Late again posting - sorry.
We did go away last Thursday and Friday. When I telephoned Wednesday afternoon to make the reservation the woman I spoke with, was rather odd about the entire thing. The spaces I asked for were not available for two nights - we had decided to stay through Saturday. When I asked if any of the spaces were available just for the one night, Thursday there was still confusion. I finally worked it out and reserved one of the spaces for Thursday night and figured that we would ask what was available for just Friday night when we checked in - just in case something was available that would work for us. I made sense to me that Friday would not be available even though Thursday was as Friday is a weekend night and more people travel.
Our trip down was fine - better time than the usual mess. As we drove down husband suggested, which he acknowledged was crazy, that we drive back again on Tuesday of the following week for the day. We have not been to the farmers market that is on Tuesday most or all of this year and different vendors are there from the Friday market. The idea hit me, I suggested that we drive down Monday and stay until Tuesday. This would relieve the problem of possibly getting stuck in traffic on the way and arriving too late to have enough time at the market. (Mostly we have lunch and walk around, perhaps buying some small items we need or see, good shop at Tuesday market to look for bears for my village and I have not been there since the village went to year round.) Plus, if we use the toilet in the RV it has to be dumped at the RV park. It needs to be 2/3 full minimum, to dump so that there is enough force, so Friday morning we were going to have to fill the tank (having only stayed one night) to dump the tanks. By coming back, there would be double in the tanks when we dumped and it would fill faster. The weather promised to be nice for Monday and Tuesday and I would make the reservation when we checked in.
Remember I said that it had been suppose to rain there on Tuesday? When we arrived in the general area we saw lots of fields (this is farm country) with huge puddles- almost pond size in them. We went around to several touristy we go to in the area and then around 5:30 pm went to the RV park to check in. We paid for our space for the evening and reserved the same space for Monday night. It is a fairly small RV park along a stream. As we were walking out of the office the employee said “Oh, if the space is too wet, just come back and we will give you another one.” Huh!? Apparently they had trouble from the rain on Tuesday. As we drove to our space we were driving along the row of spaces facing the stream. We saw what they meant - the spaces had MUD in them. Our space is in the next row so we were concerned. We drove to the space and it seemed mostly okay. I got out of the RV as we do a few things when we arrive at a space at the start of a stay there. First husband will back in (rare that we get a “drive through space”) and we will find the level spot. I guide him. This time I checked that the actual space was dry - it is gravel and the gravel looked different, very light in color, apparently washed in the flood. I saw mud on the sides of the space, so I walked to the back of the space and it was not muddy there - where we have to walk to hook up the electricity and the TV (and water if we hooked up same), so it seemed okay. He backed in, we found the level spot and marked it with markers he made. Although we have been in the space numerous times, when we arrive there we check the electricity to make sure it is functioning properly and we did so and went off again.
Well, now I understood why there was confusion about reserving a space when I called the afternoon before. Apparently the general area did not just have rain, it had RAIN!!!!!. FLOODING RAIN!!!!! As we went around over the rest of the two days we saw the result of flooding in many places. At the Friday market there was mud on the foundations of buildings and pavement. One building, which had flooded badly once in the past, had obviously been flooded as there was no merchandise on the bottom 3 shelves of the fixtures - tossed out as it was soaked. There is an auction in a room at the end of one building. I have never seen it closed. It was closed and through the wall I could hear fans running trying to dry the room.
If any of you are from the Lancaster, PA area - I hope that you were not hit by the flooding.
Friday night we returned home. I did not unpack much of the RV. I left my clothes, the snacks, the towels, etc. Husband insisted on taking his clothing into the house. After 2 days, I repacked the RV on Sunday night for the drive down on Monday. By then it was much dryer, although some of the space in the RV park needed work on them and were still closed. Understand, we were away for 2 days, 1 night, then drove home for 2 nights, 2 days, and then back again to Pennsylvania for another 2 days, 1 night and then home - and I won’t bore you with the local traffic mess on the way home last Tuesday night. Of this time, we spent the equivalent of over half a day traveling forth and back and forth and back again.
I am behind in everything I was suppose to do the last few weeks. I notice this when I went to change towels Tuesday night. I normally change all the towels on Monday, then change the bathroom towels again on Thursday and the kitchen towels on Wednesday and Friday. The towels are all assorted - I had Monday bathroom towels out downstairs and Thursday ones upstairs. (No, I am not that anal. I put blue hand towels upstairs and green ones downstairs on Monday and another color on Thursday - as I have 2 sets of each color and all my other ones vary in color by pair. This way I can tell by looking if I forgot to change the hand towels.) I went to change husband’s weekly hair towel and 2 of the 3 were in the laundry and I was pulling the third one to wash. My pillowcases are either white (2 sets) or beige (1 set) I have 3 white towels and a beige one on the bed. I forgot to do the laundry last night. I have been keeping up with washing clothing over the past several weeks of colds and travel, but not the rest of the laundry.
So right now clothing is being washed (a day late). I spent last night writing and rewriting the newsletter for my embroidery chapter. I had figured to write it quickly as it usually does not take long. We are starting our meeting year and I had not heard from the chapter president with her president’s message. We are doing a project for most of the year and I had to figure out how to write up what we are doing at the meeting. (I also list information from our national and region, as well as giving list of related exhibitions and events in a travelable area - this takes up most of the newsletter). In addition we are doing a “stitch in public” that we do every year and I wrote a page to encourage someone other than myself and the chapter president (and husband who joins us) would also come with us. I then found out, in reply to an email I had sent, that the chapter president had sent the info - apparently when I downloaded my email - from 3 days - it did not download on most of my email addresses. When I downloaded it again after hearing from her, it all downloaded. Her president’s message included this info for the meeting. So I had to fit in her message, splitting it to the meeting information and get rid of what I had written. Then send out 3 versions of the newsletter (members, prospective members, and other region newsletter editors). So last night was gone - which is why I did not get a chance to write this post then.
I have a piece I am entering at the local three county, county fair - huh? Our local fair, which dates back to 1842, is the legal county fair for 3 counties. It is held at the restoration village I have mentioned before where there is an exact copy of the original fair grounds from photos) and is held in the style of a late 1800s fair, with many of the volunteers dressed in period dress. The heart of the fair are the art, craft, needlework, sewing, baking, canning, fruits, vegetables, flowers and the like which have been entered by people from the three counties.
I used to enter several items each year including an angel cake. Lately it has been one or two items and no more baking - as there have been less entries they cut some categories all around, including angel cake. I have one piece to enter this year - if I finish it. I have about one or maybe two more nights of stitching it, then I need to assemble it and then husband has to have time to frame it for me. I keep Thursday nights (which means 11:30 pm to 2 am Friday) for stitching and other crafts for me. I have not had a chance in at least a month to do so. I planned on tonight finishing the stitching. Obviously I will not as I am writing this post and have other “must to do” items for after this. If I don’t finish it, it will be entered next year. I am not going to panic over not getting it done in time. I am a procrastinator, I know this and try to push myself to finish ahead of time. When husband was still working I would drop off our entries while he was at work. One year on the day the entries had to be in, I called him at work and - in a panic - asked where the craft wire was in the house, I was still finishing a doll I was making of Theodore Roosevelt and he needed eyeglasses. He on the other hand, would have his entries done in July!
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
What must be done gets done. What is nice to do or one wants to get done, may or may not get done - and that is okay. We can only do a certain amount and cannot kick ourselves for not getting everything done.
Showing posts with label hobbies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hobbies. Show all posts
Friday, August 31, 2018
Thursday, March 1, 2018
VERY FRUSTRATING WEEK
We had a very frustrating week. Husband has been weaving a scarf for me. He is using a yarn that he had used before - lighter in weight than most yarns he works with and thinner. I like a light weight scarf. He bought a skein each of light and dark blue - my favorite color.
The first sign that this project was not going to be as simple to do as past weaving projects was when we set up loom to do the weaving. To do this we have to run long pieces of yarn which are attached to the loom on each of the two ends of the pieces of yarn and stretched out tight between them. When we did this we saw something we have never seen before. The yarns pieces, parallel to each other, were pushing away from each other - static electricity. Remember, he has used this yarn before. We ignored this and went ahead. There are various other steps to setting up the yarn to be woven through and they were hard to do as the pieces of yarn kept pushing away from each other.
Well, this is a bit like the frustrating things which happen when we try to organize and declutter. Dividers we know will fit in a space do not. We start doing one part of a project and find ourselves led into another project. But, we carry on trying to get the end of the project.My part in the weaving is done after the loom is set up and I left husband to work.
The easy part of the weaving follows - the actual weaving. Yarn wrapped around a long piece of wood - the shuttle - is pushed through the yarn pieces that have been tied onto the loom. Then the yarn that has been taken through is pushed against what has already been woven in a process called “beating”. Then the yarn pieces on the loom are switched so what was up is now down and vice versa and the process is repeated. On the kind of loom my husband has - with a solid bar that the yarns on the loom have been tied through to lift them up and down - the same bar is used to beat the yarn after each pass - the yarn passing through alternate holes and slots in the bar.
Husband, upset, comes upstairs. He is having a problem. Apparently the yarn that he was using is yarn wrapped around a core thread - we did not know this. At one spot on one piece of tied on yarn the wrapping had unwrapped and was being pushed backwards as he used the bar as a beater - a bunch of fluff sitting on the wrong side of the bar. We managed to get the fluff through to the right side and he glued it in place not knowing what else to do and left it to dry.
Again, similar to doing organizing - if we hit a snag (which is what this was) we try to fix it and move on.
The glue was not enough to hold the wrapped yarn in place, so we repeated getting it through to the right side and then husband kept weaving, but used a large comb as a beater - needing to repeat this several times across the loom for each cross thread being woven.
Along the way a second spot on the same yarn had the same problem. We again pulled it through and glued it into place and husband kept working with the comb.
Well sure, we have all had the same problem repeat - perhaps magazines which are sorted for storage and then additional magazines are found and they all have to be sorted again.
Finally all of the problem yarn was woven into the piece. Husband looked and the rest of the yarn he could see looked fine and he relaxed and went back to his regular manner of weaving. Happy that he was making something for me and it would be greatly appreciated.
Suddenly he is back upstairs. The same problem on the same yarn piece has appeared again in a new spot! At this point he could not deal with it and he decided that the piece had to be finished, even if it was not long enough to be a scarf.
Frustration - we all know this feeling when organizing - what we think will work does not. The time we think something will take is underestimated. Mostly we go on, but sometimes something is so impossible that we have to stop and figure out an alternative.
I know the work he had put into the piece and how disappointed he was that something he was making special for me did not work out. I figured I would take the short piece when it is finished, and use it a table runner or mat (depending on how long it is). It turned out to be long enough for me to use as a scarf - although it will get a bit smaller when it is finished (washed to set it), so I will be able to use it as scarf and show it off to friends as something special he has made for me.
Again, sometimes an idea we have had about how to organize something does not work out - and we must rethink what can be done - how the containers or dividers can be repurposed to be used.
Yesterday we set up the loom for a new project for him - with a more basic yarn which he uses much more often. He has been happily weaving since then.
Similarly, if a project to improve our organization goes awry we must go on and continue doing what else is needed for us to clear clutter away and organize.
He had bought 2 other skeins of the yarn that he had problem with in other colors (it was a sale) and I have pulled the receipt for them and we will be returning them. After all, if they stayed around and he would not feel comfortable using them, we would just be adding to the clutter in the house in addition to being out the cost of them.
Just to add to this week’s frustration, we are suppose to go to a woodworking show (he is a man of many crafts) this weekend. The show is in the next state and is here only once a year. While he does not buy much - if anything - he had in mind to buy a few very small, inexpensive items which are not sold locally (and we don’t like to order things) and it is something different to do and see. So far in this year’s planning to go we have dealt with it being moved to a different venue - not an easy one to get to - and the fact that there seems to be no place nearby for a quick, cheap lunch - found a place 15 minutes away, we hope - and now - the rain and wind storm that is coming may also have - snow. Snow would be a deal breaker and he would have to miss the show - or what is known around here as the typical end to a planned trip.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustrating things happen. Things go wrong. All we can do is look at what went wrong and what we can do to deal with what happened. It is life and it just must be dealt with. Sometimes the alternatives are better than the original idea - based on the length of the finished scarf, if he had made the entire scarf he planned, it would have been much longer than I wanted - sometimes they are not.
The first sign that this project was not going to be as simple to do as past weaving projects was when we set up loom to do the weaving. To do this we have to run long pieces of yarn which are attached to the loom on each of the two ends of the pieces of yarn and stretched out tight between them. When we did this we saw something we have never seen before. The yarns pieces, parallel to each other, were pushing away from each other - static electricity. Remember, he has used this yarn before. We ignored this and went ahead. There are various other steps to setting up the yarn to be woven through and they were hard to do as the pieces of yarn kept pushing away from each other.
Well, this is a bit like the frustrating things which happen when we try to organize and declutter. Dividers we know will fit in a space do not. We start doing one part of a project and find ourselves led into another project. But, we carry on trying to get the end of the project.My part in the weaving is done after the loom is set up and I left husband to work.
The easy part of the weaving follows - the actual weaving. Yarn wrapped around a long piece of wood - the shuttle - is pushed through the yarn pieces that have been tied onto the loom. Then the yarn that has been taken through is pushed against what has already been woven in a process called “beating”. Then the yarn pieces on the loom are switched so what was up is now down and vice versa and the process is repeated. On the kind of loom my husband has - with a solid bar that the yarns on the loom have been tied through to lift them up and down - the same bar is used to beat the yarn after each pass - the yarn passing through alternate holes and slots in the bar.
Husband, upset, comes upstairs. He is having a problem. Apparently the yarn that he was using is yarn wrapped around a core thread - we did not know this. At one spot on one piece of tied on yarn the wrapping had unwrapped and was being pushed backwards as he used the bar as a beater - a bunch of fluff sitting on the wrong side of the bar. We managed to get the fluff through to the right side and he glued it in place not knowing what else to do and left it to dry.
Again, similar to doing organizing - if we hit a snag (which is what this was) we try to fix it and move on.
The glue was not enough to hold the wrapped yarn in place, so we repeated getting it through to the right side and then husband kept weaving, but used a large comb as a beater - needing to repeat this several times across the loom for each cross thread being woven.
Along the way a second spot on the same yarn had the same problem. We again pulled it through and glued it into place and husband kept working with the comb.
Well sure, we have all had the same problem repeat - perhaps magazines which are sorted for storage and then additional magazines are found and they all have to be sorted again.
Finally all of the problem yarn was woven into the piece. Husband looked and the rest of the yarn he could see looked fine and he relaxed and went back to his regular manner of weaving. Happy that he was making something for me and it would be greatly appreciated.
Suddenly he is back upstairs. The same problem on the same yarn piece has appeared again in a new spot! At this point he could not deal with it and he decided that the piece had to be finished, even if it was not long enough to be a scarf.
Frustration - we all know this feeling when organizing - what we think will work does not. The time we think something will take is underestimated. Mostly we go on, but sometimes something is so impossible that we have to stop and figure out an alternative.
I know the work he had put into the piece and how disappointed he was that something he was making special for me did not work out. I figured I would take the short piece when it is finished, and use it a table runner or mat (depending on how long it is). It turned out to be long enough for me to use as a scarf - although it will get a bit smaller when it is finished (washed to set it), so I will be able to use it as scarf and show it off to friends as something special he has made for me.
Again, sometimes an idea we have had about how to organize something does not work out - and we must rethink what can be done - how the containers or dividers can be repurposed to be used.
Yesterday we set up the loom for a new project for him - with a more basic yarn which he uses much more often. He has been happily weaving since then.
Similarly, if a project to improve our organization goes awry we must go on and continue doing what else is needed for us to clear clutter away and organize.
He had bought 2 other skeins of the yarn that he had problem with in other colors (it was a sale) and I have pulled the receipt for them and we will be returning them. After all, if they stayed around and he would not feel comfortable using them, we would just be adding to the clutter in the house in addition to being out the cost of them.
Just to add to this week’s frustration, we are suppose to go to a woodworking show (he is a man of many crafts) this weekend. The show is in the next state and is here only once a year. While he does not buy much - if anything - he had in mind to buy a few very small, inexpensive items which are not sold locally (and we don’t like to order things) and it is something different to do and see. So far in this year’s planning to go we have dealt with it being moved to a different venue - not an easy one to get to - and the fact that there seems to be no place nearby for a quick, cheap lunch - found a place 15 minutes away, we hope - and now - the rain and wind storm that is coming may also have - snow. Snow would be a deal breaker and he would have to miss the show - or what is known around here as the typical end to a planned trip.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustrating things happen. Things go wrong. All we can do is look at what went wrong and what we can do to deal with what happened. It is life and it just must be dealt with. Sometimes the alternatives are better than the original idea - based on the length of the finished scarf, if he had made the entire scarf he planned, it would have been much longer than I wanted - sometimes they are not.
Thursday, October 26, 2017
A QUICK TRIP AND I CAUGHT UP ON MY PILE OF STUFF TO DO
Well, I had a bit of a chance to catch up this past week. The pile on top of my desk which has to be done before I get to the folder of things to do, is down to scanning in articles from various issues of a magazine related to reenacting that I convinced my husband that we don’t need to keep in full. Much of these magazines are ads for items related to “the hobby”. There seems to be 3-5 articles of varying length that he wants to keep. He has gone through the magazines and circled in the table of contents those articles he wants. I am scanning in the articles here and there as I get a chance - luckily they are not in color so they scan a lot faster.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
Thursday, October 19, 2017
TRIP OUT OF STATE FOR DINNER
Last Thursday we finally took a trip to Golden Corral in Freehold, New Jersey. Now, if you have never heard of same, Golden Corral is a chain of family oriented reasonably priced (depending on the location around $14-$15 for adults). It is not a destination restaurant. But, there are none near us and the two restaurants here from a similar chain closed over a year ago - and this is one of the two closest ones to us. This is not a cheap trip - in addition to gas it is over $20 in tolls round trip.
I am not sure if I posted about this when it happened, but we tried this trip in July and ended up spending 5 and half hours going and coming with no dinner. We had gotten stuck in traffic and the anticipated hour and forty minute trip (per the GPS with traffic considered) ran a bit more - we had been driving for 4 hours and for the last two hours had steadily been half an hour from the end of our trip sitting in traffic. What finally turned us around and sent us home was the fact that by the time we got to the restaurant it might be too late for dinner and there were warnings that the occasional showers due late night, were now dangerous thunderstorms, hitting within the hour with two tornadoes so far and we were sitting in traffic in the open. So we had worked our way off the road and turned around and spent an hour and a half driving home.
What does this have to do with organizing? Well, in addition to having to organize everything for the week around this day and have to organize for the trip (we even over pack for a day trip), it is a loss of an afternoon and evening when other things could have been done.
I normally do our banking on Fridays - and we were short on money to pay bills and had to make a withdrawal from husband’s IRA accounts (hopefully the last of the year as it is the last of the planned money from same for the year). But, in anticipation of going away - and in need of some pocket cash for the trip, we went to the banks on Wednesday. I paid the bills on Wednesday night so they could go out on Friday (this was all the bills that were due by Sunday of the following week as I pay all bills a week before they are due). I did whatever else was sitting around waiting to be done.
I plugged in my other (smaller and a tiny bit newer) laptop to charge in the kitchen before going to bed on Wednesday night. I had our “travel zipper bag” downstairs with the laptop - this has a spare wallet with spare cash and a credit card (and some affinity cards for restaurants etc when we travel - other cards are in the car and the RV) and I add our checkbook just before a trip. Our logic in having extra cash and a credit card that neither of us is carrying is that if we were robbed or other similar problem, we would have cash and a credit card to use. I packed my old Palm Centro in its case - spare info of what is in my cell phone and easy to reach in the car to keep track of tolls paid, etc. We put out rain jackets and sweatshirts - weather was iffy. This way when we woke up Thursday all we needed to take was together in the kitchen on our way out.
Last time we had left after lunch at 3 pm and thinking that was the problem as we were traveling during evening rush hour, we planned - well I planned and he agreed - to eat lunch along the way. I was pretty sure that there were a couple of Wendys in NJ and I knew about one in Staten Island. So we set off.
In New Jersey I did see a Wendys on the road - just as we passed it. We kept going. We had a couple of basically time wasting stops along the way as we would (hopefully) otherwise be at the restaurant for dinner about 2 or 3 hours too early. Before I knew it we were at the first place to stop - there was a Costco with a gas station there and a Hobby Lobby craft store (we just got got our first Hobby Lobby here so that is still a place to stop for us). Since we had not eaten we went to Costco and had lunch and took a quick walk through - looking for some items they no longer have at the ones near us and didn’t have here either. We then gassed up the car (in New Jersey no self-serve allowed) and drove to the Hobby Lobby.
Now, the Costco is on the north bound side of the road we were headed south on. It is north of an intersection and the Hobby Lobby is on the same side, but south of the same intersection. How the roads in New Jersey are designed, one can generally not make a left turn on a main road. One gets off the right on an angle or something known locally as a “dog leg” and then turns left on the cross road to do so. So, to get back to Hobby Lobby we had to go out on the southbound main road, turn right at the next corner, then attempt to turn left onto the cross road - a four lane road with no additional traffic light to help, which we were able to do only by the kindness of a stranger who let us in. Then we had to turn left from that road onto the main road. We then had to turn right off the main road at the same place we did before and turn left - but into the right lanes - of the cross road we had turned left onto, to get to Costco. We gave up on trying to turn left onto the crossroad and turned right, then went up about a block, turned left into a parking lot, drove around in the parking lot, drove back out and turned right onto the same crossroad. We drove across the main road and about a block up turned right into the shopping center that Hobby Lobby is in. This trip from Costco to what is more or less the next shopping center took us 15-20 minutes.
We walked around awhile in Hobby Lobby - I went through their large Christmas department looking. No buying done though. And then we left. Now, to get back on the road we had to head back to the exit that led back to that same cross road and turn left onto the cross road - luckily there was a traffic light to help - and then turn left from same onto the main road headed south again.
So basically we drove in 3 circles to go to these two stores.
Our next planned stop was a Walmart we knew about. (We come to this Golden Corral for dinner about twice a year when we go to the woodworking show and the quilt show we go to in late February and early March so we know what is around it and on the road to it. These two attempts were our only ones to go there just for dinner - I guess I cook that badly that he wanted to go.) The jeans that husband wears has been discontinued at our local Walmarts and we hoped that other ones might still have them, plus some other items we had not found in our local ones, as well as it is a larger one than the ones near us. It is off to the west of the road we were on. I knew how to get there by turning right just before we got to the restaurant, but found a shortcut to it by following the signs and, I admit, the GPS. Nothing there we were looking for, but husband did find a DVD to buy. By the time we were done it was getting late to go to dinner so we hurried off after buying the DVD.
Yes, we made it the Golden Corral. He was so happy. I don’t particularly like the chain, but he does. Dinner and then we drove home. Of course to head back north we had to drive south, turn right onto a cross road, then turn left on the cross road and then turn left onto the main road north.
Now all the time we are driving and going places, my mind was thinking “I could be cleaning the bathrooms.” “I could be scanning the magazine articles.” “I could be doing laundry.” and so on. But his happiness at having the meal was worth the trip. Then again, when we got home he told me - “Next time I say I want to go to dinner there, tell me I want to go to dinner at the Casino in Connecticut instead.”
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes time wasted is worth it if it gives happiness to someone else or to you.
I am not sure if I posted about this when it happened, but we tried this trip in July and ended up spending 5 and half hours going and coming with no dinner. We had gotten stuck in traffic and the anticipated hour and forty minute trip (per the GPS with traffic considered) ran a bit more - we had been driving for 4 hours and for the last two hours had steadily been half an hour from the end of our trip sitting in traffic. What finally turned us around and sent us home was the fact that by the time we got to the restaurant it might be too late for dinner and there were warnings that the occasional showers due late night, were now dangerous thunderstorms, hitting within the hour with two tornadoes so far and we were sitting in traffic in the open. So we had worked our way off the road and turned around and spent an hour and a half driving home.
What does this have to do with organizing? Well, in addition to having to organize everything for the week around this day and have to organize for the trip (we even over pack for a day trip), it is a loss of an afternoon and evening when other things could have been done.
I normally do our banking on Fridays - and we were short on money to pay bills and had to make a withdrawal from husband’s IRA accounts (hopefully the last of the year as it is the last of the planned money from same for the year). But, in anticipation of going away - and in need of some pocket cash for the trip, we went to the banks on Wednesday. I paid the bills on Wednesday night so they could go out on Friday (this was all the bills that were due by Sunday of the following week as I pay all bills a week before they are due). I did whatever else was sitting around waiting to be done.
I plugged in my other (smaller and a tiny bit newer) laptop to charge in the kitchen before going to bed on Wednesday night. I had our “travel zipper bag” downstairs with the laptop - this has a spare wallet with spare cash and a credit card (and some affinity cards for restaurants etc when we travel - other cards are in the car and the RV) and I add our checkbook just before a trip. Our logic in having extra cash and a credit card that neither of us is carrying is that if we were robbed or other similar problem, we would have cash and a credit card to use. I packed my old Palm Centro in its case - spare info of what is in my cell phone and easy to reach in the car to keep track of tolls paid, etc. We put out rain jackets and sweatshirts - weather was iffy. This way when we woke up Thursday all we needed to take was together in the kitchen on our way out.
Last time we had left after lunch at 3 pm and thinking that was the problem as we were traveling during evening rush hour, we planned - well I planned and he agreed - to eat lunch along the way. I was pretty sure that there were a couple of Wendys in NJ and I knew about one in Staten Island. So we set off.
In New Jersey I did see a Wendys on the road - just as we passed it. We kept going. We had a couple of basically time wasting stops along the way as we would (hopefully) otherwise be at the restaurant for dinner about 2 or 3 hours too early. Before I knew it we were at the first place to stop - there was a Costco with a gas station there and a Hobby Lobby craft store (we just got got our first Hobby Lobby here so that is still a place to stop for us). Since we had not eaten we went to Costco and had lunch and took a quick walk through - looking for some items they no longer have at the ones near us and didn’t have here either. We then gassed up the car (in New Jersey no self-serve allowed) and drove to the Hobby Lobby.
Now, the Costco is on the north bound side of the road we were headed south on. It is north of an intersection and the Hobby Lobby is on the same side, but south of the same intersection. How the roads in New Jersey are designed, one can generally not make a left turn on a main road. One gets off the right on an angle or something known locally as a “dog leg” and then turns left on the cross road to do so. So, to get back to Hobby Lobby we had to go out on the southbound main road, turn right at the next corner, then attempt to turn left onto the cross road - a four lane road with no additional traffic light to help, which we were able to do only by the kindness of a stranger who let us in. Then we had to turn left from that road onto the main road. We then had to turn right off the main road at the same place we did before and turn left - but into the right lanes - of the cross road we had turned left onto, to get to Costco. We gave up on trying to turn left onto the crossroad and turned right, then went up about a block, turned left into a parking lot, drove around in the parking lot, drove back out and turned right onto the same crossroad. We drove across the main road and about a block up turned right into the shopping center that Hobby Lobby is in. This trip from Costco to what is more or less the next shopping center took us 15-20 minutes.
We walked around awhile in Hobby Lobby - I went through their large Christmas department looking. No buying done though. And then we left. Now, to get back on the road we had to head back to the exit that led back to that same cross road and turn left onto the cross road - luckily there was a traffic light to help - and then turn left from same onto the main road headed south again.
So basically we drove in 3 circles to go to these two stores.
Our next planned stop was a Walmart we knew about. (We come to this Golden Corral for dinner about twice a year when we go to the woodworking show and the quilt show we go to in late February and early March so we know what is around it and on the road to it. These two attempts were our only ones to go there just for dinner - I guess I cook that badly that he wanted to go.) The jeans that husband wears has been discontinued at our local Walmarts and we hoped that other ones might still have them, plus some other items we had not found in our local ones, as well as it is a larger one than the ones near us. It is off to the west of the road we were on. I knew how to get there by turning right just before we got to the restaurant, but found a shortcut to it by following the signs and, I admit, the GPS. Nothing there we were looking for, but husband did find a DVD to buy. By the time we were done it was getting late to go to dinner so we hurried off after buying the DVD.
Yes, we made it the Golden Corral. He was so happy. I don’t particularly like the chain, but he does. Dinner and then we drove home. Of course to head back north we had to drive south, turn right onto a cross road, then turn left on the cross road and then turn left onto the main road north.
Now all the time we are driving and going places, my mind was thinking “I could be cleaning the bathrooms.” “I could be scanning the magazine articles.” “I could be doing laundry.” and so on. But his happiness at having the meal was worth the trip. Then again, when we got home he told me - “Next time I say I want to go to dinner there, tell me I want to go to dinner at the Casino in Connecticut instead.”
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes time wasted is worth it if it gives happiness to someone else or to you.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
NO TIME TO WRITE TODAY - POOR ORGANIZATION
Again I am sorry to have to start my post with my hope that any of you in the areas hit by Hurricane Harvey are faring well and I must also add my hope that any of you in the path of Hurricane Irma stay safe.
We did have a nice trip the end of last week and returned safely home late Friday night (okay, really 1 am on very early Saturday morning). Since the trip was rather short - only 2 nights - and we did not go crazy shopping while away (the Walmarts there are so much larger and better than the ones here) we had the RV unpacked by 1:30 am.
At that point I ran upstairs to my computer. While away I had received an email from the president of my embroidery chapter that when I emailed out the (new and revised format) newsletter, I had left her message out and there was a large blank area on the front page. When I read her email I wondered if I only imagined that I had added her message - but then remembered it as a bit long for the space and I had to make the column area longer and also adjust the adjacent column listing our meetings for this year to be a bit longer to match. I apparently sent out a the copy I printed out to check the newsletter before I received her column to make sure that it and the other 7 attachments I had to send with it went out (to me) without a problem. Much embarrassed I quickly sent out the correct edition to the members and others who get it. In my apology I pointed out that either the readers were so polite not to mention the large empty space on the front page to me - or no one bothered to read it!
I actually managed to catch up to the point that my desk was clear! Not that there was not other paperwork to deal with - we are trying to get a discount on our general and school real estate taxes that is allowed for those who own their home and are 65 (as husband now is). There are 4 forms to fill in that I can find, plus we have to give them either our deed, birth certificates and something else - or copies thereof, I cannot tell which from the instructions. We have until the end of December to file these papers - but I know me, I better get them done now. I filled in one form today and have already requested a “receipt” for the medical insurance we paid in 2016 (paid bills not sufficient). I found out that the county holds events to help people with this paperwork and have marked the dates of the most local ones on my calendar (computer and cell phone - entered separately) so we can go to one. I found I was missing our deed - well, I know it must be somewhere, since it is not with any of the house papers in the files or lock book in the house, it must be in our bank lock box - which of course I went to today to switch those offsite backup drives I have mentioned before. I guess we will be going back in the next few days again to check for and hopefully find the deed.
I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and we did a good bit of stitching - then the visit to the bank (above), as well as a deposit to our reenactment unit’s bank account (at a different bank), returned soda bottles (for 3 months since I have not been out on my own since the beginning of June) for recycling, and bought something to start making a gift for my husband (I will not say what in case he reads the post).
I decided to call my mom tonight after dinner - and we do go on - well she does and as you might imagine from my posts, I go on a bit also. By the time I was off the phone with her it was well past the time we normally finish talking when we do at night and past when I should have started evening chores. And I had extra chores tonight.
During the past week husband and I bought a frame and framed an embroidery piece I finished and am entering at the county fair. (Technically it is a tricounty, county fair as it is the official fair for 3 counties. It is held in the style of a late 19th century fair at the same restoration village I have mentioned before.) I know where that piece is - the dining room table. I also am entering the Christmas ornament I made of husband weaving last Christmas and, of course, had not thought of entering it when I packed the Christmas stuff away and I had to find it in the basement. Luckily the “Box 1 ornaments” (the nicest ones which go on the tree first) was the 3rd box down and I found it quickly.
The same cannot be said for the ornament husband made - a handwoven Christmas tree - and plans to enter. Last time I saw it, it was hanging from a lamp in the living room, err, “the loom room”. It is not there. So I ended up having to pull all of the Christmas boxes out and look in them - it is the sort of thing that would be on the top of a box to protect it. I did not find it and do not look forward to mentioning this to husband. I am sure it will be “my fault” that it is missing. Luckily in the time between I wrote this and posted it - husband came down and he had his ornament safely tucked away.
And I also had to do laundry tonight. Last week’s laundry was done a night early so there are an extra day’s clothes and I have towels and bed linens from home and the RV. I was unsure if I should strip the bed or leave it for our final expected trip at the October or clean the sheets and go through the mess of making up the bed again - my decision was made as there were tiny bits of dirt in the bed from it sitting made up - the day after we came home I went in and stripped the bed and took it apart (which has to be done to strip it and also to remake it up).
So, while it probably will not be noticeable to any of you as my posts go out in the middle of the night anyway, this post is going out - more quickly written than normal - about 2 hours late.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get to do things than normal - but as long as they get done in the end - that is all that matters. And talking to one’s mom - mine is 89 - is always more important than getting work done.
We did have a nice trip the end of last week and returned safely home late Friday night (okay, really 1 am on very early Saturday morning). Since the trip was rather short - only 2 nights - and we did not go crazy shopping while away (the Walmarts there are so much larger and better than the ones here) we had the RV unpacked by 1:30 am.
At that point I ran upstairs to my computer. While away I had received an email from the president of my embroidery chapter that when I emailed out the (new and revised format) newsletter, I had left her message out and there was a large blank area on the front page. When I read her email I wondered if I only imagined that I had added her message - but then remembered it as a bit long for the space and I had to make the column area longer and also adjust the adjacent column listing our meetings for this year to be a bit longer to match. I apparently sent out a the copy I printed out to check the newsletter before I received her column to make sure that it and the other 7 attachments I had to send with it went out (to me) without a problem. Much embarrassed I quickly sent out the correct edition to the members and others who get it. In my apology I pointed out that either the readers were so polite not to mention the large empty space on the front page to me - or no one bothered to read it!
I actually managed to catch up to the point that my desk was clear! Not that there was not other paperwork to deal with - we are trying to get a discount on our general and school real estate taxes that is allowed for those who own their home and are 65 (as husband now is). There are 4 forms to fill in that I can find, plus we have to give them either our deed, birth certificates and something else - or copies thereof, I cannot tell which from the instructions. We have until the end of December to file these papers - but I know me, I better get them done now. I filled in one form today and have already requested a “receipt” for the medical insurance we paid in 2016 (paid bills not sufficient). I found out that the county holds events to help people with this paperwork and have marked the dates of the most local ones on my calendar (computer and cell phone - entered separately) so we can go to one. I found I was missing our deed - well, I know it must be somewhere, since it is not with any of the house papers in the files or lock book in the house, it must be in our bank lock box - which of course I went to today to switch those offsite backup drives I have mentioned before. I guess we will be going back in the next few days again to check for and hopefully find the deed.
I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and we did a good bit of stitching - then the visit to the bank (above), as well as a deposit to our reenactment unit’s bank account (at a different bank), returned soda bottles (for 3 months since I have not been out on my own since the beginning of June) for recycling, and bought something to start making a gift for my husband (I will not say what in case he reads the post).
I decided to call my mom tonight after dinner - and we do go on - well she does and as you might imagine from my posts, I go on a bit also. By the time I was off the phone with her it was well past the time we normally finish talking when we do at night and past when I should have started evening chores. And I had extra chores tonight.
During the past week husband and I bought a frame and framed an embroidery piece I finished and am entering at the county fair. (Technically it is a tricounty, county fair as it is the official fair for 3 counties. It is held in the style of a late 19th century fair at the same restoration village I have mentioned before.) I know where that piece is - the dining room table. I also am entering the Christmas ornament I made of husband weaving last Christmas and, of course, had not thought of entering it when I packed the Christmas stuff away and I had to find it in the basement. Luckily the “Box 1 ornaments” (the nicest ones which go on the tree first) was the 3rd box down and I found it quickly.
The same cannot be said for the ornament husband made - a handwoven Christmas tree - and plans to enter. Last time I saw it, it was hanging from a lamp in the living room, err, “the loom room”. It is not there. So I ended up having to pull all of the Christmas boxes out and look in them - it is the sort of thing that would be on the top of a box to protect it. I did not find it and do not look forward to mentioning this to husband. I am sure it will be “my fault” that it is missing. Luckily in the time between I wrote this and posted it - husband came down and he had his ornament safely tucked away.
And I also had to do laundry tonight. Last week’s laundry was done a night early so there are an extra day’s clothes and I have towels and bed linens from home and the RV. I was unsure if I should strip the bed or leave it for our final expected trip at the October or clean the sheets and go through the mess of making up the bed again - my decision was made as there were tiny bits of dirt in the bed from it sitting made up - the day after we came home I went in and stripped the bed and took it apart (which has to be done to strip it and also to remake it up).
So, while it probably will not be noticeable to any of you as my posts go out in the middle of the night anyway, this post is going out - more quickly written than normal - about 2 hours late.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get to do things than normal - but as long as they get done in the end - that is all that matters. And talking to one’s mom - mine is 89 - is always more important than getting work done.
Thursday, October 20, 2016
ONGOING PROBLEMS RESOLVING, WELL, PROBLEMS
I have been dealing with something I find terribly annoying. Contacting someone and not hearing back to resolve the situation. I seem to get into periods in which I have several of these situations at once. I am in one of those periods now.
First, a serious problem is one for a club I am in. We decided to do a craft project and want to get kits for those members interested in the project. Unfortunately the kits for this type of project are not sold in the U.S. We found someone in Australia who makes the kits. I have been in contact with the designer several times by email. I made sure at first that there would be no problem shipping them to the U.S. I checked what method of payment would be accepted. I followed up a month ago with a partial list of the kits we want, pending hearing from a few last members. The designer has been extremely nice. Over a week ago I sent an email with a final listing of which kits we want and asked for an estimate of the shipping and kit costs - (and asked about insurance because it is comes to about $500 - and I mean U.S. dollars). I mentioned that I need an estimate as one of our members is letting us use her Paypal account and I have to deposit an approximate amount towards the charge in her bank account so she can transfer it to Paypal and pay for the kits. I have not heard back from the designer. I sent out a second email today, just in case the first one went astray - while also acknowledging that she might be busy and hoped that all was well with her. Now I wait.
Second, back in June my husband and I had blood work taken at our doctor. The doctor’s office forwarded the blood to the lab. Now, the past 2 years we have had a problem with our medical insurance due to the doctor using the wrong lab. In 2014 we had blood work done and our insurance company denied the claim from the lab the doctor sent the blood to and we received bills for the full amount of the lab work. It was rejected by our insurance as it was not an approved lab. We checked, the lab was on their list. I telephone and the insurance employee agreed with me that it was a covered lab. After several months it was resolved and the lab was paid in full. In 2015 we went to the same doctor and again blood work was done. It was sent to the same lab and again it was rejected. That time we were told that the lab was not on their plan and that it was not on their plan in 2014, but since it was mistakenly on their list then it had been covered and, despite never being told this in 2014, we should have known this and not gone to that lab. I was confused by this as we had not gone to the lab. Apparently because we go to the doctor for the blood work a week before we see the doctor, the insurance company thinks that we are going to the lab itself for the blood draw. Managed to get that fixed also. Both years the blood work was covered in full.
So now that we knew the story, before we went to the doctor this year for our blood work, I called the insurance company first and got the list of approved labs. I then called the doctor’s office and found out which one on the list they deal with. When we went for the blood work I wrote a note that our blood work had to go to this lab. It apparently did. Now we have been billed for a copay, which did not exist last year. I telephoned the insurance company and spoke with a pleasant fellow who actually tried to be helpful. He told me that was our copay. I pointed out that the past 2 years we did not pay anything. He said that we have a different plan this year - well, technically yes, but really no. I cannot find the copay in the plan book. The closest copay I can find is for $20 (each) less than we are being asked for. I pointed this out to him. He insisted we have the copays. Blood work is only covered if it is for preventative reasons. Huh? Well, I explained why we had the tests. They are covered and he was going to call the doctor’s office and tell them to resend with a corrected code. I thanked him. After I hung up I realized that he was probably not going to tell the doctor’s office to do this for my husband’s work, just mine.
I have trouble making telephone calls as we live off schedule from everyone else - we get up around noon and go to sleep at 4 am. I tried calling the doctor’s office the next day to check if they had been contacted and make sure they knew about husband’s lab work also. I found out that the office closes at 4 pm, not 5 pm. It was about a week before I had a chance to call again. It was again late in the day. I was told that I had to speak to “A” who handles the lab billing and she would not be in until the next morning. I was put through to the lab line and left a message explaining the situation and asking to be called. The next day at 1:30 in the afternoon I called the lab line again as I had not heard back and left another message.
Yesterday I tried calling again - left another message on the lab line. This morning I got up early (for us) and tried calling as “A” seems to only be there in the morning and I hoped to catch her in, but no, I got the machine, so I left another message. I also called this afternoon at 4:30 when the office staff had left so I could leave a message in the general “mail box” so someone else would know what is going on. Hopefully that will get me a call back.
Yesterday I wrote a letter to the lab explaining what is going on and asking them to take no further action until the matter is resolved with the doctor and insurance, just to cover us as the bill due date is coming up.
At the same time I received another mailing from the lab asking for a copy of my insurance card as a followup test was done and the info they were given was incorrect. That was also sent, but somehow I know when it is processed I will have the same problem as I am having with the other lab work.
Third, we have several problems with our supermarket. I finally had enough and wrote, online, to the corporate office. I did not contact the store management as the problems are not within the store problems, but, as they say, “above the manager’s pay grade” and based on decisions by corporate. Last Sunday I had a message on our answering machine from someone who identified himself as the manager of the store and he said he would call back on Monday. No one called Monday or Tuesday. Yesterday (Wednesday) I received an email from corporate saying that the manager had tried, but could not reach me and I should call him.
I replied. I explained that I had contacted corporate not the store management as the problems come from them - not the store management. They redid their self-service registers so that they hard to use in terms of accessing them, there are arguments among customers as to if there is one line or two for same and their software in same (I am not using an unacceptable word which comes to mind) is terrible. I pointed out that store management had tried to resolve one of the problems caused by the changes from management by putting up a small handwritten sign explaining there was one line for all 4 registers which no one sees. I have had to go to the service desk on several occasions to get a “rain check” for items in their circular that they do not have - generally the same item, they should know by now to ship more of it to the store if it always runs out right away when there is a sale. Despite numerous people in line waiting for help, the one employee (and the person varies depending on the day) at the service desk takes people who have just walked up to the counter to buy, check or redeem lottery tickets first. I am not talking one or two tickets - I am talking 20 minutes worth of purchasing, checking or redeeming tickets - and then if the lottery ticket person has a purchase - that is rung up for them while the rest of us wait. It is bad enough for someone who has decided to return something, but I am (as I explained) on the line because they did not have in stock what they advertised for sale. Lastly, we get a weekly circular delivered to us for this store which is for a different store in the chain. When I last asked why this was true, someone at corporate mailed the correct circular to me for about a month and that was the total resolution of my question.
At the same time I have emailed several printing companies about orders and they emailed back the next day with the information requested. How come they can do this for a stranger, but the others don’t contact back a customer?
So I am dealing with all 3 situations, while dealing with everything else life needs to have dealt with. I am so aggravated from not being contacted back.
Does not being contacted back bother you also?
First, a serious problem is one for a club I am in. We decided to do a craft project and want to get kits for those members interested in the project. Unfortunately the kits for this type of project are not sold in the U.S. We found someone in Australia who makes the kits. I have been in contact with the designer several times by email. I made sure at first that there would be no problem shipping them to the U.S. I checked what method of payment would be accepted. I followed up a month ago with a partial list of the kits we want, pending hearing from a few last members. The designer has been extremely nice. Over a week ago I sent an email with a final listing of which kits we want and asked for an estimate of the shipping and kit costs - (and asked about insurance because it is comes to about $500 - and I mean U.S. dollars). I mentioned that I need an estimate as one of our members is letting us use her Paypal account and I have to deposit an approximate amount towards the charge in her bank account so she can transfer it to Paypal and pay for the kits. I have not heard back from the designer. I sent out a second email today, just in case the first one went astray - while also acknowledging that she might be busy and hoped that all was well with her. Now I wait.
Second, back in June my husband and I had blood work taken at our doctor. The doctor’s office forwarded the blood to the lab. Now, the past 2 years we have had a problem with our medical insurance due to the doctor using the wrong lab. In 2014 we had blood work done and our insurance company denied the claim from the lab the doctor sent the blood to and we received bills for the full amount of the lab work. It was rejected by our insurance as it was not an approved lab. We checked, the lab was on their list. I telephone and the insurance employee agreed with me that it was a covered lab. After several months it was resolved and the lab was paid in full. In 2015 we went to the same doctor and again blood work was done. It was sent to the same lab and again it was rejected. That time we were told that the lab was not on their plan and that it was not on their plan in 2014, but since it was mistakenly on their list then it had been covered and, despite never being told this in 2014, we should have known this and not gone to that lab. I was confused by this as we had not gone to the lab. Apparently because we go to the doctor for the blood work a week before we see the doctor, the insurance company thinks that we are going to the lab itself for the blood draw. Managed to get that fixed also. Both years the blood work was covered in full.
So now that we knew the story, before we went to the doctor this year for our blood work, I called the insurance company first and got the list of approved labs. I then called the doctor’s office and found out which one on the list they deal with. When we went for the blood work I wrote a note that our blood work had to go to this lab. It apparently did. Now we have been billed for a copay, which did not exist last year. I telephoned the insurance company and spoke with a pleasant fellow who actually tried to be helpful. He told me that was our copay. I pointed out that the past 2 years we did not pay anything. He said that we have a different plan this year - well, technically yes, but really no. I cannot find the copay in the plan book. The closest copay I can find is for $20 (each) less than we are being asked for. I pointed this out to him. He insisted we have the copays. Blood work is only covered if it is for preventative reasons. Huh? Well, I explained why we had the tests. They are covered and he was going to call the doctor’s office and tell them to resend with a corrected code. I thanked him. After I hung up I realized that he was probably not going to tell the doctor’s office to do this for my husband’s work, just mine.
I have trouble making telephone calls as we live off schedule from everyone else - we get up around noon and go to sleep at 4 am. I tried calling the doctor’s office the next day to check if they had been contacted and make sure they knew about husband’s lab work also. I found out that the office closes at 4 pm, not 5 pm. It was about a week before I had a chance to call again. It was again late in the day. I was told that I had to speak to “A” who handles the lab billing and she would not be in until the next morning. I was put through to the lab line and left a message explaining the situation and asking to be called. The next day at 1:30 in the afternoon I called the lab line again as I had not heard back and left another message.
Yesterday I tried calling again - left another message on the lab line. This morning I got up early (for us) and tried calling as “A” seems to only be there in the morning and I hoped to catch her in, but no, I got the machine, so I left another message. I also called this afternoon at 4:30 when the office staff had left so I could leave a message in the general “mail box” so someone else would know what is going on. Hopefully that will get me a call back.
Yesterday I wrote a letter to the lab explaining what is going on and asking them to take no further action until the matter is resolved with the doctor and insurance, just to cover us as the bill due date is coming up.
At the same time I received another mailing from the lab asking for a copy of my insurance card as a followup test was done and the info they were given was incorrect. That was also sent, but somehow I know when it is processed I will have the same problem as I am having with the other lab work.
Third, we have several problems with our supermarket. I finally had enough and wrote, online, to the corporate office. I did not contact the store management as the problems are not within the store problems, but, as they say, “above the manager’s pay grade” and based on decisions by corporate. Last Sunday I had a message on our answering machine from someone who identified himself as the manager of the store and he said he would call back on Monday. No one called Monday or Tuesday. Yesterday (Wednesday) I received an email from corporate saying that the manager had tried, but could not reach me and I should call him.
I replied. I explained that I had contacted corporate not the store management as the problems come from them - not the store management. They redid their self-service registers so that they hard to use in terms of accessing them, there are arguments among customers as to if there is one line or two for same and their software in same (I am not using an unacceptable word which comes to mind) is terrible. I pointed out that store management had tried to resolve one of the problems caused by the changes from management by putting up a small handwritten sign explaining there was one line for all 4 registers which no one sees. I have had to go to the service desk on several occasions to get a “rain check” for items in their circular that they do not have - generally the same item, they should know by now to ship more of it to the store if it always runs out right away when there is a sale. Despite numerous people in line waiting for help, the one employee (and the person varies depending on the day) at the service desk takes people who have just walked up to the counter to buy, check or redeem lottery tickets first. I am not talking one or two tickets - I am talking 20 minutes worth of purchasing, checking or redeeming tickets - and then if the lottery ticket person has a purchase - that is rung up for them while the rest of us wait. It is bad enough for someone who has decided to return something, but I am (as I explained) on the line because they did not have in stock what they advertised for sale. Lastly, we get a weekly circular delivered to us for this store which is for a different store in the chain. When I last asked why this was true, someone at corporate mailed the correct circular to me for about a month and that was the total resolution of my question.
At the same time I have emailed several printing companies about orders and they emailed back the next day with the information requested. How come they can do this for a stranger, but the others don’t contact back a customer?
So I am dealing with all 3 situations, while dealing with everything else life needs to have dealt with. I am so aggravated from not being contacted back.
Does not being contacted back bother you also?
Thursday, October 6, 2016
I DON'T EVEN REMEMBER SEEING THE PAST WEEK GO BY!
Well, another week has gone by. Have I caught up on what I wanted to catch up on? Nooo! It was another of those “time is going by and nothing is getting done” weeks.
Well, technically this is not true. I did catch up some things which were waiting and I did do things during the week. It just feels like I did nothing.
Last Friday I met with a client to get his tax return information to prepare his return. Of course to do this I had to move my “Friday errands” to Thursday. So between the two, that took most of the two days.
On Saturday one of the other members of my embroidery chapter and I and my husband were at the same local Fair which I mentioned entering in an earlier post. We had a table in the Exhibition Hall (a recreation of the 19th century building where the art, crafts, needlework, flowers, children and culinary entries are displayed) to demonstrate embroidery and talk about our chapter. We had a number of ladies stop - we always do - as well as men and children. Some take the information about our chapter, but then we never hear from them. In addition to showing the larger community of the Island that we exist, having fun working on our needlework, talking to people about something we love to do (and I love to talk also), our National organization wants the local chapters to do outreach and this is outreach. So that took up Saturday.
Sunday we went out for our normal day - lunch at Costco and then walk around and look - despite people on TV and friends claiming it is impossible to go to Costco and leave without spending hundreds of dollars, we only buy items we need and generally they are planned purchases. Then we went to Bjs (a similar type of store) for gas - we needed to buy a food item there and went in for it first as they were giving 5 cents a gallon off if one made a purchase first - I think we saved something like 50 cents. Then a stop in the Walmart out in this area (as opposed to the ones we go to almost every day near us). We wasted a bit of time there as we then went after the Fair closed for the day (last day) so we could pick up my entries. Sunday night started one of the major Jewish religious holidays. I had cooked a stew for dinner for it over Friday and Saturday night so I just had to heat it up as I knew we would be home on the late side to cook dinner. I watched religious services on television.
Monday was the main day of the Jewish holiday and it is a day when one is not suppose to be doing normal things - one should go to the synagogue and pray during the holiday. I spend the day reading a contemplative book and praying at home. I again watched religious services on television. While the holiday lasts through Tuesday afternoon, I observe one day of it so Monday night I had a bit of a chance to catch up on what was not done that would normally be done over the weekend and on Monday - like check email.
This brings us to Tuesday - feel the week rushing past? Tuesday we stopped at the Walmart supermarket near us to buy some grocery items not available at the other general Walmarts near us. I am not sure if I have I mentioned that we do not have huge Walmarts as are elsewhere. Our stores have small food sections, not supermarkets and even this specialized supermarket is greatly lacking compared to the supermarket sections in regular Walmarts. No bread or hamburger rolls in stock - this seems to happen a lot at this store. I caught up on paperwork waiting to be done - and laundry waiting to be folded from last week. I paid bills for one of the organizations I am treasurer of. I prepared for the meeting today of my embroidery chapter - packing the supplies needed for the project to be done at the meeting, making up Treasurer’s report, etc. I also got some errands ready to be done as the first Wednesday of the month is my day out alone. After the meeting I do things husband hates - like return soda bottles.
And lastly, today. I went to my embroidery chapter meeting which took a good (fun) chunk of the day. I then had lunch out alone and ran the errands. I returned the soda bottles to Walmart and went in with the slips from the soda bottle machines (whopping 95 cents) to buy bread and hamburger rolls, figuring to use the deposit returns towards it. There was none there either. Perhaps the possibility of the hurricane which may be heading this way - although probably not - has caused a run on bread? The stores did not seem crowded enough for hurricane panic, so perhaps they did not get deliveries?
When I came home I prepared the tax return for the client whose information I picked up last week. That took until dinner - and dinner was late. After dinner I went back upstairs to the office (instead of immediately sitting down and writing to you nice people who read this) to pay bills and figure out how much I have to transfer to cover bills until next Friday. This would normally be done tomorrow night for the errands to be run this Friday, but we are going to eye doctor on Friday, so we will go tomorrow to the bank.
In between this the meals were cooked, the dishes washed, the laundry done - I am doing the laundry as I write this. I am dealing with putting together an order for my embroidery chapter for an education project - making sure members have paid their share of their kit, following up on new members paying their dues, making arrangements to deposit funds to the bank account of one our board members who will pay for it with her Paypal account, contacting the woman - in Australia - who designs the kits and we have to order them from, about the coming order, figuring out who we are going to have the order sent to... So I know I did things - it just does not feel as if I did. I tend to look at the outgoing mail during the week and the filing to be done on Friday and if there is little of either I feel as if I have not done anything, if there is a lot of both, then I feel as if I got a lot accomplished. There is little of both.
What makes you feel as if you have accomplished things during the week? Do you also feel as if you got nothing done, when you also actually did a lot of things?
Well, technically this is not true. I did catch up some things which were waiting and I did do things during the week. It just feels like I did nothing.
Last Friday I met with a client to get his tax return information to prepare his return. Of course to do this I had to move my “Friday errands” to Thursday. So between the two, that took most of the two days.
On Saturday one of the other members of my embroidery chapter and I and my husband were at the same local Fair which I mentioned entering in an earlier post. We had a table in the Exhibition Hall (a recreation of the 19th century building where the art, crafts, needlework, flowers, children and culinary entries are displayed) to demonstrate embroidery and talk about our chapter. We had a number of ladies stop - we always do - as well as men and children. Some take the information about our chapter, but then we never hear from them. In addition to showing the larger community of the Island that we exist, having fun working on our needlework, talking to people about something we love to do (and I love to talk also), our National organization wants the local chapters to do outreach and this is outreach. So that took up Saturday.
Sunday we went out for our normal day - lunch at Costco and then walk around and look - despite people on TV and friends claiming it is impossible to go to Costco and leave without spending hundreds of dollars, we only buy items we need and generally they are planned purchases. Then we went to Bjs (a similar type of store) for gas - we needed to buy a food item there and went in for it first as they were giving 5 cents a gallon off if one made a purchase first - I think we saved something like 50 cents. Then a stop in the Walmart out in this area (as opposed to the ones we go to almost every day near us). We wasted a bit of time there as we then went after the Fair closed for the day (last day) so we could pick up my entries. Sunday night started one of the major Jewish religious holidays. I had cooked a stew for dinner for it over Friday and Saturday night so I just had to heat it up as I knew we would be home on the late side to cook dinner. I watched religious services on television.
Monday was the main day of the Jewish holiday and it is a day when one is not suppose to be doing normal things - one should go to the synagogue and pray during the holiday. I spend the day reading a contemplative book and praying at home. I again watched religious services on television. While the holiday lasts through Tuesday afternoon, I observe one day of it so Monday night I had a bit of a chance to catch up on what was not done that would normally be done over the weekend and on Monday - like check email.
This brings us to Tuesday - feel the week rushing past? Tuesday we stopped at the Walmart supermarket near us to buy some grocery items not available at the other general Walmarts near us. I am not sure if I have I mentioned that we do not have huge Walmarts as are elsewhere. Our stores have small food sections, not supermarkets and even this specialized supermarket is greatly lacking compared to the supermarket sections in regular Walmarts. No bread or hamburger rolls in stock - this seems to happen a lot at this store. I caught up on paperwork waiting to be done - and laundry waiting to be folded from last week. I paid bills for one of the organizations I am treasurer of. I prepared for the meeting today of my embroidery chapter - packing the supplies needed for the project to be done at the meeting, making up Treasurer’s report, etc. I also got some errands ready to be done as the first Wednesday of the month is my day out alone. After the meeting I do things husband hates - like return soda bottles.
And lastly, today. I went to my embroidery chapter meeting which took a good (fun) chunk of the day. I then had lunch out alone and ran the errands. I returned the soda bottles to Walmart and went in with the slips from the soda bottle machines (whopping 95 cents) to buy bread and hamburger rolls, figuring to use the deposit returns towards it. There was none there either. Perhaps the possibility of the hurricane which may be heading this way - although probably not - has caused a run on bread? The stores did not seem crowded enough for hurricane panic, so perhaps they did not get deliveries?
When I came home I prepared the tax return for the client whose information I picked up last week. That took until dinner - and dinner was late. After dinner I went back upstairs to the office (instead of immediately sitting down and writing to you nice people who read this) to pay bills and figure out how much I have to transfer to cover bills until next Friday. This would normally be done tomorrow night for the errands to be run this Friday, but we are going to eye doctor on Friday, so we will go tomorrow to the bank.
In between this the meals were cooked, the dishes washed, the laundry done - I am doing the laundry as I write this. I am dealing with putting together an order for my embroidery chapter for an education project - making sure members have paid their share of their kit, following up on new members paying their dues, making arrangements to deposit funds to the bank account of one our board members who will pay for it with her Paypal account, contacting the woman - in Australia - who designs the kits and we have to order them from, about the coming order, figuring out who we are going to have the order sent to... So I know I did things - it just does not feel as if I did. I tend to look at the outgoing mail during the week and the filing to be done on Friday and if there is little of either I feel as if I have not done anything, if there is a lot of both, then I feel as if I got a lot accomplished. There is little of both.
What makes you feel as if you have accomplished things during the week? Do you also feel as if you got nothing done, when you also actually did a lot of things?
Thursday, September 22, 2016
HOW CAN I BE SO BUSY DOING NOTHING?
Have you ever gone through on of those time periods where you have things to do and don’t get to them as you have minor things to do like crazy - although none of them are really anything of importance? I have been going through a period of time like this the last few weeks and sometimes it always seems that way to me.
First, as you know from prior posts, husband has been planning trips that I have to try to work around. If we are going on a trip household chores - especially laundry and financial - have to planned around and for the trips. Laundry must be done so we have clean clothes to bring. Bills have to be paid before we go away which will be due while we will be away and we have to make sure we have money in the checking account for the bills, cash for the trip, etc. When one does not know how long one is going away for or even if one is going away or not, this is hard to do. So I have to plan for the maximum amount of time we will be away - and all possible dates (will we leave Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Next Monday?) for the trip.
Also mentioned before one day a month I have to go out to a client for work. I generally go on a Tuesday or Thursday due to a variety of reasons. I had to go to the client last week and file her sales taxes after I came home (I have no Internet access at her place of business). One of the trips we were planning was also last week. So I had to make sure I went to her early in the week so I would be available whenever we actually went. Then there were a couple of problems I had to deal with for her after I was home - Time running like sand through my fingers.
We then went on the trip. It ended up a day trip to the Valley Forge, PA area, followed by a ride to Lancaster, PA for dinner and home. The shortness of the trip allowed me to catch up on some paperwork sitting on my desk (bank recs and such).
As I mentioned last week we made a frame for my embroidery piece a week ago Monday, and then after husband painted it, we framed the piece Tuesday (after I came home from my client). Over the weekend we had to take the piece to the event it was entered in. I also had another piece entered in the same event. So, last Sunday we had to drive to the location of the event and drop off the pieces. Another good chunk of a day gone.
Monday night our reenactment unit had their monthly meeting. I had to prepare paperwork to bring (I am on the board and have to give a report each time). This took up a chunk of the afternoon and the meeting runs so late that we eat dinner part before - soup - and then the main part after the meeting, around 11 pm.
Tuesday we went back to where we dropped off my embroidery as we were judging in other categories. This takes up most of the day. Then we had to eat lunch and run our regular errands on the way home. Oh, I got to check my entries - I got a red ribbon (2nd) for the embroidery and nothing for the smaller piece. Oh, well, it is for fun. (First prize is a whopping $5, so it is not done for the money.)
In between all of this I helped husband warp (set up the threads to weave through) his loom. This takes about an hour or more to do. He finished the piece and today we had to wash it.
Some how I have managed to catch up on followup I had to do from my embroidery group meeting about a coming project. I also am the “web master” and change the website after the meeting to feature the next meeting. So, of course, with cleaning and other much more important things to do, I decided that the website was missing an “about us” page and have spent parts of three days doing it - while doing everything else.
This coming weekend our reenactment group is having an event. I have to set up the embroidery I work on at events (I demonstrate period needlework) so that all the threads I might need are set up on reproduction “bobbins” (piece of wood) so I do not have to take out anything modern. We will also be packing our van for the event a day or so before. The president of the group cannot come, so husband will be in charge of the event as VP, more work for me.
Next weekend my embroidery group will be demonstrating needlework at the event I have my pieces entered in. I will have to pack in advance for that - including items belonging to the group that I have here. The day after husband and I will go back to the event (it runs 2 weekends) and pick up my pieces.
Then it will be next month and it starts all over!
So, I keep doing things, but never have time to GET THINGS DONE around the house. It amazes me how quickly the time passes. If I want to make a telephone call - for services needed, let alone family - it sits on my calendar for days and days - sometimes weeks and weeks. I really need to call my mom to say hello!
Have you found this happens to you? You are always doing things, but nothing you need to get done, gets done just the “other stuff”?
First, as you know from prior posts, husband has been planning trips that I have to try to work around. If we are going on a trip household chores - especially laundry and financial - have to planned around and for the trips. Laundry must be done so we have clean clothes to bring. Bills have to be paid before we go away which will be due while we will be away and we have to make sure we have money in the checking account for the bills, cash for the trip, etc. When one does not know how long one is going away for or even if one is going away or not, this is hard to do. So I have to plan for the maximum amount of time we will be away - and all possible dates (will we leave Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Next Monday?) for the trip.
Also mentioned before one day a month I have to go out to a client for work. I generally go on a Tuesday or Thursday due to a variety of reasons. I had to go to the client last week and file her sales taxes after I came home (I have no Internet access at her place of business). One of the trips we were planning was also last week. So I had to make sure I went to her early in the week so I would be available whenever we actually went. Then there were a couple of problems I had to deal with for her after I was home - Time running like sand through my fingers.
We then went on the trip. It ended up a day trip to the Valley Forge, PA area, followed by a ride to Lancaster, PA for dinner and home. The shortness of the trip allowed me to catch up on some paperwork sitting on my desk (bank recs and such).
As I mentioned last week we made a frame for my embroidery piece a week ago Monday, and then after husband painted it, we framed the piece Tuesday (after I came home from my client). Over the weekend we had to take the piece to the event it was entered in. I also had another piece entered in the same event. So, last Sunday we had to drive to the location of the event and drop off the pieces. Another good chunk of a day gone.
Monday night our reenactment unit had their monthly meeting. I had to prepare paperwork to bring (I am on the board and have to give a report each time). This took up a chunk of the afternoon and the meeting runs so late that we eat dinner part before - soup - and then the main part after the meeting, around 11 pm.
Tuesday we went back to where we dropped off my embroidery as we were judging in other categories. This takes up most of the day. Then we had to eat lunch and run our regular errands on the way home. Oh, I got to check my entries - I got a red ribbon (2nd) for the embroidery and nothing for the smaller piece. Oh, well, it is for fun. (First prize is a whopping $5, so it is not done for the money.)
In between all of this I helped husband warp (set up the threads to weave through) his loom. This takes about an hour or more to do. He finished the piece and today we had to wash it.
Some how I have managed to catch up on followup I had to do from my embroidery group meeting about a coming project. I also am the “web master” and change the website after the meeting to feature the next meeting. So, of course, with cleaning and other much more important things to do, I decided that the website was missing an “about us” page and have spent parts of three days doing it - while doing everything else.
This coming weekend our reenactment group is having an event. I have to set up the embroidery I work on at events (I demonstrate period needlework) so that all the threads I might need are set up on reproduction “bobbins” (piece of wood) so I do not have to take out anything modern. We will also be packing our van for the event a day or so before. The president of the group cannot come, so husband will be in charge of the event as VP, more work for me.
Next weekend my embroidery group will be demonstrating needlework at the event I have my pieces entered in. I will have to pack in advance for that - including items belonging to the group that I have here. The day after husband and I will go back to the event (it runs 2 weekends) and pick up my pieces.
Then it will be next month and it starts all over!
So, I keep doing things, but never have time to GET THINGS DONE around the house. It amazes me how quickly the time passes. If I want to make a telephone call - for services needed, let alone family - it sits on my calendar for days and days - sometimes weeks and weeks. I really need to call my mom to say hello!
Have you found this happens to you? You are always doing things, but nothing you need to get done, gets done just the “other stuff”?
Thursday, June 16, 2016
ORGANIZING OUR STUDIO
My husband and I have a “studio”. One of the reasons we picked the house we did is that it had a family room off the kitchen - actually it sort of opens into the kitchen with a big squared off archway between the rooms. It is not an original part of our house. One of the several owners before us added it to the back of the house as room to watch television and spend time with their family. To us it was a room to set up to work on our crafts - personal and to sell - and I would be able to cook at the same time in the adjacent kitchen. In the days before cable boxes and flat screen TVs we could also put our kitchen TV on a lazy susan and turn it around to also watch in the studio.
We set up the studio to suit our needs. We each have a 5 ft by 2 ½ foot office type table to work on. The tables sit back to back so if needed we have a 5 ft x 5ft space to work on - the tables are, for some reason, about an inch different in height, but generally that is not a problem if we need space. I have a bridge table in the corner of the room which abuts the table. When I used to make a lot of baby quilts it worked well to hold them up while I stitching them. It also is good to hold supplies and stuff next to me. I have two stacks of small plastic drawer units to hold ideas in progress, spare spools of thread, etc. There is a large 3 drawer plastic chest underneath with my sewing supplies and items to make small bears I used to make a lot of. Husband just had his table until a few years ago, after the bed bugs when I was trying to better organize the room, I added a 2 shelf plastic unit to hold items he needs more often than others next to him along the wall.
We have husband’s long dresser from his bedroom when he was a boy at the ends of the tables (the other ends are against the wall). Drawers hold embroidery supplies and pieces - completed and waiting to be made, miniature punch needle - ditto, wood turning parts and assembly tools, lucets, wooden games husband makes, some fancy batting and iron on glue and a pasta maker (well it is right off our kitchen and no place else was large enough). On top of it we have a 3 drawer unit which has a drawer each for items either of us is working on and a drawer of glues - all kinds of glues. (If we need glue in the house we know to look for it here.) There are an assortment of paper cutters - sliding ones, guillotine type ones, etc. There is also something called an Ellison machine - what is used in schools to cut letters, pictures, etc. to decorate classrooms.
We have 2 other dressers which we bought over the years which hold fabric - we have a lot of fabric. These are the ones which are cut pieces - the bolts are in the basement. We also have a dresser/cabinet combination - also husband’s from when he was a boy - which holds unstarted skeins of embroidery floss (Walmart discontinued them some years ago and we bought 2 of each color they had - since then they have brought them back) and other assorted needlework threads. The fabric dresser behind husband’s chair at his work table also serves as a counter to put things on and work on. We have two tall bookcases for books and magazines - mostly craft, but my recipe books are also here (again, remember this is next to the kitchen) and there is a collection of girls books I have and I keep it here as husband needed most of my bookcase in our office/library and there are some shelves along one wall which holds items we have made.
Lastly, of what I will mention right now, we have a big piece of furniture which I do not know what to call. It is divided in two - one side has shelves with full length doors in front of them and the other side has shelves with 2 small drawers at the bottom. The plan is to take the doors off and then plastic boxes of supplies can be turned depthwise - as they are on the other side of the unit - and smaller boxes put next to them - ditto.
When we had the bedbugs I had to heat all of the cut fabric in the dryer on high heat for 50 minutes and then bag them in sealed plastic bags. It was a mess. Between the fabric and personal fabric items I filled over 60 bags of fabric items. The thought of returning the fabric to the drawers was overwhelming. I finally decided to do 10 pieces a day. Husband pointed out that 10 pieces is not much - I replied that it is 10 pieces put away more than before. Day by day I did this. Some days it went well and I put away more than 10 pieces - other days there was just no time. Within a month and a half to 2 months - the fabric was put away - neater and better organized than before and I had done something I always planned to do - I cut a piece of each fabric and made a swatch card by gluing the piece of fabric to half a 3.5x5 inch index card. I then put the cards into the plastic sleeves made to hold baseball cards in a looseleaf book. (The looseleaf book dates back to high school.) We can now look through the book for fabric when need it. It is marked with the purpose the fabric was bought for, where it is located, and how much we have (all in pencil so it can be changed as needed). I also have a diagram in the front of the looseleaf book with the dressers, a number I gave to each drawer, and generally what is in each drawer to make it easier to find.
I sorted ribbon. I sorted lace. I bagged pompoms. I put all of the weaving, knitting, and crocheting and related stuff on one shelf in the unnamed shelf unit. I made a box with assorted general crafts. I made a box of buttons. I sorted findings for leatherwork into a sectional box (with a note where I stored spare in the basement). I was progressing along well. I used the dining room table covered over to protect it, some wood crates we used at craft shows to hold up the shelves, plastic boxes and such to sort and store craft supplies.
Then I hit a snag. We had a tall thin set of plastic drawers. They never worked well - any weight in them was too much. We decided to replace it with a new and better made dresser. We started looking. We could not get too wide a dresser as one of the bookcases faces the side of the dresser and we have to have room to walk in front of the bookcase to have access to the shelves. It took us about a year to find a dresser. We bought one in the children’s section of Ikea. We assembled it and set it up. I started figuring out what to put in it. Top drawer - in sectional dividers - scissors and small hand tools (and over the years it has also accumulated personal stuff I have to deal with), next drawer - paints, markers, inks, crayons color pencils, another drawer husband’s paper cutting scissors and paper, a drawer with pieces of felt in it. It was going so well.
Then we had mice in the (again, adjacent) kitchen. I carefully sanitized most of the cleaning supplies and put them in some of the cartons I had been using for sorting craft supplies and they ended up in front of the new dresser - leaving supplies unstored and drawers empty and inaccessible. This went on for several years until I got around to cleaning out under the sink in the kitchen this past year and moved the kitchen stuff back in place.
Now I could go back to organizing. In the interim we, of course, needed the dining room so supplies and what they were in were stored back in the studio willy nilly - filling up space and blocking things.
Two weeks ago husband was again talking about a weaving book “we” own. He wanted it as it contained instructions on how to make a certain type of small loom he wanted to make. I was sick and tired of hearing about this magic, missing book, so at 3 in the morning, I moved the crates and so on that were stashed in front of the bookcase facing the new dresser. I got everything out from in front of the bookcase and found the “weaving section” - 3 books. (I had done a lot of work at sorting and organizing in the studio before I got stumped at continuing.) I gave him the book that seemed to be what he was looking for and it was - yay for me. It did not have the directions he wanted for the small loom. Oh, well.
Well, now we had crates and other items out blocking space in the room. I went through the crates and they had much less in them than I thought and in one evening they were emptied out of everything which did not belong in them (table covers for craft shows were left in them). The next thing to do was to put them away.
The crates and a variety of other items store under my work table - far enough in to be out of my way when sitting at the table as they are rarely used. (The table itself is covered with stuff to be sorted and stored.) I figured that I would take out the plastic boxes under the table which “I knew” held the small bears I had made, store the crates, and put back the boxes - easy, peasy - half hour, 45 minutes at most. I bet you can guess what is coming -
I pulled out the boxes and put them on husband’s studio table. (His table is empty as he has been drying items he weaves on it.) I found out that most of the boxes had items other than I thought they did. Some years ago we had bought square and rectangular gift boxes for pens and jewelry which husband made to sell. They did not sell well. We have since been using the square boxes in shipping out some other items he makes and have been running out of the square boxes. One of these plastic boxes had some of the turned items in it - I combined some of the items which were in square boxes into 2 rectangular boxes - hmmm, 4 more boxes he could use. I then took the carton which had the jewelry pieces in the gift boxes and combined same into many less rectangular boxes- for storage - and ended up with a good number of square boxes. I also found that this way all of the small turned items fit in the one plastic box for storage (bowls, plates, etc. are in another carton). I then managed to combine 3 cartons of boxes into one as enough had been taken out and one also used to hold the jewelry - what a great change in storage space! (The 2 empty cartons went out to the porch for recycling - one was used for last week’s recycling and the other will be shortly be used for same.
I then climbed under my table and stored the crates, the plastic boxes, and some other craft show display items under the table - 2 plus hours work - but what a difference. What a great feeling of getting something done. I went on to clear some smaller areas and put the excess stuff away.
Now, I have mentioned in the past that we do 1770's reenacting. Husband is looking for something to do at events - he used to be commander, but no longer is and can now do what he wants instead of needing to run events. He needs a small, period looking table for several of his ideas. The table has to be able to be taken apart for storage and in transit. He decided the best way would be to use screw in legs which are available at home/lumber stores even though these are definitely not correct to the period, but made properly it would just look like a small table with legs. (What does this have to do with organizing - just wait and see.)
We went out the day after I had stored the crates and boxes away to find legs that looked right. He saw the price of the legs and realized that it would cost much more to make the table than he had planned - he had to get wood for the table top and the screw pieces also. Then I said magic words - “When I was under the table last night putting stuff away I had to move 2 sets of those legs.” He could not figure out why we had them - I reminded him that he had made a table for a knitting machine - decades ago - but neither of us can remember what the other set of legs is for. I was pretty sure one set of the legs was definitely passable for the purpose.
So, we went home and, yes, I had to take back out most of what I stored away the night before. This time I was smart - I handed him my chair so it was out of the way and I did not need to deal with it. (Notice when I am organizing and cleaning it is “me” doing it and he is scarce - when he needs table legs it is “we” doing it and he is “helping” me.) Well the legs were fine and then I had to store everything else back - again.
The other night - now that I have access to the bookcase - I sorted needlework magazines which I have just been fitting in on top of books when I did not have access. Most of them went into the magazine cases we have, I need 2-3 more magazine cases and, yes, I have decided some magazines I no longer need for reference and have started looking through them for any articles I want to keep and putting the rest out for recycling.
He had mentioned that one issue of the magazines I had and was sorting was suppose to have an article on weaving. As I was going through I noticed that one of them had weaving on the cover - yes, it was the one he wanted. The craft magazines are now sorted by date. Many of them have previously had their tables of contents scanned into the computer to make searching for an article or subject easier. Now with access I will one day be able to scan the rest.
Yes, progress is finally being made again!
Have you been working on any organizing projects and finally making progress?
We set up the studio to suit our needs. We each have a 5 ft by 2 ½ foot office type table to work on. The tables sit back to back so if needed we have a 5 ft x 5ft space to work on - the tables are, for some reason, about an inch different in height, but generally that is not a problem if we need space. I have a bridge table in the corner of the room which abuts the table. When I used to make a lot of baby quilts it worked well to hold them up while I stitching them. It also is good to hold supplies and stuff next to me. I have two stacks of small plastic drawer units to hold ideas in progress, spare spools of thread, etc. There is a large 3 drawer plastic chest underneath with my sewing supplies and items to make small bears I used to make a lot of. Husband just had his table until a few years ago, after the bed bugs when I was trying to better organize the room, I added a 2 shelf plastic unit to hold items he needs more often than others next to him along the wall.
We have husband’s long dresser from his bedroom when he was a boy at the ends of the tables (the other ends are against the wall). Drawers hold embroidery supplies and pieces - completed and waiting to be made, miniature punch needle - ditto, wood turning parts and assembly tools, lucets, wooden games husband makes, some fancy batting and iron on glue and a pasta maker (well it is right off our kitchen and no place else was large enough). On top of it we have a 3 drawer unit which has a drawer each for items either of us is working on and a drawer of glues - all kinds of glues. (If we need glue in the house we know to look for it here.) There are an assortment of paper cutters - sliding ones, guillotine type ones, etc. There is also something called an Ellison machine - what is used in schools to cut letters, pictures, etc. to decorate classrooms.
We have 2 other dressers which we bought over the years which hold fabric - we have a lot of fabric. These are the ones which are cut pieces - the bolts are in the basement. We also have a dresser/cabinet combination - also husband’s from when he was a boy - which holds unstarted skeins of embroidery floss (Walmart discontinued them some years ago and we bought 2 of each color they had - since then they have brought them back) and other assorted needlework threads. The fabric dresser behind husband’s chair at his work table also serves as a counter to put things on and work on. We have two tall bookcases for books and magazines - mostly craft, but my recipe books are also here (again, remember this is next to the kitchen) and there is a collection of girls books I have and I keep it here as husband needed most of my bookcase in our office/library and there are some shelves along one wall which holds items we have made.
Lastly, of what I will mention right now, we have a big piece of furniture which I do not know what to call. It is divided in two - one side has shelves with full length doors in front of them and the other side has shelves with 2 small drawers at the bottom. The plan is to take the doors off and then plastic boxes of supplies can be turned depthwise - as they are on the other side of the unit - and smaller boxes put next to them - ditto.
When we had the bedbugs I had to heat all of the cut fabric in the dryer on high heat for 50 minutes and then bag them in sealed plastic bags. It was a mess. Between the fabric and personal fabric items I filled over 60 bags of fabric items. The thought of returning the fabric to the drawers was overwhelming. I finally decided to do 10 pieces a day. Husband pointed out that 10 pieces is not much - I replied that it is 10 pieces put away more than before. Day by day I did this. Some days it went well and I put away more than 10 pieces - other days there was just no time. Within a month and a half to 2 months - the fabric was put away - neater and better organized than before and I had done something I always planned to do - I cut a piece of each fabric and made a swatch card by gluing the piece of fabric to half a 3.5x5 inch index card. I then put the cards into the plastic sleeves made to hold baseball cards in a looseleaf book. (The looseleaf book dates back to high school.) We can now look through the book for fabric when need it. It is marked with the purpose the fabric was bought for, where it is located, and how much we have (all in pencil so it can be changed as needed). I also have a diagram in the front of the looseleaf book with the dressers, a number I gave to each drawer, and generally what is in each drawer to make it easier to find.
I sorted ribbon. I sorted lace. I bagged pompoms. I put all of the weaving, knitting, and crocheting and related stuff on one shelf in the unnamed shelf unit. I made a box with assorted general crafts. I made a box of buttons. I sorted findings for leatherwork into a sectional box (with a note where I stored spare in the basement). I was progressing along well. I used the dining room table covered over to protect it, some wood crates we used at craft shows to hold up the shelves, plastic boxes and such to sort and store craft supplies.
Then I hit a snag. We had a tall thin set of plastic drawers. They never worked well - any weight in them was too much. We decided to replace it with a new and better made dresser. We started looking. We could not get too wide a dresser as one of the bookcases faces the side of the dresser and we have to have room to walk in front of the bookcase to have access to the shelves. It took us about a year to find a dresser. We bought one in the children’s section of Ikea. We assembled it and set it up. I started figuring out what to put in it. Top drawer - in sectional dividers - scissors and small hand tools (and over the years it has also accumulated personal stuff I have to deal with), next drawer - paints, markers, inks, crayons color pencils, another drawer husband’s paper cutting scissors and paper, a drawer with pieces of felt in it. It was going so well.
Then we had mice in the (again, adjacent) kitchen. I carefully sanitized most of the cleaning supplies and put them in some of the cartons I had been using for sorting craft supplies and they ended up in front of the new dresser - leaving supplies unstored and drawers empty and inaccessible. This went on for several years until I got around to cleaning out under the sink in the kitchen this past year and moved the kitchen stuff back in place.
Now I could go back to organizing. In the interim we, of course, needed the dining room so supplies and what they were in were stored back in the studio willy nilly - filling up space and blocking things.
Two weeks ago husband was again talking about a weaving book “we” own. He wanted it as it contained instructions on how to make a certain type of small loom he wanted to make. I was sick and tired of hearing about this magic, missing book, so at 3 in the morning, I moved the crates and so on that were stashed in front of the bookcase facing the new dresser. I got everything out from in front of the bookcase and found the “weaving section” - 3 books. (I had done a lot of work at sorting and organizing in the studio before I got stumped at continuing.) I gave him the book that seemed to be what he was looking for and it was - yay for me. It did not have the directions he wanted for the small loom. Oh, well.
Well, now we had crates and other items out blocking space in the room. I went through the crates and they had much less in them than I thought and in one evening they were emptied out of everything which did not belong in them (table covers for craft shows were left in them). The next thing to do was to put them away.
The crates and a variety of other items store under my work table - far enough in to be out of my way when sitting at the table as they are rarely used. (The table itself is covered with stuff to be sorted and stored.) I figured that I would take out the plastic boxes under the table which “I knew” held the small bears I had made, store the crates, and put back the boxes - easy, peasy - half hour, 45 minutes at most. I bet you can guess what is coming -
I pulled out the boxes and put them on husband’s studio table. (His table is empty as he has been drying items he weaves on it.) I found out that most of the boxes had items other than I thought they did. Some years ago we had bought square and rectangular gift boxes for pens and jewelry which husband made to sell. They did not sell well. We have since been using the square boxes in shipping out some other items he makes and have been running out of the square boxes. One of these plastic boxes had some of the turned items in it - I combined some of the items which were in square boxes into 2 rectangular boxes - hmmm, 4 more boxes he could use. I then took the carton which had the jewelry pieces in the gift boxes and combined same into many less rectangular boxes- for storage - and ended up with a good number of square boxes. I also found that this way all of the small turned items fit in the one plastic box for storage (bowls, plates, etc. are in another carton). I then managed to combine 3 cartons of boxes into one as enough had been taken out and one also used to hold the jewelry - what a great change in storage space! (The 2 empty cartons went out to the porch for recycling - one was used for last week’s recycling and the other will be shortly be used for same.
I then climbed under my table and stored the crates, the plastic boxes, and some other craft show display items under the table - 2 plus hours work - but what a difference. What a great feeling of getting something done. I went on to clear some smaller areas and put the excess stuff away.
Now, I have mentioned in the past that we do 1770's reenacting. Husband is looking for something to do at events - he used to be commander, but no longer is and can now do what he wants instead of needing to run events. He needs a small, period looking table for several of his ideas. The table has to be able to be taken apart for storage and in transit. He decided the best way would be to use screw in legs which are available at home/lumber stores even though these are definitely not correct to the period, but made properly it would just look like a small table with legs. (What does this have to do with organizing - just wait and see.)
We went out the day after I had stored the crates and boxes away to find legs that looked right. He saw the price of the legs and realized that it would cost much more to make the table than he had planned - he had to get wood for the table top and the screw pieces also. Then I said magic words - “When I was under the table last night putting stuff away I had to move 2 sets of those legs.” He could not figure out why we had them - I reminded him that he had made a table for a knitting machine - decades ago - but neither of us can remember what the other set of legs is for. I was pretty sure one set of the legs was definitely passable for the purpose.
So, we went home and, yes, I had to take back out most of what I stored away the night before. This time I was smart - I handed him my chair so it was out of the way and I did not need to deal with it. (Notice when I am organizing and cleaning it is “me” doing it and he is scarce - when he needs table legs it is “we” doing it and he is “helping” me.) Well the legs were fine and then I had to store everything else back - again.
The other night - now that I have access to the bookcase - I sorted needlework magazines which I have just been fitting in on top of books when I did not have access. Most of them went into the magazine cases we have, I need 2-3 more magazine cases and, yes, I have decided some magazines I no longer need for reference and have started looking through them for any articles I want to keep and putting the rest out for recycling.
He had mentioned that one issue of the magazines I had and was sorting was suppose to have an article on weaving. As I was going through I noticed that one of them had weaving on the cover - yes, it was the one he wanted. The craft magazines are now sorted by date. Many of them have previously had their tables of contents scanned into the computer to make searching for an article or subject easier. Now with access I will one day be able to scan the rest.
Yes, progress is finally being made again!
Have you been working on any organizing projects and finally making progress?
Thursday, June 2, 2016
THE BEST MADE PLANS WILL GO AWRY
I try to plan in advance so I know I have everything I need when I go someplace. I learned as a child that if I wait until the last minute I will panic and something will be forgotten or missing. So when I or we have someplace to go, I lay out what is needed in advance - generally the night before, but sometimes even further in advance if there is something else which will be done just before what I am laying out stuff for or if it will take an excessive amount of time to prepare.
I will put items out in one of two places - if it is for me for work, I will put it on my desk - generally this will include my briefcase with assorted papers and such in it (it always has pencils, pens, small ruler, business cards, tiny stapler, Scotch tape, subway cards, extension cord, and printer cables, also some $1 bills in the outer section and tissues). I will add the folders and USB drive for the client the night before and will leave my laptop charging on my desk where it is obvious so I don’t forget it the next day.
Otherwise I will put out what I or we need on the kitchen table. If whatever I need to bring is food related I will leave a reminder to bring it - especially if it needs to be in the refrigerator I will leave a reminder note with the other items. If there are a lot of items I will leave a list of the items needed whether they are on the table or in the refrigerator just to make sure all are taken with me/us.
So, I seem to have it all in hand - yes? Noooo!
Once a year, in June, my embroidery group (local chapter of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America, Inc. to give a good organization a free promo) has a party for its meeting. It is the end of the programing year and we get a chance to sit and discuss ideas for next year, chat, and share some of our work - finished or unfinished (okay, we do this at every meeting - we have “show and tell”, but this is suppose to be one with everyone bringing something and more than one item is encouraged). One of our members has very generously allowed us to use her house for this event, which is not near where we usually meet nor near my house. We each bring a dish of some sort for the party - light refreshment as would be at a tea party.
Now, this year I have the added “fun” of a trip with our RV to our dealer who is located 2 states away for a bit of routine maintenance the day after the party. In addition my husband had planned on staying one or two nights in the general area where the dealer is located as it is an area we like to go to and have not gone since last fall - plus we are paying the tolls to get there anyway and why not have fun also for the money. This was fine with me.
I knew I could deal with both events. The biggest part of getting the RV ready for a short trip such as this is making up the bed (the reason for this will someday be explained). I had planned to do this over the last weekend or yesterday (Tuesday). Packing clothes and snacks and a few other items for only 2 days is easy enough and it did not concern me to do the packing of the items tonight. Along with the idea in the first few paragraphs above, we have what we call “the last minute bag”. This bag is used for items which we need to use the night before or morning that we are leaving on the trip. It is kept in our bedroom and we add the items as they are used and then ready to go. Normally we would also have some refrigerator items to bring out at the last minute, but this trip that is not necessary. I figured that preparing for both events around each other was not a problem.
Then came the weather reports. My husband was concerned about reports of heavy rain where we would be going, as well as here also, on Friday and Saturday. What is the use of going somewhere where one will be outside most of the time - in heavy rain, getting wet and sick? So since last Friday he has been watching every weather report, agonizing over what to do. The bed is not made as we still are not sure what we are doing. I will have to make it up while we are away if we stay.
So, now back to getting ready for the party. Since it is a meeting I needed to get all sorts of paperwork together and my treasurer’s report. I did that yesterday afternoon. I put it in the folder I have for this purpose and brought it down to the kitchen. Normally I use a certain bag for these meetings, but it holds needlework and supplies and was not needed today. I brought down a different bag. I put the folder and some other items - such as the pieces I was bringing for show and tell - in the bag. I also run our errands for the day when I go to a meeting, so I had the outgoing mail and banking stuff so I could get some cash for our trip before we go. Last night I made the food item I was bringing and laid it out nicely on a nice plate, then put the plate into a large plastic container (so it would make the trip safely) and put that in the refrigerator. I remembered to print out the directions given by the woman whose house we are going to - and from google maps as well, just in case. I went there last year, but needed the directions as I did not remember how to get to her house from the main road. On the page with the directions I hand wrote a note - BRING PLATE OF FOOD!!! Everything nicely laid out so that nothing will be forgotten - or so I thought.
I got up in plenty of time to dress and drive to the meeting. I picked up my stuff from the table - and headed out to the car. I got in the car and started driving. I was about half way there and it struck me - I FORGOT THE FOOD!!!
What to do? If I showed up without it, I know that it would be understood, but then the food would end up being thrown out as we are going away (at least for a day) and would not eat it. If I went back to get it I would be late? Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I turned the car around, turned on the blue tooth in my cell phone and started calling (hands free) while driving. First, I called my husband to let him know that I would be walking in the door and then walking back out so he would not think someone was breaking in. Then I called the woman whose house I was going to and let her know - she told me to come without it, but I told her that I was halfway home already.
I ran into the house, grabbed it from the refrigerator and ran back out to the car and started back. By the time I got there I was almost an hour late as by the time I started the second trip the traffic had picked up on the roads and the road work had started and was slowing down traffic. (Which road work? - all over - from the cable company working on wires to municipal workers cutting grass along the side of the road to actual work on the road itself.) In my haste I missed the turn to the road to her street, luckily when I turned onto the next road it ran parallel, but then, on the correct road her street is about the 3rd or 4th one, on the road I took instead it was the first and I missed that turn also. I found an empty church parking lot and quickly turned around and made the turn onto her street and drove back to where her house was. Rushing made the trip longer than it should have been - not by much, but still longer and added a few extra minutes to my already very late arrival.
My friends were very nice about my being so late and I apologized no end, and was greatly embarrassed - they all think that I am the most organized person in the world, they only see the result of all my prep work to be organized and not my house.
So what went wrong? Well, I was cheap. Instead of taking a piece of paper and writing the reminder to bring the food on it, I wrote it on the directions. I then picked up the directions without noticing the notation on it. I knew the way to her house on the main roads, so it was not until I looked to see where I would be turning off the main roads that I noticed my notation. If I had written the note on another piece of paper I would have had to move it and would have noticed it and remembered the food.
Other than this the party went very nicely and I managed to make it to all of my errands afterwards, although finishing them a bit later than expected as everything was late due to the party being late.
But now the question you might be wondering - are we going to spend a few days away or just go to the dealer and home? I don’t know. I have packed our clothes for the two days in the RV and assorted snacks we bring with our for the evening as well as rain jackets and some other personal items, and a spare pair of shoes each - for rain. We will go tomorrow to the dealer and then see from there what we decide to do.
Nuts, I forgot to let my sister know our plans. I will have to email her next!
I will put items out in one of two places - if it is for me for work, I will put it on my desk - generally this will include my briefcase with assorted papers and such in it (it always has pencils, pens, small ruler, business cards, tiny stapler, Scotch tape, subway cards, extension cord, and printer cables, also some $1 bills in the outer section and tissues). I will add the folders and USB drive for the client the night before and will leave my laptop charging on my desk where it is obvious so I don’t forget it the next day.
Otherwise I will put out what I or we need on the kitchen table. If whatever I need to bring is food related I will leave a reminder to bring it - especially if it needs to be in the refrigerator I will leave a reminder note with the other items. If there are a lot of items I will leave a list of the items needed whether they are on the table or in the refrigerator just to make sure all are taken with me/us.
So, I seem to have it all in hand - yes? Noooo!
Once a year, in June, my embroidery group (local chapter of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America, Inc. to give a good organization a free promo) has a party for its meeting. It is the end of the programing year and we get a chance to sit and discuss ideas for next year, chat, and share some of our work - finished or unfinished (okay, we do this at every meeting - we have “show and tell”, but this is suppose to be one with everyone bringing something and more than one item is encouraged). One of our members has very generously allowed us to use her house for this event, which is not near where we usually meet nor near my house. We each bring a dish of some sort for the party - light refreshment as would be at a tea party.
Now, this year I have the added “fun” of a trip with our RV to our dealer who is located 2 states away for a bit of routine maintenance the day after the party. In addition my husband had planned on staying one or two nights in the general area where the dealer is located as it is an area we like to go to and have not gone since last fall - plus we are paying the tolls to get there anyway and why not have fun also for the money. This was fine with me.
I knew I could deal with both events. The biggest part of getting the RV ready for a short trip such as this is making up the bed (the reason for this will someday be explained). I had planned to do this over the last weekend or yesterday (Tuesday). Packing clothes and snacks and a few other items for only 2 days is easy enough and it did not concern me to do the packing of the items tonight. Along with the idea in the first few paragraphs above, we have what we call “the last minute bag”. This bag is used for items which we need to use the night before or morning that we are leaving on the trip. It is kept in our bedroom and we add the items as they are used and then ready to go. Normally we would also have some refrigerator items to bring out at the last minute, but this trip that is not necessary. I figured that preparing for both events around each other was not a problem.
Then came the weather reports. My husband was concerned about reports of heavy rain where we would be going, as well as here also, on Friday and Saturday. What is the use of going somewhere where one will be outside most of the time - in heavy rain, getting wet and sick? So since last Friday he has been watching every weather report, agonizing over what to do. The bed is not made as we still are not sure what we are doing. I will have to make it up while we are away if we stay.
So, now back to getting ready for the party. Since it is a meeting I needed to get all sorts of paperwork together and my treasurer’s report. I did that yesterday afternoon. I put it in the folder I have for this purpose and brought it down to the kitchen. Normally I use a certain bag for these meetings, but it holds needlework and supplies and was not needed today. I brought down a different bag. I put the folder and some other items - such as the pieces I was bringing for show and tell - in the bag. I also run our errands for the day when I go to a meeting, so I had the outgoing mail and banking stuff so I could get some cash for our trip before we go. Last night I made the food item I was bringing and laid it out nicely on a nice plate, then put the plate into a large plastic container (so it would make the trip safely) and put that in the refrigerator. I remembered to print out the directions given by the woman whose house we are going to - and from google maps as well, just in case. I went there last year, but needed the directions as I did not remember how to get to her house from the main road. On the page with the directions I hand wrote a note - BRING PLATE OF FOOD!!! Everything nicely laid out so that nothing will be forgotten - or so I thought.
I got up in plenty of time to dress and drive to the meeting. I picked up my stuff from the table - and headed out to the car. I got in the car and started driving. I was about half way there and it struck me - I FORGOT THE FOOD!!!
What to do? If I showed up without it, I know that it would be understood, but then the food would end up being thrown out as we are going away (at least for a day) and would not eat it. If I went back to get it I would be late? Dilemma, dilemma, dilemma. I turned the car around, turned on the blue tooth in my cell phone and started calling (hands free) while driving. First, I called my husband to let him know that I would be walking in the door and then walking back out so he would not think someone was breaking in. Then I called the woman whose house I was going to and let her know - she told me to come without it, but I told her that I was halfway home already.
I ran into the house, grabbed it from the refrigerator and ran back out to the car and started back. By the time I got there I was almost an hour late as by the time I started the second trip the traffic had picked up on the roads and the road work had started and was slowing down traffic. (Which road work? - all over - from the cable company working on wires to municipal workers cutting grass along the side of the road to actual work on the road itself.) In my haste I missed the turn to the road to her street, luckily when I turned onto the next road it ran parallel, but then, on the correct road her street is about the 3rd or 4th one, on the road I took instead it was the first and I missed that turn also. I found an empty church parking lot and quickly turned around and made the turn onto her street and drove back to where her house was. Rushing made the trip longer than it should have been - not by much, but still longer and added a few extra minutes to my already very late arrival.
My friends were very nice about my being so late and I apologized no end, and was greatly embarrassed - they all think that I am the most organized person in the world, they only see the result of all my prep work to be organized and not my house.
So what went wrong? Well, I was cheap. Instead of taking a piece of paper and writing the reminder to bring the food on it, I wrote it on the directions. I then picked up the directions without noticing the notation on it. I knew the way to her house on the main roads, so it was not until I looked to see where I would be turning off the main roads that I noticed my notation. If I had written the note on another piece of paper I would have had to move it and would have noticed it and remembered the food.
Other than this the party went very nicely and I managed to make it to all of my errands afterwards, although finishing them a bit later than expected as everything was late due to the party being late.
But now the question you might be wondering - are we going to spend a few days away or just go to the dealer and home? I don’t know. I have packed our clothes for the two days in the RV and assorted snacks we bring with our for the evening as well as rain jackets and some other personal items, and a spare pair of shoes each - for rain. We will go tomorrow to the dealer and then see from there what we decide to do.
Nuts, I forgot to let my sister know our plans. I will have to email her next!
Thursday, March 17, 2016
A REPEAT OF LAST WEEK
This week has not been much better. Things keep going wrong.
People who know me think that I am very organized. If they read this or saw the inside of my house, they would be surprised. It is weeks like last week and this week that make it disorganized. Okay, every week is bad, but these have been particularly problematic and I know it could be much worse with real problems instead of just annoyances..
In the past few weeks we spent 2 days looking for a couple of pieces of small lumber for husband to make something for his loom - I mean really small lumber - 1/4 inch x 6 inches (which means more like 5.5 inches in the world of lumber) x 4 feet. We finally found 2 pieces which were not skewed, warped, broken, split, etc. They were at our house for 3 days - and warped. So more time lost returning them and now he has no wood.
We also spent a different 2 days shopping for white bath towels - needed large ones, but cheap as they are to roll weaving projects in when the projects are washed after they are finished, this is to get the excess water out of them instead of using the spin cycle on the washing machine as that seems to be what made the problem in the last project. We then went out a 3rd day to actually buy the towels, plus the time spent at home heating them in our “suitcase heater” (just in case there are any bedbugs in them, we are crazy about this since we had them) and then washing and drying them. They are awaiting the current project.
I had to prepare a corporation tax extension for a client and so that it was out yesterday (the 15th) to the governments. This is not the return I finished and sent out last week - that one arrived last Friday and the client sent it out after a telephone call to discuss it and make sure she knew what she was doing. For good measure sales taxes are due in this state - not just the regular quarterly ones, but also the annual ones (for companies with very few sales) on the 20th. I have done two of them. I went to the client with last week’s corporation tax return today and calculated her sales taxes. Now I have to do it again online as they are required to be filed on same, and there is no Internet at the client. I prefer to go to her on Thursdays, but had to go today (Wednesday) as I have the sales tax deadline and tomorrow is - St Patrick’s Day in New York City. I learned the hard way by going into Manhattan once - and only once - on St Patrick’s Day - I will never do it again. I was stuck in the parking garage for 45 minutes waiting for enough people to leave so tha the 5 cars ahead of me would get spaces and then one more for me. After I file her sales taxes I can start preparing individual returns for clients.
Husband had a new weaving project to set up on the loom. He went to set up the warp (the long strands that run the length of the piece and he will weave over - think “warp speed ahead” and envision long straight lines pointing ahead, that is how I remember which it is) on Saturday afternoon. The yarn he planned to use we found out is not usable for same as it was too slippery. He pulled an older yarn from the basement to use (this is from decades ago and never intended by us for this future purpose). As he rolled each skein into a ball he found out that it was junk yarn and there were problems - so that’s why the huge bag of yarn was only a dollar? So - off to the store for more yarn. Monday he started setting up the loom with the new yarn - this takes my help - more time lost from what I need to do - and in one spot it has the same problem as the yarn it replaced! He is working around it. The loom was finally set up on Tuesday and I helped him get started on finishing the leading edge of it tonight and now he should not need my help with it for a few days - I hope.
We went to the supermarket on Monday to buy soda on sale. They are out of the soda which is on sale. We went to another store in the chain yesterday to try again - they also had none. Did no one notice they were about to have a sale and make sure that the stores were stocked? Just for good measure husband went back today - still none - and driving home from NYC I stopped at one near the NYC border to see if maybe they had some soda there - no, not there either. The sale ends tomorrow (Thursday), but we did get rain checks - a bottle and a half of soda left for us.
In between all of this I am trying to catch up on what was sitting around waiting to be done from last week. Okay, even further back. I managed to pack most of my Christmas bear figurines in the living room this weekend (these are the ones that rotate monthly, not the bear village upstairs which is now long packed). There are still a bunch of them to pack - but the loom and new weaving project are set up in the room and I don’t want to drop and break the bears skirting around the loom nor do I want to bump the loom and ruin the project.
My cold is much better, but still here. So dealing with meals and dishes is still all off as I try to make meals in which I do not have to touch the actual food with my hands (just the packaging) and then wear plastic gloves to wash the dishes.
Plus of course the wonderfulness that is daylight savings time started last Sunday - throwing me, myself, off schedule. Plus I am not sure that all of the clocks, watches, and other items have been changed - oh wait, that is why the light timers are off and the lights are going on at the wrong time - darn, something else to do!
Again, hopefully, next week will be better and life will be more normal.
Do you have a problem with the time change? I know in other countries it has not happened yet and some places have, intelligently in my opinion, gotten rid of same.
People who know me think that I am very organized. If they read this or saw the inside of my house, they would be surprised. It is weeks like last week and this week that make it disorganized. Okay, every week is bad, but these have been particularly problematic and I know it could be much worse with real problems instead of just annoyances..
In the past few weeks we spent 2 days looking for a couple of pieces of small lumber for husband to make something for his loom - I mean really small lumber - 1/4 inch x 6 inches (which means more like 5.5 inches in the world of lumber) x 4 feet. We finally found 2 pieces which were not skewed, warped, broken, split, etc. They were at our house for 3 days - and warped. So more time lost returning them and now he has no wood.
We also spent a different 2 days shopping for white bath towels - needed large ones, but cheap as they are to roll weaving projects in when the projects are washed after they are finished, this is to get the excess water out of them instead of using the spin cycle on the washing machine as that seems to be what made the problem in the last project. We then went out a 3rd day to actually buy the towels, plus the time spent at home heating them in our “suitcase heater” (just in case there are any bedbugs in them, we are crazy about this since we had them) and then washing and drying them. They are awaiting the current project.
I had to prepare a corporation tax extension for a client and so that it was out yesterday (the 15th) to the governments. This is not the return I finished and sent out last week - that one arrived last Friday and the client sent it out after a telephone call to discuss it and make sure she knew what she was doing. For good measure sales taxes are due in this state - not just the regular quarterly ones, but also the annual ones (for companies with very few sales) on the 20th. I have done two of them. I went to the client with last week’s corporation tax return today and calculated her sales taxes. Now I have to do it again online as they are required to be filed on same, and there is no Internet at the client. I prefer to go to her on Thursdays, but had to go today (Wednesday) as I have the sales tax deadline and tomorrow is - St Patrick’s Day in New York City. I learned the hard way by going into Manhattan once - and only once - on St Patrick’s Day - I will never do it again. I was stuck in the parking garage for 45 minutes waiting for enough people to leave so tha the 5 cars ahead of me would get spaces and then one more for me. After I file her sales taxes I can start preparing individual returns for clients.
Husband had a new weaving project to set up on the loom. He went to set up the warp (the long strands that run the length of the piece and he will weave over - think “warp speed ahead” and envision long straight lines pointing ahead, that is how I remember which it is) on Saturday afternoon. The yarn he planned to use we found out is not usable for same as it was too slippery. He pulled an older yarn from the basement to use (this is from decades ago and never intended by us for this future purpose). As he rolled each skein into a ball he found out that it was junk yarn and there were problems - so that’s why the huge bag of yarn was only a dollar? So - off to the store for more yarn. Monday he started setting up the loom with the new yarn - this takes my help - more time lost from what I need to do - and in one spot it has the same problem as the yarn it replaced! He is working around it. The loom was finally set up on Tuesday and I helped him get started on finishing the leading edge of it tonight and now he should not need my help with it for a few days - I hope.
We went to the supermarket on Monday to buy soda on sale. They are out of the soda which is on sale. We went to another store in the chain yesterday to try again - they also had none. Did no one notice they were about to have a sale and make sure that the stores were stocked? Just for good measure husband went back today - still none - and driving home from NYC I stopped at one near the NYC border to see if maybe they had some soda there - no, not there either. The sale ends tomorrow (Thursday), but we did get rain checks - a bottle and a half of soda left for us.
In between all of this I am trying to catch up on what was sitting around waiting to be done from last week. Okay, even further back. I managed to pack most of my Christmas bear figurines in the living room this weekend (these are the ones that rotate monthly, not the bear village upstairs which is now long packed). There are still a bunch of them to pack - but the loom and new weaving project are set up in the room and I don’t want to drop and break the bears skirting around the loom nor do I want to bump the loom and ruin the project.
My cold is much better, but still here. So dealing with meals and dishes is still all off as I try to make meals in which I do not have to touch the actual food with my hands (just the packaging) and then wear plastic gloves to wash the dishes.
Plus of course the wonderfulness that is daylight savings time started last Sunday - throwing me, myself, off schedule. Plus I am not sure that all of the clocks, watches, and other items have been changed - oh wait, that is why the light timers are off and the lights are going on at the wrong time - darn, something else to do!
Again, hopefully, next week will be better and life will be more normal.
Do you have a problem with the time change? I know in other countries it has not happened yet and some places have, intelligently in my opinion, gotten rid of same.
Thursday, March 3, 2016
CHRISTMAS MOSTLY STORED AWAY
We put up our Christmas decorations in the house late, so we never rush to take them down. It used to sit around and around and finally I would deal with it - sometimes in March (one year in April, but that was because our garage door froze to the ground and we could not get into it until there was a thaw to get out the boxes to pack in - since then the boxes stay in the house after being unpacked). So after years of it being too soon (to us) to take down decorations and then it was much past when they should have been taken down, we set a date. Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered on the 3rd Monday in January - we chose same as when to start taking down the Christmas decorations - the date has no significance to doing so, but it is a fixed time around when we want to do so and the holiday publicity reminds us.
So, that Monday was the day to start. This is for the inside decorations. The outside ones come down based on the weather - it needs to be warm enough to take them down and we are not going to climb through snow to do so. The day before was a COLD day, but snow is expected for the coming weekend, possibly a lot, so we took down the outside lights and put them in the garage (which is also husband’s woodworking shop). We did not wrap them up and pack them as I could not feel 3 of my fingers and needed to warm up. We packed them the next day as it was warmer.
I brought up one of the storage boxes for the inside ornaments - specifically one for ornaments from our main Christmas tree - a few days before. I had planned to bring up the others right away, but I realized that there wasn’t room to bring them up as husband’s loom and related items are spread across the living room and the coffee table moved to accommodate his loom work. I put the box under the coffee table - any place else and we would not be able to walk in the room - until the day after I was suppose to start.
I took out the box, pushed aside the loom items on the sofa (any of this sound like your life?) and opened the box. I started taking ornaments off the tree - not a lot, but a start. The ornaments went right into their storage boxes that were in the box, while I also pulled ones which I have embroidered, off the tree and set them on a chair (which has been decorated for the season an embroidered Christmas throw pillow I made some years ago) to pack later. It is the starting which is hard for me and now it is started.
We used to pack our ornaments in cartons which we had accumulated over the years which originally held reams of paper for the computer, printer, etc. After having bed bugs we wanted them packed in something which sealed better, as well as the fact that corrugated cardboard is something that bed bugs like, so we bought large plastic boxes which lock closed on the ends. We have been storing most of the ornaments in the rafters of our garage. These new boxes had to go through the rafters one end up and then turn. In addition my husband does not like climbing up to get them down - he has to clear off a work table (yes, he is like me and there is disorganization in his workshop) and stand on it and lean over to move the boxes around. The boxes were not all that light, even after I rearranged the contents so lighter and heavier items were more mixed together than before. The need to rearrange the contents was annoying to me as I had the boxes originally packed so that the nicest ornaments came out of one box and I worked my way down to the fill in ornaments in the last of the tree ornament boxes, the general “in the house” decorations were in their own 2 boxes, etc. Now they were all mixed together to distribute the weight. Not at all convenient for unpacking and repacking.
The last 2 winters we had so much snow - continuously (last winter we went through a month or more of major snowstorms every 2-3 days) - that the decorations were packed into their boxes, but by the time we could move the boxes to the (detached) garage for storage it was almost summer and we left them stacked where the main tree had been - which left all of the furniture which gets moved around to fit in the Christmas trees and such also not put where they belonged.
I have come up with a solution. I found a spot where the boxes will fit in our basement. We have a small “closet” with our gas meter in it and there is space between the side of same and the shelves holding bolts of fabric where it looked like the boxes would fit. I cleared out the area - what looks like used plastic drop clothes, and empty bolt cardboard centers (kept in case we ever needed to wrap large cuts of fabric onto them - like we ever would) with the plastic that had been over the original fabric also kept - were all thrown out - the cardboard put in for recycling. I moved the remaining items out of the area. I found not only do the boxes fit the space, but the widest dimension of the boxes fit so they will fit in more compactly then I thought - good if I they do not all fit in one stack (we have low ceilings even in the main part of the house). I also found out that I had more of certain preprinted panel baby quilt fabric - I used to make and sell panel baby quilts) that I thought I had no more of. I am not interested in making a quilt, but I had finished two embroidered teddy bear pieces from a kit and wanted to make 2 other pieces to go with them and had envisioned embroidering the decision two of the bears from the quilt panel - one each - on matching squares to make a 4 square hanging piece, so by cleaning up a bit I now have the teddy bears to copy, which thought I no longer had - a bit of a reward for the cleaning.
Now I am able to store the boxes in the basement. Weather will not affect being able to store them. I will not need husband to be able to access them and he will not need to go climbing up. Weight does not matter as much anymore and I will be able to repack everything as it used to be.
The outside Christmas lights were also stored in the garage and needed, even more dangerously, for him to climb on a ladder and then hand the box down to me while balancing on the ladder. They can now go where the other ornaments used to be, still a climb, but safer. I suggested we split them into 2 smaller boxes to deal with the rafters problem and make them ligher - maybe even switching with 2 smaller boxes I had some decorations in and I would take the large box for the decorations in exchange for the smaller ones. He will also have more room to store wood in his shop. I cleaned the large box from the lights well and this idea worked - 2 smaller, lighter boxes of outdoor Christmas lights - stored in the rafters of the garage - and a nice large box for wool.
Better all around such a simple idea.
Have you taken down your Christmas decorations and tree? Has everything been put away yet?
I have since taken down and stored the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio tree as well as stored the Christmas decorations from the main floor of the house. After finishing this I found a Christmas doll who had evaded me. She will be put into the “soft” decorations box shortly. I also took down and stored the dining room tree and it’s ornaments. It’s ornaments are all collectible brass ones from Colonial Williamsburg so they are being stored upstairs as they were before as I don’t want them in the damp basement.
Why publish this now? Well, missing from the above is putting away my (our?) little village of teddy bear figurines. We both love it so that it is always hard to put it away. This past week I spent 2 days packing up the little bears, their tree and some buildings (every teddy bear town needs a honey store, a church, a first aid office and a fruit store - right?).
I have been asked what a teddy bear village is. I had a large number of teddy bear ornaments and they were taking over our main Christmas tree. So we bought a table top tree and moved some of them to that tree and put it at the top of the stairs so it could also be seen from the main floor of the house. I then added some little bears I had - some on little ladders decorating the tree - and it just kept going. It is amazing how many (cheap) small bear figurines with a Christmas theme there are. Not all of them are specifically Christmas - there is a small band of bears playing at the church while others are singing. There are bears at a phone booth making a call (an inch tall). There is a polar bear helping himself to a certain cola which uses him for ads. There is a “craft” fair of bears with small craft like items. There is a gazebo in the park (as of 2014 it even has lights). There is a parade and bears watching the parade - well I guess you get the idea. Many, if not most people would think we are crazy, but we think it is cute.
Well, that means 95% of my Christmas stuff is stored. The only items left (other than the doll who hid) are some other bears that are displayed in the living room and could not be stored until the village was as they store in the box the village is on the top of.
Well, luckily I do a lot less for Easter. Unless we start doing an Easter teddy village - we are kicking around the idea of making it seasonal...
So, that Monday was the day to start. This is for the inside decorations. The outside ones come down based on the weather - it needs to be warm enough to take them down and we are not going to climb through snow to do so. The day before was a COLD day, but snow is expected for the coming weekend, possibly a lot, so we took down the outside lights and put them in the garage (which is also husband’s woodworking shop). We did not wrap them up and pack them as I could not feel 3 of my fingers and needed to warm up. We packed them the next day as it was warmer.
I brought up one of the storage boxes for the inside ornaments - specifically one for ornaments from our main Christmas tree - a few days before. I had planned to bring up the others right away, but I realized that there wasn’t room to bring them up as husband’s loom and related items are spread across the living room and the coffee table moved to accommodate his loom work. I put the box under the coffee table - any place else and we would not be able to walk in the room - until the day after I was suppose to start.
I took out the box, pushed aside the loom items on the sofa (any of this sound like your life?) and opened the box. I started taking ornaments off the tree - not a lot, but a start. The ornaments went right into their storage boxes that were in the box, while I also pulled ones which I have embroidered, off the tree and set them on a chair (which has been decorated for the season an embroidered Christmas throw pillow I made some years ago) to pack later. It is the starting which is hard for me and now it is started.
We used to pack our ornaments in cartons which we had accumulated over the years which originally held reams of paper for the computer, printer, etc. After having bed bugs we wanted them packed in something which sealed better, as well as the fact that corrugated cardboard is something that bed bugs like, so we bought large plastic boxes which lock closed on the ends. We have been storing most of the ornaments in the rafters of our garage. These new boxes had to go through the rafters one end up and then turn. In addition my husband does not like climbing up to get them down - he has to clear off a work table (yes, he is like me and there is disorganization in his workshop) and stand on it and lean over to move the boxes around. The boxes were not all that light, even after I rearranged the contents so lighter and heavier items were more mixed together than before. The need to rearrange the contents was annoying to me as I had the boxes originally packed so that the nicest ornaments came out of one box and I worked my way down to the fill in ornaments in the last of the tree ornament boxes, the general “in the house” decorations were in their own 2 boxes, etc. Now they were all mixed together to distribute the weight. Not at all convenient for unpacking and repacking.
The last 2 winters we had so much snow - continuously (last winter we went through a month or more of major snowstorms every 2-3 days) - that the decorations were packed into their boxes, but by the time we could move the boxes to the (detached) garage for storage it was almost summer and we left them stacked where the main tree had been - which left all of the furniture which gets moved around to fit in the Christmas trees and such also not put where they belonged.
I have come up with a solution. I found a spot where the boxes will fit in our basement. We have a small “closet” with our gas meter in it and there is space between the side of same and the shelves holding bolts of fabric where it looked like the boxes would fit. I cleared out the area - what looks like used plastic drop clothes, and empty bolt cardboard centers (kept in case we ever needed to wrap large cuts of fabric onto them - like we ever would) with the plastic that had been over the original fabric also kept - were all thrown out - the cardboard put in for recycling. I moved the remaining items out of the area. I found not only do the boxes fit the space, but the widest dimension of the boxes fit so they will fit in more compactly then I thought - good if I they do not all fit in one stack (we have low ceilings even in the main part of the house). I also found out that I had more of certain preprinted panel baby quilt fabric - I used to make and sell panel baby quilts) that I thought I had no more of. I am not interested in making a quilt, but I had finished two embroidered teddy bear pieces from a kit and wanted to make 2 other pieces to go with them and had envisioned embroidering the decision two of the bears from the quilt panel - one each - on matching squares to make a 4 square hanging piece, so by cleaning up a bit I now have the teddy bears to copy, which thought I no longer had - a bit of a reward for the cleaning.
Now I am able to store the boxes in the basement. Weather will not affect being able to store them. I will not need husband to be able to access them and he will not need to go climbing up. Weight does not matter as much anymore and I will be able to repack everything as it used to be.
The outside Christmas lights were also stored in the garage and needed, even more dangerously, for him to climb on a ladder and then hand the box down to me while balancing on the ladder. They can now go where the other ornaments used to be, still a climb, but safer. I suggested we split them into 2 smaller boxes to deal with the rafters problem and make them ligher - maybe even switching with 2 smaller boxes I had some decorations in and I would take the large box for the decorations in exchange for the smaller ones. He will also have more room to store wood in his shop. I cleaned the large box from the lights well and this idea worked - 2 smaller, lighter boxes of outdoor Christmas lights - stored in the rafters of the garage - and a nice large box for wool.
Better all around such a simple idea.
Have you taken down your Christmas decorations and tree? Has everything been put away yet?
I have since taken down and stored the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio tree as well as stored the Christmas decorations from the main floor of the house. After finishing this I found a Christmas doll who had evaded me. She will be put into the “soft” decorations box shortly. I also took down and stored the dining room tree and it’s ornaments. It’s ornaments are all collectible brass ones from Colonial Williamsburg so they are being stored upstairs as they were before as I don’t want them in the damp basement.
Why publish this now? Well, missing from the above is putting away my (our?) little village of teddy bear figurines. We both love it so that it is always hard to put it away. This past week I spent 2 days packing up the little bears, their tree and some buildings (every teddy bear town needs a honey store, a church, a first aid office and a fruit store - right?).
I have been asked what a teddy bear village is. I had a large number of teddy bear ornaments and they were taking over our main Christmas tree. So we bought a table top tree and moved some of them to that tree and put it at the top of the stairs so it could also be seen from the main floor of the house. I then added some little bears I had - some on little ladders decorating the tree - and it just kept going. It is amazing how many (cheap) small bear figurines with a Christmas theme there are. Not all of them are specifically Christmas - there is a small band of bears playing at the church while others are singing. There are bears at a phone booth making a call (an inch tall). There is a polar bear helping himself to a certain cola which uses him for ads. There is a “craft” fair of bears with small craft like items. There is a gazebo in the park (as of 2014 it even has lights). There is a parade and bears watching the parade - well I guess you get the idea. Many, if not most people would think we are crazy, but we think it is cute.
Well, that means 95% of my Christmas stuff is stored. The only items left (other than the doll who hid) are some other bears that are displayed in the living room and could not be stored until the village was as they store in the box the village is on the top of.
Well, luckily I do a lot less for Easter. Unless we start doing an Easter teddy village - we are kicking around the idea of making it seasonal...
Thursday, February 4, 2016
A PROJECT THAT TOOK DAYS INSTEAD OF AN HOUR DUE TO DISORGANIZATION
My husband got a loom for Christmas. It is not a huge one, but it is 32 inches wide. It is something he has wanted for decades. He was willing to give up a trip he loves in early December to cover the cost. He has had small hand looms in the past, but never one big enough to make more than a potholder or thin strap on.
He was very anxious to get it set up and use it, which we can all understand. We set it up a couple of days after Christmas. He will be using it in the living room or dining room due to logistics in the house. It was set up in the living room as due to a piece of furniture - a DVD chest he made - being displaced to the dining room from the living room so the Christmas tree would fit in the living room, so there was no room in the dining room. Due to the Christmas tree, there was not really enough room in the living room either for the loom, but there was more room than in the dining room.
The easy way to set up what is called the warp (the threads that one weaves the other threads - the weft - through) for this type of loom is to set up a short wooden dowel in a device which clamps onto a table or other flat surface. This is done so that the distance between a certain part of the loom and the dowel is the amount of warp needed to work with, plus extra for needed waste. Husband moved a coffee table out of the way (too low to use) and brought up a tray table. He set up the dowel clamp on the tray table and we went to work warping (putting the warp on) the loom. I had to help him for this part as it is easier with two people. It went surprisingly well and he was subsequently able to make a nice 2 foot long piece for a table or a bureau.
What does this have to do with organizing? I am getting to that - already there was a problem with space due to displaced furniture and Christmas tree. I would have waited until it was all cleared up a bit, but I understand him wanting to go forward right away after decades of anticipation.
After the success of the first piece he waited until the Christmas tree was down (he did encourage me a bit more than usual to get it done) and stored away before attempting a second larger piece. We started warping the loom last Sunday using the same tray table. We were not so lucky this time, perhaps because this piece was to be wider and longer and therefore pulled more on the dowel, the tray table fell over, the dowel assembly fell apart and all of the loops knotted together on the floor. We tried for some time to sort them, than gave up and cut them off the loom.
In finishing up setting the downstairs of the house back from Christmas, I then put, among other items, the DVD chest back where it belonged. He had the idea to open the front of the chest and attach the dowel to the top of it - it is a very heavy chest and could not fall over. We got about 75% of the way through the warping process and the dowel assembly fell apart and ended up back on the floor.
We were able this time to sort some of the loops apart, reattached the dowel to the DVD chest and started again. Same problem. Husband was frantic and ready to sell the loom. We managed to get the loops untangled from each other by sheer stubbornness on my part and ordered take in for dinner as it was now too late to cook.
Husband had a new idea. He brought up a foldable worktable from the basement with a long dowel which he put the through the opening of the worktable and clamped the table closed around it. We started again. Now, thinking ahead, we stopped each time we had a group of loops around the dowel and tied the loops together. This way if we had a problem, we would not lose all of the work we had down to knotting together of the loops. (All of the loops are to be knotted together anyway when they are finished.) We finally got all of the warp threads on to the loom.
After we gave up on using the tray table husband took it to use to hold the items he needed to do the warping on his end. They were loose on the table and were over and under each other. He also could not reach the table from where he was. I moved the table closer and sorted the items out a bit.
So, what have we learned about organizing from all this -
1 - Don’t rush doing things until the space you need is ready. (Much easier not to climb around Christmas decorations.
2 - Have the right equipment - until we had the right setup for the dowel we had a problem.
3 - Keep the tools you need where they can be reached and organized - the table close at hand and the items sorted for ease of access made the job much easier.
4 - If it is possible, protect the work in small groups (tying groups of thread loops together as we went in the final attempt) to prevent bigger problems.
5 - Don’t give up - persevere.
Oh, there was one other problem which arose from losing the warp so much. Yarn is sold is what is called “dye lots”. Two units of the same type of yarn in the same color might be slightly off from each other as each time a “lot”of yarn is dyed it comes out slightly different from all other “lots” of that yarn in that color. It is just that each time dyeing is done it is slightly different. So yarn companies give each “lot” a number (or letter and number combination). When we started he had enough yarn to make both the warp and the weft of the piece from the same cone of yarn. We lost yarn when we had to cut it off the loom. He no longer did. Luckily I was able to find some more of the yarn with the same dye lot marking today. So, plan ahead for the unexpected. If I had not found the matching cone of yarn today, he would have had to use a different yarn from a different “lot” for the weft (the weft is the bulk of the yarn needed). This would not have been a problem as it would have been all of the weft done with the other “lot”, but that would have left him with 2 unusable amounts of the yarn from the 2 cones. Now it matches and can be added to the started cone.
Do you have a problem with starting projects without preparing properly or without having sufficient room to work properly?
As a side followup note - today I brought the drinking glasses which I had taken out of the kitchen cabinet and I donated them to Goodwill. A job started and finished.
He was very anxious to get it set up and use it, which we can all understand. We set it up a couple of days after Christmas. He will be using it in the living room or dining room due to logistics in the house. It was set up in the living room as due to a piece of furniture - a DVD chest he made - being displaced to the dining room from the living room so the Christmas tree would fit in the living room, so there was no room in the dining room. Due to the Christmas tree, there was not really enough room in the living room either for the loom, but there was more room than in the dining room.
The easy way to set up what is called the warp (the threads that one weaves the other threads - the weft - through) for this type of loom is to set up a short wooden dowel in a device which clamps onto a table or other flat surface. This is done so that the distance between a certain part of the loom and the dowel is the amount of warp needed to work with, plus extra for needed waste. Husband moved a coffee table out of the way (too low to use) and brought up a tray table. He set up the dowel clamp on the tray table and we went to work warping (putting the warp on) the loom. I had to help him for this part as it is easier with two people. It went surprisingly well and he was subsequently able to make a nice 2 foot long piece for a table or a bureau.
What does this have to do with organizing? I am getting to that - already there was a problem with space due to displaced furniture and Christmas tree. I would have waited until it was all cleared up a bit, but I understand him wanting to go forward right away after decades of anticipation.
After the success of the first piece he waited until the Christmas tree was down (he did encourage me a bit more than usual to get it done) and stored away before attempting a second larger piece. We started warping the loom last Sunday using the same tray table. We were not so lucky this time, perhaps because this piece was to be wider and longer and therefore pulled more on the dowel, the tray table fell over, the dowel assembly fell apart and all of the loops knotted together on the floor. We tried for some time to sort them, than gave up and cut them off the loom.
In finishing up setting the downstairs of the house back from Christmas, I then put, among other items, the DVD chest back where it belonged. He had the idea to open the front of the chest and attach the dowel to the top of it - it is a very heavy chest and could not fall over. We got about 75% of the way through the warping process and the dowel assembly fell apart and ended up back on the floor.
We were able this time to sort some of the loops apart, reattached the dowel to the DVD chest and started again. Same problem. Husband was frantic and ready to sell the loom. We managed to get the loops untangled from each other by sheer stubbornness on my part and ordered take in for dinner as it was now too late to cook.
Husband had a new idea. He brought up a foldable worktable from the basement with a long dowel which he put the through the opening of the worktable and clamped the table closed around it. We started again. Now, thinking ahead, we stopped each time we had a group of loops around the dowel and tied the loops together. This way if we had a problem, we would not lose all of the work we had down to knotting together of the loops. (All of the loops are to be knotted together anyway when they are finished.) We finally got all of the warp threads on to the loom.
After we gave up on using the tray table husband took it to use to hold the items he needed to do the warping on his end. They were loose on the table and were over and under each other. He also could not reach the table from where he was. I moved the table closer and sorted the items out a bit.
So, what have we learned about organizing from all this -
1 - Don’t rush doing things until the space you need is ready. (Much easier not to climb around Christmas decorations.
2 - Have the right equipment - until we had the right setup for the dowel we had a problem.
3 - Keep the tools you need where they can be reached and organized - the table close at hand and the items sorted for ease of access made the job much easier.
4 - If it is possible, protect the work in small groups (tying groups of thread loops together as we went in the final attempt) to prevent bigger problems.
5 - Don’t give up - persevere.
Oh, there was one other problem which arose from losing the warp so much. Yarn is sold is what is called “dye lots”. Two units of the same type of yarn in the same color might be slightly off from each other as each time a “lot”of yarn is dyed it comes out slightly different from all other “lots” of that yarn in that color. It is just that each time dyeing is done it is slightly different. So yarn companies give each “lot” a number (or letter and number combination). When we started he had enough yarn to make both the warp and the weft of the piece from the same cone of yarn. We lost yarn when we had to cut it off the loom. He no longer did. Luckily I was able to find some more of the yarn with the same dye lot marking today. So, plan ahead for the unexpected. If I had not found the matching cone of yarn today, he would have had to use a different yarn from a different “lot” for the weft (the weft is the bulk of the yarn needed). This would not have been a problem as it would have been all of the weft done with the other “lot”, but that would have left him with 2 unusable amounts of the yarn from the 2 cones. Now it matches and can be added to the started cone.
Do you have a problem with starting projects without preparing properly or without having sufficient room to work properly?
As a side followup note - today I brought the drinking glasses which I had taken out of the kitchen cabinet and I donated them to Goodwill. A job started and finished.
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