Week 37 - A Normal Week

There’s not much to say about this week because it was as normal as it gets. Nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t make for gripping blog posts. The highlight of my week was playing with kittens when I stopped at PetsMart to get cat food on Wednesday. Otherwise it was the usual – knitting, swimming, you know the drill.

Fall arrived mid-week, which I love. It was with more rain and damp, bone chilling cold but at least summer’s over. That’s always a good thing in my book. At least all this rain has helped with the watering at Lorri’s. I’ve been a few times to check things out but have only actually watered once in the entire week. Nice.

Darla and I had a play date scheduled for Saturday, beginning with blueberry pancakes chez moi then an Omaha run, but she was out sick Friday with a stomach thing so ended up cancelling. While Darla being sick wasn’t good, it did take the pressure off my weekend. I still did a bunch of neatizing Friday night under the thought that it’d be much more pleasant to get up to a picked up house but I didn’t do all the dishes. It was nice to wake up Saturday and not have the house look like a bomb had gone off. Then I ran errands in town, stopping in the real library for the first time since it closed last January. They made some nice changes and it looks great. It felt so good to stop in to pick up money to deposit. So normal. Here’s a news story about it. The Bernadette they interview is one of Anne Marie’s kids. Cute.

Errands done, it was home to putter for the rest of the weekend. I made good progress on everything, which works because the new cleaning lady comes for the second time Tuesday. On Sunday I cooked the Boston marrow squash Lori had grown for me (I bought the seeds and presented them to her with a request to grown them and share. Ballsy, right? But it worked.) and have a freezer full of squash for winter eating. I did another clean out of the frig to go with all the squash guts and Lori stopped by to pick up it all up for her “girls” on the way through town.

Just one more week until I’m Canada bound. It’ll be an easy pack and the house should still be neat so it’s all good. Now if the post-nasal drip leftover from my cold that leads to coughing would just be gone. I may have to head to the doctor if it’s not gone very soon or flying won’t be pretty. Wish me luck.

Week 36 - My Endless Cold

Well, I can’t say I got much done this week. I spent most of my time coughing and trying not to move because that would just get me coughing. So no swimming for sure but very little else either. And there was sweating too. Lots and lots of sweating. I was a real treat!

Connie left first thing Monday morning so I made her an omelet for breakfast – protein to offset a day of road food. Within half an hour of her driving away, I had her bed stripped and remade, everything I’d moved out of her room moved back and the laundry sorted and started. I was dripping wet so jumped into the shower and then the sitting began. I was still fully congested at this point so the coughing hadn’t started yet.

With all the down time I had, I spent Monday finishing a pair of socks I’d started last October when I was home after surgery. It was a complicated pattern with gorgeous yarn – an expensive skein from a local dyer. Well, it had come in two hanks, which I took as convenient for making socks, but the second skein didn’t feel the same. When I finished the socks, they were completely different. One was wimpy, fuzzy, came out bigger and was a slightly different color. I washed them for blocking and it got even worse. They were so different that I didn’t want to keep them and couldn’t give them away. It was time to contact the dyer. After several emails, we decided that I’d take the good sock to Yarn Charm to hang for display near her yarn and she’d give me a new skein. So much time and nothing to show for it! At least I got an entry in my knitting group’s WIP contest. And after frogging the second sock, I have 50 grams I can use in another project. It’ll be fine on its own but sheesh!

In my effort to get back to “normal” this week, I spent some time slogging through paper and clearing surfaces. One of my hot spots is the corner by the fridge where I throw random food that doesn’t go in the cupboard – chips, bread, cookies… that kind of thing. While cleaning that corner, I started putting extra food on the table. Well, by the time I got the corner under control, the table was full. Let’s not even discuss how many boxes of cereal I have. So I’m declaring here that I’m done buying food. I’m going to see how long I can go eating out of my cupboards, freezer and garden without buying food. Of course some things will be exempt – milk, TP, cat food, etc. This isn’t about saving money but rather clearing things out. All good, right? Please ask me how I’m doing on this. I should really take some before and after pics.

By the end of the week, the congestion had abated but the coughing had set in. Some of it was drainage related but not all of it. I was SO pretty to be around at work. At least it was getting some better by the weekend. I had vet appointments with all four cats on Saturday morning – 2 at 9:15 and 2 at 10:15.  They all needed shots but the first two needed their ears cleaned and I had to drug Pie since she needed treatment for a UTI. I was home and showered (taking cats to the vet is gross – they blow fur when they’re stressed plus the shaking of the ears. Ewww.) before lunch and then started neatizing. I ended the day with a trip to the Laundromat with comforters (they’d gone from piled on the spare bed to the middle of the front room floor) so I could hang them on the line to dry, watering at Lorri’s (the mosquitoes were horrible from all our rain so I blasted the water on the plants while flailing my arms and managed not to be bitten) and a stock up run (no food though) at Dollar General. I was happy with the level of productivity by the time I went to bed.

Sunday was Carter’s, my cousin’s grandson, baptism in Hickman, which is an hour south of Wahoo. I was dressed and on the road by 9:00. It was a lovely service and they had pulled pork for lunch afterwards in the church hall. I helped do the pulling so was speckled with meat bits. It’s all good. When I got home, I got cooking. I’d signed up for potato salad for our food day Monday so made that, some stuffed peppers and banana bread. I’d started the day making a pound of bacon so I could make BLT’s all week and then came back from the baptism with home grown tomatoes and cukes. It looks like I’ll be doing fine with my first week of not buying food and it’s all good, healthy food too. Yay!

Week 35 - Rain and Connie

Wet, wet, wet. Looking back at the week, the main thing I think of is rain. We had almost 9” in as many days. The grass was growing like crazy, the flowers were looking beaten up and all the tomatoes in my garden were splitting from so much water. My basement was dry until the 2.5” of rain we got on Wednesday, which put us over 7” since the previous Friday. It wasn’t pouring in but rather seeping up from the saturated ground. And there was yet more rain in the forecast. 

The last straw was when I was driving home on Thursday, late after swimming and a stop at the market, and found 77 closed due to flooding. I had to drive 8 miles east, 6 miles north then back 8 miles west to go over the dam north of town, which was supposed to stop this kind of flooding. I didn’t get home until 8:00 and was exhausted. By then I was coming down with a cold and Connie was due to arrive the next day. At least I was done with preparations. All I had left to do was move the stuff on her bed into my bedroom, where it would only stay until she left, when it would go right back on the bed. 

I woke up completely congested on Friday after not sleeping well at all. While I hate to call in sick, I knew I had to if I had any chance of being functional while Connie was here. I sat in my chair and did nothing all day, which must have worked because I was feeling OK when Connie arrived late Friday afternoon. It was great to see her. Phone calls are just not the same face time. 

I popped another Claritin D (genius product!) and we headed to Omaha on Saturday morning. Our first stop was the Farmers’ Market, which we used to do when she lived in Auburn. We would have preferred Lincoln’s market but it was a game day so no chance. We had a great time and bought some goodies for later. From there we went to Lauritzen Gardens, which was free for the weekend. It was still cloudy and cool-ish so we enjoyed looking at all the gardens, although the flowers were beaten down by the rain and the lawns were squishy. We finished just as the sun came out and the heat started up. We grabbed lunch at Noodles then hit Trader Joe’s (more goodies for dinner) and Aldi before heading home. We had a lovely evening snacking on our purchases and watching the entire season 3 of Sherlock, which Connie hadn’t seen yet. I was still holding up so was hopeful for Sunday. 

Nope. I slept like crap again and woke up feeling, as my mother would say, punk. I made blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast and that used up all the energy I had. We were headed to Lincoln for pedicures, lunch and shopping with Connie’s daughter Rachele, who was visiting from New Jersey. It was pouring rain as we got to Lincoln and I was dreading the full day ahead. I’d brought my knitting with the idea that if couldn’t keep up, I could sit in a coffee shop and knit while they shopped. When Connie realized she’d forgotten something in Wahoo that she’d brought for Rachele and announced she’d be heading back later, it was music to my ears. I could now just do the pedicure and then be dropped home and Connie could shop with Rachele. I was SO relieved because I was coughing constantly and feeling worse by the minute. So after a relaxing pedicure, they drove me home and I spent the day sitting like a lump in my chair. It was exactly what I needed. Connie was racing home before another fierce storm (she didn’t quite make it so drove through some hellish rain) and got home in time for BLT’s for dinner and one of my favorite movies – The Station Agent. She loved it and I was feeling better after staying home. 

It was as good a weekend as I could have hoped for considering how crappy I felt. Connie was leaving in the morning after a quick but fun trip. Hopefully I’ll see her sometime soon but if not, there’s our cruise in February. The icing on the cake was that the rain seemed to be done for awhile so things could dry out. I am so ready for fall.