Found myself struggling this week: first it was putting
up the Christmas decorations, now it was taking them down.
It didn't help that I was distracted by other tasks that needed doing. For instance, James has been having trouble turning left out of our street. There is some kind of waxy-leaved bushes that were planted out front when they built the neighborhood, which are now taller than they were eighteen years ago. He can't see the cars coming up on his left on the main road. So Monday morning after my dog walk I marched up to the front with my hedge clipper and took down about half of it. This should have been a quick and easy job, but evidently the battery is not charging properly and I had to keep unlatching it and plugging it in again. Very frustrating. I came home and ordered a new battery. Zounds! It's one third the price of the hedge clipper!
I also had to do all my regular Monday chores—sorting meds, washing towels, and cleaning our bathroom—and also go to Kroger, since I was out of milk. So, didn't get anything done on Monday.
Tuesday is laundry day. I got out the boxes for the decorations, but that was about it since I had to go to two Publixes. Last week when they had Smart Balance on BOGO they evidently get any in stock: we went to two different Publix stores and they were out. Tuesday was the last day of that BOGO, so I went to the East-West Connector store for some and the Smyrna store for the rest, stopping at Big Lots in between to see if they had any gingerbread pizzelles left. Yes, they did, and they still had Christmas bows and paper on sale, too.
Wednesday was shopping day this week since Kaiser still hasn't gotten off their tuffets and re-upped James' physical therapy referral, even though he asked them before Christmas. By the time I get done shopping and dragging all that stuff upstairs to put it away, I'm generally done for the day. I also cleaned out the hall closet some: we have too many party things and I took away half the bowls and relocated some of the light bulbs.
Thursday James had to get his blood tested for his Procrit shot, then we had to buy a storage box for the Christmas village since I broke the old one bringing it upstairs. Instead of one big box which is hard to bring upstairs now because of the chair lift (that's how it broke), I bought four small boxes. We had lunch at Top Spice, but I'm discontent with their pad thai. Next time I'll get the other pad dish and not that one, even if I like the peanuts in the pad thai.
We finished watching Echo this week; it was only five parts. Not much for Vincent D'Onofrio's acting chops, but Alaqua Cox is mesmerizing to watch. I loved the way Maya's family, even her resentful grandmother, came to support her, especially her goofy cousin Biscuits. Graham Greene a delight as always.
The darnest thing also happened on Thursday after we got home. Our trash gets collected early Friday morning. Usually when I walk the dog Thursday morning I will try to put the can at the curb early because I have forgotten to put it out on Thursday night before. This way if I forget, all that rolls over to the next week is one bag of trash.
About twenty minutes after we got home, I heard a great thumping outside and looked out the front window. There was a garbage truck marked "Waste Connections" and the garbage guys were manhandling my Smith Sanitation trash bin. They emptied it, then slapped a "Waste Connections" sticker on it and put it back in place.
I was confused and questions raced through my head: Did Smith change their name? Get bought out? Is trash day now on Thursday? And WTF weren't we notified of anything happening?
Later that night I went to my online Smith Sanitation bill. They had sent a note back in November that they were not going out of business back, but competitors were passing around a rumor that they were, so not to believe them. I responded to the note telling them what had happened with these Waste Connections people.
So Friday morning we're up early because James has a 11:30 appointment. I wasn't up ten minutes before a very flustered lady from Smith called me, having just read my note. Apparently this Waste Connections is a competitor and they are just driving around slapping their stickers on competitors' trash cans! She said when she got off the phone with me she would call our driver, explain what happened, and make sure the rest of the trash got collected. (Trash was collected at 8:23 am.)
I immediately flashed on all those Westerns where the cattle rustlers would take the herd before branding time and rebrand the cattle with a different mark and brand the calves, too.
Now we have garbage rustlers? Unbelievable!
Friday was a suck-ass miserable day, 43℉ and a steady, cold rain. James is always cold these days due to the anemia, but I was cold, like someone dumped ice water between my shoulder blades. I couldn't get warm and felt so bad the nurse at the infusion clinic gave me a warm blanket, too! I was in my fleece hoody all night. We watched the season finale of For All Mankind. (Yes, of course Margo got arrested, but I think an America prison is a much better place than being dead or ending up in the Gulag! And the bitch that got her into that situation probably ended up either of those ways so that makes me happy.)
James did his club meeting on Zoom this afternoon, while I finally puttered around enough to put away the porch and foyer decorations, the 12-Days-of-Christmas tree, the woodland tree and the table it was on, and boxed up the candoliers and the pillows. I also put out the winter porch and foyer decorations, and sorted the bows I bought at Big Lots. In the evening we watched the heist movie Lift (yes, Vincent D'Onofrio was in it; why do you ask). If you turned your brain off at the beginning, it was a fun movie. VDO had some good scenes at the beginning, then his part just dried up. The other stars were fun, especially the daredevil woman who was the pilot. I didn't understand the "charisma" of Kevin Hart's character Cyrus. He was supposed to be a charmer who kept this group together, but I didn't understand why they threw their loyalty in with him. I was quite amused at the eventual villain: portrayed by Jean Reno, who, in the crime series Jo, discovered that lethal Nicole Wallace, Robert Goren's occasional nemesis on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, was actually alive. So now Reno and D'Onofrio are connected by two things.
Sunday I finally got the Rudolph tree, the spare room decorations, and our bedroom decorations down, and the box downstairs.
Labels: chores, Christmas, Christmas decorations, events, food, health, movies, organizing, shopping, television
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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at
10:44:00 PM
