Category: Daily Life

It took me a while, but I finally managed to take a morning and sleep in before my vacation ended. Unfortunately that morning was Sunday, which meant I woke up an hour after I should have been at Petco taking care of the adoptable cats. I made up for it by letting them play for almost an hour and a half while I cleaned their cages and talked them up to interested customers.

On Saturday morning I'd gotten up really early for a pancake breakfast, also benefiting The Animal Rescue Alliance. I spent several hours serving pancakes, eggs, sausage and beverages to people who came to Applebee's to support the charity. It was a big success, but I was so over the whole pancake thing by the time it was over that I decided to forgo the meal and just go home and have cereal.

I should mention that I never worked in a restaurant earlier in life, so this was my first experience serving food and drinks outside of my own dinner parties. Man, what a lot of work! I can only imagine what it would have been like with everyone getting different food.

It's amazing what a week at home will do for your outlook on life. It was very restorative to have nine nearly agenda-free days in which to rest, read, putter around the house, revisit some inconveniently-located favorite restaurants, and generally just chill out.

As soon as I got to the office this morning I could tell I was more focused than I'd been when I left. It's a good feeling.

Of course, we have Independence Day coming up and my birthday as well, so I'll only be working three days next week. I think I can manage to fall back into the vacation groove!

Finally I'm feeling more like my regular self, so I'm taking this last vacation day to burn through a long-overdue list of errands.

I started the morning at a coffee meetup at The Filling Station. I figured there was no point in trying to get started without the proper fuel. Several people brought their dogs today, which was fun.

When I got home it was still cool and shady in our back patio area, so I immediately put on gloves and set about weeding the rose bed and another nearby flower bed. There were grassy weeds more than six inches high from all the rain we've had lately.

After I finished weeding, I made a list, gathered the necessary supplies, and set off on my round of errands.

My first stop was a local tailor shop so I could get the suit pants that @TaraCuda gave me shortened. I also dropped off my favorite pair of  Wrangler jeans to have the broken zipper replaced.

Next on the agenda was a trip to MarBeck to look into having my old vacuum cleaner repaired. A while back I made the mistake of buying a cheapo new vacuum cleaner at Target and I've hated it from day one. Fortunately, I'd hung onto my broken Hoover and the repair shop guy said it would be as good as new with $50 of parts and labor. Woohoo!

On my way back toward home I finally picked up a Father's Day gift for my dad: Aqua Teen Hunger Force Season One on DVD (yes, my 79-year-old dad loves that show, believe it or not). Then I stopped at two grocery stores, and now I've swung by home to drop off the perishables before I go to Lowe's for gravel and fill dirt to deal with the washout from the droopy guttering I had fixed the other day.

I strongly suspect that my enthusiasm for today's activities will quickly run out once I've hefted around all the heavy bags of rocks and dirt in the 90-degree heat.

What have you been up to today? Have any fun weekend plans?

If you count last weekend, today is the beginning of my sixth day off work. I have not exactly been making the most of my time.

Being sick doesn't help. It makes me averse to doing anything outdoors, which means that trips to the zoo and botanical gardens are off the list. I have also failed to get any gardening done. However, I got to sit in the air-conditioned comfort of my own office while other people repaired and cleaned my gutters and mowed my lawn yesterday, so there's that.

I did make it to one of the restaurants I wanted to go to, and A Librarian and I are hitting another one for lunch today. The only other thing left on my vacation food list is to bake some sourdough bread with my new starter.

Earlier in the week I took my sister, niece and nephew to the Dinosaurs Unearthed
exhibit at Kansas City's Union Station, thanks to
tickets provided free by their PR firm. 

They had lots of animatronic dinosaurs that moved and roared when
you triggered the motion sensors. The exhibit also showed the work that
paleontologists do to find, dig up, preserve and even mold and copy
dinosaur bones, which was interesting. For me, the highlight was the
depiction of various dinosaurs with feathers.

For years I've been reading that many dinosaurs and birds are now
thought to be closely related, but this is the first time I'd seen a
museum-type display that showed what a fuzzy baby T-Rex might have looked
like. They even showed "traditional" and updated velociraptor depictions
side by side. The new scientific view, based on fossil evidence of
feathers, suggests that they looked less like scaly lizards and more
like the huge bird of your nightmares.

My husband and I are having trouble finding the time to hang out together because his
sleep schedule is completely the opposite of mine. Last night I finally took him to see "Iron Man 2," which we both enjoyed.

I started taking the prednisone yesterday and it is already making me cranky and a pain to be around. I picked a fight about laundry last night. Seriously. And I have ten days left after today.

The good news is that it seems to be helping in that I can now take a breath without feeling the air burning through my bronchial tubes.

The hubby and I both have a reasonable amount of free time this afternoon and most of the day tomorrow, so we're going to try to make it to the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Kemper Museum. I was also thinking this would be a good opportunity to finally visit the Steamboat Arabia Museum, but the tickets are kind of pricey so I think it'll have to wait for another time.

I guess it's time for me to go down and take my morning handful of pills (not to be confused with the ones I take midday or the ones that go with dinner).

How's your week going?

I have now been sick for 18 days. I'm on my second course of antibiotics and my doctor went absolutely bonkers with additional prescriptions, including two inhalers, nasal spray and allergy meds. She thinks that my constantly recurring bouts of bronchitis might be due to a combination of allergies and previously undiagnosed asthma, so the one other prescription she provided was for Prednisone to reduce all the bronchial inflammation.

Ordinarily I am a model patient, but I am terrified of Prednisone. My mom died of lung cancer and my mother-in-law died of pulmonary fibrosis, so I am acutely aware of the side effects: sleeplessness, irritability, weight gain, wonky blood sugar, etc., etc. When I got home from the pharmacy last Friday, I started taking all of the stuff that was supposed to make me better, but I just couldn't bring myself to take the steroids. I filled the prescription – I have the medicine – but I didn't take it.

Well, I'm still not feeling better. I'm not coughing as much as I was but when I do, my chest hurts. I'm also losing a good 4-6 hours per day napping, which is not what I'd call a sign of radiant health. I think I'm going to have to suck it up and just take the prescription. 

So tomorrow I'll start the dosing schedule in the morning. The sleeplessness side effect should eliminate those afternoon naps. I'm hoping that the knowledge that the medicine is going to make me hungry will keep me from catering too much to that side effect and maybe I won't blow up like a balloon.

I suppose I should have talked to my doctor about how freaked out I was about the Prednisone, but I doubt she picked up on the magnitude of my reservations when we were discussing it. But she's the highly trained professional in this scenario and I'm the big chicken who's afraid to gain a couple of pounds. I think she wins.

Have you ever been to a swap party? No, not that kind of swapping. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Last night I met up with eight friends and we each lugged in bags and boxes of stuff that we no longer wanted. The last time I went to one of these, we'd all just brought clothes and shoes. This time, however, there were no limitations.

I'd gotten rid of most of my unwanted clothing at the previous swap, so this time I dug a little deeper. I ended up bringing some of last year's leftover BlogHer swag, a long gown I hadn't worn since 1999, a suit that will probably never fit me again, duplicate sets of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" seasons on DVD, most of the earrings I own (my pierced ears closed up years ago) and a lot of other random stuff that's been sitting around my house for way too long.

I arrived with five bulging bags and came home with two, which I thought was a very satisfactory outcome. I scored a cute top, several necklaces, a suit that will be perfect once I get the slacks hemmed, two candle holders that will work well outdoors, and two hanging planters.

I was tempted to arm-wrestle A Librarian for the mandoline slicer that someone brought, but I decided to let her be the one to risk shaving off precious epidermis with it.

We didn't have a particularly organized method for claiming items. The bringer would hold up each item and the first person to express an interest was likely to go home with it, unless it was a clothing item that didn't fit.

Everything that went unclaimed at the end will be donated to an upcoming charity garage sale. So not only did we get the satisfaction of sharing with friends, but we'll also help a good cause. I like that.

Today you'll find me guest blogging at The 3 R's Blog while Florinda is on vacation. I was going to leave this post at that, but I figured I might as well talk about my weekend a bit while I'm here.

On Saturday morning, I went to an Intro to Sheetrocking class at K2 Workshops. There was only one other student, so it was a great learning opportunity and I am now confident that I can handle a sheetrocking project by myself. I have a basement wall in mind already.

Later in the day when my husband got up, we went and saw The A-Team. I loved that show when I was a kid, and the movie didn't disappoint. It's certainly nothing I'll be pondering at length, but it was a fun popcorn flick and an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours. Best of all, I used up an AMC Theaters gift card I had in my purse and only had to pay $5 for both our tickets.

Sunday was cooking day. I'd seen this recipe for pulled pork on How to Cook Like Your Grandmother earlier in the week and purchased a 13-pound pork shoulder at Costco on Friday. After a quick grocery store trip in the morning, I had the meat in the oven by 9 a.m. It cooked for nine hours and the sandwiches were delicious! I froze a lot of the pork, but I probably need to give away some of what's in the fridge.

One little wrinkle: some of the juice from the pan spilled into the oven. I didn't think it was a big deal until I turned up the oven temperature and tried bake some French fries. Now, smoke pouring out of my oven is not that uncommon of an occurrence, but this time I saw the flicker of flames through the oven window.

I opened the oven door, dashed some baking soda onto the flames to put them out, then turned off the oven and went to McDonald's for fries. The cleanup will have to wait for another day.

Speaking of cooking, Erica Jurney has a new site called Hand Make It where she's selling sourdough starter. It's been a long time since I last played around with sourdough, so I ended up being her first customer after I heard about it on Twitter. I'm looking forward to branching out in my bread-making – without setting any fires, I hope.

I'm still waiting to recover completely from the bronchitis/sinus funk I came down with last week. It's been more than two weeks since I've slept through the night without a dose of cough medicine. I'm sure the weather isn't helping. It's either been a bazillion degrees with high humidity or thunderstorming heavily. Not good.

What did you do this weekend? Anything fun?

Even though I've claimed that I want to spend my upcoming vacation at home (I know what word you're thinking of and I refuse to use it) doing nothing, in reality I have a whole bunch of things I'd like to do:

• Go to the zoo
• Visit Powell Gardens
• Have lunch at El Camino Real
• Watch the most recent season of "Glee" (it's all DVRed and ready)
• Have lunch at Andre's
• Take lots of yoga classes at my regular studio and my sister's studio
• Start my boot camp workouts
• See some movies (both at the theater and on DVD)

I'm sure I'll think of more things, but that's a solid start to what I have in mind.

The only problem is that I'd like my husband to be able to join me for most of these activities, yet he goes to bed when I get up and sleeps until mid to late afternoon. That'll make things a bit tricky. I'm hoping he's willing to adjust his schedule slightly so we can hang out together more.

If he can't make that happen, I guess I'll use the long mornings to read and drink coffee. Sounds like a good plan to me.

[Clarification: I know it sounds like this vacation is imminent, but actually it's not until the week after next. I'm just excited about it, that's all.]

I've now missed two days at the office because surely my co-workers do not want me around hacking germs into our shared airspace. Plus, when I start feeling poorly at home, I can just go lie down on the floor until my energy levels improve. I believe they may frown upon that at work.

Yesterday I made it into the doctor's office, only to be given the exact diagnosis and prescriptions I received about six weeks ago. So it's another bout of bronchitis and so far the medicines are accomplishing absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.

I'm actually getting work done, believe it or not. There's nothing like uninterrupted home office time when you need to burn through a bunch of minor projects. I'm still counting most of the past two days as sick time, but at least I've accomplished a few things and managed to phone into the few meetings I had.

Dr. Jones and Trillian spend the early mornings all riled up, but fortunately they sleep all day long. Here's Dr. Jones trying to catch the birds he hears outside. He thinks that if he climbs up high, he can reach them.

Trillian is wont to steal my chair when I get up, but she's mostly content to sleep in her little bed on my desk.

Isn't she beautifully shiny?

I'm hoping that tomorrow is a turning point and I can muster the energy to work all day at the office. I have a lot of meetings and some tasks that require my physical presence.

Man, I'm tired of being sick. Any tips for boosting my immune system so that I'm not such a delicate flower from now on?

I'm sick again. For the fourth time in 2010. This time I picked up a virus (probably from my bass player while we were doing a recording session last weekend) and it settled immediately into my chest, as per usual. On Friday afternoon I started feeling all the signs of impending doom, so I canceled my evening plans and stayed home to rest.

Then there was Saturday. I had some plans that I didn't want to cancel. They were strenuous plans, and I went through with them using every ounce of energy I could muster.

In the afternoon, my sister and I were booked into a two-and-a-half hour yoga workshop with Sadie Nardini. The room was packed full of people and it had to have been at least 90 degrees in there. I poured sweat the whole time and tried valiantly not to cough as we did challenging exercises designed to work your psoas muscles.

Let's just say I was not as in touch with my psoas as I would have liked. When I woke up this morning, my hip flexors and glutes were noticeably sore because I'm pretty sure they jumped in and shouted, "Me! Me!" every time I tried to access my deeper core muscles. Oh well.

As soon as the class was over, we got in my car and hit the road for a three-hour drive to Des Moines, Iowa, for a party celebrating the engagement of one of our third cousins (first cousin twice removed? I never know). I was doing all right on the drive, but once we got to the party I could tell I wasn't going to last long. We stayed about three hours, which was the length of time my on-hand cough drop supply lasted, then headed to our motel to crash.

After nine hours of sleep (aided by leftover codeine cough medicine from the last time I got sick), I felt a little better. We went back to our cousin's house for breakfast and learned that everyone had stayed up until four a.m. Fortified by coffee, breakfast and more cough drops, we headed back to Kansas City.

About an hour or so into the drive, I started incessantly coughing and throat clearing. We stopped off at a Wal-Mart and I picked up some OTC cough pills, which helped quell some of the symptoms while, of course, adding new ones. But I made it home in one piece and crashed until low blood sugar forced me to enlist my husband in joining me for a huge dinner at Cracker Barrel.

Even though I've only been sick for a couple of days, I think I'd better try to get a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I wish I could figure out why my immune system is so lousy these days. 

Right now my entire life is focused on making it to the week of vacation I have from June 21-25. I am staying home and my plan is to relax and do absolutely nothing. In the meantime, I need to get well so I can enjoy my time off.

So what's up with you this weekend?

Well, the four-day experiment of living life in the physical world is drawing to a close. Except for occasional glances at my e-mail, I stayed off the Internet from Thursday evening until now.

I won't lie to you, Friday morning was tough. I went to breakfast by myself, sans cell phone, and I felt positively twitchy. I hadn't realized how thoroughly my brain had become wired to constantly compose 140-character narrations of my every thought and activity.

Once I got home, I started looking around the house and discovering the ramifications of living life absorbed by a glowing screen.

First of all, every light fixture globe and candle holder in the entire house was fuzzy with dust. I took them all down and ran them through the dishwasher.

I thoroughly scrubbed the slate floor in the kitchen and hallway and let it dry overnight so I could seal it with semi-gloss acrylic. Man, was it overdue, but it looks amazing now.

Our shower was next on the agenda. It turns out that Tilex really works on mildewy grout…but you have to have an amazing capacity to hold your breath while you're spraying it. I liked the shower results so much, I bleached the bathroom floor with Tilex the following day. The grout hasn't been that white since the tile was newly laid.

I'd thought my dressing room wasn't too bad until I really started digging in. I had a ridiculous amount of junk mail stashed all over in bags and boxes. In fact, my gigantic recycling container is packed to the top with catalogs, envelopes and magazines.

Things I found in random locations while cleaning:

• My marriage certificate
• Almost a dozen cat toys of various sorts
• A good pair of sunglasses
• Photos from a camping trip I took in 2004
• Last year's end-of-season bill from our lawn guy, payment status unknown
• An envelope full of Brinks Home Security stickers (it was rebranded as Broadview Security in 2008)
• My Blockbuster video card from 1995
• Handfuls of hair ties and barrettes
• Two disposable cameras from 2005 and 2006

In going through all of the junk mail (and there was another cache of it from 2004/2005 in my office), I have learned that direct mail is completely wasted on me. I must have received 25 or more of the same credit card offer from Southwest Airlines in the past five years. I also had a zillion charity outreach mailings containing ugly address labels with coins glued inside the envelope. By the time I'd eviscerated all of the mail in the piles, I must have had close to a dollar from those mailings alone. I had never opened a single one of the envelopes until it came time to throw them away.

My office was the room that ultimately defeated me. I might have had a fighting chance to get it finished by the end of the weekend, but my husband and I took some time to have a couple of restaurant meals and even play miniature golf one afternoon. We also recorded a demo song with my band, hung out briefly with friends, and watched some DVDs that we need to return to the guy who lent them to us. We had a great time, but those activities ate up precious time that I could have spent cleaning.

The office is *this* close, though. Just a couple more hours and I'll have the last tub o' stuff unpacked and dealt with, and the piles of junk on my desk sorted and appropriately distributed.

One thing I can say for sure: I would never have gotten this much work done if I'd allowed myself access to the Internet this weekend. Every time I needed a little break, I just sat down and rested for a few minutes or played with the cats. If I'd gotten started scrolling through Facebook or reading my RSS feeds, I'd never have gotten back to work.

I think the key moving forward is going to be in limiting the times and duration of my web surfing. Instead of running upstairs to get online in the morning, I need to be putting on my sneakers and literally running out the door and down the street. When I get home, rather than checking my e-mail right away, I need to sort the snail mail and decide what goes in the recycle bin or shredder and what needs to be dealt with in some other way.

Can I do it? Well, let's hope so. At least now I know it can be done.