sylph stops

[sylph]

Did not make spaghetti last night--that'll get shifted to tonight, goulash or taco pasta tomorrow along with a grocery run.

 

Yesterday afternoon hubs had planned to mow the yard. After about 10 minutes he comes back in and asks if I will follow along behind and rake up the leaves (apparently March is when leaves fall in FL? Who knew). Sure no problem.

 

3 HOURS LATER we finished mowing, weed whacking, and  edging the lawn while wrangling about 90% of the leaves into submission. Homeownership, man, I forgot how much work it is. Satisfying end result, though. I am sore today--apparently I have not used raking muscles in many moons. (Still better than shoveling snow, though. )

 

 

This afternoon I need to get out and spray what's left of the lawn fungus and maybe drain the pool a bit, since it's supposed to rain on Saturday. 

 

[raptron]

20 hours ago, sylph said:

Did not make spaghetti last night--that'll get shifted to tonight, goulash or taco pasta tomorrow along with a grocery run.

 

Yesterday afternoon hubs had planned to mow the yard. After about 10 minutes he comes back in and asks if I will follow along behind and rake up the leaves (apparently March is when leaves fall in FL? Who knew). Sure no problem.

 

3 HOURS LATER we finished mowing, weed whacking, and  edging the lawn while wrangling about 90% of the leaves into submission. Homeownership, man, I forgot how much work it is. Satisfying end result, though. I am sore today--apparently I have not used raking muscles in many moons. (Still better than shoveling snow, though. )

Hahah, dang! Well done team. 

 

[KB Girl]

On 3/3/2021 at 8:06 PM, sylph said:

I am relating to this HARD right now. I'd love the opportunity for some emotional rest and recovery, but the hits just seem to keep on coming.

Really hope you'll get that opportunity from now on.. 

 

Way to go with the lawn

[sylph]

Friday The steam mop we ordered arrived so of course we had to try it out, like, immediately. Between the two of us we vacuumed and steam mopped all of the tile in the house (which is all of the house, aside from the master and spare bedroom). SO MUCH DIRT. Pretty satisfying, overall. Also, I picked up groceries (I think that was Friday?)

 

Saturday a bit of a blur, to be honest

 

Sunday hubs made a monumental effort on the hobby/craft room while I did laundry. We ordered chaise loungers for out by the pool (cushions TBD).  Also ordered some work tables for the hobby room. They should be here in ~2 weeks, so we'll need to have everything sorted out for him by then. He is ITCHING to get his 3D printer back up and running so I'm excited to get this room functioning. We also hung up some art on the walls (finally) which helped the settling in/getting out of 'apartment mode' a bit. I also got out and sprayed some mosquito control stuff on the yard.

 

Monday Made some attempt to find good, reasonably priced, readily available cushions for the chaises. Luck was not had. Everything is super expensive, not weather proof and/or not available for some unreasonable amount of time (12 weeks!!?) There has to be something out there that is suitable.

 

Tuesday Got up this morning and got a walk. Also, made the conscious decision to put workout clothes on and did a 15-20 minute yoga session before getting to work which was nice.

 

Edit:

This morning we had our EAP folks lead a zoom session for the staff that worked closely with the guy we lost. I don't get much out of group therapy, but some of the staff clearly did and as his boss, it definitely felt like the right thing to do to be there. It was nice to hear some funny/good memories that people have of him, but ROUGH all around and now I'm a bit of an unfocused mess. In retrospect, I wish we'd organized it for the end of the day instead but that has it's own issues as then everyone has it looming on their calendars all day. Blah. I don't know. It just feels not-right all around.

[Mike Wazowski]

Glad there were a lot of good things this past weekend (even with an annoying lack of luck on cushions)!

 

And hugs for the unpleasant start to this morning - I wish I had something better / more useful to say on that, but alas.

[sylph]

On 3/9/2021 at 3:32 PM, Mike Wazowski said:

 

And hugs for the unpleasant start to this morning - I wish I had something better / more useful to say on that, but alas.

It was beneficial for the staff, so worth it. I'll keep coping in my own way.

[sylph]

Wednesday: Um... walked in the morning. Did work things then had some running around to do in the afternoon. Also made some phone calls to see if I could get hubs and I on any 'waste prevention' lists for the vaccine, no dice. It would be too sensible for there to be some central mechanism for this. I will literally drop everything and go drive an hour to get a vaccine if it would otherwise go to waste and there is nowhere that I can flag myself to do this. Blergh. On the positive side, our governor has said that he'll be opening up vaccinations to 55+ next week and everyone else "soon" so perhaps there is hope on the horizon. Of course, once the flood gates are open, good luck me & hubs.  That'll be a whole other can of worms, but at least there will be a chance.

 

Thursday: Walked this morning, then did a ~20 minute barre video which KICKED. MY. ASS. I thought I was going to fall over. Ridiculous and just goes to show how unconditioned I am. Yeesh.

[Mad Hatter]

21 hours ago, sylph said:

Thursday: Walked this morning, then did a ~20 minute barre video which KICKED. MY. ASS. I thought I was going to fall over. Ridiculous and just goes to show how unconditioned I am. Yeesh.

But you did it!!! 💪

 

21 hours ago, sylph said:

It was beneficial for the staff, so worth it. I'll keep coping in my own way.

I really don't think there is a right way in this case... Do whatever you need. ❤️

[raptron]

22 hours ago, sylph said:

Wednesday: Um... walked in the morning. Did work things then had some running around to do in the afternoon. Also made some phone calls to see if I could get hubs and I on any 'waste prevention' lists for the vaccine, no dice. It would be too sensible for there to be some central mechanism for this. I will literally drop everything and go drive an hour to get a vaccine if it would otherwise go to waste and there is nowhere that I can flag myself to do this. Blergh. On the positive side, our governor has said that he'll be opening up vaccinations to 55+ next week and everyone else "soon" so perhaps there is hope on the horizon. Of course, once the flood gates are open, good luck me & hubs.  That'll be a whole other can of worms, but at least there will be a chance.

I signed up with Dr. B from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/health/covid-vaccine-leftover-doses-dr-b.html. Not sure how many places are participating near me or near you, but seemed worth it to me. 

22 hours ago, sylph said:

Thursday: Walked this morning, then did a ~20 minute barre video which KICKED. MY. ASS. I thought I was going to fall over. Ridiculous and just goes to show how unconditioned I am. Yeesh.

Hahah, barre DOES that though. Working as intended.

[sylph]

19 hours ago, raptron said:

I signed up with Dr. B from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/health/covid-vaccine-leftover-doses-dr-b.html. Not sure how many places are participating near me or near you, but seemed worth it to me. 

 

Yep, I did that too, though I don't think anyone near me is participating. No avenue goes unexplored at this point, though. There are some state and federally supported walk up sites here that folks have had some success with popping in at the end of the day to see what's left, but that involves leaving the house, which is something we're trying to minimize, so it's a bit of a conundrum.

[sylph]

21 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

But you did it!!! 💪

 

I really don't think there is a right way in this case... Do whatever you need. ❤️

I did something, anyway! Maybe I'll even do it again next week. Heh.

 

Friday. After my morning walk, my work day started with  a meeting that I run that my employee typically helped me with (logistics, minutes, etc.) so this time I ran it all on my own. That was hard (functionally it was fine. the difficulty was all emotional). I had planned to say something at the end of the meeting, to acknowledge the fact that he wasn't there, but couldn't manage it so cut the zoom off after normal business before I lost it entirely. Had another meeting or two to figure out some other hairy problems (yay compromise--where no one is actually happy with the result) and was off after noon.

 

The rest of the day on Friday was much better. Hubs and I spent the afternoon adjusting the sprinkler system so that it: 

1. Watered the grass with reasonable coverage (no super dry spots or super wet spots)

2. Did NOT water the driveway, sidewalk or side of the house.

This took longer than expected and we were both pretty soaked by the end. Fortunately it was 80 degrees and sunny.

 

After that, we lounged by the pool, puttering around with the hand skimmer and a broom to clean up the lanai a bit, then sat down with some margaritas while the sun went (mostly) down.  Right around sunset we took a walk around the neighborhood. Showers when we got home, then had dinner which was leftovers of that viral tomato/feta/pasta thing that was going around a few weeks ago. I improve it by adding a pound of Italian sausage to the whole mix. I could eat that stuff EVERY DAY. Yum. Then we cuddled up on the couch and re-watched Fool's Gold for about the 100th time then went to bed.

❤️

 

This weekend I need to do laundry, we should probably do our taxes, I have a Zoom family meeting this afternoon and I think I need to plan a grocery run for tomorrow or Monday. There were some things they were out of last time that there were no good replacements for, so there are some categories where we are preeeeety low on things.

 

Edit: oh, it's also the beginning of Daylight Saving Time this weekend. I am not excited to 'lose' an hour. I AM excited that the sun will be up longer/later in the day

[Mad Hatter]

3 hours ago, sylph said:

Fortunately it was 80 degrees and sunny

😒

[sylph]

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

😒

Our first winter/spring in Florida has been a revelation.

[sylph]

Saturday: Had a family zoom call that (all told) lasted for ~3 hours yesterday afternoon. Oy. Totally ruined the rest of the plans for the day to get a bit of cleaning in and finish up the laundry. Hubs and I spent a chunk of the rest of the afternoon/early evening puttering around town seeing if we could opportunistically score a vaccine. No dice. So really a wasted day overall.

 

One of our plans for this weekend involved getting our taxes done but I've just had a look through some of our paperwork and it turns out one of my documents has an error. Sigh. With the move/mail forwarding/etc. I just received it on Friday, so I hadn't had a chance to review it until this morning and I find out its wrong. I'm hoping it's not going to be a huge PITA to fix and we can certainly get the rest of the paperwork sorted out except for that bit, to be ready to hit the button to finalize as soon as we can but.... yuck. I was hoping we could just be DONE with it this weekend. 

 

Also today I need to finish up the laundry, make the thing for dinner tonight that I had planned on yesterday, get the rug pad down under our new living room rug, and then I think hubs and I are going to tackle some of the stuff in the dining room. It's not boxes, it's just stuff that we put there 'for now' without a lot of consideration as we were moving stuff in so now it needs a permanent home--some small pieces of furniture, the camping dishes (what?), a case of bottled water and other super random stuff that does not belong in a dining room. We also have some artwork that we left there last weekend when we were hanging stuff because we couldn't decide if we wanted to hang it at all, or if it was right for the room. So, maybe we can make some decisions there today.

 

Hypothetically speaking, one of the tables I ordered to serve as a desk in my office is supposed to arrive today as well, so if that happens, we'll need to unpack and assemble it, take the old desk out (somewhere?) and get the new one into the space. That'll give me a good basis to determine what size of other furniture I can fit there (I am in need of a big storage cabinet and another desk/table to serve as a gaming station for the PS5 and stuff. Plus maybe some filing cabinets/other storage, depending on what there's room for and what we manage to purge vs. reorganize).

[sylph]

Oh, also groceries since I had the last of the bread as toast with my breakfast this morning.

[sylph]

Sunday

• Taxes did not get done. Ah well, we're at least organized and ready to do it.
• Dining room did not get organized. Oops?
• My desk did not arrive.
• I did finish the laundry.
• We also spent another 2.5-3 hours in the yard cleaning up leaves and trimming up the plants out front so they don't touch the house, etc.
• I did get a grocery order in. I'll go pick it up this afternoon.
• After yard clean up, we dipped into the pool (well, hubs did. I just put my feet in.) and had a couple margaritas. Then shower and dinner and then watched a couple episodes of Boardwalk Empire.

 

[sylph]

Monday

• Still no desk (supposedly it's today)
• Picked up groceries
• Cut hubs' hair
• Made Southwest Beef & Cabbage Stir Fry for dinner
• I don't remember what else I did yesterday, but hubs and I did get a short walk in just before sunset, so that was nice.

[sylph]

Tuesday

• Walked in the morning.
• Desk came! It's assembled and out in the living room until I can shuffle my current furniture around in the office and get everything set up. Definitely going to need to get a separate set of drawers/filing cabinet to tuck under one end for a bit of storage.
• Did some poking around and realized that 'educators' qualify for vaccination here. Went with my University ID and a pay stub and was able to get a first dose. Hubs qualifies in other ways so we are both on the road to our herd immunity contribution. Huge mental load off, now.
• Work tables for the hobby room also came in, so we picked those up at Lowes and got 2 of the 3 assembled before dinner. Hubs will likely get the 3D printer and various other fun toys set up while I work and we'll get the last work table set up once I'm finished for the day.

My deltoid is definitely twinge-ing me this morning, which I expected post-vaccine. We'll see if I have any more significant side effects as the day progresses (I hear it's the second dose that really kicks your ass, so we'll see how I feel three weeks from now...)

 

Doing virtual happy hour with some work friends late this afternoon (one just got a new puppy, so I'm sure there will be lots of squee-ing) 

[sylph]

Wednesday

• Morning walk, check.
• Set up the last of the work tables for hubs. He got his initial set up completed and a few small test prints out of the way, so I'm glad he's up and running again.
• As advertised, happy hour was lots of puppy-related squee  
• Took an early evening walk with hubs. It was HOT, so just a quick one, but it was nice to get out and get moving together. Perhaps we'll try it again tonight, just a little bit later so the sun has a chance to lessen its assault on the pavement.
• Deltoid is essentially back to normal, though I have a small neck/head ache that is either related to the vaccine or to the pressure change that is happening (cooling off for the weekend) or both.

[sylph]

Thursday

• Walked in the morning
• Worked
• Ran around a bit in the afternoon
  • dropped a few things off at my parents that they are re-homing for us
  • put gas in my car
  • put air in the car tires
  • realized the car needs to be washed, but it's fruitless right now because POLLEN is everywhere
  • swung by the apartment for a last mail check (our lease expires today, technically)
  • ran to Costco to pick up a few things
  • dropped my ThredUp goody box at a FedEx location (I love this service, I think)

I feel like there was one or two other things I did whilst running around, but I can't think of them now.

Challenge ends tomorrow! What even were my goals? I have no idea.

[Mad Hatter]

4 hours ago, sylph said:

Challenge ends tomorrow! What even were my goals? I have no idea.

I don't know - being a productivity MACHINE?! Because you nailed that one.

[sylph]

On 3/19/2021 at 2:13 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I don't know - being a productivity MACHINE?! Because you nailed that one.

It doesn't really feel that way, but looking back to the beginning of the challenge, I do seem to have accomplished some stuff...

[sylph]

CHALLENGE WRAP UP

 

At the beginning of this challenge, hubs and I had literally JUST moved into our house. As in, the day after the movers dropped off all our stuff, I posted my challenge. Clearly, things have come a long way from there, though it doesn't generally feel like it since we're in it all the time.

 

Goal 1: A place for everything and everything in its place. 

We did pretty well with this, though not the way I'd originally envisioned. Boxes are unpacked, MANY things are put away, have a home, or have been discarded, but we still have some work to do.

• The extra bedroom is completely full of stuff. If it will ever become a gym/guest room, we'll need to get some progress going on that.
• BUT the giant stack of boxes and bins is gone from the living room. I can see three empty boxes that need to be discarded and two small boxes of stuff that need to be put away from where I'm sitting. Not bad. The amount of stuff we've sorted, unpacked, repacked, discarded, cardboard that got sliced up and recycled this challenge has been monumental. Seriously, I should've kept a tally.
• The dining room still has a bunch of miscellaneous stuff in the corners, though it is less and different stuff than started there this challenge.
• The hobby/craft room has been transformed into a useful space and hubs has gotten his 3D printer back up and running. This was one of the main things I wanted to accomplish, to ensure he had a functional space to do his thing.
• Office is functional, if not optimized--my new desk is set up, which is great, but still lots of work to be done there (mostly furniture picking, which is difficult over the internet.

There's definitely more to do and we have plans to do it, it's all just taking awhile (which is fine--it's making us really think about our stuff, what we want to keep, what we want to get rid of, and what we need for storage box/bin/whatnot capacity).

 

Goal 2: ...um, move

Pretty successful in keeping up the habit of a morning walk on work days. Also got in a few evening walks with hubs as well as a TON of work cleaning, raking, weeding, etc. While none of it was terribly fitness-y (aside from that one barre vid I did one morning), I'm definitely not dissatisfied with the amount of movement I got in this challenge.

 

Goal 3: Cook?

This was semi-successful. Definitely better than trail mix and granola bars. I fell in love with the tomato/feta/pasta thing that went viral about a month ago (I've made it three times in the last four weeks and plan to keep it in some kind of rotation--good thing hubs likes it too) Most weeks I had a plan to make at least one or two dishes that we could then subsist off of leftovers for the remaining days. There was perhaps 1 day per week that became a 'fend for yourself' kind of dinner that became sandwiches, hummus and pita, chips and salsa or various other snack foods that turned into dinner. Not bad. I would like to get a bit more organized with meal planning and maybe work on some freezer cooking so things are a little less haphazard, but we'll see how that goes.

[sylph]

New challenge (kind of, anyway) here

[raptron]

LOVE IT ALL. Glad you guys are settling in well.