and J came over Saturday night as usual, and we had a very pleasant, relaxing time with several episodes of "The Mentalist". When we run out of episodes we might move right on to "Stargate SG-1", or possibly take some time out for a few board game nights. Either way, fun evenings with good friends, and without spending money - it's all good. Next week it's my turn to provide the snacks, so there will either be homemade cookies or coffee cake, or maybe a big tub of popcorn and a plate of homemade fudge. Good times on the cheap!
Monday, February 21, 2011
Monday Thoughts
Life is, as always, interesting, sometimes entertaining, often complicated, and full of choices and tradeoffs.
I really want to get my current knitting project finished. I'd like to be able to wear the sweater to work while it's still cold enough to wear a sweater to work ... and I already have the yarn and pattern for the next one. Which will be pink, so it's even odds sister S will try to talk me out of it, or into making one for her.
I really want to get my workroom completely cleaned out and reorganized. But that uses up knitting time ...
I have three shelves full of books I haven't read yet. Quite a few of them are hardcovers that are too bulky and/or heavy to carry to work and back every day for train reading. And every time my friend D comes over for our weekly movie-or-board-game night, he brings more books to lend me. I read on the train, I read through my lunch hour, I read when my hands cramp up from too much knitting (is there even such a thing as "too much knitting"?), and the books still pile up faster than I can whittle them down. I'm like Robert Heinlein's character Hilda Corners in "The Number Of The Beast", who said she read in bed, she read while she ate, she read on the john, she read in the bath, and she'd read in her sleep if she could figure out how to keep her eyes open.
I have a lecture series on DVD that Mom lent me, and another one she bought me for my birthday, that I really want to see. I could pop them in the DVD player while I knit, but they're subjects I like to give my full attention to ... I'm not so good a knitter that I can knit without paying any attention to what I'm doing.
For someone like me, an embarrassment of riches! It makes me wish our lotto pool at work would win big, so I could say goodbye to working for a living and have, finally, enough reading/knitting/sewing/everything time. I could never be one of the "idle rich" - life is just too full of interesting things to do/see/hear/learn, and not nearly full enough of time for them all.
*****
Am I a bad person because I enjoy watching someone with a highly inflated sense of their own importance shoot themselves in the foot? Especially people who've grown a sense of entitlement where they should have cultivated some kind of work ethic?
Two weeks ago, our office hired New Kid. The Monday he was supposed to start, he called in sick. Well, things happen, benefit of the doubt and all that. When he did show up, he seemed from the start to be very young - in attitude as well as age - and very, very full of himself.
The following Monday he called in sick again. Hmmmm. He also had to be warned more than once during the week about things he was doing when he should have been doing what we hired him for. Warnings he apparently didn't find worth taking seriously. And frankly, he wasn't nearly as good as he thought - and said - he was.
Today, Monday, the beginning of his third week with us ...yep, you guessed it.
If he shows up tomorrow, he'll be handed his final cheque and told not to come back.
We amused ourselves speculating on whether he has quit but doesn't have the cojones to say so to our faces, or whether he was too hung over to care what we thought and is counting on coming in tomorrow morning as if nothing had happened. I guess we'll find out in the morning. It certainly is glaringly obvious that he has no idea what being a full-time employee in the real world is all about. He's currently pursuing a business degree (evening classes) and fully expects that as soon as he has that diploma in his hand, companies will be lining up outside his door with high-paying career offers. Yeah, good luck with that. Especially since our field is not thickly populated, sooner or later everyone in the industry knows everyone else, and word gets around ...
*****
It's slushing outside. One minute it's snowing, the next minute it's raining ... if you don't like what's happening, wait five minutes ... it'll change. Nasty. I wonder what it'll be doing in the morning?
*****
Exchange between two daughters and me earlier this evening, after I had obliged them by stopping on my way home to pick up concert tickets for them:
"Yay! We have concert tickets to see 'Favourite Band'!"
"No, I have concert tickets. When you pay me back for them, then you will have concert tickets."
I'm such a meanie.
*****
I just realized something possibly odd about myself.
I remember learning to swim, and to roller skate, and to ride a bike, and to do cursive writing (a disappearing art these days, it seems). I remember not yet knowing how to drive, cook, thread a sewing machine, ice skate backwards, or chop kindling. I remember when we got our first television - a black & white Phillips, with the rounded green screen and "wood-grain" cabinet and rabbit ears sitting on top. I remember the first day of first grade. I even remember bits of my second birthday.
I don't remember not knowing how to read. And I don't remember not knowing how to knit.
I really want to get my current knitting project finished. I'd like to be able to wear the sweater to work while it's still cold enough to wear a sweater to work ... and I already have the yarn and pattern for the next one. Which will be pink, so it's even odds sister S will try to talk me out of it, or into making one for her.
I really want to get my workroom completely cleaned out and reorganized. But that uses up knitting time ...
I have three shelves full of books I haven't read yet. Quite a few of them are hardcovers that are too bulky and/or heavy to carry to work and back every day for train reading. And every time my friend D comes over for our weekly movie-or-board-game night, he brings more books to lend me. I read on the train, I read through my lunch hour, I read when my hands cramp up from too much knitting (is there even such a thing as "too much knitting"?), and the books still pile up faster than I can whittle them down. I'm like Robert Heinlein's character Hilda Corners in "The Number Of The Beast", who said she read in bed, she read while she ate, she read on the john, she read in the bath, and she'd read in her sleep if she could figure out how to keep her eyes open.
I have a lecture series on DVD that Mom lent me, and another one she bought me for my birthday, that I really want to see. I could pop them in the DVD player while I knit, but they're subjects I like to give my full attention to ... I'm not so good a knitter that I can knit without paying any attention to what I'm doing.
For someone like me, an embarrassment of riches! It makes me wish our lotto pool at work would win big, so I could say goodbye to working for a living and have, finally, enough reading/knitting/sewing/everything time. I could never be one of the "idle rich" - life is just too full of interesting things to do/see/hear/learn, and not nearly full enough of time for them all.
*****
Am I a bad person because I enjoy watching someone with a highly inflated sense of their own importance shoot themselves in the foot? Especially people who've grown a sense of entitlement where they should have cultivated some kind of work ethic?
Two weeks ago, our office hired New Kid. The Monday he was supposed to start, he called in sick. Well, things happen, benefit of the doubt and all that. When he did show up, he seemed from the start to be very young - in attitude as well as age - and very, very full of himself.
The following Monday he called in sick again. Hmmmm. He also had to be warned more than once during the week about things he was doing when he should have been doing what we hired him for. Warnings he apparently didn't find worth taking seriously. And frankly, he wasn't nearly as good as he thought - and said - he was.
Today, Monday, the beginning of his third week with us ...yep, you guessed it.
If he shows up tomorrow, he'll be handed his final cheque and told not to come back.
We amused ourselves speculating on whether he has quit but doesn't have the cojones to say so to our faces, or whether he was too hung over to care what we thought and is counting on coming in tomorrow morning as if nothing had happened. I guess we'll find out in the morning. It certainly is glaringly obvious that he has no idea what being a full-time employee in the real world is all about. He's currently pursuing a business degree (evening classes) and fully expects that as soon as he has that diploma in his hand, companies will be lining up outside his door with high-paying career offers. Yeah, good luck with that. Especially since our field is not thickly populated, sooner or later everyone in the industry knows everyone else, and word gets around ...
*****
It's slushing outside. One minute it's snowing, the next minute it's raining ... if you don't like what's happening, wait five minutes ... it'll change. Nasty. I wonder what it'll be doing in the morning?
*****
Exchange between two daughters and me earlier this evening, after I had obliged them by stopping on my way home to pick up concert tickets for them:
"Yay! We have concert tickets to see 'Favourite Band'!"
"No, I have concert tickets. When you pay me back for them, then you will have concert tickets."
I'm such a meanie.
*****
I just realized something possibly odd about myself.
I remember learning to swim, and to roller skate, and to ride a bike, and to do cursive writing (a disappearing art these days, it seems). I remember not yet knowing how to drive, cook, thread a sewing machine, ice skate backwards, or chop kindling. I remember when we got our first television - a black & white Phillips, with the rounded green screen and "wood-grain" cabinet and rabbit ears sitting on top. I remember the first day of first grade. I even remember bits of my second birthday.
I don't remember not knowing how to read. And I don't remember not knowing how to knit.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Random Ramblings
I've had a few things on my plate the past week or so, and a lot on my mind, so tonight's post will be a little jumbled ...rather than try to put events in order, I'm just going to ramble about whatever occurs to me.
The job continues to be very good. My office wardrobe could use some upgrading, but I'm very fortunate in that there isn't really a dress code as such, except that we only wear jeans on Fridays. That takes a lot of pressure off, since any additions this year (other than shoes and underthings) will be made by yours truly. I'll try to remember to post them all in the "Projects" sidebar, but don't expect too much all at once! Since one of my semi-resolutions was to finish everything I start, I think my best hope of doing that will be not to let myself start a project until the previous one is finished. In the past I've had a tendency to start a dozen garments at once and take forever to finish any of them ... I don't have the space for UFOs to accumulate any more, and I no longer have the time or the patience to sort through a big pile of pieces figuring out which piece goes with what.
* * * * *
The memorial service for L was last Saturday, and I must confess I found it a little depressing. Partly, I think, because apart from Big Guy, his brother and nephews, and one friend, I didn't know anyone there. Partly because although the service itself was fairly dignified, I'm not a fan of organized religion, especially when its adherents natter on interminably about "God's will" and "in a better place". How can there be a better place than the home she'd worked hard to make and keep with her loved ones? How can it be "God's will" that she go through what she did because a doctor she trusted misdiagnosed a malignant lump as "just a cyst, don't worry about it"? And did the video presentation really need so many photos of L in a hospital bed, dying? I don't think so. But ... it's not my place to judge; if that's what gave her husband and sons some comfort, I certainly would never dream of telling them what I really thought.
Anyway, on our way home, Big Guy and I agreed that whichever of us goes first, the other one will not do that kind of thing. We're both pretty much set on "give away whatever parts still work (organ donation), burn the rest, and have a party when the ashes get scattered". And in the meantime, enjoy each other's company as much as we can, because who knows what might happen tomorrow?
* * * * *
I spent most of Sunday happily knitting away, thinking I'd have the back of the sweater finished and the front started by bedtime, and then ... I discovered that I'd left out one small but critical step at the beginning of the armhole shaping, and had to rip out about eight inches of work. I'm calmer now, but still feel rather foolish. After all, I've been knitting for almost fifty years - how could I have not noticed something so basic? Can I plead a mental hangover from Saturday?
* * * * *
Daughter J volunteered at a foodie event a few days back, and for her trouble brought home, among other things, a huge bag of assorted exotic mushrooms. After work today, I helped her get them all set up in the dehydrator; when they're done, we'll vacuum-seal them for future yummy goodness at her hands. That vacuum sealer has to be the best $5.00 yard-sale purchase I ever made!
* * * * *
Big Guy is finally back to work, for which we're both grateful. We don't know how long it will last - in construction, when the building (or whatever) is finished, that's it until he gets a call for the next one. So as long as he is working, we're putting as much $$$ as we can toward paying down debts. The mortgage is set up so that we can keep up with it on just one income - I insisted on that from day one - and still eat and pay the bills. I also insist that whenever one of us is not working, the credit cards don't come out except for the most dire of emergencies - the ones that can't be dealt with any other way and can't wait until we can afford them. Like the roof that started leaking four months before we had planned to replace it ...
At least the past year of dual unemployment showed him that maybe some of the things I'd been trying to tell him all along weren't so "out there" after all. Things like:
never shopping without a list
never shopping without going through all the flyers first, or without checking the kitchen & pantry to see what we really needed
never shopping hungry
never shopping without my coupons
Actually, the tricky part isn't making a list - it's persuading him to stick to it. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've said "Put it back, it's not on the list." Or "I don't care what a great deal/sale/price it is, we don't need it." At this point, I count any shopping trip that ends with us bringing home fewer than four "off-list" items as a victory of sorts.
I also counted it as a real victory when he finally agreed to let J and me clean out the big chest freezer in the basement. He's always had the firm belief that anything frozen stays good forever, and that a little freezer burn never hurt anybody. Um ... no. J pointed out to him how many of my bad IBS flareups coincided with him cooking something he thought was still perfectly good, and that I wasn't just being "picky" about food that he ate without any ill effects ... I'm told she said something along the lines of "Come on, Dad, we all know you could eat pureed tin cans and be okay!" So we dug and sorted and defrosted while he sat in the workshop and sulked, but in the end we threw out a lot less than I'd been afraid we might have to. But folks, I don't care how well-wrapped and solidly frozen something is - if it's dated 1999, I am not letting anyone eat it. And I don't want to hear about that edible mammoth meat they dug up somewhere in Siberia.
* * * * *
I've started a list of blogs I read along the side; I'll be adding to it periodically, once I'm all caught up on the ones I try to read regularly. Right now, though, I'm going to go and knit.
The job continues to be very good. My office wardrobe could use some upgrading, but I'm very fortunate in that there isn't really a dress code as such, except that we only wear jeans on Fridays. That takes a lot of pressure off, since any additions this year (other than shoes and underthings) will be made by yours truly. I'll try to remember to post them all in the "Projects" sidebar, but don't expect too much all at once! Since one of my semi-resolutions was to finish everything I start, I think my best hope of doing that will be not to let myself start a project until the previous one is finished. In the past I've had a tendency to start a dozen garments at once and take forever to finish any of them ... I don't have the space for UFOs to accumulate any more, and I no longer have the time or the patience to sort through a big pile of pieces figuring out which piece goes with what.
* * * * *
The memorial service for L was last Saturday, and I must confess I found it a little depressing. Partly, I think, because apart from Big Guy, his brother and nephews, and one friend, I didn't know anyone there. Partly because although the service itself was fairly dignified, I'm not a fan of organized religion, especially when its adherents natter on interminably about "God's will" and "in a better place". How can there be a better place than the home she'd worked hard to make and keep with her loved ones? How can it be "God's will" that she go through what she did because a doctor she trusted misdiagnosed a malignant lump as "just a cyst, don't worry about it"? And did the video presentation really need so many photos of L in a hospital bed, dying? I don't think so. But ... it's not my place to judge; if that's what gave her husband and sons some comfort, I certainly would never dream of telling them what I really thought.
Anyway, on our way home, Big Guy and I agreed that whichever of us goes first, the other one will not do that kind of thing. We're both pretty much set on "give away whatever parts still work (organ donation), burn the rest, and have a party when the ashes get scattered". And in the meantime, enjoy each other's company as much as we can, because who knows what might happen tomorrow?
* * * * *
I spent most of Sunday happily knitting away, thinking I'd have the back of the sweater finished and the front started by bedtime, and then ... I discovered that I'd left out one small but critical step at the beginning of the armhole shaping, and had to rip out about eight inches of work. I'm calmer now, but still feel rather foolish. After all, I've been knitting for almost fifty years - how could I have not noticed something so basic? Can I plead a mental hangover from Saturday?
* * * * *
Daughter J volunteered at a foodie event a few days back, and for her trouble brought home, among other things, a huge bag of assorted exotic mushrooms. After work today, I helped her get them all set up in the dehydrator; when they're done, we'll vacuum-seal them for future yummy goodness at her hands. That vacuum sealer has to be the best $5.00 yard-sale purchase I ever made!
* * * * *
Big Guy is finally back to work, for which we're both grateful. We don't know how long it will last - in construction, when the building (or whatever) is finished, that's it until he gets a call for the next one. So as long as he is working, we're putting as much $$$ as we can toward paying down debts. The mortgage is set up so that we can keep up with it on just one income - I insisted on that from day one - and still eat and pay the bills. I also insist that whenever one of us is not working, the credit cards don't come out except for the most dire of emergencies - the ones that can't be dealt with any other way and can't wait until we can afford them. Like the roof that started leaking four months before we had planned to replace it ...
At least the past year of dual unemployment showed him that maybe some of the things I'd been trying to tell him all along weren't so "out there" after all. Things like:
never shopping without a list
never shopping without going through all the flyers first, or without checking the kitchen & pantry to see what we really needed
never shopping hungry
never shopping without my coupons
Actually, the tricky part isn't making a list - it's persuading him to stick to it. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've said "Put it back, it's not on the list." Or "I don't care what a great deal/sale/price it is, we don't need it." At this point, I count any shopping trip that ends with us bringing home fewer than four "off-list" items as a victory of sorts.
I also counted it as a real victory when he finally agreed to let J and me clean out the big chest freezer in the basement. He's always had the firm belief that anything frozen stays good forever, and that a little freezer burn never hurt anybody. Um ... no. J pointed out to him how many of my bad IBS flareups coincided with him cooking something he thought was still perfectly good, and that I wasn't just being "picky" about food that he ate without any ill effects ... I'm told she said something along the lines of "Come on, Dad, we all know you could eat pureed tin cans and be okay!" So we dug and sorted and defrosted while he sat in the workshop and sulked, but in the end we threw out a lot less than I'd been afraid we might have to. But folks, I don't care how well-wrapped and solidly frozen something is - if it's dated 1999, I am not letting anyone eat it. And I don't want to hear about that edible mammoth meat they dug up somewhere in Siberia.
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I've started a list of blogs I read along the side; I'll be adding to it periodically, once I'm all caught up on the ones I try to read regularly. Right now, though, I'm going to go and knit.
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