We had a beautiful weekend.  My sister, S, came in with her bf.  On Friday we ate dinner and made a Sarris ice cream parlor run then on Saturday we took a walk around Peter's lake, made a three stop cruise between local breweries, and finished up with dinner.  It's been a while since I've gotten to see her, so it was a highlight.

The temps have cooled back off but I did get a few more seeds in pots (basil, beans, cukes, peppers) and I sprinkled some chive in a little area beside the wall out back with the hopes they will proliferate.

I also got a few Easter decorations up inside and switched out my kitchen curtain for the birds instead of the snowflakes.  Welcome spring and summer!  I've been gathering goodies for Easter, but I need to inventory to see what gaps I have.  In addition to helping the Easter bunny out, our neighbors are repeating last year's Easter egg hunt, so I am trying to get the right things pulled together for that squad, with something special for each kid - this isn't as easy as I thought given we have from 1 yo to 14 yo to account for.

This morning I realized I should have returned Avery's switch game to the library so I guess I need to run out today -- and pay a fine.  The last tax bill check cleared, so I'm done with all of that until September.

I took a moment to step out today and dropped one container of carrot seeds, one container of beet seeds, and one small container of lettuce seeds.  I also watered the pepper and asparagus plants that are sitting in the basement waiting to go back outside.  It looks like everything in the basement is dead, but I have persisted and I'm glad I have as today I spotted a little scrawny asparagus in the pot!  I didn't cut back the fronds last fall as I was afraid I would do "too much", but I will do so as soon as I can get that pot outside.

The drips at the hot water tank are from the drain release.  It isn't a large amount of water, so that's a relief.

Not to be out done, and perhaps a curse of me speaking it into the universe that many items in this house are probably creeping towards end of life, the keurig, the dryer, and the fridge all gave me a moment in the past week.  The pump on the keurig wasn't stopping after the water was exhausted to brew the cup of coffee.  Fortunately, after descaling and giving it a bit of time this resolved itself (for now).  The dryer threw a code when steam sanitizing an item that indicated there was an exhaust flow issue.  After last year's shenanigans with the vent cleaning tool breaking off I call bull.  It has since been running without complaint. Then I pulled a bottle off of the door where the ice maker is and found about a quarter cup of water in the tray.  I sopped it up and reseated the door that opens to tend to the ice maker and it took hasn't provided angst since.  I'm not going to remain this lucky for long, I'm not stupid.

I never got the second estimate on flooring that I was waiting for, but they did leave a message.  I need to stop back up there and clarify my want for the estimate w/ my current selection.  I had a third place come and measure just for the non-carpet flooring.  That came in at the same price as the place I expected to be pricy (where I picked an acceptable, but not love it option)... but they have a laundry list of things they don't do.  For example, I would need to go buy and stain/paint replacement quarter round and I would need to have the plumber to reconnect the toilet and the fridge's water supply.  (sigh) This whole thing is frustrating.

There was some water under the hot water tank earlier this afternoon - of course there was, right?

With the brief nice temps I tucked all of the sprouting potatoes into pots.  I also had a tomato that had seeds trying to grow.  When I sliced away that portion I also put those i to a bit of dirt to see what comes of it.  Tonight I should prb cover them all.

If you've ever watched Office Space you understand when I say TPS reports.  Well, you're aware, even if you don't fully understand... but if you understand, you understand.  My present TPS report is people copied on emails.

I got an email forwarded to me that I needed to take action on.  The guidance was explicitly to reply to everyone on that email.  Ok, no problem.  I send one message and get a call from a subcon saying this other email needs to be on all communications and sounding a bit like I slighted someone.  Ok, fine.  Subsequent emails on this discussion include said email address.  Now I got an email from someone else from the original email asking me to include another email address on all of these communications.  Why weren't either of these emails on the original request?  Why do I feel like I somehow made a mistake?  It's hard to keep track of now 11 recipients.  If someone drops one of them off of an email, do I need to readd them?

Meh.  So much time is lost to ridiculousness in business.  Why do we have to include every friggin person on a team for every meeting -- but then restrict to a subset of people that are on certain conversations which result in confusion and questions later from the people left off?

On a brighter note, today was "decade day", so we geared Avery up for the 80s at school.  She's got the oversized Atari shirt with the sleeves rolled, silver parachute-style pants, fluorescent shoes and bracelets, the side pony with a bit of blue color, and blue eyeshadow.  She is the very definition of Totally Awesome.

aaaand it's snowing again.  At least we had a nice weekend, mostly.  There were some pretty wicked wind and storms that came through,  While I didn't get an alert on my phone we did head to the basement briefly when it started to hail yesterday.

On Saturday I swung into yet another flooring place since I have yet to get an estimate from the one that has been here twice.  They had choices I hadn't seen before, but again, none of them landed in the "I love it" category, even after bringing three samples home.

What is it about me that allows some folks to take advantage of my willingness to offer a bit of grace?  Here are two cases that stand out to me - let me know if I am the ahole.  I will note that both people are super pleasant folks that I really like.  They weren't mean, but it was death by 1000 cuts.

The first ended over a year ago.  I had someone offering a routine/repeat service here at the house.  We would schedule and even confirm within the week before every month or so.  Then within a day or so of the scheduled time I would get the text "can I shift from morning to afternoon or afternoon to morning", "can I move you to this day instead" etc.  No big deal 99% of the time and the answer was always "no problem".  Peppered in here was always a "are you healthy" message or two before appointments, which I get to an extent, but it annoyed me - and I would totally message you and say "we're sick" if I needed to and I assured them of this.

Over time my eyes would roll a bit when the text came in because of course it did.  Then there was that 1% of the time when I was depending on the service occurring on that scheduled date before having guests here at the house.  On this occasion it was a "can we reschedule, I'm afraid of getting sick".  We weren't sick mind you.  Yes, it was during flu season, but that's several months of the year and this service does necessitate you entering people's homes.  This left me in a bind and in a rush to take care of things on my own leading up to the holidays and company.

When they messaged the next month they expressed feeling really bad about not coming etc.  But I simply indicated that it's still flu season and we will just bow out.  A month later they messaged again and asked if I wanted said service.  I repeated that we would wait until flu season ended.  By late spring I got used to not spending the money and sucking up and doing this activity myself, so I never bothered to start things back up.  I'd like to get someone back in for this service, but I've put it off, and damnit -- I don't want set up for the same cycle again.  Am I the ahole?

The second scenario is playing out right now.  It involves a weekly lesson for kiddo.  Scheduled late summer 2024 and agreed upon a date and time each week.  We ended up going less than 50% of the time, and it wasn't me cancelling... but ok.  Girl never developed a routine and never grew interested (probably because of the irregularity).  Each time there was a cancel there was an offer for a different day of the week.  I always replied indicating "no thanks", "we'll see you next week", and often noting when the offered time conflicted with other commitments.

Now their schedule has changed completely.  The first message was a spam to several 'students' indicating this changed schedule and noting that lessons could not start before X time, let me know available times.  Well, good news, our time was exactly X time -- we should be good.  Today I get a text offering us the X+1 hour time slot and I replied indicating "I must have misread.  If you are still able to start at 530 we'd rather keep our set time."

I admit, the reply pissed me off because it indicated the person with the X-1 hour time slot wanted our time and already picked it.  That they were "going first come first serve".  Pretty sure August-September 2024 comes before March 2025.  The next text reiterates the X+1 hour time and times on another day of the week.  At this point I feel jerked around, despite being obscenely accommodating for the past 5 months.  Am I the ahole if I'm just out at this point?  Why should I change both my and my kid's schedule around in order to accommodate another student that wanted to take our slot?

We are getting small tastes of nice weather again and I'm so here for it.  As much as I loathe changing the clocks and it makes me rather grumpy when the alarm goes off for a few days the later sunlight time is welcome.

The other little thing bringing me joy is that I bought the green onions I needed to make the corn dip I took to holiday gatherings again.  It's so good!  I will be using some of my little lunch break to mix it up.

I feel stuck.  Having home owners insurance and two tax bills arrive, I haven't seen my slush fund incrementing as I would have anticipated in the past two months.  The good news is that I did get a bit of a tax refund to offset some of it, or it wouldn't have just been stagnant growth it would have been negative.

My brain is twirling with smaller improvement ideas, but I have to keep them at bay and put my eyes on the prize.  I wish I was passionately excited about one of my flooring options.  I did have the second provider return, and he disagrees that a glue-down would be required.  While this opens more options in flooring selection it also makes even more doubts and second guessing swirl.

One perk of having been sick is that my appetite was way down.  I've decided to try and embrace this as a leaping off point, not allowing myself to return to post-ick consumption.  The scale is responding, for now - I know losing weight this way is short lived; I am hoping it serves as motivation.  I definitely saw my first robin w/o his friends earlier this week.  I am hoping nicer weather will inspire me too.  Of course, this just reminds me that I'm behind as I haven't put a single seed into dirt yet.

I purchased some snow crab legs for dinner tonight - I haven't bought those in many years but thought "what the heck" when I spotted them on sale.  It'll be fun to see what Avery thinks.  She does like a california roll, so this should be better, right?

I didn't escape the cooties.  I have spent a few days feeling very cold but without a fever along with a general lethargy and very heavy/tired eyes.  Last night I was literally crawling into bed at 7:30 and I enjoyed every minute of sleep.

The most annoying part is that there is crud draining which has my cough /sore throat firing up again.  While most of my cough went away at the start of February (after torturing me for the full month of January) I periodically had a hack.  I guess I'm to the point where I should consider a trip to the doctor for the cough, but I see the sinus drainage correlation, so maybe it isn't worth it.  It also isn't in my lungs, it's truly in my throat, but I do worry about any type of lung issues.

I've been trying to power through two shows on Netflix.  It's been a while since I found something there worth watching - go figure my favorite egg plans on canceling his subscription the second I find things to watch  The first, Resident Alien, came recommended from one of my Starbucks friends.  The second is Six Feet Under which I found my happenstance.  They aren't earth shattering, but I'm enjoying them.

Girl seemed to be doing well mid-day yesterday but then her eyes started to tear again and looked red.  Looking online for guidance I pulled out the lubricating eye drops I had in our emergency medical supplies and gave her a warm compress.  I called her pediatrician late in the afternoon to see if I should take her in somewhere (concerned about pink eye) and learned that this is basically what has been going around and that it is likely to come and go in waves.  I also learned that I took the right action on the eyes, so that's reassuring.  They also advocated for ibuprofen rather than acetaminophen (tylenol), which was fortunately available via the nearest Walgreens.  I guess since the fever was low enough I needed to let it ride.  I also snagged some ear drops as I noticed this gap in my emergency supplies after a neighbor highlighted this symptom as an issue she was having in her household.

I post all of this to spread the word in some capacity.  Either way, she was 110% herself at bed time last night and seemed a-ok this morning, so off to school she went.  I'm hoping we don't ride the roller coaster the pediatrician's office warned me of, but I guess we'll see.

As for me, I have a dentist appointment today.  Wish me luck.

This is a first - kiddo stayed home from school today.  She just wasn't herself all day yesterday.  Then she became very tired late in the afternoon and was reading a fever.  She went to bed super early (at her request).  This also means she was up super early today.  I came down (about 15 minutes before her alarm was set for) to find her fully dressed for school and watching TV.  Given the fever late in the day yesterday, I had her stay home.  Hopefully this is just a quick thing and I don't get this gift.  I've heard so many people going back and forth with the sick that's been going around - I admit, I'm a bit nervous.  I guess that's my reminder to go give her more vitamins and emergen-c.

Flooring update - I'm exasperated.  I had a second location measure.  They indicated that I would need to do glue-down (due to spotting a bowing in the floor in my hallway).  This, of course, reduces the options I have significantly.  It wiped out all but one flooring option I had liked the look of at that location.  The one that remains?  Yep, it's one of their most expensive flooring options.  While I didn't have an idea of a $ amount, I am in complete sticker shock.  It would wipe out my entire slush fund and a bit more.  They offer 0% financing, but I was really hoping to not need to go in such directions.

The first place that measured didn't notice any issue with the floor.  Because I haven't picked something they haven't given me any pricing, which is a bit frustrating.  I've been back and forth from there bringing home samples to look at.  I am just not finding something I like that looks ok (in my opinion) with both my cabinets and counter tops.  Too gray, too beige, too busy, too plain.  I am officially the flooring Goldilocks.