Week 34 - Overwhelmed to Start

Monday was eclipse day, which was a lot of fun. We scheduled an eclipse food day (focus on round food) and we all had our glasses at the ready. After lunch, I headed outside with some of my office mates. The main viewing area was the green behind the Union but we snagged a bench on the plaza behind the library, which had plenty of people but not the thousands behind the Union. It was pretty cloudy but they parted just before the totality and we got to see it all – the beads and the diamond ring. All in all, it was pretty amazing. The group exclamations from over the hill added to the experience. I’m glad I got to see it.

I started Tuesday feeling slightly overwhelmed so made a list of stuff I needed to do to try and get a handle on things. I got on the phone and started making appointments – hair, vet and foot doctor. I dropped my football tickets on the way home and prepped 3 lots of yarn to ship that night. All that went a long way towards easing my mind, which made the rest of the week go well. For sure.

On Friday the state fair ribbons were finally posted. I had entered 9 things in the fair and 8 of them ribboned so I was pretty pleased. I was thrilled to see that my orange socks had won the best socks in the state, which came with a $25 gift certificate to Spindle, Shuttle and Needle – the local yarn shop in the tiny town of Stromsburg. Andrea and I will have to plan a little road trip. But since my friend Jill kindly took lots of pics of my socks, I decided not to go to the fair, despite buying a ticket when I entered all my knitting. Here's the pic that satisfied my need to go and saved me 200 miles of driving on a work night.

Having made all those phone calls on Tuesday, I started Saturday with an 8:00 hair appointment followed by 8:45 at the vet for Pie and Gansey’s shots. Unfortunately Gansey became an evil possessed kitty whereas Pie was easy peasy to get in the carrier, which is usually not the case. Gansey left me dripping with blood from scratches and then hid so I only got Pie in for shots and made an appointment for the next Saturday for Gansey, when I could only hope I’d have better luck catching her.

Later on Saturday, I headed to Lincoln for a celebration of life party for the wife of the Husker Cats weekend feeder. She’d died in July after breaking her neck in a pool accident and while I’d never met her, we had corresponded via email many times. There were hundreds of people there and I even managed to find a couple of people I knew to chat with. I was glad that I made the effort (I avoid going to Lincoln on weekends as a rule) to show support for Lon. After a quick stop at the market, I was done for the day.

Sunday also marked the end of an era, when I brought my last load of produce scraps out to Lori’s chickens. It was her last weekend at the farm before her move to Omaha. Sad. Otherwise it was chores as usual, including prepping the last of the peaches for the freezer. I also managed to finish 3 separate socks. Having so many projects on the needles probably didn’t help with feeling overwhelmed earlier in the week so that was good too. Progress was made this week. Yay!