October 3, 2022 Monday--11:45am

 Good morning!

Frist of all I have to say before I forget--I am not getting notices anymore of new posts except for a small handful of blogs.  I found my Blogspot reading list but there are only a handful of blogs I still followed on that list ( many from years ago who don't even post anymore).  So--please--if you haven't heard from me in quite a while in your comments please leave one for me here and I will come and make sure I follow you...if you have that option, of course.  I feel Blogger has cut me off from so many bloggers I have followed for years because I did it by their email option--and now they took that away.  I will have to learn to go back to Blogger to check my reading list.  I have done that a couple times this week.  Anyways, on with the week that was...

Monday

I set up letters finally.  Was behind.  My life has been in slow motion for some time.  I went online to look for the crockpot instruction booklet.  Went to open a link to one--and it was a scam!  Good Lord!  Has been a long time since I have had one of those creepy, startling things!  The screen got taken over and a voice was telling me that it was a Microsoft alert and I needed to call this number or be invaded by a virus that could steal my identity, etc.  You couldn't get off the screen or shut it down.  The voice warned me that if I shut the computer down my computer would be wiped.  But, of course,  shut it down...and it was fine.

Something like that happened to me when I got my very first desktop computer back in 1998.  Didn't have a voice back then warning you--just big flashing words and instructions.  I was brand new to computers...and so I got totally played.  Took hours on the phone with customer service for me to get rid of the virus.  Some patient soul dealt with a 47 year old woman who was asking "What is scrolling?"  Complete and utter newbie!  I have never fallen for my computer threatening me again.  And imagine--from clicking on an appliance instruction booklet!?

Anyways, I went to my trusty YouTube and found what I needed right away.  Should have gone there in the first place--LOL!

I made the soup.  And burned my right forearm going to unclip the side of the cover.  Forgot about the steam hole.  Amazed at how in less than a second I probably had a second degree burn in a little circle...deep enough to peel and scab over.  Good grief!  How embarrassing!  It's okay and healing just fine.

Tuesday

I finally worked on letters...all day!  Got about five of them mailed out, I think, that day.  Felt good to be catching up with my paper chats!!  :)

I watered the patio.  Frost warning that night!  So early for it to be getting that cold.  I don't ever remember there being snow before or on Halloween growing up.  Cold--and having to wear a coat under the costume--yes--but not freezing temps.  Not until the Halloween blizzard in 1990, I think it was...maybe 1991?  We had a blizzard on Halloween and then another one on Thanksgiving that year.  I remember because I was living in Uptown in Minneapolis, was so sick with a fever both blizzards I couldn't get out of bed.  My friend, Bill, who lived a block away came and shoveled my car out for me both times (no garage and my car was buried to the roof--both times).  He brought me garlic broth.  Hate garlic but he watched over me while I had to consume it because he insisted it cured almost anything--and he also returned with a Thanksgiving dinner plate after the second blizzard.  (Gay friends are the best.)  

Turned out I had psittacosis from birds at the pet shop where I was assistant manager.  They knew a particular cockatoo they had sold turned out to have it but they never told me...until I was so sick and weak I had to sit on a chair behind the register because I could barely walk without wheezing.  Had to go to a lung specialist at the University of Minnesota for many months.  At least they paid for it.  I had no health insurance...or sick days for that matter.  

Maybe the owner wanted to keep me quiet about them moving all the birds to the basement of the drug store a block away that the lady also owned.  The government had told her she had to either dispose of all the birds or treat them for many months in isolation and then have them each tested before she could sell them because this was so contagious to birds.  (People rarely got it from them-but I cleaned a wall of bird cages half every day and humans can get this disease I'd never heard of from close contact with an infected bird's poop dust.)  She had them clean all the cages and wipe down the walls--but all the birds were back in a few weeks.  As soon as I was well enough I was gone.  Moved back to the suburbs.  Assistant manager at another privately owned pet shop in Maple Grove.

Obviously--I digress.

Wednesday

Total pajama day.  Took me till 9pm to work up to a shower.  LOL!  So glad to have Miss Allie for company.  

Thursday

I found the perfect table at IKEA!

Okay--I have my art table in the studio and...

...and my kitchen table here...but I wanted a larger table for various art & craft projects.  

(Allie follows me around to see what I am doing--LOL!)

Anyways, the kitchen table I have now would work great in the middle of the studio after I move but I knew I needed a larger table.  I have missed my bigger, wider old oak one and been thinking about another expandable table.  I am one of those people who spreads out whenever I am working on something...just need a lot of space.  Even when I went to college at 48 years old just writing papers...I needed a big corner desk and often added a TV tray or two to hold all the reference books and post it notes and notebooks and print outs...and it has been like that since I was a kid.

My old oak table (being held together by metal strapping so definitely a give-away) has two leaves--but they are heavy and had to be stored someplace.  Usually under my bed and full of dust, so it was a process to add them or take them back out...but the table was wide and good sized on its own.  I need a lot of surface space for fabrics when I sew, journal making, large art projects...and even "smaller" projects where I just spread out like when I worked on papers for college or homework when I was a teenager--LOL!  I need organizing room.  ;)  But I was tired of the falling apart old oak table.

I found it!  At IKEA again, of course.  I took a video of their online video.  Not sure if they will shut this down or not.  Hope it works.  But this table has three sizes due to the two leaves that are right inside of the table.  Looks easy enough for this old lady to expand or contract it!

Plain and simple--like everything else I am buying.

May seem like a dark, plain, boring place to live from what you have seen but it looks exciting and beautiful to an organizer like myself who wants to simplify her life...but has a ton of stuff.  I've lived surrounded by bookcases for so many years I can't even remember now.  A place filled with matching storage--is like a dream to me.  Ahhhh!  My art & craft stuff and all my writing stuff--well, they have kept me sane for over two decades of being house bound.  I may have been even less able to use a lot of it this last year or two, but it is the highest on my priority list of essential things that I have to keep.  Hence the need for lots of storage.  That's the nice thing about living alone.  I can arrange my home any way that I want that makes me happy and there's no one to complain about it--ROFL!  Dagan and Leah totally get me.  :)

Anyways, Leah got ahold of her sister in Minneapolis and I think they might already have this table in a big box in their garage!  Whoohoo!

Friday

Infusion day.  Funny--went with the skin punch out healing on my left forearm and the burn healing on my right forearm.  I don't think anyone noticed--lol!  Saw Brittani.  When I go back in 3 weeks it is the first time she said I don't have to get bloodwork done--(or see the doctor which is every other time now).  We even asked they double-check on the no bloodwork.   No idea why the change??  But in 6 weeks it is the usual--bloodwork, doctor, and infusion.

I find it amusing that I have been telling her more about the actual stuff that is going on with me and gradually getting worse over the months--and yet she thinks I am doing so well I don't even need bloodwork checked next time.  I give up.  No point in telling them the weird things that have been happening because it doesn't matter to them.  If it is not listed or no one else has reported it--doesn't matter.  (Like the pasty poo.)  They just keep asking me the same things every three weeks...do you have mouth sores? No.  Have you had constipation?  No.  etc, etc...good to go.  LOL!  But you try to tell them odd things that ARE happening--well, not on the list so must not matter, you know?  I'm not going to bother to tell them anything unless it's something really bad.  No point.  

Leah and I stopped at my garage and put my winter clothes bins in the car so we could get them into the apartment.  

Seems like I just got done doing this switch!  I haven't started yet, of course.  I still have the five bins from the bathroom to go through, too, in there.  My bedroom is getting very crowded.  Overwhelming at times.

Leah and I had a great chat about the move and the build...how things will be so different, decisions, plans, furniture, and storage places I will also have (some shelves in maintenance room, under the entryway section of the basement, and some in the garage, too).  We both get so excited.  Such fun to put our heads together for this.

After she left--well, a few hours later--I couldn't keep my eyes open.  This is normal now.  I slept from about 7-9pm and then again from 12-10am.  The exhaustion has gradually gotten worse over this year.  It's either sleeping and sleeping or insomnia--LOL!  Oh well.  

Saturday

My project for the day was laundry.

Sunday

All I got done was to finish folding clothes and putting them all away--write out my rent check and walk it down to the office rent box--and empty the dishwasher.  But I was happy with that.

This week

Leah is planning to try to get over to repot my inside plants before it is too cold out.  Dagan took Thursday and Friday off and they are working on emptying the basement.  Probably take a couple of weeks.  She'll pop over one of those days probably so she doesn't have to bring the boys and it will go much faster.  ;)

Keanna will be back tomorrow afternoon!  Two weeks already.  

Today or tomorrow Leah is going to CashWise and will drop off some groceries for me.  At some point she's also picking up more of the Origin dry cat food Allie loves and some Sudafed for me that the nurses recommended for my plugged up sinuses.  

Miss Allie doesn't care for people food--not even steak or bacon or chicken.  She ate a tiny bit of the beef broth from the soup.  She will eat a little of the canned cat food for a treat in the evening--but I am talking maybe a tablespoon...and she doesn't finish it all.  Very different from my other cats--LOL!  She does like her Origin, though, and eats that up!  When I got her she was so thin under the thick fur that she felt boney.  Not anymore.  She's filled out a bit.  She probably lost weight during her month at the pound and month at Cat's Cradle when she was hiding in the corner or in that one cat bed.  I do adore her.  She's asleep on the chair with me as I am typing.

Allie thinks all the world should be as happy to see her as she is to see them.  Expects petting and loving from everyone.  Talk about a born optimist who didn't let her scary couple of months dampen her spirits.  She's a good reminder for me.  ;)

Well, that's it for this past week.  The weather has been gorgeous here.  Beautiful cool, crisp, fall days.  Makes me feel guilty when people have been ravaged by hurricane Ian down south.  I hope you are safe and well--wherever you are.  May angels watch over you.