busy week

You will not be surprised to learn that I did not get my plans for the weekend done. I did get dirt and plants and some seeds (but not all I wanted) on Saturday and then Sarah and I went to get mani pedis (more sparkling toes!). I don’t get polish on my fingernails because I don’t like the way it feels and yes, I can feel the polish, it feels like my nails are suffocating. Doesn’t seem to bother me on my toes though. Or maybe it’s because for all my working life I worked in an etched glass fabrication studio and always kept my nails extremely short, and now that I’m retired, gardening and maintaining a bigger yard I still prefer very short nails. And fake nails? No way. I don’t see how people function with those long fake nails. 

Sunday mornings are even longer than weekday mornings and while I did get one bag of good expensive garden soil carried out to the bed I want to start in, it was already in the sun by the time I did that and nut grass has sprung up in that newly weeded down to dirt bed so that has to be dug up first. And did I mention it was already in the sun? So, yeah, nothing more got done. Monday morning was a bust because I had to leave early because Robin had an appointment to finally get her driver’s license. She needed to use my car because it’s legal and everything works so I followed her and Sarah to the DPS and she passed. Then she and Sarah continued on to the city where Robin is going to start working part time and I came on home. 

I had my annual eye exam Monday afternoon. My insurance requires a referral for a specialist and since I go to an ophthalmologist and not an optometrist I need a referral. I called the referral department two weeks in advance of my appointment to give them plenty of time to send it. Last Friday the doctor’s office called, they hadn’t received my referral yet. Called the referral department, oh yes, I see you called on the 9th, don’t know why it hasn’t been sent, I’ll see what I can do. Monday morning, still no referral so I called my PC doc’s office, explained the thing to them. Oh, yes I see your doctor has authorized it, I don’t know why it wasn’t sent, let me transfer you to the referral department. The eye doc’s office finally got the referral an hour before my appointment so I didn’t have to reschedule. Vision hasn’t changed, right eye cataract hasn’t changed much so no surgery yet, dilated my eyes and they look healthy she says. And then yoga that night.

This has been an incredibly busy week for me. Monday was a long day. Tuesday was grocery shopping for the week and then my night to fix dinner which only gives me a few free hours in the afternoon when it’s too hot to work outside. Wednesday I had my 6th month check in with the EP. I go prepared with a book because I know I’ll be waiting about an hour (no loud grumbling from others waiting this time). On the way home I stopped by CostCo to return the shoes and then did some shopping. I had cut the mailing label off the bag they came in and stuck it in the box. The nice lady thanked me for bringing that, makes it so much easier she said. Then when I was ready to check out I got in one of two lines and it turned out to be the self checkout line which I had never used before. An employee had scanned my items while I was in line and when I got to the check out I didn’t quite know what to do. The employee told me to scan my card and then scan my items. So I did. Got to the line to exit and the woman counted and counted again and finally figured out I had been charged twice for every item so anyway if was all straightened out but it was mid afternoon before I got home. I skipped yoga class that evening because I just did not want to get in the car on the highway again after only being home for a couple of hours.

Spied these two moths on one of the yew trees Wednesday. They were about 14” apart. They are female (brown) and male (yellow) Io moths (automeris io), part of the silkworm family.

Yesterday I was back at SHARE after being closed the last two Thursdays for new flooring. The vinyl in the back food area is nice, kind of a gray marble/stone pattern, but the carpet is hideous. Kind of a red and gray stripe pattern in blocks that turn 90˚ from each other. Really ugly but I had little time to even think about it because this was probably the busiest day we’ve ever had except for maybe one Thursday before Thanksgiving. We had 56 food orders, mostly bigger families. Since we were closed Jan didn’t order very much from the regional food bank, she hadn’t shopped locally, and we hadn’t received any donations. We ran out of one item and at the end of the day we are very low on many others. We have an abundance of eggs though because we still have to get our monthly donation whether we are giving them away or not. I was so tired when I got home but I went to the local yoga class anyway since I had missed the night before. Stephanie asked us if we wanted high energy thumb up or low energy thumb down. All eleven of us went thumbs down. 

So now today, this is the first day of this week I haven’t had to rush my morning to get somewhere or do something and wouldn’t you know this morning was really kind of pleasant, would have been perfect for me to get out there first thing and dig up the nut grass and spread and turn in the good garden soil. So did I? Fuck, no, I was enjoying my not rushed leisurely morning.

* Picture at top…Philippine violet.