Working Wednesday November 6,2019

~ Jenny

I have big plans today. BIG PLANS. First, I’ll get out of bed before nine and get the Working Wednesday post up . . .

Damn.

What did you accomplish this week?

82 thoughts on “Working Wednesday November 6,2019”

    1. Ummmmm….yarn pies?? Even Mr Google doesn’t provide a definitive answer…. 🥴

      1. Lahk “These hyar pies are mine; them ‘ere pies are yarn.” (I may have mixed several accents, badly. The ‘mine’ prolly should have sounded like Mayan. Maybe ‘hyar’ should have been ‘cheer’.)

  2. I cooked on chili on Sunday. We’re still eating leftovers.

    I signed my kids up for volleyball. Waiting to hear what day practice is. This is a combined 4th-6th grade team and everyone makes the team. It’s fairly low key.

    Tonight is the PTA for my daughter’s school. We’re going because one of the topics is getting her and some of her classmates out of math hell. They’re VERY good with math but relearning 3rd-4th grade math. She was happily completing 6th and 7th grade math in 5th grade. She’s bored silly. I don’t want her to lose her love of math.

  3. I signed up for another music gig so I’ve got 3 rehearsals and a concert to play across two different ensembles, while I’m schlepping around ALL OF THE EQUIPMENT.

    Also I watched Salt Acid Fat Heat on Netflix and I must try some of its tricks, like taking the bite away from raw onions by marinating them in an acid (vinegar), or a miso egg.
    (Also, going to do some roasted beets!)

  4. I’m working on getting through my last few weeks of work without getting bitter. I’ve loved working here, but it definitely time to move on while I still enjoy most of what I do.

    Also working on the last preparations for the launch of my next book on Tuesday. 🙂

    1. E-mail me if I’m supposed to be putting up an Argh Author which I’m positive I am. I lost all my e-mail in-box. Because I am inept.

    2. Is this for Crossroads Corner (Bendixon Sisters Book 3)?

      After an embezzling boyfriend puts her under police suspicion—and deeply in debt—Camryn Bendixon joins her grandfather’s failing construction company. Her goal is simple—work constantly to rebuild her career and her self-esteem. And if she must drag Bendixon and Sons back to profitability by her well-manicured fingernails, that’s what she’ll do.

      Will Danson knows life is fragile—a fact brought home when Laura, his only child, lost her sight. Determined to provide for her, he does his best to balance managing the Prince George division of the Kohlenburg Group with his young daughter’s needs. But it can be a lonely road for a single dad.

      Soon Camryn and Will are competing for construction bids and career-making contracts. But it is Camryn’s battered heart that Will truly wants to win.

      I pre-ordered it in September. I’m getting impatient. “This title will be auto-delivered to your Kindle on November 12, 2019.”

  5. I’ve started planning for a tea party for some friends. We normally go out to a tea house, but I want to give it a try at home.

    1. My sister and I did one with our friend Harriet and had SO MUCH FUN! With 3 of us, we each got to make the part we enjoyed most and everyone had a fabulous time. We’re still talking about when we should have the next one. I hope you have a terrific event.

  6. I have a cold, so I’m muddling through work while at home. About all I can manage. But I can’t work from home while the house is messy, so step one is cleaning things. >.>

  7. I’m working on letting my real estate agent and lawyer figure out what the hell is going on with our land sale because it’s something weird. We have a signed contract and the deposit has been made (according to the lawyer) but according to the lawyer the company has “assigned” the sale to someone else who, when the lawyer talked to that person, didn’t know anything about it. I am not happy but I do have a signed contract.

    2. Oh there have been some of that happening in the lower mainland in BC. Hope it gets straightened out.

      1. Yeah, the real estate scene in the LM is just off the wall.

        We got ours sorted out – well, the lawyer and real estate agent did anyway – and it wasn’t anything nefarious just bad communication. No where near as funky as some of the Vancouver area land deals. No illegal casinos on my land in NS!

  8. I can’t say I have alligators trying to climb in my boat of life….. more like leeches. Fighting them off with hat pins. Should try salt. Otherwise, being surprisingly productive this week, which is good because the “unusual” category is higher than usual on the to do list this week.

  9. Yesterday I “reported out” (these days you can’t just “report”) on a massive project: I interviewed 25 people from all over the world, summarized their responses, and recommended what the company should do next. I felt like an anthropologist. An anthropologist who today just might take THREE naps.

    1. The phrase that I’ve noticed everywhere these days is “Welcome in” instead of “Welcome.”

      1. It’s terrifyingly close to the copy I edited last night. Thanks for the link!

        I also just saw a hilarious graphic illustrating the life of a designer:
        – Birth
        – Can we make the logo bigger?
        – Death

  10. I have been engaging in self-care. Been dealing with upper respiratory tract infections and resulting complications. So I guess I produced phlegm. Hahahahaha.

    Decided to keep trying new things. Took meself off to doctor to handle complications and received a change in script. Went to work late, after the doc. Spent time laughing with the children. Spent some time sitting in the sun.

  11. Egg Salad! Egg Salad on pumpernickel bread with pickles because I likely can’t have potato chips. I went to my doctor’s office for a follow up visit about my blood pressure. Of course it’s up. We both used to joke that it was only up when I saw her and not any other doctor’s office visits. But yesterday the jig was up and now I’m another med. And we spent extra time together because her 11:00 did not show and she had time to chat until that the dreaded word ‘elderly’ was used. I know she was talking about her mother being 82 but I’m only in my mid seventies. I just don’t feel it. Anyway I went to the pharmacy to get my prescription and casually walked by the 50% Trick or Treat candy aisle. Kit Kat bars made with dark chocolate. Dark chocolate is supposed to be good for you. I’ll start back to walking soon.

    1. Before she had to retire, the longest serving member of our team was 82, she was a lovely very strong minded petite lady. she needed a stick to walk and she only worked 3 days a week, but she had stamina of olympic standards. She could shifted paperwork in her sleep. She tried to retire a decade ago because she couldn’t use public transport any longer. The company rearranged her hours and had her transported in a taxi for her 3 days of the week. She only retired this year, because she hurt her other leg. We had to hire three temps just to try to cover her work. We still really miss her, sometimes elderly is just a state of mind.

      1. Wow. I am super impressed with the company stepping up with the taxi. And with the woman and her stamina, which I think regenerates better when we keep engaged and active in the world, but not many companies seem to value that so kudos to this one that did recognize her contribution didn’t diminish because her age increased:)

        If more employers realized that we’d all be better off.

        1. yes…treat them as doddery and it’s time to go off to the retirement farm, but also let’s vote in an old age pensioner to run the country…

      3. Our Opal is going to turn eighty-one at the end of this month. She’s only been working twenty hours a week for longer than the eight years I’ve been there, and if she ever fully retires the place is going to fall apart.

    2. My parents are in their 80’s and still going strong. They’re off on yet another cruise as we speak. My father plays tennis 5 days a week. I have a crappy knee, so I like to say that my 85 year old father can literally run circles around me. It’s funny/not funny that it’s true.

    3. I don’t know if you drink coffee or not, but some forms of fermented green tea (Gabo tea, for example) supposedly lower blood pressure. Won’t give you caffeine jitters, either, and lots of Asians have the stuff after dinner, so I guess it doesn’t keep them up at night.

  12. This morning we watched a marine salvage company move a barge into location to where a sailboat was pulled off it’s mooring during a storm last week and smashed up along the shore by the causeway. In just a couple of hours they had a diver go underneath the boat securing lines and then having it hauled onto the barge. Those guys really know their business.

    1. That sounds like Marblehead, although I’m sure it happens in other places as well. My mother used to keep an eye out during hard north-east winds can call the Harbor Master when boats came loose from their moorings and headed to the shallows.

  13. I’m not working on anything but work. I should be taking out the recycling. I should be taking out my accumulated trash, too. It’s just a four gallon trash can, 2/3 full. I should be delivering my laundry basket to the dotter. There’s not much in it but that not much includes all but one of my uniform shirts. I’ve got plenty of I shoulds… but I’m being fluid and unpredictable about my approach to responsibility today. Possibly the rest of the week.

    No. I have a good book, some sugar free chocolate, and a couple of hours before work. I should get back to that book.

  14. I’m working on a couple of crochet projects while keeping my ankle iced and elevated. I started a project with jumbo yarn yesterday, and was happily surprised that DH was able to find the correct size hook (in the third place I had him check). Hooray for knowing all three places well enough to verbally describe them!

  15. After being on the waiting list for more than a year, I received the first dose of the shingles vaccine and it delivered quite a punch! Wow. I felt like I had been beaten by an angry mob and left to sputter in the rain and leaf-clogged gutter for two days. The horror stories from people who actually had shingles, some multiple times, convinced me I could suffer twice the side effects and I’d still be so much better off than I would be getting shingles. So, I may have accomplished nothing, but my immune system mounted quite the attack to help protect me against a ghastly ghost from a pox of chickens cast decades ago.

    1. I had substantial reactions to both the shingles shots (you have to have two, the second sometime within 2-6 months of the first). First one, my arm was horribly sore for a week. Not just the injection site, the whole arm. The second time was worse–flu-y, ran a temp, very sick for a week. Having had what they called a “mild” case of shingles two years ago, I can say with no hesitation at all that the horrible side-effects from the shot are worth it, if it works. Shingles are the devil, and the vaccine merely an evil imp.

    2. Yes, go ahead with the second injection! My slightly older cousin had shingles and it affected her eyesight; I’d consider any bout with flu preferable. [I was lucky and only slightly sore, but the demand for the vaccine was so great that I almost didn’t get the second injection in time. Luckily my local CVS got a shipment in and saved it for their second-round folks.

    3. Yes, the shots are preferable. I had shingles, a very mild case with little pain and just a small bit of eye damage in one eye. I’ve known people with nerve damage.

  16. I will be working on cleaning the silt left from the flood out of my basement once it has dried out a little more. Mostly I have been working on staying positive, that I didn’t have as much damage as many of my neighbors, and that my life is nearly back to normal. I will admit though, that when I saw members of the National Guard come in to help with the clean up, I wanted to break down and cry. (Out of gratitude that someone cares and we weren’t being overlooked again)

  17. On Sunday I went to the produce market and since then I’ve been working on making healthy meals at home. I have 3 different kinds of tomato and it will be a challenge not to just eat them out of hand at every meal. I can be very lazy that way.

    Yesterday I went walking in my new shoes for the first time and totally screwed up my bad knee. I iced and elevated it like crazy last night, but it isn’t any better. Fortunately, it is almost warm enough to wear sandals today so I can stretch out my muscles by walking in them and see if that helps. I also plan to call my friend and ask her what kind of pillow she uses to prop up her bad leg at night and where to get one. The one I am using is not nearly as effective as the ones they had at PT.

    But the biggest project I am working on this week is my depression. I’ve been frustrated by the fact that I’ve been stuck for a long time and my mood is cycling down. On Monday my shrink asked what I was afraid of. When I gave her the very long list her eyes widened quite a bit. I don’t think she suspected how much had been rattling around in there. I’m not sure she knows exactly what to do with all of it, but I do feel like we have more direction. And I feel hopeful.

  18. Work steamrolled right over me this week, though I am trying to get enough sleep to keep up with it. I managed to knit two legs of the elephant together. Lost focus and got all excited about an easy crochet cardigan and a fun crochet cushion, lucky I don’t have the wool for it or my UFOs would be weeping in the corner right now, while I try to learn how to crochet again.

  19. milkweed!
    https://www.instagram.com/p/B4f4HQkBRRt/

    followed by cattails.

    Also – if you watch Leverage before sleeping oddly with post-nasal drip, Sophie offers to help you get the confidence of your nose, Hardison wants to hack it to make it work better and Parker just wants to tweak it a little. I am relieved neither Eliot nor Nate needed to help.

  20. Raking leaves and raking leaves and raking leaves. It will rain tomorrow and maybe snow on Friday so next week I will be raking, raking, raking leaves.

    Also, Jazzy seems to be getting ‘potty outside’. And no major skirmishes between Jazzy and my Tantaka.

    Long day and late night yesterday due to the election. It was fun waiting for the returns to come in and otherwise just staying out of the workers’ way.

  21. Yesterday I finished the 100 pages of end-matter mostly in Italian – hooray! Now I’ve started the main text. Which is in English, but is already throwing up lots of inconsistencies and stuff to check. I’m going to stick to four hours a day, and try to do some creative stuff to start each day. Except this weekend, when I’ve decided I need to put my approach to other publishing clients together, aiming for gardening books in particular.

    I finally finished the allotment compost bin I started in the summer and then abandoned due to work: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4idJEGHvkA/ It took half a day, including cutting back the hedge, clearing the ground and getting the sides level enough to work.

    1. That’s a brilliant way to make a compost bin! It’s never occurred to me to use pallets as walls like that.

      1. I thought so too. When I look back to when we first bought a wood stove my husband would scour the back lots of stores and found a treasure trove of pallets to burn at the end of winter. That was when our wood supply was running out and didn’t want to get another cord. The pallets were being tossed.

    2. That is the only use of landscape cloth I’ve seen that makes sense. (Really, what difference does it make if the weeds sprout on top of the landscape cloth instead of underneath? Equally hard to pull.)

      1. This is heavy-duty woven plastic: it lets water through but does smother weeds. The only ones that got through in the nine years I had it over my paths in the kitchen garden at the cottage were a few that found the joins and one bit of couch grass that managed to pierce its way through, before I treated myself to some chipped bark to cover it. By contrast, the previous plot-holder used the lightweight stuff that’s like interlining. This now forms a mat with weeds growing through it, and is proving a real fiddle to remove. (Although I recommend it for strawberry beds, as long as you get good-quality stuff that’ll last the 3-4 year life of the bed.)

  22. Sweet FA, it feels like. Which is not true because I’ve been working longer-than-usual hours, it just doesn’t feel like I’ve achieved anything. ARGH. Maybe I need to go bake a cake, or go for a run.

    1. Going for a run is better for your health, but baking gives you something you can see, smell and taste to show how you spent your time. And if you share the results, several people can feel better.

  23. I’m chuckling reading everyone else’s posts. Thank YOUUUUU. At this moment, I’m procrastinating getting back to real work. Files arrived late but they still need to get out. Sigh. Sigh some more. It’s annoying being a responsible adult. Sigh again but I’m smiling at yarn/yam and the idea of Eliot “helping” with post-nasal drip as off to edit I go.

    1. Okay.
      “YARN:” a unit of time in the original Battlestar Galaxative, the one with Lorne Greene. Same as a year, so that pie is old.

      “YAM:” A desCartian statement of existence. “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.” Doesn’t like pie unless it’s spinach quiche.

      PIE: Circumference divided by diameter. A little over three pieces, so someone is going hungry.

  24. Working (slowly) on a new Llewellyn witchcraft book. Came up with what might actually be a clever idea for a panel presentation at RWA Nationals next year (which I’m 95% likely to be going to, mostly because it is in San Francisco and I’ve never been there, and I have a friend who lives an hour away who would come and act as a native guide) and I’m working on recruiting some author friends to present it with me.

    Also took the Wild Bunch (three 2 year old cats) to the vet this morning for shots and yearly exams. Taking three at a time was easier when they were one, and a little smaller…

    1. I can barely lift the cat carrier with two two-year-olds inside. I came home and promptly ordered some luggage pads (?) for its handle. I was also informed that one of them could stand to lose about a pound, so am working on how to do that. Probably find them a dish where they have to fish out every individual kibble.

      1. Oh you poor thing. Cats just love diets. They are so reasonable when facing any discomfort, real or perceived. Bwah ha ha

    2. I hope you get to go! If you do, and have the chance, take the ferry from the Ferry Building over to Sausalito and wander around. I was very lucky and got to live in Sausalito for many years, before being priced out. Seals, sea lions, beautiful bay views, and lovely hills. Most tourists just hang around on the main street near the ferry dock and look at the shops. It’s worth walking down Bridgeway, the main street, to be right by the bay and look across, but going up into the hills is a great, quiet walk. The secret to Sausalito is that if you get turned around in the hills, just take every opportunity to walk downhill and you’ll come back to Bridgeway. Then you just need to figure out which way to turn (left or right) to get back to the ferry. And most people you meet will be able to tell you. There are roads marked on maps that are actually staircases. Those are gorgeous. Lots of nifty old homes. I miss it so much.

  25. Sometime I dearly love sent me a pattern for a knitted shawl and wondered if I could make it. I really wanted to, but my mind recoils at integrating 5,000 tiny glass seed beads.

    5,000.

    I can only sadly shake my head no.

  26. As I read further, the pattern calls for silk yarn in a natural color, and the shawl must be hand-dyed after it’s finished being knitted.

    Ha, ha, ha! Several bridges too far.

  27. I’m working on pretending like the time changed didn’t happen and maintaining my old sleep pattern but having happen an hour earlier. So far, it’s kinda working. However, 10pm seems waaaaay too early for bed. I have gotten up early the past 3 days and exercised in the morning. Feeling kinda proud about that. Still some work to do on the schedule. Also, not sure if it will last through the weekend. Fingers crossed it will!

  29. I accomplished — or two-thirds, anyway — something interesting: My brother and I are working our way through our late mother’s possessions, starting with the attic. Among a miscellaneous collection of mostly unlabeled photographs, he handed me a studio photo of a couple, probably WWII vintage, man in uniform, woman in suit with blouse. On the back was, in light pencil, a man’s name. No one either of us had ever met, or heard of. So I looked around for the man, and found him on Ancestry.com, with a supporting document, his marriage certificate. When I looked at that, a scan of the actual certificate came up: he was married in 1942 and the witnesses were my grandparents. Clearly the right person! Further hunting on Ancestry found a patron’s family tree for the wife’s family, and happily — though I wouldn’t ordinarily say this! — it was a small tree, which made me think that the patron was probably a fairly close relative. So I sent her a message, saying that I had a photo she might want, and giving the details. I heard back the next day. The bride was her grandmother’s only sister, and she only has a baby picture of her, so she would love to have the photo. I need to buy a suitable mailing envelope and send it off, but I’m feeling quite smug.

    Also this week I went to a local lab for a blood draw before a medical appointment, and the tech who drew my blood [painlessly and on the first try on my heavily scarred left elbow] is named Brianna. I told her that she was the first live person of that name I’ve ever met, but I’ve seen her namesakes in historical novels from a remarkable number of periods.

  30. We’re moving continents in a week and a half, so I’ve been working on all the last minute things, plus getting everything ready for the yard sale this weekend. I called Xfinity to set up internet at our new home (there has never been internet there before), and I was so happy to have good customer service – she was so helpful and professional, and you just don’t get that much here in Ecuador.

  31. This week I painted a couple of watercolor landscapes, more impressionistic than my usual style. But the fall colors just called for soft flowy paints.

    And I worked on helping my composer friend with her compositions again. She has reworked several of the pieces that I helped her with previously and she wants an outside chord check. Not sure how helpful I actually am, because her musical style is so different than mine.

  32. I am impressed with all of you. I got some of what I planned to do done. I went to a Make Your Own Ugly sweater party but had to leave before I really got going because my son had to re-film two auditions for me and I had to work around his schedule. I got a great idea. If only I were better at drawing. I want to cut out a HUGE partridge and put him in a tiny overworked pear tree. Then I need a slogan.

  33. I took a friend to urgent care after an accident. I took my daughter to dentist for crown. Crown cell off before it was cemented in. Then took daughter to MD for x-ray to check whether it was in lungs or stomach. Her crown is in the stomach looking like Tinker bell. So bad things happened, but could be worse. I realized even with travel added; the total time spent was still less then an ER visit. So a good day. Plus I get to complain, which I always enjoy.

  34. I feel like I’ve done plenty this week, some of it really good, but I haven’t created anything. Hmmm, I don’t like that story, must rewrite it. So. I got some things finished at work, made a bit of progress on the death-by-paperwork project at home, got some more exercise, did a heap of dancing, talked to friends. All that was creative.

  35. Am about to sit down and continue working on book #2 but I wanted to take the opportunity to say that Welcome to Temptation is my all-time favourite novel. Have just re-read it, which I probably do around five times a year … and have done for nineteen years now. I’ve still got my original copy, which has moved five countries with me. And I realised with this latest reading how much it’s influenced my own recently-released book #1 – small town politics, outsider/insider conflict, quick dialogue, back-against-the-wall moral dilemmas. Strong, funny women. All my favourite ingredients. Thank you for it!

  37. This my first week at my new job. Not much going on, yet, as everyone’s busy doing something they don’t have time to explain. But I’m happy to be there, surrounded by programmers of various kinds. It’s quiet and I don’t have to stand all day.
    The first week is often like this.

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