Week 11 - Hellish Budget Week

Yup, it was a week of budget hell.

Nora's last day was Tuesday (one day earlier than last week's plan) and it featured a 12 hour zoom. Yes, 12 hours! We started at 9:30 in the morning and Nora and I didn't finish until 9:15. There was a decent lunch break and we stopped for 20 minutes to eat dinner but it was long and stressful, with Budget not providing data until 4:40 that we needed to finish. At least when we signed off, the files were built and I thought that would be the end. Foolish me.

I was in the office on Wednesday and in person meetings replaced the zooms. Budget wanted more fields added so I spent Thursday morning trying to pull them in without redoing the files and then giving in and redoing them with fingers crossed. We had a final zoom that afternoon to go over the data and at 4:53, they said they were good to go. I logged off the zoom and IM'd my boss to say I was done. He thought I meant with my job and was quitting. Nope, I'd be back to work on Friday.

Having eaten nothing but the food I'd cooked on the weekend - grilled cheese with baked beans for lunch and chili mac every night for supper - I ordered a pizza, picked up a 6 pack of my favorite beer and drove through DQ for a sundae. I had a little celebration then went to bed and slept well for the first night in a week.

I started Friday slogging through all the emails I'd missed and making a to do list before our team zoom at 10:00. The only thing I'd managed to do all week was help users with questions and a couple of things for Mary so the list was large. Despite that, I said I'd be taking Friday afternoon off and wouldn't be taking vacation time. Little did I know that Lacey, who kept me sane during this project, had already emailed a thank you and said I should take time off. Nice. After a lunch of leftover pizza, I started reclaiming my life. The kitchen and back room were a mess so I started cleaning that up then decided I had to wash the kitchen floor, which I did by hand with a scrubby instead of a mop. When it was half done, I ran errands then finished when I got home. With all that done, I had high hopes to relax and enjoy my weekend.

After spending Saturday morning weaving in ends on socks, including these monster socks I'd worked on all week during zooms to help maintain sanity, I made a modest to do list for the rest of the weekend. And I spent the rest of the weekend plugging away at it between streaming, knitting and chatting with friends and family. By Sunday afternoon the sun was shining and it was warm enough to open the windows and putter outside. 

It was a lovely end to a stressful week and I cannot express how excited I am to just have a normal week ahead. And maybe being so exhausted will make it easier to adjust to daylight savings time. How's that for looking for the silver lining? Anyway, wish me luck that Budget doesn't come up with any requests this week.

Week 10 - Impending Budget Doom

I got some news early in the week that would rock my world at work. It didn't sink in immediately but by Thursday I was in tears. But before then there was some joy.

I was due to start working in the office on Wednesday but Darla had convinced me to meet her at the East Campus Union for their mardi gras lunch. I started working early with the intent to drive in for lunch and then work in the office for the afternoon but the weather was drop dead gorgeous and that changed my mind. It would be much nicer to work at home all afternoon with my windows open and dressed comfortably so that's what I did. After a super yummy lunch with Darla (always a treat to see her), I drove home and worked late to make up the drive time. After work, I made coffee cake to take to the office and prepped to be up and out on Wednesday at the time I'm usually getting out of bed. Have I mentioned before that I'd happily work from home for the rest of my years at UNL? Oh well. Once day a week, which is approve through August, won't kill me.

I had been told on Monday that Nora would be taking a leave of absence and I'd have to take over the new budget system that she wrote and has been working with for 2+ years. Did I mention that this is budget season? I wasn't in the know on the reason for the leave and regardless, I'd have to fill in. Nora would be scheduling zoom training sessions each day until her leave would start a week from Thursday. I got the series of invites on Wednesday morning and the first one was that afternoon. After eating lunch on a bench with Cindy and Lana (it was so warm we had to get out of the sun), I put on my headphones for the first session. It was 100% useless with lots of blather about budget philosophy and no practical directions on what I'd have to actually do. Reality began to set it.

After a night of stress dreams (the kind where people die), I called Nora Thursday morning and told her that I needed operational direction rather than what we had covered on Wednesday. We had a good talk and she said she'd work on a timeline before our next zoom but when I asked her if she'd be available while on leave for questions, she said no and my tears started and didn't stop for quite awhile. Lacey, the boss of all of us who worked up the ranks from an accountant and who I've worked with for years, called and set my mind a bit at ease. The afternoon zoom was more focused but there was still a ton to get through. 

After more stress dreams, I woke up tired and Friday was another bad day. We had Frevvo (our online forms software) problems all morning and our afternoon zoom stretched for more than 2 hours at the end of the day. I was toast!

I was a zombie all weekend. I even went back to bed after breakfast on Saturday and finished a book - something I haven't done in years. I'd been reading in the wee hours when I couldn't sleep so it was nice to read at a normal time. I streamed and knitted all afternoon and on Sunday, I did the bare minimum of chores and a bit of cooking, starting with chili, which I rarely make. My old friend Janice, who I hadn't talked to in years, called out of the blue that afternoon and we talked for hours. It meant my homemade baked beans didn't come out of the oven until after 9:00 but they would get me through the next super stressful week so I guess it was meant to be.

So it was a pretty crappy week but was only a taste of what the next week would bring. And the recharge weekend I had was a good thing because I'd need all the mental and physical energy I could muster. To end on a happier note, here are some socks I knitted for my oldest friend's birthday, which I did manage to mail out mid week.

Week 9 - Cold and Crowned

After a glorious weekend of unseasonably warm weather, that was due to change  so I ran my errands over lunch on Monday. The front came through when I was in the farm store so I was happy to get home to hole up during the cold snap. With the library closed for the holiday, there was no Monday Night Knitting and so I had nowhere I needed to go for days and I was happy with that.

But that same cold caused someone to reschedule their dental appointment and when they called me Tuesday morning with an appointment at 11:00 for my crown, I grabbed it. I had a class to teach that afternoon but just delayed it an hour and went out in the cold. The new dentist bought a crown making machine so I didn't have to go back. It was 2 hours well spent and my droopy mouth was almost back to normal by the time I had to teach. 

Other than the dentist, I didn't go anywhere for the rest of the week. I was horrified by the war in Ukraine so watched a bunch of TV and when I struggled to get warm in my own house, I turned on my mattress pad and went to bed early to read. I ended the week zooming with Connie for 2.5 hours after work on Friday, which was great.

Maybe it was having been holed up all week and that the weather was starting to warm up but nothing was making me happy on Saturday. I was antsy and even streaming/knitting wasn't hitting it so I called Andrea and asked if she'd be up for a ride to Seward. Luckily she was so off we went. The MCC (Mennonite Central Committee) thrift shop there is wonderful and that was our destination. We found all kinds of treasures then hit some other shops on the square and a gift shop Drae had scoped out online on our way out of town. I scored some stocking stuffers for next Christmas. Nice.

Since it was the end of the month, I forced myself to do the last few things to finish my bedroom on Sunday afternoon. It was only dusting the furniture and changing the light bulbs in the overhead light. I replaced compact fluorescents with 2 60 watt LEDs from Ikea. Yeah, you could do surgery in my bedroom but it's done. That was my goal for February and I succeeded. Blaring light be damned.

So it was a pretty typical wintery week except for my crown. You can call me Queen Merry. Here are some of my overwintered flowers, which are always a joy in dreary, cold weather. Spring is coming.

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. : )