Week 43 - Last Busy Week

Like most of this month, this week was busy and ended with a mini road trip. All fun but after weeks with no downtime, also exhausting. I do hope this is my last busy week for awhile.

I took Helen to lunch for her birthday on Monday. I don't see enough of Helen so it was fun to catch up over Mexican food. I got DQ after knitting that night, which is always a treat. All this made for a nice start to the week.

Monday was also Boss' Day but since we wouldn't see Ben until Wednesday, I had volunteered to make Twix cookies, after learning last week that Twix was Ben's favorite candy bar. I'd found a recipe online and had bought a bag of Twix at Aldi so was good to go. My plan to make them at lunch on Tuesday was thwarted when I saw that the dough had to be chilled for at least 2 hours, which the recipe specifically said should not be skipped. I put the dough in the fridge and waited until after work. They were a total pain to form (should have formed them before chilling) and then the caramel made it hard to get them off the sheet. But it was only in the 40's so having the oven on felt good and I put homemade pizza in as soon as the cookies were done. Yum!

The cookies were a big hit on Wednesday and a bunch of us were going to Tico's for magueritas and nachos after work so I had that to look forward to. I decided to skip lunch, eating leftover pizza at my desk, so I could leave at 4:30 but that made the afternoon drag. My solution was a visit to Dodie in her new office, which broke up the afternoon nicely. Tico's was fun and with a belly full of nachos, I was home in time for Survivor. Another nice day.

I woke up Thursday feeling, as my mom would say, punk - low energy and mood. I wondered how I could call in but I don't do mental health days (I feel too guilty) so logged on at 8:00. It didn't take long for me to decide to use vacation time to take the afternoon off. Knowing that made it easier to get through the morning. After eating my weekly grab and go for lunch, I cleaned up all the pans from my cookie baking then headed downstairs to make some project bags. I had the idea to make Halloween project bags for my friends but the 1st one was a total hack job and I fixed all my problems with the 2nd bag but it wasn't big enough. Done with that. The afternoon was very restorative so worth the 4 hours of vacation time.

Friday was busy at work and the day flew by. When the clock struck 5:00, I put on my sneakers and headed to the lake, stopping for birdseed at Bomgaar's on the way. I downloaded a pedometer app (didn't know about iHealth) and spent the next 45 minutes walking across the jetty and back. Just shy of 2 miles and nearly 4k steps. Not bad and a great start to the weekend.

Saturday was a fun day. I picked Andrea up at 8:15 and we headed to Lori's in Omaha for a mini road trip with her and her cousin Michelle, who used to knit with us.After driving through Scooter's for coffee, we did the 3 hour ride to the Missouri Star Quilting Company in Hamilton, Missouri, arriving at noon. There are a dozen or so different shops, each one specializing in one type of fabric. We shopped the first few then went looking for lunch but every restaurant we tried was closed so we ended up at the only open one, which was a toy store/tea shop with a seriously limited menu. It was yummy and they brought our food out on multi level plates. We then finished the rest of the stores, which are an entire side of one block, with shops upstairs too. We finished right at 5:00 when they all closed. We'd all found fun things to buy and headed north towards Lori's, eating scones Lori had made in the car. I was home at 9:00, had a bowl of cereal and went to bed.

I slept until 8:00 on Sunday, which is late for me, and then had a relaxing day. The weather was nuts again - high 80's and very windy. I believe we broke a heat records set in the 1800's, so I spent the day hiding inside where it was cool. I talked to my sister, knitted, of course, and caught up on my blog while watching podcasts on YouTube. I cobbled together meals that didn't require the oven (too bad I just ate the last casseroles from the freezer) and settled in for an evening of PBS. 

So my month of weekend commitments is done and I'm happy about that. Everything I did was fun but I'm ready to hunker down and get some stuff done in the house. We have 2 more weeks before the clocks change (why are we still doing that?) so I plan to get more walks in after work. It's a nice way to end the day and I need the exercise. Here's hoping I actually do it because talk is cheap, right?