Monday, May 11, 2015

Week 19 - Cold and Weather

When the week starts with a lightning strike so close to your house that it takes out your phone and internet, you can only go up, right? Not so much this week.

The lightning hit in the road in front of the house next door just before I left for work on Monday. I left in the pouring rain and fighting a cold. It was an uneventful day and I got home to a big box of yarn (the prizes for everyone from the shop hop) and no phone or internet. My neighbor from the other side came over to say their big tree in the backyard had been hit by lightning right after I’d left for work. I got on my cell to Windstream and they estimated Wednesday morning for someone to come. No phone is no biggie but no internet for another 2 days? Not acceptable. Good thing I had knitting, which meant 2 hours at the library with my iPad. My cold was gearing up too so things were not looking up.

I slept like crap that night and had I not arranged for replacement maple nutty long johns for Mary, I would have considered calling in. But it was also food day so I took my brownies and headed to work with the thought that I’d leave after lunch if I didn’t feel better. Well, despite having taken my fave Claritin D, I was feeling worse and didn’t even make it until noon, leaving at 11:00 with barely the energy to get home. At least I’d done an online chat with Windstream at work and they’d committed to come that day. I took my iPad next door to my neighbor and begged his wireless code so at least I could stream Netflix but only from my front room. The tech came at the end of the day and respliced my line and replaced my modem so I was back up and running. Yay! I am clearly dependent on the internet for happiness. Luckily I have great neighbors. : )

I coughed all night long and so felt even worse on Wednesday and called into work. There was no thought to going in. I felt that bad. I did nothing but sit and nap all day long. It poured rain all night long and I was back at work on Thursday, feeling much better. I had 2” in my rain gage but Lincoln had gotten closer to 8”. In one night! There were floods everywhere driving in and lots of people, including Dodie who was my lunch date, were home with wet basements. Since I hadn’t brought my iPad and knitting for lunch, I went thrifting without Dodie and scored a couple of things for me and a bunch of cute baby clothes for my boss’ new granddaughter. With all the flooding in town, which had gotten worse over the day and some highways out of town (mostly to the south) were closed and neighborhoods near campus were being evacuated, they let us leave early since rush hour was going to be bad. Luckily my energy had come back because I hadn’t thought to check my basement for water (2” is still a lot even if it wasn’t as much as Lincoln got) and I did have some water and wet linens downstairs so started laundry as soon as I got home. I was then able to neatize the house, which was looking awful after my 2 days staying home and doing absolutely nothing. It was wonderful to feel better again. I still had the cough and congestion but it was ebbing.

Friday was over in a flash and despite having a big errand list for after work, I headed straight home instead, leaving everything for Monday. I had no obligations for the weekend and more rain was forecast but I was hoping to get outside between storms. Saturday ended up being the better day and while I wasn’t feeling 100%, I was able to get outside to mow then compost and plant my new flower bed against the fence in the vegetable garden. I did a bit of weeding but not much else before leaving for a Dollar General run. I enjoyed Saturday snack supper with Guinness, sticky toffee pudding cheese on crackers and leftover seafood dip from Friday’s lunch with Layton. I had hoped to get more done outside but you can’t fight weather.

It was pea soup muggie on Sunday and it was clear I wouldn’t be getting anything else done outside. It finally started pouring around lunch time, which felt better than the humidity. I was coughing again and chalked it up to the cold breaking up (hopefully) and spent the afternoon cleaning out my frig and prepping fruits and veg for my upcoming rotation. I had a nice final normal meal of turkey and stuffing from the freezer and stewed rhubarb over vanilla ice cream for dessert. I’d managed to not gain weight during my 2 weeks off but was ready to be rotating again.

Between being sick and the weather, it really was a doozy of a week. Then I got a sad email at the end of the day saying at least 2 campus cats had drowned in the floods on Innovation Campus. I’ll be doing a headcount of my kitties when I get to campus this morning but I don’t expect any casualties. Of course there’s more rain in the forecast. Spring in Nebraska!

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