Yee-haw and, you know, howdy and stuff. Here I am, safely* in Missouri. For those interested, it's been a non-adventure so far. Meaning--all has gone well and no disasters.
I flew into K.C. on Friday, to be met by the L-i-K-S and a series of thunderstorms that made us both quickly agree that starting a long highway drive just at that time was a bad idea. Instead, we called Rapunzel and Pippi and invited them to meet us for dinner. I was very happy about that, since I hadn't been sure I'd have any time to see them on this trip.
After dinner, Rapunzel went off to work and the L-i-K-S and Pippi and I sidetracked through a couple of bookstores on our way back to a peaceful evening at their place. I didn't buy any books. I'm rather proud of that. So frugal! (Maybe it was just the security of knowing I had eight books, nine DVDs, and an internet-enabled laptop with me already.)
After that, a quiet evening at their place. They have a Dog-Inna-Box they needed to let out when we got there and he seemed to be very happy to have company. He insisted on smelling me. Many times. Later, after that palled and I was roaming around in my pj's, he took to sneaking up behind me and putting his cold nose on the backs of my knees. I was starting to think that the Dog-Inna-Box should have stayed inna box, but he really was just being friendly and he was very well trained, in all matters that did not involve smelling.
They have two cats, too. The cats, as cats will, ignored me. I like cats.
Pippi wasn't working that evening, so she took an hour out of her busy teenager's schedule to do my hair for me. She got a hair-straightener-gizmo for Christmas and apparently loves playing with it. I have to admit, my hair really did look great. I could use that gizmo now, after two days of washing my hair in the water at Mom's place. I look scary.
Later, Rapunzel was off work, so I tracked her down in her room and made her talk books with me for an hour or so. I don't get a lot of chances to chat with the girls face-to-face, so it really was a nice evening.
The L-i-K-S and I drove down here, to the Joplin area, on Saturday morning.
Getting right down to it, Mom looked--old and ill. Granted, she's 73 and has health problems, but it's still a shock when you haven't seen an elderly person in a couple of years*, to see the changes.
Much of that, of course, is the effects of the hospital stay. It takes longer, as you get older, to shake off the residual medications and stuff. Especially if they're feeding you oddball drugs so they can do tests.
The arrangement with her sister and brother-in-law, Billy Jo and Billy Bob, seems to be working for her so far. She has a little bedroom with a bathroom right off of it, like a little guest suite, and she can get from one to the other in two steps. She has a hospital bed, a walker, and a wheelchair, for getting around.
Everyone's being kind and rallying 'round. They do that. They fuss and fight and feud with each other endlessly, just like the stereotypical backwoods family, but when there's a crisis, everyone rallys around in an amazing fashion.
The first day or two, pretty much all of her surviving siblings showed up to visit (no small number in a bunch that originally had ten people), some with spouses. Billy Jo's two kids showed up, one towing a spouse and 7 month-old baby. Billy Jean's two kids showed up as well. My own brother, Pest Boy, turned up later that first evening. I think we wore her out with too much excitement, but she did like seeing everyone.
Mom seems to be stronger and a bit more alert every day. She's come to terms with the diagnosis in a way that surprised me at first, before I remembered the rallying 'round in a crisis mode they all possess. In a woman who's been known, in the last ten years, to argue with you because you mentioned, just in passing, that the sky was blue, it's a relief to see that she's not going to fight the diagnosis or the steps we need to take to keep her safe.
She's not happy about it, but that would be ridiculous, so that's okay. They have things set up to try and give her as much independence as possible, and all of this crowd, or at least the older generation of it, has a certain amount of experience in nursing the elderly, the ill, and the terminal, so they're not wigged out by the necessities of the situation.
Much still needs to be done. At some point they're going to have an estate sale to get rid of her furniture and knick-knacks and stuff in her trailer, then she'll sell it, but not for a couple of months, until things really settle down. (I don't think she's ready to 100% accept that she'll never be able to come "home" again.) In the meantime, her trailer gives me and other visiting offspring a place to stay, so that's working out okay for us right now.
I still wish we could bundle her up and haul her back to Colorado, where we could see her every day, but that's just not the right thing to do. She's finally found a really good doctor who runs a clinic that specializes in neuromuscular diseases. Mom doesn't want to leave him, and I don't blame her. Also, she lives with people who don't work for a living, so they're around 24/7 in case she needs anything or just wants to chat with someone. That's good for her as well.
She has most of the necessary financial and future arrangements paperwork done, according to her. I haven't prowled around her desk yet to make sure the papers really exist and she wasn't just thinking she'd done them, but I guess that will be necessary one day this week. The only paper she hasn't done is the medical one, what to do in extreme cases sort of thing. She's supposed to do it this week.
Aside from that, we need to make a few financial arrangements around her living with Billy Jo and Billy Bob. So far I can't get them to discuss it with me, but we need to pay them for taking care of her. They don't feel it's right to be paid for taking care of family, but we're trying to get them to see that Mom, if we let her be a part of these conversations, would want to feel she's contributing and not being a drain on their slender resources. That's a battle I'll have to keep fighting this week.
And now, I'm on dial-up, so I'd better stop before this entry goes to a length that will choke the phone lines. (Dial-up. How primitive.)
Also, there is a dead beetle in the bathtub. Now that it's daylight, I need to deal with it.
___________________________
* "Safely." Hah. This place is alive. There are bugs of all sorts, lurking in every nook and cranny of this part of the country, just waiting to jump out at you. Flying bugs and crawling bugs and biting bugs and stinging bugs and more. I am so not a fan of bugs.
I know what an ecosystem is and I completely understand the place and value of bugs in one. I just don't think people should be living here, amongst it all. We should leave the back woods to the bugs and the critters and let them get on with it.
I am not the stuff the pioneers were made of.
___________________________
** Yes, I know. "How could you let two years go by and not visit your old, widowed mother, Anne?" As a quick reminder, I've been unemployed twice in the last two years. My finances have been a bit shaky.
Internet access now rock-steady and acting as though there was never anything wrong. (No, the Little Man didn't fix it. It fixed itself an hour or so before he showed up. Very embarrassing. Still, he messed around and changed out some cables and stuff, even increasing our speed a bit, so it's all to the good.)
Most of the seeds (we've decided to designate this as the Summer Of Gardening) I planted have sprouted! Hooray! I planted forget-me-nots, marigolds, and sunflowers. It's all very exciting to see the little green shoots unfurling each day.
I very nearly did them in on Wednesday. Expecting the temperatures to be warmer than it turned out to be, I had them sitting outside for hours before I realized the little buds were shivering and nearly shriveling. They all seem okay today, though.
I regret that I won't be around to love them for a week, but the R.C. can be counted on for regular watering and stints in the sunshine. (I swear mine grow faster than hers because I lavish love on mine. She's rather more demanding--offering them regular water and sunshine and then standing over then, asking why they're not sprouting yet.) By the time I get back, half of mine will be ready to move into bigger pots.
In lesser excitement, today's schedule includes laundry and packing for tomorrow's departure. Not exciting, but necessary.
The schedule also includes a bit of housecleaning. Looking around this place, I can really see that I wasn't feeling up to cleaning last week. The dust is an inch thick (she exaggerated without shame) and somehow a pile o'papers has grown on the table next to the chair. I should look at those before I leave town and see if any of them are something I need to deal with.
Other than that, I'm downloading/copying/moving files from the PC to the laptop so I'll have Things To Amuse Me With during my incarceration time.
Anyhow, I'll have the laptop and dial-up access (I think) while I'm in the wilds of Missouri. If all works as planned, I should be able to update at least occasionally.
Internete access remains unreliable. Technician supposed to be dispatched this afternoon.
Mom is out of the hospital and ensconsed in a little bedroom/bathroom set-up at her sister's house.
Final diagnosis? (Diagnosises? Diagnoses?) Lou Gehrig's disease, a mass on one of her adrenal glands, a partially enlarged heart due to blood clots, and an unusual amount of brain damage from her hypertension.
Yes, we feel guilty about not taking charge of her and watching her health over the last two or three years, but when she was feeling well, no one could make her do anything she didn't want to do and what she didn't want to do was lose her independence.
We, along with tens of thousands of other families in the USofA have been struggling with this issue for years. How unhappy are you entitled to make an aging parent under the guise of "taking care of them"?
My health? Quite fine, thank you. As expected, the CAT scan found nothing at all. The "shadow" was just a shadow.
Yesterday's massive storm dropped up to 20" of snow around south and west of the Denver area and in the foothills. Colorado in the spring is such an adventure.
We got snow and rain alternating all day long, but no actual accumulation (the rain melted it). I had to cancel plans to drive to Colorado Springs to have dinner with friends because the highway was closed, but I have new plans for this evening and hope to make it through tonight!
Leaving for Missouri on Friday. I'll be taking the laptop and should have internet access at least once a day.
Nothing new on the job hunt. To be honest, between the health stuff (mine and Mom's) and the internet problems, I haven't had a lot of time to be searching in the last week. Now that I'm leaving town for a week, I'm not sure how much point there is in searching until I get back. I won't be available for interviews.
Being a Lady of Leisure isn't quite turning out the way I'd anticipated.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:42 AM | Comments (2)Our internet access, after being rock-steady for the last six years, has chosen the past few days to become unreliable. Not sure how much I'll be online in the next couple of days. That's kind of a drag for the job-hunting process. Can't search the online sites if you can't stay online.
Just as an update, my CAT scan for the "kidney shadow" is tomorrow morning. I should have results on Tuesday. (I've given up obsessing about it.)
My mother's in the hospital down where she lives. They swear most of her problem is dehydration, which makes sense to me. (Anyone who drinks coffee from 6 am to 9 pm is going to be dehydrated.)
She's arguing the diagnosis, but she'd argue if you told her the sky was blue. Fortunately she has excellent BC/BS "gap" insurance for her Medicare. (And, as it turns out, her healthcare is excellent as well. My dissatisfaction with it turns out to have been based on entirely erroneous information from her about what her caregivers were treating her for and how.
The L-i-K-S drove down from KC this weekend and Mom has a lot of family in the area. I'm flying down there for a week (at least) this coming Friday to see for myself how things stand.
I think we're at the point where she can no longer live alone, which is going to make her furious. Her choices will be to live with one of her sisters and her husband (they smoke heavily), move in with the L-i-K-S, or move to Denver and get an apartment with me/us.
I hope our internet access stays up today. It's a drag being to get into my email for only five minutes a day.
Posted by AnneZook at 07:44 AM | Comments (2)Warning: Not a cheerful post.
So, the whole gross incident is now safely behind me. I have no further symptoms and everything seems to be normal again.
Actually I felt a huge amount better by Wednesday, but I was still safely medicated and couldn't tell if I was actually better or just drugged to near-insensibility.
This, of course, means I have the leisure to worry about other things. There are two primary subjects on my mind today.
#1 - The Shadow
In the process of doing the CAT scan for the kidney stone on Tuesday, they found a "shadow" on my pancreas. They said it wasn't a good angle to figure out what it was and wanted me to see my regular doctor to have it checked out. I was procrastinating (what you don't know....) the subject until today. I called my regular doc and they sounded worried enough to get me into their office this afternoon. :-( I don't want people to be taking it that seriously, okay?
I guess that means another bout of drinking weird substances, waiting on them to work through my system, and then rolling in and out of the machine.
As someone unemployed and without healthcare* I'd prefer that all of this be not happening. Could anyone here arrange that for me?
And I'm having psychsomatic symptoms. I don't even know where my pancreas is but my subconscious has chosen an area of my torso and has been offering me symptoms for the last day or so. Nothing real. The most normal of things, like a hiccup, strike my brain as ominous.
(* I had Kaiser insurance at my last job. I still have the COBRA option but since none of my chosen healthcare professionals are Kaiser, I haven't been able to decide whether or not to sign up for it. Now that I've had Actual Medical Incidents, I don't even know if Kaiser would cover me.)
#2 - The Mother
Mom called today to report that she'd had "an incident" last night. Basically dizziness, pain, falling down, and being helpless. She called one of her sisters who took her to the ER where she waited an hour and a half and never got to see anyone. Eventually they took her home with them and she'll be staying there for a few days.
I hate the healthcare system where she lives. I don’t like her doctor who prescribes her meds she's supposed to know make my mom sick. I don't like an ER that can't get an elderly patient with stroke symptoms in for treatment. I don't like a 'specialist' who sees a serious circulation problem and schedules a treatment for two months later.
Anyhow. Once I get my "shadow" problem dealt with today (yes, I've decided it's something that can be dealt with in one day), I'm going to have to book a ticket to Missouri and plan to spend a couple of weeks there. If all goes as planned, I'll be leaving next Friday, so I'll be offline for a couple of weeks at that point.
At this point, I can't decide whether or not to worry about my mother because it stops me from obsessing about the Big C, or to worry about myself, because it stops me from obsessing about my mother.
Sorry to be such a downer today. I'd actually planned an entry on the joys of spring, of sunshine, the small but definite sense of triumph I feel from having planted flower seeds and seen them sprout, and my anticipation of a really good sushi lunch to celebrate my return to normality. Also I wanted to talk about ReGenesis and Veritas and a couple of books I've been reading. Sigh. I'll come back when I'm more cheerful.
Sorry, a short intermission in posting there.
Quick update:
1) The HR guy did not call from the interview. Shrug. I guess they found someone they liked better. It's a shame. I'm thinking of calling the interview guy tomorrow, just to ask him what's up.
2) Half a dozen more resumes sent out, no responses yet.
3) Went up to the mountains on Sunday, to do a little light gambling at the casinos and enjoy the weather, which finally turned nice. I won $66 on one machine, which makes me the Big Winner in the ongoing competition the R.C. and I run. (When you play penny and nickel machines, $66 counts as a huge win.)
4) After a week-long silence, She called with an emergency today. Sadly, I was unavailable until 3:00, by which time She'd already solved the problem Herself.
5) Why unavailable? Well, the pain started at 6:00 this morning and progressively got worse for the next three hours. Eventually even I can be taught, so I dragged my butt into the living room to tell the R.C. that I needed to go to the emergency room.
My fear was appendicitis, which seems to run in my Mom's family. I had all of the symptoms--pain in lower right quadrant of abdomen, upchucking, etc.
Anyhow, a few hours in the ER, some anti-nausea drugs and some pain-killers in an IV, and a CAT scan of my stomach later--I was diagnosed wtih a kidney stone. You know, I'd heard those are painful, but I had no idea what "pain" really meant before today.
This would probably have been a more entertaining entry if I wasn't currently doped up on narcotics, but I can't say I'm sorry.
Hope your day was better?
Posted by AnneZook at 04:37 PM | Comments (8)The interview went, I think, very well. Thank you all for the good wishes I know you were sending. :)
The current project manager was a nice guy and we talked for about an hour. He liked the variety of my professional history, especially the variety of functions I fulfilled in each job. (Apparently finding people who understand that "project management" requires that you be hands-on, and involved in a lot of things at once, is difficult.) I made it through Phase I of the process, anyhow. Phase II is a phone interview with their HR person (a function they outsource) which will probably happen on Friday.
It's an interesting company. One of their precepts is that everyone should be involved in continuing education and improvement. I can get behind that. I've been tempted to sign up for a Microsoft Project class before now and it would be nice to take it and know it's getting me work-related brownie points.
I've never studied Project but I assume Microsoft has found some way to computerize the computation of Gantt charts (which I taught myself from a $12 book, fifteen years ago) and other standard project management tools. I'm looking forward to learning it.
And something called "Visio" which I've heard of but am entirely unacquainted with. (A quick Google reveals that this is "diagramming" software. Okay. That's going to be interesting.)
And they offer a whopping amount of time off. Two weeks vacation, of course, plus five days of "personal" (euphemism for "sick") time. That's pretty standard. Health insurance plus vision and dental (neither of which I've had for ten years). A 401k. And a whopping 18 annual "holidays." Boggles the mind, doesn't it? Aside from the usual suspects, this company gets a number of nonstandard religious days off in a year. Because the owners--well, because they believe and they want to offer the time or something.
It's a ten-minute drive from home, so a shorter commute. Or, you know, 25 minutes on public transportation.
In the meantime, I'm not resting on the dubious laurel of having secured one interview. I've sent out eight more resumes and have hopes that one or more of those companies will find my qualifications interesting.
(Is it narrow-minded of me to reject some ads purely based on the companies that have placed them? I find myself avoiding national chains, large corporations, and companies I suspect, quite without foundation, of being "evil.")
Little else of amusement to report. Another spring storm is moving into the area. Precipitation isn't supposed to start until Thursday but they're forecasting around 6" for Denver on Friday. Sigh. If I'm going to have some enforced time off, why can't it be days drenched with sunshine and bathed in warmth? Why snowstorms?
I'm afraid my day didn't offer much in the way of blog-fodder. Unless you want to hear about how I gave myself a facial, a manicure, styled my new 'do and frowned dubiously at the red highlights the stylist thought would be "fun" for summer, and changed clothes four times trying for a balance between "mature professional" and "young enough to be fun to work with"?
"So, Anne," I can hear the throngs of frustrated readers asking. "Where the heck are you these days?"
"Here I am," I say, with a guilty twitch.
Sorry for the extended silence. After spending the first week of my unemployment cleaning and tidying like a fiend, I felt it incumbent (reasonably good word) upon me to spend time during my second week actually, you know, looking for a job. So, I spent some time sending out resumes last week.
Not like I did that one time, sending out to the ads that promised weird and interesting responses. Nope, this time I responded to real ads.
I suppose it's a reflection of how aggravated I got with Bernie's constant neuroses that the only things that really appealed to me the first three days were writing jobs. (I like the idea of a job where I just sit and type this kind of stuff, but the Sensible Me knows it won't pay.
I even have an interview! Think of me tomorrow (Tuesday) at 3:00 MT, okay? I like the sound of this one. Let's hope the reality matches my imagination and that they find me the most suitable of all their applicants.
Also, winter returned last week and we had light snow Thursday and Friday and then Sunday, when they'd promised that the storm would move on out of here, we had heavier snow. Nothing radical. It was barely freezing most of the time, so the snow was melting almost as fast as it fell, but I got cranky about it.
What else?
Various yarn projects either finished, ripped out and restarted, or progressing normally.
Last week's gardening experiment seems to be bearing fruit. The seeds I planted have sprouted! Three in one pot and one in another. It's very exciting. I wonder if flowers will actually bloom at some point?
I revisited some of Eddings' earlier books and have decided that while the Belgariad is still interesting, it was in the Mallorean series that his writing started to get annoying. I had this vague impression that some of the things that are annoying me in The Dreamers were things that bothered me in his earlier books, so I went back to review them and I was right. He suffers from the flaw of finding some conversational tic or gambit really cute and repeating it ad nauseum.
Having decided that, I think I'll put his stuff down for a while and return to Cornwall's Sharpe series.
I still have the new Bradbury waiting to be read (Farewell Summer) but Dandelion Wine was such a seminal book for me that I'm really more than half-afraid to pick up a sequel, written so many years later, you know? A bad sequel can ruin the original book for you sometimes.
So far, no drawing practice. I did finish tidying up that last pile o'papers in my room, so that the drafting table would be clear to spread my drawing stuff out on (and found a letter to my niece that I thought I'd mailed a month ago) but I haven't gotten to the point of getting out the drawing supplies, much less working on anything.
Everything in my room is so tidy. I know that part of the reason I tidied it up so ruthlessly was so that I'd have room to spread out a project or two, but now that it's neat and clean, I'm reluctant to mess it up.
Today's schedule includes--very little. I drank coffee, showered, and ate breakfast. I checked the job sites and sent out two more resumes. At 3:00 I'm having my hair done in preparation for tomorrow's interview. At some point, I need to give myself a manicure. Today or tomorrow, I need to get back on the company's website and memorize all of the information there. Interviewing is a lot of work.
Other than that--nothing. I'm sorry I didn't have anything more interesting to share, after such a long absence, but the weather was icky, I'm still trying not to spend money carelessly, in case my unemployment lasts a while, and once you've said, "I sat in a chair and read for hours" that pretty much covers how I spent most of my weekend.
First there's a sweet flare of chocolate. That's followed by a rich fruitiness that dissolves into mocha--a dusky taste of something that almost promises to become nutmeg. It goes on from there to deliver a mouth-filling rush of rich cocoa and an unexpected bite at the finish.
Chocolate, with benefits.
My latest indulgence is Häagen-Dazs' new Mayan Chocolate ice cream and it was a fabulous choice. Chocolate with cinnamon is one of those ideas you think could be interesting, but that you might have trouble mentally "tasting." Let me tell you, those Mayans knew what they were doing. A "match made in heaven" doesn't even begin to describe this astonishing combination.
It doesn't hurt that Häagen-Dazs holds no brief for the fad of "low-fat" when it comes to ice cream--something I'm eternally grateful for. I don't eat ice cream often and when I do, I love how the full-fat part of a good recipe adds body and richness to even 'ordinary' ice cream flavors. For the Mayan Chocolate, well, it would have been criminal to have short-changed this amazing flavor in any way. Put away your sauces, leave your nut toppings on the shelf, and don't even bother with that pre-fab whipped cream. This isn't an ice cream that needs or deserves to be drowned in lesser flavors.
Mmmm. Ice cream love!
I wish I was feeling some book-love these days. I've been trying Eddings' The Dreamers series. I got the first two books, but I'm not sure I'll buy any more. His Belgariad, etc. books were good in the beginning although some of Eddings' writing tricks were getting--tired, by the last trilogy. His writing, again, good enough in the first trilogy, was becoming labored, and his jokes belabored, by the end.
In The Dreamers, all of the things that became annoying about the first series are back, tripled and triply annoying. Along with some new irritants. Characters talking in dialect and bad jokes beaten into the ground are bad enough. For some reason, we keep revisiting the same scenes over and over in the new series, from the perspective of different characters. And for no particular reason, since none of the characters have any epiphanies or any unique reactions to events to warrant dragging us through the same scenes three or four times. (Eddings uses a sort of, "he saw this happen and then that happened and then that happened and then that happened" approach--we don't actually follow the characters through the scenes, it's all sort of expositioned at us.) I guess it's an easy way to pad out your word count, but it certainly slows the story down. I'm so bored right now I can't even remember why I cared enough about this series to buy a second book.
Anyhow. A quick visit to the bookstore yesterday netted me three more of Cornwall's Sharpe books. So far, that series isn't letting me down.
So, I hear you thinking, what have you been doing with this week's leisure time as an unemployed woman?
Not blogging, I guess.
The R.C. finally worked out her notice and now we're both without gainful employment. This has changed the rhythm of my days somewhat.
I haven't cleaned, washed, or tidied anything in four days. I have a significant need to do (more) laundry and, looking around, I see that both the kitchen and bathroom could use cleaning again.
Mostly, I get up and check the job sites, sending out resumes and giving my personal email a quick look, first thing in the morning.
At some point I have to exchange emails and/or IMs with Her. She jumps on me every time I'm on IM. I've started leaving IM turned off when I'm online in the mornings.
That job I finished for them the weekend after my last day--well, they finally went back to the client with it, the client made major changes, and She and I have been having something of a stand-off ever since as She tries to get me to do all of the recoding and I stand firm behind my belief that She should do it. I've agreed to do the "hard parts" for Her, against my better judgment since She has to learn sometime, but I'm telling myself to be gracious about it. She got pitched into this awfully fast, the learning curve on this job is steep anyhow, and (in my less-annoyed moments) I can acknowledge that She's trying.
I sent Bernie my last time-sheet yesterday. We'll see what happens. He should owe me for a week of pay, plus whatever accumulated vacation hours I had. If it doesn't show up in my checking account tomorrow, I'm done helping out.
No love for Bernie & Her.
It's amazing how quickly I've gotten used to not going to work, though. I mean, yes, I spend a fair amount of times on the jobsites in the mornings and would spend more if I wasn't being careful not to hog up the computer (the R.C. wants to use it too, after all) but other than that, it's less of a strain than I anticipated.
I should be freaking out, but I'm not.
Earlier this week we went to Home Depot (she said with the casual cool of someone who has plumbed the mysteries of Home Depot before and anyhow who didn’t go beyond the first aisle this week and so stood in no danger of getting--suborned). The R.C. and I each bought a plant and I picked up some saucers I needed for the planters I already had. Then we came home and she repotted and I planted seeds and now I'm waiting with breathless anticipation to see if anything sprouts. I've never grown anything from a seed before. It's very exciting.
So. What's the damage?
Home Depot. $11.50
The bookstore yesterday. $40
We were downtown one day, for lunch at The Market. I think that was Saturday. We also swung by The Cheesecake Factor and bought an entire 6" cheesecake! (I've never bought more than a slice of cheesecake before.) $8.00
Thinking. I think that's all the money I've spent so far this week. I went to the grocery store one day, and we had lunch a couple of times, but food comes out of a different budget. ("Cheesecake" doesn't count as food. It's definitely on the "extras" list.)
As always, bookstores remain the biggest item in my personal expenditures list. Still, I think I'm doing pretty well at not overspending.
I Hate Yarn (brief) Interval
I finished a shawl/shoulder wrap. I don't love it. The colors are fabulous (cobalt blue, vivid purple, separated by swaths of black) but I should have used a pattern. Still. It will be warm for whoever gets it, and that's the point, right?
Also, a light-blue and white scarf. Because I had a skein of light-blue left over and a handful of white.
Still working: A cobalt blue scarf, another scarf with that cream-and-pastel-mess yarn (to use up what I had left over) and another medium-blue afghan (to use up, etc.), which is looking like it's going to turn out to be huge. (And warm!) Another scarf (to use up, etc.) with the fabuloso variegated (dark blue through light purple) yarn that turned out to be less-attractive when worked than I'd hoped it would be.
Buying the just the right amount of yarn for a project is a problem for me.
I need to do more yarn stuff in the evenings. I may be doing well at not overspending, but I'm not doing at all well at not overeating. It's time to start keeping my hands busy again.
/end I Hate Yarn Interval
Lemmee see.... I've spent some time playing computer games. Watched a few DVDs. Got together with friends last Sunday to watch episodes of Supernatural, a show they both adore and that I'm indifferent to but I like getting together with them anyhow.
Next up on my list of things to do while I'm unemployed is to dig out the drawing supplies again (I can't find anything since I tidied my room so ruthlessly) and do some practicing.
I have a lot of things around here I could play with (and that I always think of wistfully, when I'm tied to the tyranny of a 9-5 job) and I'm going to try to get to all of them. If nothing else, playing with the toys I already own will help keep me from spending money I shouldn't spend.
And that's how my week has gone I hope yours as been equally as peaceful?