Frustrating Week - January 29, 2022

So where was I? 

Oh, yeah:  co-worker #2 came down with covid on Thursday.

Friday morning, The Boss and I were in our office.  She, too, had been in the presence of co-worker #2 on Thursday while neither of them was masked.  She was antsy, worried.  "What are we supposed to do?" she asked me.  "Are we supposed to quarantine?  Wear masks?  What?"

I pulled up the CDC web site.  

Our situations were different.  I'd been boosted, she had not; she'd been sick with the flu when the booster shots came out.

"You're supposed to quarantine for 5 days, get tested, and wear a mask for 5 days after that when you're around people.  I'm supposed to wear a mask for 5 days and then get tested - no quarantine."

I was frustrated.  Since the previous Tuesday, I'd been sleeping in the spare bedroom, using a separate bathroom, confining myself mostly to the sewing room, and wearing a mask when I had to be in other parts of the house.  I'd washed my hands so often that my skin feels like sandpaper.  My 5-day clock for covid protocols had been ticking since Tuesday morning and was half over, but the clock had been re-set to Day 1 with the prior day's exposure.  And the weekend was coming up.  I'd need to wear a mask at home all weekend.  Goody, goody.

Yesterday evening (Sunday), The Boss called.  "Do you have covid?"

"No.  Do you?"

"Yes.  I'm pretty sure."  Fever, headache, sore throat, muscle aches.

SHIT.

We talked about what to do.  We'd scheduled covid tests for both of us the next morning, which was technically a day too soon, but she was supposed to hold court that morning and didn't want to take the bench without a test.  We met at the courthouse this morning, where the jail nurse was going to administer the tests.  She stayed in her vehicle.  Since I had no symptoms, I went in (with my mask on, of course).  For the next hour, I ran documents down the back stairs to be signed.  Meanwhile, the nurse did my test, then went to the parking lot to test The Boss, who went home after signing the last document.  

I left the courthouse and went to our office, washed my hands (for the 100th time this morning), wiped down some things with disinfectant.  The nurse called.  My test was negative.  Fifteen minutes later, The Boss called.  As she suspected, her test was positive.  We'd have to cancel court in three counties.

Before we hung up, she said, "The scientists ought to test your DNA, because there must be something about it that makes you immune to covid."  

But I still have a couple more days on my covid clock.  

Covid City - January 27, 2022

Tuesday morning, a co-worker from another office texted me to say that someone in her office (where I had been on Monday) had tested positive for covid.  Oh, great; I had sat within 2 feet of that person for a few minutes, without my mask.  And I had been around her on the previous Thursday, when she was probably contagious. 

The Husband had gone out of town on Monday but was due back Tuesday afternoon.  When he came home, he told me that a co-worker from his office had come down with covid, and he was planning to work from home this week.

"Uh, well...I have news," I told him.  

I wore my mask around the house Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening and kept my distance from him.  Slept in a spare bedroom.  Sanitized everything I touched.  

This morning, I did a rapid covid test.  It was negative.  Yay!  

So I went to work this morning, wearing my mask.  At lunch, I took it off to eat and forgot to put it back on.  Two hours later, another person in the office tested positive.

<sigh>

Birthday Party - January 24, 2022

 The Little Rotten Baby was the honoree at a birthday party this weekend.  

She was a bit confused by all the people and decorations and noise.  And she was absolutely astounded when the crowd sang happy birthday to her.  She had a giant, unicorn-themed birthday cake, and a small "smash" cake, which she had no interest in smashing.  She did, however, consent to blowing out the single candle (possibly with a little help from her mother).  

 

New Phone - January 21, 2022

My cell phone service provider had the audacity to threaten to cut my cell phone off.  It seems my phone is so old that it will no longer be supported.  They said if I did not voluntarily get a new phone, they'd send me one for free.  The Husband said, "It'll probably be a TrackPhone." 

It seemed like a no-brainer to wait on the free phone, thinking if it turned out to be a goober, maybe I could at least trade it in on a phone I want.

It came yesterday - an iPhone 10R.  A co-worker swapped the sim card to the new phone.

I hate it.  It's huge.  And it's probably going to listen to my conversations, even when I'm not on the phone.

I scrolled through the settings and turned off everything that I did not recognize as being absolutely essential.  Blasted thing may not work at all, now.

LOOT! - January 20, 2022

 So I get home today, and there's a box with my name on it on the front porch.  I recognized my BFF's handwriting on the address label.  She'd said she was mailing me something.

The box contained:

1 family-size bag of Lay's Cheddar and Sour Cream chips;

1 family-size bag of Lay's Jalapeno Cheddar chips;

1 burr for my Dremel;

1 dish-draining mat;

2 kitchen sink strainer baskets with holes (I had mesh ones - they get yucky);

1 outdoor thermometer (our old one is never correct); and

1 Ruth Bader Ginsberg bobblehead (while visiting me after Christmas, she heard me say I wanted one).

My personal super-hero set is now complete:

Isn't my BFF just the most thoughtful person in the world?  :)

The LRB is 1 - January 18, 2022

The Little Rotten Baby turned one year old today.  She's been walking for a few weeks.  She can say a few words and do a few "baby signs."  Sharp as a tack, she is; show her something once, and she's on it.  If she wants to, that is.  (Have I mentioned she's rotten?)  

And camera shy, as you can see.

I went to see her this evening.  She's having a birthday party Saturday, but I have a thing about THE DAY.  Took her some cupcakes.  She picked out the one she wanted, red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.  It surprised me that she went for that one instead of the one with colorful sprinkles.)  She blew out one candle and we all clapped and said YAY!  And she applauded herself and licked some frosting.  It was so sweet it gave her the shivers.  I offered her a bite of just the cake, but she spat it right out.  Can't say I blame her.  I don't like it, either.

* * * * * * * 

My chicken house came today.  I happened to be standing in the driveway when the FedEx man drove up, and he brought it to the back porch for me.  There were supposed to be two boxes.  Maybe the other will come tomorrow.  I'm not in a hurry, anyway.  It's cold, and my knee is out, and we've got to clean out a spot to put the coop, and I don't even want to open the box.  

I got my first order today from a company that's supposedly selling locally-sourced food and delivering to homes.  It was on the doorstep in a couple of insulated canvas bags with ice packs in them.  I don't know what possessed me to buy a quart of cream, but I did - maybe it was part of a "bundle" - and I don't use it that often.  Did you know that all you need to make a good biscuit is self-rising flour and enough cream to make dough?  That's it.  (The cream has enough fat in it that you don't need to add butter or shortening.)  Tomorrow morning, I'm going to use that cream to make a big batch of biscuits to take to work.

Fail - January 16, 2022

This morning, I had a hankering for quiche for breakfast.  The refrigerator vegetable drawer yielded mushrooms and onions.  I thought we had some ham or turkey, but we didn't, so I settled for vegetable quiche.  In the freezer were store-bought pie crusts left over from Christmas.

All of the quiche recipes I consulted said to pre-bake the crust, and to put dried beans in the crust while it baked to keep it from bubbling up.  So I poured a bunch of dried garbanzo beans in the crust and baked it for 10 minutes.  

When my filling was ready, I took the pie crust out of the oven and discovered that the garbanzo beans had BAKED INTO the crust.

I tried to pour them out, but they were stuck fast.  Had to dig them out, one by one, with a spoon.

The bottom of the crust was a pocked mess.  I smoothed it with the back of the spoon and moved on.

Maybe I should have thawed the crust, first?

Rainy Saturday - January 15, 2022

 It's a little chilly on the back porch this evening.  I've been doing around in the house all day, but haven't accomplished a whole lot.

A couple of days ago I started crocheting these pods:

The pattern is for a set of 5.  I made the smallest one, then the medium one, then the largest one.  Started on the next-largest this morning, but ran out of jute.  I might just quit working on it and call it a bowl.

The 5 x 7 embroidery machine hoop cracked earlier this week.  Last night, I superglued it (and a couple of my fingers) together, but when I tried to hoop some fabric this morning, it came apart again.  I ordered a new one yesterday, but it won't be here until Tuesday.

My serger has been on the fritz, so I decided to have a look at it after breakfast.  I suspected that the problem was a broken belt, but I couldn't find any belt, broken or not, so I just put the cover back on and made a mental note to take it to the repair shop.  But when I manually twisted the wheel, everything moved that ought to have moved, so I guess it's fixed.  Erase that mental note.

While I was crocheting, I watched a cooking show on PBS.  Woman was making chicken paprikash, which I had never eaten.  It looked wonderful, and I determined to make some.  Today.  After scrounging the pantry for ingredients, I had to go to the grocery store for paprika - I had 3 jars of paprika, and none of them the kind I needed.  

The paprikash turned out yummy.  Cooked some rice to go with it.  When it got closed to done, I called Nanny to see if she wanted some, and she did, so I carried her some.

Now, I'm about to go have some, myself!

Well, I did a thing yesterday.

I bought a chicken coop.  Ordered one online, actually.  It should be here in a few days.

Some assembly required.

I have been wanting chickens for years.  Actually, what I want is "yard eggs," but the answer to the age-old "which came first" question is "chickens." 

This chicken coop is likely a piece of sh*t that will fall apart the first year.  I read the reviews of about a dozen coops, and they were all bad - "flimsy," "pieces don't fit together," etc.  I considered building one from scratch, but the cost calculated to about 3 times what I paid for this one.  Anyway, with all of the critters in the neighborhood - foxes, owls, armadillos, bobcats, coyotes, hawks, otters, snakes, raccoons - the coop will probably outlast the chickens.

Now, I just gotta find some chickens.  I would kind of like to try starting from scratch, hatching eggs.  On the other hand, it might be nice to buy some full-grown chickens (a friend would sell me some) and get right down to business. 

In any case, it will probably take a month to get the coop set up.  Since this was not The Husband's idea, he will not be anxious to tackle this project.  Before that happens, we will need to de-junk the area where I intend to put the coop, which most likely will require a trailer and a trip to the dump.  He will not be gung-ho to tackle this, either, though it needs to happen, chickens or not.  

Jammed Up - January 13, 2022

 

In an effort to save taxpayer dollars (and trees!), I print document drafts on the clean side of used paper.  Yesterday, as I was printing on some of this used paper, the printer jammed because I'd inadvertently loaded some pages that were stapled together.  I cleared the jam of everything I could see, but the printer continued to say it was jammed.  It sounded like something - maybe a staple? - was hung in the nether regions of the printer, but I couldn't find a way to get inside that part of the machine.  I called the computer help desk and explained the problem to the nice young man who'd answered.

This printer is probably older than he is, and he had to hunt up some schematics to help me find a rear access panel.  While he searched, I apologized for having to call him for a stupid paper jam.  He replied, "Oh, that's okay.  My grandparents call me all the time to help them with their stuff."

I said, "HOLD IT!  Are you suggesting that I am OLD enough to be your GRANDPARENT?"

Hah!  You should've heard him stammer.  :)  

By the time he found the right printer manual, I'd solved the problem, myself.  

<grumbling> Young whippersnapper thinks he's gonna tell me how to . . . .

Contemplating Retirement - January 12, 2022

It was 53 degrees in my office yesterday when I got to work, though the thermostat was set at 72.  This was the second time in a week that we've had no heat.  The first time it happened, I called the landlord, and he asked me to call the HVAC company he uses, so I skipped the landlord altogether yesterday and just placed the call to the HVAC folks.  

The Boss and I were supposed to work in another county yesterday, but since someone needed to be at the office to let the repairman in, I stayed at the office with an electric space heater running full blast under my desk.  The Boss got back to the office after lunch.  We still had no heat.  She said, "Let's go home."  I texted the landlord, told him we had no heat and he would have to see to letting the repairman in.  

The Boss and I are both tired of our jobs.  When I told her the heat was out AGAIN, she heaved a big sigh and said, "I am just soooo . . . ."  We've worked together for nearly 30 years and can almost read each other's minds.  I nodded and said, "Meeeeeeee, too."  

She's retiring come August 30.  We'll have to clean out our offices, which I am dreading.  After that, she's done working.

I, on the other hand, should probably find another job.  It's a scary thought.  I may be too old, spoiled, and bossy to survive in a different environment.  When some young upstart tries to tell me what to do, I may be, like, "Look here, junior . . . ."  

Can you draw unemployment if you get fired for insubordination?

* * * * * * * * 

We went to see The Granddaughters last night.  The Little Rotten Baby is now walking as though she was born doing it.  With this new mobility, she has acquired a distaste for being told what to do.  When she started down the hallway in pursuit of her older sisters and her mother told her to come back, she stopped, whirled around, and said, "Nuh-UHHHH!" (with a waggle of her index finger for emphasis) and proceeded down the hallway.  Her mother popped her diapered butt, which hurt her feelings but not much else.

The Grandparents, of course, urged the baby to run to them for comfort, but the baby wanted an apology from her mama.  

 

L-o-n-g Weekend - January 10, 2022

I came home from work Thursday and have not left the property again.  It was a l-o-n-g boring weekend.  Rainy.  Cold.  Trapped in the house.

I've been wanting to do a colorful fabric bunting (or something) for the back porch.  While BFF was here, we made some fabric birds.  They weren't what I wanted.

Yesterday, I decided to try another kind of bird:

It would have been simple to just cut out the bird and sew it on the sewing machine.  But nooooo...I had to make it hard.  The plan was to digitize the bird so that they could be mass-produced on the embroidery machine.  I digitized the pattern for the bird's body and tried to cut out the wings and tail with my cutting machine.  This opened up another can of worms.

The cutting machine requires a sticky mat.  I have four of these mats, and all but one is covered with dust and lint, which has rendered them un-sticky.  Fabric would not stick to them securely enough to accurately cut the design.  

So, in the middle of the birding, I stopped to clean a mat.  Cleaned two of them, actually.  As dirty as they were, it was necessary to clean them all the way down to the original surface, which meant taking off the original "sticky."  It took an hour just to do one mat, and then the "sticky" had to be put back on.  I had a tube of 2-way glue - stuff that dries but remains sticky.  I ran out of glue after the first mat.  

Eventually, I was able to cut out the wings and tail for the pink bird, but once I assembled it, I didn't like the way the wings and the tail looked, so I went back to the computer to digitize some two-sided wings and tails to sew on the embroidery machine. 

Maybe I'll get it right someday.  

'Tis the Gift to be Simple - January 8, 2002

A few nights ago, I wrangled control of the TV remote(s) while The Husband was out of the room, and loaded up a documentary about the Shakers.  The Shakers in America were an off-shoot of the Quakers and aspired to the same simple lifestyle, with one addition: they were celibate.  By the time this film was made, there were only a few Shakers left - like, maybe, four or five, all women, all of whom were orphaned as children and were adopted by the Shaker community.   

I was working on a cross-stitch project while this documentary was running, and so I heard more than I saw.  One thing I heard was "Tis the gift to be simple...."  And that song has run in my brain ever since.

I've loved that tune ever since I first heard it as a kid.

Today, I picked it out on the mandolin.   

Snow Day - January 7, 2022

Wednesday, the weather-persons were predicting ice/snow for our area.  The Boss said, "Don't come to work tomorrow if the roads are bad."  The Husband and I covered the truck and the Wrangler with tarps to keep them from being encased in ice overnight.  Come morning, sure enough, we'd gotten a little snow and sleet, but the weather had been so warm during the previous week that the roads were just slushy, not slick.

I went to work.

About noon, it was snowing to beat the band.

I could not help but remember the year (1984, I think) that a different boss sent me home at 11 a.m. when it started to snow.  As I left the office, there was just enough snow on the ground to show my footprints in the parking lot.  By the time I got home (15 miles away - took nearly 2 hours), I was pushing snow with the bumper of my little Nissan pickup truck.

I went inside and told The Boss it was snowing to beat the band.  She said, "Go home."  I did.

By this time, there were cars in the ditches on my route home.

West Tennesseans just don't know how to drive on icy roads.  Does anyone, though?

What was slush yesterday is frozen solid today.  Our road is usually the last road in the county to thaw.  

I'm not going to the office today.

And I can already tell that I will go nuts trapped in this house with no project laid out to do.

Brrrr! - January 4, 2022

 I don't like this cold weather.  

Sunday morning, I peeked outside to find it was sleeting.  A little while after that, big snowflakes started falling.  We'd had a long spell of warm weather - in the 70s, IN DECEMBER - so the sleet and snow didn't stick, thank goodness.  But it's been colder than a well-digger's butt ever since.

BFF went home this morning, and I went back to work.  It was 56 degrees in the office, though the thermostat was set on 73.  I called the HVAC folks and cranked up my little space heater.  The HVAC guy showed up by 11 and got the heat working within minutes.  It sounded like he did a temporary fix, so I may find the office cold again in the morning.  

I'm too old for cold.

Happy New Year - January 1, 2022

Wow...it's 2022.

Back in the typewriter days, it took me the whole month of January to get used to typing the new year.  Now, I hardly ever type it, thanks to computers.  

Happy 2022.  

Our New Year's Eve was seriously tame.  BFF is still here.  I made some appetizers and a pasta dish for dinner.  There were enough leftovers to feed us today.

But since today is New Year's Day, we had to eat black-eyed peas, cabbage, and cornbread.  The pea-soaking started about 10 a.m.  About 4, I started the peas cooking, but I didn't have a cabbage.  I'd used it earlier in the week - cooked it in the crock pot with a pork loin, onions, and carrots - and hadn't replaced it.  The leftovers were in the refrigerator.  I thought, What the heck, I'll make black-eyed pea soup, and dumped cabbage, meat, and all into the pot with the peas.  On top of the cabbage bowl was a bowl of left-over red beans and rice.  I dumped it in, too.  And you know what?  It was good soup.  And you know what else?  We had left-over cornbread (from the night we had red beans and rice).  I feel so economical.  

Yeah, ok . . . I'm just lazy.

The BFF and I went for a drive in the rain today.  She was on a sleuthing mission to the next little town up the way.  It so happens that there is a second-hand store in that town that I've been meaning to visit.  It is run by the daughter of a friend-of-a-friend, a 30'sh young woman trying to make a go of it.  In my sewing room, there was a black plastic lawn bag full of pillows that I'd made when I had my craft booth.  The bag takes up a lot of space in the sewing room, and I've been meaning to either donate the pillows to the young woman's store or trash them.  One day last week I actually started with them to the garbage can but couldn't go through with it.  So we loaded them in the car and dropped them off after the sleuthing mission.

While we were in the store, I saw a Valentine's Day flag that I'd made for my craft booth.  I had donated it, along with some other stuff, to a church-based second-hand store the day I closed the booth.  It was kind of a Twilight Zone moment.

When we came home, we played in the sewing room.  We made some fabric birds to hang on the back porch, and some fabric fish to make a flag for BFF's kayak.  It was kinda fun.

Not a bad way to start the new year.  :)