Working Wednesday, July 6, 2022

~ Jenny

We’re still working on Rest in Pink. That’s going to be pretty much every Working Wednesday post from now until the end of July. We’re at 60,000 words, so we are working.

What are you working on?

(Here’s another glimpse into the fascinating world of professional collaborative writing:)

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Later:

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Much later:

53 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, July 6, 2022”

  1. You two are a riot. 🙂

    I am not hating my retirement. All my “work” is gardening, most of it scantily clad. (I only dress to leave the house.) I mentioned adding a sixth Smart Garden-3, “Ranchero Cero.” I planted three bok choy plants, which are different from the red pak choi I planted and harvested previously.

    It’s finally time for harvesting lettuce. I have over a dozen Romaine lettuce plants and I took the first one yesterday. It was the base for a great salad. No peppers ripening just now (two purple chilis, but they are small and round) but maybe the Piri-Piri is next. It’s quite annoying that it will be months until my next tomato crop. The Japanese veggies may join the next salad. I have plenty of green onions, too.

    1. Gary, you love taking care of things: family, machines (before you retired), plants. Glad to know you continue to pursue your natural inclination.

    2. Gary, it is summer. There are these things called farmers markets: some are on a specific day of the week, some are stands by the roadside. A computer search should get you a listing of markets near you. And they sell home grown tomatoes. And in another month probably half your neighbors will just give you some.

      1. You are correct, and that’s without mentioning my niece in Virginia Beach with her own hothouse. She’d happily stock me up with tomatoes, or even canned tomatoes from previous crops. I still loved harvesting my own cherry tomatoes and I am nurturing a Golden Harvest Tomato plant in Sheba, but it’ll be at least six to ten weeks before the first tomato from there.

    3. Outdoors, each of my two green pepper plants has a pepper, which I am trying to leave to get bigger. They will not set more in this heat. At least this year I have pepper plants, unlike last year. This year I have netting.

      In pots on the front porch I have three cayenne pepper plants, covered in flowers that will not set in this heat. At least I don’t expect to harvest them for a couple of months.

      Indoors, I have many house plants, some of which date back to 1940, long before I was born.

      1. I have two sweet peppers. Red, I think, but not yet ripe. They might go yellow instead. Hot peppers, I have aplenty, nonripe at the moment. I harvested my second Romaine lettuce and built a glorious salad. I have a few red chilis left from the last plant, and a couple of purple chilis getting there. I want more sweet peppers from my gardens.

        Indoor Farming is more fun than I ever would have believed.

        1. I’m hoping you’ll venture outdoors too. Gardening in the earth, with weather and wildlife, is absolutely fascinating.

          1. But the great death star is in the sky, and I might turn to ashes! Or be… uncomfortable. I suppose I might learn to love outdoor gardening, but first they need to make a neighborhood-sized air conditioner. 🙂

  2. Someone is getting snippy? So brave!

    I’m at the tail end (I hope) of covid. I’ve escaped until now so I’ve had a pretty good run. I also never want to get it again. Anyway, I think it justifies the giant truckload of nothing that I’ve achieved this week. I’ve watched tennis and drank Pimms.

    Today I ran a workshop (online! I’m still isolating!) to plan impact communications for a research project that wants to transform dairy farming, centreing the health and wellbeing of soil for better outcomes for people who farm, communities, and the environment. The project combines science with traditional Maori knowledge (matauranga Maori) to assess alternative farming practices. It’s cool to do work that’s trying to make things better.

    There’s a cover quote on Samit Basu’s book The Lost City ‘We knew the end times were coming but we didn’t know they’d be multi choice’. Feels a bit like that, so work with hope is good.

  3. Driving home to Colorado from Ann Arbor and scratching about a million bug bites that I got while visiting my brother’s family there. It’s bad.

  4. This weekend I used the extra day to continue working on my UFO projects. This one is a paper pieced item I started in a class back in 2017. (It feels like longer than that, but I guess the calendar doesn’t lie.)

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CfqoH8dOKIq/

    I’m now poised to work on the fiddly bits around the border

    Meanwhile, at work work, we’ve hired a new employee, so for the first time since March 2020, I’m going into the office full time (I’m needing to train her – so more professional to do that in the office rather than in my home). One day of that so far, and I’m missing my usual morning commute from the kitchen to the dining room table!

    1. The pictures are in reverse order – from where I ended up this weekend to where I started when I pulled it out of the box.

      1. I’m in awe of your quilting! And loving the kitty pics on your instagram account!!

    4. I also spent a lot of time working on projects. I’m caught up on the temperature gauge cross stitch, at least, and got out of a tricky point on a sweater.

    5. It is hard to have a favorite since you make so many gorgeous quilts, but that one is certainly in the running.

  5. I’m working toward getting a website up before August. Yesterday my local library saved me, allowing me to scan photos to a flash drive for free.
    Yes, I have a printer that claims to scan, but it tells me it’s not connected to the computer, which is ludicrous.
    Libraries–possibly the best use of tax dollars ever.

    1. my stupid Epson XP-7100 continually gives me that ‘not connected’ excuse when I try to scan. I yell at it: you were connected just fine yesterday when we printed that thing!

      1. My HP printer does that too, but it works if I scan from the app on the computer, instead of hitting the scan button on the printer itself.

  6. Yesterday I jumped in my car and drove to the pharmacy and got my last booster vaccine. I walked right in and there was only one person in line – my husband who had jumped on his bicycle and beat me there by a minute. I was in an out in less than 5 minutes and most of that was doing the paperwork. These small independent pharmacies are amazing.

    1. Last week I enquired about boosters at my local pharmacy, my vaccine study having told me I should get a Moderna or Pfizer one to follow the J&J one I got from them in December, and the clerk called across the room to the pharmacist “Brandi, do we have any vaccine thawed?” and I interrupted and said not today, because I was in a hurry, but I would be doing it after the Fourth. Today is after the Fourth, technically, but I can barely move from the crazy at work. Next week’s day off will be booster day. Yes, independent pharmacies are amazing.

      1. Individuals at chain pharmacies can be amazing, too. There is one clerk and one pharmacist who have done wonderful things for me since I moved into this area. It is just the paper pushers who set the policies and buy bad computer software at the chains who make life difficult

  7. This is silly but for the longest time I have been annoyed by the kitchen towel folded over the handle of the oven door and falling to the floor if I even looked at it funny. Until one day I grabbed a clothespin and wrapped around the edges of the towel. It’s practically genius!

    1. I cannot (or do not want to) hang my towel on the oven door (which is closer to the sink) because it is at nose height for my dog. The refrigerator door handle is higher, and the towel wedges in too tightly to fall off.

      1. My sink is across the kitchen from the oven/refrigerator. If you wait to get to a towel there, you’ll be dripping on the floor. (Of course, I have towels in both places!) We ended up buying a free standing towel holder to place next to the sink. It definitely made DH happy not to walk the three steps to the oven door like a surgeon afraid to contaminate his hands!

        1. When I moved in three years ago I tried to find a place near the sink to hang a towel that would not interfere with all the _other_ things I keep next to the sink. I failed. The paper towel holder that was there, looking like a towel rack if you think about it, is too far back under the cabinets to reach without barking your knuckles one time in four. It is only about three steps to the refrigerator, but it annoys me constantly.

          2. My refrigerator is across from my stove and next to my sink so I toss the towel I am using through the refrigerator door handle.

      2. I have a new puppy, so “suspended from the ceiling” is pretty much the only safe place for the kitchen towel or pretty much anything else right now. I had forgotten just how inquisitive and persistent puppies can be. This morning she attempted to eat the baby-locks I purchased for the cabinet doors, in hopes of keeping her out.

    2. I had a thing like that. I’d pile packages on the passenger seat of my car and the seat belt warning would go off and every time I’d think, “I should just buckle that seat belt.” I finally did. Ten years after I bought the damn car.

      1. My car occasionally bings the seat belt warning with my wallet on the seat. Now my wallet is about the size and weight of a paperback book so I keep the seat belt plugged in almost all the time. Two loaves of bread set it off one time.

    3. I have had an oven for almost thirty years that has a handle that doesn’t have an opening to hang a towel from. I hate, hate, hate it. Didn’t notice when I bought it, regretted ever since. On the plus side, it’s been broken for about 3 years now, so I have an excuse to replace it (although I’m using a toaster oven until I can arrange to have a heavy-duty electric outlet installed and the gas line removed so I can get an electric oven/stove).

    4. we installed a long cabinet pull horizontally on the side of the upper cabinet flanking the sink. perfect ‘rod’ and location for a dish towel. 🙂 the ‘mess’ towel is still on the handle of the oven, but then we don’t have a dog.

      1. The sides of the upper cabinets flanking the sink are where my dishpan and dish drainer hang when not in use. Also my colander. Crowded around there.

  8. I’ve done frustratingly little this week, having been contending with feeling faint/light-headed. Went to the doctor and then had a blood test. Doctor rang with the results this morning: my cholesterol’s slightly high, so I’ve got to cut down on dairy and go for a walk every day; and she’s prescribed vitamin B12, since that’s low – despite my diet being high in eggs and dairy (see above). She says that could be causing my symptoms, although I’m definitely not anaemic.

    I’m left a bit baffled, and frustrated to be so low in energy and wobbly. Will try a psychological approach, plus the other stuff.

    Meanwhile I’ve been doing bits of admin. Next is arguing with the AA, who as usual want to overcharge me for breakdown cover. Oh, and one triumph: I’ve finally made some apricot jam I like, and with cheap fruit that turned out to be really under-ripe, despite the red skins. I must have failed half a dozen times over the years, each time resolving to give up. I assumed the poor-quality fruit was the main problem – apricots are never that good here, since they’re all imported.

    1. I had some of that same thing going on, and my doctor suggested I make sure I’m hydrated. So I drink at least a cup of water as soon as I get up, and during the day. Also, going on a news blackout for three weeks helped a lot! I hope you feel better, soon.

  10. I’m smack dab in the middle of birthday week when I’m doing no work at all (at least not my usual work), but I did harvest a couple dozen garlic heads (growing from cloves I missed harvesting last year, which is fortunate, because what with open heart surgery on October 1, I wasn’t in any condition to plant new cloves by the end of October). And I harvested one black raspberry, which was flavorful but tiny, and is the only one to ripen so far. Looks like the harvest is going to be anemic due to drought.

  11. The novel is finished, so I’m slapping my hands every single time I think about doing another editing pass or running a spell check. I want to give it some time alone so it won’t enter a restraining order on me.
    Other than that, it’s been kind of quiet. I’m working my “reading” stack down, and I’m trying to decide when I’ll binge watch the series’ I’ve got on my talking book player.

  12. New curtain rods installed with curtains on them…nso all furniture and accoutrement have been put back in place after the refinishing of floors and repainting of walls.

    We had a company come out to give us an estimate to replace our four… yes FOUR… exterior doors and storm doors. The estimate came out to a whopping $8000 PER DOOR!!

    For that much money it should be dripping in gold and have a man installed to keep me happy 😃

  13. This has been a busy week, we’ve been working on a lot of outdoor projects (as usual, at the expense of indoor projects like vacuuming and washing dishes). This morning we put up outdoor string lights. If it will only stop raining and warm up, we will be able to sit outside at night and enjoy them!

    Yesterday we took the afternoon off and went on a fairly long drive. We went on a new route and took a small ferry across the Athabasca river, which is flowing high and hard right now. The dogs enjoyed looking out the window and sleeping in the back seat while we drove over roads they had never been on before.

    We also did a bunch of pruning on the trees in the front yard. Some of the birches have to come down, they lost their tops in an ice storm a few years ago, and we need a professional opinion on some others. There was a tree crew in town and Paul talked to them about coming over to give us a quote but they have not shown up yet. Given that it poured yesterday afternoon, they may have just given up for a few days.

    Last night we finished Stranger Things. No spoilers, just to say that I wish they had either given Vecna a better origin story or none at all because, heaven help me, I am so bloody sick and tired of entitled white men using their over-inflated, self-indulgent, almost masturbatory, belief in their own uniqueness and superiority as an excuse to treat people like playthings (still in Hawkins, this applies to Papa/Dr. Brenner too). Also, it brought back many memories of every talk show host on daytime tv whipping the whole satanic panic/extreme child abuse/repressed memories crowd into a lather. Shudder.

  14. I’m just cleaning and getting a little yard work done. And tomorrow I’ll get the car inspected. Mostly I’ve bee reading The Last Graduate.

    The booming has stopped but Pixie’s still a bit jumpy. Hoping she gets back to normal soon.

  15. A few of our neighbors still have some fireworks left, apparently, but overall this year was noticeably quieter than last year, so I am counting my blessings.

    Working: Day Job was supposed to lighten up in July; no such luck. I worked off some annoyance with an hour of weed-whacking this evening. At least when you clean up a patch of weeds, there is EVIDENCE that you accomplished something.

    The novel-in-progress is roaring along. Finished Chapter 22 this morning; two to go, plus an epilogue, because the publisher this is aimed at does epilogues. Very happy with it. By next week I might be soliciting a beta reader. 🙂

  16. The poem I read for writers club zoom meeting last night went well. (Title: Margaret Sanger Is Rolling In Her Grave). Only one person upset. That person needs to think positively so can’t look at negative things like news, etc. I am so tired of that bs excuse for whitewashing everything negative. I feel another poem / rant coming on.
    The piece I wrote for memoir class got a good reception also. I will not be writing a memoir but the class is good and it keeps me writing.
    In fact, I stayed up all night last night working on a short story that I am liking.
    Got started on the process – and big expense – of getting my teeth fixed. Argh – this will be 6 months of irritation.
    Also asked for estimates for getting the floor fixed in the small bedroom.
    That’s it for here in 100 degree Florida!
    Enjoying the Jenny / Bob exchanges…lol

    1. I feel your tooth and wallet pain. I have a very nice car’s worth of dental work in my mouth. Seriously, it’s close to $60,000. Most of that was paid for by dental insurance/health care spending accounts through work in very carefully orchestrated bursts.

  17. Yesterday I convinced my family to come outside and help me haul some wood up from behind the shed for splitting. Dad got excited and pulled out his chainsaw for the tricky ones (burls and forks), and then I split the easy ones the old fashioned way because I am not to be trusted with the chainsaw. A solid few hours work, and more exercise than I’ve had since the start of my leave. Very satisfying. Then, of course, I started work on a bottle of wine.

  18. The only thing I accomplished this week was a double batch of cookies I baked this evening. My beloved doctor is retiring this month and I wanted to have something to give her when I go to see her tomorrow. Then I remembered that my friend Dave is moving his clothing store into a smaller location and decided that he and his worker bees could probably use some TLC, too and doubled the batch. They all love this variety of cookie, but it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to eat the night before my final weigh-in. But I had to taste test them before giving them to other people, didn’t I?

    1. You can’t hand out untried cookies, Someone needs to sacrifice and perform quality control obviously

      1. Many years ago, I returned from a Poseidon Strategic Nuclear Deterrent Patrol aboard the USS Will Rogers to receive a care package from a former shipmate and his wife (Shawn and B-bear (for Barbara)). You’ve heard of Famous Amos cookies? These were from a competitor in California, Unknown Jerome’s, which I greatly preferred. Inside the package were ten individually wrapped delicious chocolate chip cookies. An eleventh cookie had a perfect crescent missing and a piece of paper with “Inspected by #1” on it. an cookie-less wrapping had only a paper with “Inspected by #2” on it.

        Thanks for stirring up a treasured memory. 🙂

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