Good morning ladies,
Happy December already. For a weirdo crummy year this in retrospect did go by quickly. Thanksgiving was quiet. I cooked - everything from scratch and after 5 hours of standing in the kitchen by the time the meal was ready I was almost too tired to eat. DH said everything was delicious and offered to fix me a plate. I thought i had comfortable enough shoes on but maybe even my New Balances were not good enough for a marathon cooking session. And I didn't cook a ton of food since it was just the two of us. I made a small turkey breast and we had enough for 2 and a half meals. Christmas is like in 3 weeks - I can't even fathom. I can't really decorate with the 2 young cats - Conan the Destroyer and his sidekick. Whatever I do put out can't be pulled apart or chewed on so that leaves out most of my decorations and most certainly a tree. I didn't decorate last year either - the kittens were little and still would have caused mischief but I frankly just didn't feel like it. I do admit to having lost my Christmas spirit and this is probably a good year to do so since we are supposed to stay apart anyway. I am kind of glad not to have to worry about going to parties with people I'd rather not be around anyhow so it's not bad at all.
DH is turning 71 so he had to start taking money out of retirement savings. We do on a regular basis anyway to supplement as pensions alone would force us to live far more frugally than either of us care to and without kids, neither of us desire to do without so that someone else can squander the money after we die. It's a tricky game to figure out how much you can spend without setting yourself up for problems in your older, more feeble years when you might need it vs being too conservative and not enjoying it. DH has the itch to go places with his photography but my physical condition and having 4 cats really puts the kink in that so he plans a trip or two himself. It is very hard for me to get around with my knees - I think I damaged my replacement knee when I fell in May as well as some permanent damage to the left one. I am not quite ready for a double knee transplant and have to lose a substantial amount of weight in order for that to be mildly successful. The cold weather doesn't make it any easier. They closed the pool where I was going - they got a salt water system and unfortunately have had numerous problems with it ever since the facility opened. It's been down for almost a month now. I have really cut back on my eating. I have a big mid-day meal, no breakfast other than coffee and I am simply not hungry for supper most nights. I do make sure DH is fed. I have lost about 6 pounds over the last 2 months - it's super slow to come off and I swing back and forth with a pound lost, pound gained depending on the salts and such. I am not eating balanced meals either which I know is not good. I need to get more organized. In so many aspects of my life.
I would love to change the house - the interior needs a good painting but with 2 story high peaked ceilings that is a challenge. I would also love to rip out the carpet and replace all the flooring with better wood throughout. Which means we somehow need to get all the furniture out of the house. That would be a very hard job for DH to do alone, would be better to have someone come in and do it 1, 2, 3 and done in a day or two. But DH is very picky. I also have a very expensive dining room set - table, chairs, a large cabinet and smaller butler cabinet that take up a lot of room and really don't fit in here. We got them in Tennessee when we had a separate formal dining room and the people who bought our house did not want to buy them so we took them with us. It's a Thomasville all wood, dark cherry set - very nice and sturdy but not the light pine of the Northwoods. Also this house is too small for a set like that. I don't know, I seem to be paralyzed by indecision these last 2 years. We talked about changing the kitchen, changing the living room, redoing the laundry / mud room, getting me a new car, taking a trip of a lifetime to Australia and New Zealand and I just can't seem to get my act together. So another year goes by and I just get older and let able to do things.
I did get the laptop switched over. Was not as hard as I anticipated. I was able to download all my saved passwords into a spread sheet which helped tremendously. Some of the things I copied to an external hard drive and then copied over came out a little wonky, I am working on going through organizing things which gives me an opportunity to purge them. Windows 10 is not as awful as I remember when I first saw it. I am embarrassed that they no longer make this model of laptop (my new one) and come February my initial 2 year warranty will expire. Did I seriously leave this new laptop for almost 2 years before setting it up?
I do like the keyboard and bigger, clearer screen. The only thing I don't like is the keyboard is metal like and it's chilly, especially in this part of the woods. Part of my cleanup was going through some documents and things that kind of took me down a trip down memory lane about my life so far. That was interesting, many bits I had forgotten or tend to get mixed up now when I try and think back.
My Mom is doing good. She stayed home for Thanksgiving for the first time ever but my sister dropped her meals twice - homemade spaghetti and meatballs which she enjoyed on Thanksgiving and then got a basket of Thanksgiving turkey and fixings on Friday after my sister cooked. I had said that after we moved to Tennessee and were not able to come back that holidays had lost their meaning to me - Easter, Mother's Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas it was just me and DH which came to be like any other day in our lives, just with better food and nicer china plates sometimes. It was sad for me and as the years passed, it actually got depressing which is why I think deep down I am not that excited about Christmas any more. But my sister who always wound up hosting the family meals said this was the first time she was ever home alone with no one but her immediate family and she LOVED IT. No cleaning the house, no cooking up a storm in her too tiny kitchen, no stress, no family members arriving 2 hours early and being totally in the way of everything just because that's the schedule they wanted to stick to. Sis said she could easily get used to these holidays. I said wait until you've had about 10 of them, in a row, for all holidays! Still I am happy that she enjoyed herself for once without the major stress and aggravation the holidays often brought to her. Sorry to be such a downer.
Laura - hope you got your new monitor set up and working and it was the monitor - not the video card that was causing the blanking out. You are right when you said you would love Shad's winters but not her summers. That's the problem with most places that have mild winter temperatures. For the most part it's either short winters and beastly hot summers or if you find a place like San Francisco that is mildly temperate all year long, it's horrendously expensive or you have to deal with Mother Nature's droughts, earthquakes, wildfires and such. We've been looking for years, no perfect place unless you have lots of money to live in 2 places and toggle the weather! Enjoy your days off. Doesn't seem like you both are big travelers and this year is not one to do it so might as well enjoy yourself at home. Have you given any more thought to getting another pet? Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving with the mommas.
Annie - one of the best parts of changing jobs I thought was that renewed enthusiasm about something different and learning new stuff. I often stayed at jobs 7 years or so and by the end you get tired, jaded because you have seen a lot of b.s. and unfair treatment. Starting fresh is just wonderful - it gets your brain active and engaged too. Like walking outside in the bright sunshine and mild weather after months of gray winter days. I'm so happy you are enjoying yourself. I'm glad the boys did not pick up Covid. As widespread as it is, going to be more and more difficult to avoid it. Hope your niece will be ok also. I'd be afraid being a medical person - ticked off too that people are being so resistant to common sense. I hope the massage fixes your neck kink. I have a neck thing I got at Amazon that is filled with beads you heat in the microwave. I sleep with it most every night and it helps with the tension in the neck and back and I think the heat is soothing and helps me relax and fall asleep more quickly. I recommended it to my Mom but like everything she poo poo'd the idea so not wasting the money to buy her one though I know it would help her. Don't be like my momma
Susie - hope you enjoyed your long weekend. Do you find work less hectic now that you are working from home? Or was a big part of the stress before the conditions you were working under and the new bosses are better? Glad to hear DH is recovering well from his surgery. Is it just healing or does he have to do any P/T? Congrats on the continued weight loss.
Shad - ah that was a long time ago in Graceland. I think of you occasionally and how the world conspired to mess up travel plans. You have visited as we moved about the country and the place we are at now, I think would be the place you would most enjoy as it is about as far removed from the city live with lots of trees and nature and all that comes with it - bears, turkey, deer, birds and even the mossies in the height if summer are probably still not as bad as you are used to. Hopefully someday we can come down and you can give us the tour and you will be back here one last time before we are both in scooters or wheelchairs! Hope you sorted out the mess with the bookkeeping. I spent a few hours dealing with Microsoft and the banks because they changed the credit cards for the Humane Society and I can switch them over for the monthly subscription billing for the shelter PCs. Only to find that there is a glitch and the people I have to call - support is only available for a small window each day and then they have a 5 day holiday weekend! I am grumbling wondering why I am wasting so much of my time on this project. I do really want to be done with the volunteering. I told them I won't be doing bingo until they get this Covid under control which means maybe not at all next year which of course, they don't want to hear. Maybe 2021 will be the year of the hermit! Glad to hear that things are getting better for you. I suspect we are in for a rough patch as we have so many resistant to common sense here. The people in this country have got batty.
Hello Ceejay!
The sun is creeping up to the point where I can no longer see the screen so I'm going to post this and go on to other projects. Stay well everyone and check in from time to time.