Hello and Happy New Year to all of my family, friends and strangers that are reading my blog. Fun to have you along for the ride!! We have a LOT to talk about, so going back to my “work” mind, I am going to provide an agenda. 🙂 If we don’t get the agenda complete on this “meeting” we will move the agenda items over to the next “meeting”!
Agenda – January 9, 2020
- Why have you not updated your blog since December 4?
- Adventures on the road to WI and MN
- Christmas and New Years
- Back in the “warmth” of Arizona
Why have you not updated your blog since December 4th?
As I was thinking about writing on my walk with Max this morning, I thought of all of the excuses that I could provide to make my delay in writing legitimate! 🙂 Although I also thought why do I feel a need to explain my excuses? Did you ever have a day that you just did not want to go in to work, but really didn’t have a real, tangible excuse? You just needed a mental health day!! But you waited maybe 5 minutes before you made the call in to see what you could come up with: headache, that time of the month, queasy stomach (or as my Mom used to say just kind of “urpy”), sore throat, cold, etc. Now it had been a long time for me to call in sick because when you work remotely you can keep working even if you are hacking, coughing, blowing your nose, bathroom visiting without worrying about infecting others, spreading germs or just being the person that everyone would wish would go home!! That was one of the perks of working remotely — I could only infect my dog or husband! I digress….which is why I set up an agenda!! So it just seems kind of normal to have to provide an “excuse”….but I am retired so I should be in the mind set that my time, my wandering, is not really my excuse, but just my retired life…if that makes any sense. But for those of you that are really disappointed in me, or when I am reading this in my rocking chair 20 years from now in the nursing home, while the nurses aid feeds me applesauce, it will be good to know what roadblocks I experienced in the last few weeks that kept me away from this laptop. 🙂
Laptop
Let’s talk about this laptop. For those of you from Robinson, I have had this laptop since I started at CHR. When I decided to retire I asked if I could buy back the laptop so Brenda told me to talk to the help desk team to see if it was in warranty. When I took it to them, they just laughed and said they did not even have to look it up — they knew it was well out of warranty, so it was converted from my “work” laptop to my “home” laptop. Along with it being out of warranty, it has some other quirks that I have just learned to live with! For example, it will no longer work without being plugged in. We did replace the battery and that worked for a while, but then I just kept getting a message saying the battery needed to be replaced so I gave up and surrendered to the fact that I always needed electricity to use it. I did pack my laptop for the trip and I could have plugged it in the truck since it does have a plugin available, but on this trip we shared driving so David usually drove in the morning and then I drove in the afternoon. That gave me the chance to do my counted cross stitch in the mornings for a couple of hours (I think that is another excuse to explain….my joy of doing whatever crafts I want, whenever I want to)
Crafts
This is my current counted cross stitch — I loved the colors! Just before we left, I have finished 6 ornaments that I put on our tree in cross stitch!
Books
So I did not even take my laptop out of the bag on our driving trip. And when I was at other people’s houses it was time for visiting or when I got up early in the morning it was to read (probably another one of my excuses…LOL). When we left AZ to go north, I had a book I was reading and packed another. Well, dummy me, I finished both and still had about 8 days left before we headed back. My DIL, Salty Maggie, is a reader like me so I asked if she had some books to spare….LOL. And of course, she did and her selections so far have been great!!
What Alice Forgot is the book I had taken with me and finished — the other 2 are books that Salty Maggie provided and both were great! Just finished The Life We Bury this morning (Murder/Suspense) and it was crazy good. It was also based in Minnesota — near the campus, Austin and North Branch. He is a Minnesota author, was a criminal defense attorney so can bring the perspective in his writing. I saw he wrote 2 other books based in Minnesota, so I will buy them since that location based writing is really fun to read. Plus on my Nook, I have The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah that we are reading for the book club here. So you can see that reading is definitely a valid excuse!! I always set my alarm for 6am, catch up on Facebook and then go in to the living room with my coffee and blanket (yes, it is chilly in the mornings here — 34 this morning!!) and read for at least an hour!!
We did get back to AZ Friday, the 3rd which was faster than normal. With us both driving a good half day it really helps us put more miles on. In fact the 2nd day we put on 705 miles. So my next excuse for not writing Saturday or Sunday was that I always get back from MN in a little funk, so writing on my blog is farthest from my mind. I did share my funkiness with Jackie and she later helped by Facetiming with us so we could see Jaxen again. Only problem is he kept saying “Bumpa”!!! I wanted to say what am I chopped liver!! I think I need to teach him to call me Meemaw as they do in the south because that would be easier for him to say rather than Grandma. I think it was Caley that came up with Bumpa and it has stuck — even our DIL’s and SIL call him that!! So now I need a easier name for a toddler to say!!! See….I digress…so again proof for the need of an agenda.
More Crafts
While we were traveling, I saw on Facebook this new thing called Diamond Painting. They looked so cool that I ordered one from Amazon to try it out. I have watched a couple of YouTubes to get the tips and tricks and started on that. I put on some quiet music and just enjoy working on it. I bought a “full drill” which means the whole piece is filled with diamonds and I bought the 5D diamonds, which have more sparkle. This is what I am working on — kind of hard to see because it has the clear plastic cover on the top to protect the adhesive. I will take a better picture once it is done.
Keyboard
I hope to put it above my keyboard area….oh….that is another excuse that is not really valid, but I think I can still use it — I need some time to play the keyboard!! I say not really valid because honestly I have not sat down to play it since before Christmas — but it has been on my mental to do list!!
This is my keyboard — did you notice the picture that is sitting on the music stand! I hope to hang that above my piano — it is a Christmas present that my granddaughter gave me that was beyond amazing!! I don’t think there were too many dry eyes once I opened this one!
So I think that wraps up agenda item #1 and since it got long winded and I did digress a little I am going to end this blog here and start agenda item #2 in a new blog. Hope you are all doing good and enjoying the New Year so far.
TIFN
But time for one Jaxen pic….he was enjoying one of his Christmas presents!
Dandy Ventures 