Texas Lady

I started coming out of my holiday slump this afternoon.  I actually bathed, did laundry, cleaned out the fridge, etc.  I didn’t get out of my nightgown though, just put on a clean one after my bath.  Tomorrow I’ll actually leave the house and run errands.  The weather is changeable right now, cold nights and warmer days but the sun is high and beautiful.

I’ve been doing a lot of studying on different aspects of my sewing hobby, mostly machine embroidery, but when I sewed all day last week I threw my spine out again and have been having muscle spasms and nerve pain down my right arm.  It will go away eventually and I’ll be able to do what I want again.  Thankfully my hubby will massage it and that helps immensely; also ice helps with the inflammation.  Old age sucks sometimes, but I’ll survive.  I finally got to the point where I’ve run out of appointments so my days are finally free.  I have multiple lists of things I want/need to do, so I’m sure to not be bored any time soon.

Our dog walker, John, has decided to come back to work recently (I think there’s something he wants to finance), so he and Ronnie walked all of our beasties tonight again.  The only one who doesn’t go is Dusty because he’s so tiny that it’s hard for him to keep up and since he has bad knees we end up carrying him most of the way anyway.  Ronnie’s been walking Maximus on the treadmill more lately since he’s been home for the holidays and his mom’s health issues and that has helped Max’s mood so much.  And when he walks with Ronnie and John through the subdivision he doesn’t pull so badly.  When you try to walk a dog that weighs 82 pounds and wants to go faster than you can walk it’s bad news, believe me!

Time to go check the laundry.  Peace out, America!

Thankfully the day has arrived and will be over soon (bah humbug!).  It’s Ronnie’s birthday, too.  We did our holiday celebration last night with family so today is just a lazy day to play around with the dogs, watch TV or read.

…..that I’m finished xmas shopping.  The traffic and crowds are beginning to get ridiculous!  It took me 20 minutes to get out of the car wash at the shopping center and get back on the main road.  In fact, I had to make a detour from the first route I (and others) tried to take because the line of cars had no end; it stretched bumper-to-bumper over the overpass on the other side of the freeway.   Crazy!  I have everything wrapped except what I just bought.  I had to go out to get name tags, ribbon, etc., or I would have just stayed the hell home.  The only thing I have to buy at this point is groceries and even that will get crazy by Sunday.  I intend to be finished and home by then.  It’s nuts out there and I can only imagine what the residents of a huge metropolitan center go through.  I’ll be so glad when this season is over and done!!!!!!!!!!

When I got home there was an email from the City of Dickinson informing us that there would be no trash pickup on Tuesday.  Really?  I would have never guessed that they wouldn’t pick up trash on Christmas Day!  How rude of those workers not to come and get all my wrapping paper and turkey bones!  Lazy bums!

Just checking in while I take a break from all that walking and bending; it’s hell on my back.  Now I’ll go wrap the rest of the gifts and embroider the three blankets I started this morning.  Hope you all have a wonderful day….and stay off the roads!!!!!!!!

Update: Okay.  All three blankets complete and ready to put in the mail tomorrow, all gifts wrapped and labeled.  Supper over and the kitchen cleaned, all the dogs medicated and Jolie’s nebulizer treatment done.  Time for a break for me.

As usual the time I have found to post is after midnight.  It’s been busy the past couple of days but most of it was socializing.  This is a photo of Fancy after her grooming yesterday.  We always reward them for good behavior after they’re out in public.  They love cheeseburgers and ice cream, so depending on the weather they get a yummy treat.  She’s been to Sonic Drive-In so much that she was ready to order her sandwich before I even got the car out of gear.  Then last night we went to an xmas party at a former co-worker’s home then stayed up late watching television and slept in this morning.

Today we went to a friend’s baby’s first birthday party at a local park then went out to dinner at Saltgrass Steakhouse (http://www.saltgrass.com/) to celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary.  Got home about 8 P.M. and I’ve been busy dumping pictures to disks and looking for a movie camera that I’d put away and didn’t remember where.  Ended up vacuuming up Bandit hair out of 2 closets and digging in 3 closets before I found the camera, but all’s well that ends well, because the main storage closet is reorganized and I actually know what’s in it again.  LOL

Counting down to xmas.  I only have to endure 10 more days and it’s happily over for another year.  Thank the gods for that!!!!!!!  I have a few gifts and groceries to purchase but most of our family lives out of state so we use gift certificates to make sure they get enough money to buy something nice for themselves.  It all works out in the end.

Time to go do something fun at last!  I get a daily update from one of my sewing websites and I’m going to go check out the latest.  Have a nice night!!!!!!!!!

It’s over….the task of reorganizing the embroidery files.  I began with 988 mgs and ended with 356 mgs.  So happy I don’t have to sit here and go through anymore files!!!!!!!!!  CRAP!  It’s now taken me 3 days and staying up all night for all of them.  It is almost 3 A.M. now and I just finished.  But the house is clean, the laundry is started and we had a home-cooked meal tonight, so I didn’t sit here all day.

Tomorrow is errand day (groceries, pet supply store, phone calls, etc.).  It should be a lovely day and the car is full of gas so it just requires me to drive it and get it done.  I think I can handle that.  Retirement has been busy as hell but I can see the results from all my effort; I guess that’s what really matters.  Just took my sleeping pill so I’m outta here!

The past two days I’ve been cleaning out, cleaning up and reorganizing my embroidery design files.  I have 3 years of them (17000) to catalog.  Every time I’ve bought designs I’ve saved the files in a folder under the heading of the company they were purchased from in their own dated file folder.  Now I can’t find anything when I need it!  I have to go through each damned folder until I find the right design.  I know I’ve bought them but I can’t find them and it is very frustrating.  After discussing it with Ronnie yesterday I decided it was time to tackle my filing system.  OMG, I don’t know if I was ready for it.  I sat in my office chair until almost 5 A.M. last night (this morning), then after I got home at 1 P.M. today from the groundbreaking ceremony at the plant I started in on them again.  I’m back from a break now because I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my head if I looked at one more file.  SHIT!!!!!!!  I started out with 988 MGs and I’m down to 680 MGs now.  And I’ll probably be up most of tonight in order to finish the job.  And, yes, I backed them all up before I started.  Can you imagine losing 17000 files and having to download them all again if I could even remember who I purchased them from?

I was invited to the groundbreaking ceremony at BP for a new building.  I’d been on the building committee for 3 years prior to my retirement but thankfully they are including me in the festivities since I was one of the initial committee members on the original plans.  I’d never attended one before but I got to wield the golden shovel and get my picture taken.  They are going to send me a copy to share.  How cool is that?!!!!

Tomorrow my sweet housekeeper comes so I’ll be home most, if not all, of the day.  We’re invited to a xmas party Friday night and need Santa hats so that went on my list today.  Then Saturday we’re attending the 1st birthday party of one of our vet tech’s children at a local park.  Since we’re getting down to freezing temperatures this week I hope it warms up prior to Saturday or we’ll all freeze.  LOL

I did finish the lighting in my sewing room but I’ve not been back in there to sew.  Now here cold weather is upon us and two doggie sweaters did not get taken in.  What a bad mother I am!!!!  (NOT)  Sometimes there is simply not time to do what I WANT to do because of all the things that I HAVE to do.  Sounds like real life, doesn’t it?  It happens to the best of us…..well, back to my files.  Good night……..

Ronnie and I went to Joann’s today and bought Ott lights for the sewing room.  Pretty cool as far as I can tell.  They are LED lights so the light is white and brighter than fluorescents.  Everything is easier to focus on even with the ceiling light off.  I do think that I may go back and buy one more while they’re on sale for 50% off.  I’m thinking of putting one at the right side of the cutting table.  What do you think?

Yesterday I added another utility table to the sewing room and removed the ell for the sewing desk since I needed more counter space.  When I bought the original sewing desk I had one sewing machine and one embroidery machine so I didn’t need much space (I thought).  But now I have 4 machines and can still only have 3 of them out at any one time because the room is very small.  I yet have to figure out some lighting because I need all I can get with these aging eyes, but now I have a cutting table (right), counter space for machines (middle) and my sewing desk (left).  Cool!!!!!!!!

More later…….

Getting ready for bed.  It wasn’t a bad day but still running errands and shopping, trying to redecorate other rooms a little as I go.  Decisions, decisions, decisions.  Bought a shower curtain, etc., and never took it out of the car.  I don’t like it and will exchange it.  Typical woman, right?  LOL  Met my doctor’s P.A. today; she’s sweet.  Tomorrow Buffy (neighbor’s poodle that we rehabbed) goes for grooming but I’m going to try to sew.  Talked to Ronnie about the lighting in the sewing room and he agrees we need to spend the money and make sure we have enough light in there.  It’s hard to see tiny threads and lines on patterns and in manuals when you don’t have plenty of light.  I have some coupons that are only good on Wednesday (Seniors’ Day) so that’s where I’ll start.  Joann’s, here I come!

Yesterday I cleaned and cleaned (sliding glass doors, the china cabinet glass, some stains on the tile floor, the oven, the water in the fish tank, etc., etc., etc.) after running errands for about 3 hours.  I don’t know where all the energy came from but I was hoping it’d stay around a while.  It didn’t, unfortunately, because I have been tired and a little depressed today.  Guess I used up all my positive energy.  I am making headway on my endless pile of lists.  I’m knocking them out but still making more as fast as I can think up new things we need to buy, do or discuss.  This “retirement” stuff is right up my alley.