Well, last week I wrote about not being able to get housework done due to a problem with my leg and that it was finally getting better. But, life has its own way of having its fun!
I was scheduled to go for jury duty yesterday (Tuesday). Like many to most people I did not want particularly to go, even more so, due to the continuation of Covid in our area. The idea of sitting closely in a room with other people scares the heck out of me. But I had figured that based on my age I could not be called for jury duty again after this time as there is a minimum time that must pass between when one serves jury duty (even if not actually put on a jury) and when one can be called again and by the time I could be called again I would be past the age when I have to serve on a jury. In addition I had already pushed the date back 6 months by requesting an automatic delay. I had actually picked this week as my alternate date to serve as it was about as far I could push back the jury duty and it was a 4 day week – I figured that cut my chances of being seated on a jury by 20%. That did not work.
I am not, especially during the pandemic and sitting home most of the time, a person who takes a shower every day – and since the pandemic started I have been taking a shower even less often than usual. I figured that I should take one before going in for jury duty. So, Monday night I climbed in the shower and took a shower.
When I got to my feet I had a problem. My left ankle looked as if I had a hammer hit it or something dropped on it! Purple from collected blood. I don't know how many days it has been like this. We tend to dress in half light, I don't generally go looking at my body, and I can't see far clearly without my eyeglasses – so until I lifted my foot to wash it - I had not seen the purple area. I quickly finished my shower and yelled for my husband – who was as upset with it as I was.
I went through the papers on my desk which had been collected to bring with me to jury duty and found the instructions on what to do in case of emergency and one cannot come. 8:30 the next morning I tried telephoning the court – steady busy signal. Went back to sleep half an hour and then tried again. I got a very nice woman who when I explained that a medical problem had come up overnight and I had to go to the doctor told me that all I needed to do was get a “doctor's note” and mail it along with my jury duty paperwork to them. She did not even ask for my name or my “juror number”. A lot simpler than I thought it would be. Husband then telephoned the doctor for me and the first appointment available was at 3:30 that afternoon.
After a late lunch we drove to the doctor's office. He examined my foot asked questions and decided that it was not serious (I thought it might be PAD – as my mom has same). I had a bad spasm in the back of my leg a little over 2 weeks ago and he said it might be from that. Just to be sure he wanted me to get a scan of my leg. (There was no problem getting the doctor's note for the court.)
Sitting in the car husband called the lab that was to do the test (using my phone as his has very limited minutes) figuring we would get an appointment for the next day if lucky. They had an appointment available early evening same day – we took the appointment.
Having taken my mom for these scans I was concerned – not only about something being found, but it has been a long waiting process and where we have to take her is not a place which is nice about doing the test or anything else. The place we went (which is part of a chain of locations) was very nice. Employees were wonderful – from the desk staff to the woman who did the test. I did not have to fill in a lot of paperwork – it was mostly already filled in, just a few questions, signature and date. Only a short wait. The woman doing the test was very pleasant, explained what she was doing each step and kept checking that she was not hurting me. What a difference from where mom has to go (as it is her doctor's office).
Called today by doctor and all is fine. We each took a big breath!
Husband had asked the doctor if I needed to stay off my foot or keep it elevated and he said no, but we have been taking it easy and I sit here I have my feet on the one step (used to reach cabinet shelves) that is kept under the kitchen table (no place else to keep it) with my right foot on it and my left foot sitting on my right foot to elevate it a bit anyway.
Foot looked a very little bit better today – but a bit is better than none or looking worse.
Last night husband did the dinner and late night snack cooking and even washed up afterward. Today we ran out and did a bit of food shopping – we had planned on a bigger food shopping trip today, but just the most important items were purchased. Tomorrow it suppose to rain heavily. Hopefully by Friday my foot will look much better – fingers crossed.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY -
Don't put off going to the doctor and worry about is going wrong – go, get it over with it and hopefully all will be well – or at least better than one thought it would be.
No matter what one has plans to do – whether for fun or something which one has to do – one never knows what will happen that will cause one's plans to go awry.
We had planned to go to an event our reenactment unit is having Sunday - outside with lots of room to stay away from others - that husband was really looking forward to as we have missed our hobby and being with our fellow “colonial people”, but as I put off the question of going or not going, he brought it up and said that we are NOT going. It would be too much walking around and carrying things for me - he says. (That to me is true love.)
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Thursday, October 13, 2022
JURY DUTY - WHAT CAN BE WORSE THAN SAME, DOES HAPPEN
Thursday, December 19, 2019
CHRISTMAS AND OTHER HOLIDAYS - AND GETTING READY
Another week gone already?
Are you ready for Christmas or Chanukah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday)s) you celebrate?
Me, I have not packed away Thanksgiving yet. Well, the dishes, pots, silverware etc were put away, but my decorations are still out. I don't put out as many for Thanksgiving as I do for Christmas (maybe 1/20th as much as for Christmas or less), but I have the decorations from when we used to have the families here for Thanksgiving dinner and I still put them out – I need to.
I have to get them packed away and get the indoor Christmas decorations put out – at least most of them. I generally don't get to my bear village until Christmas Eve or even Christmas night so they “know” they will be put out late.
We still have a lot of stuff in the house that has to go back into our RV from when we cleared it out in October to take it in for the extended service time. The larger pieces – the bed assembly and such – are back in it. I have several fabric shopping bags with stuff from it, including the plastic containers that we use for food (snacks) storage when we travel. It has been bad weather most days around here the last week or so since I realized I had to get all that out to the RV. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner – we keep a hand held – plug in vacuum in the RV in case we make a mess and need to clean it up. (Lots of vents in the RV for air to move in and out so animals can smell food in it – hence the plastic containers and concern requiring a vacuum cleaner.) It is on my dining room table – not a good place for it to be.
We (and by we, I meant I) also have to store reenacting stuff in the box benches in the dining room that we store it in. We had the last event of the year that we needed our stuff for last Saturday – more on that later, if I remember – the only remaining events are the 6 days – this coming weekend and next – that we will be doing the candlelight night event at the local restoration village and we need little for that other than our period clothing.
Husband has to move his weaving stuff to our studio – won't be able to get to my side of same after he does, but the “loom room” will again be the living room when he does.
After all that I can start putting up the decorations and the trees.
We have been busy the last week since I spoke to all of you. I went to Manhattan to a client on Thursday, which took most of the day especially the travel back and forth. When I got home husband was waiting to pack our van for the reenactment event that was coming up on (now last) Saturday.
It was at a historic home that one of our members works at and was a colonial crafts event that we were allowed (encouraged) to sell our work at. The local community had their tree lighting and other events that day so crowds were expected in the community. Husband had been weaving scarves to sell. It was to rain on Friday – and maybe Saturday – so when I arrived home on Thursday husband suggested that we pack the van while it was not raining, though dark. He was concerned about the tables and racks getting wet on Saturday if it was still raining, so we put everything in very large plastic bags – some items needed two bags – one on each end, overlapping, to cover them. He had put two tables in the back of the van before I came home. We needed to put most of what we were bringing in the main section of the van (where we have a back seat and the middle seat is out & permanently in our storage shed to make an open space). It was a cold night and damp in advance of the rain. He went to slide the side door open and it did not budge. He tried again – and again. He then went in the front door and climbed through to the main section and went to open the door – which is pushing instead of pulling it open from outside as we thought that somehow it had frozen closed and needed to be forced open.
Ha ha! He get the door open and the overhead rubber gasket that keeps water from going into the van fell down – on me. It would not fit back into place. I called our mechanic – if I have not mentioned it is a local shop and 4 blocks from our house – it was almost 5:30 and I thought they closed at same. His newest mechanic answered (there are 3 including the owner) and he knows us by name from all of our crazy car problems. I explained and he told me we should bring it over – if we left it sitting it would flood in the coming rain, at the very least they would have it indoors and fix it the next day. We drove over hoping the side door would not roll open – it did not. He got the gasket back in place and we were set again. We went home and loaded the van. Friday we ran normal errands and picked up deli turkey to make sandwiches for the next day.
Saturday it was misty more than raining and we were able to get everything inside to set up dry. We had a nice room in the museum – the exhibition was on 19th century needlework so it went well with his weaving and my embroidery demonstration. We fit in the room perfectly. The event had people there most of the day – estimate is 75-100 people and since it was raining on and off and nasty the rest of the day, that was pretty good.
Still no chance to pack away Thanksgiving decorations and start on Christmas though. Each day has had new things to waste the day. I did manage to fit in taking most of the smaller exams I need to take to prepare income taxes next year for pay. They are online classes from an approved company and I use them every year. Two more small classes and tests and then the large 3 hour timed test – 6 hours of class time to do. That last one is always the one that scares me. I know that someway I will fit them in before the end of the month as I always do.
I hope to get the stuff out to the RV and pack away the Thanksgiving – at least the downstairs stuff, if not the Teddy Village Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow and hopefully start with the dining room decorations. I need to push a large linen style looking chest from the living room to the dining room before I start the dining room. It holds a small sized tree in the dining room and the large tree in the living room goes where the chest is the rest of the year. (It looks like a linen or hope chest, but instead of the top lifting the front drops down and there are drawers in it for DVDs – husband made it.)
The front hall and the living have decorations also and then the 3 downstairs trees – big one in the living room, small ones in the dining room and studio and beaded one that I made in the living room also – on the coffee table. I was going to change the bear figurines (separate from the teddy village) that are in a corner shelf unit in the living room – but his big loom is in front of the corner unit.
I did put up the wire hanging piece we bought a few years ago to hold Christmas/holiday cards. It is a long piece with little wire spots to clip papers – in this the cards – to and I hang it from our mug rack near the ceiling in the kitchen with red ribbons. I had figured a better way to hang it last year when I took it down and clipped a note into one of the wire spots to remind me – good idea it worked perfectly and I clipped the note back in for next year.
We did finish our shopping – we bought books for his two nieces – the only gifts we buy. I send my adult niblings (that is actually a work – I made it up and then found it already existed – it means nieces and nephews combined) checks for gifts. He has bought some DVDs and such – which he would have bought anyway – and given it to me to wrap for Christmas – I actually stick them in recycled Christmas gift bags – why waste paper. At some point we have to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas Eve dinner – maybe the Asian buffet we go to will be open? We are also figuring we will go there for dinner tomorrow as we won't be able to eat out this or next weekend due to the reenactment, so it will break the meals at home up a bit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Whatever holiday you celebrate – take time to enjoy it. In the future it will generally be the good times that are remembered – if the problems and misadventures are remembered they will become humorous in retrospect - “Hey remember the year that Susan and Carl got into the box of chocolates when they were little and took a bite out of each and then put them back?” “Remember the year we forgot to bring Ellen's gift and we all had to get together again the next week for her to get it?” Trust me, these things are terrible in the moment, but hilarious in the future.
It is the memories of the time together - even if you are just two like us - that matter in the end. If the decorations are not finished – they will be by new year's. If you will be alone try to find someplace where there are other people, I know that there are community holiday dinners even around here - where no one would think that they exist.
Oh, and as I learned at home growing up – there is always a room to throw all the stuff I you can't figure out what to do with in so the house will look nice for any family or friends who come by. :-)
Are you ready for Christmas or Chanukah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday)s) you celebrate?
Me, I have not packed away Thanksgiving yet. Well, the dishes, pots, silverware etc were put away, but my decorations are still out. I don't put out as many for Thanksgiving as I do for Christmas (maybe 1/20th as much as for Christmas or less), but I have the decorations from when we used to have the families here for Thanksgiving dinner and I still put them out – I need to.
I have to get them packed away and get the indoor Christmas decorations put out – at least most of them. I generally don't get to my bear village until Christmas Eve or even Christmas night so they “know” they will be put out late.
We still have a lot of stuff in the house that has to go back into our RV from when we cleared it out in October to take it in for the extended service time. The larger pieces – the bed assembly and such – are back in it. I have several fabric shopping bags with stuff from it, including the plastic containers that we use for food (snacks) storage when we travel. It has been bad weather most days around here the last week or so since I realized I had to get all that out to the RV. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner – we keep a hand held – plug in vacuum in the RV in case we make a mess and need to clean it up. (Lots of vents in the RV for air to move in and out so animals can smell food in it – hence the plastic containers and concern requiring a vacuum cleaner.) It is on my dining room table – not a good place for it to be.
We (and by we, I meant I) also have to store reenacting stuff in the box benches in the dining room that we store it in. We had the last event of the year that we needed our stuff for last Saturday – more on that later, if I remember – the only remaining events are the 6 days – this coming weekend and next – that we will be doing the candlelight night event at the local restoration village and we need little for that other than our period clothing.
Husband has to move his weaving stuff to our studio – won't be able to get to my side of same after he does, but the “loom room” will again be the living room when he does.
After all that I can start putting up the decorations and the trees.
We have been busy the last week since I spoke to all of you. I went to Manhattan to a client on Thursday, which took most of the day especially the travel back and forth. When I got home husband was waiting to pack our van for the reenactment event that was coming up on (now last) Saturday.
It was at a historic home that one of our members works at and was a colonial crafts event that we were allowed (encouraged) to sell our work at. The local community had their tree lighting and other events that day so crowds were expected in the community. Husband had been weaving scarves to sell. It was to rain on Friday – and maybe Saturday – so when I arrived home on Thursday husband suggested that we pack the van while it was not raining, though dark. He was concerned about the tables and racks getting wet on Saturday if it was still raining, so we put everything in very large plastic bags – some items needed two bags – one on each end, overlapping, to cover them. He had put two tables in the back of the van before I came home. We needed to put most of what we were bringing in the main section of the van (where we have a back seat and the middle seat is out & permanently in our storage shed to make an open space). It was a cold night and damp in advance of the rain. He went to slide the side door open and it did not budge. He tried again – and again. He then went in the front door and climbed through to the main section and went to open the door – which is pushing instead of pulling it open from outside as we thought that somehow it had frozen closed and needed to be forced open.
Ha ha! He get the door open and the overhead rubber gasket that keeps water from going into the van fell down – on me. It would not fit back into place. I called our mechanic – if I have not mentioned it is a local shop and 4 blocks from our house – it was almost 5:30 and I thought they closed at same. His newest mechanic answered (there are 3 including the owner) and he knows us by name from all of our crazy car problems. I explained and he told me we should bring it over – if we left it sitting it would flood in the coming rain, at the very least they would have it indoors and fix it the next day. We drove over hoping the side door would not roll open – it did not. He got the gasket back in place and we were set again. We went home and loaded the van. Friday we ran normal errands and picked up deli turkey to make sandwiches for the next day.
Saturday it was misty more than raining and we were able to get everything inside to set up dry. We had a nice room in the museum – the exhibition was on 19th century needlework so it went well with his weaving and my embroidery demonstration. We fit in the room perfectly. The event had people there most of the day – estimate is 75-100 people and since it was raining on and off and nasty the rest of the day, that was pretty good.
Still no chance to pack away Thanksgiving decorations and start on Christmas though. Each day has had new things to waste the day. I did manage to fit in taking most of the smaller exams I need to take to prepare income taxes next year for pay. They are online classes from an approved company and I use them every year. Two more small classes and tests and then the large 3 hour timed test – 6 hours of class time to do. That last one is always the one that scares me. I know that someway I will fit them in before the end of the month as I always do.
I hope to get the stuff out to the RV and pack away the Thanksgiving – at least the downstairs stuff, if not the Teddy Village Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow and hopefully start with the dining room decorations. I need to push a large linen style looking chest from the living room to the dining room before I start the dining room. It holds a small sized tree in the dining room and the large tree in the living room goes where the chest is the rest of the year. (It looks like a linen or hope chest, but instead of the top lifting the front drops down and there are drawers in it for DVDs – husband made it.)
The front hall and the living have decorations also and then the 3 downstairs trees – big one in the living room, small ones in the dining room and studio and beaded one that I made in the living room also – on the coffee table. I was going to change the bear figurines (separate from the teddy village) that are in a corner shelf unit in the living room – but his big loom is in front of the corner unit.
I did put up the wire hanging piece we bought a few years ago to hold Christmas/holiday cards. It is a long piece with little wire spots to clip papers – in this the cards – to and I hang it from our mug rack near the ceiling in the kitchen with red ribbons. I had figured a better way to hang it last year when I took it down and clipped a note into one of the wire spots to remind me – good idea it worked perfectly and I clipped the note back in for next year.
We did finish our shopping – we bought books for his two nieces – the only gifts we buy. I send my adult niblings (that is actually a work – I made it up and then found it already existed – it means nieces and nephews combined) checks for gifts. He has bought some DVDs and such – which he would have bought anyway – and given it to me to wrap for Christmas – I actually stick them in recycled Christmas gift bags – why waste paper. At some point we have to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas Eve dinner – maybe the Asian buffet we go to will be open? We are also figuring we will go there for dinner tomorrow as we won't be able to eat out this or next weekend due to the reenactment, so it will break the meals at home up a bit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Whatever holiday you celebrate – take time to enjoy it. In the future it will generally be the good times that are remembered – if the problems and misadventures are remembered they will become humorous in retrospect - “Hey remember the year that Susan and Carl got into the box of chocolates when they were little and took a bite out of each and then put them back?” “Remember the year we forgot to bring Ellen's gift and we all had to get together again the next week for her to get it?” Trust me, these things are terrible in the moment, but hilarious in the future.
It is the memories of the time together - even if you are just two like us - that matter in the end. If the decorations are not finished – they will be by new year's. If you will be alone try to find someplace where there are other people, I know that there are community holiday dinners even around here - where no one would think that they exist.
Oh, and as I learned at home growing up – there is always a room to throw all the stuff I you can't figure out what to do with in so the house will look nice for any family or friends who come by. :-)
Thursday, July 25, 2019
A CHORE LEADS TO A TIME FOR SOME REST
Well we now both have working computers - yay!
The fridge seems to be working - bigger yay! Husband found out that the drawers at the bottom of fridge keep a more even temperature than the rest of the fridge. After testing the temperature in same, we decided that the best place for his insulin in one of the drawers as the temperature in same seems to always be 36F or higher so that problem is resolved too.
Missed working with my sisters and their husbands at mom’s house again last weekend. We had terribly hot weather here and I was “under” it. My sister told me that they have gone through all but 3 rooms and 6 closets - not sure if that includes the room I have to go through as I left a lot of “stuff” in my old room. I found out that the other day that “we” will having a tag sale. Hmmm, I guess if I found stuff to donate it might be worth leaving it for the tag sale and maybe I will add some of the stuff we need to get rid of in our house and the money from same when (if?) it sells can go towards mom’s living expenses while not costing us anything that we don’t have to give her.
I has been HOT here - over 100F one day and almost the same the day before. Monday night there were major rain storms around the area - over several states. Husband was again demonstrating to me how wonderful having Roku is and that we can see every episode of “Midsummer Murders” from the start (we- mostly I - have only seen about 3 seasons as that is when I found the show) and we don’t have to watch it 3-5 am when it is on PBS we can see it any time. Last week when he ran the second episode (had run the first one previously) it kept going out of sync and needing to be restarted. Monday the hottest of the days and at night was the huge thunderstorm. We were watching episode 3 when it froze. He kept trying to get it going. Then something dawned on me - I turned on my cell phone and turned on the house wifi - nothing. I switched the TV to the cable - nothing. We had lost our Internet service - no cable, no computer Internet. (We still have copper wire telephone service from old telephone company so same still worked.) Husband was having a fit over no TV and no Internet. I knew that at least we had electricity. The TV came back gradually over several hours. At first the broadcast channels were back. Then the non-premium channels. The cable company’s local news channel was not there - but husband found it on their local weather channel - how the heck can one channel from their studio work and not the other? And shouldn’t their news channel at some point have mentioned - hey, we are on this other channel do an outage of our service - sorry - here is what is going on and which problems are where? They did not even do so after the service was restored. When the first channels were back, I went on my cell phone to see what had happened - just lots of people complaining that they had called to report the outage and find out what they could and got the message I did - “We are experiencing a large call volume. Please contact us through our website.” No website working of course!!
Today we went on a little trip. (Oh, no, another of her nightmare trips.) Our RV has two batteries (the type that are used in golf carts) which charge from the RV being driven, running the RV generator and/or plugging in the RV to electricity at home or at campground. As I am pretty sure I mentioned our two had reached beyond the end of their lives. We found a company in New Jersey that could order the batteries that husband had been told were the best to get for our RV and could install them. We ordered the batteries last week - paying for the batteries themselves at that time by charge card over the phone. They came in and we made an appointment to go to have them put in - for this past Monday - the day of the storm. On last Friday husband looked at the weather and saw the huge storms expected and told me to call and change the appointment to today (Wednesday). Blew out my week - I had planned to go to my client this week either Tuesday or Thursday and could not wake up that early two days in a row. I did so. Good thing we did. The area where the company is located was hit hard by the storm. Parts of the area were still out today and the company was running on two generators.
We (I) cleared out stuff where they might need to work - both halves of the bed were stacked on the base for husband’s side of the bed on each other. (His side is longer than my side and they might have needed to access the cabinet under my bed.) We figured out what we needed to bring. Not having been to this place before and having looked at online maps and there was no place for lunch near by, we bought sliced deli turkey and made sandwiches last night and bagged them in a cold bag made for lunch with two cans of diet soda and plastic ice. I emptied out my travel backpack. (I use it when we go somewhere where we will not have easy access back to the RV or car if we use same instead during the day. I put in what we might need based on where we go and what we do.) I put the cold bag with our lunch in it. I also added a package of saltine crackers as they work well for husband if he has a blood sugar low. In our other cold bag I put some bottles of a sugar drink he uses if his blood sugar goes too low and I put that bag in the RV fridge - which we did not put on. We had no idea if there was a place for us to wait while the work was done inside the building or if we would be sitting outside (in lesser, but still heat) on a curb waiting for it. We were also not sure how long it would take for the work to be done as we knew that there was no way we would be there by 8:30 am as we just cannot get up early enough to get ready and drive at least 2 hours and be there by then.
We got out this morning just ahead of our planned leaving time (okay - it was the same 8:30 am that it had been suggested we be there) and when husband went to back the RV out into the busy main street we live on it was actually empty on our side of the street long enough to pull out without waiting. (I stand in the street with a walkie talkie and tell him when he can pull out - he pulls up next to the curb and I jump in and we go.) As mentioned in past posts, what used to be a 45 minute drive to the bridge off the huge island we live on, can take 2 hours now. We have found that leaving the house at 8:30 am seems to be the best time for us to leave - we are driving at the rear end of rush hour and by the time we reach the construction areas - they are just short of starting work.
Drive was going pretty well and then the news announced that there had been a car fire on the bridge we had to take off the Island and traffic was bad. OH (expletive deleted)!! We figured we were in a mess for sure. Husband asked me about alternatives. I started thinking. We are on the south end of the Island and therefore also the south end of Manhattan Island. To get to “the main land” - mostly New Jersey we can take a bridge to Staten Island and then another bridge from there to New Jersey. We can drive through one of several bridges or two tunnels into Manhattan and then go across same and go out through one of two tunnels to New Jersey - this would involve driving the large van that is our RV in crowded Manhattan streets and we cannot take a tunnel due to having propane in a tank in the RV. So, we could get into Manhattan from where we were, but we would have to drive most of the length (south to north) of it to get to the George Washington Bridge. We could go north on our Island on one road that we can go on (we are too tall for many limited access roads here) just at the start of the next (Queens) county/NYC line drive north to the Bronx - over a bridge - and then across the Bronx on a road that I have never seen or heard of not being stopped by traffic - and then into Manhattan (on a bridge) and then over the same George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. An additional problem was the road we needed to use in New Jersey was only open to vehicles like ours for part of the way - no problem if we go by State Island, but if we go by the George Washington Bridge we have to figure an alternate way to drive south until we are near where we would get on the road if we went through Staten Island. We decided to keep on the way we normally go as it was so much simpler and it would probably take more time to go north and then come back south again than deal with the delay. The car that had been on fire was in the opposite direction from the one we were going. And the GPS traffic was not showing any drastic problems.
We figured that we would monitor the reports on the radio news channel we listen to as we went along and that, along with the traffic we hit would make our decision. But - today was the day that Robert Mueller was testifying at Congress and the radio station decided to run same instead of news and weather. The road was not as bad as usual. The bridge barely had a slow down. At 9:30 am I called the company and told them that we were on way and would be there in about an hour.
When we got there we were very pleasantly surprised. The building was large. The employees very friendly and nice. Robert had some info that the guys putting in the batteries needed to know and he gave it to the nice woman who wrote up the work order. I took my back pack - with lunch and some paperwork (about the ordering of the batteries) I had in case we needed it out of the RV. She wrote up the work order and then showed us what she called their “living room”. There were sofas, a huge TV showing - of course - Robert Mueller testifying. There was a man already there waiting for them to work on his car. I sat down - backpack on an end table - and husband walked around their small shop area of stuff for RV s. The man was very nice and we talked thorough out the time we were waiting. (Found out that there was a TV remote and he had chosen the show - fine with us.) I played solitaire on my cell phone. I had also brought my old Palm Centro as it had different games I like to play in case I got bored with the solitaire I play. The poor fellow was going to be there most of the day and have a huge bill when he was done. (Not that our bill between the parts paid for and the work to be done was small.) At one point the employee came out and asked him if he wanted to see local food place menus to order lunch as he would be there so long. (Very nice of her to think of this.) He offered it to us also, but I pointed at the backpack and we explained that we had brought lunch when we saw there was nothing near by. Of course I needed a trip to the ladies room. Very nice compared to most and especially to what I thought it might be based on other RV places.
Our work was done by 1:30 pm and we paid for it and were off - with our lunch still uneaten. We found out that the place still had not had their electricity restored and were running on 2 generators. We had not even noticed a problem with same. We were glad that they had been able to do the work under these conditions.
We have been in the general area before and had planned to hang around, have dinner in the area and then drive home - both because there is a chain buffet restaurant husband likes near there and to avoid being stuck in rush hour - which we would hit by the time we got back to Long Island. We decided to go to a shopping mall and walk around - and we figured to eat lunch in their food court area. As we were driving there we noticed soooo many stores that were dark and no cars in their parking lots as well as utility crews working. I suggested to husband that since we would pass it, we should check that the buffet was open after the storm instead of spending time and then finding ourselves with a dinner problem. Few cars outside it, but the lights were on and we saw people at tables.
Went to the mall and had lunch and walked around for over an hour. Then we went to Barnes and Nobles and walked around. Then we drove to a Walmart we knew about - closer to the restaurant then the other two - and went there for a while. Then dinner and home. Coming home the upper level of the bridge was closed - we presume based on what we saw that they were still clearing the bridge from the accident or making repairs due to same. It was the most traffic we had the entire trip.
Although much of the day was wasted time as we did not want to come home and got stuck in traffic (and he REALLY likes that buffet) I don’t feel like we had a wasted day. We had a lot of down time and actually I feel as if I had a chance for an enforced rest period today. (He, on the other hand, was in a constant state of concern.) Now that the batteries are replaced and new - he is worrying that the alternator is going bad or the “separator” is going bad. (The same alternator charges both the car battery under the hood that most if not all cars have and the RV batteries. The separator - surprise - keeps the RV and car batteries separated when same is going on - one is charged than when it is finished, the other is.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes things work out better than one thinks they will - but always make sure to plan for the problems that may arise. Sometimes a chore that wastes a lot of time can bring some needed rest to you.
The fridge seems to be working - bigger yay! Husband found out that the drawers at the bottom of fridge keep a more even temperature than the rest of the fridge. After testing the temperature in same, we decided that the best place for his insulin in one of the drawers as the temperature in same seems to always be 36F or higher so that problem is resolved too.
Missed working with my sisters and their husbands at mom’s house again last weekend. We had terribly hot weather here and I was “under” it. My sister told me that they have gone through all but 3 rooms and 6 closets - not sure if that includes the room I have to go through as I left a lot of “stuff” in my old room. I found out that the other day that “we” will having a tag sale. Hmmm, I guess if I found stuff to donate it might be worth leaving it for the tag sale and maybe I will add some of the stuff we need to get rid of in our house and the money from same when (if?) it sells can go towards mom’s living expenses while not costing us anything that we don’t have to give her.
I has been HOT here - over 100F one day and almost the same the day before. Monday night there were major rain storms around the area - over several states. Husband was again demonstrating to me how wonderful having Roku is and that we can see every episode of “Midsummer Murders” from the start (we- mostly I - have only seen about 3 seasons as that is when I found the show) and we don’t have to watch it 3-5 am when it is on PBS we can see it any time. Last week when he ran the second episode (had run the first one previously) it kept going out of sync and needing to be restarted. Monday the hottest of the days and at night was the huge thunderstorm. We were watching episode 3 when it froze. He kept trying to get it going. Then something dawned on me - I turned on my cell phone and turned on the house wifi - nothing. I switched the TV to the cable - nothing. We had lost our Internet service - no cable, no computer Internet. (We still have copper wire telephone service from old telephone company so same still worked.) Husband was having a fit over no TV and no Internet. I knew that at least we had electricity. The TV came back gradually over several hours. At first the broadcast channels were back. Then the non-premium channels. The cable company’s local news channel was not there - but husband found it on their local weather channel - how the heck can one channel from their studio work and not the other? And shouldn’t their news channel at some point have mentioned - hey, we are on this other channel do an outage of our service - sorry - here is what is going on and which problems are where? They did not even do so after the service was restored. When the first channels were back, I went on my cell phone to see what had happened - just lots of people complaining that they had called to report the outage and find out what they could and got the message I did - “We are experiencing a large call volume. Please contact us through our website.” No website working of course!!
Today we went on a little trip. (Oh, no, another of her nightmare trips.) Our RV has two batteries (the type that are used in golf carts) which charge from the RV being driven, running the RV generator and/or plugging in the RV to electricity at home or at campground. As I am pretty sure I mentioned our two had reached beyond the end of their lives. We found a company in New Jersey that could order the batteries that husband had been told were the best to get for our RV and could install them. We ordered the batteries last week - paying for the batteries themselves at that time by charge card over the phone. They came in and we made an appointment to go to have them put in - for this past Monday - the day of the storm. On last Friday husband looked at the weather and saw the huge storms expected and told me to call and change the appointment to today (Wednesday). Blew out my week - I had planned to go to my client this week either Tuesday or Thursday and could not wake up that early two days in a row. I did so. Good thing we did. The area where the company is located was hit hard by the storm. Parts of the area were still out today and the company was running on two generators.
We (I) cleared out stuff where they might need to work - both halves of the bed were stacked on the base for husband’s side of the bed on each other. (His side is longer than my side and they might have needed to access the cabinet under my bed.) We figured out what we needed to bring. Not having been to this place before and having looked at online maps and there was no place for lunch near by, we bought sliced deli turkey and made sandwiches last night and bagged them in a cold bag made for lunch with two cans of diet soda and plastic ice. I emptied out my travel backpack. (I use it when we go somewhere where we will not have easy access back to the RV or car if we use same instead during the day. I put in what we might need based on where we go and what we do.) I put the cold bag with our lunch in it. I also added a package of saltine crackers as they work well for husband if he has a blood sugar low. In our other cold bag I put some bottles of a sugar drink he uses if his blood sugar goes too low and I put that bag in the RV fridge - which we did not put on. We had no idea if there was a place for us to wait while the work was done inside the building or if we would be sitting outside (in lesser, but still heat) on a curb waiting for it. We were also not sure how long it would take for the work to be done as we knew that there was no way we would be there by 8:30 am as we just cannot get up early enough to get ready and drive at least 2 hours and be there by then.
We got out this morning just ahead of our planned leaving time (okay - it was the same 8:30 am that it had been suggested we be there) and when husband went to back the RV out into the busy main street we live on it was actually empty on our side of the street long enough to pull out without waiting. (I stand in the street with a walkie talkie and tell him when he can pull out - he pulls up next to the curb and I jump in and we go.) As mentioned in past posts, what used to be a 45 minute drive to the bridge off the huge island we live on, can take 2 hours now. We have found that leaving the house at 8:30 am seems to be the best time for us to leave - we are driving at the rear end of rush hour and by the time we reach the construction areas - they are just short of starting work.
Drive was going pretty well and then the news announced that there had been a car fire on the bridge we had to take off the Island and traffic was bad. OH (expletive deleted)!! We figured we were in a mess for sure. Husband asked me about alternatives. I started thinking. We are on the south end of the Island and therefore also the south end of Manhattan Island. To get to “the main land” - mostly New Jersey we can take a bridge to Staten Island and then another bridge from there to New Jersey. We can drive through one of several bridges or two tunnels into Manhattan and then go across same and go out through one of two tunnels to New Jersey - this would involve driving the large van that is our RV in crowded Manhattan streets and we cannot take a tunnel due to having propane in a tank in the RV. So, we could get into Manhattan from where we were, but we would have to drive most of the length (south to north) of it to get to the George Washington Bridge. We could go north on our Island on one road that we can go on (we are too tall for many limited access roads here) just at the start of the next (Queens) county/NYC line drive north to the Bronx - over a bridge - and then across the Bronx on a road that I have never seen or heard of not being stopped by traffic - and then into Manhattan (on a bridge) and then over the same George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. An additional problem was the road we needed to use in New Jersey was only open to vehicles like ours for part of the way - no problem if we go by State Island, but if we go by the George Washington Bridge we have to figure an alternate way to drive south until we are near where we would get on the road if we went through Staten Island. We decided to keep on the way we normally go as it was so much simpler and it would probably take more time to go north and then come back south again than deal with the delay. The car that had been on fire was in the opposite direction from the one we were going. And the GPS traffic was not showing any drastic problems.
We figured that we would monitor the reports on the radio news channel we listen to as we went along and that, along with the traffic we hit would make our decision. But - today was the day that Robert Mueller was testifying at Congress and the radio station decided to run same instead of news and weather. The road was not as bad as usual. The bridge barely had a slow down. At 9:30 am I called the company and told them that we were on way and would be there in about an hour.
When we got there we were very pleasantly surprised. The building was large. The employees very friendly and nice. Robert had some info that the guys putting in the batteries needed to know and he gave it to the nice woman who wrote up the work order. I took my back pack - with lunch and some paperwork (about the ordering of the batteries) I had in case we needed it out of the RV. She wrote up the work order and then showed us what she called their “living room”. There were sofas, a huge TV showing - of course - Robert Mueller testifying. There was a man already there waiting for them to work on his car. I sat down - backpack on an end table - and husband walked around their small shop area of stuff for RV s. The man was very nice and we talked thorough out the time we were waiting. (Found out that there was a TV remote and he had chosen the show - fine with us.) I played solitaire on my cell phone. I had also brought my old Palm Centro as it had different games I like to play in case I got bored with the solitaire I play. The poor fellow was going to be there most of the day and have a huge bill when he was done. (Not that our bill between the parts paid for and the work to be done was small.) At one point the employee came out and asked him if he wanted to see local food place menus to order lunch as he would be there so long. (Very nice of her to think of this.) He offered it to us also, but I pointed at the backpack and we explained that we had brought lunch when we saw there was nothing near by. Of course I needed a trip to the ladies room. Very nice compared to most and especially to what I thought it might be based on other RV places.
Our work was done by 1:30 pm and we paid for it and were off - with our lunch still uneaten. We found out that the place still had not had their electricity restored and were running on 2 generators. We had not even noticed a problem with same. We were glad that they had been able to do the work under these conditions.
We have been in the general area before and had planned to hang around, have dinner in the area and then drive home - both because there is a chain buffet restaurant husband likes near there and to avoid being stuck in rush hour - which we would hit by the time we got back to Long Island. We decided to go to a shopping mall and walk around - and we figured to eat lunch in their food court area. As we were driving there we noticed soooo many stores that were dark and no cars in their parking lots as well as utility crews working. I suggested to husband that since we would pass it, we should check that the buffet was open after the storm instead of spending time and then finding ourselves with a dinner problem. Few cars outside it, but the lights were on and we saw people at tables.
Went to the mall and had lunch and walked around for over an hour. Then we went to Barnes and Nobles and walked around. Then we drove to a Walmart we knew about - closer to the restaurant then the other two - and went there for a while. Then dinner and home. Coming home the upper level of the bridge was closed - we presume based on what we saw that they were still clearing the bridge from the accident or making repairs due to same. It was the most traffic we had the entire trip.
Although much of the day was wasted time as we did not want to come home and got stuck in traffic (and he REALLY likes that buffet) I don’t feel like we had a wasted day. We had a lot of down time and actually I feel as if I had a chance for an enforced rest period today. (He, on the other hand, was in a constant state of concern.) Now that the batteries are replaced and new - he is worrying that the alternator is going bad or the “separator” is going bad. (The same alternator charges both the car battery under the hood that most if not all cars have and the RV batteries. The separator - surprise - keeps the RV and car batteries separated when same is going on - one is charged than when it is finished, the other is.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes things work out better than one thinks they will - but always make sure to plan for the problems that may arise. Sometimes a chore that wastes a lot of time can bring some needed rest to you.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
ILLUMINATING LIGHTS, BUT ALMOST NO WORK- WORK, DONE
Well another week gone - and nothing much done of what I planned to do. Husband had plans.
We have a solar outdoor light fixture that we bought at least a year ago - if not two years ago - at Costco to put up in the backyard. We have electricity back there and at one time husband put up a light, but he cannot deal with heights - could not back when put the put the light up (nor can I deal well with heights) - but it is worse now. The fact that we are both on the short side and have to climb up higher to reach what others can reach adds to the problem. The light he had put up has not worked in a long while and we did not want to climb as high as the old light to replace it. So our logic was that we would buy a solar fixture and replace it by putting the solar fixture lower down the wired fixture. The fixture has been sitting in our dining room since we bought it waiting to be put up.
When we had our garage finished we had electricity added. You know the idea of ask around and find someone friends recommend? We hired a contractor who had done work several times for husband at his job and were extremely happy with. Our garage - not so much. To leave out the extensive details, the (supposedly) licensed electrician the contractor had hired did the wiring rather oddly. The outlet boxes inside the garage move as they are not attached to the studs. He put in 2 circuits - but rather than put half the outlets on one and half and half the lights on one and the other half on the other - all the outlets are on one circuit and the lights he put in were all on the same circuit. The air conditioner - which we added later is also on one of the circuits. (The ac installer said he never put one in a garage before.) Oh that reminds me - the garage is husband’s wood workshop. We did have the electrician put in a light next to the side door into the garage (something added when we had this work done - before there was only the large front garage door) which has a switch and a front spot light which has its own switch. We have replaced the front spot light a few times - high up, but not as high as the light on the back of the house - when the motion detectors have gone bad. Well, in the garage there are work lights - the two long flourescent bulbs type. The front two are hung from the inside of the roof - one of them, for unknown reason, much further towards the center of the garage and therefore much higher up. This fixture has been flashing and not really coming on, also for about a year. We had a box with 2 of the LED replacement bulbs for this particular type of feature, but could not reach the fixture to replace them.
The latest problem was that the light next to the side garage door stopped working completely. Husband decided that something had to be done as he could not see in the backyard at night to go in and out of the garage, there was no light there for security, and he was getting a headache working in the garage.
So while I am planning to work on tax returns for clients and for us, he was planning to work on lights. He bought a fixture to replace the one next to the side garage door. He then turned to the question of being able to reach things high up without fear of falling off a ladder. He found a ladder of about the right height that had platforms for the two stop steps and we set out to buy one. We had to go to one of major home store chain stores and then three of the other home store chain to find and buy one. It was really worth the cost - but it did take a lot of time over 2 days.
He was able to put the new light next to the side garage door. He then figured he could reach the bulbs in the fixture inside the garage and was going to buy a pair of LED ones - I surprised him with a box of them that was in the basement and it was done (and I don’t have to worry about breaking them when I move the Christmas boxes around).
That left the solar fixture that has been here for years. Problem is that where we planned to put it he decided after research, was not the place to put it. He finally figured out where to put it - reachable, facing the sun, and lighting up the backyard. So yesterday we put it up. The light fixture first and then the solar panel. Biggest problem was that where he put the light is where our TV antenna stands in the backyard. I was in constant fear that he would lean back or fall back and the long metal prong of the antenna would be through his head. He managed to avoid it and it is all in place. It apparently needs to charge a few days before we can test it.
Tonight - after dinner - I finally got to start the first return. It went easier than I thought with the new forms. It is not finished yet, but done enough that I am not worried about it. (Client lives on the other side of the country and I want to mail it out to her Monday if I can.) Meanwhile I have heard from a client who normally gets an extension - same this year as he is away until after April 15. Another client, a friend, contacted me last week - she has a return from 2015 that needs to be done or she will lose her refund from same. Problem is that she has no access to her house as there is a problem with a support wall and the ground may fall away. Luckily I have enough of her 2015 info (from when we filed the extension) to do a fairly correct return - but I sent her a form that will have IRS mail me copies of the forms sent to her by banks, etc. from that year’s return just to make sure. I am still waiting for other clients to mail their info to me. I keep wondering if I will hear from the client who disappeared to do her taxes. I really worry about her.
I have kept up on laundry - clothing load in the washer as I write and will go in the dryer as soon as my - yes - cell phone rings to tell me that the wash load should be done. I also need to do a load of towels afterwards.
Husband is again hoping and planning to go away Friday for the day - but it looks like rain again. We need a gift for my mom for her birthday on Sunday - she will be 90 and my sister is having a dinner for her. No ideas of what to get for her. I was going to embroider something, but husband talked me out of it. He doesn’t like the idea of giving her gift cards for the supermarket she goes to either (I don’t normally give gift cards, but I am stuck for ideas.) I had actually hoped we will go away as we maybe we can find a PA Dutch food item to bring her back as a gift.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One cannot always do what wants/needs to do when one plans - especially if there are others involved in one’s life. One can only do the best one can and not go crazy about it.
The timer in the cell phone just went off. So I will copy and post this when I come back up from switching loads. Okay laundry switched - now I can post.
We have a solar outdoor light fixture that we bought at least a year ago - if not two years ago - at Costco to put up in the backyard. We have electricity back there and at one time husband put up a light, but he cannot deal with heights - could not back when put the put the light up (nor can I deal well with heights) - but it is worse now. The fact that we are both on the short side and have to climb up higher to reach what others can reach adds to the problem. The light he had put up has not worked in a long while and we did not want to climb as high as the old light to replace it. So our logic was that we would buy a solar fixture and replace it by putting the solar fixture lower down the wired fixture. The fixture has been sitting in our dining room since we bought it waiting to be put up.
When we had our garage finished we had electricity added. You know the idea of ask around and find someone friends recommend? We hired a contractor who had done work several times for husband at his job and were extremely happy with. Our garage - not so much. To leave out the extensive details, the (supposedly) licensed electrician the contractor had hired did the wiring rather oddly. The outlet boxes inside the garage move as they are not attached to the studs. He put in 2 circuits - but rather than put half the outlets on one and half and half the lights on one and the other half on the other - all the outlets are on one circuit and the lights he put in were all on the same circuit. The air conditioner - which we added later is also on one of the circuits. (The ac installer said he never put one in a garage before.) Oh that reminds me - the garage is husband’s wood workshop. We did have the electrician put in a light next to the side door into the garage (something added when we had this work done - before there was only the large front garage door) which has a switch and a front spot light which has its own switch. We have replaced the front spot light a few times - high up, but not as high as the light on the back of the house - when the motion detectors have gone bad. Well, in the garage there are work lights - the two long flourescent bulbs type. The front two are hung from the inside of the roof - one of them, for unknown reason, much further towards the center of the garage and therefore much higher up. This fixture has been flashing and not really coming on, also for about a year. We had a box with 2 of the LED replacement bulbs for this particular type of feature, but could not reach the fixture to replace them.
The latest problem was that the light next to the side garage door stopped working completely. Husband decided that something had to be done as he could not see in the backyard at night to go in and out of the garage, there was no light there for security, and he was getting a headache working in the garage.
So while I am planning to work on tax returns for clients and for us, he was planning to work on lights. He bought a fixture to replace the one next to the side garage door. He then turned to the question of being able to reach things high up without fear of falling off a ladder. He found a ladder of about the right height that had platforms for the two stop steps and we set out to buy one. We had to go to one of major home store chain stores and then three of the other home store chain to find and buy one. It was really worth the cost - but it did take a lot of time over 2 days.
He was able to put the new light next to the side garage door. He then figured he could reach the bulbs in the fixture inside the garage and was going to buy a pair of LED ones - I surprised him with a box of them that was in the basement and it was done (and I don’t have to worry about breaking them when I move the Christmas boxes around).
That left the solar fixture that has been here for years. Problem is that where we planned to put it he decided after research, was not the place to put it. He finally figured out where to put it - reachable, facing the sun, and lighting up the backyard. So yesterday we put it up. The light fixture first and then the solar panel. Biggest problem was that where he put the light is where our TV antenna stands in the backyard. I was in constant fear that he would lean back or fall back and the long metal prong of the antenna would be through his head. He managed to avoid it and it is all in place. It apparently needs to charge a few days before we can test it.
Tonight - after dinner - I finally got to start the first return. It went easier than I thought with the new forms. It is not finished yet, but done enough that I am not worried about it. (Client lives on the other side of the country and I want to mail it out to her Monday if I can.) Meanwhile I have heard from a client who normally gets an extension - same this year as he is away until after April 15. Another client, a friend, contacted me last week - she has a return from 2015 that needs to be done or she will lose her refund from same. Problem is that she has no access to her house as there is a problem with a support wall and the ground may fall away. Luckily I have enough of her 2015 info (from when we filed the extension) to do a fairly correct return - but I sent her a form that will have IRS mail me copies of the forms sent to her by banks, etc. from that year’s return just to make sure. I am still waiting for other clients to mail their info to me. I keep wondering if I will hear from the client who disappeared to do her taxes. I really worry about her.
I have kept up on laundry - clothing load in the washer as I write and will go in the dryer as soon as my - yes - cell phone rings to tell me that the wash load should be done. I also need to do a load of towels afterwards.
Husband is again hoping and planning to go away Friday for the day - but it looks like rain again. We need a gift for my mom for her birthday on Sunday - she will be 90 and my sister is having a dinner for her. No ideas of what to get for her. I was going to embroider something, but husband talked me out of it. He doesn’t like the idea of giving her gift cards for the supermarket she goes to either (I don’t normally give gift cards, but I am stuck for ideas.) I had actually hoped we will go away as we maybe we can find a PA Dutch food item to bring her back as a gift.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One cannot always do what wants/needs to do when one plans - especially if there are others involved in one’s life. One can only do the best one can and not go crazy about it.
The timer in the cell phone just went off. So I will copy and post this when I come back up from switching loads. Okay laundry switched - now I can post.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
IT'S NOT MY TIME ANY MORE
I know that I have mentioned that getting organized and my work - job work, house, and club treasurer work - done was much easier when my husband went out to work. Monday to Friday was basically my own time. I could do all my work in a couple of days if I wanted and relax the other days (never worked out that way though) or work a bit every day (more like most of every day) and so on.
I was/am self-employed so I have no boss to answer to. As long as I get my job work done by its due dates and accommodate my clients with times that are convenient for them, I could decide when to work at my job. This still applies, but I have to deal with husband and what he wants to do and work around that.
We share a home office - sit at desks across from each other - so I miss sitting there and making telephone calls for any of the various types of work I do with no one watching me, listening to me and often telling me what I am doing wrong, as well needing to make him at least mute the TV (I taught him to have the TV on while doing things, so this is my fault I guess) so that I can hear who I am talking to on the phone and they don’t hear Capt Picard loudly talking in the background (he keeps the TV on rather loud, to say it politely). I end up making telephone calls from bed instead, balancing paperwork and/or alternate PDAs on my lap so I can talk on my cell phone and still easily consult a calendar or bring everything down to the kitchen to use the table and still have to juggle what I am using. Even worse, there are calls I have to make that I don’t want him to hear and he doesn’t want to hear (mostly the doctor to make appointment for us as he does not like to know in advance) and to correct problem related to same. He commented to me that I had to make a couple of phone calls, in reference to picking new medical insurance for me for next years, and I pointed at a stack of papers - spread out in smaller stacks - and told him - “yes, as soon as I make all these other calls that are ahead of them”. A discussion followed on the problems I have making telephone calls - the above and also the fact that we spend too long outside every day running “errands”. I went a bit too far and had to apologize as I made him feel really bad - and I didn’t want to do that.
We wake up late (and stay up late) which is a problem and I am worse than him at this as I am used to waking up slowly and alone. We go out for lunch - despite my telling him before he quit his job that life is not a continuous vacation and we can’t eat out all the time - because he likes it and our lunches at Wendys cost no more than lunch at home - maybe even less. Now, if we went and ate and left that would be okay, but we sit there and watch CNN on the TV, well he does, I sort of hear it above me while I watch a European sports channel on the TV at the other end of the room. Then if it was up to me, we would go home, unless it was the day to food shop or some other needed errand. He does not want to go home and therefore we spend time in stores “Where can we go today” walking senselessly around the stores. We spent 2 hours yesterday buying food items to make dinner because I had mentioned a dish he used to cook and he decided to make it (I was trying to talk him into cooking). He could not find the kind of cheese he needed...
Now this week I had a bunch of problems hit me at once. A client I have had a problem with her credit card processor (I am sure I have mentioned this). I had called and dealt with it while she and I were both away. This week she is home and I need to go to her for the regular monthly accounting stuff. I had been told that the amount which was credit to her account was about $500 less than the sale that was being credited. So I telephoned on Monday (after the discussion above about telephones) to find out the breakdown of charges taken out - I was going to reimburse her for any fees resulting for my error and was told the amount I was told before was wrong and only the monthly fee that had also bounced back had been charged. I let out my breath - I didn’t have $500 to give her and was glad I did not have to. But, I was told, it looks like a sale she made is being held. Huh? It is a much larger sale than she normally makes and they need information to pay it. I got a list of the info and planned to get the info when I went in to her this week. I telephoned her Tuesday about it - she had telephoned me while I was out about it also. She had a telephone call that there was a problem with the sale - she was positive that she would never get the money for it from the processing company and there is a problem with IRS about it - because I had filled in a form wrong when she signed up with this company. Huh? She gave me the name and phone number of the man who called and I must talk only to him according to her - his number was a switchboard and she had no extension number or department name. I left a message with customer service at the number to call me. Today I called the department I spoke with about the sale on Monday, hoping it was the same department although a different phone number and the woman I had spoken with, very nicely tracked down how to contact him. I spoke with him and he needs a simple form. I know I did not fill in the original form and will deal with her about it. Tomorrow I will take care of all this, hopefully, when I go there.
I missed this month’s meeting of my embroidery group as we were away. Next month’s meeting is being led by a member and kits or part of kits and own material are needed for the meeting. It was mentioned at the meeting I missed to the members and a list was made for her to order for members. It occurred to me that not everyone was there who might want to do the project next month, and I contacted her about my sending out an email. I then did so with her info. The person who ran last month’s meeting, then sent me additional info about the supplies and I sent out another email to everyone - this one, for some reason, bounced back from one member because of what it said(?).
Our reenacting unit is doing an event midweek next week for a school. Suddenly the school needs paperwork - some I have to get from 3rd parties - including an invoice. We are not sure if the event will be on one day or the next (in case of rain the first day) and we are having trouble getting members who can come midweek. So I had to call the unit’s insurance company for part of the paperwork , do a form from IRS, and write 2 invoices (one for each day, just in case) and get them out.
Oh yes, the medical insurance I need to pick and sign up for? Well, after my call to the doctor on Monday I decided which one to take and we started to sign me up for it on the computer. Despite the fact that the signup period started November 1, the computer sign up was not yet working on November 11 and would start on the 15th (today), so we still have to go back and sign me up.
If my time was own as it used to be all this would be so much easier. Of course in addition to all this, I have had to reconcile bank accounts for us, our business, and both clubs, pay bills, juggle money in the bank so bills could be paid, plus all of the housework I could do. Due to weather and the fact that on Halloween when we went away, the recycling had not been taken, I put out 5 weeks of recycling this week. Similarly we had not been able to put out garbage last week - and the office garbage does not go out every week, only if the pail is full, I put out 5 bags of garbage for one pickup, instead of the usual 1.
Tomorrow I will drive for at least an hour, ride a subway for 15 minutes, then ride subway back 15 minutes and drive home for two - three hours (in is off peak, home is rush hour - sort of, 3 pm is rush hour these days) after working for 3 hours at client and it will not be fun this visit as I have to resolve the problems and make her understand what is going on with everything. Well, at least I get away from husband for the day and get to drive.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
One has to work with the time one has. Limits put on one’s times by someone else are just one more thing which has to be dealt with. Problems are not something which can be foreseen and planned for. We can only do what we can do.
Oh, and husband just came down and told me he made a sale on his online business and now, at 1:25 am, we have to get it ready to go out - and I do the paperwork.
I was/am self-employed so I have no boss to answer to. As long as I get my job work done by its due dates and accommodate my clients with times that are convenient for them, I could decide when to work at my job. This still applies, but I have to deal with husband and what he wants to do and work around that.
We share a home office - sit at desks across from each other - so I miss sitting there and making telephone calls for any of the various types of work I do with no one watching me, listening to me and often telling me what I am doing wrong, as well needing to make him at least mute the TV (I taught him to have the TV on while doing things, so this is my fault I guess) so that I can hear who I am talking to on the phone and they don’t hear Capt Picard loudly talking in the background (he keeps the TV on rather loud, to say it politely). I end up making telephone calls from bed instead, balancing paperwork and/or alternate PDAs on my lap so I can talk on my cell phone and still easily consult a calendar or bring everything down to the kitchen to use the table and still have to juggle what I am using. Even worse, there are calls I have to make that I don’t want him to hear and he doesn’t want to hear (mostly the doctor to make appointment for us as he does not like to know in advance) and to correct problem related to same. He commented to me that I had to make a couple of phone calls, in reference to picking new medical insurance for me for next years, and I pointed at a stack of papers - spread out in smaller stacks - and told him - “yes, as soon as I make all these other calls that are ahead of them”. A discussion followed on the problems I have making telephone calls - the above and also the fact that we spend too long outside every day running “errands”. I went a bit too far and had to apologize as I made him feel really bad - and I didn’t want to do that.
We wake up late (and stay up late) which is a problem and I am worse than him at this as I am used to waking up slowly and alone. We go out for lunch - despite my telling him before he quit his job that life is not a continuous vacation and we can’t eat out all the time - because he likes it and our lunches at Wendys cost no more than lunch at home - maybe even less. Now, if we went and ate and left that would be okay, but we sit there and watch CNN on the TV, well he does, I sort of hear it above me while I watch a European sports channel on the TV at the other end of the room. Then if it was up to me, we would go home, unless it was the day to food shop or some other needed errand. He does not want to go home and therefore we spend time in stores “Where can we go today” walking senselessly around the stores. We spent 2 hours yesterday buying food items to make dinner because I had mentioned a dish he used to cook and he decided to make it (I was trying to talk him into cooking). He could not find the kind of cheese he needed...
Now this week I had a bunch of problems hit me at once. A client I have had a problem with her credit card processor (I am sure I have mentioned this). I had called and dealt with it while she and I were both away. This week she is home and I need to go to her for the regular monthly accounting stuff. I had been told that the amount which was credit to her account was about $500 less than the sale that was being credited. So I telephoned on Monday (after the discussion above about telephones) to find out the breakdown of charges taken out - I was going to reimburse her for any fees resulting for my error and was told the amount I was told before was wrong and only the monthly fee that had also bounced back had been charged. I let out my breath - I didn’t have $500 to give her and was glad I did not have to. But, I was told, it looks like a sale she made is being held. Huh? It is a much larger sale than she normally makes and they need information to pay it. I got a list of the info and planned to get the info when I went in to her this week. I telephoned her Tuesday about it - she had telephoned me while I was out about it also. She had a telephone call that there was a problem with the sale - she was positive that she would never get the money for it from the processing company and there is a problem with IRS about it - because I had filled in a form wrong when she signed up with this company. Huh? She gave me the name and phone number of the man who called and I must talk only to him according to her - his number was a switchboard and she had no extension number or department name. I left a message with customer service at the number to call me. Today I called the department I spoke with about the sale on Monday, hoping it was the same department although a different phone number and the woman I had spoken with, very nicely tracked down how to contact him. I spoke with him and he needs a simple form. I know I did not fill in the original form and will deal with her about it. Tomorrow I will take care of all this, hopefully, when I go there.
I missed this month’s meeting of my embroidery group as we were away. Next month’s meeting is being led by a member and kits or part of kits and own material are needed for the meeting. It was mentioned at the meeting I missed to the members and a list was made for her to order for members. It occurred to me that not everyone was there who might want to do the project next month, and I contacted her about my sending out an email. I then did so with her info. The person who ran last month’s meeting, then sent me additional info about the supplies and I sent out another email to everyone - this one, for some reason, bounced back from one member because of what it said(?).
Our reenacting unit is doing an event midweek next week for a school. Suddenly the school needs paperwork - some I have to get from 3rd parties - including an invoice. We are not sure if the event will be on one day or the next (in case of rain the first day) and we are having trouble getting members who can come midweek. So I had to call the unit’s insurance company for part of the paperwork , do a form from IRS, and write 2 invoices (one for each day, just in case) and get them out.
Oh yes, the medical insurance I need to pick and sign up for? Well, after my call to the doctor on Monday I decided which one to take and we started to sign me up for it on the computer. Despite the fact that the signup period started November 1, the computer sign up was not yet working on November 11 and would start on the 15th (today), so we still have to go back and sign me up.
If my time was own as it used to be all this would be so much easier. Of course in addition to all this, I have had to reconcile bank accounts for us, our business, and both clubs, pay bills, juggle money in the bank so bills could be paid, plus all of the housework I could do. Due to weather and the fact that on Halloween when we went away, the recycling had not been taken, I put out 5 weeks of recycling this week. Similarly we had not been able to put out garbage last week - and the office garbage does not go out every week, only if the pail is full, I put out 5 bags of garbage for one pickup, instead of the usual 1.
Tomorrow I will drive for at least an hour, ride a subway for 15 minutes, then ride subway back 15 minutes and drive home for two - three hours (in is off peak, home is rush hour - sort of, 3 pm is rush hour these days) after working for 3 hours at client and it will not be fun this visit as I have to resolve the problems and make her understand what is going on with everything. Well, at least I get away from husband for the day and get to drive.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
One has to work with the time one has. Limits put on one’s times by someone else are just one more thing which has to be dealt with. Problems are not something which can be foreseen and planned for. We can only do what we can do.
Oh, and husband just came down and told me he made a sale on his online business and now, at 1:25 am, we have to get it ready to go out - and I do the paperwork.
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, January 26, 2017
CIRCUMSTANCES CAN CHANGE WHAT I CAN GET DONE
First a followup - I now have the ornaments off the main Christmas tree, the studio tree, and the tree in the dining room which had all ornaments from Colonial Williamsburg. (We have been members for a couple of decades and get one each year.) The ornaments are boxed and ready for storage. The trees are taken apart (artificial trees), boxed and stored in the basement. I also stored the decorations from the kitchen, dining room and our entry hall (one box total) in their box. Living room is next.
I started thinking about how much more cleaning, organizing and cleaning up I used to get done and tried to figure out why I don’t get more done now. Now I realize what I used to do would be much too little for many people, but it kept our house clean. Lately I only get the basics laundry, and changing bedding and towels, done.
When we were first married, husband would come home on Friday afternoon exhausted and go to bed early and I would clean our tiny apartment while he slept. Not too many rooms to clean and a time to do so.
After we moved to our house I did not do a good job of cleaning - big house, my work load increased - then I started reading books about organizing. We go to Barnes and Nobles weekly and I was bored and found out that there were books about organizing. At about the same time we were on the board of a crafts organization which rotated the board meetings to different board members houses - I really needed to get the house in some semblance of order. Then again we had saying in the group of kindred spirits - “Have the board meeting at your house, better you should clean then me.” I started reading the books while we are at the bookstore - I read fairly quickly and would finish about a book a month. While much of what was in the in the books did not apply to me, they did give me impetus to work at organizing and cleaning the house.
The schedule I came up with was that I used to clean the floors and dust the upstairs the first Wednesday of the month. On the second Wednesday of the month I would do the same downstairs and clean the bathroom downstairs. On the third Wednesday I would again do the upstairs and clean the bathroom upstairs. On the fourth I would again do the downstairs floors and dusting and clean the kitchen. I did this for over a decade. Now, I don’t get to anything that it is not urgent - WHY?
Again there was a change in my life. My husband is home all the time now! When he went to work I would clean upstairs in the morning on the weeks I did same and the downstairs in the evening while he was upstairs. Now he is with me all the time and I have no more mornings as we get up late (and go to bed late) and he is around most of the evening..
Also we have the RV stuff in the dining room half the year - next to impossible to clean a floor covered with boxes. Now we have the loom and it’s stuff in the living room - yes, it is now back and set up since the Christmas tree came down last week - again hard to clean around it.
I used to food shop on Mondays and do a fill in on Fridays for the weekend if needed. Husband hated food shopping so I did not want to need anything on the weekend when he would be home. I also would make sure that I would not need to food shop while he was on vacation from work (his place was on a modified school year, several one week vacations). Now we shop willy nilly - barely a list in my cell phone, no set day and we can end up food shopping 3 -5 days a week. Last week we had a day when we spent an hour and half in 2 supermarkets - and bought maybe 6 items - he likes to go up and down aisles and see what there is - looking for the magic healthy, tasty, low in carbs meal he will love, which is he is sure exists somewhere. I used to go out on Tuesdays - Thursdays for a 15 minute trip to and from the post office (check our box and mail anything to go out) - now we go out for at least an hour a day - wandering in one or the other of 3 stores. All that time which could be used at home to get things done - gone.
So, life changed again. So I have to come up with new plans for cleaning the house - because it needs to be done more often. I am thinking of trying Tuesday nights instead of Wednesday days.
Of course there still exists the problem of trying to clean while husband is home - clean a bathroom and he will need it and just try to dust his computers and desk while he is working at them.
I need to get the food shopping back on a schedule also. We have had a shake up here in supermarkets which has made food shopping even more confusing. The store I shopped at since we were married as my main store, was taken over around when he quit his job. (Understand this was a mutual decision based on his being horribly burned out at the job and he works from home now.) He was just starting coming food shopping with me then and he pointed out that we went to the market I had been going to and then to one from another chain as “mine” never had what I wanted any more. So we started just going to the “other” market. Since then the food markets here have changed. The chain I used to go to and another chain owned by the same company are gone in bankruptcy. In their old locations new markets are opening - several are upscale ones with food bars - too expensive unless there is a sale to buy food there and the food bars never look properly tended - another one of these (which will be the third chain like this around our area) will be opening in the fall. The chain that was my alternate has opened a second store a little further away from us - in a better area with better parking so he is not as upset about going there as before. And Walmart opened a “Neighborhood Market” here. Our Walmart stores have small food sections. They are not the huge food markets or stores that they are elsewhere (and are not open 24 hours). This store is food and what one would normally find in a supermarket, but still not the size of the food departments in Walmarts in other areas nor do they carry everything the other Walmarts (or other supermarkets) carry. To give you an idea - this store does not have a bakery - just items baked elsewhere and brought in; the deli counter never seems to be open - we wonder if we have to ask to have it opened.
I need to start looking at the circulars and matching items to my list again. I used to have a list on the fridge - who ever took the “item” which brought quantity left to the point where we needed to start looking to buy it, would the add the item to the list on the fridge. Now I put it in a “BUY list” memo in my cell phone. We always seem to be in a rush, so I buy what we need NOW and wait for the rest. I do try keep up my coupons - but our diets and lives are such that, combined with less coupons being delivered, and the fact that we buy some stuff at Costco which does not accept coupons, and that we buy a lot of store brand items, we use a lot less supermarket coupons than before. (Though, last week the supermarket had brand name chicken soup - you know the brand - on sale for 49 cents with their store card and I had a coupon for $1.50 off - that was a good deal!) I keep my coupons and store cards in the car so if I need something - it is just outside the store in the parking lot. (I keep store cards we might use when traveling in the RV and some of them also in the car, and I keep store cards that are only local also in our van - just in case). The coupon holders come with us on trips. I have one holder for regular and store coupons and another just for a large hardware chain which puts out constant coupons (I am guessing you know which one I mean). I bring them into the house once a week (okay, I mean to bring them in once a week, sometimes less often and sometimes I add or remove in the car while husband is driving) to pull out old coupons and add new ones.
Sometimes outside forces throw me off schedule. I just put out two and a half weeks of the kitchen pail garbage (meaning most of the first floor garbage). Why so much? Well, our garbage pickup is on Mondays and Thursdays. I normally put the kitchen garbage out on Sunday night for the Monday morning pickup. Monday last week (the 16th) was a legal holiday and there was no pickup. So, I planned to put it out on Wednesday night for Thursday - I forgot. We had a nor’easter here and the winds were suppose to start Monday morning. I did not want my garbage flying all over and did not put it out Sunday night - and I left the second week’s garbage bag in the pail in the kitchen as there was room in it and it did not smell. So, tonight I put out both bags for pickup tomorrow. I also have a mostly full bag of trash in our office, with smaller bags to be added to it from our bedroom and upstairs bathroom, but that can go out Sunday for Monday pickup next week. We don’t fill the office pail as quickly and it is mostly just paper. I also have two and a half weeks of recycling to go out - three weeks by Monday night when I will put it out for Tuesday pickup. Since Monday the 16th was a holiday, I forgot to put out the recycling for Tuesday. Then this past Monday/Tuesday we were still dealing with the nor’easter, so the recycling is sitting in the porch waiting to go. I will make two stacks of papers and use a larger box to put out the cans and bottles and they will be gone (well, at least as of now they say next Sunday to Tuesday should be nice weather). I put my newspapers out in cardboard boxes which we have gotten things in and recycle them at the same time.
I am trying to get back on some sort of schedule as I used to be to get it all done. I have writing my post for this blog down for Tuesday night - so it can be posted very late Wednesday night -which might technically be early Thursday morning. Many weeks I write it on Wednesday night. This week I was good and wrote it on Tuesday night, then thought about it, and revised it before posting it - it is much less rambling than it was as I originally wrote it.
Do you have a schedule or just do what you can when you can?
TODAY’S THOUGHT ON ORGANIZING - Any step forward is better than none. I mentioned previously to change one thing and follow through on it. It took almost 29 years in this house - along with 9 years of stuff from our apartment and over 25 years of stuff from before that to get us to where we are. It will not be gone quickly, even allowing for the fact that some of the stuff has already been gotten rid. But any step forward is that much less to do afterward.
I started thinking about how much more cleaning, organizing and cleaning up I used to get done and tried to figure out why I don’t get more done now. Now I realize what I used to do would be much too little for many people, but it kept our house clean. Lately I only get the basics laundry, and changing bedding and towels, done.
When we were first married, husband would come home on Friday afternoon exhausted and go to bed early and I would clean our tiny apartment while he slept. Not too many rooms to clean and a time to do so.
After we moved to our house I did not do a good job of cleaning - big house, my work load increased - then I started reading books about organizing. We go to Barnes and Nobles weekly and I was bored and found out that there were books about organizing. At about the same time we were on the board of a crafts organization which rotated the board meetings to different board members houses - I really needed to get the house in some semblance of order. Then again we had saying in the group of kindred spirits - “Have the board meeting at your house, better you should clean then me.” I started reading the books while we are at the bookstore - I read fairly quickly and would finish about a book a month. While much of what was in the in the books did not apply to me, they did give me impetus to work at organizing and cleaning the house.
The schedule I came up with was that I used to clean the floors and dust the upstairs the first Wednesday of the month. On the second Wednesday of the month I would do the same downstairs and clean the bathroom downstairs. On the third Wednesday I would again do the upstairs and clean the bathroom upstairs. On the fourth I would again do the downstairs floors and dusting and clean the kitchen. I did this for over a decade. Now, I don’t get to anything that it is not urgent - WHY?
Again there was a change in my life. My husband is home all the time now! When he went to work I would clean upstairs in the morning on the weeks I did same and the downstairs in the evening while he was upstairs. Now he is with me all the time and I have no more mornings as we get up late (and go to bed late) and he is around most of the evening..
Also we have the RV stuff in the dining room half the year - next to impossible to clean a floor covered with boxes. Now we have the loom and it’s stuff in the living room - yes, it is now back and set up since the Christmas tree came down last week - again hard to clean around it.
I used to food shop on Mondays and do a fill in on Fridays for the weekend if needed. Husband hated food shopping so I did not want to need anything on the weekend when he would be home. I also would make sure that I would not need to food shop while he was on vacation from work (his place was on a modified school year, several one week vacations). Now we shop willy nilly - barely a list in my cell phone, no set day and we can end up food shopping 3 -5 days a week. Last week we had a day when we spent an hour and half in 2 supermarkets - and bought maybe 6 items - he likes to go up and down aisles and see what there is - looking for the magic healthy, tasty, low in carbs meal he will love, which is he is sure exists somewhere. I used to go out on Tuesdays - Thursdays for a 15 minute trip to and from the post office (check our box and mail anything to go out) - now we go out for at least an hour a day - wandering in one or the other of 3 stores. All that time which could be used at home to get things done - gone.
So, life changed again. So I have to come up with new plans for cleaning the house - because it needs to be done more often. I am thinking of trying Tuesday nights instead of Wednesday days.
Of course there still exists the problem of trying to clean while husband is home - clean a bathroom and he will need it and just try to dust his computers and desk while he is working at them.
I need to get the food shopping back on a schedule also. We have had a shake up here in supermarkets which has made food shopping even more confusing. The store I shopped at since we were married as my main store, was taken over around when he quit his job. (Understand this was a mutual decision based on his being horribly burned out at the job and he works from home now.) He was just starting coming food shopping with me then and he pointed out that we went to the market I had been going to and then to one from another chain as “mine” never had what I wanted any more. So we started just going to the “other” market. Since then the food markets here have changed. The chain I used to go to and another chain owned by the same company are gone in bankruptcy. In their old locations new markets are opening - several are upscale ones with food bars - too expensive unless there is a sale to buy food there and the food bars never look properly tended - another one of these (which will be the third chain like this around our area) will be opening in the fall. The chain that was my alternate has opened a second store a little further away from us - in a better area with better parking so he is not as upset about going there as before. And Walmart opened a “Neighborhood Market” here. Our Walmart stores have small food sections. They are not the huge food markets or stores that they are elsewhere (and are not open 24 hours). This store is food and what one would normally find in a supermarket, but still not the size of the food departments in Walmarts in other areas nor do they carry everything the other Walmarts (or other supermarkets) carry. To give you an idea - this store does not have a bakery - just items baked elsewhere and brought in; the deli counter never seems to be open - we wonder if we have to ask to have it opened.
I need to start looking at the circulars and matching items to my list again. I used to have a list on the fridge - who ever took the “item” which brought quantity left to the point where we needed to start looking to buy it, would the add the item to the list on the fridge. Now I put it in a “BUY list” memo in my cell phone. We always seem to be in a rush, so I buy what we need NOW and wait for the rest. I do try keep up my coupons - but our diets and lives are such that, combined with less coupons being delivered, and the fact that we buy some stuff at Costco which does not accept coupons, and that we buy a lot of store brand items, we use a lot less supermarket coupons than before. (Though, last week the supermarket had brand name chicken soup - you know the brand - on sale for 49 cents with their store card and I had a coupon for $1.50 off - that was a good deal!) I keep my coupons and store cards in the car so if I need something - it is just outside the store in the parking lot. (I keep store cards we might use when traveling in the RV and some of them also in the car, and I keep store cards that are only local also in our van - just in case). The coupon holders come with us on trips. I have one holder for regular and store coupons and another just for a large hardware chain which puts out constant coupons (I am guessing you know which one I mean). I bring them into the house once a week (okay, I mean to bring them in once a week, sometimes less often and sometimes I add or remove in the car while husband is driving) to pull out old coupons and add new ones.
Sometimes outside forces throw me off schedule. I just put out two and a half weeks of the kitchen pail garbage (meaning most of the first floor garbage). Why so much? Well, our garbage pickup is on Mondays and Thursdays. I normally put the kitchen garbage out on Sunday night for the Monday morning pickup. Monday last week (the 16th) was a legal holiday and there was no pickup. So, I planned to put it out on Wednesday night for Thursday - I forgot. We had a nor’easter here and the winds were suppose to start Monday morning. I did not want my garbage flying all over and did not put it out Sunday night - and I left the second week’s garbage bag in the pail in the kitchen as there was room in it and it did not smell. So, tonight I put out both bags for pickup tomorrow. I also have a mostly full bag of trash in our office, with smaller bags to be added to it from our bedroom and upstairs bathroom, but that can go out Sunday for Monday pickup next week. We don’t fill the office pail as quickly and it is mostly just paper. I also have two and a half weeks of recycling to go out - three weeks by Monday night when I will put it out for Tuesday pickup. Since Monday the 16th was a holiday, I forgot to put out the recycling for Tuesday. Then this past Monday/Tuesday we were still dealing with the nor’easter, so the recycling is sitting in the porch waiting to go. I will make two stacks of papers and use a larger box to put out the cans and bottles and they will be gone (well, at least as of now they say next Sunday to Tuesday should be nice weather). I put my newspapers out in cardboard boxes which we have gotten things in and recycle them at the same time.
I am trying to get back on some sort of schedule as I used to be to get it all done. I have writing my post for this blog down for Tuesday night - so it can be posted very late Wednesday night -which might technically be early Thursday morning. Many weeks I write it on Wednesday night. This week I was good and wrote it on Tuesday night, then thought about it, and revised it before posting it - it is much less rambling than it was as I originally wrote it.
Do you have a schedule or just do what you can when you can?
TODAY’S THOUGHT ON ORGANIZING - Any step forward is better than none. I mentioned previously to change one thing and follow through on it. It took almost 29 years in this house - along with 9 years of stuff from our apartment and over 25 years of stuff from before that to get us to where we are. It will not be gone quickly, even allowing for the fact that some of the stuff has already been gotten rid. But any step forward is that much less to do afterward.
Thursday, November 24, 2016
ORGANIZED THANKSGIVING?
Thanksgiving, as I sit here and write is tomorrow. Thanksgiving was very important to me growing up. Since my family (and I) are Jewish most of the mainstream family holidays (Christmas, Easter) were not our holidays and we did not observe or celebrate them. But Thanksgiving was different - it was for all Americans (and any one visiting the country also).
When I met my husband (who is Roman Catholic) and as we progressed through dating to marriage we started celebrating each other’s holidays with the each other’s families. That left Thanksgiving as the only holiday both families wanted us for. We tended to go to his family, but sometimes went to mine. We got married and this continued. Then came the year his sister got married - a week or so before Thanksgiving. We did not want to go to dinner with just his parents and grandmother, but did not want to leave them alone and go to dinner with my family. What to do?
I then made a suggestion that shocked and surprised my husband - “Let’s have both families here for Thanksgiving dinner”. I then found the real difference between the two families. It was not being from different “old countries”. It was not the difference in religion. It was - his family ate out for almost all holidays and mine ate home for almost all holidays. The concept of making dinner for and having 10 people shocked and scared him. My mom used to have that and more for family holiday dinners and to do so was what I expected out of life. He was further concerned as we lived in our apartment then - “Where would we put everyone?’ We had a long living room and I figured we would get (we ended up borrowing from his parents) folding tables and set them up end to end to make one long table.
Both families agreed to come. We were a little rocky that first year. We overreached. Luckily we started the night before. We planned on making our own stuffing which used chestnuts - I never knew that under the shell chestnuts had a skin, which also had to be removed - it took forever. We put together some food dish or other and had it on the counter. I dropped a glass - the food was covered in glass and had to be thrown out. But we did it. Lack of serving space? Cover the portable clothes dryer with a table cloth, push it in the corner of the living room - bar. People had a problem walking past each other at the table, but it all worked out. I even saw a different side of my, always seemingly austere, grandfather - someone made an inadvertent double meaning comment (meaning off color in the unintended meaning) and my grandfather laughed like crazy with everyone else and so did husband’s grandmother.
It was so successful that we continued for 25 years to make Thanksgiving dinner for the combined families. We got much better at it. The year we moved to this house we moved in October. I promised that we would make Thanksgiving dinner - even if we ate off of paper plates. (The china was on the table for the dinner.) The problem we found we had was that the dinning room was square, not long and we had to deal with fitting in tables. Until we bought a dining room table some years later we came up with plywood pieces which clamped to our old kitchen table and made a huge square table and had to be assembled and disassembled each year.
The only thing that stopped us, finally, from continuing to make Thanksgiving dinner was bed bugs. Since we no longer feel comfortable having anyone in the house we no longer have people in. Since then my family eats dinner at my sister’s house and his family goes out for dinner. We eat alone. In the 8 years since then we have eaten Thanksgiving dinner in a chain buffet or made dinner for the two of us. (One has a lot of leftover turkey when one makes dinner for two.) The chain buffet closed this year. That left us looking for an alternative. There was one possible place that we could sort of afford, but we had never been there and reviews online were not the best. So this past weekend it was “officially” decided that we make dinner at home.
Now to keep organized over the years I made lists. Starting the second year we made Thanksgiving I wrote them in a spiral notebook. At first it not only included a list of what we would have, but also lists of what each item would be cooked and served in. Over the years since the menu mostly repeated I knew which items would be used for cooking and serving. I knew that, as odd as it sounds, the first thing to start cooking when we got up Thanksgiving (late) morning was the potatoes for mashed potatoes. The first year we had found out that there was a large local deli which was open on Thanksgiving and we could order the turkey cooked and ready for a hot pickup in the afternoon - my sister and her husband (and children) would pick it up for us on their way here (we paid) as they went past the place anyway. Over the years the place shut down and we started getting the turkey from their other location - closer to my sister than us. Not having a turkey in the oven left room for everything else.
At the height of our hosting Thanksgiving I would start cooking on Tuesday having already cleared the dining room as much as possible - including moving small pieces of furniture to our studio on the other side of the kitchen. I baked Venetians (aka rainbow cookies). They had to be baked and put together with the jellied centers on one day, left overnight with a heavy book on them and then chocolate melted and frosted it on another day. I would make beef vegetable soup (PA Dutch recipe) on Wednesday and bake an apple pie and brownies (brownies were from a mix). Wednesday night we would put together the sweet potatoes (no marshmallows, Colonial Williamsburg recipe) and bake the pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving day we would make the rest of the items and bake the sweet potatoes. A couple of times I made and baked rolls from scratch and once a baked a tea bread (CW recipe again) from scratch. Sometimes I made biscuits instead. Nieces and nephews however like the can popping open however, and we mostly made rolls from refrigerated dough. (These rolls are no longer made by the popping can company or any other.)
Each year I would look at my list of dishes from the year before. We would discuss it and possibly make changes - Would something new work? Do we need more of less of something. More of something? Did his sister want salad? Was my sister vegetarian that year? Did my niece decide she was kosher that year and would bring her own food? (Did not last beyond 2 years.) We would adjust the menu. But year to year it remained organized. My sisters, mom and I were used to working together on getting out the food and clearing up and husband’s sister made her best efforts to help. As nieces came along they helped - young children like to help - but nephew preferred the living room and playing. I would do the dishes, etc. after everyone left. In the apartment by hand and here in the dishwasher. Here in the house I would also wash and dry the tablecloth and napkins overnight. Since we stopped having the family in, the dish washer has broken so I am back to washing by hand. When we went to/go to sleep at night on Thanksgiving everything has been washed (or was being washed in the dishwasher). It does take a few days or a week to put it all back, but all is always cleaned that night.
Our guest list would change - it got smaller when my dad died, larger with each niece or nephew, a boyhood friend of husband’s who lived out of town, was down for the holidays a couple of times and joined us for dinner. Husband’s sister’s mother-in-law was added to the guest list for several years before we stopped. We first heard that his sister and her husband were going to adopt a child at dinner one year. My niece had her first “food” - applesauce - at Thanksgiving dinner one year.
I have the recipes in the computer. I used to use a cookbook program, but it needs a parallel printer directly hooked up to the computer on a specific port, so it is no longer usable. It used to be great, it would resize recipes and calculate the revised ingredient list and had a shopping list feature. I had put in the location of foods in our supermarket and I would have a shopping list printed out in the order I needed to find the foods. When I saw its life coming to an end I printed all the recipes and scanned them back into the computer as pdf files so I would not lose the recipes. I have to calculate ingredient quantities for changes in servings and make my own shopping lists, but I still can print the recipes out. One advantage to this when making an assortment of items, is that when an item is done being prepared, the recipe is tossed out. Helps keep track of what is done and what needs to be done.
So if we have been so organized and good at it, why has this year been such a mess? We did not decide until the last minute that we were making dinner for ourselves. (We had kept waiting for the magic restaurant to appear for us to go to for dinner.) On Sunday while in Costco we saw turkeys for 99 cents a pound. We were not going straight home and did not want the turkey sitting in the car for hours so we did not buy one.
Tuesday we had a list of what we would make and needed ingredients. - some our traditional ones, some husband picked to make it easier for me. We set out to food shop. In my mind we would buy items which did not need refrigeration (since they were more Thanksgiving related they might sell out) and then get a turkey at the Costco near us. Husband had planned to buy the turkey first in case we had a problem finding one - but did not tell me why he was buying it first, so I pushed to get it later. We bought stuff at Walmart and the supermarket next to it. (I may or may not have mentioned that our Walmarts do not have the supermarket Walmarts commonly have and there is a separate, unrelated supermarket next to the Walmart we normally go to.) We then set off, not to the Costco near us, but to the one we normally go to (which we like it better than the one near us) to get the turkey.
Horrors! There were no more 99 cent a pound turkeys! The only turkeys they had were $3.29 a pound as they were organic. Panic! My mind went to what we could have instead of turkey. I remembered we bought 2 ham portions - one for Christmas and one for whenever - when last in Lancaster, PA and I figured if stuck we would have “French Turkey” which is ham. Husband drove to a specialty food store located near Costco which had opened here this year - a chain from Connecticut. We had been very disappointed when we went to see this store after decades of hearing about it - very expensive, but I followed him into the store. He moved so quickly that I lost sight of him before I got to the store. I kept thinking I was seeing his red winter jacket - but when I got to where I thought I saw him it would be an employee in a red apron. I finally caught up with him at the turkey case. They had LOTS of turkey - even better and - important at this point - was that the turkeys were not frozen. We picked out one that is probably too big for us, and brought it home. $1.69 a pound, not the 99 cents we planned, but not $3.29 either.
Today Wednesday we went to the supermarket to buy the items which we did not buy yesterday as they need to be refrigerated and we did not want to drive around with them yesterday while getting the turkey. We ended up changing the menu while there. I had planned on baking him a pumpkin pie. He decided we should buy one instead. I make it for him with less sugar and no pie shell (believe it or not the latter part - no pie shell - is from Libbys and uses its basic pie recipe). He decided it was too much trouble, so we bought a pie and I ran around putting back things such as eggs which we were buying to bake the pie. What had settled the matter was a free apple pie for me with the purchase of his pumpkin pie (or vice versa). Both treats for us which will be eaten over many days as we are limited in eating sweets.
I had planned on clearing out the dining room yesterday and today - in particular the items for the RV which sit under the dining room table in RV season and get stored in the RV for the winter, but did not have a chance due to the running around shopping. We keep our dining room table, without the boards to the table, against the wall when not in use. (This was done in the 1700s and is very convenient allowing use of the empty space in the middle of the room for other projects.) I will pull it into place in the middle of the room and stack the RV stuff (and any weaving stuff, etc. stored in the dining room) against the wall out of the way.
I did polish the silverware we will use. It has been some years since it was polished and the heating of the house to kill the bed bugs did not help. I have been picking out for us the less tarnished looking pieces. Surprisingly it did not take as long as I remembered to polish what we needed - and I put the pieces in a zip bag to keep them relatively free of tarnish. Perhaps I will finally get around to polishing the rest of the silverware and lining the drawers they are kept in with the special fabric to prevent tarnishing to protect it. In the meantime, the pieces I have polished will be returned to the sealed bag when we are done with them.
Somehow the dining room will be ready. I will get up tomorrow and put the turkey in the oven and go back to sleep. Everything will come out okay - worse comes to worse, it is just us.
My best wishes to all of you who are in the U.S. for a wonderful Thanksgiving.
When I met my husband (who is Roman Catholic) and as we progressed through dating to marriage we started celebrating each other’s holidays with the each other’s families. That left Thanksgiving as the only holiday both families wanted us for. We tended to go to his family, but sometimes went to mine. We got married and this continued. Then came the year his sister got married - a week or so before Thanksgiving. We did not want to go to dinner with just his parents and grandmother, but did not want to leave them alone and go to dinner with my family. What to do?
I then made a suggestion that shocked and surprised my husband - “Let’s have both families here for Thanksgiving dinner”. I then found the real difference between the two families. It was not being from different “old countries”. It was not the difference in religion. It was - his family ate out for almost all holidays and mine ate home for almost all holidays. The concept of making dinner for and having 10 people shocked and scared him. My mom used to have that and more for family holiday dinners and to do so was what I expected out of life. He was further concerned as we lived in our apartment then - “Where would we put everyone?’ We had a long living room and I figured we would get (we ended up borrowing from his parents) folding tables and set them up end to end to make one long table.
Both families agreed to come. We were a little rocky that first year. We overreached. Luckily we started the night before. We planned on making our own stuffing which used chestnuts - I never knew that under the shell chestnuts had a skin, which also had to be removed - it took forever. We put together some food dish or other and had it on the counter. I dropped a glass - the food was covered in glass and had to be thrown out. But we did it. Lack of serving space? Cover the portable clothes dryer with a table cloth, push it in the corner of the living room - bar. People had a problem walking past each other at the table, but it all worked out. I even saw a different side of my, always seemingly austere, grandfather - someone made an inadvertent double meaning comment (meaning off color in the unintended meaning) and my grandfather laughed like crazy with everyone else and so did husband’s grandmother.
It was so successful that we continued for 25 years to make Thanksgiving dinner for the combined families. We got much better at it. The year we moved to this house we moved in October. I promised that we would make Thanksgiving dinner - even if we ate off of paper plates. (The china was on the table for the dinner.) The problem we found we had was that the dinning room was square, not long and we had to deal with fitting in tables. Until we bought a dining room table some years later we came up with plywood pieces which clamped to our old kitchen table and made a huge square table and had to be assembled and disassembled each year.
The only thing that stopped us, finally, from continuing to make Thanksgiving dinner was bed bugs. Since we no longer feel comfortable having anyone in the house we no longer have people in. Since then my family eats dinner at my sister’s house and his family goes out for dinner. We eat alone. In the 8 years since then we have eaten Thanksgiving dinner in a chain buffet or made dinner for the two of us. (One has a lot of leftover turkey when one makes dinner for two.) The chain buffet closed this year. That left us looking for an alternative. There was one possible place that we could sort of afford, but we had never been there and reviews online were not the best. So this past weekend it was “officially” decided that we make dinner at home.
Now to keep organized over the years I made lists. Starting the second year we made Thanksgiving I wrote them in a spiral notebook. At first it not only included a list of what we would have, but also lists of what each item would be cooked and served in. Over the years since the menu mostly repeated I knew which items would be used for cooking and serving. I knew that, as odd as it sounds, the first thing to start cooking when we got up Thanksgiving (late) morning was the potatoes for mashed potatoes. The first year we had found out that there was a large local deli which was open on Thanksgiving and we could order the turkey cooked and ready for a hot pickup in the afternoon - my sister and her husband (and children) would pick it up for us on their way here (we paid) as they went past the place anyway. Over the years the place shut down and we started getting the turkey from their other location - closer to my sister than us. Not having a turkey in the oven left room for everything else.
At the height of our hosting Thanksgiving I would start cooking on Tuesday having already cleared the dining room as much as possible - including moving small pieces of furniture to our studio on the other side of the kitchen. I baked Venetians (aka rainbow cookies). They had to be baked and put together with the jellied centers on one day, left overnight with a heavy book on them and then chocolate melted and frosted it on another day. I would make beef vegetable soup (PA Dutch recipe) on Wednesday and bake an apple pie and brownies (brownies were from a mix). Wednesday night we would put together the sweet potatoes (no marshmallows, Colonial Williamsburg recipe) and bake the pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving day we would make the rest of the items and bake the sweet potatoes. A couple of times I made and baked rolls from scratch and once a baked a tea bread (CW recipe again) from scratch. Sometimes I made biscuits instead. Nieces and nephews however like the can popping open however, and we mostly made rolls from refrigerated dough. (These rolls are no longer made by the popping can company or any other.)
Each year I would look at my list of dishes from the year before. We would discuss it and possibly make changes - Would something new work? Do we need more of less of something. More of something? Did his sister want salad? Was my sister vegetarian that year? Did my niece decide she was kosher that year and would bring her own food? (Did not last beyond 2 years.) We would adjust the menu. But year to year it remained organized. My sisters, mom and I were used to working together on getting out the food and clearing up and husband’s sister made her best efforts to help. As nieces came along they helped - young children like to help - but nephew preferred the living room and playing. I would do the dishes, etc. after everyone left. In the apartment by hand and here in the dishwasher. Here in the house I would also wash and dry the tablecloth and napkins overnight. Since we stopped having the family in, the dish washer has broken so I am back to washing by hand. When we went to/go to sleep at night on Thanksgiving everything has been washed (or was being washed in the dishwasher). It does take a few days or a week to put it all back, but all is always cleaned that night.
Our guest list would change - it got smaller when my dad died, larger with each niece or nephew, a boyhood friend of husband’s who lived out of town, was down for the holidays a couple of times and joined us for dinner. Husband’s sister’s mother-in-law was added to the guest list for several years before we stopped. We first heard that his sister and her husband were going to adopt a child at dinner one year. My niece had her first “food” - applesauce - at Thanksgiving dinner one year.
I have the recipes in the computer. I used to use a cookbook program, but it needs a parallel printer directly hooked up to the computer on a specific port, so it is no longer usable. It used to be great, it would resize recipes and calculate the revised ingredient list and had a shopping list feature. I had put in the location of foods in our supermarket and I would have a shopping list printed out in the order I needed to find the foods. When I saw its life coming to an end I printed all the recipes and scanned them back into the computer as pdf files so I would not lose the recipes. I have to calculate ingredient quantities for changes in servings and make my own shopping lists, but I still can print the recipes out. One advantage to this when making an assortment of items, is that when an item is done being prepared, the recipe is tossed out. Helps keep track of what is done and what needs to be done.
So if we have been so organized and good at it, why has this year been such a mess? We did not decide until the last minute that we were making dinner for ourselves. (We had kept waiting for the magic restaurant to appear for us to go to for dinner.) On Sunday while in Costco we saw turkeys for 99 cents a pound. We were not going straight home and did not want the turkey sitting in the car for hours so we did not buy one.
Tuesday we had a list of what we would make and needed ingredients. - some our traditional ones, some husband picked to make it easier for me. We set out to food shop. In my mind we would buy items which did not need refrigeration (since they were more Thanksgiving related they might sell out) and then get a turkey at the Costco near us. Husband had planned to buy the turkey first in case we had a problem finding one - but did not tell me why he was buying it first, so I pushed to get it later. We bought stuff at Walmart and the supermarket next to it. (I may or may not have mentioned that our Walmarts do not have the supermarket Walmarts commonly have and there is a separate, unrelated supermarket next to the Walmart we normally go to.) We then set off, not to the Costco near us, but to the one we normally go to (which we like it better than the one near us) to get the turkey.
Horrors! There were no more 99 cent a pound turkeys! The only turkeys they had were $3.29 a pound as they were organic. Panic! My mind went to what we could have instead of turkey. I remembered we bought 2 ham portions - one for Christmas and one for whenever - when last in Lancaster, PA and I figured if stuck we would have “French Turkey” which is ham. Husband drove to a specialty food store located near Costco which had opened here this year - a chain from Connecticut. We had been very disappointed when we went to see this store after decades of hearing about it - very expensive, but I followed him into the store. He moved so quickly that I lost sight of him before I got to the store. I kept thinking I was seeing his red winter jacket - but when I got to where I thought I saw him it would be an employee in a red apron. I finally caught up with him at the turkey case. They had LOTS of turkey - even better and - important at this point - was that the turkeys were not frozen. We picked out one that is probably too big for us, and brought it home. $1.69 a pound, not the 99 cents we planned, but not $3.29 either.
Today Wednesday we went to the supermarket to buy the items which we did not buy yesterday as they need to be refrigerated and we did not want to drive around with them yesterday while getting the turkey. We ended up changing the menu while there. I had planned on baking him a pumpkin pie. He decided we should buy one instead. I make it for him with less sugar and no pie shell (believe it or not the latter part - no pie shell - is from Libbys and uses its basic pie recipe). He decided it was too much trouble, so we bought a pie and I ran around putting back things such as eggs which we were buying to bake the pie. What had settled the matter was a free apple pie for me with the purchase of his pumpkin pie (or vice versa). Both treats for us which will be eaten over many days as we are limited in eating sweets.
I had planned on clearing out the dining room yesterday and today - in particular the items for the RV which sit under the dining room table in RV season and get stored in the RV for the winter, but did not have a chance due to the running around shopping. We keep our dining room table, without the boards to the table, against the wall when not in use. (This was done in the 1700s and is very convenient allowing use of the empty space in the middle of the room for other projects.) I will pull it into place in the middle of the room and stack the RV stuff (and any weaving stuff, etc. stored in the dining room) against the wall out of the way.
I did polish the silverware we will use. It has been some years since it was polished and the heating of the house to kill the bed bugs did not help. I have been picking out for us the less tarnished looking pieces. Surprisingly it did not take as long as I remembered to polish what we needed - and I put the pieces in a zip bag to keep them relatively free of tarnish. Perhaps I will finally get around to polishing the rest of the silverware and lining the drawers they are kept in with the special fabric to prevent tarnishing to protect it. In the meantime, the pieces I have polished will be returned to the sealed bag when we are done with them.
Somehow the dining room will be ready. I will get up tomorrow and put the turkey in the oven and go back to sleep. Everything will come out okay - worse comes to worse, it is just us.
My best wishes to all of you who are in the U.S. for a wonderful Thanksgiving.
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, December 3, 2015
DURING THE HOLIDAYS WATCH WHAT AND HOW MUCH YOU BUY - PREVENT FUTURE CLUTTER
While out shopping this weekend I had some thoughts about preventing some clutter before it happens. Less stuff into the house, less to get out.
This first part is important all year long - and you cannot believe how important it is - Most people walk into stores which have carts and automatically take one as they enter. I don’t. The carts are placed at the entrance to entice you to take one as the stores know you will buy more if you are pushing a cart than if you have to hold what you are buying. Unless I am specifically buying something that I know will be too heavy, too bulky or too many things to carry, I do not take a cart. You can always get one later if you need one. I thought of this walking into Costco last Sunday. If one does not take a cart than you can only buy what you can carry. You have to think about what you are buying once the purchases reach the point where you cannot carry them. If you are pushing a cart it is easy for you to keep putting items into it with little thought and buy more than you need or can easily pay for. And don’t forget the children or spouse who adds to the cart while you are looking or not.
I do this all the time - sometimes the stack I carry in the supermarket will drive my husband crazy as I pile up needed groceries in my arms and then hand him some rather than take a cart or basket. Trust me, this helps a great deal. When you go into the store to buy one or two items - or just look - you are limited in what you can buy if you do not have a cart. See a great deal on a TV - that you don’t need, but it is such a good deal - if you can’t carry it and have to go get a cart you get a jolt to think about whether or not you should buy the item. Every unneeded item not bought is an item less to deal with and money not spent.
When we are in Costco - a store which people complain that they cannot leave without spending at least $300 each time - we do not take a cart when we walk in. Generally we go there on a Sunday and have lunch at the food court first. I sit and look at the people with overloaded carts eating there. I cannot understand how in the heat of the summer someone will fill their wagon with meats, dairy items, and frozen things and then instead of going straight home with them to keep them from the heat - they sit down and eat first. I also have to wonder how much of what they have bought they planned to buy or needed or even thought about before tossing it in their cart. We then go into the store to walk around - if we have items we NEED we plan to buy them. Buying a replacement bag of pretzels for the one about to run out and lettuce - no cart needed. Oh, this DVD is a favorite movie and we decide to buy it while in the store - still no cart needed. We need toilet paper and it is on sale - go out and get a cart and then watch closely what else might be added. Most weeks we are there we buy nothing other than the lunch we ate. Other weeks we buy 1 or 2 items that are needed or are like the DVD. Some weeks we have a list when we walk in and buy a number of items - but we do not take a cart unless we know we will need it.
This works just as well in Walmart or Target or the supermarket or Home Depot or whatever other store you visit. DO NOT TAKE A CART UNLESS YOU KNOW THAT YOU WILL NEED IT DO TO THE SIZE, WEIGHT, OR NUMBER OF ITEMS YOU PLAN TO BUY.
The second part is - think about what you buy. When you are buying gifts for people - don’t go overboard - they don’t need clutter either. Don’t buy things for yourself - you are there to buy gifts not clutter for you. If you buy Aunt Jennie a blouse - don’t buy 3 for yourself. If you buy your son a video game cartridge - don’t buy him three of them - buy the one he has asked for most. Less clutter and you will teach him to limit what he has and help him to learn to avoid clutter in his future. Oh, and while you are buying it for him - you see the new Iphone. Do you really need a new Iphone? Won’t the old one do the job? I was at a board meeting for an organization I belong to. The 4 of us sat down - the other 3 took out their Ipads. I took out my paper pad and pencil. I took notes just as well and did not have a problem with the notes turning sideways every time I picked up “mypad”. Understand I am not a luddite, I just use technology for what I need it for, not the latest fad. I use it to help me, not to be fashionable. I learned to program computers on a mainframe before the Internet existed. (I hate to say it, but I also learned probably before many of you were born.)
I know someone who has a variety of computer tablets in their house. He bought an Android phone to solve his problem in getting online to check email for work. It did not help as the screen was small and the on screen keyboard was too tiny to use. He then bought a Galaxy 5" tablet as it was going to solve his problems. No, still too small and the screen keyboard unusable. He then bought a larger tablet computer - same problem and when he picks it up the screen turns sideways. Last Christmas he bought a laptop - problems solved. If he had bought the laptop he needed and thought about when he started he would not have 2 devices sitting around taking up space (he still uses the Android phone for phone quick Internet) and would not have paid over and over for what he thought he needed because it was the hot thing. And he is now looking to replace the phone as it has gotten so slow as to be unusable. (And no, I do not use a flip phone, I have a 3 year old Blackberry which does what is needed- good keyboard - and does not cause the screaming such as this person using his Android does.)
I am writing this on a laptop so old that the latest copyright on the labels on it is 2004 and it is running XP. It is slow and drives my husband crazy - occasionally I can be a line ahead in my typing compared to where it is - but it works and does the job. My husband keeps pushing me to get a new one, but I have no problem with it (I do have a newer smaller one, about 8 years old, which I use for work, this is my kitchen computer). My desktop is still running Windows 7 - it was built for me by my husband with more memory, speed, and storage than I need and will last some time - I don’t need to deal with the problems of Windows 8 or 10 and everything I need to do is done - and the computer is not out making more electronic garbage or taking up room in my basement and I have not spent more money which was not needed just to buy a new unneeded computer - because “they” say it is needed.
When you see something and think that you must have it - or Aunt Jenny or little Bill must have it as a gift - stop and think. Do you really need it? Do they? Where will it be kept? How much will it cost you in - not just the price marked on it - but in interest on your credit card for the purchase, in annoyance at buying something which takes up space and is in the way, in the fact that once it is home you realize it was foolish to buy it, and the fact that you now need to deal with something else in your house that you don’t really want and need to figure out what to do with when you start going through the clutter in your house.
Be careful in shopping and you will stop, or at least slow down, clutter from entering your home. Watch that shopping!
This first part is important all year long - and you cannot believe how important it is - Most people walk into stores which have carts and automatically take one as they enter. I don’t. The carts are placed at the entrance to entice you to take one as the stores know you will buy more if you are pushing a cart than if you have to hold what you are buying. Unless I am specifically buying something that I know will be too heavy, too bulky or too many things to carry, I do not take a cart. You can always get one later if you need one. I thought of this walking into Costco last Sunday. If one does not take a cart than you can only buy what you can carry. You have to think about what you are buying once the purchases reach the point where you cannot carry them. If you are pushing a cart it is easy for you to keep putting items into it with little thought and buy more than you need or can easily pay for. And don’t forget the children or spouse who adds to the cart while you are looking or not.
I do this all the time - sometimes the stack I carry in the supermarket will drive my husband crazy as I pile up needed groceries in my arms and then hand him some rather than take a cart or basket. Trust me, this helps a great deal. When you go into the store to buy one or two items - or just look - you are limited in what you can buy if you do not have a cart. See a great deal on a TV - that you don’t need, but it is such a good deal - if you can’t carry it and have to go get a cart you get a jolt to think about whether or not you should buy the item. Every unneeded item not bought is an item less to deal with and money not spent.
When we are in Costco - a store which people complain that they cannot leave without spending at least $300 each time - we do not take a cart when we walk in. Generally we go there on a Sunday and have lunch at the food court first. I sit and look at the people with overloaded carts eating there. I cannot understand how in the heat of the summer someone will fill their wagon with meats, dairy items, and frozen things and then instead of going straight home with them to keep them from the heat - they sit down and eat first. I also have to wonder how much of what they have bought they planned to buy or needed or even thought about before tossing it in their cart. We then go into the store to walk around - if we have items we NEED we plan to buy them. Buying a replacement bag of pretzels for the one about to run out and lettuce - no cart needed. Oh, this DVD is a favorite movie and we decide to buy it while in the store - still no cart needed. We need toilet paper and it is on sale - go out and get a cart and then watch closely what else might be added. Most weeks we are there we buy nothing other than the lunch we ate. Other weeks we buy 1 or 2 items that are needed or are like the DVD. Some weeks we have a list when we walk in and buy a number of items - but we do not take a cart unless we know we will need it.
This works just as well in Walmart or Target or the supermarket or Home Depot or whatever other store you visit. DO NOT TAKE A CART UNLESS YOU KNOW THAT YOU WILL NEED IT DO TO THE SIZE, WEIGHT, OR NUMBER OF ITEMS YOU PLAN TO BUY.
The second part is - think about what you buy. When you are buying gifts for people - don’t go overboard - they don’t need clutter either. Don’t buy things for yourself - you are there to buy gifts not clutter for you. If you buy Aunt Jennie a blouse - don’t buy 3 for yourself. If you buy your son a video game cartridge - don’t buy him three of them - buy the one he has asked for most. Less clutter and you will teach him to limit what he has and help him to learn to avoid clutter in his future. Oh, and while you are buying it for him - you see the new Iphone. Do you really need a new Iphone? Won’t the old one do the job? I was at a board meeting for an organization I belong to. The 4 of us sat down - the other 3 took out their Ipads. I took out my paper pad and pencil. I took notes just as well and did not have a problem with the notes turning sideways every time I picked up “mypad”. Understand I am not a luddite, I just use technology for what I need it for, not the latest fad. I use it to help me, not to be fashionable. I learned to program computers on a mainframe before the Internet existed. (I hate to say it, but I also learned probably before many of you were born.)
I know someone who has a variety of computer tablets in their house. He bought an Android phone to solve his problem in getting online to check email for work. It did not help as the screen was small and the on screen keyboard was too tiny to use. He then bought a Galaxy 5" tablet as it was going to solve his problems. No, still too small and the screen keyboard unusable. He then bought a larger tablet computer - same problem and when he picks it up the screen turns sideways. Last Christmas he bought a laptop - problems solved. If he had bought the laptop he needed and thought about when he started he would not have 2 devices sitting around taking up space (he still uses the Android phone for phone quick Internet) and would not have paid over and over for what he thought he needed because it was the hot thing. And he is now looking to replace the phone as it has gotten so slow as to be unusable. (And no, I do not use a flip phone, I have a 3 year old Blackberry which does what is needed- good keyboard - and does not cause the screaming such as this person using his Android does.)
I am writing this on a laptop so old that the latest copyright on the labels on it is 2004 and it is running XP. It is slow and drives my husband crazy - occasionally I can be a line ahead in my typing compared to where it is - but it works and does the job. My husband keeps pushing me to get a new one, but I have no problem with it (I do have a newer smaller one, about 8 years old, which I use for work, this is my kitchen computer). My desktop is still running Windows 7 - it was built for me by my husband with more memory, speed, and storage than I need and will last some time - I don’t need to deal with the problems of Windows 8 or 10 and everything I need to do is done - and the computer is not out making more electronic garbage or taking up room in my basement and I have not spent more money which was not needed just to buy a new unneeded computer - because “they” say it is needed.
When you see something and think that you must have it - or Aunt Jenny or little Bill must have it as a gift - stop and think. Do you really need it? Do they? Where will it be kept? How much will it cost you in - not just the price marked on it - but in interest on your credit card for the purchase, in annoyance at buying something which takes up space and is in the way, in the fact that once it is home you realize it was foolish to buy it, and the fact that you now need to deal with something else in your house that you don’t really want and need to figure out what to do with when you start going through the clutter in your house.
Be careful in shopping and you will stop, or at least slow down, clutter from entering your home. Watch that shopping!
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