Here we are, Avery's last day of Easter/Spring break.  It's the final stretch to end 1st grade, which is crazy.  I've encouraged her to sleep in yesterday and today before we get back to the typical grind.  She was definitely ready for a break and is soaking up some time on the couch.

Break started with the resurrection party at her school and I got to go help with that.  It was fun and the kids seemed to enjoy it.  It's always good to get another glimpse at the kids and to see how each behaves.  It's kind of funny that I knew who some were just by things they said or did.  This gave me half a day off of work.  I chose to take half of the next day (Thursday) off and all of Friday.  I am so proud that I didn't even boot the computer on Friday.

On Thursday we tried to go to the basketball clinic that Avery has been participating in but only a few of us pulled up and no one came to unlock the school.  I guess we didn't get the memo?  If you say 9 weeks, start this date and end this date and that counts out to 9 weeks I assume it's happening.  This was a bummer as we would have done something else that evening had I known.

Instead we got up early and went to a 9am showing of King of Kings on Good Friday.  It was excellent.  Engaging and entertaining for me as an adult, but also full of stories from Jesus' life and a well done depiction of his death for children, which is a tough thing to try and present.  We repeated a little craft we did when Avery was much younger, creating bunnies out of a tracing of her hand - and boy have those bunnies grown.

Saturday we had a bit of running to do but then made our way to the Canonsburg Easter Egg hunt.  It's always a good time and the girl left with lots of goodies.  Then we stuck around to hang out at the park a while with her bestie.  The weather was fantastic.

Sunday after hunting her eggs here and going to church we prepared some goodies to take with us for Easter dinner.  It was at the near Aunt/Uncle's place, so that saved travel time.  A neighbor had gifted us two very large containers of cherry tomatoes.  We put them to use roasting them with olive oil and garlic and then mixing them up with mozz.  I also had a burr about banana pudding and ended up making a way too large batch of that to take with us (and eat for the next week apparently).

Yesterday and today I am back at work in the mornings.  It being our final hurrah I need to come up with something good to do this afternoon.  As a bus just went by it looks like the other neighborhood kids returned to school today.  Hopefully the weather holds so we can go enjoy it.

I hope you had a blessed Easter.  He is Risen!

We have had so much rain.  The grass is green, lush, and TALL.  Unfortunately, it's too much rain to actually mow.  But I had to get things in order for our neighborhood Easter egg hunt tomorrow.  It's a lot easier to ensure the poops are scooped if the grass is trimmed, so out came the weed eater.  I needed to pull out the leaf blower to get everything that accumulated below the deck cleared away anyhow.  So my quick "I'll just go scoop poop" turned into a couple of hours of work outside.  I am feeling accomplished with something that is long over due.

While out there I realized the robins have been busy - and there is already a nest built under my deck!  No eggs yet.  This reminds me that the time to put hummingbird food out is nearing, but the weather is still calling for some rather cold moments in the next week.

Update:  as I am typing this the new lawn care guys came.  I knew they had intended to start mowing in April, but hadn't heard more from them.  I'm glad I was here (to open the gate and pay them).  I'm glad I had already scooped poop.  But I guess some of my effort this morning was a bit of a waste.  It's ok, I could use the exercise.

Cats.  Why are they obsessed with hiding so I accidentally trap them in my bedroom in the morning?  One might also ask why I am so inattentive that I don't notice for a few hours.  In my defense I gotta get the kid off to school and then the calls and meetings start.

It's most noticeable when Church is trapped because he isn't waltzing between me and my keyboard around 10am.  This is what triggered me to notice his absence earlier this week. I left him out and he promptly went to get the breakfast he missed to find an empty bowl (oh Barney, you little piglet).  Today it was Barnabas that didn't come running when it was treat time.  I left him out and went to check the food bowls presuming I would need to hook him up with some kibble.  My charming Church didn't touch Barnabas' food until that very moment when he decided "wait, I gotta try and eat this up so he doesn't get it".

Last night Barnabas was kind (?) enough to point out to me that the present from the dog mentioned in my previous post still offends him.  He was jumping over the spot and trying to cover it with the rest of the carpet.  Roger that Barney, I'll pull out the rug scrubber and try again.

* GROSSNESS WARNING *

 

Barf. Oh yeah, that's why I stopped giving bones etc to my dogs a long time ago.  Silly me, I gave Zero a bone on the deck yesterday to keep him happy and quiet while we had company here.  Today we have vomit.  Noxious, make you gag strong vomit.  Soupy, hard to clean up vomit.  The first huge puddle was ejected in the living room, because of course it was.  Several more pools formed outside on the concrete while I attempted to rinse the bulk of it from my cleaning rags before putting them in the washing machine.  The house smells like a cesspool despite cleaning to the best of my ability.

This level of gross happened out of the blue once before in my dining room a few months back and I had not provided anything of the sort to him.  As I am trying to replace flooring in the near term, please don't allow this to be a routine thing.  I just can't.

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?