One of my resolutions was to write here once a week; I’ll let you decide if I’ve already failed.
My last post here was on January 1st. On January 2nd, I woke up with severe pain in my chest – specifically my right chest muscle. I didn’t have any difficulty breathing and my heart rate was fine and I was lucid and all that – it just hurt to be awake and even more to move. I’ve broken a rib before (amateur boxing was involved) and this felt quite similar to that. Long story short, somehow I managed to bruise a rib in my sleep.
Of course, this was just in time for a return to work with extended hours after the winter break. Long story short: we had to preemptively use PTO for January 2nd, but the hours worked Wednesday-Saturday gave us nine hours overtime, so our PTO was retroactively given back to us. Well, I still got a couple hours overtime since I had to be in a half hour earlier than anyone else and I’m not going to encourage wage theft.
So I started feeling better on Friday and only worked 3.5 hours on Saturday and when I came home I sneezed and realized I may be coming down with a cold. Not surprising, as Krystal had a cold while my ribs were doing their thing. How kind of it to wait its turn.
The good news was that I knew some OTC medication that would help; the bad news was that my entire weekend was spent in medicated sleep. Which maybe I needed after spending four days sleeping in the recliner in forty-five minute increments.
Then the work week started on Monday and while there weren’t extended hours it was busier as it was the start of a semester so the days seemed longer.
Well, Monday did.
Tuesday we closed early due to a bad storm with severe flooding predicted, and went home already with a delayed start on Wednesday. The storm was brutal and though we personally fared okay many more were without power on Wednesday morning, so many that the school system declared a “remote day” and we closed entirely for the day.
I’m not sure how a remote day is supposed to work when lots of places don’t have power, and I really wish the schools would see the value of actually CANCELLING SCHOOL once in a while instead of seeing technology as a way to be “always on” and save calendar days. But I’m not longer teaching, so . . .
It felt good to have off for our anniversary; it was a pity Krystal did not have off but her work was open for office personnel. That night we went out for supper at out favorite Indian place. I had chana masala – “garbanzo beans sautéed with spices in kadai, a traditional Indian wok” according to the menu. We also split a big serving of cheese naan.
Supper on Thursday night didn’t go so well. Krystal wanted tomato biscuits, with the biscuits coming from Bojangles.
Now, I’m used to getting my order wrong from Bojangles: they almost never include my sauce and they have a 50/50 chance of getting the side item right and of course straws are never in the box like they’re supposed to be, but this took the cake. Instead of the 12 biscuits I ordered, I got four biscuits and a bunch of chicken I wouldn’t really eat because chicken (or any meat) on the bone is gross to me and Krystal.
I was frustrated after a long day, and I got very good advice to wait to deal with things until the next day (Friday). I threw it all in a ziplock bag & tossed it in the fridge. After work on Friday I ripped off all easily accessible meat; everything else went into a pot w/ vegetable stuff to make stock.
I cut up the chicken and tossed it in the cast iron with the bolstered stock, a can of cream of chicken soup, yellow rice, and hearty dashes of Nature’s Seasoning & let it cook for about half an hour.
One of the reasons I was so frustrated on Thursday was that I failed to get the new Year of the Dragon Pusheen plush. It wasn’t a necessity; I was more disappointed with the customer service – or lack thereof – during a limited time drop.
I was on the site at release time. Got it in my cart and went to check out with my saved information in the Shopify app like I usually do. I then tried for twenty minutes to check out, only to be cycled back to a captcha. This happened at least thirty times, and yes I kept count.
After twenty minutes I saw on Instagram – not the website itself where it was still telling me I could check out – that they were sold out and would not be releasing more.
There was a limited number of 1,000 limited to two per person, and within thirty minutes of the drop and twenty minutes after selling out there were 22 or more on eBay with $150 price tags (original was $30 USD).
Again, I didn’t have my heart set on this, but I am disappointed with the terrible user experience.
Yesterday was Saturday and I got a simmer pot going. It pulled double duty to decrystallize my last jar of wild Pennsylvania honey, which among other things will make rich honey simple for the construction of a few Bees Knees cocktails, which I’ve taken to drinking out of empty strawberry-rhubarb jam jars.
I’ve decided I want a tattoo of a mason kar labeled in my mom’s handwriting; how cute and wholesome and unique is that?
I have been making headway on some of my other resolutions. I’ve read three books already: Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, and Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.
I’ve also started to journal by keeping a commonplace book.
I filled four pages with words I’ve found over the past few months – I even made a mistake & crossed it out & the journal did not burst into flames. Maybe I can do this daily journaling thing after all, even if I am working up to it by copying others’ words for now.
Today I had a pleasant experience online. I interacted with a post by John Scalzi (who you may remember is one of my favorite living authors) about making friends. I vented some frustration with those that say folks of the opposite gender cannot be friends, and he quoted Taylor Swift to me, telling me to “shake ‘em off, Jay!”
I keep reminding myself I have off tomorrow – even after almost four years I still haven’t got the hang of having Martin Luther King day off from work. Hopefully I will remember tomorrow morning when my body tries to run on autopilot.
But the question remains: did I keep my resolution of posting every week? Today is the fourteenth, so I’m just within the last few hours of the two-week window since my last post – meaning I posted at the very beginning of week one and the very end of week two. According to my calendar I might not have made it; it tells me that weeks run Sunday-Saturday BUT there are other calendars that begin on Monday AND Saturday and Sunday are collectively known as the WEEKEND.
Did I make it? I say yes, but I’m biased.
What have you been up to?
Running In My Head 