Done!

It’s 2:20 on Saturday afternoon and my house is clean and all back together and all my Christmas decorations are out. The tree is up. I’m finished. And I’m tired. LOL I cleaned last night and mopped my floors right before I went to bed. It was so nice to sleep in and get up to a clean house. So today I’ve decorated and done laundry. 

I was debating even putting up the tree this year, but then decided that the lights make me happy and I don’t need to make myself feel worse than I already do. I even hung lights in my front window. I’ve got another string of lights on my bakers rack. Basically, I went all out this year. I’m all light up for the holiday. 

I’m going to read for a while and then I’ll make some dinner. The first of my leftover turkey recipes. I might even make up a batch of homemade hot chocolate a little later. I feel like being cozy for the rest of the day.

Happy Thanksgiving 2024

It has been a really nice week. I definitely needed the break from work. I had thought I would check my email once but I haven’t so far. It’s been so relaxing.

I survived Thanksgiving and even had fun with the family in my space. It wasn’t fancy and was kind of weird though. The turkey was done early, but it actually tasted really good and wasn’t dry. My brother ended up with some kind of food poisoning before the actual Thanksgiving dinner so he stayed in the car for an hour or so just sleeping, I guess. We made him up a plate, but he didn’t eat anything at my house. And I had made sure we had plenty of mashed potatoes because he can really put them away. So lots of those leftover. Plus, the turkey came from work so I didn’t get to choose the size and it was 19 lbs. Even dividing it up, I have a lot of turkey meat. I’ve got 3 recipes I’m going to use it in fairly quickly, I think. 

Plus my niece and nephew and one of their friends showed up after they ate dinner at the other grandma’s house and ate some more here. It’s fun to have them old enough to do that and I love having them here. 

I’ve got most of my Christmas shopping done. Just have 2 boys left to do. Today we made candy at my sister’s house so by the time I got everybody back home and made it home myself, it was 4:00. The day went fast. I took a little nap because I had a headache and I’ve been cleaning and putting stuff back and making room for the Christmas tree, which I’ll put up tomorrow. 

So we managed Thanksgiving and candy making without mom but I think she’d be proud of how we did. She taught us well and I’m really blessed that we all live close and more importantly, that we all get along and enjoy spending time with each other. For all our faults and imperfections, my parents did an excellent job and really did create a forever family. 

Another One

Today was another rough day, brought on by getting frustrated at work. I’ve been feeling a little bit like I needed a good cry, so maybe it’s not that bad. But I’ve been weepy all day. By the time Thanksgiving actually comes, I’ll be fine. I will miss mom of course, but we’ll get through it. Anyway, I’ve been missing mom and staring at this turkey in my fridge and realizing I have to figure out how to cook it. Ha ha it’s fine. Everything is fine. Thanksgiving is actually going to be at my house this year, because it’s only going to be 8 of us. Anna’s family will be with the in-laws this year. I think I’ve got a pretty good plan in place to keep my sanity, but also enjoy the time with family.

There are some good things. I managed to straighten my hair without frizz today. It’s not quite as sleek as when it gets done professionally, but looks a lot better than the last time I tried it and the ends weren’t all nasty frizzed. Yay!

We did solve our problem at work. Well, we got the test to work. It’s still a lot of work to get everything resolved, but we’ll get there. 

I have all next week off and now that we got that test to work, I don’t feel bad about actually taking it off. I’ll be able to relax and enjoy it a bit, I hope, in spite of everything. 

I had to work late last night so I actually took off early and got a walk in before it got dark, and noticed this thing on the parkway that I have never seen before. My sister and I have been trying to figure out how long it’s been there. LOL  Crunching through all the leaves felt fantastic. Walking is a sanity saver, for sure.

Made It!

Not gonna lie, it was a rough week. We finally have a solution for our problems at work even though we can’t implement them until Monday. 

I took a walk during the day on Wednesday and snapped this picture. I feel like the universe was talking to me. 

And in other news I logged on to FB for the first time in a long time and found out that my favorite webtoon is on indefinite hiatus and I’m guessing it will never be finished. I guess it hasn’t been my favorite for quite a while now, but it was really one of the things that got me through 2020 and 2021 and I’ll always be fond of it for that. Maybe I’ll go do a re-read of it before the episodes disappear just because I can. I’ve moved on with my life now though so I’m not sure it would have stayed a favorite. No way to know now. I do still read web comics, just not that many and I don’t spend nearly the amount of money on them that I did back then. Probably a good thing. 

Now that I made it to Friday, I’m looking forward to the weekend. I don’t have to work and it’s supposed to rain/snow for a bit tonight and tomorrow morning. Can’t wait!

Odds and Ends

I love lazy Sundays! Oh, wait, this hasn’t been a lazy Sunday. Ha ha oh well. 

I was in Charlotte last week for work and struggled to sleep all week in the hotel. I got home late Thursday night and these last 3 nights I have slept so well in my own bed. It’s been glorious. 

We had a problem come up at work last week and I had to get some support help from our software company and while I was at the airport waiting for my flight, they told us what happened and it’s a really, really big mess. One of the members of my team was doing a relatively normal purge process to delete some data and I don’t know what happened, but she chose the wrong option or something and instead deleted over 300,000 applicants from our recruiting system. And since that’s my part of the system, I get to help fix it. I’m not even a little bit mad at the person. I feel terrible for her. And I feel relief that I didn’t make that mistake and I’m not her supervisor or manager. We are trying to reload some of the data and since I’m not much of a data person, it’s been a bit of a struggle but I’m getting through it. I worked 10 hours on Friday and almost 7 on Saturday.  On Friday afternoon I sent the person a message basically telling her to hang in there and I’m glad she’s part of our team. I just felt I needed to say something because I really am not mad at her. I told the people helping to load the data that I was offline today. I do need a break and I’m taking it today. We have a paid holiday for Veteran’s Day tomorrow and I’ll be working it, so I’m not working today.

We had our primary program in church today. I had taken a break from work yesterday to go to the practice and we did the thing today. The kids did so well. It was my day to play the organ and since I’m the primary pianist, I had double duty today. All my mistakes were minor and the kids remembered words and the places where the melodies changed and they just did really good. They didn’t need me for second hour so I came home. LOL I’m sure it should have stayed and gone with the adults but that took a lot out of me. It’s relief to be done with it, even though playing music for the primary is one of my favorite things. 

And now I’m going to go cuddle in a warm blanket in my library for an hour and then get ready to go to family dinner. I made pumpkin pie bars for dessert. Never made them before so hopefully they turned out ok. 

Rough

Today has been a rough day for me. All I really think about the election results are bad words. Since I still can't let some of my emotional things roll off as easy as I used to, I have been struggling. I went for a walk after work and it has helped a lot. I'm going to sit back and probably feel sad and angry for a few days as I process everything. I'm staying completely off social media and the news for the rest of the week. And after that I'll figure out what I can do about it. There's a lot I can't do, but I can do some things. 

Happy Halloween

It's kind of gloomy and cold outside so it's kind of a great day for Halloween. It's not my favorite holiday, but I don't mind it. I stay away from the scary parts and have fun with the cozy parts. I think tonight I'm going to bake something with pumpkin while I read and watch old movies. I don't get tons of trick or treaters but I do get some and I don't mind giving out candy either. I have a pumpkin on my t-shirt and come candy corn earrings in and that's as dressed up as I ever get. We carved pumpkins the other night. Mine is the skeleton in jail. I kept it simple this year. LOL  I'm ready for the cozy part of fall and so happy that it's finally here.