February, I am tired of you.
Ice-coated limbs are crashing all around the yard.
I am taking a sick day today. Sinus crud. I worked yesterday. It's hard to wear a mask when your nose is running like a wet-weather spring. On the way home from court yesterday, The Boss asked, "Do you need to stay home tomorrow?" Sounded to me like a hint, so I took her up on the offer.
This is going to be a l-o-n-g day. :(
The Little Rotten Baby has learned to say, "Dang!" She picked it up from her father and her sisters, who say it in response to something surprising, upsetting, amazing, etc. She says it with a Southern accent, and usually with a good bit of flair: "D-AAAAAA-NG!" We visited her and her family two days ago. As I was holding her, facing me, she noticed my necklace, a ladybug made of red jade. She grasped it in her tiny fingers and said, under her breath, "Dang."
Cracked me up.
* * * * * * *
Yesterday I came down with a sore throat and a stopped-up nose. Generally felt yucky all day. I'd hugged my grandson on Saturday, before learning that he was suffering from the same symptoms. Could I have caught his bug so quickly? Was it covid? Had I, in turn, infected the LRB when she was in my face, examining my necklace? I worried all night. I had a job interview this morning and didn't want to miss it. Our government-issued rapid covid tests had come in the mail over the weekend, so I used one this morning. Thankfully, it was negative. But the LRB is feeling puny today. Her mom says they've all had the same crud for the past few days.
It was raining cats and dogs when I left the house this morning. The wind blew my janky umbrella inside-out before I could get to the car, and then the left side of my body got soaked while I was in the car, trying to close the umbrella. My route to town was flooded in low places; at one point, I was afraid my car would drown-out. By the time I made it to the job interview, my coat and feet were sopping wet.
The interview went well, I think. It seems that there are multiple positions that need filling, thanks to some new industrial endeavors in our area. I don't yet know which one will be offered to me, but I'm pretty sure I won't be on the highway, holding a STOP/SLOW sign for on-coming traffic.
The Boss called after the interview. She's got this same nose crud (most likely where I got it, come to think of it) and had been to the doctor. She said she wasn't coming in, and that I should go home. I did not argue with her. I'd been trying to dry my shoes and socks in front of a portable electric heater, without much success. It felt so good to come home and get in some dry, warm clothes.
It's going to be tough working for another boss, who likely won't spoil me the way this one has.
Despite last week's news about the possibility of a new job, I continue to look for some crafting activity that will both keep me busy and make some money - or at least pay for itself - when I finally do retire. One google led to another until I found myself watching videos about making pop-up cards and books. I ended up downloading a couple of templates for pop-up cards - one with flowers, and one with a dog.
The instructions said that the templates are not for commercial use. That's quite alright, as I don't intend to sell cards - not these cards, anyway - I just wanted to see how they work. Same deal with the pop-up dog.
I started with the flower card because it's pretty. The templates were designed to be printed, cut out by hand, and assembled. The cutting was too tedious to attempt with scissors and/or a craft knife. It seemed reasonable to scan the templates and cut them out with my cutting machine.
That might have worked if I knew more about the cutting machine and the software.
Long story short, it took me half the day to assemble the flower card. Late that evening, I started on the dog. It turned out to be a wrinkled mess. The next day was my son's birthday, and I had the big idea to make him a pop-up dog birthday card.
Ten hours later, I produced a fairly correct card. Oh, I was so proud of myself. But it needed something for the front of the card. I printed out a birthday message and slapped it on the card. I even made an envelope for it.
During those 10 hours, I baked my son a birthday cake. Later that afternoon, when we took the cake to him, I handed him the card, so proud of myself. When he pulled it out of the envelope, I discovered that the birthday message was upside down.
Yeah, maybe I won't do a card business.
Yesterday was pretty much an all-around good day.
For starters, it was our anniversary; 42 years and counting. It's hard to believe we've been married that long.
The Husband, a romantic at heart, looked up the traditional gift for a 42nd anniversary and discovered that it is red jade. When he came home from work, he gave me a necklace and some earrings set with red jade.
We had dinner reservations at a new "speak-easy" restaurant in town. Sometimes, the restaurant posts a "code" word on its Facebook page. Before we left the house, I pulled up Facebook to get the code. While doing so, I noticed that there were a ton of "likes" on my page. I hadn't posted anything and was curious about what people were liking, so I investigated it and discovered that The Husband had recorded himself playing the ukulele and singing a romantic song, with a slide-show of pictures of us taken on our travels. Awwwwww. So sweet!
Our dinner was delicious.
Another good thing that happened was a call about a new job prospect. I'll keep the details under my hat for now, but I am very excited.
Only two things made the day not quite perfect: (1) the gift I ordered for The Husband was still floating around somewhere in California, and (2) we came home to a water leak in the front yard. Lovely.
I saw a mule standing on a pond yesterday morning. It made me giggle. (We don't see that sort of things much in these parts.)
He was standing with his head hung low and his butt to the wind, and I couldn't help but hear Eeyore's voice coming out of his head: I wish I could have a drink of water.
You had to be there, I reckon.
I needed a giggle, for I had made The Boss and myself 30 minutes late for court.
I'm not entirely sure it was entirely my fault. Court was supposed to officially open at 10:30 (a change from our usual 9 a.m. time). I had it on my calendar. 10:30. The Boss had called over the weekend to tell me that she'd be well enough to work by Monday, and we'd even discussed that we didn't have to be there until 10:30. But The Boss says that she told me she wanted to be there by 10. I guess I missed that part.
Anyway . . . .
I was a few miles short of halfway to work when she called, alarmed that I hadn't arrived. When I told her I'd be there in 15 minutes, she said I was supposed to have been there 15 minutes ago. I said I'd punch it.
I'd no sooner punched it than I rounded a bend and came upon a pickup truck loaded with furniture. He was driving responsibly, considering his load. I followed him for several miles, anticipating the long, straight stretch up the road where I could blow his doors off. When we got to that stretch, he punched it, and I thought, Okay, he has seen me back here and has decided to move on. And he did move on . . . until we got to the top of the next hill, where the road gets curvy again. I could've throttled him.
So I got to The Boss's house, and got behind the steering wheel of her car, and we took off. Since she hasn't been feeling well, she dropped off to sleep before we'd gone 5 of our 90 miles. (She was asleep when we passed the mule.)
I take a lot of crap from family and friends - and even The Boss, at times - about how slowly I drive. Our route takes us down curvy, two-lane backroads for most of the trip. Along the way, we've regularly encountered deer jumping out of nowhere (with more coming behind them) and flocks of buzzards partying in the road. It pays to be cautious. My detractors should've seen me yesterday, deliberately exceeding the speed limit on those curvy backroads.
The Boss continued to snooze in the passenger seat. I slung her all over the place, going around curves.
It was 9:59 when I pulled into the courthouse parking lot and dropped The Boss off at the back door. "If you RUN up the stairs, you can be in the courtroom by 10."
She gathered up her stuff and said, "I ain't runnin' up the stairs."
Her grammar occasionally suffers from having worked with me for 25+ years.
The past couple of weeks were just bizarre: three covid exposures, two (negative) tests (thank goodness); and a big old ice storm that had The Husband and a Daughter-in-Law (and a couple of granddaughters) working from our house for the latter part of this week.
During this time, I ordered a grocery pick-up from Walmart, which usually does a pretty good job of filling my orders. This time, they sent a pork shoulder (I'd ordered a butt) big enough to feed a family reunion and a beef roast big enough to do the same. I immediately cut the beef roast in two and froze both halves. The shoulder had a bone in it - I could wiggle the leg, for pete's sake - and I was daresome to try to butcher it. The Husband suggested that we call our son and see if it wanted to cook it in his smoker, but he was working and they had stuff to do, yada-yada. We put it in the mini-refrigerator that we bought back when our son and his family were living with us. It lives in my sewing room and serves mostly as a place to pile things, and I sometimes forget we have it.
Well, I remembered it this morning as I was placing another grocery order and saw "pork butt" in my purchased items list, and I thought, Oh, crap. Is that thing even still good? I quit what I was doing and hauled the thing to the kitchen. It smelled mildly funky right out of the package, but I washed it and sniffed it again, and pronounced it "aged" but not "rurnt."
My ancestors would be ashamed of the way I mangled that chunk of meat. There was no way to cut through the bone without a power tool or a hatchet and a stump. I ended up with one decent-size roast, and a bunch of fist-size chunks. The chunks are roasting in the oven as we speak. The roast is in the freezer.
I had to bleach everything in the kitchen.
After cleaning up the mess, I made another one. The two half-rotten bananas on our kitchen table are now -
Whew . . . I almost burned the banana nut muffins.
Good thing I was telling you about them, huh? ;)
