MORE INSTRUCTION BOOKS DEALT WITH - WHY ARE ORDERS ARE ALL COMING DAYS LATE THESE DAYS?c

 Well, another week gone by.  I have scanned some more instructions books and just discarded some for items we no longer have.  The last several weeks of books have not been thrown out as I am going to tied them together and put them out when next I put out recycling as I did with the earlier scanned ones when I last put out recycling.

In normal times I out recycling weekly for pickup.  A stack of tied together newspapers, magazines, etc.  and a cardboard box of cans, bottles, and jars.  I recycle the boxes we get into the house this way as some years ago the second plastic box we had from the township for recycling was taken (as was the first one) by the garbage crew as they decided it was too broken to use.  So I keep boxes in our side porch – small ones – for a normal week in normal times and we used 4 soup cans and nothing else to put in.  Big ones for weeks when there is a holiday and I do a lot of cooking with a lot of things to recycle, and medium sized boxes for in between.  These days we can use only one can or two cans in a week.  Combine this with we not are temporarily not getting our newspapers in hard copy, and most weeks if I put the stuff for recycling – it would not be seen.  So I have been putting out the recycling when the carton I use to collect it all in is overfull and I put it in the larger can they gave everyone some years ago – this holds about 2 months worth, maybe more with how many items we are using these days.

So the instructions to be discarded sit in a bag in our office set aside to go out.  

We did go get to go food shopping yesterday – a good sized fill in trip.  Though much more relaxed than the 2 months major shopping we had done through most of the pandemic.  Even used a coupon – we complained about a frozen meal we had bought (main course – lacking in meat) and they apologized and sent a coupon for the next purchase.  I almost forgot not only to use it – but how to do so – husband remembered.  

I ordered 2 pairs of jeans – yes, we ONLY order something if we cannot get it any other way.  I noticed the knee of one of my pairs jeans had a hole – looked in Walmart – they no longer carry these jeans and have no acceptable (to me) alternative.  Husband looked up the jeans company – and we ordered from them.  Jeans were to be delivered today – no, now they may not come for another couple of days, so we even if we wanted to run errands we have to stay home to wait for them now as they are left in front of our house – easy to be seen and taken as we live on a main road.  Add to that bad rain storms over the next couple of days and we could not go out if we wanted to.  Same thing happened with some items husband had to order for his handcrafted business and a different delivery company – also got notice at last minute that not coming on day specified by them.  (Is this a new trend?)  

So more time to scan instruction books and do other housework which needs to be caught up.  Right now, as normal for when I am writing on Wednesday night – our washing machine is washing our clothing.  When same goes into the dryer – the towels go into washer.  When clothes come out will fold in bed while going to sleep tonight and towels will go into dryer.  Towels will be folded tomorrow night while going to sleep.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Lately more things seem to go wrong.  Do you find this to be true?  Just have to go with the flow and take things as they come – and I am not someone who likes that loss of control.

How is your organizing going – anything special which works for you?

SOMETIMES FATE IS HAVING FUN WITH ONE

Last week I said that I was finally catching up a bit.  I should not have said so “out loud”.  Fate had more in store for us.

Thursday morning my mom - 90 years old, still living alone, and having problems recently - telephoned me. She needed something she had in her garage and could not carry it into the house as it was too heavy.  Could we stop by later in the day and bring it in for her.  “Sure.”  Oh, and could we bring her a burger to eat as she did not have food (which I took to mean in her house).  “Sure”.  We went to Wendys for our usual lunch and planned to buy a burger for her before leaving and bring it to her.  I told husband I was going to pick up some groceries on the way to her house to hold her over.  I knew that on Saturday she was going to my sister’s house for the weekend to go have and have her hearing tested and for Mother’s Day.  I telephoned her and said that we would also bring some deli turkey, what kind of bread would she like and what else could we bring.  “I have plenty of food in the refrigerator.”  Huh?  “Mom you said that you had no food!”  “Oh, that is up here in my bedroom.  I am too frightened to walk down the stairs.”  OH BOY!  We bought the burger and drove to her house.

Mom was upstairs.  I went up and walked down her down the stairs step by step.  She sat in the kitchen and talked to my husband while she ate the burger.  She thought it was wonderful.  (She had never been to Wendys before she went there with us a couple of months ago and had been surprised at how good their burgers were - this is not an ad for Wendys.)  I looked around her kitchen.  We had been there on Monday and while her house always has stuff around - don’t we all - the kitchen had been clean and neat.  This time - only 3 days later - there were dirty dishes and the like all over and food out and rotting.  I washed the dishes, etc and tossed the garbage. 

I then suggested to her that she go to my sister’s house early (based on conversations with my sister I knew this was okay) and she would mostly not have to deal any stairs while she was there.  She agreed.  We then started packing clothing for her - she told me which drawer to get clothes to pack - “why are you bringing so much, I am only going for 2 days?’  “No mom, it is at least 4 days.”  She has started sending her laundry out to be done and there was a sealed package of it which had been returned clean to her.  I took that package also - despite the towels and bed linens also in it - the more the better.  We took her medications - complete bottles and weekly box.  We took both of her walkers and her cane - none of which she has been using, but has started to.  All was thrown in plastic bags.

My sister met us and we got mom in.  Our thoughts were that she can no longer live alone and we would keep her at sister’s house bit by bit until we managed to get her to agree to stay.  That night we had call from my sister.  Mom could not get up the sofa - even with help - and kept falling asleep so they were at the hospital near my sister.  Mom was there for at least the weekend.  There was a decision that one of her meds was too large a dosage and it was cut back - it was making her too groggy.  She had been scheduled to go to a psychiatrist on this past Monday to deal with the meds,   I called and canceled it as the hospital had dealt with them and if she was going to be living a county away, she should have a doctor out there.  I also called her regular doctor and canceled an upcoming appointment, explaining the situation and saying that we would tell the doctor handling it out there to call him about it.

We spent Mother’s Day at the hospital.  (All three of us daughters, our husbands, and her grandchildren were there at varying times  - even without planning it.)  I joked to someone yesterday - maybe this was her way of making sure everyone visited her for Mother’s Day.  She was transferred to a rehab facility on Monday and they are working with getting her walking better.  We still have to figure out where she will be going on a permanent basis.  We have not talked to her about it.  (No, she doesn’t even know I have a blog - so she does not read it so she will not know about any of this.)

Yesterday I had to go my client in NYC - what a mess - somehow she had bounced checks - from customers and then as a resort her checks which had paid bills - and had several situations with customers credit card payments and cancellations.  (Client is not much younger than mom.)  I was ready to scream between what had gone on with mom and what was happening at client.  I work at client on a desk maybe 2 feet wide and 18 inches deep and it filled with all sorts of stuff around the edges - so I couldn’t spread stuff out to work.  Her vault is behind the chair I sit and she seemed to need to open it  - and open the door more fully than normal and was constantly hitting the back of my chair.  Oh, and I had left earlier in the morning to go to her to deal better with the overcrowded parking garage - and it still took almost 2 hours after I got there to get a space (and I really had to go to the bathroom when I pulled into the garage and had to wait) so I had about an hour less than I planned and needed to do all of this.  I actually took photocopies of many things to go over them again here at home. 

In the middle of all of this, I heard husband’s ring on my cell phone - in my brief case on the floor in a plastic bag (concerned about bed bugs in the place)  beside me. I was about to scream, but knew if he was contacting me it was IMPORTANT. He had gone out for lunch in our van and after lunch at (yes) Wendys, it would not start.  He called the auto club and they got it started and he drove to our mechanic to be looked at.  Our RV was already at our mechanic for the annual state inspection.  The RV was finished so he drove it home and left the van.  He had texted me to bitch about all this.  My response “Much the same here.”  I got an apology from him.

I have made arrangements to forward her mail to my sister.  In the interim until that starts we are going to her house and picking up her mail. Today I said to husband that the weather was nice (rain tomorrow as it is most days lately) so I wanted to drive to mom’s house and pick up the mail and make sure that there were no packages of stuff she had ordered before all of this there.  He was not happy about the time it would take, but agreed.  Only junk mail of course, but lots of it.  I think my mom gets more mail in a week than we get in a month - lots of catalogs and strange magazine offers.  On the way home we stopped to gas up the car as I had used up a lot yesterday and we are thinking of a day trip to PA on Friday. 

As we drove home from the gas station (closer to mom than us), which we have used before, the car started acting funny when we were stopped at lights.  Sooooo, we picked up the van and left the car!  There is a new fellow working for our mechanic (I met him once, husband met him twice as he was there yesterday) and we went in and explained.  I also told him that we do not normally have serial car work done. :-)  So far the costs for the vehicles have not been bad, hope this one is not expensive.

In between all of this I have managed to catch up a bit more - the “to do” pile is getting noticeably shorter.  The “to scan” has gotten slightly taller though. I have managed to get an email out to a friend who husband told me had posted on FB that she needed a source for food trucks for an event - told her about a large event in that area and they must know who comes to their event.  I also scanned in the “who is bringing what to the June luncheon meeting” of my embroidery chapter - both because I intended to send it to the membership and because one of the members who had not been at the last meeting to sign up had asked.  Scanned and emailed out to the members.  Hopefully there are more of us coming and I am not the only one bringing something other than some sort of salad.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

We never know what is going to come our way.  Unfortunately it tends to be problems more than solutions.  Each item has to be dealt with - to overlook it will make bigger problems down the road.  When I am ready to scream about everything I think about all of those with much larger problems.  Mom is aging and needs more help - but she is still with us.  My client is driving me crazy, but she is a nice person and I do like working for her - most of the time (and we need the money).  The vehicles are driving us crazy at this particular point in time - but they normally run fine and don’t end up costing a lot of money for repairs.  New rule - van will be driven at least every Wednesday as if it had been driven more often than twice a month or so, it might not be having problems lately.  I am not a “Mary Sunshine” but I know that the problems we are having are not as bad as others have and we can deal with them.  And they give me something to write about.  What do you think are the chances we will go to PA this Friday?















       

WHAT SHOULD YOU GET RID OF AND WHAT SHOULD YOU KEEP?

Pardon me - I didn’t post yesterday.  As I think I mentioned the most important annual Jewish holiday was yesterday and when it was over last night it slipped my memory what day of the week it was.  So here I am, a day late and a post short. 

As I was talking about last week, much of what one needs to know about organizing we know.  It is finding the time and pushing ourselves to do it that is the problem - at least for me.  Basically one has to sort through what one has and get rid of what is not being used and will not be used and then set up what is left in an organized manner so that one can find what one is looking for quickly. 

What to get rid of?  A good question.  Some of it is rather obvious - empty boxes of cereal for example.  They are garbage. Almost empty box?  Depends on how much is left - if you can eat it all while continuing to work - eat it and toss the box; if it is enough for a meal or two - use it up at meals and toss the empty box.  In this case I mean for the cereal box to stand for anything which gets used up, but the empty container is still around.  This week and last week I made a chicken stew that my husband loves for dinner.  Problem is that the garbage pickup is on Monday and Thursday and I was making the stew on Monday last week and Tuesday this week and both times had to hold it all both times until Wednesday night when I put it out for Thursday pick up.  The bones, skin and such have to be thrown out, but if I toss them in the kitchen garbage and they don’t go out right away, it will smell terrible.  I can take the kitchen bag out to the can outside, but it really upsets me to put the bag(s) out only about 1/3 full.  So, I put the chicken garbage into one of those plastic shopping bags that one gets at groceries stores, put same in the bowl I had used to hold the cooked chicken overnight (cooked the chicken one day, made the stew the next) before taking it off the bones and left it in the fridge.  When it was time for the garbage to go out I added the shopping bag of chicken icky stuff to it and out it went.  I then washed the bowl the bag had been in.  I actually have left over stew from both nights.  It can’t be frozen as it has potatoes in it and they never freeze well.  I have the stews in two canning jars in the fridge (one from last week and one from this).  I will hold them until the end of the next week - if husband has not eaten it by then (he really LOVES this stew) then it will go out that Sunday night in the garbage - it will not be allowed to sit beyond when it will be safe to eat.

Staying with the kitchen, some items are harder to get rid of.  Husband will decide that he likes something - say a particular canned soup - and buy a lot of it.  Then something will happen and it will not be eaten.  Say, he decides it raises his blood sugar too much and he should only have it once in a while.  The items sit........and sit.........and sit..........and sit.......and sit.  Suddenly they are past their date and one cannot even donate them.  It really kills me to throw out 6 full cans of something because it passed its date a year or two before - but out they must go.  They are taking up needed room and if they are eaten by accident they may make someone ill.  I have to check on some eggs we have in the fridge - wait, I will check right now - an entire dozen dated for June 16, 2018.  Now what do I do?  Normally I would toss the eggs.  But here is a bit of info - when eggs pass their date and are sent back to the producer by the stores they are allowed to be repackaged and sent back out a certain number of times - gross right, but it is true.  Eggs can be tested to see if they are still good and I will have to find the instructions on how to check them.  Okay, per “The Joy of Cooking” if the eggs float in cold water they are no good.  I will test them tomorrow and then throw them out if they float.  We go through periods where we eat eggs or use them in cooking and will buy them - and then the period of eating them ends - see husband deciding he likes something and then deciding not to have it any more, above - I think he was making quiches with them and then stopped doing so - and they sit.  Usually it only part of a dozen, which is left.  In case you are thinking - what about breakfast?  We wake up so late that we have lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch and then a late night snack for supper, so eggs tend to be more of a dinner food here.  I am going to test them.....  Well, they will going out Sunday night with the garbage for Monday, the 3 I picked at random all floated - but, on the other hand, I was wrong - there are only 10, not a full dozen.  We have a quart of milk in the fridge also.  I know that is fresh, we bought it for a meeting of our reenactment unit last Monday - husband had volunteered to bring snack - oh that reminds me of something else, we are going to return an unopened package of cookies - we bought 2 different kinds for the meeting and apparently it was a chocolate mint cookie crowd, not a chocolate chip crowd.  But no one opened the milk to use in their coffee.  So I have to figure out how to use up a the quart - I guess we will be having diet pudding for snack a few times.  We were lucky to find the quart - mostly it comes in half gallons and more around here, and the quart cost almost as much as the half gallon.

So - when one sorts through stuff one will find stuff to toss, stuff to check and decide if it should be tossed - now or soon after, stuff to return, and stuff to use up.  If only I had some chocolate syrup for the milk, but if I buy same, then I will have a started bottle of chocolate syrup and someday in the future will be deciding if it should be thrown out or not.  (Plus we just plain should not have the extra carbohydrates.)

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

You know that you know what to do.   Go through and toss the floating eggs and the long past date things (whether they are actually dated or not) - and the chicken stuff which has been stored until you can toss it.  Get rid of the empty boxes or finish up what it is in them and get rid of them.  Return items which are in good condition which can be returned.  Use up the items that can still be used - before they have to be tossed because they are floating eggs.   This applies in the rest of the house as well as in the kitchen - paints and makeup can go past their use time also, for example.  The dress you bought for Sally’s wedding a month ago and then bought a different one, that you wore instead - return it if you can or donate it - unless you know that you can wear it for Harry’s wedding next month.  And so on.