Week 29 - Reading and Trees

Two things dominated this week - my neighbor taking down 2 70+ year old trees and me reading The Women. The first caused noise and then work, which I only accomplished after I finished reading the entire book in just over 2 days while working full time.

First the trees. I was working from home on Tuesday and the heat had broken so I had the windows open. Around 9:00, I began to hear chainsaws and looked out to see that my neighbor was cutting down the silver maple in her front yard, which was planted in 1951 when this neighborhood was built. I went out to chat with the tree guys and they told me she was taking out the back tree too. I was sad to see such majestic (and perfectly healthy) trees being cut down, not to mention the shade they provided my yard every evening, even though they're 2 yards away. By the end of Tuesday, the front tree was down except for the gigantic main trunk and I had hopes that they'd finish the back tree while I was on campus on Wednesday.

Nope. They could drop the front tree in the street but the back tree was between their house and garage so each branch had to be tied off and carefully lowered after it was cut so they were still at it on Thursday when I was back working from home. So noisy and it was still making me sad. All day long!

I had asked the tree guys what they'd do with the woodchips and upon hearing they'd be dumping them at the city burn pile, I asked if they'd leave some by the alley in my backyard, which they seemed more than happy to do. Well, at some point Thursday afternoon without making enough noise to get my attention, they dropped an ENORMOUS pile of woodchips. I'm talking enough for the entire neighborhood when all I needed was some to go around my veg beds. By the end of Friday, I'd spread mulch all around my raised beds and it looked great but other than one other bed, I was done and still had a mountain of mulch. I spread the word among my friends and posted on 2 local Facebook groups and some is gone but there's still plenty more there. It goes way back behind what this pic shows - 10 feet at least.

Now for the reading. Someone had recommended the book The Women and I'd reserved the e-book but would have to wait months or maybe more than a year so I also reserved the actual book at my small town library. I had forgotten I'd done that but when I went to knitting on Monday night, they presented me with it. I prefer to read an e-book on my iPad but picked up the actual book while having my tea break Tuesday afternoon and was immediately sucked in. When work was over at 5:00, I read until I had to go to a library board meeting and started reading again as soon as I got home. I read until midnight and when the cats woke me up at 5:30 on Wednesday, I read for an hour before I had to get ready to head to campus. I read all Wednesday night and finished the book on Thursday, reading during lunch and after I got home from swimming. Such an amazing book! I haven't read a book that quickly, while working full time even, in years. If you haven't read it, you should. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's about nurses in Vietnam during the war. Fiction.

So that was my week and the weekend was a Fremont run for spinning on Saturday, including all our usual stops, and chores, knitting and visits on the phone and in person (Lorri stopped in after church) on Sunday before ending the week in the pool, which makes me super happy. Another summer week in the books. Just a couple more before I retire and head to Rhode Island for my annual beach week. Not that I'm actually counting the days. Really, I'm not.

Week 28 - Kansas City Fun

The start of the week did not go well. I was chatting on zoom with Cindy when someone knocked at her door. She was gone for awhile and came back in tears. Her dog, who had been having breathing issues and had been back and forth to the vet for 2 weeks, had died. Her neighbors went out to their yard and Milo was running over to greet them and keeled over dead. I felt Cindy's pain having gone through this too often myself in the past year. There was a contentious meeting shortly after that but it got better from there. 

It was a beautiful day so Nan had invited us to knit at her house instead of at the library. Since she'd supply pizza and beer, I put blondies in the oven at lunch and left for Fremont right after work, picking up Andrea on the way. It was just the 3 of us knitting but it was totally enjoyable with good food and company.

As lovely as Monday evening was, the highlight of the week was Kansas City on Wednesday with Anne and Rene. We'd planned this a month ago, inspired by a post Anne saw on Facebook for Scrap KC. It's a teacher supply and craft store full of donated stuff. That was our reason for going but there's always Ikea and a lovely yarn shop - Yarn Social. 

I drove down to Rene's for 8:00 and we left from there. Rene used to live in KC so she was driving. We stopped in St. Joseph for a potty break and Starbucks plus a couple of thrifts looking for goblets for my friend Cindy's niece's wedding (didn't find any). There was a donut shop next to one of the thrifts so we got a donut for the road. We got to Ikea shortly after noon but the donuts meant we weren't hungry for lunch yet. We shopped Ikea (found all kinds of fun stuff, as always) then went to Scrap KC. Anne was disappointed that they didn't have much cone yarn but I found some cheap good quality yarn, including 2 that looked like sock yarn and did in fact pass the bleach test when I got home. (Bleach dissolves wool but not nylon so is a great test for sock yarn, which must include nylon for me to use it for socks.) We then went to Yarn Social and bought gorgeous but expensive yarn. It was now after 3:00 and we were starving. 

The women at the yarn shop recommended a local sandwich place but when we got there, it was closed already so we got on our phones and found Gus' Fried Chicken. We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed chicken fingers with all kinds of southern fixings - hush puppies, baked beans, greens, etc. We hit 2 more thrifts that were on the way to the highway but found nothing again. It was 4 hours home with just a stop for ice cream and another for gas. We were back in Lincoln by 8:00 and I was home before 9:00. I unpacked the car and put everything away before taking a shower and collapsing into bed.

It was back to campus on Thursday and I spent all morning working with Dana on allocations before heading to East Campus for more BBQ - Tennessee this time, which featured delicious deep fried pickles as a side. After an uneventful afternoon, I had an hour to kill between work and swimming and totally scored more good quality yarn at Goodwill. This time it was a $7 bag filled with Noro (Japanese wool) and Malabrigo, which is always gorgeous. Then another nice thing happened. All 3 of us had bought little rolling carts at Ikea and it was the only thing still left in my car after I unloaded Wednesday night. Well Anne had put hers together and offered to swap it out for mine since she knew how to put them together already. We swapped in the parking lot at the pool. How nice was that!

The work day went quickly enough on Friday and I ran Wahoo errands at lunch - got my grab and go and hit the thrift shop and The Warehouse since I was out. I came back to find lemons on my bench (they might have been there Thursday night but if so, I missed them) that a friend picked for me from her brother's tree in California. There will be lemon meringue pie in Donna's future but maybe when it cools down a bit.

Because we had heat emergency days Saturday, Sunday and Monday with temps in the high 90's with heat indexes of 110, (yikes!) other than watering my plants and harvesting some of my first produce, I didn't leave the house. I made Swiss chard and Italian sausage pasta Friday night, sausage and peppers (my banana peppers in pots on the driveway are doing very well) and cut up 4 lots of rhubarb for the freezer - 3 with strawberries for strawberry/rhubarb pie and one just rhubarb for my fave dessert. Other than the strawberries, all the produce was from my garden. I also sorted the lemons and made simple syrup for lemonade with the ones that needed using. I shared syrup and lemons with Lorri when she stopped by after church.

So another week ended with a holed up in the AC weekend. I had given thought to reorganizing my craft room, which got all discombobulated after the flood, but never made it down there. Oh well. Retirement is only 3.5 weeks away. So many things can wait. :)

Week 27 - Not a Fan

Call me a cranky old lady but I do not like all the fireworks on the 4th. I'm all for a professional display but the ones my neighbors light off for a solid week before the 4th and a few days after are bad. It's just noise and litter with nothing to show for it but spent money and lost sleep. At least we got lots of rain early in the week (5" between daytime Monday and overnight to Tuesday) so fire wasn't a concern.

One good thing about this week was getting a pass on working on campus on Wednesday plus getting to stop working at 3:30. Of course I had already made plans to see Thelma with Anne and Rene at 5:00 on campus but that was OK. I drove in for the movie, which was good but totally streamable. We went to Ivana Cone for ice cream afterwards. I'll call that a good start to the long weekend because being still at max vacation, I took Friday off. I think 90% of campus did. They should have just closed. Yeah, right.

I had planned to go to a craft fair in Seward on Thursday morning with Darla but with rain forecast and it being a rain or shine event, we cancelled it and instead would do lunch on Friday. I spent Thursday holed up inside with the cats going in and out all day as my neighbors set off loud fireworks. I watched the new Beverly Hills Cop movie on Netflix and called it a night. The noise kept me reading late but I had hopes that the worst of it would be over.

The cats woke me up early on Friday, as usual, and I found myself following my normal weekday morning routine. This left me dressed and ready to go by 10:00 so I drove to Lincoln then and had time to do some thrifting before meeting Darla. At a Goodwill where I rarely find anything, I found a bunch of fiber packs (for spinning yarn) and a few skeins of good quality yarn. At another Goodwill, I found someone's entire collection of Starbucks coffee mugs, including one I'd wanted but not for $15. Goodwill's normal high price of $1.99 for a used mug was a steal for a Starbuck's mug so I bought 4 - a Christmas one and the orange one I'd wanted for me and 2 as gifts. Nice.

I met Darla at Noodles (she got the Nebraska mug) and we had a nice lunch. I had emailed my cousin about hanging out that afternoon but she needed an hour for something so I went to Anne's to play with Hazel. (Anne got the mitten mug.) I wasn't there long before my cousin got back so I headed over there and we chatted the afternoon away. I hit Aldi and headed home for a lovely weekend with no plans.

And so began another summer weekend holed up in the house avoiding the heat and more fireworks, because clearly my neighbors had more. The only thing worthy of a mention was a nice long chat with my friend Cornelia, who I only see when I'm in Rhode Island in the summer and rarely talk to. Otherwise it was knitting and streaming the weekend away. Enjoy the cute picture of Goodie, who spent more time in the house this week than usual. Damn fireworks!

Week 25 - Kittens and Knitting

It was a pretty normal week with all the usual stuff - Monday Night Knitting, BBQ on East Campus and water aerobics on Thursday, etc. But there were a couple of fun things worth mentioning.

After work on Wednesday, I went with Anne to play with kittens. There was a litter of tuxedo and black kittens being fostered for Becky's stray cat project and Anne was ready to get one. I happily played with the kittens and found one that would let me pet his belly but the news is that Anne took one of the tuxedo kittens and named her Hazel in honor of my dear departed Hazel. She's a total cutie and Anne has been having fun with her. There was zero temptation for me. I'm fine with my 4 beasts.

I'm back at max vacation so took Friday afternoon off and went to Omaha to knit at Lori's. She was dog sitting her niece's dog so we stayed in. Her house was HOT though. We were inside sitting still and I was actively sweating. When I got up to go to the bathroom, I saw that it was 84 degrees and Lori got up to adjust her thermostat to kick on the AC. Sheesh! The AC in the car felt great and after a stop at Aldi, I was stocked up and ready for a weekend inside.

I was a total veg on Saturday, doing minimal chores and catching up on YouTube knitting podcasts. Sunday I got busy. First thing was to pack up all the yarn for Dottie, who I'd be meeting in Iowa City next week. This was most of it - there's a layer behind what shows in this pic and more in the garage that never made it inside. Since I pulled some off the spare room bed, I kept going in there and organized all the remaining yarn. As usual, I ended the week driving to Lincoln for water aerobics, getting home just in time for a quick shower before watching PBS.

So it was a good week with a mix of socializing and productivity. Plus kittens! Love it.

Week 26 - Dottie in Iowa

It was another yarny week with lots of yarn gone from my house. The best part of that was seeing my sister, Dottie.

I had gotten so many good deals on yarn lately that the pile of acrylic for my sister was enormous - way too much to think about shipping. That's when I came up with the idea to meet in the middle, which we'd done years ago, meeting in Davenport. This time we were meeting in Iowa City, which is just over 4 hours of driving for each of us. We weren't staying over so were going there and back in one day. Works for me.

It was blazing hot on Monday and Tuesday so I loaded all the yarn into my car first thing Tuesday when it was a bit cooler out. With the floor finally clear in my front room, I spent Tuesday evening cleaning, which all started when I vacuumed the newly cleared front room and then kept going. I swept and vacuumed all the floors and even vacuumed down the stairs to the basement. I then cleaned up the kitchen, washed the pots and pans then to finish up, cleaned the bathroom before my evening shower. Not only was my house emptier but now it was cleaner too. I went to bed feeling great about things.

We both left ~8:00 Wednesday morning and met in a HyVee parking lot just after noon. I left my yarn filled car and we headed out for lunch and thrifting in her car. We had yummy lunch at The Dandy Lion, which Siri failed on, sending us to The Dandelion Cafe instead. From there we hit an MCC (Menonite Central Committee) thrift shop called The Crowded Closet. The MCC thrift shops are a cut above if you're looking for a nice one. Anyway... they had a yarn wall that Dottie had seen online. I got a few skeins of nice yarn but not much else. We went to a local yarn shop, only to find a note on the door that it was closed for the day. We hit 2 more thrifts - Salvation Army (nothing - it was skanky and expensive) and hit pay dirt at the Goodwill across the street. They had cone yarn galore, which is Anne's favorite so I did a video chat with her and she picked out lots of yarn. I did manage to get a single skein of sock yarn for myself and Dottie bought me a fun new mug. All that was left was to go back to HyVee and head home.

We transferred the yarn (filled Dottie's trunk and back seat), gassed up and said our goodbyes. I got a frapuccino for the road (I'd picked a HyVee with a Starbuck's, of course) and headed out. We'd eaten a late, large lunch so I wasn't very hungry (I'd set out snacks but had left them and my coffee on my kitchen counter) but did stop at a McDonald's drive thru off I-80. I ordered a filet o' fish value meal and and apple pie and it was almost $12! I gasped when she told me the price and she apologized for it being so expensive when I paid. Yikes! I was home after after 8:00 so it was a long day but fun.

Thursday was a campus day so it was an early morning. Luckily it was another BBQ day so I didn't have lunch to pack but I did pack my swimming stuff. It started raining right after we got back from lunch and rained on and off all afternoon. Anne and I decided to bail on swimming so I stopped at HyVee, where I picked up a fried chicken dinner special, and headed home. I was tired, understandably.

Friday was an uneventful day working from home but in the spirit of gone is good, I mailed a big box of yarn out. Someone who has bought yarn from me before had bought 24 lots of my will trade or sell yarn on Ravelry, which I'd pulled a couple of weeks ago, but she had to delay paying until her payday. I happily dropped the box at the post office at lunch rather than scheduling a pick up for Saturday. I went into the weekend with so much less yarn in my house. Yay!

I had another weekend inside, doing lots of knitting and not many chores because I'd done so many on Tuesday. Holing up in the AC is pretty typical for my summers but this weekend it was after a fun week with some long overdue sister time. Life is good!

Week 24 - Replaced Pudding Cup

It's that time of year again when there aren't enough hours of darkness to get good sleep. Besides that, I tend to stay up because it's light so late and that makes it worse. Just another week before the days start getting shorter. Yay!

So I stayed up late Monday night because I had messed up the heel on a sock and just had to stay up to fix it. And because I was up late, the cats were too and Goodie didn't come in until 3:15, which meant I slept fitfully until then. Without me noticing, Rosie got out when I let Goodie in and then was meowing at my bedroom window at 5:15. I was exhausted on Tuesday and it didn't help that I had a library board meeting that night, which went late because it was the last day for one of the members so they brought out snacks after the meeting. All I wanted to do was go home because I had made a cake after work and still had to finish it before bedtime. Luckily, I slept like a rock that night, helped by having turned the AC on that afternoon so the windows were shut.

As usual, Wednesday was a campus day and I was feeding the north side feeders, which took close to 30 minutes instead of the 5 it takes when I feed the south. I took the cake to work for Lana's birthday, had some with my morning coffee then more that afternoon with Dodie when she needed something sweet. It was a blueberry lemon poke cake and was absolutely delish - summer in a pan. I skipped the cool whip topping but here's the recipe. I went right home after work, made dinner and settled in to start The Last of Us on HBO, aka Max.

Thursday was my 2nd campus day and a few of us went to East Campus for their summer BBQ grill out. After work, I met Anne and we went through dozen of totes of yarn (Facebook Marketplace again) and picked out wha we wanted then made a beeline across town to swim, only to find no one in the pool because there had been a crack of thunder so we had to wait 10 minutes before we could get in. I got home late but watched more of The Last of Us.

I was an indecisive mess on Friday, which seems to be a trend. I had planned to go to campus AGAIN for a retirement party that afternoon but was not feeling like it at all. I really needed to go but was back and forth trying to decide until I thought of making it more worth going. I messaged Anne and Rene about going to The Old Oak at The Ross at 4:40. They were in so I headed to Lincoln. I closed the party down and went to the office for the last hour of the day. The lights were off and doors were locked, which adds to the creep factor of being all alone in the office. I was only there an hour before it was movie time and it was a wonderful movie. We went to Zesto in search of peanut butter soft serve only to be told that's a fall flavor. Really? We enjoyed the flavors we got and then drove home. The work week was over and had included plenty of fun. Nice.

There was more fun in store on Saturday. It was Christmas in June with our spinning group, which meant a picnic in the park and a gift exchange. But before that, Andrea and I went to Abie for a rummage sale in the church basement. It was fill a bag for $3 and we each found a few things. We headed to Fremont and The Restore (also bought a few things) then went to the park. The wind saved us from punishing heat/humidity and it was a fun time with good company, food and presents. When we left, we hit the Estate Dispersal store. I was thrilled to find a single pudding cup to replace the one that had broken years ago. Now I can make my banana pudding in these fun vintage cups again. The one I got wasn't a duplicate color of the 3 I had in the cupboard too. Score! From there it was Goodwill, Aldi and home. I was beat but it had been a fun day and I finished The Last of Us that night.

Sunday was adulting day so I started my chores right after CBS Sunday Morning (love that show!) I made a dent in neatizing and cleaning before Lorri stopped by after church. When she left, I sat down to lunch and the new episodes of Bridgeton. I only got 2 watched because I spent a chunk of time pulling yarn from my will trade or sell stash that someone from Ravelry was buying. I made a quick omelet and headed to Lincoln for the 4th time in a week (!) to swim. Totally worth it. I stayed up late yet again to finish Bridgeton, which had a great ending. Can't blame the weather or lack of darkness for this week's sleep deficit. Who needs sleep? Maybe I can catch up next week? : )

Week 23 - Fatigue and Yarn

The week started with tornado sirens just after midnight on Monday morning, which woke me up with a burst of adrenaline and had me struggling to fall back asleep. The lack of sleep compounded from there (rotten cats not coming in at bedtime!) but at least the end of the week was all about yarn scores.

After the sirens Monday, Rosie didn't come in until 3:00 am the next night and while I say I'm not going to worry about the cats being out in the wee hours, I do worry and get up periodically to call them inside and have been known to be walking my yard in my nightie in the wee hours. Yes, I am that crazy cat lady. I was a zombie at work the first 2 work days but was watching Dana do my normal work so didn't need much brain power. I got the cats in at 9:00 Tuesday night and slept great so was a new woman on Wednesday. I even did some chores before heading to campus for the day.

Dana is doing great with picking up on my work duties so work is going well. Of course I'm taking full advantage of being in Lincoln for campus days so had lunch with Dodie on Wednesday then thrifted and food shopped after work. I hung out with Darla at lunch on Thursday, did a Dairy Store run with the few of us who were in on Thursday, including the new accountant so it was a welcome event, and then did my first water aerobics of the summer after work. And just like that, it was Friday.

And that's when the yarn fun started. I had found some cheap workhorse yarn on Facebook Marketplace that appeared to be in northeast Lincoln so I said I'd buy it and would pick it up before swimming on Sunday. When they sent their address, it was in south Lincoln so I called Anne. She was willing to pick it up while she was running errands and picked up some yarn but it wasn't the right yarn so they ended up delivering it to her later that day. By then I'd found some yarn in my neck of the woods so drove to Mead after work to pick up what I'd hoped would be acrylic for my sister but ended up being mostly cotton yarn, which I have no use for. I messaged with the seller and she had her mom go through more bins and I drove out Sunday afternoon to swap the cotton for acrylic. All settled.

But that's not all the yarn. In a Nebraska fiber group on Facebook, someone posted about indie dyed sock yarn for $6 a hank. I messaged back and forth with her (the original poster was the person doing the sale but she didn't say that in her post) to make sure there was some left and in the meantime had asked Anne if she'd go and check it out for me because I didn't want drive 60 miles if it as already gone. She said she'd go even when I found out there was plenty left. She did a video chat from there and showed me the yarn. I got 14 skeins for the price of 3! Still more yarn fun was coming.

On Saturday night, Anne emailed me a garage sale listing that showed bins and bins of acrylic that'd be perfect for my sister's charity crocheting. The sale was over on Saturday but I messaged the seller and asked if there was any yarn left. She said not a single skein had sold so I asked how much she had (60 brand new BIG skeins) and if she'd be willing to do a bundle price. I got all the yarn and 2 big totes for $100. Score! And you guessed it, Anne went and picked it up for me.

Beyond the huge amounts of yarn, there was other fun and productivity on the weekend. Saturday was World Wide Knit in Public Day so some of the Monday Night Knitters sat outside the florist on the main drag in Wahoo and knitted the morning away. It was perfect weather and with a yummy mocha, the time flew. I left at 1:30 to go home and eat some lunch and having been recharged by sitting all morning, I tackled the spare bedroom, which was a mess. I sorted yarn, including more for my sister, and cleared the floor. I came up with lots of donations for Becky's Stuff for Strays garage sale. On Sunday, I went through the shelf above my couch for more donations and went through 2 baskets of clothes that have been on the floor of my bedroom, looking for my swimsuits but also finding tops to wear this summer.

As if Anne hadn't done enough for me already, I asked her if I could give my donations to her because she was going to Becky's to drop hers on Monday. She agreed so I loaded up the car and headed to Lincoln. I went a bit crazy buying produce at the market near the pool, swapped donations for yarn and happily did water aerobics to end the week.

What a great week! Work went well, I got scads of yarn not just for my sister but some for me (thanks Anne!) and am back in the pool. I'm also feeling good about starting to slog through some of the crap in my house. I love knowing that my stuff is being sold to support kitties and my plan is to keep going through my stuff all summer and fall, maybe even finishing before garage sale season is over. Becky posted pictures on Facebook to advertise the sale and every single one was of stuff I'd donated. I hope she sold it all and made some money for the cats.