Yesterday, we started One in Vermillion. And once we get done with that, we’ll start rewrites from the beginning with Lavender, but still, I will remember this as the summer I did nothing but make stuff up and type with a guy I haven’t seen for fifteen years. We’re taking tomorrow off because Bob wants to go biking which I completely understand, and I need to . . . do so many things I can’t even list them. But we have the start of a plot, which is good, and we’ll find out what this book is about as we write it, which is normal. I don’t think we could ever do this again, but I’m so happy we’re going this fast this summer.
So what did you do this week?
What I Did On My Summer Vacation by Gary S.
Okay, it isn’t a “vacation,” it’s the first summer of my retirement. What I did was what I always did – try to take over the world! Well, my tiny little fraction of a corner, anyway. The BornAgainIndoorFarmer did scantily clad gardening, harvesting Romaine lettuce, green onions, and piri-piri death peppers to make amazing salads. I have one in the fridge for later. It just needs some garnishes and cheese and bacon. Teresa is full of baby red and green Romaine pods. Seble has a single Romaine a foot tall, at least for another hour. Everything else is growing and growing.
Then Gary the dieter dieted and added that bicycle and I’ve finally got the big fat seat – the bike’s, not mine – adjusted to a comfortable height and angle. Diet boy is going for a ride when the sun is sufficiently up. Exercise is a good idea whether it affects the diet or not.
There are other Garys and every one of them did something, whether it was shop or clean or recycle. We’re very busy. 🙂
I’m married to a Garry who is currently unemployed and he was also very busy yesterday. Even did laundry. Wish I’d had popcorn.
I too am a retired Gary! Although does that still count when I came out of retirement after a few years to help out as an assistant fencing coach?
An assistant fencing coach? My my you all have such glamorous lives.
From retired to retread? Let me think… I’m an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church… retired. A chief petty officer of the United States Navy… retired. I’m a Lead Worker in a Department of Corrections Power Plant… retired. Doing any of those did not affect the retired status of any of the others. So no. You’re still retired. You just have something interesting to do with your retirement.
Oh good. I’m glad to hear that 🙂
About the salad – 2.0 grams of piri-piri peppers was enough to set my lips and gums afire. That foot-high lettuce in Seble joined the rest in the salad, and now Seble has six Romaine seed pods to germinate.
Then the dotter invited me to have pizza for a grandkinder’s birthday and I retired the diet for the rest of today. 🙂
I’m still plugging along in my quest to complete some old quilts. I did some more quilting on my home machine and my ancient quilt is nearly done. I also rented some time on the longarm machine and quilted this top from at least 10 years ago.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cgg0-pNO5Jy/
Fabric producers oftentimes take 2.5 ” strips of all the fabrics in a fabric line and package them together in a roll. This quilt top used one of those rolls and put them together randomly. You’ll see things like the same pattern in three different colors. It’s a fun way to get a lot of variety. But apparently, once I put that top together, I was ready to move on to something else. Now it has been quilted and I can give it to someone who’ll use it.
I love that quilt! And love the furry accessory.
I really enjoy seeing your quilts. And I think they are at least partially responsible for my return to knitting after ten or fifteen years. Thank you.
Thank you! I hope you are enjoying your knitting! (and I look forward to seeing pictures)
That is really pretty!
That quilt is beautiful. I love the rich colors.
I worked ten shifts in eight days, and then I lay down for two. Today I made a pot of red sauce as the bare minimum of cooking so that I would have lunch at work tomorrow. I don’t really want to go to work tomorrow, but it can’t be helped.
Tonight, though, I went to a five course degustation of creative potato dishes, which was entirely delightful.
I was almost late for the day job this morning because my cousin is looking for a studio assistant and I was sharing her listing around. She is an artist, previously based in NYC who moved during covid. I wish I could apply for it. It would be a great learning experience, but as the current bread winner in my house (more importantly the one with health insurance) I can’t through caution to the wind. I am a little sad about it though.
Otherwise, it’s vacation time at the bank, so we are stretched thin. We are a very busy branch, so it’s been a very exciting week. Mostly when I get home I laze and sleep. I did finish some glow in the dark polymer clay ghosties though, which need to be made into funky asymmetrical earrings very soon.
Oh that is sad! How is hubby doing in job search? And more important question…are those earrings going to be purple??
Thank you. The unemployed hubby is also very busy. He is doing a lot of home improvement, and Monday I came home to him cooking dinner in a baseball cap because he decided to cut his own hair. It’s not as bad as he thinks it is.
And I am planning on some non-traditional colors for the ghosts. I have this mint green rose beads… Sort of pastel Halloween? I will definitely add purple to the list.
I read that as he was actually cooking your dinner inside a baseball cap. Interesting image. LOL Good man!
Lol. That would be an interesting meal. And he is a good man.
I got a different mental image, since no other clothing than the cap was mentioned, and hoped that he wasn’t frying bacon.
Thanks Gary, I don’t think that I can unsee that mental image…
Me neither, Lupe. Me neither.
Oh, he is also studying for certifications in IT, something to do with cyber security, and a license to pilot drones commercially. He really is very busy.
Update: he went to the thrift store today and bought us a $9 “as is” tent so we can go camping. Send duct tape and/or alcohol and chocolate around one of those rescue dogs’ necks. Thnx.
I would bring it myself, just to meet you and that man. Would a rescue cat work?
Cats are the best, but they may only be able to carry those tiny little sample bottles…
Hmmm, maybe he will end up going to DEFCON in Las Vegas some day? My sorta hacker husband went every year pre-pandemic and I went and read books by the pool…
I will see if I can talk him into it. He wanted to do a comicon in NYC before covid. Now he is pining over a new video game where you navigate the cyberpunk apocalypse as a cat. I will buy it for his birthday if he doesn’t break by then.
Anybody and everybody in IT security ends up at DEFCON – 30,000 participants – he should get his new future employer to pay for it. Filled with people with bad haircuts so he’ll feel right at home.
Heh. He went to visit his mom yesterday and refused to take his hat off the entire time.
I’ve been dealing with more low energy/feeling tired stuff, which is probably still to do with vitamin B12 – I’m due to be tested again in a couple of weeks, to see if the pills have sorted my deficiency; if not, I’ll have to have injections. So I’ve spent more time than I want to not doing very much. I have cleared a load of marigolds and other weeds that were swamping my squash. Also harvested the redcurrants and make a batch of fridge jam. And had a friend to stay;
I’m cleaning the house at the moment, ready for another friend who’s due later this afternoon.
Jane, my friend’s dad has a vitamin B12 deficiency which was difficult to treat. He discovered if they gave him the pills which you put under your tongue to melt (subcutaneous), they worked the best for him and gave him a more even result. The injections worked too but his energy and dizzy spells would cycle then: great after the shot then low energy again when another shot was coming due.
Thanks for this, Jessie. I’ll keep it for reference.
I wish you the best luck with treatment. It sounds like a difficult illness to deal with.
I’ll be heading over to my mom’s in a few minutes. Three of the four siblings take care of our 81 year old mom, who still wants to live on her own. We take turns going over to prepare her food, take her vitals, help her with her meds and make sure she’s safe in the shower. My brother comes up from Illinois for a week once a month. My sister is paid by the county to do the general care, and I’m here to do weekends and fill ins for the other two. My sister is currently taking care of her grandchildren so her daughter-in-law can go to a conference in Nashville. I’m finding that taken care of mom is a gift. Otherwise, I’m just doing the usual house cleaning, and attending library board meetings.
Your mother is truly blessed and I’m glad you and your sibs were able to divide the responsibility equitably. The fact that your brother can come up for a week every month is a big plus. My brother was terribly frustrated that he was unable to do so and no amount of video calls quite took the place of being able to be together.
Like Gary, I’m enjoying my first retirement summer; unlike Gary, I am not growing food (for the deer and other critters).
I’m spending time with my website, a non-techie trying to figure it out.
Not much else has changed in retirement, though. Still freelancing, just not going to the college three days a week for pt work. Still avoiding housework. Most things can be put off another day.
Did busy things like pick up new id card, start new SIM and request credit cards from the account we started last time we were here. It was such a pain starting bank accounts in various countries, that we left them open just on the off chance. That is, years ago we moved every three months for his work and all of the institutions involved required a local bank account to pay into so now I have accounts in multiple countries. Just enough to avoid fees but so cool to move to Scotland and have it ready to go.
But mostly we’ve spent time wandering the water ways of Edinburgh being completely blown away by all the green space in this city. There’s a hill that has badgers (said the sign, I don’t do city parks at night not even for bagers) and the river is said to harbour otters. It is astonishing how rural some of these paths seem. I can’t think how we missed this last time
Maybe they’ve improved – I remember when they managed to entice otters back to the rivers in Shrewsbury, about twenty years ago. And I was really excited to spot one by Lake Vyrnwy in Wales about ten years ago – I hadn’t realized they’d got that far (it’s the source of one of the tributaries of the River Severn, which runs down through Shrewsbury to Bristol).
I’ve been weeding and gardening and watching Hannah dig a hole in an unused spot in the garden. It a good hole in a good spot so I’m going to plant a dwarf cherry tree in it. Paul entered our front yard in the Communities in Bloom judging even though it’s not ready, but it’s not like I was hoping to win, Next year maybe, but I am going to do some weeding so at least I’m not embarrassed by the clover around the birch trees.
I feel like all I’ve done this summer is pull weeds and remove turf and rocks. I’d say easily 25 bags of weeds and a pickup load of turf and rocks. It will be worth it next year.
I am loving the quiet moments when I can listen to the fountain burble and the birds chirp.
Thursday we are going to finish up all the projects we can because we are gone Friday/Saturday and Sunday I’m not doing anything that’s not fun.
I wrote some more on my book and then took the plunge into writing the ending. Thank you JC for the suggestion. It is amazingly going well. Maybe it’s easier to write the ending when you haven’t slogged through all the stuff before, and are tired of the whole thing. I bought a security camera to keep an eye on the neighbors without boundaries. No, they are not a branch of Doctors without Boundaries. They are people who think they, and their kids, can toss and kick balls into my yard and walk into my yard whenever they wish. It’s very disconcerting. I’ve mentioned this before. Now I’m doing something about it. On a lighter note, we are getting some much-needed rain. My grass turned from brown to green in a day!
Along with those cameras, you need some sprinklers that you can ‘randomly’ turn on when you see your neighbours in your yard.
Thanks for the laugh.
And you think I was joking.
That’s how I dealt decades ago with two teenage boys who were working on their Vespa next door. They would tinker with it a bit, then rev the engine and ride it slowly back and forth on my front sidewalk. I think it wasn’t licensed and the parents said no street travel. This would go on for hours. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I would cycle the front yard sprinkler system. Then they either took a break and got distracted with some other project or they got to annoy the neighbor on the other side of their house. This way they got to work on it awhile but when they went on too long, I could get rid of them with out making a big deal.
I’m able to work on my dock today which is not usual because I typically have to be on zoom calls and look professional. I wish I could always work on the dock.
That sounds fantastic. Is it private and peaceful or do you have to share it with neighbors?
We have neighbours to either side of us, but one set are never there and the other set are lovely and don’t hang by their dock very often – they go out on their boat instead. And then we are blessed with being across from a flood plain so it is illegal to build on that land (a statute dating from the time of Hurricane Hazel). From our dock, I look across to a willow tree, under which a family of beavers has built a den and come out to work/play quite frequently. There are also a couple of minks who live near them, although they are shyer. A bear made its way down to the river once, as has the occasional coyote. We’ve had muskrats live underneath the dock and once a romp of otters swam (wiggled) past us. Does this count as peaceful??
Bliss. I wasn’t sure whether to picture a solitary rustic wooden dock at sunset or a shiny metal and or plastic one festooned with lights and lots of small craft.
Here our docks off riverlots are constricted out of discarded barrels and tires and such… There is a wide range.
Shiny metal festooned with lights – ewwww. So kind of in between that and solitary rustic wooden deck. Ours is more like a solid wooden deck with discreet lighting built into the deck itself. No boat but paddle boards, kayaks and yes, I confess to a Seadoo.
Work is work.
In Beauty and the Beast, we are actually having rehearsals (I haven’t had that many), this week is “Be Our Guest,” which has almost everyone and so far has been 2 days long…with a third partial day to go 😛
Yarning: I’m nearing completing a Spencer/bolero jacket as part of my “Dress Like Kate Sharma” plans, have half a sleeve to go. I am embroidering on the hem of the Encanto skirt, which is another thing that will take forever. I’m caught up on the temperature gauge cross stitch for the moment.
One billion dollars, that’s the new mega millions jackpot. Before retirement the department I worked in would join together and buy lottery tickets for the big win. Scan them and print off pages for each one. The boss too, after all she said she wasn’t going to be the only coming to work if we won. We never won but we sure could dream. Sometimes she would pick a Friday and we would all go out to lunch, walking as a group to any of the local restaurants. Haven’t really thought of it in a while, those were good memories.
Yesterday was errand day so we left the granddog at home, couldn’t and wouldn’t leave her in the car while we grocery shopped. When we got home I noticed the cover on the sofa was scrambled like eggs so I knew where she spent the time. Also the black dog fur. But no worries, there is a gadget on the vacuum I am so pleased with. It just sucks up the fur like nobody’s business and I’m finicky enough to put pillow cases on the sofa’s pillows.
I just noticed that the butterfly bush and rose of Sharon have both bloomed. Summer is moving along.
The heat and visitors made the week more about thinking about things to do than doing them. But we’re cooler for a while and the visitor left, so work and projects resume.
Singing and rehearsing regularly in prep for a couple of recitals in August, which is a pleasure. Back to lovely routine for a while, I hope.
Highlights: Ordered Shane & the Hitwoman. Planned to clean but didn’t follow through. Going for an echocardiogram tomorrow. Made a casserole my husband kinda sneered at—ground beef & zucchini. Read a great book—Unlikely Animals—and a bunch of mediocre ones. Also, gonna buy tickets for that billion $ lottery. Wheee
Wow, I, too. will be having an echocardiogram and buying a lottery ticket tomorrow.
Good luck on your echoes tomorrow! And the lottery.
Is the echo in preparation for what to do in case you win?
Watering the gardens, deconstructing the balcony for major repairs, and trying to keep cool.
I saw a hummingbird on my honeysuckle. Did not notice the yellowjacket.
Now THERE is a story! In 12 words, no less! Please tell us more….
Cleaned the bathroom, started a Murderbot reread, and tried to motivate myself to do a few things. I did change the printer ink cartridges but did not trim the hedges. Maybe tomorrow for the hedges.
Murderbot rereads!!?? I wonder if it’s a “thing” that many of us Jennifer Crusie enthusiasts like Murderbot, too??!!
I have done no work at all except for the usual daily routines of feeding cats and myself, cleaning out the litter boxes, making the bed each morning etc. Today I went for a hike wearing my backpack. I need to get used to it for my Camino hike in the fall. I much prefer hiking without it, but since my friends and I will be on the road/trails for several days (staying in albergues/hostels at night), I need to get used to it.
Oh my cousin did that. Another cousin and I are thinking of doing that. Good luck.
My work is going out in the morning to weed before the day is so hot that I retire inside to the air conditioning. We almost always have an August hot spell but it has arrived a little early with temperatures between 97 and 102 for the the week then if we are lucky, it will drop to the upper 80’s and the low 90’s . We are in a convergence zone so it’s anybody’s guess if the weather prediction will happen or it will stay in the upper 90’s.
My second work project in conjunction with the above one, is to make homemade ice cream that calls for no elaborate ingredients and is free of ice crystals. The strawberry was very good but more like a gelato. The peach was almost there but tomorrow I will try vanilla bean bourbon with yet another slight variation.
I’m learning four different talks for my trip to Toowoomba next week, and am quite sure that I’ll confuse them and end up delivering the Grade 6 talk to the preps. I’m also worrying about actually there, WITH my luggage, as the airlines in Australia seem to be in meltdown due to covid, stress, flu, understaffing, etc.
Going to take medication, props, knitting and kindle in my hand luggage, just in case. There currently seems to be orphaned luggage scattered across our wide brown land.
actually *getting* there
If you can fit it in toiletries and a change of clothes is also good
With the heat wave ending yesterday, I may get some work done by next Wed., but I didn’t get much done this past week. I did finish the current draft of a novella, but it took twice the time I’d allotted for it.
And I found out that my parathyroids have now joined my thyroids in working overtime (and despite the matching names, they’re not particularly interconnected, so it’s not a typical situation where there are domino effects with one organ’s misbehavior affecting another). At first, we thought it might have just been because I stopped eating cheese to be heart-healthy, so I wasn’t getting enough calcium, but now after a bunch of calcium supplementation, my parathyroid hormone levels are even higher. So it’s something else. Not sure what. Guess I’ll be working on figuring that out for the next few weeks/months.
I never comment, and mainly lurk here to feverishly hope you have new books coming. Word of new books is the pick me up I desperately needed today, my sons 2nd birthday :D. We’re all sick with covid, and this makes everything a little less of a bummer. Thank you, and I hope you know how much people like me look forward to your writing. I’m really weighing making the girl I have due in December Minerva, after Min Dobbs.
Oh, welcome out of lurk!
My daughter’s middle name is Amanda, after Margery Allingham’s Amanda Campion, so I get your thinking. Whatever you decide, I love it that you’re contemplating it.
And thank you so much for reading. That’s the best compliment.
We decided for reasons I don’t remember to reorganize the house. I’ve been moving things and giving things and donating and shredding stuff.
Quite tired of it, considering the heat.
Day 3 of week 4 of Hell Month 2. The Day Job has demanded most of the mental effort I can muster, but I did get quite a lot of tedious writer business done over the weekend, including setting up a profile (most of one) on Prolific Works.
Tomorrow I have to go to the Actual Office to deal with some old-fashioned paper documents. Will not stay all day. Once those things are deposited with the mailroom, I’m scampering back home to finish out my shift in peace, quiet, and solitude.
I feel like a socialite — my niece had a housewarming party on Saturday, and yesterday we visited cousins who own the beach house that my family spent a month in every summer for many years. Great to see the cousins. Odd to be at that beach again, 30 years on.
Today I drove down to see my daughter (2 hour drive) who has just bought and assembled a new shelving unit. Now she is trying to re-imagine her apartment — she has wanted the shelves for a long time and knew that there would be repercussions (a lamp no longer fits). I enjoy being a bystander. She will figure out a good solution.
Working on final grades for the summer semester and getting ready to start fall classes. I’m trying to make some time to read in the evenings, but my brain is tired.
Oh, and the new puppy was so delightful that we returned to the farm to get her sister, who had not been adopted. We have one chocolate mini Labradoodle and now are joined by a cream one. They are keeping me hopping!
Congratulations!