We just got back from taking out trash down, getting our mail and making a grocery run to Walmart. I’m exhausted.
We had TWO Black Fridays this year and NOW it’s CyberMonday, and the crowds are already fearful. In Greenwood. Arkansas. An extremely small town in the middle of the River Valley, ‘small, sweet, but nowhere’ U.S.A. I can only imagine what it’s like in big cities.
I always make a point of either making the Christmas presents I give or shopping the whole year, buying something for someone when I find it and then putting it away until Christmas. This is so I don’t have to fight the crowds. Nothing kills my Christmas spirit more than lots of aggressive folks pushing and shoving their way through shops, stores, parking lots, and streets between me and where I’m trying to go.
Fighting our way through today – just to replenish our groceries – reminded me that I really enjoy people AT A DISTANCE rather than in large menacing groups. We just put our groceries away and are resting before putting our lunch together.
It’s sunny outside, but it’s 40 degrees F. and we’re due for ‘gusty winds’ soon. Oh, GOOD!
We’re going to go out soon to drive our trash down to the bottom of the driveway, get our mail, and replenish our groceries. That’s it for ‘out’ today.
I have never figured out whether having long weekend holidays makes it easier or more difficult to go back to work. In some of the jobs I’ve had, the work load exploded while I was gone, so it was really hard to face it and I thought it might have been better just to work through the holiday and keep my head above water. Other jobs I had made it so I could really relax and change my focus for several days in a row, a luxury I really loved.
Now that I’m retired, the point is moot. I have the luxury of working like a nut when the mood strikes or lazing like a sloth when it doesn’t. I don’t usually HAVE to be outside when the weather is lousy. I can snuggle between my heat pad and my throw in my recliner and make the world go away for a bit, if needed. How spoiled I am!
I hope that all of you were able to see family and friends during this holiday, get several good hugs, lots of smiles, and some delicious food you don’t normally allow yourself. :0)
It’s 36 and cloudy here this morning. A cold front is coming through and it’s a great day to stay inside, warm and dry. It rained lightly earlier, and I’m grateful we didn’t get ice. I’m not ready for this.
Signs By McDougall
I’m going to try to use this inside day to my advantage, working on my glassware etching. I’ve watched a few etching videos on YouTube that really get my juices flowing. They make it look really easy, but it isn’t. The jury is still out on whether what I’m doing will pass muster as Christmas gifts. I’m having a good time trying, though the process gets to my hands (particularly my thumbs for some unknown reason), so my sessions have to be short. Maybe I can get multiple sessions in today.
This is the ‘cup holder’ my husband made in our shop over the last two days. It’s stainless steel and heavy.
It fits the bottom of the glasses he likes to use perfectly. Now, when the TV tray is jostled, the liquid in the glass jostles, but the glass doesn’t fall over, spilling the drink everywhere. So far, so good!
I’ve been re-reading my collection of J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts) In Death books in preparation for receiving the latest paperback in the series, Payback in Death, which I’ll get around the end of December or the beginning of January. I’m on book # 50 now, Golden in Death, and am thoroughly enjoying being in Lieutenant Eve Dallas’ world in the future.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your holiday weekend and are home safe and sound now.
I’ve been playing on the computer this afternoon, seeing some beautiful and funny things. I’m planning to go up and spend some time etching the glasses I’m decorating when I finish here.
When I went to our local grocery store, they didn’t have the lunch bowls today. I talked to a lady at the deli, and she said she would make two of them for me while I waited. They have macaroni and cheese at the bottom, then chunks of chicken tenders, then some cheese on the top. We pop them into the microwave to melt the cheese on top. YUM!
My husband finished creating his stainless steel cup holder in the shop. I have to admit it’s quite impressive. It’s heavy and, of course, fits the bottom of the double-walled tall glass perfectly. He showed me by jostling the TV tray the glass usually falls off of. The liquid inside the glass sloshed a bit, but the glass stayed right where it was. There is hope that this is a solution to our problem.
It’s already starting to get dark outside, so no work in the yard today.
A quick “hi” before I leave for a much-needed haircut. After, I’m HOPING to get two macaroni-and-cheese-with-chicken-chunks bowls from the deli/bakery at our local Harps. This is my new favorite thing, so fingers, and all other appendages, are crossed that they have some today.
I’m hoping the stars will align so that I will get outside to do a bit of work this afternoon. A cold front is coming in, so the high will drop about 10 degrees tomorrow.
My husband is making a stainless steel cup holder to go on his TV tray in the living room. This is because he has become a MASTER at spilling whatever drink he has at the time. I warn him – he says he’s being careful – and then down the drink goes – all over the carpet – AGAIN. It’s not cute anymore. He worked most of the afternoon yesterday on it and thinks he can finish it today. I don’t know if the plan is to anchor something to the tray table or just put the glass in it. We’ll see and hope for the best.
I hope that today is a beautiful one for you, too.
Here I am, up almost 2 lbs since yesterday. UGH. The worst part is that it will take me a week or so to get the regained weight off again. (Sigh. Whine) :0(
That said, we had a really nice dinner and my husband was quite complimentary. He was serious about getting ‘his share’ of the deviled eggs before we were even technically ready to get the plates out. One would think he NEVER gets them. It’s reminiscent of our dog seriously telling everyone who will listen that there has been a HUGE mistake – that she hasn’t been fed in a month!
I was pleased that, when I got up and started to clear, he actually came and helped me put things away and clean up the kitchen – another thing for which I am truly thankful. :0)
I FINALLY got out and weed whacked around the house and under the deck yesterday – something I’ve been flapping my lips about for several days now. I followed that up with the leaf blower, so now we look pretty civilized, for the Lewises. I’ll watch to see if it gets warm enough for me to do some weed whacking in the area behind our shop and beside the garden this afternoon.
Otherwise, I’m planning to just do a bit of this and that today, moving from one thing to the other as the mood moves me. I LOVE days like this, where I don’t have any ‘have-to’s.’ It doesn’t happen often and I cherish them.
I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving and are enjoying a nice, long weekend off now.
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you spend time with people who mean a lot to you this holiday.
We enjoyed a quick message from our son, who lives across the world from us. He is 12 hours ahead of us (or maybe 13 with Daylight Savings), so it’s a bit difficult to actually talk real time. He said he enjoyed a good Thanksgiving dinner with his friends. One of the nannies who takes care of their toddler told him about a place that houses children who need a place to live. He checked it out and decided to sponsor a child there, sending a monthly donation.
I’m thinking I’ll get out and see if I can get some weed whacking done this morning. It’s a bit cool, at 52 degrees, but the sun is shining and I’ll be working hard enough I think I’ll be okay. I would love to get things neatened up around the house and under the deck.
Have a wonderful day, filled with food and family!
I’m pleased that a lot of people are getting at least a long weekend, if not even more days off for Thanksgiving. THAT gives folks a good thing for which to be thankful, if nothing else. :0)
We’re having a quiet day today. We go for a routine doctor appointment today, but that’s it for errands. I’m going to work on my Etsy site some more, making what I hope are changes that bring more people, and that they like what they see when they get there.
I’m also still working on the glass etching project in my art room, doing a bit each day. I’m now zeroing in on the ones I need to finish first.
Since my husband and I prefer the leftovers AFTER the main Thanksgiving dinner, and we’re by ourselves this year, I went ahead and cooked our turkey yesterday and served it with corn and homemade macaroni and cheese. I have finally learned to trust the instructions on the turkey, plus using a meat thermometer, so I didn’t overcook it, making it come out too dry. My husband proclaimed it, “perfect.” :0) We have plenty left for the traditional dinner with the fixings tomorrow, plus turkey sandwiches, our favorite thing, for several days.
My husband and I have never ‘fought’ about traditional things that married people do. We ‘fight’ over what design to cut out as a mailbox decoration next, or what colors to use in painting it. Lately, we have been ‘discussing strongly’ whether to have the heat or the air conditioner on upstairs. Right now it’s 43 degrees F. and we have the heat on downstairs. We have had the air conditioning on upstairs since my husband sleeps better when the air temperature is cold. We finally compromised on the upstairs – turning on the heat, but setting the thermostat at 68. We’ll see how that goes.
It’s a great day to stay inside today. It’s 49, cloudy, windy, gray and wet outside. My husband and Amber just left to drive down to the bottom of the driveway to get our mail and hopefully retrieve what is now an empty trash can and drag it back up to where it lives.
I told you I have been working on my Etsy site, basically redoing it from the bottom up.
I started by lowering my prices as much as I can.
I’ve been having technical issues on trying to design a banner to go across the top, plus a logo. The last couple of days I painted what I hoped would work as a banner, and then this morning I designed a new logo.
It was raining when we got up this morning. Raining when we went out for errands, and raining a bit ago when we drove our trash down to the bottom of the driveway. The forecast is for “Scattered (80%) showers and thunder – the top threats are pockets of damaging hail and gusty winds.” Sounds like the perfect day to stay inside, safe and warm.
We got up and left this morning – in the cooler, rainy weather we’re having – immediately after feeding animals to get lab work done for our 6 month routine doctor appointment Wednesday afternoon. We like to treat ourselves to a Dari Restaurant breakfast afterwards.
They called us back to the lab part of the clinic, but then told us, after taking some of my blood, that we weren’t due for any more lab tests. I explained that it had been six months since we last saw the doctor and that we ALWAYS got fresh lab work done so that she could see how we were doing and could make recommendations for what we should do until we saw her again. They checked the records again and said it was ‘too soon’ for our lab tests. I was too shocked to ask when we WERE due for the tests, and we left.
We went ahead and enjoyed our breakfast out, but I’m still at a loss. If we don’t have the test results for the doc, all we can tell HER is that we’re still old. All she can tell US is that we seem to still be alive, and then give us another appointment.
It seems like there is a lack of communication somewhere. With my luck, our doc will want us to get lab work some other day after Thanksgiving, and my husband will probably get ugly about having to go to the doc 3 times…
Heart-warming moment on UK documentary series when a school teacher helped a student overcome his stammer. The teacher used the method from "The King's Speech" with success. pic.twitter.com/ZMNZjo41Q7
We’re having a nice ‘day-after-quiet-birthday-celebration’ here today. The weather is nice. It’s supposed to rain late this afternoon into tomorrow, but right now it’s a beautiful fall Sunday. I plan to do some weed whacking before the rain starts.
I just had the NICEST phone talk with a good relative/but, more importantly, FRIEND. We haven’t talked in awhile, so I feel as if I’ve been verbally hugged.
We don’t have any big plans for Thanksgiving. If you’re traveling, I hope you have safe travels that go as smoothly as possible so that you can see/hug the people who mean the world to you.
I am working on rejuvenating my Etsy site. I try for awhile, give up in frustration, go do something else, then come back and try again.
The project right now is trying to rearrange the images for my products to change the look and focus of my shop. It’s taken me a week of looking, saying a few (or more) bad words, and messing around, but I FINALLY found the way that I can move my images around – just the first step in a lot of things I would like to do.
For now, I’m going to cut off work on that and switch to birthday dinner mode.
Happy Birthday to my husband. I’m delighted with his attitude. Yesterday he was “old and 79.” Today he’s “80 with cache’!”
He checked with me this morning first thing, to confirm I’m cooking ‘chicken chunks with onions, mushrooms, and soup over rice’ for his birthday dinner. I was planning to bake a pineapple upside down cake, as well, but he decided that was ‘too much sugar.’ (This from the man who denies he has Type II Diabetes – he just has a ‘sugar problem’)
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I told you that I’m trying to give my Etsy site a face lift. This is proving to be a real character-building exercise. I’ve been working on a banner to go across the top, a new logo, and lots of other changes and – I hope – improvements, but I’ve been beating my head against a lot of obstacles so far.
I finally decided that I could at least do one thing reasonably quickly, and that was to lower my prices. People are at least thinking about buying presents for everyone on their list for Christmas, and I think prices are particularly important when the economy is so challenging. So all of my prices have been lowered – some really significantly – and I’m still offering free shipping to anyone living in the contiguous U.S.
I lowered my prices yesterday and woke up to a sale this morning. Maybe a coincidence, but it was really nice, nonetheless. I just got home from a trip to town to the post office to get it in the mail. :0)
I’m lucky to have discovered how flowers – real or painted or photographed – can lift my spirits. The delicacy of the actual flowers and the richness of the colors fills me up, leaving little place for any negative thoughts or sadness.
The question of the day is whether our friends will be at Lunch Bunch in a little over an hour. Why don’t I call them, you ask? Both of them HAVE phones, but neither one answers. I leave a voice mail on one of them, but she says she doesn’t get it. The other doesn’t have any kind of messages set up on her phone, and doesn’t wear her hearing aids much of the time, anyway.
So – we’ll go and see if anyone is there, eat – or not eat – and then get some groceries on the way home. “The times – they are a’changin.'”
Dengarden
My challenge for the day is changing the wire holder on my weed whacker so I can continue neatening up around the house. I may have to break down and enlist my husband’s help, but I would RATHER prevail by myself.
Fox & Spice – Fall – Tumblr
My joy for the day is the truly beautiful fall weather we’ve been enjoying. Usually it’s in the 90s one day – then we have 3 days of fall – followed by snow, ice, and winter. It has been such a nice thing to almost take the beautiful afternoons for granted!
I have about 10 minutes to relax with a cup of coffee before it’s time to make our lunch. Just in time – after getting the beef stew ingredients in the crock pot for our dinner and just after I’ve pretty much gotten the kitchen clean. The crock pot is going. The dishwasher is going. And now, after lunch, I’ll need to do what I can to clean it up again. This is why I’m such a slob. When things are clean, I just want to stand and admire them. When things are not, I want to ignore them and do something else.
The pest spray guy will be here between 3 and 5 this afternoon. He usually hits the earlier part of the time frame, so I’ll have until about 3 to try to move things off the floor so that he can have a chance to do a good job spraying for us. We’ve been doing pretty well on bugs this year, but I REALLY don’t want to ever worry about scorpions in the house again after being stung by one in our bed several years ago. It still gives me nightmares and makes my skin crawl.
HighlandLakes.com
Added to this, I saw an article about a “Red-Headed Centipede” that really got my attention. When we first moved here, about a hundred years or so ago now, I was sitting in my recliner watching TV. All of a sudden I detected movement on the wall next to me. A CENTIPEDE was crawling up the wall! EEEEWWWWWW! I don’t remember if it was red-headed, blond, brunette, or what, but I freaked out. I insisted the pest people come out the next day and spray for EVERYTHING, including elephants, and have had them come quarterly ever since. Since they’re really good, we hardly ever have bugs that we can see in the house. Every once in awhile, we’ll find a dead one in the paper traps the man leaves in good places.
Got to run fix lunch. Hope you’re having a fine day!
I’ve decided to overhaul my Etsy site and my brain is scrambled. Some of the changes I would like to make are cosmetic (considering new name, banner, logo, etc.) Some changes I would like to make the Etsy site doesn’t allow.
I’m reading articles on describing my items. I have followed the Etsy forms on listing my stuff. When I go to ‘Etsy.com’ and type in a search term that I HOPE will make my stuff pop up, it doesn’t. I have NOW read articles that say I should be putting my key words into my title spot, rather than down where Etsy says to put them. I’m seeing in my research that a lot of the people on Etsy are doing this. I’ve decided that today the only thing I’m doing is lowering my prices and letting my head rest. :0)
The stress continues because I couldn’t change the thingie that holds the weed whacking line yesterday. I’ll tackle that problem again later. I THINK I’m smarter than the weed whacker, but the jury is still out….
The pest spraying people called and are coming between 3 and 5 this afternoon for the last spray of the year. I’m trying to get ready for them, clearing the floor areas as much as possible. It amazes me how MANY things are on our floors! I’ll just do what I can.
Before I do anything else, I’m putting the makings of beef stew into the crock pot for our dinner tonight.
I hope that you are having a fine day so far and that many things bring a smile to your face.
creativeartworksblog 