I started the week with an appointment with my shoulder doc. I was using way too many lidocaine patches (almost every night) so needed to explore next steps. While my strength was still good, they ordered an MRI to check the calcification and rule out a rotator cuff tear before deciding if surgery is an option. But when I stopped to schedule the MRI, they said they had to wait for Blue Cross to approve it and it was a don't call us we'll call you situation. I am not holding my breath. Our health care system is SO broken. The good news is that Wednesday was our last water aerobics and while I'll miss it, my shoulder has been way better since. I'll take it for now and will try to be patient waiting for the MRI.
I dropped Ginny's package on the way to work (Staples, which I had to drive right by, has a UPS desk) and got to work after 10:00, which is a nice way to start the week. But then I got an email from Nora saying they'd denied us filling Josh's position, which means more work for both of us and Nora will be slammed when I'm out for 6 weeks having my knee surgery. Nora took it hard but I wasn't surprised so just went on with my work. What did surprise me was when Mary decided to cancel our Winter Workshop, which was scheduled for 2 days after break and would have had us slamming until Christmas and probably meant Cindy would be working over break. So that was a nice bonus and started the discussions of what we can give up to deal long term with not filling the position. Unfortunately the next step was we have to start logging our hours so they know what we're working on. I HATE THAT! I had to do it at Brown and it sucked. Oh well. We're getting into we just need to be glad we're employed territory. Of course this is mostly the fault of the republicans in our state legislature who voted to cut taxes even though farm prices, and therefore revenues, are down. Who doesn't see the correlation? I just don't get it.
Feeling dejected, I put in for Tuesday afternoon off and went home after meeting Darla for lunch at HyVee. I had a lovely afternoon, catching up on the chores I hadn't gotten done on the weekend when I got sucked into knitting gifts. I also made rugelach to take to work on Wednesday, when we were having our office Christmas party. Mary takes the whole office out to lunch and buys us all a gift too - very generous. We also do a Yankee Swap (called a white elephant exchange in Nebraska) and that's always fun. It's supposed to be something from your house so I ended up with a hideous bear ornament but it came with a huge bag of Lindor truffles. Yum! I ended the day with our last water aerobics for a few weeks. I'll miss seeing all my water friends.
I still had 2 stray hours of vacation time in my bank (I like my bank to be in even days - call me anal!) so decided to take them Friday and head home early. I was home by tea time, which was a nice start to the weekend. I had no plans to leave the house and with my wrapping almost done and Ginny's package shipped (it had already arrived in South Carolina by Thursday morning), the list wasn't overwhelming. I was nearly done with one pair of Christmas socks and had one whole other pair to make by the 26th. I also needed to put my tree up, finish wrapping and put the wrapping stuff away plus do a final neatize of the house. It was going to be bitter cold so my plan was to never leave the house.
I started Saturday with a long overdue sewing project that I can't go into details on just yet. It went swimmingly but I was missing something to finish it up so had to brave the cold and head to the farm store Saturday evening. It was worth it to finish the project, after which I put up the tree. It was due to be -14 real temp with wind chills making it feel much colder but I couldn't get Pie to come in Saturday night, probably because I'd dragged her in Friday night so she wanted nothing to do with me. She has access to the garage and is a former feral from campus so pretty self sufficient so I wasn't too worried....
Until she didn't show up for breakfast on Sunday morning. When there was still no sign of her by afternoon, I was convinced she'd frozen to death. After calling and calling to no avail, I drove to the farm store and called there in case she had hitched a ride in my car. Can we say crazy cat lady boys and girls? I then had a kid who was visiting my neighbor down on the ground taking video underneath my deck with his phone. No luck. Needing something to take my mind off my frozen cat and having gotten everything on my list done, I decided it was time to do my online STOP class to get my 2nd speeding ticket dismissed. I'd paid a couple of weeks ago and had to do it by my first day back from Rhode Island so it made sense to get it over with. It was supposed to take 4 hours but took closer to 6 but I was done by 8:00 and had gotten an entire sock done on my last pair so it wasn't a total waste. Yet there was drama on the horizon surrounding that. Stay tuned for details next week.
Here's hoping your holiday to do list isn't too long and that you find some time to enjoy the preparations. Ho ho ho!
No comments:
Post a Comment