Wow. I don't remember ever being sick for this long ... it's been three weeks so far, and I'm still coughing, though not nearly so incessantly or painfully as last week or the week before. The doctor thinks I probably have/had pertussis (also known as whooping cough). Oddly enough, though the cough was a killer and left me raspy-throated, achy-ribbed, and utterly exhausted, I had no other symptoms. No fever, no rash, no green goop, no digestive upsets ... just the damn cough. Said cough, I'm told, could take another week or two to finally disappear. I'm finally starting to feel more like myself, though, and getting a lot of my energy back at last. Which is nice after weeks of being too tired to pick up the remote and change the channel!
Of course, the job search had to be put on "pause" along with everything else; there's no mileage in applying for a job you can't go to the interview for, is there? "Yes, I'd love to come in for an interview. How about three weeks from now?" That, I figured, wouldn't make a very good first impression. So the plan right now is to spend the rest of this week getting the new workroom in order, and gear up the job search again next Monday morning ... including rescheduling all the Resource Centre workshops I missed.
Big Guy, bless his heart, tried to take care of me. He made chicken soup, brought me Benelyn (with codeine for the aching ribs), intercepted phone calls ... then again, he also did his usual You-are-a-plague-rat-and-I-will-feed-you-with-a-slingshot routine.
And ... he painted my new workroom. Just got up one morning, grabbed a roller, and did it. Over my protests that I would do it as soon as I could stand up long enough, He claimed he only did it because my new desk is taking up too much room in his workshop, but we all know better. And I love him too.
So ... the painting is done, the windows are sparkly clean inside and out, the curtain rod is back up. We're still working on the floor; it really needs professional refinishing, but for the moment all we can do is try to get all the paint splatters and scuff marks (from J's furniture) cleaned away. I'm hoping to get the desk in there some time tomorrow; after that I can start shifting everything from the current room. And yes, I'll be sorting and tossing/donating as I go ... nothing is going into that room until I'm absolutely sure it will be used. I refuse to move things in that I'll just end up taking back out!
Our downstairs tenant gave us notice for the end of March. Whereupon daughter P and son-in-law N promptly asked if they could move in on April 1st! The suite is pretty small for two people and a dog (and two cats), but the price is right as P is still looking for work (she was laid off last fall), and N likes the closeness of the Skytrain for his daily commute. So they have given their notice to their current landlord, and the weekend of March 31st - April 1st is going to be interesting, to say the least. Oh, and did I mention that March 31st is daughter J's birthday? "Interesting" may turn out to be far too mild a word for it ...
On the frugal front, things are going well. Instead of buying paint for the workroom, I used primer and paint we had left from painting the living room a couple of years ago. It's a lovely soft, warm oatmeal colour, with a white ceiling to reflect more light. For drapes, I'll be using some fabric Mom gave me; a sheer lightweight silk patterned with pastel flowers. Not my first choice, but it will work well with the room and is mild and inoffensive. And if we can't get all the paint off the floor, I'll check out Freecycle and the local thrift stores for a couple of nice light-coloured throw rugs or sisal mats.
Convincing Big Guy to cook in smaller quantities is going to be harder than I thought. Good thing we have that big chest freezer - which he now says we should be eating out of instead of grocery shopping! I've been saying it for months - but now that it's his idea, it's a good idea! ::sigh :: But it looks like he might be back to work soon, which means I'll probably have to take over the cooking. Now, I hate cooking. Frankly, I'd rather scrub toilets than cook. But if I do the cooking, I can control how much gets cooked, which in turn means I can cut the food waste way down. We ended up tossing a quart of homemade chicken soup last week, because he made a huge pot of it and then stalled on batching it up for the freezer, and I was too exhausted most days to eat more than a tiny bit.
I was enormously amused by something I got in the mail a while back. Last year I joined BC Hydro's "Power Smart" project; a couple of weeks ago I got a little package from them in the mail. I opened it up to find ... half a dozen wooden clothespins accompanied by an estimate of how much I might save by hanging laundry up instead of using the dryer! I giggled madly as I tossed them into the basket with the hundred or so I already have - I guess they had no way to know I've been hanging all my laundry for years!
Anyway, back to the floor cleaning. I've been taking pictures at each stage of the room conversion; I'll post them when the room is finished. Can't wait!
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