Still It's a Real Good Bet, The Best Is Yet to Come

Well, kids. I caught a cold. I know. It feels so weird. I did a covid test and it was negative, so it really is just a cold. I haven't been sick in over two years. I almost forgot what it felt like, until I was so rudely reminded. So much sneezing, and Coughing, and blowing my nose, and hacking shit up, and then my ears got all clogged up, and I was dizzy and exhausted...Even more than usual. Before I took the Covid test, I looked up the difference between the Omicron variant, and a cold. They said the biggest difference was having night sweats with Omicron. Really? Then I could have had Omicron for the last several years.

It was horrible timing, what with our planned trip to Arkansas and all. I was in bad shape on Wednesday and Thursday, but I'm feeling much better today. Which means I'm not so dizzy I can't stand up, and I'm not hacking, and blowing my nose as much. I slept most of the way down to Arkansas. We stopped for lunch in Kansas City at a place called Martin City. We got mussels, and crab cakes and shrimp tacos and split it all. Everything was lovely. I still can't eat that much, because I can't taste the food as well as I can when I'm not sick, so I'm not quite as interested, but I did my damnedest.

We got to Bentonville right at 3,and we couldn't get into our AirBnB until 4, so we thought we'd check and see if I was strong enough to ride a little on the trails there. Bentonville is lousy with Walmart money, and I guess the Walmart boys like to mountain bike, so they made tons of cool trails all over town.

 

 

 

They also run through Crystal Bridges Museum's sculpture garden, and so we rode the easiest trails, and took many photos, as I am wont to do.

Come to find out, I was not very strong at all. I was getting winded riding up the slightest of hills, and my lungs were very angry with me. I was even slower than this stationary tortoise.

I loved this exhibit where they asked that you please do not touch...The balls. Heh heh.

We rode past a pig, back to our car to get settled into our place before dinner.

 We went to an early dinner at Table Mesa (table table?) and the food was lovely. We got some Ceviche, and margaritas to start off with, and then ordered the crab enchiladas, and spinach chile rellenos. It was all delicious, but our food came out about a second after we got our appetizer, which was poor form. Oh well, it could be worse. We could have waited forever for our food.

Let's see, great food, riding bikes around art, more great food, and margaritas? I think we covered most of our bases on this fifth wedding anniversary.

Funny thing: The gift your supposed to give people on their fifth anniversary is wood. Tee hee. Sure, diamonds and flowers are nice, but what straight girl doesn't want wood?

On A Winter Sunday I Go, To Clear Away The Snow, And Green the Ground Below

 

 Well, Stinky tested positive for Covid on Friday. She is smart and is vaxxed and boosted, so her symptoms aren't too bad. She's just exhausted, super congested, and very, very tired. Since I was in a car with her on Thursday evening, John and I each did a home test. We were both negative. Yea!

 If you know me at all, you know that food is love in my world. I went to three different stores to get Stinky some orange juice, chicken noodle soup, Mucinex, fresh flowers, a bunch of microwaveable meals, snacks, treats, cereal, Dr Teal's bubble bath, Kleenex and electrolyte tablets. If she's sick for the next month, she's still all set.

Remember how I said I was going to read the Stacey Abrams novel? I lied. I saw the T. C. Boyle novel about Timothy Leary and LSD, and since it's January in Iowa, I needed a LOT of escapism, and so I went that direction. Now that I'm crawling down into that rabbit hole, I'm going to read Michael Pollan's non-fiction book about hallucinogens next. Unless, of course, something else pops out at me instead.

Today was the first Sunday in about a month and a half where I didn't work on our bathroom reno in any way, shape, or form. It would have been nice if I had been at all productive, but I really just read, spent some quality time with the cats, and played Wordle, and did the Sunday New York Times Crossword puzzle, and the mini, and Spelling Bee. John has tried to get me to do Sudoku, but that is a puzzle of numbers, and my brain can only do puzzles with words, so it never really stuck with me. And also, I don't really think I need to add more puzzles to my repertoire, do you?

I hope you all have a lovely week saying goodbye to January, and not getting Covid, and doing all of your puzzles, whether they be word, or number, or if you're some kind of crazy genius who can do both.

 Every now and then I like to go back to the early days of my blog and check back at what I was doing around this same time that year. This post happens to be from January 20th, 2006. Wow! That was over 15 years ago. Anyway, what I was doing back then, apparently, was being all nostalgic. Soooooo, not much has changed since then.

 It's weird to think that this was only a few months before the Iowa City tornado hit our apartment. Being from the future, I know how it all panned out after this post too.

Here is my post from this time in 2006:

  Here is a picture of my mom's family taken at my grandparents' house on the Southside of Chicago. I'm assuming it was late 1964. That Alfred Hichcocky looking baby is my brother and he was born in March of 1964. My mother was pregnant with me when this was taken.

It's weird to look at these old photos and see everyone looking so hopeful, but already knowing how it all panned out. Don't you wonder if they would have done anything differently had they known the way things would end up? I ask that about myself when I was younger too. If I had any idea, would I still have made the same choices? I've always been kind of a dumb-ass when it came to learning those harsher life lessons, so probably. I'd like to think I would've at least been smart enough to have worn a very sturdy helmet to protect myself from all the times I hit my head against the same brick wall.

I Turn Myself Around. I'm Moving Backwards and Forwards.

Well, kids. My lovely month of getting to work from home is over, and I had to go into the office today. Sigh. I hate having to wear actual pants, and riding to work on snowy/icy roads was tons of "fun" too. I didn't crash my bike at all, so that was a plus. 

I felt really crappy today, which led me to play my favorite game again: allergies and migraines, or Covid? I took a Covid test when I got home and it was negative Soooo....Allergies and perimenopause for the "win"!

So, you'll all be happy to know that except for repotting plants and sealing some tile, our bathroom is pretty much done. I spent most of the Martin Luther King holiday cleaning the last of the paint chips and sawdust off of the walls and floors, and wiping down, checking expiration dates (you'd be amazed at how old some of this shit was), and organizing all of our bathroom crap. I didn't do the whole "does it bring me joy" thing, because if sunscreen, stool softener, and band-aids gave me joy, you should all feel free to worry about me. I threw out all the old stuff, and wondered where the hell a lot of it came from, and tried to organize what I kept. Who knew what the shelf actually looked like? It was covered with five year old bottles of bug spray, bottles of lotion with just a centimeter left in the bottom. Behold the fact that you can see the shelf now, for in about two weeks, I'm sure we'll have acquired enough Mucinex, hand sanitizer and Thera-fu to cover it all back up again.

 While I was doing this lovely project, I listened to different episodes of "All Things Considered" on Spotify. It was mostly interviews of people who recently died - Joan Didion, Sidney Poitier, and Betty White. It was kind of like having old friends tell me stories about their lives while I worked.

Now, I'm going to talk about books for a hot second. I just finished reading "The Vanishing Half" by Brit Bennett. I had read "The Mothers" a year or so ago, and I really liked it, but I LOVED "The Vanishing Half". If  you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. I am going to start reading Stacey Abrams' "While Justice Sleeps" next. My daughter let me borrow it. It' a novel, and if it's good, I'm going to have to ask what CAN'T Stacey Abrams do? She is a power house. And also, where does she find the time? Okay. I know what you're going to say, she doesn't waste all of her time watching shitty shows on TV. Yeah, yeah. I'm old and broken. I need my cheese.

Anyhooooo, I better get to sleep, so I can get those night time hot flashes rolling. Woot!

Is There Anyone Else Here Who Doesn't Know? We're Under Fifteeen Feet of Pure White Snow

Of course, with me blogging more, comes the side effect of some pretty damn boring posts. Maybe they were boring when I only wrote once a month, but now there are just more of them. Sucks to be you!

You'll be happy to know that Gus finally calmed down yesterday. And this is the problem. He's a big jerk who drives me nuts, and then he gets all sleepy and cute, and all is forgiven...Until tomorrow morning.

It snowed on Friday, which meant we got to ski on Saturday, and hopefully again today. I know a lot of people hate Winter, and it's not my favorite season either, but sometimes its starkness can be stunning. The sun shining up the snow, and all the textures? It's almost enough to put up with the cold for. Sorry about that awkward sentence. I'm sure there are plenty more to come.

 Now that it's Winter and I have more time, I would love to find some more blogs where people actually write in them. So, if you know of any, please leave a link to them in the comments.

I get one extra day of weekend tomorrow for MLK's birthday. I hope it's a good one, and that we figure out voting rights. Why don't people want to make it easier for people to vote, so that more people do it? I don't get it.

Well Something's Lost, but Something's Gained, From Living Everyday

Apparently, I'm just going to keep posting photos of my renovated bathroom until I die. I went from being embarrassed for anyone to see my bathroom, to non-stop internet bragging. If you saw it in person, with all of it's weird patches on the wall and strange divots in the wood, you wouldn't think I had much to brag about, but when you have only one bathroom, and it's very small, and it's suddenly isn't gross anymore...Well, you might just want everyone that had to see it when it looked like shit, to get a gander at it now too.

It has been a tough week for me. Lot's of hormone issues. My sleep pattern looked like this: Exhausted all day, and then a half hour before I was supposed to go to bed, BOOM! I'm suddenly not tired and felt the need to go into every FB rabbit hole I could find. Then when I finally went to sleep, about a half hour or so into my happy sleep, I had a horrible hot flash, kicked off all of the covers and turned the fan on, then fell back to sleep, and once the hot flash was finally over, and I was all sweaty, the covers were off me, and the fan was pointing at me, I was FREEZING. I put the covers back on me, fell asleep, and started the whole process all over about an hour later. Lovely.

Needless to say, I was a real peach all week, and I didn't get much done. Sigh. 

I was so tired yesterday, that I kept hitting my head on everything. When that kind of thing happens, I like to say that my equilibrium is off. And then give myself all kinds of get of jail free cards, like telling John that we should just walk to Shakespeare's and let them cook for us, and we just drink beer and get hugs from our bear-like friend. 

I guess I'm finally admitting that I'm a person who wears glasses now, and doesn't take them off for pictures anymore. It's kind of freeing getting older and just saying eff it. I look how I look. I wear glasses, I'm overweight, I have wrinkles and my neck has its own personality now. Welcome to my fifties, bitches!

Gus has been a real pisser today. He's been hunting Heidi down, or waiting until she falls asleep and pouncing on her. Sure, it's better her than me, but I got annoyed and sent him downstairs and closed the door to the dormer room. Now, he is scratching at the door and making the saddest crying noises. Poor thing. I won't let him torture Heidi. I'm the worst human ever. Sorry, Gus. I raised two girls. I've heard it all before. That shit doesn't work on me.

Here's hoping for a wonderful MLK weekend, where I stop having hot flashes and my cats give us a break from their assholedness. I wish the same for all of you too, of course.
 

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy

Well, look at 2022 Churlita writing two whole posts in one week. I'd love to make a habit of that, but I save most of my time and energy on bad habits, so we'll see if I can get around to that healthier one.

So, this pandemic, right? What a bunch of crap. The latest variant is so contagious that most of us will probably get it. I am smart enough to be vaccinated and boosted, so if/when I do get it, I'm hoping to avoid any messy hospitalizations or death. I have been lucky enough to be able to work from home this month that the students are gone, but we have to go back the first day of classes, so then I'll get to be exposed to all of the people who have traveled from all over the world, and some of them won't be vaccinated or wearing masks, so I think that should create a nice Covid stew. I would love it if they could wait a couple of weeks for all the germs to settle down before we came back to the office, but apparently, the board of regents would rather we all get sick, so that we will have to call in sick, and not be able to come into the office anyway. That's how the "smart" people do things

So, yeah. We're still working on our bathroom. We're just starting our second month, and we're almost done...I think. My brother was very, very, kind and came to do some work on our house for us last month on the eighth. He said he had a very aggressive estimate of finishing everything in four days. Since I know what an old, cranky asshole our house can be, I saw him, and raised him a week. The actual time it took him was ten whole days. Yikes! Poor guy. 

Anyway, John was great and got our sink installed, after about 15 trips to the hardware store to get the many different things that were supposed to have come with the sink and pipe installation kit, but were missing, and then a couple of different screws that didn't quite fit. I am so bad at dealing with that kind of thing, so I took on the responsibility of scraping, sanding, scraping and sanding again, and then finally, today, priming the woodwork in the bathroom. Guess how many layers of paint I had to get through to even see the wood? That would be, or at least seem like, 5,987. Ugh! Tomorrow, I get to paint it all. Then we'll clean and put everything back, and then put all the pretty stuff in, like plants and towels, and rugs. That's what I'm looking forward to, but mostly being done with the whole thing.

It has been ridiculously cold here lately. I know, it's January in Iowa. What do I expect? I guess the good thing about it, is that I certainly don't mind wearing a mask around everywhere I go when the windchills are 30 below zero. My face doesn't freeze off, AND it keeps away those pesky Covid germs. Two birds.

 The cats have been total jerks lately. I'm sure it's from not being able to go out on the porch while it's this cold out, but JAYSUS! it's getting old.

They start out like my kids used to do, where they're messing with each other, and they're all laughing, and everyone seems to be into it...Until someone hits the other one too hard, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose and you're not sure you can get them apart and there are tears and threats, and in the case of the cats, there are tufts of hair flying and hissing and growling and I get super stressed out. Then five minutes later, it's all forgotten, they're all happy and friends again, and nobody knows why I reacted the way I did. I just must be psycho or something. Whatever. Kids and pets. They're all the same. I love them so much.

So, here's to things warming up with the weather and cooling down with the pandemic. I hope everyone gets their projects completed, and that all our kids and pets just calm the eff down.

So, I Turned Myself to Face Me, But I've Never Caught a Glimpse

 Holy cow! Happy New Year and RIP Betty White! There's so much to talk about and I haven't been very good about doing it lately. I blame our house renovations we've been doing for the last month. We're so close to being done with the bathroom, but there's still plenty to do.

I hope you all had a great new year, and that this year is better for all of us. I've been seeing a lot of people posting New Year's resolutions, and I say good on them. I don't do it, but I hope it works for those of you who do.

It's hard to be good, isn't it? I'm not talking in the way of trying not to kill people. Although, I've had days at work where that's hard too. I'm talking about taking care of ourselves. We all know what we need to do: Drink tons of water, drink less alcohol, eat better food and less of it, exercise more, be kinder to others, don't blow our money, get rid of half the shit we own, keep our houses up better, and blah, and blah, and blah. Trying to do all of that shit is hard. Really hard. There are days where I'm better at it, and days where I just let it go and give myself a get out of jail free card. Eff it. I'm tired. I'm annoyed with almost every living person on this earth. I want to eat handfuls of sugar, and add salt to everything I eat. Also, I'm going to sit around in the same jammies for an entire weekend, and maybe I won't shower either. 

They (the illusive they) always say it's a balance. But who really gets that balance down? They also say we're not supposed to beat ourselves up about stuff. So,when I do say screw it all and watch the crappiest, cheesiest TV shows, and believe me, I do that way too often, I just have to give myself that. I will watch a marathon of "Hawaii Life" on HGTV and want to take a shot every time a middle aged white dude says, "Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout!" (Which would mean I would die of alcohol poisoning by the end of each show, so I don't). But then I'll go through a week where I read more than watch TV, I ride my bike or go running more, I watch my sugar intake, I actually fold my clean laundry and put it in drawers instead of letting sit in a pile in the hamper in my room. Then something happens, oh, say, like a pandemic hits, or I have a bad perimenopausal hormone bout, or something stressful happens with my daughters, and I backslide and reach for the comfort of Ben Jerry's and a super embarrassing Christmas movie or whatever.

So, trying to make a resolution to change all my unhealthy behaviors for a year, or the rest of my life is just way too stressful. I just try to be better about stuff in general, and sometimes I am able to be mindful, and I take better care of myself, and other times I spend way too much time watching movies and BBC TV series' based on Jane Austen novels, and it hasn't killed me yet,

What I'm trying to say is, sure, take care of yourselves, and try to be better and all that shit, but also, cut yourselves slack when you need to. Happy 2022 to all you all!