Working Wednesday, August 11, 2021

~ Jenny

This week I got my mailbox standing upright again (it fell out of the ground, but I think it had been there since 1947 so not a big surprise) and worked on my container gardening. Still to go: Everything else.

What did you do this week?

83 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, August 11, 2021”

  1. I did a drawing of someone’s foot that I’m fairly pleased with. And tidied up my desk a bit. And cleaned the loo and cooked a fair bit of healthy food. That last one was the main achievement. For the last fortnight, I’ve managed to drop my junk food intake back to something reasonable and even lost a bit of weight.

  2. Spurred on by the impending doom, oops, I mean visit from my ex-mother-in-law, I asked my ex to come over and help get rid of at least some of the squalor. (Thanks for the spelling tip 7 and Gary). I got extremely hot and sweaty, but the sewing supplies are now upstairs and the porch, at least looks inhabitable and not like someone was using it as a box depository (I was). There is still far too much junk out there, but it is better.

    Plus all the boxes out of the kitchen, and all the mess the boys left (things they didn’t want anymore but didn’t bother to throw out or tell me about) is gone. So much better.

    And the dog I have been working with has unexpectedly decided to grow some manners. I had no idea that I was making an impact. She has stopped raking her nails down my body and now just puts a paw on my foot when she wants attention. Not perfect but so, so much better.

    I’m feeling even less broken than last week. Although I will talk to my doctor about the lack of energy I’ve been feeling. Aren’t you supposed to feel energized when you lose a little weight? I just want to sleep all the time. Maybe I’m anemic? I’ll get medical advice.

    1. I hate to say this but maybe also get a Covid test as I gather that sometimes these are symptoms especially for somewhat older people.

      1. Oh gosh. That never even occurred to me. I suppose having the vacine I might just have those kind of symptoms.

        Thanks Debbie, I wouldn’t have thought of that.

    2. Kate, maybe ask the doctor to check your B12 and thyroid as well as iron. Both of those can cause similar symptoms.

  4. I got my second jab of Pfizer today. Huzzah.

    Our government has really stuffed up the vaccine rollout. NSW waffled about lockdown for too long and things have gone pear shaped. A covid infected denier, following zero protocols, drove his two covid positive kids from locked down Sydney nine hours north to Byron Bay to look at investment properties. I am livid. I’m so over these ratbags.

    I’m sick of my own company but I see Mum weekly so it’s not too bad. After taking her grocery shopping and for her first Astra Zeneca jab yesterday she sent me home with homemade soup and freesias.

    I’ve been re-reading a favourite book for comfort. Dinner was some sparkling wine and Twisties. Regrets are minor. I feel a bit sick and have had followed up with two large glasses of water.

    My bed is comfy, Morrigan Crow has saved her friends, my phaelonopsis are going gangbusters and the car passed rego.

    1. Preach. At least that guy’s been charged. Although I’m not convinced that makes up for endangering so many people’s lives.

    1. I know that drive, although I always stopped in Ohio. 70 right? Or 80 across PA? Been there. Wave at Ohio State for me as you go by.

  6. I found a document a friend left me, which I’ve looked for for weeks, and ransacked my trash cans for. I had carefully filed it. But I have the bad habit of having several places I file stuff. So that’s a load off of my mind.
    My family is supposed to have a reunion in several weeks, with people coming from Colorado and Wyoming to Maine. My sister worked her tail off to find a place people could stay. However, it turns out that one first cousin once removed is not vaccinated, despite being an EMT, and with increased COVID numbers, the whole thing may fall apart. Although the house that holds 22 people will still have to be paid for.
    I am working with a program to build some documentation, and I can’t get it to jell. I had to take several walks and find some dogs to pat.

  7. I ended up staying up way to late Friday night finishing a book. Since the cats always expect breakfast, I ended up with just four hours of sleep on Saturday, which resulted in being v-e-r-y unproductive.

    On Sunday, I sang with a small group at church, which was fun and personally rewarding. That afternoon, I looked over my upcoming week and saw I had a meeting with my quilt buddies Tuesday night (in person!) I decided I needed to get the round robin done, so I could pass on the duffel bag full of fabric to the next person – so that’s what I did Sunday afternoon. I did the math right this time, and added a solid border followed by a border of half-square triangles.
    https://www.instagram.com/p/CSVN2d8HajE/

    Now with that off my plate I’m starting to look at baby quilts (and blankets). There are two impending additions to the family, due about Christmas time.

    I applaud your mailbox fix. Ours had been in the ground 20 years when I attempted to pull a package out of the box. The cardboard packaging was catching on the rim, so I stuck my arm in the box to add leverage and extract the book. Apparently my leverage was enough to snap the post off at the ground and I had a mailbox suddenly dangling from my arm. It was only after laying the whole post on the ground that I managed to extricate the package. My DH had a chore getting it back up!

    2. Congrats on getting the math right! I only dabble in quilting and find that REALLY hard. Good luck with the baby quilts!

  8. Today I am working on shaking loose a delivery date for our container – yesterday we learned it cleared Customs! Since that’s always a crapshoot (I’ve heard horror stories, both here and in the US) it feels like a huge hurdle has been overcome.

    Had a couple of errands to run this morning while on my walk, and didn’t shorten my regular distance, so I wound up walking 2 more kilometers than usual, which I believe entitles me to laziness for the balance of the day. Right?

  9. We’re in the midst of our quarterly deadline, so lots of paid work going on. This evening I will finish watching all the Olympics I dvred over the weekend. I already know who won the events, but I still like to see them. I do however fast forward through all sandy volleyball. (Is it my imagination or was the Olympics half beach volleyball this year?) For most games and multiset sports I just ff to the last two minutes. Except swimming and running events, which I have endless patience for.

  10. We started rehearsals for Camelot–in person! Still! Has not been shut down yet!–this week. It’s going well. Disclaimer: I’m joining a show that ran for a weekend before the pandemic shut it down and now they’re bringing it back…you know, when they thought it was safe to do so by making that decision in July….. Anyway, I’m picking it up easily, thank goodness. We are all rehearsing in masks per the mask mandate here. Which is fine, better safe than sorry (entire cast is vaxxed but nowadays we don’t know any more, do we?), and other than trying to project more, I’m not finding it a huge big deal. I’ve been practicing singing in a mask anyway.

    So far don’t feel sick and I can still smell things. Fingers crossed.

    There was a biiiiiiiiiiiiig lecture yesterday from one of the staff about how they’re trying to get permission from the county to perform without masks, which may or may not be decided on before the show runs, and it’s entirely “the buck stops here” with one person deciding that and who knows there, and we have an under-12 kid in ONE scene and that may cause problems with this and blah de blah, and they asked if anyone wanted to quit because they can’t stand to perform in a mask. I don’t *think* anyone did, but I guess I’ll find out tomorrow. They are requiring vax cards/testing to see the show here, thank goodness.

    They basically said this theater may very well shut down if this show doesn’t go on. 🙁 I don’t want to drop out, but I do note that everyone signed up for this show one way or another before delta variant…but I think they’re trying to be as safe as possible.

    On another note, I used to volunteer to teach crafting classes and that job asked if anyone’s ready to come back and teach in winter. And I was all “Oh dear god, I cannot make a decision in August as to whether or not it’s going to be safe to teach in person in January.” Hell, I decided to do Camelot in mid-July and look how things changed so fast. I feel like you just can’t make long-term plans in which it takes you months to set things up to do an in person anything any more. Also, January!? We’ll probably be in lockdown again come January.

      1. I can’t really make a provisional one and back out later if I change my mind. The manager was very understanding and said that she felt bad asking people under the current circumstances!

        Frankly, if I were them I would throw out the “six months in advance” planning model. I don’t know why they do it so far in advance since I’m not involved in that at all, but if I were them I’d be planning month to month at the soonest because anything can and will be closed at any time.

  11. I started caulking the joints in the pink flower bed but had to stop because it was getting nasty out and haven’t had a chance to get back to it yet. Paul wants to get the ledge boards on this afternoon if it’s nice (fat chance, the wind is howling and rattling the house) so I will have to get to it sooner rather than later.

    I’ve stained hundreds of linear feet of boards for the new deck and finished water sealing the deck boards for the top.

    I’ve also been packing stuff down stairs and will be at that for a while still. Paul is going to help me with the DVD cabinet which is going to stay in the family room in the basement. I took all the DVDs down yesterday when work was slow.

    I picked up a bunch of paint chips for the new living room colour, I think grey is the way to go, decided on a trim plan since our baseboards and door mouldings all have to come off due to a height difference in the flooring, and started plotting the functional changes I want to make to the closets.

    I’ve been given the go ahead to start taking the trim off so that will probably start tonight or tomorrow night and I’ll take it to the dump on Saturday. We don’t live anywhere where it’s easy to do like a Freecycle thing. I have removed a lot of cheap particle board trim and it doesn’t always come off nicely.

    I got more paint on the bench, the biggest decision now is what colour to paint the eyes of the flowers. Some touch ups and then getting the back painted and it will be done. The spaces around the flowers will be a neutral greige colour to blend in.

    Today I’m making muffins, working at the day job, staining, hauling, researching Turkish towels, and ordering supplies.

    Oh, just in case you were wondering why I’m going all the grunt work on these projects, it’s because Paul works 7 on, 7 off 12-hour night shifts and by the end of September will have worked almost 28 extra days since the end of May. Also, I love doing this kind of stuff and he hates it. I did all the demo work in our last house.

    What I am not doing today is laundry. I did laundry every day last week. And this week. The washer is on strike today.

    1. Wow.
      I wish I was as productive in a week as you are in a day. You did this all while working at a day job…
      I have a day job and that and the essentials are about all I can do.

      1. Debbie, my day job is so incredibly flexible (and I work from home) that I almost hesitate to mention it as something I “do” in a day. I do medical transcription and if there’s no file in my inbox, even though my time is booked off for work in my head (meaning I’ve scheduled this time for work and not say, doing the grocery shopping or whatever), I’m not actually working and can run do something else if it’s quick like throw laundry in or carry DVDs downstairs. The down side of all this flexibility is that if I’m not actually working on a medical file, I don’t get paid. It’s a trade off.

        I am one of those people who likes to bounce from project to project and I have the attention span of a gnat. I also have a hard time relaxing and usually can’t watch tv or a movie or anything like that if I’m by myself. I can read to relax but my vision has gone wonky in the last couple of years hence all the Good Book Thursday audio books. I run hell-for-leather for a few weeks and then hit a wall and crash for 3 days then I’m up and going again. I’m happier when I’m busy because it keeps my brain quiet. It’s so busy with the to-do list that it can’t bug me.

        It’s productive but, man, some days it’s just nuts.

        1. I did legal transcription for a couple of years. Loved the flexibility re time (and the variability of the cases), hated the unreliability of the paycheck. I don’t think I can claim to have been as productive during downtime as you though!

      2. I love that bench! It looks both cheerful and restful, which I often find mutually exclusive.

        1. Thanks. I was going for something like that. Usually my colour choices are a little more on the off the wall than that, I seem to always miss the restful part. Perhaps I am learning, which would be a first.

    3. RE: Turkish towels. I have bought some from several different retailers, and I like the ones from Teema Towels the best by far. They’re comparatively pricy, but the quality is so much better than the others I have.

  12. Office Wench Cherry, Do you and Paul renovate houses and sell them? I’m fascinated by the home improvements you perform.

    Yesterday my husband cut open the aluminum foil-like dryer vent hose in the basement because clothes weren’t drying. I turned on the dryer then went back to the basement.

    “No difference,” Maynard commented as he lifted up the cut end of vent hose.

    Just then a huge wad of dryer lint flew out and covered his head and shoulders with bits of lint.

    Problem diagnosed.

    1. Dryer lint. Been there.

      No, we don’t, I’m just cheap and like to do things by myself. Also, control freak.

  14. I’m starting to run into a wall. Even though this new job is much more varied, I don’t know that I can do full-time. Knocked off just now when I could feel my brain freezing. Talked to my supervising editor about the schedule yesterday, and she’s trying to give me a bit more time, but basically they left it to the last minute to start, and there’s a mountain of stuff to do. And I can’t work any faster without making stupid mistakes.

    I’d really like to work four days a week, max – which was what I was meant to be doing, until the schedule was concertina’d. They’re all very nice, so I probably just need to set better boundaries. At least next week will be four days, since I’m going on a coach trip to the new RHS garden on Monday.

    Meanwhile, urgent gardening and other things aren’t being done.

    1. Oh my! Take good care of yourself, Jane. Watch those boundaries. Walls are hard. Sending you calm and some breathing spcae.

  15. I used the Saws-all and the circular saw (after viewing a video on how to change the blade) to saw an old counter in half. It was very invigorating! Always nice to accomplish something you thought you’d have to ask someone else to do.
    Don’t fear the Saws-all! You can sand out the bumpy parts. 🙂

  16. Still not working and playing tourist with my mum in my home town.
    We went to see some contemporary art at the Bourse du commerce – Pinault collection. The building is beautiful and the restaurant at the top has gorgeous views and affordable (well affordable for Paris) dishes by very well known French chefs Michel and Sébastien Bras. The art is … interesting.

  17. I finally emailed the GI doctor to ask what to try next for my digestive distress. I didn’t remember to ask him about the stuff that worked for my niece, but hopefully I will remember to do so if the antibiotic doesn’t work.

    My sister and I were supposed to go out to lunch today, but she called to say that she had a date in traffic court. They are so far behind that I thought she meant that she had been in another fender bender, but this was for the collision that totaled her car. Isn’t it amazing that even after the towing company lost her old car and the months until the insurance company could assess the damage and decide what to pay for it (and the resulting disputes about that), the county traffic court is still at least 2 months behind that? It makes sitting among the unmasked on public transport look somewhat better in comparison.

  18. Board of Elections meetings today. And a lawsuit going on regarding one of the November races. Hate the politics, love the work. (Gin and tonic when I get home tonight.)

    And all of the cooking, cleaning, yardwork is done.

    Pixie is doing well. She actually came over and nudged my knee today, but moved away after I touched her. She is a very happy girl.

  19. Priorities. Gin, have you got a new schedule for angio? More thoughts & vibes & prayers on their way. Apply them to your cold as necessary.

    Work accomplished this week? There’s been some. Nothing that sticks out. I bought a presentation board to carve up and cover the Styrofoam by the AC Unit. Haven’t made cut one, yet.

    Made a pot of Chinese Hot & Sour Soup, as recommended here. Consumed it. Nose still sniffles. Maybe I have an allergy. Probably to dust. I’m sure I dusted the man cave at least once this year.

    Gathered up the dirty dishes. Hid them in the bathtub, soaking in water and dish soap. (In a red sink-sized tub. I didn’t fill the whole bathtub with dishwater.) After work…

    The charger discussion caused me to bring my “Great Library” laptop to work, since it hasn’t been plugged in since I got the All-In-1 model. There’s no WiFi at work, but I do plan to connect it to the net… soon. And sync it with the others.

    I haven’t done anything to brag about all week!

    1. Thanks for asking — just got new date for angioplasty on Aug. 26. The good news is that, contrary to what I’d been told before, I probably won’t have to stay in hospital overnight, and being able to recuperate at home is always nicer. Annoyed by the delay, but at least now I’ve got a plan again, and that always makes me feel better.

      1. Remind us just before. I’m not going to stop the thoughts and vibes and prayer, but I won’t mention them much for a while. They’re still coming. Be well. Be better. Be.

  20. Working on collecting “adult points” as we used to say in our early twenties, my friends and I, when we’d just moved away from home and did all the things adults do: cleaning, laundry, cooking, paying bills etc. I’ve been researching floors, locksmiths, fridges and freezers, but can’t decide on what’s good or which contractor to choose. We still have 2 weeks until we can measure rooms and check out how many floors really need to be replaced, but I at least want to have an idea already on where to go. You never know how long it’ll take until they can come fix all those things, after all.
    I’ve also been uploading a couple of new not-pig-piggybanks, but have not done any crafting besides that.
    Today I tried to tidy up a little, put all my exercising stuff in a box, put my sewing machine back in its box and folded one of the boxes MIL had bought to see how big it was. Far too small, it turned out. I’d already suspected that, but she was 100 % sure we’d have more than enough with 10 of them. I got half a drawer from the chest of drawers in the livingroom into it, then it was full. Oh well, we have time enough to get bigger ones.

    What bugs me, however, is that just that chunk of packing-work today made me so exhausted. I was busy for maybe 1.5 h, but was so tired afterwards that I had to fight to not fall asleep when taking a break. This has been going on for a looooooooong time, but the docs don’t listen to me when I try to find a solution, because all my bloodtests come back perfect so they say I’m fit as a fiddle, while I feel 380 years old and sick. I’ve been wondering if chronic fatigue syndrome could be it? I get an almost perfect symptom score when I look it up. My psychiatrist says I have to go to the house doctor for this… and I am sure the house doctor will just scoff at me if I suggest something like that. Is there anybody who has, or who’s had, similar experiences of exhaustion/fatigue after just a bit of work? I’m feeling like an alien here. 1.5 h makes me exhausted like nobody’s business – a whole day’s work or study makes me so tired I get sick and can’t eat because I feel so nauseous, and it takes about 1.5-2 days for me to recover. I hate it. 🙁 Could CFS be it? Should I go kick my doctor in the knees until she takes me serious? I don’t know how to proceed.

    1. Low thyroid can do that, but I assume you’ve checked that.

      Low phosphorus causes overwhelming fatigue too, which no one thinks to check, but also hardly anyone gets low phos except for folks like me who have a genetic issue and it shows upinitially in early childhood. There are some things that can cause low phosphorus in adulthood too, non-genetic, but they come with other serious symptoms (bone pain or kidney failure) that you’d notice beyond the exhaustion, so it’s highly unlikely in your case. But I’ve met a couple people who were medical mysteries for a while, because their symptoms were vague — pain, exhaustion — and doctors scoffed at them, but it turned out they had a non-genetic form of chronic low phosphorus known as tumor-induced osteomalacia. It often takes several years to diagnose because it’s so rare. Like my rare disorder is one in twenty thousand births, and TIO is closer to one in a million (literally, maybe even one in ten million).

      Okay, way more than anyone wanted to know about phosphate-wasting, but it’s my area of expertise (as a patient advocate), and I can’t help myself. The fatigue element of my genetic form of phosphate- wasting tends to be ignored by the medical community, and it’s a real battle to convince them that it too is disabling and deserving of treatment. There are doctors out there who understand how real and disabling fatigue is, but they’re hard to find.

      1. Thank you for the information and for taking the time to write it down! I don’t think(!) it’s anything like that, but yeah I can’t be sure because scoffing doctors. I did, however, go through a pretty thorough blood examination last year, and everything came back in top condition. That’s why the doctor keeps scoffing at me – I come to her with symptoms she can’t explain, so she writes me off as a hypochondriac or attention seeker. Or she shoves it over on the psychologists and psychiatrists as psychosomatic. And they say I should go back to the doctor, because they don’t think it’s psychosomatic. 🙁

    2. Have you been tested for Lyme disease or an autoimmune disorder? Both can cause extreme fatigue.

    3. I think you should kick your doctor whether it is CFS or not. Obviously, something is amiss and until you find out what it is, it will not be possible to treat it. She may write it off as stress about the move, but it sounds bigger than that.

        1. Oh, it’s been going on for faaaar longer than the move has even been in picture. This is a thing that’s been going on since… 2015 or longer, but that’s when I noticed it the first time. Back then I thought it was my bad sleep + therapies + long course days that was the root of evil, but when I experienced it again years later, after therapies had been all wrapped up and I felt mentally good, I figured it must be something else.
          Sleep apnea IS a thing they’ve recently discovered indeed. It’s not a very serious one, fortunately, but they’llgive me some kind of splint or something for in my mouth to use when I sleep. Not entirely sure yet, still waiting on final decision from the ear-throat-nose doctor and a referral to the right specialist for measurements. Maybe, hopefully, things will improve from then on, but I won’t take it for granted.
          We might have to consider switching house doctor when we move, since our new place is outside our current doctor’s…patient area. If so, I’ll go there and kick the new one’s knees instead. Sometimes a doctor that hasn’t seen you before does a better job than one that has known you for a long time.

          1. When my sister started using a c-pap for her sleep apnea, she stopped dozing off behind the wheel. I hope that your mouthpiece will have a similarly dramatic effect. As for finding a new doctor, I wish you good luck. A new outlook on an ongoing condition can provide a whole new insight. I am sending good vibes.

    5. I’m still coping with it three years after the heart failure. No idea what it is in. your case, but I sympathize strongly. It’s so damn ANNOYING. “I just started this and now I have to lie down.” Grrrr.

      Although 1.5 hours is damn good.

      1. Thank you. I’ll try(!) to feel like a champ for managing 1.5 h instead of a wet rag that can’t do what other people do so easily. 🙂 It’s very good to get other perspectives on these kinds of things.

    6. Hi Shass, have you had your parathyroid (not thyroid) levels checked ? Doctors don’t necessarily do this if calcium levels are normal or only mildly elevated. However some people have hyperparathyroidism without highly elevated calcium levels due to the feedback loop with vitamin D. Take care & be kind to yourself.

  21. I have worked at being devious in order to make my workday downtime productive for me. Now have my old laptop running a few feet away from Work Computer and am using it to jot down stuff for WIP. Actually using it as a Chromebook so I might as well hook up my Chromebook instead, because the old laptop has a busted letter R on the keyboard and that is a letter I use frequently!! Past time to wipe this old thing anyway and recycle it.

    Working in general: day job + have been in a better writing groove for the past two weeks. Over the weekend I doubled the word count on WIP novella. Also started writing the next thing, which might be a novella but might also be a novel; can’t tell yet. I started writing it in 1st person, which is not my usual, but the MC seemed to want that. Haven’t even decided who his love interest will be. Adventure!

  22. Do you get enough daylight? I lack vitamin D and only started taking it after I ended up very low, (winter is not good for my moods). Or maybe your quality of sleep isn’t very good

    1. Both D-vitamine AND sleep are a thing, for sure. Taking those stroooooong vitamine shots now once per month to keep it in check, so I hope that is on okay levels. The sleep… still working on that!

  25. Other than work-work, which has been brutal, the only thing I have accomplished this week is to get the truck’s oil changed, about 2000 miles late. Work-work has made it nearly impossible to schedule appointments far enough ahead that there are any available. Still trying to get an annual eye appointment.

  26. I bought airline tickets and reserved a Rent-A-Car for our quick trip to Oklahoma at the end of the month. Now I just need to make hotel reservations.

  27. My work this week was joining the Morgan club for a 350 mile two-day tour. It is the farthest we have taken it in decades. I have posted a picture on Instagram of a few of the cars. There were 14 Morgan’s in all. Some were Plus-8’s which are very powerful and we had a hard time keeping up. Twisty back roads and beautiful remote areas – it was fantastic.

  28. Not a lot going on but the Death to the Beaver plan is continuing forward. We have found who owns the land the dam is on and we are reaching out.
    We are at phase 2 of planning my “5year from diagnosis party”. I found the invite but I haven’t come up with good verbage for it.

  29. My work this week was applying for an appointment with the oral surgery practice — my dentist referred me for a spot on the palate that she wants them to look at. They have an awesome form to fill out online — it took me nearly an hour to assemble all the information, even though I have it, just in several different places, like a calendar and the iPhone and the rolodex app. Now I wait to hear back in the hopes of actually making an appointment.

    Also, a wonderful editor has just returned THE LARAN GAMBIT manuscript notes this morning, so that’s the NEXT piece of work awaiting. The cover artist gave us four different suggestions for cover art and we chose one, so that’s dealt with, also.

  30. My high point came today when the PA entered my weight in her computer. “Check number,” the computer growled, adding in red: “15% drop!”

    Yep, I was very happy.

  31. 2 achievements this week; we ran irrigation line and drippers to individual plants all through the landscaping so I no longer have to manually water anything. And got all the curriculum and materials for 5th grader set up in a bookcase where she’ll be working, so we’re pretty much ready for 1st day of school now. I’d rest on my laurels now but I have no idea where I put them.

  32. I had been working on cleaning and packing ahead of finally visiting my family interstate tomorrow, but our chief minister has just announced that we have a positive case in our community and we’re going into a seven day lockdown from 5pm. No indication of how my family’s state will react as yet, but they’ll probably close the border again. It’s a bit of a bugger, because I haven’t seen my parents and siblings since before Christmas, and I’ve just been stood down from work again because of all the closed state borders. So now I’m working on eating an entire block of Whittaker’s peanut butter chocolate.

    2. I’m feeling a lot of sympathy from across the ditch for all you Aussies. But at least you’ve got good chocolate.

      1. Thanks Reb. I really can’t whinge because Sydney and Melbourne have had it far worse than we have. Up until this point we’ve been the magical pandemic unicorn.

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