At least it's Thursday already

Holy shit show! The incompetence of some people/companies is crazy. Myself and 2 of my coworkers have been dealing with one of our manufacturer's and I honestly don't even know how this company has managed to stay in business. On Monday, our salesman just wanted me to send them a purchase order for a very small order - a sample he needed on jobsite by Thursday, our customer willing to pay the overnight shipping. If this sample gets approved by the customer, then of course hey - big order will come....

Several emails on our end the next day trying to confirm it was shipped...finally a reply mid afternoon "your accounting needs to contact our credit dept". I emailed right back - please give me name/email/ph# to contact? We have a main ph# listed in our records for this manufacturer so I tried to call. I got a rude person basically saying "why'd you call this number? we are "sales" OMG - just transfer me to your credit dept then! She gives me another number to call so I try that but can only get voicemail. Our sales support assistant then tried calling 3 different numbers to this company yesterday, all with no luck actually getting anyone. Nor did they reply to any of our emails about the order yesterday. Their order dept person, who first emailed us that we needed to contact their credit dept doesn't even have a phone number in her signature line. Hows that for great service?!

So, finally they email back this morning that they have sent us a payment link so we can prepay the order before it gets shipped. Um....we've been emailing you since Monday that we needed this on the jobsite TODAY! What a joke.

DH wanted to get our garbage man the gift this morning. The garbage truck typically arrives in the morning on Thursdays around 7-ish, but he got up at 6am to wait to listen for the truck, to make sure he didn't miss him. It's now almost 9am and still no garbage truck. Of course, LOL.

I was trying to kill 2 birds with one stone yesterday by not having to walk all the way down to the end of our street to drop off the Christmas cookies to neighbor. Her son gets off the school bus at 4:30 or so, so I was watching for the bus from our dining room window and then would get out there and meet up with him as he's passing by on his walk home and then I'd continue over next door to Mr & Mrs house to drop off theirs. It was very windy rainyish day, which is why I really didn't want to take the long walk down to their house. I get out there, the bus has gone by and no kid. Damn it! LOL. I guess he didn't go to school yesterday, so I walked over to Mr&Mrs and dropped off with them and brought my other box back home. I'll text other neighbor today around noon and make sure she's home, before I walk down there. I think today's weather will be better for a walk.

Annoying cat behavior

More "teaser" snow overnight, but it's warming up and a bit of rain coming or at a minimum it will melt off again today.

I got an email from my health insurance company yesterday about don't forget to claim your rewards. I vaguely knew something about this program, but thought I'd better check. I had $25 to claim for an Amazon gift card, from having my annual exam and screenings this year. Oh nice! Then I decided to explore what else they offer rewards for. I earned another $30 answering a questionnaire and putting an app on my phone. Glad I looked - that was an easy $55 found/earned. I will have to remember this for next year, where I can at least get another $25 for my annual check up.

DH also really likes the "Christmas crack" toffee treat I made with Ritz crackers, chocolate, peanut butter and toffee and the top sprinkled with mini m&m's. He said it tastes like a really good Reese's. I agree. 

I made myself a to-do list for work, so that I (hopefully) don't forget to take care of before I'm off for 2 weeks. Worse comes to worse and I wake up one morning, in the next 2 weeks, suddenly remembering I forgot to do something, I can always log into work and do it, haha. 

DH is going to have to get up early tomorrow so he can try to catch the garbage man and give him his (giant LOL) box of chocolates. I think they usually come around 7am but it's not super consistent. Even if they don't come until after I am up, I don't typically even hear them out there. He did manage to fit the box in our mailbox for the mail carrier yesterday, so she got hers. We also still have the box for our FedEx gal. We don't get FedEx here as often as UPS or USPS. I told dh a week or so ago, as far as I know, we don't have any packages coming via FedEx before Christmas and offered to order something from Walmart (who usually ships FedEx) so that she has to stop here, but he just said oh, let's just wait and see. Oh well. Maybe we'll get something by New Year's.

My cat is being very annoying lately. He's just acting very agitated a lot of the time. Maybe it's because he wants his normal outside time off and on during the day but he's not liking the cold, so he comes back in. Mostly he sleeps most of the day now but when he is up he just seems restless. Then as soon as I go to bed he wants to meow and up on the bed, down, up in the window ledge, down, out to the living room, then repeat. After I went to bed last night dh shut his den doors (french doors with windows) because he was talking to a friend on his phone and didn't want to wake me up. I guess Amos was meowing he wanted in, so dh let him in the den and reshut the door. He immediately started meowing he wanted back out. Repeat. From about 5am he was annoying. I let him out when I got up at 7 and left him out there for about 40 minutes. He followed me up to my office (where his food and litter cabinet is). I fed him, gave him his treats. He starts meowing. I played with him and his mouse on a stick for awhile. Then he went downstairs and I didn't hear him meowing again, and he woke dh up (again). He's back outside now. Dh was not happy. I guess I'll just have to put him up in my office for the night. It seems like, in the past, when I have done this for a few nights, the then seems to mellow out and doesn't act like this for awhile. Hopefully he gets over whatever is going on.

Miscommunication

Yesterday morning, while it was snowing, dh came upstairs and said "Bumble died". We had this whole conversation where I asked what's wrong and he said the motor died, it won't go up. Bumble is what he named his big white sidexside snowplow. I thought he was talking about that and that something was wrong with the plow part/motor that raised and lowered it. Off he went to try to fix it.

Only I kept hearing noises right outside the front corner of the house. Hours later (because I was busy getting our bonus payroll submitted and other things) I go look out the window to try to figure out what in the heck all this noise is. He was working on Bumble.....Bumble the inflatable Christmas decoration! RIP big Bumble. He didn't last very long.

Bumble on top of Bumble (old pic)

Boy, we had a lot of snow that year compared to now, with barely a dusting on the ground.

Ok, I got Monday done. I still don't think my expense program syncing with my accounting program issue is fixed. I guess I'll find out when I have to try to sync again. Seriously, if it is, I'm just going to wait until after the holiday to figure it out, I think. I can just add the info manually this week, plus we don't usually have many expense reports being submitted mid/late month. They are supposed to get them in the first week of each month (ha! who am I kidding?!)

As dd and I say to each other: we now have 5 more sleeps until we see each other :)

I've been thinking about someday getting a new area rug for my living room. One that's a bit bigger, with maybe a bit of color in it. What has been catching my eye are rugs that have copper and blue colors in them. I'm always seeing those ads for the washable type rugs. And then this morning I see an ad for them, but they now have holiday rugs. How cute would that be to be able to change out the rug for the holidays!, but easy to store when not using it. I'll have to keep that in mind, whenever I do finally decide to get a new rug. DH would be "OMG - you have a rug for Christmas now?!" haha. 

Oh, Monday!

I got up, ready to take on Monday and the week and was immediately annoyed with the first email, from work, I read, LOL. We have this vendor we purchase from fairly regularly - for years. They email me the monthly statement, and for some reason also always email it to our dept head that purchases from them. Our dept head, while I love her to pieces, always has to forward it to me and half the time is questioning me, if we are past due. I have told her repeatedly over the years, that I also get this same statement email.

This morning I wake up to this email from her: 

Making sure you had seen this from XXX. Since it's unlike us to be overdue on payment to XXX (Invoice 9172....), I'm hoping it's not a case of a check being lost or anything. As such, I wanted to bring it to your attention.

First off, if by chance, I missed getting an invoice from them, then I will see it on the statement and get it taken care of right away. You don't need to remind me. Here is my reply to this one:

It's all good - 9172.... is a Credit Memo, not an invoice, that was on last months statement and it will get applied to the current invoice on the statement, that is not due until next month. 

Give me a break - I've been doing this job for 20 years (40 years of experience). I think I know how to do my job. I'm just annoyed because she does this all the time and all the time nothing is wrong. From now on, I'm not even going to explain myself anymore, I'm just going to reply "ok, got it".

Then I go to do a process where I sync our 3rd party expense reporting system with our accounting system and now suddenly that doesn't want to work.

But, then I got a nice surprise. My boss emailed the report with all the bonus's listed, for me to enter for a payroll batch, and turns out I'm not getting half of what I would have gotten, if we had met our goal, I'm getting more than that, LOL. As usual, there are a few getting extra and I am one of them. I will put my annoyances aside (once I figure out what the heck is wrong with our expense report system!) and count my blessings.

I made the pork chops meal last night and it was a total hit. The added packet of Lipton onion soup mix, in addition to the cream of mushroom soup, made the rice taste really good. My only complaint was it needed more water, there wasn't enough of the soup/gravy for the rice. Or maybe I just needed to cook it about 10 minutes less. The recipe said an hour, but these weren't very thick pork chops. I'll work on tweaking it next time I make it. Plus it looks easy to make a homemade copy cat recipes of the onion soup mix and cream of mushroom soup, with no additives. It looks like pork chops are a great source of protein. I only bought a 4 pack this first time, because I wanted to make sure we'd like them. Now we have to wait almost 3 weeks before we shop again LOL.

A shopping, baking Saturday

It was a fairly busy day, at least by my metrics (which doesn't take much, LOL). We left the house at noon to go get our grocery order. Arrived about 45 minutes later and our order was ready a couple minutes after we got there. We were pulling out at 1pm and then went to the other grocery store. I got some dinner rolls for Christmas dinner. Grabbed a couple more loaves of bread and a loaf of white bread. Got dh's tortilla chips (to which he says, as I'm putting the bags in the truck "I'm getting kind of tired of those" and to which I reply "you heard me say I was going in here for tortilla chips because Walmart was out of stock!" Men!) Decided to get one more gallon of milk and ended up putting that in the freezer. 

I also picked up some organic peanut butter to try (with my daily apples and peanut butter). It will be a little to get used to. I have literally eaten Jif peanut butter my whole life. I'm used to the thickness and sweetness, but I managed to gt it stirred up some (still very runny!) and on my plate with my apple slices and it was a fine combination. Maybe keeping it in the fridge would help? At least it's much healthier. Organic peanuts and a bit of sea salt. No added sugar and seed oils and no mono and diglycerides.

By then it was 1:30 and dh suggested stopping at Wendys. I said sure (we had eaten lunch at home around 11:30) but the drive thru line was packed. I said maybe McDonald's isn't so busy. It was, but he pulled in to the gas station next door to fill up and as we were pulling out McD's line was almost gone, so he pulled in. I ordered a chicken sandwich. Worst sandwich ever! Flat dry bun and nothing on it but the chicken (kind of dry too) and 3 pickles. $7 - a complete waste of money. I've never ordered one before, so I assumed it was like Wendy's, which has mayo, lettuce, tomatos and pickles. The cute kid at the drive thru window looked like he was 12 years old. DH says you don't look old enough to be working, the kid proudly said "I'm 14!" Learned something new - I didn't know kids could get a job that young here. Where we lived before you had to be 16 and even then many places (retail and food) wouldn't hire 16 year olds.

I took a nap after we got home and I got the groceries all put away.  When I got up dh was out in the shop, and I figured he'd want dinner a little later, since he basically had 2 lunches. I made the Christmas shortbread cookies. They are so easy and so good. He came in and was like "what? no chocolate chip cookies?" So, I got out some more butter to let soften and made his cookies around 7pm.

They turned out the worst ever! OMG! Flat as always, but on both cookie sheets (I have 2 different kinds) they overcooked on the edges of the cookies and the middles weren't done. I gave up and put the rest of the dough in the fridge. He'd rather just eat the dough anyway.

Today I will make the "Christmas crack" or Toffee crackers or whatever names they go by. Then I will get them packaged up to give to the 2 neighbors and leave a few for me (dh will be eating his dough, LOL) to munch on. He might give the toffee crackers, that have the mini m&m's on them a try. He can't resist m&m's. Then once he decides "oh, these are good, I'll have to make another batch for us, LOL.

Next weekend, I'll probably make some more of the shortbread cookies and maybe some of the sugar cookies. I might skip making those, though. If we have the shortbread, some of the toffee crackers, plus I am making a pumpkin pie for Christmas, that's plenty for the 4 of us.

I also bough some pork chops to make something for dinner. DH suggested it (because a friend suggested it to him, if I had suggested it he would say no). I said you told me early on in our marriage you didn't like pork chops so I never buy/make them.....anyway, I remember a recipe my mom used to make us for dinner - kind of a casserole type dish with rice, cream of mushroom soup and pork chops, but I can't remember how she made it or what all ingredients she used. I'll have to see if I can find something similar online to make. Porkchops and applesauce. If you are my age you will get the reference ;)

Grocery gettin' Saturday

Just before I was going to bed last night I thought to myself 2 more weeks until I see dd...then a few minutes later I realized, no! it's only one more week. Christmas is sneaking up fast, it always does.

I entered my Walmart order yesterday for pick up today at 1pm, so we'll have to leave home around noon. We are going to have to make a quick stop at the other grocery store. The tortilla chips dh likes are out of stock at Walmart and I also want to look in their bakery for whatever rolls I decide to get for Christmas, that I can freeze. I think I also might pick up more milk than I ordered from Walmart because we'll likely use more with dd and sil here.

A week or so ago it sounded pretty promising that we would make our sales goal at work, to get our year end bonus. I found out yesterday that we are not going to make it, but because we are very close, they are going to pay out half of what we would have gotten. A bummer that we didn't make it, but half is better than nothing. We are probably only a couple of weeks shy of making the yearly goal - so darn close.

A little more snow this morning (yesterdays little bit melted) but it supposed to warm up to 42, so this will likely melt as well, or more rain.

I will be making some cookies/treats this weekend. Most will get shared with the 2 neighbors. I plan to do some easy shortbread cookies and then make 2 kinds of "Christmas crack", one with just chocolate, one with peanut butter and chocolate. I have different toppings: pecans, mini m&ms, and red and green sprinkles so I will do sections with each kind. I haven't tried making the one with peanut butter yet, but it's basically the same recipe. Maybe the Monday before Christmas dd and I will make the sugar cookies I usually make (just for us).  I told dd next year I think I will forego the cookie making (so no sugar consumption temptations) and make some candles to give to the neighbors. I can make those anytime next year and then no rush to get stuff made right before Christmas. Plus dd/sil won't be here for Christmas next year so I won't feel like I need cookies for them.

Well, better go back downstairs and see if Amos is ready to come back inside this morning. He wanted out when I got up at 7:15 and hasn't been back at the door the last 2 times I checked.

Finishing up Friday

It's Friday, it's payday and there's a little bit of snow on the ground. It's a good day :)

Some friends of ours with 2 young kids drove by our house last night to see our lights and yard decorations. DH told their dad - have them tell me if it's too much, not enough or just right LOL. Their assessment: it's awesome, but they would add some lighted candycanes. Guess what we'll be adding next year? haha.

We got a call yesterday from the new owner of the lot next to us. (they live in Tx). It just kind of sounds like more of the same...basically trying to feel dh out, to see if they can do what they want and if anyone's going to care. We have restrictions (not covenants) on how close we can put a permanent foundation/structure to the edge of the properties where they drop off down the bank. No closer than 25 feet. We also have restrictions that we cannot touch the river bank. (We are high bank properties, like over 100 ft up a steep bank). I think its our DNRC that control this. So, even though we technically own our property part way down the bank, to the high water mark, we are not allowed to alter it. Of course new owner wanted to know how close he could build (it's right in your lot CC&R's...) because they wanted to build right up next to the bank, and then says "ya, I need to figure out how to make a trail down to the river". (but then at one point said ya, I saw that about the 25' - so why ask then?)

DH just said do so at your own risk and told him what happened with our other neighbors (Mr & Mrs) who first built here 8 years before anyone else and tried to build steps/ramp down to the river. He also told him about another property owner about 1/2 mile down river. She bought her property like 10 years ago. It's a wide piece (10 acres) and not quite as high bank and the previous owner had basically cut in a little road to get down there, apparently years before. But over the years it got overgrown, so wasn't really noticeable. A few years ago new owner decided, hey, I'd like to use this little road trail to drive my quad down there, so she cleaned it up, pulled weeds, etc. Well, she got notified by the DNRC she was in violation and had to restore that hillside and they literally gave her like a month deadline.

I was the one who answered the phone (he called on our landline) when he called and dh was in the shower. He said their builder had some questions on what they can/can't do, so he was wondering if we knew. I decided dh would be best to talk to him (since he dealt with all that during our build) and told him dh will call him back in a bit. But, before hanging up I did say "so, are you guys going to get started building next spring?" He said well...we're still trying to decide if we need a house in Montana. We live in Tx and also have a vacation house on a lake in another state, so not sure if we need another one. Plus, still trying to find out how much it's going to cost to build". 

They bought this lot, without seeing it for themselves. Only their son had checked it out and I'm guessing he had just told them/assumed they would be able to just build right up next to the bank,  (because his wife wants to see the river from inside their house) and hey, just make your own access down to the river. Now they are trying to figure out how they are going to build 25' back and see the river and apparently their idea/solution is build a 2 story house up on stilts...........

It's been 3 weeks again since we went to the city for groceries. My time flies. Once dh gets up and going this morning I'll ask him when, this weekend, he wants to go in. At least, with our 3 week schedule of getting groceries, this month we only have to go in once :)

I just checked the hospital's patient portal to see if dh's blood test results are showing yet and they are. Negative, so it's not autoimmune pancreatitis. Now we wait until the next endoscopy on Jan 9th to see if we can get any answers. At least we got the test in before the end of the year and it's not going to cost me anything.

Temptations everywhere

I will say I've notice, since cutting down on sugar (most days I don't have anything with added sugar) that I have not been experiencing the energy crashes I used to always get around mid afternoon. I had one yesterday - why? well most likely because Tuesday afternoon I had a chocolate covered donut and then yesterday Mr Neighbor dropped off some holiday treats his wife made and I had a couple of those. Mid afternoon yesterday I could hardly stay awake. I will have to do my best to not eat the treats. DH rarely will eat them, he never eats the treats anyone ever drops off, so I end up eating all of them. Looks like there are 3 different kinds in the container. One I did not like at all - looked delicious but way too sweet for me. The other one I tried looked kind of like a chocolate chip cookie, but flatter and cut into triangles. And it wasn't chocolate chips in them - dates, I think, and that one was really good.

After we got dh's blood draw done, we stopped at the store in town to pick up some milk. DH went in with me and we always have to walk past the donuts (it's a very small store LOL) and usually they never have any donuts left by afternoon (or even late morning) but lately they seem to have donuts still. And since we rarely get them, like once every 2-3 months (that's my story and I'm sticking to it!) we treated ourselves. DH loves the maple bars. I had a chocolate covered bar. Honestly, it was probably 2 months since we last had a donut, we don't go to that store very often and most of the time they are out of donuts. They do make very delicious fresh donuts.

One these holidays and extra food/treats are done with in 2 weeks, I am back to what I have been eating/not eating. Then just as I was done with work yesterday our little neighbor boy down the street (who is getting so tall and big now! he's in 2nd grade) stopped by with the Christmas treat his mom made - a freshly baked loaf of sourdough bread. Yum! It was still warm. Then UPS showed up with a gift from our good friends in TX (the ones we went on the cruise with) and it was a box of apples, pears and some nuts and cheese. I'm actually more excited to see the goodies in this box than the sweets we've gotten, so that's a good sign, right? 

DH noticed the tiny package under the tree last night. LOL! It's already driving him crazy what it could be. DD thought this was hilarious. 

I guess my side job will go on about 4 more months and then I'll be done. It would be great if about the time I lose that income, I get another raise at my regular job ;)

The incompentency

The doctor's office finally called around noon yesterday to say they sent over the orders for the blood test. I waited about 45 minutes and called the hospital to make sure they received it. I could just see us driving the 11 miles into town, getting there and them saying "no, we don't have anything yet". And there would be no way to call the dr office from there and get it resent, because they never answer their phone.

But, they did get it, so we went in to get that done. We sat there outside the lab for at least 20 minutes. No one else waiting for lab work and no one came out from there. Finally, a guy in a lab coat comes out, looks surprised to see us there. "Are you here for labs?" Yes... he looks around the corner at the lady we checked in with at the main desk and starts to ask her and she says "oh, I was waiting for your phone light to go off, before I called you and told you he was here". OMG. I think she just totally forgot. Annoying. Then we still had to wait another 10 minutes before the guy came back out again, and got dh. Anyway, that's done and they took 3 vials of blood from him. Of course dh didn't think to ask him about how long it would be before his dr. has the results. This dr office (nor the hospital) doesn't report things to MyChart, which is a bummer.  But, then I just remembered the hospital does have a patient portal log in, so his results should show up there. I'll watch for it,

At least it was a beautiful sunny day for the drive to town. After we got home I got another call from the EUS scheduler from the day before. She thought she had talked to me the day prior to set up his appointment, but apparently she then didn't enter it in their system! Can you imagine if we had waited a month for this, get to the hospital to check in, and they say "we don't have you on the schedule"?!

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with one more gift for dh. For years he's been wanting some towing mirrors for his old pick up. I asked SIL if he knew what he wanted (of course he did LOL), but he said dh wants original OEM and they are going to be really hard to find (and expensive) so if dh can't find those it will have to be aftermarket ones (MUCH cheaper). I decided to just have SIL send me a link to a picture of some mirrors so I can print it out.

Dh likes to wrap presents as soon as they get here. He put this really big box under the tree the other day and says this is going to be the best present, LOL. I was going to find another big box and do the same, but all the boxes are out in the shop, up in the loft and I'd have to ask him to get me one. He'd say "why? nothing that has come in deliveries is that big??" So, I found the tiniest box I could. A box of matches. Took out the matches and printed the paper with the pic of the mirrors and folded it up small to fit in the box. Wrapped it with a tiny bow I have and put it under the tree. Waiting to see how long it takes him to notice. It will drive him absolutely nuts to wait until Christmas to find out what it is, LOL.

I need to fix that tree light cord, LOL. DH put the skirt under the tree and didn't put it over the cord. It's all in the details ;)

My long time side job, is fully coming to an end next month. The owner and his wife (who is the one I communicate with 99% of the time) are 70 now and he is having a lot of health issues and she has finally convinced him to completely retire. I've been working for them each month, the last year and a half, on a much smaller scale, as he has just been doing consultant type work and I have been keeping track of that income and expenses. She and I have become pretty good friends over all these years and that will continue. 

Back and forth

The scheduler for the upper EUS finally called mid afternoon yesterday and the soonest they can get dh in for the procedure is Jan 9th. That's very disappointing. Another month waiting. She said their office is only open these next 2 weeks and then closed for 2 weeks for the holidays and not reopened until Jan 6th. This endoscopy isn't done at their office, like the one last month was, we have to go to the hospital and the dr performs it there. He had an EUS 3 years ago, before his gallbladder was removed and they did it at the hospital, then, as well. We have to be there at 6:30 in the morning. Ugh. Oh well.

Then I called the hospital in town to make sure they had the order for the blood test and of course, they did not. So, I had to call the dr office back again, and am still waiting for a call back or message, this morning. I mean really - we have to know that the lab got the order before we try to go there. I don't want to have to keep calling the hospital every day to ask. Geez. So, I just sent another message, asking for an update on the order. There needs to be a better system, LOL. The doctors office is at some point going to say, yes, the order has been sent. Then I'm going to have to call the hospital again, just to make sure they got it.

DD has confirmed they will be here on Sunday the 22nd and will be able to stay until the 26th. This will be nice visit and glad to have the extra couple of days with them. She will have to work on her laptop from here on the 23rd, but should only have to work part of the day and it should be a slow day for her as most people have taken it off.

Nothing much else is new. I have to get payroll processed today. Still iffy/close on if we will be able to get our end of year bonus. While there's still 3 weeks left, we all know everyone's work slows way down after next week. Keeping fingers crossed.

Not Temu sized

Holy cow! I had ordered boxes of Russell Stover chocolates to give to our delivery people....they arrived yesterday via an Amazon driver. They are HUGE! I did not realize I was ordering these monster sized boxes, LOL. I just thought they'd be regular sized boxes of chocolate. Usually things ordered come smaller than expected, not bigger, haha.

I got them wrapped and ready for dh to give out the next time we see the drivers. My supervisor was on the job

Boy, Amazon sure is being slow getting stuff here. I ordered a bunch of other gifts (plus my vitamins) over a week ago at the same time I ordered these chocolates. First it was all supposed to be here yesterday. Then today. Now I see the rest of the order is saying tomorrow...why? probably because they are using these independent drivers to get stuff here and don't have enough drivers.

Yesterday dd messaged in our group chat that their "tree guy" was getting started yesterday on removing trees from their property (to build a house on). My reply was "Woooo!" Later she messaged me privately, that they were driving over to the property and SIL read my "Wooo!" reply on his smart watch and said "your mom is so supportive". Awww! That made me feel good. I'm so excited for both of them. From a few things dd says off and on it kind of sounds like his parents can be a bit negative. When they tell them stuff/plans they often get "why are you doing that?" type of responses.

I see from my USPS informed delivery that my side job check is finally in the mail today. Boy, that took the scenic route to get here. I'm just glad we don't have to go through canceling a lost check and reissuing it and waiting another week for it to get here.

Well, my work day started a little earlier than planned. Our satellite office on the other side of the state's internet is down. Apparently I'm the only one who gets notification, via email because I'm on the account as the contact, so I just figured out how to add our main guy over there's cell phone number, so he can gets texts to alert him if there is an outage.

40 year old appliance

DH wants to try drinking fruit smoothies. I had made some years ago and while they were good, my old blender was lacking and it sure seemed to take a whole lot of fruits just to get one glass. I told him if I'm going to make him some strawberry/banana smoothies I need a blender that isn't 40 years old LOL. I still have this blender - a wedding gift that will be 40 years old next month! It will be good for both of us to eat more fruit. I will just have to freeze fruit or buy already frozen, since we only shop every 3 weeks. He wanted to get me one more Christmas gift, so I'm going to pick out a blender to order. Plus, I'm sure the protein powder I've been buying can be added to smoothies, as well. I'm guessing I can buy big bags of frozen strawberries at Costco. I can freeze the bananas, as well.

We just got rain yesterday. Then when the temp gets back down below freezing again, (like it is this morning) the rain goes away so we still get no snow.

I've done 3 weeks of the intermittent fasting. Some days I make it 16 hours, but most days it's 15 hours when I will have my cup of coffee, with creamer, and then another 90 minutes or so before I eat breakfast. Absolutely no change in my weight. Not even a half a pound. Not to mention about a month ago I added walking to our mailbox Mon-Sat, sometimes twice a day, if I have to take something out to mail. It's about 750 steps I added per day with one trip. I know I need to add more. Bah humbug.

DD and SIL are getting dh a set of 2 game cameras for Christmas. The one he had for quite a few years got ruined when the batteries leaked/exploded/something. We know there have been lots of deer in our yard at night. He will go out to turn off the Christmas lights and they take off, LOL. It will be fun to see some pictures again and having 2 cameras he can put on in front and one in back and not have to move it around, like before. I'm going to get a couple of the microSD cards, the cameras use, to put in his stocking.  

I ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon for Christmas gifts/stocking stuffers (and for Amos, too!), along with the multivitamins I take, and it's all supposed to be delivered today from an Amazon driver. They always only seem to deliver in our area on Sundays, otherwise the stuff comes in the mail or UPS. No one around here much likes having these Amazon drivers - they are people hired who use their own cars, not the Amazon vans with actual Amazon employees that deliver. They always seem sketchy, too. It's never the same driver, either.

I heard dh get on his phone after I went to bed, which he does a couple times a week, talking to either of 2 good friends of his, that he's know forever. Then I heard a bit of what he was talking about and realized it was son in law he was chatting with. I think they must have talked like 2 hours LOL. SIL did some modification to one of his Mustang's and I think they were talking about that and all the extra horsepower, haha.

Results and more waiting

The nurse from the GI doctors office called with the MRI results and said dh's pancreas is still showing "abnormalities" in the head of the pancreas (as with the CT scan at ER), so they want to do an upper EUS and scheduling will call to set that up. As soon as I hung up I'm like wait a minute - he just had an upper endoscopy 3 weeks ago! He needs another one? I called back to confirm this (because I don't trust doctors/staff to pay attention that he just had one) and had to leave a message. It took till mid afternoon for someone to call back, but yes, this is a different type of endoscopy that uses an ultrasound on the scope that goes down his throat. Fine. I am still waiting to hear back on when they can schedule it and am praying they can get him in before the end of the year, since he's already met his deductible and out of pocket this year. Then I asked the med assistant that called, if the doctor is still going to want to do the blood test for autoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) can we get that done before the end of the year as well? He sent a note the the doctor about it.

Not too long later the nurse called back and said yes, he will put in the order for the blood test and dh can go get that done next week here at our hospital lab, in town. And I suppose, if by chance, that shows he has that condition - maybe then the endoscopy wouldn't be needed. I did read the MRI results from dh's MyChart and it (from weeding out the medical terminology) sounds like the abnormality in the pancreas is still the inflammation they are seeing at the head of the pancreas. There was a comment that cancer wasn't likely based on these findings, but would need the EUS/further tests to rule it out.

The propane heater rebate showed up in the mail yesterday as a check, not a credit to my account. It didn't show up as mail in my informed delivery and I was hoping my missing side job check was just having the same issue, but still haven't received it. I know twice this week I got neighbors mail and was worried a bit about that - but it still should have shown up in my informed delivery info, even if she put it in the wrong box. Plus, I know neighbors would have either put it in our box or brought it over (that's what I did with their mail).

I still want to get dh one more gift for Christmas, but I can't think of anything. I guess I could get him a gift card to Harbor Freight. I know he can walk in there at anytime and find 10 things he wants LOL, I just never know what those things are he wants.

Happy for the weekend here, but no big plans, as most weekends go. Probably will get the gifts that have showed up, so far, wrapped and under the tree. DH always sets up a "wrapping station" on a table he sets up in the bonus room. Might be rain, might be snow later today. 

I didn't make ham and cheese sliders for dinner last night. It felt like a long day from work and when I opened the freezer and saw some frozen fish fillets, I decided we'd have those, instead. 

Friday that feels like Wednesday :)

I still haven't received my monthly check in the mail from my side job. It usually comes around the 3rd of the month. I can log in the company bank account and see the check was processed (through bill pay) and looks like it should have went in the mail on Monday. I guess if it doesn't get here by Monday, I'll have to have her cancel it and send me a new one. 

Looks like I am going to have to call our propane company to ask about the rebate. The guy made it sounds like the rebate would be processed to my account with them and he said "you should see it next Monday". It's still not there and the full bill is due soon.  I guess I can just pay it and when the rebate/credit gets posted it can sit on my account and go towards the summer fill up.

My poor sis is still dealing with her (step) dad and his ongoing/increasing health issues. Very stressful. He's like 92 and REALLY needs to be in assisted living. He ended up back in the hospital (small town one) for the past few weeks and decided he wanted to go home again. She and her sister in law finally got some help for him, but would only come like 4 days a week and then another person for some other type of help, one day a week. They got him home and of course, he then told the nurse that was to come in 4x a week, she only needed to come in once a week and there's not much they can do. He's extremely stubborn. Well, then this morning she and I were messaging about work and she suddenly said "I gotta go - dad's not doing well". There is no way this man can live by himself! The nearest other relative (her sis in law) is an hour from him and my sis is 2 hours from him.

I'm so glad it's Friday already. Of course the week went by fast for me, since I had Monday and Tuesday off. The weather looks like rainy tomorrow but turning to snow on Sunday. It would be nice to see some snow. We've been getting lots of fog, that freezes onto all the trees and almost looks like it has snowed.

We are still waiting to hear from dh's doctor about the MRI results. I guess we'll give a call if we haven't heard by this afternoon. That's what the MRI nurse told him to do. She said his doctor should have the results next day but if he hasn't heard by Friday, to call the doctor. But, this is the doctor's office that is almost impossible to get someone to answer the phone - it always goes to recordings/leave a message, so I'm sure even if we call, we'll still be waiting to hear, just like we are now.

I think this weekends dinners will be ham and cheese sliders tonight and pizza tomorrow. I've been craving pizza. The weekend before Christmas will be my cookie making weekend. I'm going to skip making the rosettes this year. They haven't been turning out that great the last 2 times I made them and they don't stay fresh very long. I'm going to make the "Christmas crack" - 2 kinds. One with chocolate and pecans, and one with chocolate and peanut butter. I have some mini m&m's and red and green sprinkles to top, so I'll likely do half and half. I'm going to make the good little shortbread cookies I made last year. They are super quick and easy to make and very delicious. Then I'll most likely make my sugar cookies I make every year. It's tradition, LOL. If dd and sil are here on the 23rd (I think they are coming over on the 22nd) maybe she and I can do those cookies together. Or even on the 24th - we don't really have much planned for the 24th - other than opening the presents in the evening.

Thursday this and that

I got my Christmas cards done and they are now ready to be taken out to the mailbox. I still have Christmas stamps left over from last year, as I didn't use them all. I definitely have to bundle up and wear a hat walking down to the mailbox these days. I don't think it ever got above freezing yesterday.

DD was telling me last night she is thinking of getting another tattoo. She has 2. One she got when she went to college, on her back shoulder, representing family. Then she got one a few years later on her ankle for her great grandmother -who she got to have in her life for 17 years. Now she is thinking of getting another one for her grandma that would include her grandma's handwriting from an old birthday card she kept. Very sweet. 

Hopefully dh hears some MRI results today. I'm guessing this is still going to be something pancreas related. I guess I should be glad we're not in Canada trying to get appointments. My sis said her dr referred her to a spine specialist almost 2 months ago. She just got a call from the spine dr office - they said it would be a 12-15 MONTHS wait to get an appointment. And she waited to months for them to call and tell her that. She told them what's the point? LOL. Sure....tell me again how great socialized medicine is? Plus, the stuff she has told me about her step dad's care is terrible.

Today feels like Tuesday, LOL. I'm going to be so happy when I wake up tomorrow and it's already Friday haha.  

I'm about to lose it on dh. He wants to buy me a Christmas present, but it's on Amazon, so of course he doesn't want to use my account, as then I'll see it on there. I said then either set up your own Amazon account or send the link to dd and have her order it for you on her account. He decided to set up his own account, but apparently years ago he had already done that with his email address. I had him choose forgot password (because of course he never writes down and saves passwords) and it sent a code to his email, but after entering that it wanted to verify it was him by entering the expiration date of the cc on file with the account. Well, no can do on that of course- as the account was last used years ago. Who knows what the expiration date is/was? I called customer service and the only option is for him to set up using a different email address  - which I had already suggested to him to just do that.

He didn't want to use another email address - says this is the only email he has/uses. I said well, WHY in the hell did I have to go through all that hassle a year or so ago setting you up with a new email through our internet carrier? that he just had to have?? Then he doesn't use it?

Finally he got a new account set up, got his payment method added (with my help) and then when he went to order whatever it is he wanted to order he hollers upstairs - it says free prime shipping, do I chose that? No - you have to pay extra/month for the prime account. If your item is free shipping there should be an option in the shipping choices that is free. Well, without me looking at the screen, apparently there was no free shipping unless you had prime. "Why can't I just sign up for this free 30 day trial?" I said you can BUT you damn well better remember to cancel it before the month is up or you will be charged for it. Of course he's not going to remember. I just put a reminder on my outlook calendar to remind him to cancel it.  Some days he can be so exhausting.

Back to busy

We tried a resetting our furnace and that didn't work. So then dh texted our hvac guy to ask him. While waiting for him to reply (we both knew we had this issue one time before, but couldn't remember the fix) dh said "didn't we have to pull this thermostat off the wall and plug it back in one time, to fix it?. I said yes, but it was the small one upstairs in the hallway. We went up and did that and everything came back on and synced together, so that was a relief. Dh texted hvac guy back that all was ok now. He did call dh back and said it's possible that small thermostat "puck", as he called it, could be going bad and needs replacing, and said if it happens again let him know and he'll do a replacement on it.

This morning we were up bright and early....well it wasn't bright out, still dark....and got into the city so dh could get his MRI done at the hospital. They got him back in right after we got there. It was only supposed to take an hour, but ended up taking almost 90 minutes. It's a small waiting room and not crowded until about 5 or 10 minutes before dh was done and came out. It just exploded with people checked in, waiting to be checked in. I was like this is too many people for me, so I got up and went out and waited out on the hallway for him, LOL. They told him he should hear the results from his doctor in the next day or two.

I didn't get my Christmas cards started/done while on break. I started a few of them today, but better for me to do a few and then stop as my handwriting can only stay nice for a few at a time, and then my carpal tunnel kicks in and my writing gets sloppy. Good thing I don't have that many to send out. Only about 10, haha.

I am not feeling the back to work feelings today. But, only 2 1/2 more weeks and then I'm off for 2 more weeks. I can do it!

Another day off

My day off yesterday, I got busy and didn't end up posting. We're planning a little weekend trip with dd and sil for next May and were trying to nail down the airbnb. After a few messages back and forth with the host, I got it reserved for us. It's a few hours drive from us, so not too far from home. Then dd said she thought they had an airbnb gift card to use, so once she sent me that info, I was able to get it reserved and did the partial payment option. It will be fun - the guys can enjoy their car stuff and dd and I will get an opportunity to shop some antique and gift stores.

I've got most of the Christmas shopping done. I just want to come up with one more idea for dh and I need a couple more stocking stuffers for him. Usually I do candy, but trying to keep away from that with his stomach issues. I did order a nice Cross pen (thanks for the suggestion MegB!) for dd.

Our furnace isn't recognizing the other 2 zones this morning, so I'm not able to turn up the heat upstairs in my office. It's done this before, but I can't remember what the HVAC guy had dh do to fix it, so dh will have to figure that out when he gets up this morning. I should write this down, so that next time (if it's something dh can fix himself) we will know what to do. It's been 2 or 3 years since this last happened, so I can't remember now. Not to mention, we've had other issues, so the fixes get mixed up in my mind. I think this issue just has something to do with the "zone damper" and just needs to get "unstuck" or something. Probably because it's 19 degrees outside, LOL. So, until dh wakes up, I just have a chunky sweater on and a blanket over my lap to stay warm. (it's holding the heat at 66, that we set it at last night, we just can't adjust it)

We got through most all of our leftover turkey. The sides are all gone. I didn't end up freezing any of the turkey as we've been managing to get it all eaten. Last night we were back to regular dinner, with some salmon.

I just finished up the November stuff for my oldest side job and emailed that report off. Gotta wonder how long this is going to last. They are still doing a little bit of business (more like consulting now) so have kept me on to keep track if that income and related expenses. I'm guessing not too much longer. Hopefully, when it does end, I'll be about due for a raise from my regular job and that will offset losing that.

Almost done

Yesterday I continued to decorate, but it wasn't as exhausting as Friday was. The only thing I have left to do is put the lights on the pencil tree and put the "box" collar under it. I also needed to find where I stored 2 Christmas blankets and I just went and looked in one of the guest bedroom dresser drawers and found them. I don't even want to think about putting it all away again in a month. Ugh. LOL. I have not bought any new Christmas decor this year. I'm trying to be good ;)

My coffee tasted good in one of my Christmas mugs, this morning

We were just having leftover turkey for dinner again (of course) so I decided to just have a turkey sandwich and I ate it at 3:30, so I could easily get my 16 hours fasting in and be able to have something to eat/drink at 7:30 this morning, and not have to wait. I'm not getting 16 hours in every day, but probably 2 out of 3 and the 3rd is working out to 14-15 hours.  There's enough sides left for dh to have one more dinner out of it (which he wants) so that's what we'll do again last night and I'll just have a sandwich again.

One of to-do list items, while I'm off through Tuesday, is to get our Christmas cards ready to go in the mail. That sounds like a good tomorrow project. 

Most of today I just plan to do online gift shopping and try to get it all done. I just finished up SIL. A folding knife and gift card to Sportsman's Warehouse and I needed to spend $10 more or pay $5 shipping, so I decided to order him some BBQ rub for another stocking stuffer. I also got him a camera battery charger thing from Amazon dd said he wanted.

I want to get DD a nice ink pen, but I need to decide what brand. I don't know what is good or not, so I'll have to do some researching I guess.

I ordered a nice fresh greenery type table centerpiece, with a candle, to have sent to our friends we went on the cruise with. I still need to get the delivery people gifts. I thought someone asked if we have the same people as before, but I can't find the question, so maybe it was in my head LOL. But, yes, we have the same people as we've always had, other than the first year or so, we had a different mail lady, but at like 80 years old she finally retired, but we've had the same one since. We've had the same UPS and FedEx and garbage man all these years.

It's a lot of work

I think I wore myself out yesterday. And still not done decorating. Then I remembered it's been 2 years since I had to do this all myself, as last year dd was here to help, LOL. It goes much faster with 2 people. And I'm 2 years older 😕 The big tree is done and the garland is on the staircase (each side) and those 2 are the hardest jobs. A few years ago dd gave dh this little "tool". I don't think he's ever tried it.....but let me tell ya, it's a Christmas miracle! It has pretty much fixed most of our light problems. One of my sections of prelit garland was out and it fixed that. I have no clue how it works, but it does.

Today I need to fluff out the tree in the dining room and decorate it. I also need to string the lights on the skinny tree in the entryway, but it needs no decor. It's full of pinecones and berries for decor. I also need to get out all my kitchen decor and get the decor put on the fireplace mantel and hearth. Then I should be done.

Our turkey dinner turned out delicious. I think it was the gravy packet with the Jenni-O turkey. Plus the turkey turned out really good. We are enjoying the leftovers for turkey sandwiches and leftover turkey and sides for dinner.

I need to order the gifts we always get for our delivery drivers (UPS and FedEx), mail lady, and garbage man. I've gotten various gifts over the years. Hickory farms, etc. Last year I got Frango chocolates, from Macy's. I do not know what to get this year. Got any suggestions for me??

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! 

My day off yesterday was kept very busy getting started on Christmas decorating. DH got the 4 trees out of storage. I got the bedding on the other guest bedroom and our bed. Then I got all pillows, bed and throw pillows (couch, loveseats, etc) all covered in Christmas pillow covers. Trying to get pillows stuffed into covers is exhausting, LOL. 

Then I got started fluffing out the branches on the first layer of the 12' tree. Last year we had an issue with some of the lights being out in the 2nd layer, but managed to just put that area in back. DH put the second layer on (it lights up when you connect the poles) and now a bunch more lights were out all random branches here and there. We worked on it for over an hour. DH had some replacement bulbs and some little gun type tool dd had given him a few years ago, that tests bulbs and also does something when you insert it onto the bulb holder part and squeeze the trigger. We ran out of replacement bulbs but managed to get most all of that layer working again (looked better than last year). Then he added the 3rd layer (which was never a problem) and now one whole side of that layer was out. By then we were tired and disappointed. It's just too many lights to try to figure out what to replace. It's not like one light goes out (while the others stay on) so you just replace that one. We'd replace one light on a branch and suddenly lights on branches 2 branches away would light back up. 

This 12' tree is hard enough to deal with when everything works - lights no longer working is too much. At this point (this is our 5th Christmas with this tree) we are just going to let it be with the crappy half lit way it will be, and after Christmas after we take it down, dh is going to just cut all the lights out of it and we'll use string lights, I guess. I'm not even sure how hard it will be to get all the lights out of it - I'll have to look closer because I think they are all wrapped around branches and probably not an easy task.

Not sure what to do if trying to get the lights off is too much of a chore. Too damn expensive of a tree to just throw away. Even 12' trees with no lights are very expensive, but I guess that is what we should have bought in the first place. 

It looks like the guy who now owns lot 5 is going to get started right away. Our old "excavator guy" we used for our build, came in yesterday and dropped some excavator of something off next to the lot and it is already been staked out for something to build/dig a foundation. We were told he was building a shop first, so most likely for that. Looks too small of staked out area to be for a house. Still seems strange that this new guy who bought it hasn't even introduced himself to any of us here. Shoot - we knew Mr & Mrs neighbor very well by the time we started building. DH said it's probably because DAN told him we were all a-holes, LOL. Probably. haha.

I never thought to look and see if DAN has purchased some other piece of property in the area, so he can build his 8000 sf warehouse, with 2000' additional covered area extending it. Now that he would have the money from selling these lots, I'm assuming he would find something else to buy. 

Well, time for some breakfast and then get in the shower and dressed, so I can get started on putting the turkey in the oven. I hope all my American readers have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Good news and gifts

I have never been this caught up with work. All thanks to the great job my sis is doing for us. She says she loves this job, so I am so glad. While December will be a short month with my time off, I will be able to stay caught up and then starting in January I should be able to start some new projects we have never had time to get to.

Dh's stomach biopsy results came in the mail yesterday and all is good/normal with that, so that is good news. Now we just wait and see if the MRI next week will show what is going on with the pain and nausea. The doctor had also mentioned if nothing shows up, there is a test he can do to see if he has auto-immune pancreatitis. 

DH got the lights up on the house/garage and those gutters cleaned out yesterday. Today he plans to do the fence and then he is done with lights. He will have to do all the inflatables, but that will be for another day.

I wasn't able to order those jeans for dh from Walmart - the sale yesterday was just for Walmart+ members. But, now this morning, I see everyone can order at the $13 price. He should be set for jeans for the next year. Good grief - I just wanted to order 2 pair of jeans, so I would need to add $9 to my order to get free shipping. You wouldn't think finding something(s) that total $9 would be so hard, LOL. I'm about ready to just get 3 pairs of jeans.

Doing payroll was a breeze yesterday. While I was waiting for my boss to review it (we always have her look it over as a second set of eyes, just to make sure) I got the state business tax return done and submitted. After payroll got submitted, I worked on getting the October financial reports all done. I got them done by the end of the day, but I'm going to look them over this morning, before I send them to my boss. I'm so excited to be so caught up. Plus the added bonus of getting to spend lots of time chatting with my sis on a regular basis.

Ok - I thought of something to add to my Walmart order for the free shipping - some candy to put in dd's stocking. She likes those Fererro Roche candies. With my Target order the other day, I added some beef sticks for sil's stocking. I need to think of more ideas. I know dd always brings their stockings, but I have some with their names, as well that I hang on the fireplace. And I'm going to add a bag of whole bean coffee sil likes, to his stocking.

My goal is to be done with Christmas gift shopping by this weekend.

Two day countdown

I'm ready to get my 2 days of work in this week and be done with it all for a week. I have to do payroll today, as well as submit the monthly state business tax return. By tomorrow, before I'm off, I want to get done with everything October related and have the monthly financials to my boss. Yep! We have never been this caught up. That was my goal, to be able to close out the previous month before the end of the next month. Smart move getting sis on board!

The weather turned cold, but all the rain we've been having went away, so while it's cold enough to snow, now there's no moisture to fall.

Dh did get the lights put up on the shop. He decided to kill 2 birds with 1 stone and also clean the gutters while he was up on the ladder. I think today he plans to get the lights up on the house. Then the fence line another day. I did a bit upstairs. One guest bedroom I just put out some framed Christmas pictures (cut out from an old Christmas card and Christmas gift boxes) and a Christmas pillow case over the bear throw pillow. I also swap out brown blanket on the end of the bed for a red one. In the other room (this is the room dd and sil use when they come) I was going to put on the Christmas duvet and pillow cases, but it was really wrinkly, so I decided to wash and dry it to get the wrinkles out easily. Amos decided to start helping me in this room

It looks like some stores are having online early Black Friday sales today. I see Walmart has the Wrangler jeans dh wears for $13, so this is when I usually buy him 2 or 3, since it's a good price. But, I remember not too long ago when they'd put them for $10 on Black Friday. Our brain says, "well, it's only a $3 increase" but it's also a 30% increase, which sounds terrible, doesn't it?

I needed a couple gift ideas for dh (I already gave one to dd) and I got a couple yesterday while I was dusting and vacuuming his den. He really needs a new mousepad, so I'm getting him a personalized one and while dusting his shelves w/books, I remembered some books he said he wanted.

A shopping day

We decided to pick up groceries yesterday instead of today. We left the house about noon and first stop was Costco and they had tons of the wreaths. A guy was bringing in another pallet full as we were getting ours into our cart. We got our 6. They are huge and so much nicer than the ones we got from Lowe's last year and only $20 each.  

We also picked up some wool socks for dh to try and stocked up on some 30 pack cases of Mountain Dew. 

Speaking of Costco, I was messaging with dd before we left, telling her we were stopping at Costco to see if they had the wreaths in. I said I'm just going in with blinders on, so that I'm not tempted by all the other Christmas decor, that I didn't know I need. Her reply: You let Costco tell you what you need. LOL!!

Then we went to Harbor Freight to get a utility cart for yard work (and will store his bags of yard stuff while in the garage), dh wanted. Then I went into the other grocery store to see if they had the salmon we like and they did and on sale, so I got 4 (there's 2 pieces per box). I also grabbed a carton of eggnog. I had checked the price and it was cheaper than Walmart, that I am freezing and saving for Christmas. Otherwise I'd likely drink it all in a few days, LOL. We'll be shopping again before Christmas, so I'll get more then. I was also getting low on grape jam and haven't been able to find it at Walmart and this store has some in their store brand. We like the jam instead of the jelly kind. 

When we got over to Walmart and checked in to pick up our order, there were like 2 or 3 cars there. Apparently none of the 3 different workers wanted to bring out our order. We sat there for almost 20 minutes as other cars pulled in and they brought their stuff right out. Finally, a car near us was getting their groceries and I was waiting for the worker to get done and was going to ask about ours and then someone finally brought it out.

We had brought sandwiches with us, so that we didn't stop at fast food. Even though dh wants a burger, he knows it won't agree with him and his stomach will be in pain after. Plus that saved $20. It rained the whole drive to the city, but wasn't raining there and got nicer as the day went on. I feel like it's never going to stop raining at our house.

I got on a kitchen cleaning kick yesterday morning. I took everything off my counters and wiped them all down. Moved the canisters, bread box, toaster and keurig and all clean underneath and behind now. 

DH's computer has been working fine, thankfully. The OneDrive finally finished up syncing everything to the cloud sometime Thursday night, so now we are back to full internet speed, since it's no longer using half of the bandwidth to sync. I think it will be an ok back up system, now. Well, at least I have until September to decide if I don't want to renew it.

I'm trying my new organic, chemical and mold free coffee right now. It's good, but I think the Folgers Black Silk tastes better. I guess the question is do I want taste or organic? LOL. I did the 16 hour fasting Mon-Sat this past week. Today I only managed 14 hours. The dinner I made last night (chicken/rice/veggies dish) took almost an hour to make, so we didn't eat until 5:45. I just didn't feel like waiting another 2 hour this morning, until almost 10am. I'll get back to it tomorrow. It's easier to wait in the morning when I am busy at my desk with work.

I'm hoping it clears up enough today so dh can get started on the Christmas lights. I'm going to see what inside decorating I can get started on today. I should be able to do the 2 upstairs bedrooms and change our bedding to the Christmas quilt.

Busy days

Yesterday I just got too busy with work to find time to write up a post. This morning started off the same, but now it seems to have calmed down somewhat.

I'm still trying the intermittent fasting. This morning, after I ate breakfast and then got about halfway through my coffee, I started feeling really nauseous for a few minutes. It's subsiding some now, but not completely. I haven't been able to finish my coffee. 

We're sure getting lots of rain. DH has been wanting to get started putting the Christmas lights up outside, but he doesn't want to do it in the rain. Maybe he'll be able to get started on it this weekend. I think I'm going to get started with some of the decorating inside. I can do the bedding and kitchen without having to get all the bins out of the storage closet yet, for everything else. This might not seem such a big job, if I spread it out over more days.

Dh was looking at what people are asking on Marketplace for freezers and it's very little, he said. Like $100. So we are just going to keep it. If we come across someone who is in need of one, then we will just give it to them. My Lowe's order history won't go back that far (stupid!) but I want to say it cost $600-700. DD doesn't need one, they bought a freezer last year. I probably made a post about it back then, with the cost LOL.

I think dd and sil will be coming over the Sunday before Christmas, the 22nd. At least I hope so. She was saying she has to work on the 23rd, so they wouldn't be able to drive over until early that afternoon. I suggested driving over on Sunday and just working from here on Monday (she can work remotely if necessary). Then she wasn't sure what they were doing with SIL's parents, they had not set up the day to spend with them yet, so if they wanted to do it that Sunday, they couldn't drive over here. Yesterday she made it sound like they will probably come over on Sunday. I hope so.

Turkey, anyone?

We now have a heated garage. The guy showed up with a helper and they got it installed in about 2 1/2 hours. It's a propane wall heater, like we have in the shop. We have a smaller one, about half the size, in the shop bathroom, as well.

A big rafter of turkey's just went through the backyard. I didn't get all of them in the picture, but I counted 17 in total.

It got really cold last night, around 25 degrees, but no snow, like was predicted.

We're going to need to get some more groceries in the next week. I had thought, with picking up some extra milk, bread, etc when we stopped at Walmart last week to get the turkeys, I would have plenty to get me through and we could go do a pickup order after Thanksgiving. DH is going through more bread than usual. And eggs. And I seem to be going through more milk than usual. So, now I am trying to decide if I want to go pick up an order this weekend, or wait and go in next Wednesday, when I have the day off. Not that we will be going inside the store, but I feel like everything in the city is going to be hectic/traffic the day before Thanksgiving. 

I also want to get into Costco whenever they get their big live Christmas wreath's in stock. I wonder if they will have them out before Thanksgiving? Last year we saw them in Costco a day or two after Thanksgiving. I guess worse comes to worse, we can stop in and get them on Dec 4th, when we have to go into the city for dh's MRI. That's the whole reason I decided to get a Costco membership this year LOL. Well, I did it for eye exams and glasses, too.

I think we're going to try to sell our chest freezer. I just need to look up what we paid for it, so I can get an idea of how much we should ask. I got it at Home Depot, but don't remember what it cost. I remember using some of our Covid stimulus to buy it.

More heat

The propane guy showed up. 10am and minutes after I had to listen to dh rant about if he's going to show up or not this time. Apparently we're going to be able to submit this for a $200 energy rebate, so that is good to help offset a little of the cost.

We've been getting deer in our yard in the evenings. It's right at dusk, so a bit too dark to try to get a good picture of them. For sure we saw a momma and her 2 young ones. 

I've made it through day 2 of intermittent fasting. I think waiting to eat this morning seemed harder than yesterday. I've been having my cup of coffee after I eat breakfast now and boy it sure tastes good! The 8 hour window I can eat seems to go by super fast. The hours between dinner and bed aren't too bad, but the 2 hours in the morning until I can eat seem to be the hardest part, so far. I do start drinking water when I get up (and in the evenings). I just have to keep reminding myself that in order to get my normal calories, I need to eat my evening snack in the afternoon, LOL.

We live in a very small community - there's only about 4000 people in the whole county, with 3 small towns. Apparently in the last month there have been 2 drug overdoses, resulting in death, in one of the small towns (pop about 500). Sad. Probably fentanyl. Dh said he had just read an article that one of the large cities in our state recently had like 6 fentanyl OD's in one weekend. Like one of our friends said - what is the suppliers end game here? Doesn't seem good business sense to kill off your customers.......

Monday

Back to Monday. I'm counting the days until next Tuesday LOL. After that I have a week off :) 

We got back to playing pool this weekend. Since before our cruise we had only played once. After we got home from the cruise we were sick with Covid, then the lingering exhaustion for weeks. Then dh got sick with his stomach issue. He can be a poor looser 😆

I finished the book I was reading yesterday morning. The other e-book that was ready to borrow is about intermittent fasting, so not as fun to read, haha. One thing I got out the the book, kind of unrelated to fasting, is most coffee sold has chemicals and mold in it. I did not know that. While I only drink one cup a day, the thought of putting chemicals and mold into my body isn't very appetizing. I've decided to order a bag of chemical/toxin and mold free coffee to give a try. It's expensive, but since I only drink one cup a day, I think it would be worth the bit of extra cost per day.

DAN finally came and took away his little excavator from lot 5. It's all a mystery LOL. I'm not sure if he also took down the realtor's big for sale sign on a tree, but maybe his sale for this lot was on a delayed closing for some reason. The state's property website still shows him as the owner of this lot, while he supposedly sold both lots at the same time last July, the other lot shows in the new owners names, for the past few months. His out of state house is still not sold....he's into his 4th year of trying to sell it now. Just crazy. This insane length of time on the market for a nice home has to have people who see the listing wonder what the heck is wrong with it, that it has been on the market over 3 years now. The only reasons I can guess why it has not sold is it's still way too high priced and zero landscaping in a nice subdivision of homes on an acre with some water view. Next spring should be interesting around here, if we have 3 homes being built. The couple that owns lot 6 (for the past 5 years) are also supposed to start building next year.

I sure hope the propane guy shows up tomorrow to install the garage heater, like he says he will. I'm not holding my breath, though. Obviously now that it's cold out, emergency calls to fix people's heating takes priority, but at least message us if you aren't coming!

Ready for weekend relaxing time

DH's computer showed up around noon yesterday. I took a lunch break to take it up to my office and check it out. There was a paper with it saying they replaced the processor and heatsink and had to reinstall the operating system. So, I basically had to set it up from scratch again, but did (or rather thought I did) have the back up copy on OneDrive now. Some of it had backed up to OneDrive from before I sent it back, but I ended up just transferring the backup (that had everything) from the external hard drive. The hour or so I had it at my desk, getting it set up again, it was super quiet - not a peep out of the fan, like before. So, hopefully it is really fixed now! And hopefully I don't have to buy dh a new computer for a LONG time........

I do still need to learn more about how OneDrive works because I am still confused by how it all works and how it works with file explorer. I paid $70 for a OneDrive one year subscription to back up, but if I don't end up figuring it out (by next Sept LOL) I may cancel it and just go back to backing up via an external drive. When I first started it (just before I sent the computer back) it was taking forever to sync all his files (like 12,000 pictures is most of it!) and using up ALL of our our internet bandwith. So, I now remember I just turned it off after we figured out it was using all our bandwidth and I was going to work on figuring it out and then a few days later ended up sending the computer back. I have a feeling our internet speed is just going to be too slow to use this OneDrive. There is a setting where I can limit the bandwidth it uses, so while it's syncing (and taking forever, it's only like 10% done) it's now *only* using up half our bandwidth.

DH did message that propane guy yesterday and now he says he'll be here next Tuesday. Let's hope so, so we can get this done.

I was walking across our living room yesterday, after work, and suddenly had this sharp nerve type pain in the ball of my left foot. Every time I stepped on my foot there was pain there. It seems better this morning, but very weird. I hope it doesn't come back. That was very painful to walk on and it's probably not a good long term solution to try to walk without putting weight on the ball of my foot! Lately I seem to get these aches and pains out of nowhere, that last 2-3 days, and then they go away.

I started reading one of the ebooks I borrowed from the library. Really good so far (Matt Haig, The Life Impossible) so that kept me busy last night. More than likely I'll finish it this weekend. I've liked his other books I've read.

We might get some snow tonight, but kind of sounds like it might still be more up in the mountains and on the pass. DH needs some snow! He needs to get off the internet and do something that relaxes him, like plowing snow. We've been getting quite a bit of rain this past week, but the temps are just a little too high to make it snow.

Computer returning

The fit I threw with the Dell customer care manager on Wednesday morning must have done some good because yesterday afternoon I got an email that my computer was repaired and being shipped back overnight. Tracking shows it will be here sometime today (but it's FedEx, so who knows). But, honestly, I have my doubts if it even got fixed. Or if it was the processor that got replaced, if it's even the same one it's supposed to be. If it's not fixed, it certainly won't be going back there. I'll find some place in the city to work on it.

We still have not heard back from the propane guy to install our garage heater. DH had said he was going to message him yesterday, but of course he didn't. I don't know why he can't follow up with people when they aren't doing what they said they would do. How hard is it to just send a text asking the guy for an update? He acts like the world is going to end if he has to "bother" someone about something. But, then I have to hear him constantly complaining about the situation. It's a freaking business transaction, it's not like he's asking a friend to do a favor or something for him! It's very annoying.

My boss kept me hopping all day yesterday, starting first thing yesterday morning, so I didn't get time to write up a blog post. Plus my sis was working and has questions off and on, so we hop on Teams a lot. I'm hoping for a quieter Friday. She's not working and hopefully my boss got what she needed from me for her project.

We need to order some new flags for our big flag pole out front. They are getting a little ratty. I was going to just order from the company we bought the pole and US flag from (the state flag was a gift from dd), but saw their price had gone up from $53 to $70. DH still had the box the flag came in, so we had the brand/part# and lots of online places sell it - for under $50, even Amazon, so that's where I'm getting the flags from now. 

I had a some ebooks reserved from the library to borrow and finally 2 of them are ready to borrow, so it will be nice to have something to read again. I haven't read anything since before we went on the cruise. I seem to flip flop between finding a show to watch a bunch of seasons and reading. Now I can take a break from watching shows and get back to reading for a bit.

DH is feeling pretty down and grumpy with his ongoing stomach/pancreas issue. I'm sure it is getting very old feeling nauseous all the time. I sure hope the MRI next month will show something and hoping he can get some relief if they can figure out what is going on.  Just wish he didn't have to wait this long for the MRI appointment.

Still waiting

Nothing much new since yesterday. I got a nice picture of the sunrise this morning

I spent part of my morning on the phone with Dell again, after they have now delayed my estimated date of repair out another few days. I ended up requesting to talk to a customer service manager. Still not getting anywhere other than "we'll escalate your case" I said I was already told by 2 people that was done 2 weeks ago. He said he couldn't find where it was done. I asked for confirmation that it gets done. He did say the more detail I can't see online is that the part they are waiting for is a new processor - so that is a major part that is causing the issue, not just a faulty fan. The first person I talked to said becaue it's been so long now, I can get a replacement and he had to transfer me. Then the person he transferred me to said no, I can't because I didn't report the issue until 32 days and warranty for replacement or refund is 30 days. That's when I asked to talk to her manager. He said he can put it for a replacement, but it might be a refurbished used one. I said NO! I paid for a brand new computer I barely got to use. Regardless, it's all going to take weeks to request that, if that's what I want. I'm going to wait the 5 more days they now say it will take. Then I will be calling my credit card company to see if they can help with a dispute on it. But, now I'm reading that most credit card companies you can dispute within 60 days of the charge going on your account and it's now been over 60 days. It's all just infuriating.

 

 

 

Done for the day

We were up at 5:30 (ugh) and out the door by 6:15. It usually takes a little less than an hour to get there, but there was notice that a part of the freeway was going to have some road construction where we'd have to stop and wait for a pilot car. Well turns out that didn't start until 7am, so we sailed right through haha. But, dh wanted to be there a little early anyway, to use the bathroom beforehand.

We were there 2 hours for a 10 minute procedure, LOL. Literally - they wheeled him out of the room and 10 minutes later were rolling him back in and waking him up. The doctor said nothing was found to cause his issues going on. She did see a couple of stomach polyps, but those are usually totally benign and a little bit of erosion in his pre-pyloric region. She removed the polyps and did a biopsy in the erosion area and those will go to pathology, just as a matter of routine. She said she sees the erosion in that area all the time. 

So, now we wait until he can get the MRI done, to see if they can tell anything more from his pancreas, what is going on. They can't get him in for that until Dec 4th.

He was starving by the time we got home a little after 10:30 since he hadn't had anything to eat in about 15 hours. Then he went back to bed for a nap. About an hour later, I joined him and took about a 90 minute nap. 5:30 is too early for me ;)

I probably could have just worked the rest of today, only missing a couple of hours, but might was well use up some of my 300+ hours of PTO. I'm just grateful we got this procedure and the MRI to be done next month, in before the end of the year and it will all be covered 100%.

Weekend wrap up

We had our company come for a few hours yesterday afternoon. A family of 3 generations, so 3 kids included, haha. It was nice to sit around the table visiting. Eventually dh remembered - hey we have a pinball machine up in the bonus room and we didn't see the kids again, after that, LOL. The older one (16) came back downstairs a little later and very politely asked if he could play pool and that he would be very careful with it.

I only ended up making like half of the chocolate chip cookies. It made plenty for yesterday (plus I had the Christmas crack, as well) and dh and I don't need to eat a bunch more. I'm going to freeze the remaining dough for another time. Even though flat (of course) they did taste really good. I used sea salt this time, instead of regular table salt. I bought it awhile back for some other recipe, so I might as well start using it in other stuff. I also have some kosher salt, bought for a recipe, that rarely gets used. I see I'm getting a bit low on table salt, but I'm just going to try to use up these other salts first.

I watched a movie on Netflix last night, that dd said was pretty funny. It was good, for a Netflix made type movie, called Red Notice with Ryan Reynolds and Duane Johnson. I don't see it being a box office type of hit. It has some funny parts. I could see how they left it off at the end, there will likely be a sequel.

I'm not feeling in a work mood this morning. Plus now I have to do payroll today, since I'll be off again tomorrow. At least with having tomorrow off, it should make the week go by fast. The endoscopy side of their office is supposed to call today to let us know for sure what time to get there. The scheduler started to say 7:30am, but then she ended up saying, she's not sure exactly what time they want us there, they will call us on Monday. She had given us 2 choices, 7:30am or 2pm. With the later one, we'd probably end up with me having to drive us home in the dark, so we opted for the early time. I also need to call the pharmacy again, later this morning, to see if they got the prescription now.

Now the update on dh's computer repair says 11/14 (was 11/9). I sent a message through the work ticket that just said, now another week to wait - just send my computer back, I will get it fixed locally. No response yet. Did I tell you I also mailed a letter about it to Dell headquarters in Texas, about a week ago? I'm sure it will be fruitless, but there really is no way, apparently to get a hold of anyone in the states about it. I had found the phone number for their Texas headquarters but again, their system just routes the call to customer service in India. Trying to call again, will probably be on my to do list tomorrow afternoon, after we get home. 

Well, I'd better get to my work day.

Recipe link and whatnot

Itsy Bitsy Living requested the recipe for the "Christmas Crack". Here is the link to the recipe I used. I think it will be a good one to add to my Christmas cookies I share with neighbors. I also want to try a recipe that has peanut butter in it. I have a feeling we'll like that one even better.

We are having some company over this afternoon, so dh requested I make some chocolate chip cookies to eat while we are all visiting. I told him they always turn out flat but he said that's the way he likes them, he likes them chewy and flat (where I like them thick and soft). Ok, I'll make them.

Yesterday I did a couple loads of laundry (dh does the bulk of the laundry each week), including changing the bed sheets. DH did a little bit of window washing - at least those he could reach without having to use a ladder. He'll save that for another day. Last nights dinner was spaghetti. Enough leftovers for me to have for a couple dinners during the next several days, while dh is eating his scrambled eggs most nights.

I had a check coming in the mail for my latest side job. It was mailed out on Tuesday and when it didn't show up Friday I thought for sure it would be here yesterday, but yesterday morning my informed delivery was not showing it. Thankfully it was there in the mail, so now I don't have to worry about it being lost. Seems kind of ridiculous that it takes mail 5 days to go 500 miles. This little side job is very minimal and I waited until I had at least a few hours to bill out. It appears most months will be about an hour of bookkeeping, with October being the busiest month, as I had to create a bunch of invoices to go out. I'll probably just invoice them 2-3 times a year, or at least when I've built up 3 hours, LOL.

Working on cleaning and organizing my office a little this morning. What do I file this under? "C" for cat?

This and that

Yesterday was finally our consult with the GI doctor. Because dh is still having some of the nausea and pain (just not to the level it was when we went to ER), especially when he eats, they are going to do an endoscopy w/ultrasound next Tuesday. And also get an MRI. That was the bit of confusing part. He made it sound like he wanted to have the MRI done first and then if it shows anything, do the endoscopy, but he was going to get both on the schedule so he wasn't waiting any longer.

Then they put us in the scheduler's office. The MRI is done at the hospital - call this number, but wait until Monday morning, because they won't have it in their system for a few hours. Then for the endoscopy she said they had a cancellation and had an opening on Tuesday...then I said can you clarify which procedure is done first, because the doctor made it sound like the MRI was to be scheduled first? She went and asked him, came back and said it's ok to do the endoscopy first. Ok then...just seemed odd because both dh and I heard it that way, when the dr was talking to us. Maybe he changed his mind when she asked him, since there was an opening so soon for the endoscopy.

The want to see if the inflammation has gone done (compared to his CATscan) and also with the endoscopy they will be able to see if the inflammation is covering up something like a mass, that they couldn't see with the CATscan. So, good that this is getting done quickly. Also good for insurance purposes! This will all go towards this year and after $680 more in charges, he will have met his out of pocket max, as well. I'm sure yesterday's visit will probably be at least half of that $680, likely more.

We didn't have to leave for the appointment until 11:45am, so I decided to try making that "Christmas Crack" with my new jelly roll pan. Very easy and very tasty! I used chopped pecan nuts for the topping and it reminded me a lot the Almond Roca candy. Years ago, dh's mom used to buy me Almond Roca during Christmas, as she knew I really liked it.

After the appointment we went over to Walmart, so I could pick up the turkeys. They didn't have a lot out yet, but I was able to get 2 Jennie-O turkeys for .88/lb. I would have wished for one a bit smaller and one a bit larger than my choices were, but they were close. The larger one, for Christmas, when the kids are here, will be plenty big enough for dinner, but probably won't be as much leftover for sandwiches and a leftover turkey dinner meal the next night, but the smaller turkey for just the 2 of us on Thanksgiving will be more than enough leftover, so I will probably be able to just freeze some of the leftover meat and add it towards sandwiches/meals at Christmas.

I had not been inside shopping at Walmart in ages. While the parking lot was completely packed, the grocery section wasn't too bad. The only bad aisle was the bread aisle, which had a traffic jam for a couple of minutes. Most of the congested areas was all caused by stockers carts, getting more food stocked. I only had to wait behind one person in the check out lane and the lady checking me out was very nice and friendly. I also picked up more eggs, bread and milk, so now instead of needing to go back for our 3 week trip in 2 weeks (we went last weekend) I'll be able to now make it another 3 weeks and we can go in AFTER Thanksgiving. I have the Monday and Tuesday off after Thanksgiving, so that can be one of our days to go in to pick up groceries and also stop at Costco and get all the big outdoor live wreaths. Those are really the reason I got a Costco membership, haha! (plus so we could get eye exams and glasses).

The doctor had also agreed dh could get another prescription for the Zofran and they would call/fax it in to our little town pharmacy. As we were leaving the nurse said she called it in. We get to the pharmacy in our town a couple hours later, and they had received no prescription. GRRRR!! It was like 3:45. I tried to call the dr office, but of course, got their recording and had to leave a message for the doctor's "team" and no one called back. Our pharmacy isn't open on Saturdays, so now we have to wait until Monday to get it, and another trip back to town. Doctor also told him no more cheeseburgers until after the endoscopy and MRI, which bummed dh out, LOL, as he was planning to stop and get one as we were leaving the city. 

Tomorrow some friends are stopping by to visit, so I guess today will be a cleaning day. Not that I have much to do, but I did just remember I have some Fall/Thanksgiving decor I can put out. I put some fall pillow covers on the pillows on my church pew, along with some fake pumpkins and I also put some little fake pumpkins and fall leaves on my dining table.