Week 17 - Finding Some Happiness

With work in continual suck mode, my plan for the week was to find some happy to offset it. I had been developing some routine around working from home so it was time to embrace that.

Unfortunately my thumb was problematic on Monday. I don't know if it was all the gardening or knitting too much but it was sore and starting to swell. But it hadn't been that way when I first got up so I'd already taken my meds, which meant I couldn't take the 800mg ibuprofens my doctor had prescribed last time this happened. I dug out my brace and wore that all day, which made typing difficult. I started the big guns pills on Tuesday and between those and the brace, the pain subsided pretty quickly. I'll take that as a win. 

I needed a win because it was so windy that I couldn't have a fire for driveway knitting but it was otherwise too cold to sit outside so I cancelled. Bummer.

I went to Mocha C's for lunch again on Tuesday and ran 3 other errands that involved no human contact. That afternoon I started watching training videos for one of the programs I have to learn. BORING! When the day was done, I put together an under the sink shelf that I've had for years in a box in the laundry room. With that done, I completely organized that area, which gave me a sense of accomplishment. Then I moved all the violets I'd brought home from work to the front table, reclaiming my bar, and put all of the houseplants I'd overwintered outside. Making progress always feels great.

Wednesday was mostly a snooze fest of training videos but I ended it watching Survivor with Dawn again, which is something I look forward to. I also look forward to Thursday's lunch "hour" because one of my favorite knitting podcasts - The Grocery Girls - are live at lunch. I happily watch them while I eat. Then that night, I met Cindy at my favorite nursery to buy my first plants of the season. We had planned to find a wide spot in the road to sit and chat but Cindy needed to get home so we just chatted a bit in the parking lot. Flowers and friends are good, even if it's quick.

Friday ended with another train wreck at work. I had a 3:00 meeting on a new form HR needed designed and from what Layton (my friend in HR who I've been having lunch with every Friday for 20+ years) said, it wouldn't be too hard, until he sent an email that evening that blew the whole thing up. Instead of a little addition to an existing form, it would be days of work and there was a tight deadline. I went ballistic (more on that later), barely slept that night and yet again, Carolyn talked me down on Saturday morning. My concern was that my boss wouldn't support backing off even though Layton had completely misrepresented what he needed. Carolyn helped with an email to Ben and then I headed to Lincoln for some garden therapy at Nora's. 

On the ballistic note, Carolyn and I discussed the fact that these days lots of people have a hair trigger. It takes very little to go from 0 to 100 on the irate scale in a flash. I'd had 2 bouts of this in the past week and Carolyn had had one herself. I then found out that a fire storm of nasty posts on a friend's Facebook page, which I'd noticed and mentioned to Carolyn, was actually caused by a snarky comment I'd made. I felt awful but it was yet another instance of everyone being right at the edge all the time. I think the constant stress is taking a toll on everyone. Anyway.... back to happy.

Nora's daughter's school has a plant sale fundraiser every year so I'd ordered a few plants at the last minute. I called to see if she was home (duh!) and drove to Lincoln just after 5:00. It felt wonderful to be on the road, this being only my 2nd time getting out of town in more than a month. Then I realized halfway there that I'd have to drive right by Aldi so called Andrea to see what she wanted (she's been getting things for me at Aldi for the past month.) It felt great to be in a market and I thoroughly enjoyed shopping. Everyone was doing the social distancing thing and I felt as safe as I could. Then I went to Nora's and we walked around her yard looking at plants and chatting for an hour. I left with the plants I'd bought and a pot of lily of the valley she dug up that I had the perfect place for in my yard.

I was happy to find an email at the end of the day saying I didn't have to do the form and that Layton would be on his own. But did Ben tell Layton that? No. So I sent an email telling him as much. Fast forward to Sunday morning when Layton called to discuss it and come to find out, he didn't really need any of the changes he'd emailed because he already had all of that information. So I was back to the easy form and could now get it done before the deadline without working more on the weekend. Sheesh! HR is not known for their logic or efficiency.

A happy thing Sunday was doing my first mow of the season with my newly tuned up mower. I have hired out my mowing for the past 2 years and while John did an OK job, he missed things that I was happy to address. I then went on to edge my front lawn and since I had some nice grass that had been growing over the sidewalk, I planted it in some bare spots in my backyard. Then I reclaimed the garden bed at the top of the driveway and planted the lily of the valley then planted all of the perennials I'd brought home. It was a good day and it felt great to go inside and take a shower. I nuked the last of the casserole I'd made earlier in the week and called it a week.

So if work continues on its current trajectory, I will take solace in some of my new routines. Driveway knitting with friends on Mondays, with or without a fire and sitting 6' apart, Mocha C's for my fave lunch on Tuesday, Survivor with either Dawn (via Messenger) or Anne in person, Grocery Girls over lunch on Thursday, sharing food with Andrea and then spending weekends in the garden. I have no idea, nor does anyone else, how long this working from home will last but I'll do my best to soldier on and survive it. Hopefully between bouts of productivity, knitting and my happy routine, I'll make it.

Stay healthy everyone. And happy.

Week 16 - Super Crappy Week

Well, I cannot say it was a good week. While there were a few nice moments, overall it sucked. 

Most of the sucking was work related but on top of that, I woke up in a foul mood on Tuesday and just couldn't shake it. I was crabby all day but sad and teary on and off too. And Tuesday is my out and about day so I picked up lunch at Mocha C's - my favorite chicken salad croissant, yellow Lay's and a scotcheroo, but even that didn't help. There was nothing to do but tough it out and I was fine on Wednesday morning. I had zoom meetings all morning, trained on Zoom that afternoon and had a lovely dinner of pasta with wine while watching Survivor with my friend Dawn in Virginia. So Wednesday was much better.

And then came Thursday. During our morning team meeting, I was basically told that I need to learn 3 major lots of new software. Great. Just what everyone needs to hear when working from home during a pandemic, with stress around every corner. I was PISSED! I called my supervisor that afternoon and got zero satisfaction so decided then and there that I needed a less interesting job with less stress and closer to home. I'm writing this almost 2 weeks after this happened and I still feel the same. Oh well. I may be stuck in my job anyway because who's going to be hiring anytime soon? Nobody.

On top of that, during the team zoom meeting the next morning, my supervisor invited himself and his wife to my house. He said he's bring my favorite totchos and we could eat by the fire. WHAT??? Not only have I never so much as had lunch with this man, but you ambush me in front of other people with an invite during a pandemic? And after pissing me off the day before (not that he had any idea how pissed I was)? NO. No for so many reasons. I stewed on that and barely slept Friday night, worrying how to tell him no without offending him. Thankfully, Carolyn talked me down on Saturday morning and literally dictated a 2 sentence email that said no gently and got me off the hook. OMG!

There were a few bright spots. I started the week on a good note finally defrosting my basement freezer. By the way, I have enough pureed fruit to make jam for an army regiment. On Thursday night, Heidi was picking up some yarn I'd pulled for her and called to ask I wanted to split a BOGO burger deal for supper. She delivered it and it was delicious. By then we were in the middle of a snow storm. Yes, we had 6" of snow in April. But it was gone by late morning on Friday and it was like it never happened by tea time. On top of that, it didn't leave the ground soggy at all.

After spending most of Saturday morning chatting with friends, on the phone and zoom, I was thrilled to head outside. I spent most of the weekend outside in the garden, letting nature redeem my crappy week. I can only hope for a better one to come.

Week 15 - Visits with Boundaries

It was week 3 of staying at home but I was still finding my way to the new normal. Work was fine and I did have a few bright spots in the week.

On the work front, Brook did his usual job of keeping things fun and we had themes for each morning's zoom meeting - funny hats, bring your pet to work, Hawaiian day, etc. I had a big project to work on - grad student allocations - and that made the week fly. But when I finished that and was facing a slow Friday afternoon, I couldn't face it and so took half a vacation day. I can't say I did much beyond streaming (McMillion$) and knitting but it was worth the ding to my vacation bank, keeping in mind I got 12 days added back to that pot when I cancelled the cruise. And I did get to something on my pre-Covid to do list - I went through my sock mending bag and mended 3 pairs and frogged back one pair that needed reknitting, which I started. 

On the social front, I had some lovely times, socially distanced of course. Monday found me knitting in the driveway with friends again, which is a lovely way to start the week. Then on Wednesday Anne came over for a walk at the lake (very windy) and Survivor. She brought spam buns, which were a comfort food from her childhood. They were delish and she left me a few extras to eat for lunches. Cindy and I had a zoom coffee break with Lana on Friday morning. Then on Saturday afternoon, Cindy came to drop off my mower, which her son had overhauled, and we sat in the backyard and enjoyed Via lattes, the packets for which had been a stocking stuffer. It was the closest I've been to Starbucks since our last latte on our last day at work. It was a gorgeous afternoon and the visit felt so normal. I needed that.

As for productivity, I made more masks and mailed some off to my sister and her husband then made one for Anne to give her when she came Wednesday. I spent time in the yard at the end of every work day whenever the weather cooperated, finishing raking the lawn right before Cindy arrived on Saturday. I had been cooking up a storm so had cheesy baked cauliflower for dinners most nights and made a strange cracker stuffing thing using saltines and some cranberry brats from the basement freezer. I shared it with Andrea who said she liked it. Andrea and I have been sharing lots of food. The banana cake in the spam buns pic was from her. Yum!

So another week down. I still wasn't finding working from home horrible and was absolutely enjoying all the extra time in my day from not commuting. That was absolutely showing in my yard, which looks better than it has in years and it's only mid-April. With no end in sight to sheltering at home, I can only imagine how good my yard will work soon. I'll take it. 

Stay healthy everyone.

Week 14 - A New Routine

It was the 2nd week of sheltering at home, not that our governor had shut down the state yet. But I was settling into working from home and was ready to enjoy warmer weather. My goal was to spend an hour outside at the end of each work day, making use of the time I wasn't commuting.

I put out an invitation to the Monday Night Knitters to do some social distanced knitting around the fire pit in my driveway. Heidi and Andrea said they'd come so I raked the front yard at 5:00, nuked some leftover lasagna and started some disinfecting - the chair arms and my bathroom handles. I propped the screen door open so they could open it with an elbow and I was ready for some knitting fun. The fire was nice and burned the entire bin of brush. Heidi brought long forks and marshmallows so we roasted those when the fire was just coals. After all my disinfecting, no one used the bathroom but better safe than sorry. And as a bonus, Andrea had gone to Aldi that afternoon and picked up a few groceries for me that will mean I wouldn't need to go to the store this week.

I had plans for another social event on Tuesday - an early lunch with my friend Lorri. We both go to go lunches from Mocha C's in downtown Wahoo (my fave chicken salad croissant, chips (Lay's yellow, of course) and a scotcharoo) and sat at opposite ends of a picnic table in one of Wahoo's parks. Her husband came along and I had brought 2 table cloths so we spread those and ate a quick lunch. I had to get home for a 1:00 Zoom meeting plus it got chilly whenthe sun went in so quick worked. It was still chilly after work so all I managed was picking up sticks in the backyard and breaking them up for another fire. My neighbor has a dying silver maple so there's never a shortage of sticks in my yard.

Wednesday was the first of the month so I spent the day doing monthly reports. I also popped out periodically to pick up wood from my neighbor across the street, who was having a tree cut down in her front yard. I had mentioned that I could use small logs so the man obliged and cut all the smaller branches into 6" cuts. The wood was green so would be for later burning but I got quite a bit. Nice. We had a cold snap coming so I didn't want to rake flower beds yet so at the end of the day, I raked the side yard. It felt great to start loading up that empty compost bin. I ended the day messaging with Dawn while watching Survivor. The work week was more than half over.

The weather was cold and dreary on Thursday so since I wasn't going to be going out, I got dressed in jammie pants and picked matching socks. At the end of the day, I Zoomed with Connie, who has been home even longer because she's got a compromised immune system. It was great to see her since my trip to her house at the end of March had been cancelled. I talked to Lori after Connie and so had nachos for dinner for the 2nd night in a row, with the layed bean dip Andrea had gotten for me at Aldi. Not nutritious but yummy. I needed to make sure to cook on the weekend.

I slept like crap that night and then had a bit of a panic on Friday morning. I was scheduled to do a Zoom demo of one of the new online forms I'd created but I was getting errors. Brook was nowhere to be found to help and I was a mess. He came back online and talked me through a fix in the nick of time. Between exhaustion and stress, I was over the day. I went down stairs at lunch and made masks for Carolyn and her family (I'd chosen the fabric in the wee hours while wide awake) and I got them into the mail for pick up that afternoon. We had a Zoom FAC (where would we be without Zoom?) with the office gang at 4:00 so it was an early day, which I needed. To celebrate the end of the 2nd week of working at home, I cast on new socks using the Stomp on Coronavirus pattern and yarn in the same colors as the virus molecule we see on the news - purply gray, red and orange. 

On Saturday I was going to drop my mower at Cindy's for her son to tune up and then go to the office to pick up my plants. But first I wanted to make a mask for Cindy with Eiffel Tower fabric. What should have taken 15 minutes took and hour because I broke my sewing machine needle. Grrr.... I found some but the first one wasn't right so I was pretty frustrated but did manage to finish it and it was cute. 

Just driving again felt great. Who knew I'd ever appreciate my commute? Cindy and I chatted in her driveway and then I headed to campus, which was eerie as all get out. The office was dark and creepy so I grabbed my violets and got out of there. I then went in search of my cats and found Pipsqueak, who I can touch, but Tortie Girl, who is totally skittish, also came out. She wouldn't come near me but she did come out when I called. Cool.

I had driven by Starbuck's on the way to campus but the line was nuts so I went home through town so I could check out another one. There was no line but that was because they'd closed half an hour before I got there. Bummer. But right across the street was Kaw Valley - the plant seller that pops up in parking lots this time of year. They were unloading trucks and were open so I bought some pansies for Lorri and me. Then I saw that Amigo's drive thru was open and they sell Winchell's donuts so I got 2 and a bag of crispos (deep fried tortillas sprinkled with cinnamon sugar) - yum! None of them made it to Wahoo. Talk about carb overload! I started streaming the new season of Ozark when I got home and didn't get hungry until much later so had stuffies and a Guinness. I absolutely needed to cook on Sunday because I had had way too many crappy food dinners this week.

We hadn't had the rain that was forecast so I needed to water the veg bed I'd planted a week ago. I dragged out hoses but hooked them up to the front of the house so I wouldn't have to snake them under the deck. It made for lots of walking back and forth but I got the bed watered in so hopefully I'll see germination soon. Then I pruned my roses and took the branches to the city burn pile. And somewhere in there I made masks for Lorri and Bob and dropped them off while I was out.

With the outside work done, I got busy cooking. I made a rock awesome homemade pizza and while my dough wasn't perfect, the toppings were and it tasted as good as Pizza Hut. I'll do better with the dough next time because there will be more pizza in my future quarantining. I also made chocolate marbled banana bread then Andrea came over and we swapped food. She gave me an entire loaf of homemade white bread and some banana cake. It's great to swap food to give us both more variety. Between all this, I finished Ozark. SO good.

I was settling in with a new routine and it wasn't all bad. I was reverting to the time my body wants to sleep - 11:00 to 7:00 - and wasn't setting an alarm, which is always a treat. I was not resenting working at home and was just the right amount of busy. I was getting some yard word done a bit at a time in the hour I used to spend commuting. And I was managing to incorporate seeing people in person but still maintaining social distancing. If I can keep this up and manage to stay healthy, this won't be so bad. Now for some warmer weather. Stay safe everyone.

Week 13 - Safe at Home

It was the first week of working at home so everything was new and different. It's a brave new world we're living in and it was time to get working. From home.

In an effort to keep things light, I started a #socksofsocialdistancing project on Facebook. Each day I post a picture of the socks I'm wearing, hand knitted of course, and will see what lasts longer - my sock supply or working from home. People seem to like it and anything to do with knitting socks makes me happy. On that note, I cast on so many pairs of new socks that I was out of needles. Whatever it takes to keep me sane - I'm all in.

We had the first of our regularly scheduled team meeting via Zoom at 10:00 Monday morning. Cindy and I spend a few hours of the day getting Zoom figured out for my training classes and when we went onto Zoom for our 2:00 meeting, Ben was a no show. Well if the boss isn't on, what's the point? We ended up cancelling the afternoon Zoom going forward. I finished up day 1 and it wasn't so bad. Having no knitting on Monday was the icing on the weirdness cake.

Mary kept me plenty busy with data requests on Tuesday and after a quick lunch, I did my first zoom training. It went well. I had just one student, which was nice for my first one. When I was done, I signed off and headed to Lake Wanahoo to walk the damn. I had checked the temp in my yard and went without a jacket but had neglected to account for the wind off the lake. It was pretty chilly so I didn't make it all the way across but still did ~1.5 miles.

Anne, who is my Covid-19 buddy since we both live alone and aren't seeing anyone beside each other, was coming over for supper and Survivor on Wednesday night. I got busy at lunch and made soup and the sauce for lasagna. I put the lasagna together at the end of the day and threw it in the oven when Anne got there. First stop was back at the lake, with jackets so we made it all the across the lake and back. 2 miles. We got home just in time for the lasagna to come out and we ate it while watching Survivor. It felt good to some company that didn't require a computer screen. I loaded Anne down with food when she left. It's good to share.

I had more data requests from Mary on Thursday and my 2nd class went well. Both of the people in the class had kids at home so we had a few interruptions but went with the flow. I called the day done shortly after training and headed outside. It was pretty chilly out but I wanted to do something so broke up all the brush clogging my wheel barrow, which left it open for future compost sifting. I was chilled when I went in but felt good with my small start and there was just one more work day! The week was flying by.

I didn't have a super productive day on Friday but we had out team meeting and a DocuSign demo via Zoom so at least got those done. At the end of the day, I chatted with my neighbors across our yards and that felt special. Despite being home all week, I was still ready for the weekend. All the working was interfering with being home!

I was heading to Lincoln on Saturday for knitting and a fire at Anne's but spent the morning chatting with Sharyn and then Andrea stopped by for a driveway chat, 6 feet apart, of course. It felt good to get in the car and drive! When I got to Lincoln, I was shocked to see how many parking lots were full of cars. Heck, even Goodwill was full! I wasn't sure why it was even open but then our governor hadn't issued a stay at home order yet so... Anne and I had a nice afternoon and then went to Piezano's for take out pizza. We got 1 pizza and a piece of cake and it was $28! And completely underwhelming. I declined to take any leftovers home.

I spent Sunday mostly on the phone talking to Carolyn, my sister and then Deanne. I didn't pack the day with chores, which bit me in the butt later, but oh well.

What I did do on Sunday was get started with yard work. First on the list was to empty one of the compost bins, which only had 6" of compost left from last year. With my newly emptied wheel barrow , I started sifting compost. There was more in the bin than I thought so I had a full wheel barrow and more yet to sift. That lead to clearing out one of my veg beds and spreading the compost there. It was too wet to till so I just spread it on top. And when I filled it again, I prepped a 2nd bed. I then planted the first bed with early veg but the 2nd one would just sit. Then I finally put together the wood rack I'd bought on Amazon 2 years ago. I couldn't find all the nuts/bolts so I tied it together in 2 places with clothesline. Whatever works! I immediately loaded it up with wood I'd picked up at the city's burn pile. I was already for my first fire - yay! So one thing lead to another but I ended the day with wood to burn, an empty compost bin ready for leaves once I start raking and my early veg getting an early start. All good.

So, I'd survived the first week of working at home and didn't hate it. I think a big part of that was that I moved my computer to my desk for working hours so work was there and so felt separate from home. I moved it back to my chair at the end of each day and then work was done. Since it looks like we'll be home for a LONG time, it's good to make peace with it. Stay healthy everyone!