Working Wednesday, August 2, 2023

~ Jenny

I have been working on settling into a new place. Without furniture. I miss chairs. I do have a bed, so that’s good, and today I will put the bed frame together so I won’t be sleeping on the floor anymore, a major improvement. Also Bob kicked Rocky Start/Excellent Oddities back to me once I got to Pennsylvania, so my task list is full.

What’s on your task list?

97 thoughts on “Working Wednesday, August 2, 2023”

  1. Good luck with unpacking and getting set up! I find that putting up pictures is the step that transforms something from a house to a home.

    I told you I was going to do some quilting on the little pink quilt. I did – Friday afternoon, I quilted two quilts. But Friday evening, I didn’t start the process of binding, so those two are still in the bag, pinned to the quilting zippers.

    Instead I had my mind on a new project, so cut things out on Friday. I figured I’d knock everything out on Saturday and Sunday, in addition to about 5 other tasks I’d set myself. Um, no. As usual, I underestimated how long things would take. I focused on this quilt – which has a bunch of little pieces, so lots of seams! – to the exclusion of everything else.

    Here are the pieces in the process
    https://www.instagram.com/p/Cvb_Sy7O9mG/?img_index=1

    I’m very close to completing a top. I’ll be working on doing that this coming weekend, along with putting the binding on those other quilts. Who knows, I might actually get to those other projects too!

    1. Very fun! I love the blues. They remind me of old china.

      My mother in law is a quilter and log cabin is her favorite block. She is fascinated by how different it can look with color variations. This reminds me of that.

    4. I like the colors in your quilt block. I’ve started learning about quilting and I get so excited when I see a new pattern or some fabulous fabric but I seem to be in the ‘collect all the fabric, patterns, and things and look at them’ mode. Still I will keep at it. And I sympathize with underestimating how long something will take. Or in my case, WAY over-estimating just how much I will be able to do in a 48 hour period of time.
      Turns out I need my sleep more than clean laundry or binding getting finished. Who knew? LOL.

  2. I am back to manically cleaning, mostly because I was in danger of being buried alive by laundry. My husband will do laundry, but he won’t put it away. I think that it is a boundary thing? Weirds him out, although he has already seen my underpants so I don’t know…. Anyway, I haven’t done anything in weeks and the anxiety was rising. I can see the floor again in spots, now to vacuum it.

    And I had a thought. I have candle making supplies that I bought at a yard sale (because I haven’t found a hobby yet that I haven’t wanted to try). I haven’t used them since making imbolc baby shower gifts and the baby is 4. Anyway, it’s a thing that people do, to make scented candles based on their favorite books and I thought that I might try if for Lavender’s Blue. I may never get to it, but sent profiles and snarky labels are fun to think about at work. I could do a lavender candle of course, but that is too simple and I want it to be more about Liz and Vince. Vanilla for all the diet coke? I am limited to scents in my essential oil collection, but am open to suggestions. Something like, a lavender, vanilla and gunpowder scented candle with just a whiff of guilt…

    1. I understand. My husband will do the dishes but doesn’t put anything away after they are dry. So, we get piles of things in the dish drainer. I think for him it is a task-based thing. If he needs that space to wash more dishes, he’ll put the other things away, but until that time, things can be piled up to the ceiling, and it won’t matter because it isn’t in the way of the next task.

      I like your candle idea! Go for it!

      1. After maybe 20 years of marriage (so 16 years ago? ) my husband and I had a big fight because he insisted he was doing much more housework than me (I had temporarily stopped all housework due to surgery and was getting slowly back) and cited doing the laundry as an example and I said that he wasn’t doing the laundry all the way because he didn’t fold and put it away which actually takes more time so I was doing more of it than him.
        That did get through. He will fold and put it away now.
        Marriage —an ever changing relationship institution.

    2. It’s very reassuring about your marriage that your husband has seen your underpants. LOL

      1. He especially likes my grey Monday pants with the frowny faces, although it drives him nuts because I wear them whenever I feel like it. I have explained that it is a frame of mind, rather than a calendar thing, but he is more logical and I am more emotional.

  3. Welcome to the Keystone State! Good luck putting the bed frame together and make sure those bolts are tight!

    I found myself doing a second round of tossing when I opened boxes and said to myself, “Really? I paid to move this?” Good luck and take it one box at a time.

      1. I say that about mama’s stuff stored for many years then we bought small containers for the business. One is mine or the family storage container. Finally did purging this year. Now I have my sister’s glassware cleaned and on the kitchen table. Husband looked at it and said, “what’s all this?” Right, as if the drama with nephew hasn’t happened. It all magically appeared.

        I did take her sewing machine cabinets. Or rather, offered. Hoping so. Means stuff goes out the door. I have plans for the reams of fabric.

  4. The US commitment ceremony is August 12. So I’m making calls, picking up last minute items, writing emails, and trying to get the house and garden ready for a brunch for between 40 and 60 people. Almost ready!

    I just wish the last 20 would tell me if they are coming before I have to order bagels and quiche and pastries. But since they don’t seem to plan to I’m also trying to make space in the freezer for leftovers.

    I’m trying to catch up on the day job now that I’m mostly recovered from surgery.

    I’m trying to help DH’s friend with early onset Alzheimer’s and also help DH deal with his emotions about it. Every time the friend can’t manage simple technology or shows he hasn’t absorbed something in writing DH has to go through a process of being upset that this friend isn’t taking things seriously and then realizing it’s the dementia. And we both are angry at the friend for letting making money get in the way of spending time with his kids when they were teens so that now he has almost no relationship with them. But we wonder if his willingness to accept the barriers his wife put up was somehow due to the early dementia.

    And I have been going through the book I wrote about DS in when he was little to try to give DS a sense of when he started reading, what books he read at what age, and remembering what fun he was as a kid. I think I will switch to his and DD’s books for bedtime reading.

    I do have a list for the fall and on it is weeding out the boxes and boxes of schoolwork the kids wouldn’t let me throw out to trash most of it now they are grown. When that’s done I will have uncovered a table that I can use to sort and get rid of the millions of other things we kept unnecessarily through three moves when we built the house. So that’s my fall….

    1. Early onset Alzheimer’s is brutal, so sorry you and DH have to deal with the emotional fallout.
      My guy was diagnosed at 62 and died at 66 after four very trying years for all involved.

      Get legal decisions in place for the friend ASAP, from who handles his money and bills, getting the car keys and driver’s license taken away, to end of life wishes, to placement in a locked care facility as soon as (or before) the wandering starts. Had multiple friends searching when he went astray mid-afternoon, the police found him early the next morning (before commuter traffic), approaching a freeway on-ramp. Thank goodness they picked him up! The police got called shortly after he got lost, and many friends helped by making the rounds of the neighborhood on foot and in pairs in cars. Good luck! Taf

      1. Oh I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s an awful disease at any time (took my dad at 89) but early onset is brutal.

        To make it harder the friend is in London and all his family is in the US, and just realized what is going on a few months ago, but haven’t stepped up. His young adult kids are in no shape to deal with this for various reasons, he’s getting divorced , and he is in understandable denial about his current capacity much less what is coming . He lives alone so if he wanders no one will notice right away.
        Fortunately he doesn’t have a car or drive.
        We are using the divorce as the reason for why he has to update all his legal stuff …

        1. And I should add we are in the US too. So aside from an employee of his business which is being closed down there is no one there …

          1. I feel for you too – I’m so sorry. Its a horrible horrible disease, my father got it when I was 18 and now my mother has it too.

            A book I have found helpful is “What I Wish People Knew About Dementia” by Wendy Mitchell, who is herself has dementia. It made me a feel a little better, and told lots of things I didn’t know, so I might be helpful for anyone else in a similar situation.

        2. Sorry about your Dad, loss is difficult at any age. (I cried quite a bit after my 95 year old grandfather by marriage died.)

          Divorce is a great explanation (and reason) for updating the legal stuff. It would be good to encourage the kids to make contact with as many neighbors as possible so that a network of people can be looking out for wandering and other problems. You are correct that Alzheimer’s is brutal, my hopes are that family and friends pull together to cope.

          A doctor visit with family members asking questions and taking notes may help with reducing denial and providing tips for coping for everyone involved. His soon to be ex-wife may be helpful for the sake of the kids (worth a try). Some family and friends may not be able to cope-just let them go.

          1. He’s in London. He is divorcing his wife. His wife and 2 kids are not talking to him and the third barely is. The wife and kids are all in the US and haven’t visited him in London for a decade. So they don’t know his neighbors. And they are not able to handle this for a variety of reasons (young age, disabilities, etc).

            The family members that know what is going on and I hope will step up is his sister and nephew in TX. And we need to get him to move closer to them. He understandably wants to move closer to his kids who are in CA.

            We will definitely check out the book.

            DH is going to visit him for a week in Sept with the goal of 1) getting him started with a lawyer on the power of attorney medical directive etc 2) make sure he is up to date on doctor visits and that his PCP and doctor treating his cancer (so far wait and see treatment) know of the dementia diagnosis 3) getting him a “personal assistant” since he doesn’t yet acknowledge he needs a dementia care person 4) getting him on Medicare .
            We just got him a disability lawyer to advise his divorce team about how to structure the divorce funds set aside for one of the kids who is wholly disabled.

            It’s … a lot. And hard to see someone whose life was built on his brain unable to write simple scheduling emails. And we have a fair bit of anger too for the way he let the wife keep him from his kids and prioritized making money (the reason he stayed in the UK when the family went back to the US) over being with his then teen kids.

            It’s a total mess and I frankly live in fear of the guy asking DH to handle his medical care and affairs.

          2. Debbie, that does sound like a lot. I am so so sorry that you are having to deal with all that. Wishing you all strength and resilience and that you all get to a better place over time.

          3. Thank you Yuri
            The suggestion about driving made us realize that my DH should probably steal his license — while he doesn’t own a car DH thinks he May rent them to travel outside London.

            And he clearly isn’t safe for that

  5. I’ve been trying to work out what’s causing my chronic mild hyperventilation/light-headedness, which has been worse recently. I think it’s linked to not doing the creative stuff – writing & photography – that I’ve been promising myself for years I would. So I’m hurrying to finish my current freelance job, and then plan, at least until Christmas, and probably for a year, to focus on playing around with writing, and also sorting my photography so I can move forward with that.

    I’ve also got to be clear with the Ramblers that I’m not going to do more than half a day a week on researching lost rights of way. The current local coordinator has decided to bow out in a couple of years, and it would be very easy to get sucked into a full-time unpaid job. Not doing that. But I will do my best to support and encourage the new volunteers, and hopefully they’ll take it on.

    1. You might also get your doctor to check your calcium levels —having just had a parathyroid removed of course I see potential hypercalcemia and hyperparathyroidism everywhere but it’s a simple blood test.

    3. I hope you find the solution to this. I sounds like possible anxiety, too. You are good at self-care, once you decide it’s necessary. You go, girl!

    4. Thanks everyone. This has been going on for a year – I went to the doctor last July. She did a blood test, and prescribed vitamin B12, but though my levels of that were a bit down, it turned out I don’t have any problem absorbing it, and am on a permanent low dose now, so that’s not the cause. I think it is anxiety, and comes down to being stressed out at not keeping my promises to myself. I’m going to see if giving myself a year of doing creative stuff solves it. If not, I’ll try the doctor again. But I went through something very similar after I turned 30, so I think it probably is my subconscious screaming at me to choose a different path.

      2. Our subconscious does scream very loudly when we are missing out on important stuff, doesn’t it. I do hope the new path works for you, Jane. It sounds like a very nice path to take, more creativity.

  6. We have a Yukon camping trip coming up (fingers crossed all the forest fires simmer down and the roads stay open touch wood), so we are working on planning and finding all the gear that we need, getting the house ready for the house sitter, and figuring out how to pack enough (of the right) clothes but not too much clothes.

    I’m working on getting the pool usable again because apparently when you ignore it for a couple weeks, the chemicals don’t walk themselves over to it and things grow. Almost done; the chems should be good but it needs another vacuum. Did you know that vacuuming a pool is more tedious than vacuuming a house? True story.

    And then WORK work is of course busy completing all tasks before vacation AND preparing everyone else for the fact that I may be unreachable so they’re all on there own for two weeks.

  7. Jenny, you didn’t bring your furniture with you? Or is it coming later? Glad you’re settling in. I hope you at least have a chair to write in. Or do you do that on the bed?

    I’m madly trying to write the next Llewellyn book, due October 15th and barely started. I also need to get out into the garden to harvest the garlic and pull the weeds, which are growing faster than anything else, as usual.

    I’m also putting flea meds (OMG, those things are expensive) on all five cats. They’re indoor cats and I haven’t seen a flea in years, so I never bother. But my fluffy black guy Koshka has been battling allergies for over a year–pulling out his fur, kicking at himself until he has big gouges, getting yeast infections in his ears over and over. When treating the symptoms didn’t work, we finally broke down and got the expensive allergy testing done, and he tested off the charts for flea allergies. One of the women at the vet’s office said that he was so allergic, he’d itch if a flea walked past and spit in his general direction. (I love those women.) My new vet says that they can come in on mice and on your shoes, and healthy cats will just eat them when they bite (ugh), so it isn’t unusual not to see them. So I’m trying the flea meds, and a new anti-itch med, and keeping my fingers crossed that this is really the answer. If it is, I might be able to take him off the uber-expensive special hypoallergenic food and go back to using the corn litter I like. Also, the poor cat won’t be miserable. Anyone else have any experience with this?

    1. A while ago my dog was bringing fleas in, because I didn’t realize her expensive flea treatments had stopped working, so the cats got the fleas, too. I got them the shots, and had to have the dog put down for other reasons, and that solved the problem. Oh, I also dusted the house down with diatomaceous earth. Good luck! Poor babies. And you.

      1. The shots last a long time, I forget how long, but through several flea egg gestation periods, which is important.

    2. We got away without putting flea treatments on our indoor cat for years, since the dogs were protected. Then the cat started sneaking out through a tear in the patio screen and now we’re dealing with fleas and worms. Ugh. So gross.

      1. I hope not tapeworms?! I adopted a feral cat that had them. Really, really gross!

        This site seems to have blacklisted me against making my own post. Sigh.

    3. My cats have always been indoor cats, no flea problems until I adopted a stray who was intensely allergic to fleas, and she became my coalmine-canary for flea infestations, caused by mice, as your vet said — I live in an old house near a huge field, so there’s really no avoiding mice completely. A couple consecutive rounds of the prescription flea stuff would get rid of the problem for a few years at a time, so I didn’t need to use the flea stuff permanently.

      If you do need to continue the flea stuff for a while, and you get it from your vet, see if you can get a scrip and order it from Chewy. LOTS less expensive. And more convenient, since they deliver it to your door, and you’re not paying for your vet’s overhead and staff time.

      1. Good idea. I use Chewy for a lot of things. And it’s good to know that my vet isn’t gaslighting me. LOL. I was so sure I couldn’t possibly have fleas since I hadn’t seen any sign of them. But apparently it just takes one intensely allergic cat to let you know they’re there. I also live in the country, and mice are sometimes dumb enough to come inside the house with 5 cats…

    4. I hope it works for Koshka’s sake!

      My kitty, Sophie, has been stuffed up and we could hear her breath. Nothing the vet gave us helped. I’ve tried Earth Animals’ Cough, Wheeze, and Sneeze herbal remedy and it had her breathing silently within 5 doses. Not sure that it would be the right thing for Koshka, but perhaps they have something else that could help?

  8. I’m not getting anything done this week because we have a 9-week old puppy. We raise service dog pups; Simba is #17, and we take Olympic, #16, to college next week. This week is devoted to enjoying the two of them playing, and loving the stuffing out of Olympic for his last week with us.

    1. I’m impressed that you have been able to give the puppies back so many times. When my sister’s family tried doing that they found the goodbyes too wrenching.

      1. Here’s how I explained it on FB:
        HOW DO YOU GIVE THEM UP?
        It’s coming up on that time again: Turn In.
        Time for Olympic to go to Oceanside, CA for “ college” with the professional trainers at Canine Companions. We keep the pups for a year and a half, which *sounds* like a long time, but it goes fast. The remaining few days are spent doing “lasts”: last grocery store trip, last time at work, last salon appointment, last walk around the neighborhood, last trip to the library, last vet visit…and everyone wants one more hug from the dog. These dogs have relationships with people beyond your own friendships.

        Which brings me to the eternal question: How can we give him up?
        First of all, we aren’t giving Olympic up, we are giving him back to Canine Companions. He was never our dog to keep. And second, we may want him, but someone else NEEDS him, which is the whole reason we do this.

        You may remember our puppy Angus, who graduated a couple years ago and is working at Texas Children’s Hospital, West Campus with child life specialists Meg Elise and Hannah Early. Angus had the smallest personal space of any of our dogs, and I told the puppy program manager that if she had a job for a weighted blanket that sheds, Angus was that dog. Turns out she did, and Angus is spectacular at it.
        Meg just updated me and said, “We had two separate patient interactions this week with vulnerable patients. He gently climbed in bed and laid his head in their laps and they immediately had tears streaming down their faces. It was the sweetest thing to witness…We have a whole board in our office with notes from patients to Angus.”

        You ask, how can we turn them in? I say, how can we not?

    1. I’m getting the feeling that GaryJ doesn’t really like being bossed around. Even if he’s the one doing the low-grade bossing. With lists. Damn lists. Deep six’em!

      1. Last year I had a master plan for my life and announced completion of steps and was up to Revision W before I declared the plan complete. Then I retired. Most of it was also on my blog. Now there is nothing I need to accomplish that requires detailed stages and milestones and so forth.

        I could make plans for my hydroponic gardening hobby, but it all comes down to “Check the water levels, harvest and eat the ripe stuff, prune as necessary.” I don’t need plans for that.

        The rest of this week, I plan to catch up on my reading.

    2. Gary, I have a refrigerator magnet that says “Some chores must be put off many times before they can be forgotten completely.”

  10. Spent the week so far buying supplies and back-to-school shoes for my 15-year-old grandson who moved in with us in March. And girding my loins to start driving carpool in a couple of weeks.

    Somehow, I never saw myself as a carpool mom at 70…

    1. Don’t worry, you got this, it’s like muscle memory. My nephew was born and my mother bounced right back into carer mode, despite it being several decades since she raised my baby sister

  11. Bit of excitement up here at the cottage today: I talked to the team leader of a crew who are conducting a search for a cold case missing person from 1968 (!) at the end of our road in the woods where we walk our dogs every day. They started looking today for ‘remains’ or clothing items and will continue tomorrow. I wanted to offer my help but have no grid search skills…plus: job. Dang.

    1. Wow! That is exciting, if a little unsettling. Are they using some sort of technology to look underground for someone who I assume has been buried or lost for so long?

      1. The team leader told me that they had different search modelling techniques than they had in 1968 – I don’t know what these techniques are but it sounded good! I don’t know if they are using underground search tech. It’s all quite fascinating.

        1. Sorry – to be clearer – they think the 1968 search was in the wrong place and new modelling has indicated…the wood on our road.

  12. My grandchildren are supposedly on their way down to help with the lawn. They should have been here somewhere between 11 and 12. This morning I made chicken salad and a pasta salad for them just in case they’re hungry. Snort! I’ll hold off on making the brownies until I see their bright and shiny faces. My husband and I have been mowing the lawn, he will start without telling me and when I see him working, I put my shoes on and take the lawnmower away from him. It’s CHF for him, our second son had a stroke so that lets him out, our oldest had a hip replacement, so it has been down to me. I called one lawn service and they said they would come down and give me an estimate, didn’t show. Another company were not taking any new customers. I’ll start making calls much earlier next year. In the meantime, we’re relying on ourselves. It is going to get better, dammit!

    1. I second that last statement. It is going to get better. Has to, really, or I will despair.

  13. My work for the week is none. For years we have discussed the reality that two people living in a three thousand sq. ft. house with a lot of yard maintenance are going to need help if they want to persist in living here. My latest health problem made it clear that one person alone is in over t
    his head. Last Saturday the cleaning team came for the first “deep cleaning”. After this every two weeks all bathrooms (4), the main floor, the kitchen and the stairwells and landings, and the bedding will be changed (it kills our backs to do this) will be done by them and we will do the rest. Life already is better. We have started cleaning out closets and sorting things to go to Goodwill- all the jobs we have put off doing because we have to clean house.

    Oh, we also have window cleaners coming. At 80 my husband should not be climbing the ladder to wash windows on the third floor sunroom.

    1. Good for you! I finally talked my dad into getting help, besides me, for the outside of his house and it has made life so much better for everyone.

    2. I decided I had better things to do with my time than scrub toilets. I know how, but would rather not. So, I hired a friend who was starting a cleaning business. Once a month, she takes care of those things that I don’t want to do, and I do NOT feel guilty. I’m helping her, she’s helping me – it’s all good!

      1. It wasn’t easy finding people: 3 different cleaning people calls, one response- fortunately that was a winner. The window cleaners same story.

    3. Congratulations on finding the help you need and using your time for the kind of projects the rest of us do not do. Sorting out the donations will help a lot of people.but is so easy to put off.

  15. I did this, I halved this whole recipe. I did switch out cornflour for almond flour and I was in a hurry so put them in at about 185°C before oven was at temp. https://www.cookwithmanali.com/perfect-eggless-vanilla-cupcakes/

    I got the most perfect flat cupcake that would be amazing for constructing cake towers etc. Taste was delish as usual, I’ve baked these before without playing with the recipe.

    I think they forgot the vanilla (or something) in the method, add it, it’s necessary.

    Also, NEVER EVER do the curdle thing to make the substitute buttermilk. It always changes the sweetness and consistency. ALWAYS USE REAL REGULAR, FULL CREAM BUTTERMILK.

    I’ve tried low fat, no. I’ve tried yoghurt, no. Trust.

    I’m tired. Will come back to read everyone’s posts. 💐💐💐

  16. Jenny,

    Could we have a Lavender’s Blue discussion/spoiler post sometime for those of us who want to chat?

  17. I am trying to work and texting with my mom who is waiting – patiently but uncomfortably – for my dad to have his cataract surgery done. He was supposed to be in at 11. It’s 2:20 and still no word. She heard over an ago that he was up next but still not out. No one has come to tell her he ran away (Paul’s mom had to have heart surgery about 15 years ago and then had to have part of it re-done the same day. She was just out of anesthetic enough to understand that she had to go back to the OR and she tried to get up because she wasn’t going and they couldn’t make her. Of course, she was too groggy to stand up but she gave it the old college try.) so that’s good.

      1. No, I don’t think so. My mom never said anything about hearing codes or seeing a big fuss. I think they just seriously overbooked. They have to go back tomorrow (the hospital is a 3 hour drive one way from the farm), of course, for the first day check up but finger’s crossed that goes faster. They had to be there for 9 a.m. and she texted me at 2:43 to say that she thought he was done.

  18. I’m working on my MA dissertation and knitting a hat for BIL, or…not, because I was tired and crampy this evening. Back to the coalface tomorrow!

  19. I sat out and watched the Sturgeon Moon last night. The weather this week is amazing. Had a talk about a part time remote tech writing position, which may pan out. Fingers crossed.

    Next week family arrive for visits, staying in a house my sister rented, down the road a bit. Looking forward to seeing people, but also enjoying this week before the crowd descends.

  20. I’m working on recruiting folks for a research study, and apparently most people aren’t as excited as I am about the opportunity to advance scientific knowledge. Sigh. It’s really groundbreaking research too — looking at hearing issues, which have never, to my knowledge, been studied in my rare disorder, even though it’s widely known that we have a high incidence of hearing loss and tinnitus. I don’t, but it’s known to be more common in our population than in the general population.

    1. Don’t be so down on the folks who didn’t sign up for the study. After years of having side effects from drugs that were never tested onwomen, I decided to volunteer for all the studies I qualified for. But after years of being bounced out because of possible drug interactions, I finally stopped responding to the ads. The worst ones were the ones where the testing center subcontracted the qualifying interviews. You’d answer pages and pages of questions over the telephone, only to be told once you got there that something they knew weeks earlier disqualified you. The testing center just “forgot”to tell the pre -screeners about that part.

  21. I worked on updating my resume for a recruiter who’s been hounding me about this Great! New! Job! with a big firm (I know for a fact she contacted at least one of my colleagues – at our work email addresses, which is NOT COOL – and she’s said they already have several candidates so I should hurry). The thing is, I wasn’t actively looking for a job, and being pushed makes me cranky. The job description isn’t better than what I’m doing now. More money, maybe, but … the latest thing was an email telling me to rewrite my resume because of the way this company likes it. And I’m like, you know what? I’ve managed to get all these other jobs with my resume the way *I* write it, and how about you go pester those other candidates. Sheesh.

    Otherwise, what the hell have I accomplished in the past week?? Well I trimmed the grapevines again, and watered everything, and I got a huge chunk of revision done on the last self-pubbed novel. Once more through to add a couple of scenes that have come to mind, then one more polish, and then the last new cover re-launch will be done.

      1. I don’t know, but I’ve decided to ghost her (if I can. She’s persistent). For many, many reasons, stability is king right now and for the foreseeable future. My job is imperfect but it is stable.

        Last time I was job-hunting I got an in-process challenge that was different. I was being considered for an intellectual property contracts paralegal position, which is not something I’ve actually done before and would have been the first real use of my then-fairly-recent paralegal certificate. They sent all screening-round-2 candidates a contracts analysis, which I completed and returned because it was absolutely relevant. Didn’t get the job, but still: not an offensive requirement!

        This, however, came across as offensive. And this is an east-coast-based company, which means things in my profession, things that are unappealing. So, nope. 🙂

  22. It’s Tech Week, so figuring out stuff like costumes and trying to remember lines and the like. That’s not too bad, but I’m really ticked that literally everyone else decided they preferred my (modern short-ish red) hair to a (long, black, looks more period) wig in this show. HELLO I AM LITERALLY DESCRIBED AS SHORT AND DARK, HENCE THE WIG. I am Annoyed. Also we are doing this in “colonial California” and now I look even more white girl. Do not like.

    Had appointment with new therapist today. Didn’t go too bad, we’ll see how it goes.

    Finishing a huge project at work. I am very tired.

  24. Medicare told my physical therapy place that since I hadn’t seen the doctor who ordered my PT for 5 months, they were going to pull the plug. So I called the doctor’s office and made an appointment for her earliest opening, on 8/23. Then I called Medicare to ask if they would give me an extension until I was able to see the doctor and they offered to cancel my appointments, so I didn’t have to. And it took me a lot of effort to get to a live person who could look up my case and see what was really happening.And all the time I was on hold I kept getting robocalls about how only this company could tell me about the changes authorized for Medicare in the coming year. I had to clean out the list of call from telemarketers I got this afternoon. I counted 20 calls the second time I cleared the call record and that was only one out of 3 times I had to do it today,

    Remember when Jeff Bezos said that he was going to self insure Amazon and then start selling insurance to the rest of us? Someone should tell mister robber baron that we don’t need him to disrupt health insurance; it has already been done.

  25. I traveled to IL today and caught up on the last 2 Argh posts despite needing to be up in 7.5 hours to get ready to go to a conference. I’m hoping it will be inspiring. It lasts 2 days and then I’ll drive back to Michigan. The nice thing is I’m able to stay with my in-laws, who I like.

    I also hope to make a little progress on my patchwork of the cross quilt blocks. They’re a hybrid of machine and hand sewing. Here’s a picture of one I’ve got done: https://www.instagram.com/p/CvV-_McrTMB/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

  26. I’m working on putting the romance back in my romance novel (the subplots have gotten kinda out of control), cutting excess word count where I can, and generally making it more cohesive. Normally I draft fast (like, usually one to three months) but I’ve spent two years drafting this sucker off and on, and it’s made it hard for me to hold the whole thing in my head. I have an outline, but I need to be able to *feel* what stage of falling in love the characters are at, and right now I don’t have that. So I’m reading it all from the start, editing as I go, so that hopefully when I get to the final stuff that needs to be written, writing feels organic again instead of check-box-y.

  27. I went back to work today and nobody yelled at me. A positive start. And my new trainee is lovely and very competent – she transferred in from another port so this should be a pretty easy sign off.

    I think the work I need to be doing is figuring out an alternative industry I can move into in a few years when our jobs are all outsourced to a foreign company with lousy conditions. My redundancy payout at that point will be pretty good, but it certainly won’t cover my mortgage. So that’s a long term project. Short term project will be lodging my tax return.

  28. We’re starting to show signs of spring, so I did my winter pruning of the roses, grape vine and feijoa tree. Much happier now that’s done.

    I own a 6 bedroom house that I rent out by the room and 2 rooms are empty at the moment. They badly need to be renovated and while they’re empty is the best time by far to do it. So I did some hours of cleaning and bought secondhand carpet. Still have to unroll the carpet, figure out exactly how much I’ve got, and do the jigsaw of making it stretch to as many rooms as possible. And organize a painter friend to come in and paint the rooms. Even without doing the renovations myself, prep and organization feels like a lot of work!

    And to feed my creative side, I posted a fanfic scene. That was fun to write and now I’m basking in people’s nice comments.

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