Week 8 - Starting to Socialize

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me what would make me feel better about normalizing and while I wasn't sure at the time, apparently I got there because this week I finally felt OK about going out and about.

The week started normally with Monday Night Knitting (I shared a pie) and my grab and go lunch on Tuesday but after that, I decided to hit the senior center thrift shop, which I haven't done in ages. They were having a half off sale so I scored a few vintage things, which made me happy. This was just a taste of what was to come.

Cindy and I were going to the movies at 4:45 on Wednesday to see Who We Are: Racism in America. While not happy/peppy, I was excited to see it and decided to take 2 hours of vacation rather than rush around. I used the time to run errands all over Lincoln, including hitting some thrifts where I scored a bunch of yarn - some will be shipped to my sister, some was shared with my neighbor and a few got added to my stash. The movie was very good and I hit the market for a pork roast on the way home. What a fun day - not a fun movie but just to be in a theatre was a treat.

The Grocery Girls were live at lunch on Thursday, which is always happy, but while eating ice cream that night, I managed to break a tooth. It was the tooth my old dentist had predicted would be the next one to blow and blow it did. The entire inside half of my tooth was gone (swallowed, of course) and the remaining filling was super pokey so I started calling my dentist at 7:00 am on Friday. I finally called his emergency number at 8:00 when they still weren't picking up but were supposed to be open according to the website. Come to find out, they're only open every other Friday but he was going to be in the office so would call when I could go in to grind down the pokey bits.

He called to say I should come in between 11:00 and 11:15 so I was there right at 11:00. It was closer to 11:30 before he was off the phone (I was fine knitting in the chair) so by the time he was done, it was almost lunch time. I decided to see what The Warehouse had and I'm glad I did. I was heading to the register when an old friend called out my name. It was Nancy Meyer, who I hadn't seen in 5 years (we were long overdue to get together when Covid hit). We chatted for a bit and then decided to go to the Mexican restaurant lunch. We caught up over chips and tamales (cheapest lunch ever - $5.35!) and had a great time. Then it was back to work for the rest of the afternoon.

I had big plans on Saturday. Anne and I were going to Woodbine, Iowa so Anne could buy cones of acrylic yarn that I'd found on Facebook Marketplace. I had no interest in the yarn but happily knitted in the passenger seat for the 1.5 hour ride there. Anne bought tons of yarn and the woman was lovely, giving me the cutest kitten with a yarn ball planter when I admired it on her garage shelf. We shopped our way back through the small towns, stopping for lunch at a little cafe. From there, Anne dropped me in Fremont at spinning. Andrea and I did our regular Fremont run afterwards - Goodwill, Aldi and Menard's (a midwest chain like Lowe's). Such a fun day and so social!

The weather Sunday was another freaky 65 degree day in February. I took advantage of it and worked outside all day. I started with cutting my last rose bush (the one in the sidewalk bed that was arching into the street) then cut the winter creeper that had grown over the sidewalk, which makes shoveling harder. Not that we've had any snow this winter. And since I was loading them into the car to take to the city burn pile, I added the clematis vine from the backyard. That made a mess so after unloading the car, I went to the car wash and vacuumed. All this was before noon. After taking a lunch break, I headed outside to do my first ever winter sowing, which entails creating mini greenhouses from milk jugs, planting your seeds and leaving them outside in the cold. They will germinate when the temp is right for them and they won't need hardening off. Here's a pic of all the veggies and flowers that go into my veg beds out in my garden waiting to sprout. How fun!

How's that for a felt like normal week? Seeing people and being out and about shopping and eating felt great. I live in hope that the pandemic really is easing up so we can get back to something approaching normal life. 

Week 7 - Kansas City Trip

Travel, friends, more birthday treats, crocheting (!) - this week had it all. It's no wonder I needed the weekend to recharge.

The week started with the mundane. I mailed a box of yarn to my sister, took the rest of my birthday cake to knitting, took advantage of the wind and 60 degree weather to hang my laundry out (my dryer is still dead and I've done nothing to get it fixed) and managed to run 4 errands in 15 minutes over lunch on Tuesday. Gotta love small town living! But Wednesday was the banner day.

Rene and I had tickets to see the Auschwitz exhibit in Kansas City. Since it's 3 hours south of Lincoln, we were getting an early start. But you know me - if I'm going to Lincoln I'm going to maximize my day so I scheduled breakfast with Darla for her birthday. Since I had to leave the house at 6:30, I did all my prep the night before and was only a few minutes late to our favorite Cook's Cafe. What a nice start to the day. Then I went to Rene's and we headed south. Rene used to live in KC so she was driving, which meant I could knit. Nice.

Our tickets were for 1:00 so we got barbeque for lunch beforehand and Rene treated me for my birthday. That's day 10 of celebrating. Lucky me! Auschwitz was really well done and it took 3 hours to go through. I was pensive when we left but we drove to a yarn shop and that improved my mood. And yes, I bought sock yarn. Oops. Then it was Ikea time. The shelves were half empty but it was still fun and I found some stocking stuffers for Christmas 2022. After driving thru at Arby's, we headed back home. It was a good, if sobering, day and I got home at 11:45. So long too but it felt SO good to be out and about.

For only being gone one day, it took me most of the morning on Thursday to catch up. The afternoon didn't go well (enough said) but my fabulous friends came through, as always. I ended the work week helping Cindy with some training stuff and I was ready for the weekend.

I have been on a mission lately - slogging through stuff and cleaning like my house hasn't been cleaned since pre-covid when I had a cleaning lady. My goal is to have the house clean and organized before garden season. The front room is done and all that needs doing in my bedroom is dusting so I felt OK taking the weekend off. I still did chores on Saturday and did a bunch of cooking on Sunday but otherwise I spent the weekend crocheting. 

Yes, I said that. I've been making some progress on my WIPs (works in progress) too so pulled out a granny stripe afghan that I thought I'd be ripping it out because the cast on edge was tight. But when I took it out, I decided the cast on was fine and so started working on it again and I couldn't stop. I was originally using mini skeins but dug through my stash to find bigger skeins so I could have bigger stripes. I found one of my fave shows ever on Hulu - Lie to Me - so watched that and crocheted away. It felt great to relax and the afghan brought me joy. It's fingering weight yarn (thin) so will take a long time but the hook in the pic shows where it was when I started so I doubled what I had done. Yay!

So it was a good week with KC being the high point. I'm hoping this will be the beginning of getting out and about more. The covid cases are dropping in Nebraska, right on schedule at 2 weeks behind the coasts. I live in hope that it will keep going in this direction and that we can get back to some sense of normal. Time to plan my next mini trip.

Week 6 - My Birthday Week

What a fun week! My birthday was Tuesday but I stretched my celebrations out for the whole week. I have wonderful friends.

It started Monday afternoon when it was in the 50's so I took the afternoon off to hang with Lori. At noon I made lemon chip cookies and bread pudding with a Christmas stollen and a few white chocolate chips, which meant I'd succeeded in my first month of "bake something with chips every month" (yes, it was the 31st but I still made it). I met Lori at the lake at 2:00 and we walked with her dog. Clouds had come in so it was a bit chilly but we warmed up as we walked. Then it was back to my deck for tea. Andrea was late so only arrived as Lori was getting ready to leave but it was a treat to be outside in January. I took the rest of the cookies to knitting that night and we knitted until 9:00 - our latest since the days when we used to knit at the vet's club.

Tuesday was my actual birthday but as usual, it also was monthly reports day. I was plugging away at those when Lorri (2 R's so not the same as Monday's Lori) called to say she wanted to bring me lunch. Nice. She got the grab and go I had planned to get myself and we chatted the lunch hour away. Cindy had suggested meeting for dinner at BW's in Ashland (my fave dive that serves tater tot nachos) but it was so cold that we agreed, happily, to postpone. The rest of the day flew by and I had some nice birthday phone calls that night.

It was bitter cold on Wednesday so quite a change and I stayed cozy inside. I made Mexican layered dip at lunch and had that and a beer for supper. I finished a pair of socks, which I gave a rarely awarded super happy rating on my Ravelry project page - perfect yarn (my favorite frosty purple) and pattern, while watching the Harry Potter 20 year anniversary show. I started Thursday by going through every little piece of paper on both my computer tables and got organized and sent an email to my boss to confirm my what's next prioritization. After enjoying The Grocery Girls live over lunch, I dug into work.

Friday was another birthday event. Anne came over with my favorite Panera salad and some treats she'd made. We chatted the evening away and she got me set up again on her Apple TV account, which was the reason she came up instead of my usual visit to her house. She left at 8:00 and I immediately started watching Ted Lasso. Nice. I spent Saturday doing chores between episodes and was done by Saturday night. If you'd ever told me that I'd not only love but get choked up over a series about soccer in the UK, I'd have laughed but that's what Ted Lasso did. Love that show!

With the front room and all the windows done, I'd decided to do my bedroom next because it was already 80% done. I only had a small window on Sunday morning but went in there and had the room picked up and the floors washed before Helen arrived. She brought chicken marsala for lunch and an entire banana cake for my birthday. We chatted the afternoon away and when she left, that was the end of my birthday celebrations.

What a great week! I have such wonderful friends and they made my birthday - another pandemic one - special.

Week 5 - On a Roll

My week was full of productivity despite being busy almost every night. And there's nothing wrong with a week that starts with delivery of yarn that had been lost in the mail for a month. Not only was it sock yarn but mystery sock yarn and it was absolutely gorgeous. But enough about sock yarn (said me never) - anyway....

It was a training week at work and my evenings were particularly busy. I had knitting Monday night, a Husker Cats zoom on Wednesday, book club on Thursday and did a Fremont run for groceries Friday night. Despite all that, I still managed to continue on my cleaning mission.

I started washing the china from the hutch Tuesday over lunch but opted for cooking Tuesday night, my usual night to cook, instead of doing more. But when I woke up super early on Wednesday, I finished washing the china before work, which meant I put the hutch back to pretty over lunch. So here it is - the before and after. Way better, right? I'm not going to waste time beating myself up on how crappy it looked for so long. Clutter is a constant battle for me. It's in my genes.

With my Fremont run for groceries and such done on Friday, I was ready to rock and roll on Saturday. Since it was going to be nearly 60 degrees, my goal was to finish the windows. I pulled all the valances first thing and had them washed and hanging on the clothesline so was ready to clean. I had bought foam window cleaner at Dollar Tree and pulled the dustbuster from my Aldi electric broom so the cleaning when much faster than last week's front room windows. I forced myself to iron and rehang the curtains after stopping for a tea break so the windows were completely done. It's amazing how clean they looked. Dirty windows must be like cataracts - the dirt builds up so slowly that you don't know how unclear your view is until it's gone. Now to not wait years before I clean them again.

I rewarded myself Sunday with some relaxation time. I had bought a chuck roast at HyVee on Friday so cooked that in the electric frying pan over the course of the afternoon. I also went through my seeds and ordered new ones for this year's garden. I managed a few chores too and ended the week feeling great about my continued progress plus I had my birthday week to look forward to. All good. 

Here's a gorgeous sunset pic I took from my kitchen window Saturday night. The days are definitely getting longer. : )