Back to normal life

 After a nice break of almost three weeks, it was back to work yesterday. The students don't return until today, as we had professional development yesterday. For me, that just meant going up to one of the district office buildings downtown and sitting through two hours of a payroll "refresher" course with the other secretaries/bookkeepers. I didn't get anything of value out of it, but the newer people may have. Afterwards I stopped and got a sandwich for lunch and then headed to my school to spend the rest of the afternoon organizing our supply room and catching up on emails. Pretty dull, but a gentle reentry to work. It's going to be good to see some of my favorite little kids this morning when they return. 

Thanks for all the comments on my last post. Gregg's sharp pain in his ribs completely subsided after one day. I was extra worried about it all because that's the side where he had radiation in his (only) lung last winter, and he said it hurt to take a deep breath. I'm relieved he seems to be okay, but I'll be reminding him to talk to his doctor about it at his next appointment. I worry about him and his health all the time. Just typing this out makes me tearful. I realized yesterday that it was the 14th anniversary of his surgery to remove his left lung. God, that was a scary time. And the chemotherapy afterwards was hell for him, but I'm so thankful that all these years later he's still here and mostly healthy and okay. Yesterday I wondered why I was so tearful and sad all day, but then I remembered the date. Also, New Year's Day was the second anniversary of my dad dying and I think that had something to do with it too. I've been thinking more about him lately and missing him, and of course this was my first holiday of being fully no contact with my mom. I feel like an orphan, as silly as that is for a 50-year-old woman. And to top it all off, today is the anniversary of January 6th. I don't talk about it too much here, but our political situation causes me so much stress and anxiety. Every day is a new horror. 

So, I'll be glad to get back to normal today, and I'm glad the holiday season is behind me. It's definitely NOT "the most wonderful time of the year" to me. 

Wrapping up the holidays

 Hello, friends, and Happy Holidays!

It's been a nice Christmas at my house, the best we've had in years. Gregg had four days off in a row starting on Christmas Eve, so we've spent a lot of time together just enjoying ourselves. There have been lots of friends around, lots of good food and good cheer, visits with family. Speaking of which, Gregg's sister Karen is here at the moment, spending a couple of days with us. Once she leaves tomorrow, we'll take down the tree and the decorations and Christmas will be put away for another year. It's been fun, but I'm ready to go back to regular life now that it's almost New Year.

One final thing I should mention about this holiday season: it's been a full decade, exactly 10 years, that Gregg has survived cancer! When he was diagnosed with stage 3b lung cancer the week before Christmas in 2011, to say his prognosis was grim would be a bit of an understatement. Thanks to three wonderful doctors, determination to do whatever it took to fight, and, if I'm being honest, a whole lot of dumb luck, here he is 10 years later, cancer-free and healthy. I'm so very grateful!

Anyway, so my sister in law is here today and tomorrow. She's still asleep as I type this; she's a night owl who stays up very late and then sleeps late. This works out well for me. Gregg just went back to work this morning, and while she sleeps it gives me my first chance in a week to have a little alone time. Late this afternoon I plan to cook a nice dinner for the three of us, and that's going to be my last "hurrah" of the season. I've cooked and baked and cleaned, and cooked and baked and cleaned (wash, rinse, repeat!) over the last few weeks. I made cookie and treat trays for half a dozen neighbors, gave out small homemade fruitcakes to my book club friends, sent out over two dozen cards, wrapped a few small gifts, and made a big spread of finger food and a ham on Christmas Eve (to share with friends who stopped by). I'm happy Karen's here and happy to cook a nice meal for her visit, but when she leaves tomorrow it will be good to officially be done with Christmas. I'm tired. Luckily, I don't go back to work until next Tuesday so I should have plenty of time to rest and relax. 

 Here are a few pictures from the last week or so. 

 

I hope you all have had a very happy holiday season!

Busy, busy...it's that time of year!

For the last two weeks I've tried to make my desk at work a haven of festive good cheer for the school. The holidays are almost here, after all!  I'm in the front lobby, the first point of contact for parents and the public, as well as being situated right between the 6th and 7th grade halls. I've been using one of my computer monitors (I have two) to pull up a crackling fire and instrumental Christmas music on YouTube every day. There's a tiny decorated tree with colorful lights on the edge of my desk. Best of all (as far as the students are concerned) I've been filling a small red and green basket with Christmas candy each morning and being very generous with it. Ho ho ho!

Thank God tomorrow is our last day before the break, because the kids have been attracted to my candy bowl like moths to a flame and I'm about to go broke! :)  It's amazing what they'll do for a piece of cheap candy; one little boy who was always in trouble came asking for some early on, and I made a deal with him. If he stayed out of ISS (in-school suspension) and I didn't get any discipline referrals on him, he could come get a piece of candy between classes. It worked! Little Clarence hasn't been in trouble for two weeks, which is a major accomplishment for him. One afternoon he hesitated at my desk, clearly wanting something, so I said, "What is it, Clarence?" Of course, I was thinking he was about to ask for candy again. Instead, he gave me a huge hug, said, "I needed that!", and ran off to catch his bus. You could have knocked me over with a feather! So sweet. Lots of other kids have figured out that if they stop by and ask politely, I'll give them candy. All of a sudden I'm about 10 times more popular than I used to be! Haha.

It's been a busy, busy week. Our book club Christmas party was last night, George had a vet appointment yesterday afternoon (I had to rush home from work to make it). Today I had to leave work for a couple of hours to go to an eye appointment. I feel like I've been rushing around nonstop every day. 

Tomorrow night after work I have plans with my friend Martina. She had an extra ticket to an Ukrainian ballet performance of Cinderella touring the area, and she invited me to be her "date".  We're going to get a late dinner somewhere afterwards, too. I'm really looking forward to it, having never been to a ballet. Then there's a lunch with other friends on Saturday, more holiday baking Saturday afternoon (I made fruitcakes last weekend, now it's going to be sugar cookies) and then on Sunday we have a dinner party invitation from a bachelor friend of Gregg's. I haven't met this friend yet, so I have no idea what to expect, but it sounds like fun! 

Next week as we approach Christmas I hope to have more down time and solitude. I'm enjoying this week, but it's been a bit stressful too. At heart I'm an introvert (you'd never know it to meet me) and all this socializing is going to wear me out if I'm not careful. It's already a tiny bit past my comfort zone, but I'm soldiering on. 

Hopefully I'll have more time for blog reading and blog commenting after tomorrow, too. I can't wait to catch up with all of you! 

Pandemic Christmas

 It's shaping up to be the oddest holiday season of my life, and I'm sure it's the same for every one of you reading this. Yesterday South Carolina set a Covid record: over 3200 new positive cases and 49 reported deaths, and that's in a single day. Some counties in the state have hospitals at 100% capacity with no available beds, so the situation is becoming more dire by the day.

 At my school (and all the other schools in our district) the number of cases have also been going up and up and up, and that's not even counting the number of students and staff who are required to stay home and quarantine because of exposure to someone who's positive. It's a real mess. The school board announced that we'll get out earlier for the holiday break than originally planned, with our last day being the 18th instead of the 23rd. Even so, our (wonderful) school nurse told me yesterday that she's shocked that we haven't gone back all virtual given how bad the district numbers are trending.People are becoming frightened and even a bit paranoid, like a couple of teachers who've been going for weekly Covid tests despite having no symptoms and everyone taking rigorous precautions. I can't blame them. A few teachers across the state with no pre existing conditions have actually died. And far too many people in the community simply refuse to believe in the seriousness of this virus and continue to go about their normal activities, maskless and fancy free. They make me furious. If it were only their own ignorant selves they were endangering, that would be fine with me, but unfortunately we're all at risk because of them. Our current record breaking numbers are the fallout from Thanksgiving gatherings, and January is going to be even more deadly once we're a couple of weeks past Christmas.

As for the approach of Christmas, our already short list of people to buy gifts for is shorter than usual. We won't be seeing any family or friends for the foreseeable future to exchange presents, and the truth is that this has been such an expensive year for us, both in terms of lost income and emergencies to pay for, that we would need to curtail most gift buying anyway. I did buy a Christmas present for my buddy, Little P., though. 

That kid is forever making paper airplanes. He's fairly obsessed with them. Unfortunately, he doesn't really know how to make them properly so they never work very well and are kind of sad, but he remains undeterred. On Thursday afternoon he brought his latest one to show me. He threw it, and it went all of one foot then it hit the floor with a plop. He smiled. I said, "You really love paper airplanes, don't you?" and he replied "I was born to make paper airplanes!" Hahaha. That boy cracks me up! So when I saw this kit at the bookstore that evening (I had dashed in to buy Christmas cards) I knew he would love it.

I'm planning to cook and bake a lot less than usual this Christmas. There will still be a ham, and a few favorite snacks, appetizers, and simple meals. I may even bake a batch or two of cookies, but that's about it. We've had our tree up for a while now, and last weekend we strung some colored lights on the back porch, for fun. 

So many houses in our little neighborhood have lights and decorations up this year! We enjoy looking at them when we're out walking George at night. Even in pandemic times those simple pleasures can be enjoyed safely. Here are two houses I've gotten pictures of so far.

I should be finishing up my Christmas cards this weekend and getting them mailed out next week. I love sending them and I really love receiving them. That's another thing that can be enjoyed safely....reaching out via card or letter to friends and family. I sure will miss seeing everyone this year, but it's kind of nice in a way to have an excuse to do less and have a simpler holiday for once.

What kind of holiday plans do you have this crazy year? How do you feel about it all? 

Kicking off the holiday season

 For my friends who celebrate, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! It was really good at my my house. We got up early that morning and took George over to McLeod Park for a good walk. It's too bad we have to cross a very busy highway to get to it; otherwise we could walk over, it's so close to home. The drive only takes about 3 minutes. It's a pretty park with lots of space, and George loves it.

Then we came back home and I spent the next few hours cooking. I made a pretty good spread for two people, and it was all delicious, if I do say so myself.

Menu: Roast Turkey Breast, Hasselback Potatoes, Cornbread Dressing,

 Cranberry Mandarin Orange Sauce, Green Beans, Sweet Potato Souffle. 

A close up of the Hasselback Potatoes. This was my first time trying this recipe, and we liked it a lot!

And later, there was pie: Pecan (my favorite) and Cherry (Gregg's favorite). The cherry pie looks like hell but it tasted good.

The best part about cooking this meal was that I got to share some of it with our neighbor, Heather. She's single and doesn't have much family, so I sent her a text asking if she had any plans for a Thanksgiving meal. When she said she didn't, I offered to drop off some plates of food and she gladly took me up on it! I loaded three plates with enough food for two meals and took them over. An hour later she texted me and said, "OMG this is amazing! I can't stop eating!! The sweet potato casserole is just like I make it, just like my mother and grandmother would make it and with the marshmallows on top!! This has made me have a Thanksgiving Day!!" 

I can't tell you how happy that made me! My husband is a huge fan of my cooking and he always looks at me like I've worked some kind of magic when I make a big festive meal, but it's a lot of work to cook for just two. It felt so good to share our meal with a friend! Later in the evening when the pies were done I texted Heather again and asked her if she was ready for dessert. Within seconds she responded: "Yeeeeesssss!!" and walked over to meet me at my front steps. I gave her two slices of each pie and some more sweet potato souffle since she liked it so much. Another good thing about sharing our food was it cut down on the leftovers which we always tire of pretty quickly. We had some of everything again yesterday, and today there's just enough sliced turkey left to make a couple of sandwiches. Everything else should be finished off by tonight, too. Perfect. 

So that was our Thanksgiving and then yesterday we went back to the park, walked George a couple more times around our neighborhood, relaxed, and then PUT UP THE CHRISTMAS TREE. In November! We've never put up the tree so early, and I feel kind of weird about it, but it looks pretty. We started off by pulling out the tree and all the boxes of ornaments from the closet in the office/Marco's room. We'd already decided to clean out that closet and to start utilizing the attic for decoration storage, and since we had everything out we figured, what the heck. I took a photo of it this morning because the lights look so nice on this cloudy, gray, chilly day. 

Oh, and our dryer died this morning, because of course it did. It wouldn't be the holiday season without an unexpected expense popping up! So now I know what I'm getting for Christmas. Ho ho ho.

The luxury of time off

It's been a real luxury to have so much time off around the holidays this year. I don't think the novelty of it will wear off for a few years, at least.

I've been able to keep the house cleaner and tidier than usual with all this extra time. I got the Christmas tree down and packed away yesterday without too much stress. It's nice to see the living room put back in order. A major cold front is moving in (we may even have some snow and ice over the weekend) and I plan to make a big pot of vegetable soup with the leftover ham and hambone from Christmas. I may even bake a cake.

The days off work have been useful in another way, too. Gregg has inherited a third of an IRA from his mom, and the application to open a new account had to be faxed in ASAP so that we wouldn't have to pay a large tax penalty for not taking out the "required minimum distribution" before December 31. Given that she died on December 4 that didn't leave much time to figure out all the complicated paperwork, even with the (almost expert) help of Edythe's husband Lou. I've had to exchange several emails with the investment company, and Lou, and travel back and forth to a UPS store to send faxes....all things I wouldn't have much time for if I were at work. It's been a huge help to Gregg for me to take on the paperwork for this. All he's had to do is sign in a couple of places. I do hope the rest of Edythe's estate won't be as complicated for him to inherit. This IRA thing has required a small crash course in investing for me and has been a real pain, to boot.

I've also had time during this break to catch up with friends I haven't seen in a while. I met my friend Susan for breakfast today. She's such a good friend to me, and as a cancer survivor herself, she was just the person I needed to talk to about Gregg's upcoming PET scan. She went through almost the same scenario a year ago, and it turned out to be nothing but scar tissue. She's convinced that will be the case with him, too. I hope she's right! I also got to hear about how her son Alexander (a former coworker of mine that I really like) and his wife are doing. We ended up talking over coffee for almost 3 hours! She's a teacher, so she's on the same holiday break as me.

The only plans I have for the rest of my time off is to do a little bit of decluttering and organizing in the house. We have several cupboards and closets that desperately need cleaning out, and I can do it at my leisure over the next few days. It will be nice to start the new year with a cleaner, more orderly home than usual after the busy holiday season. Once again, I'm beyond grateful for my new job.

Catching back up, and keeping Christmas simple

Where the heck did November go???

It's December 1st already, and despite my best intentions these last couple of months to sit down and give this blog more attention, I keep finding myself too busy to do it. Part of the reason, of course, is that old ball and chain, work.

 Retail management is pure drudgery during the holidays, and preparing for them begins in earnest in October. My job, while never happy, has been particularly difficult this year. We have a couple of members of the management team that have completely gone off the rails in their personal lives, including some serious drug addiction issues. As you can imagine, that leaves the rest of us forced to cover their absenteeism and neglect of their job duties. The rest of the store team is demoralized, which has led to calling out, bad attitudes, loss of productivity, and a whole lot of turnover. The atmosphere is so negative and things are so bad that the turnover has included several of our most dependable, long-term employees. Slowly but surely they're finding other jobs without all the dysfunction. And who could blame them?

I was so hopeful at the start of this year that I'd be one of the lucky ones with a new job by the time the holidays rolled around! It was my one and only resolution for 2014, and I have to admit I'm disappointed. The local economy isn't good, and competition for the kind of job I want is high. I was very discouraged for a while, but now that I've resigned myself to the fact that it's not going to happen as quickly as I'd hoped, I'm feeling better about continuing to search. In the meantime, I'm putting in extra hours and coming home extra tired, and that's put a damper on lots of things, not just blogging. Days off have been spent doing the necessary housework, chores, and caring for our feathered and furry housemates.

I've also been trying, during odd moments, to prepare for the upcoming holiday. I'm keeping gifts simple and inexpensive this year. Homemade food items, like flavored vinegars, vanilla extract, and Christmas cookies, and homemade (but simple to make) filled candles will constitute a majority of the gifts we'll be giving this year, with a few books or small items thrown in here and there. I can't take the crowded stores, the mad rush of shopping, the feeling like nothing you buy is ever enough this year. I despise it all, including the fact that the Christmas machine starts up earlier and earlier every year, and then really kicks off with the travesty known, appropriately, as Black Friday. No thanks. This year, I want to try to take it easier and find some small portion of the holiday to enjoy.

Stay tuned for photos of the gift projects I've finished so far, as well as some knitting I've been working on. I'm also still looking for a good, traditional fruit cake recipe and deciding on what kinds of Christmas cookies to make, so if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them! Anyone else out there making or baking gifts this year? Or finding other ways to keep the holidays simple and inexpensive? Please share!

It's almost here (and almost over!)

We're in the home stretch now...Christmas is a mere 3 days away! I can't wait to see it come and go. This has been an incredibly hectic holiday season. In addition to the normal woes of working in retail (long hours, crowds, etc.) we've also had our share of extra stress this year.

 Money is tight thanks to a big car repair, Husband had the flu two weeks ago and is still recovering, and I woke up yesterday morning with the beginning of a bad cold. In addition to all that, we've adopted a new dog. The timing of the adoption was bad, but George was on the "put to sleep" list, so we didn't have the option of waiting until after the holidays. We love him already--he's lovable and playful and sweet--but he's also very young, bursting with energy, and in need of training. I've been working hard teaching him to walk properly on a leash, and we've had to take extra walks every single day, not just for training but to burn off some of his excess energy.  Getting another dog has been a lot of work so far, during an already hectic month. I'm looking forward to January when I can spend more time with both of the dogs, as well as having some down time for myself.

Sweet George

Ginger and George share a bed now.

Today is my last day off before Christmas, so I'm baking cookies. This cold has made me feel lousy, and I really don't feel like doing anything--but I'm soldiering on. The holiday is coming, ready or not!

Ho ho ho.

Finally, some rest

As usual, I am glad to see the holiday season winding down. Work has worn me out.

Between extended holiday hours, crowds of shoppers, cranky overextended coworkers, relentless traffic, and my own personal holiday preparations at home, the whole period between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to go by in a blur of caffeine fueled frenzy. Yesterday I had to go to work at 5am (which meant getting up at 3:30!!) to set the post-holiday sale at the bookstore.  Even though I had to get up at such an ungodly hour, it ended up being kind of pleasant. We didn't open until 8:00, so almost half of my shift was spent in the quiet, peaceful, empty store working on first one task, then another, with no interruptions. Even after we opened I was off working alone, removing holiday signage and consolidating leftover merchandise and re-setting empty tables and endcaps. Then I got to leave at 1:00pm. After swinging by a friend's house to check on his cats (he and his wife are out of town visiting relatives) I went home, ate a big plate of leftover Christmas dinner, and went to bed for a nap.

And what a  nap it was! I slept hard for four hours, and woke up confused and disoriented because it was dark outside and much later than I expected. After some of the grogginess dissipated, GB and I went for our nightly walk with Ginger, then came back and feasted on more holiday food and sweets. We watched Netflix for a couple of hours, then went back to bed. I was afraid that after such a long nap I would be wide awake, but I fell asleep immediately and slept a full eight hours. I must have been more exhausted than I knew. Since yesterday afternoon I've slept more than 12 hours!

Today I am off, and it's wonderful to feel so rested. Our home could use some TLC, but I'm only going to do the most necessary chores. Then I'm going to take Ginger out for a long winter walk, and when I get back I plan to make a homemade pot pie with the last of the leftover turkey. Marco is so very happy today; he got two big new toys in his stocking from Santa! That bird loves new toys as much as a human child.  He's been playing nonstop since we put them in his cage. Ginger got a new leather collar, a large meaty bone, and several smaller doggie treats in her stocking. GB and I also have lots of holiday goodies: movies and books and way too many sweets. There are Godiva chocolates, cookie platters, chocolate covered cherries, peanut butter fudge, and boxes of hard candy taking up room on the dining room table. Far more than we need! But the house still feels festive.

It's going to be a good day to be at home!