Time Grabs You by the Wrist, Directs You Where to Go

Okay, for the love of gawd! I am finally finishing my shit jobs post. Before I started this, I really forgot how many jobs I worked, and how many times I worked at a couple of these places. I guess I should just get on with it now, huh?:

 24.) During my last semester in college I only took 12 hours of college courses, which meant that I could work 60 hours a week instead of the measly 40 I was working when I was taking 16 or 17 hours of classes. A friend of mine knew a guy who was leaving his job at an ice cream/coffee/soup and sandwich place, and they were going to need to replace him. I marched right down, got an interview, and started working at the Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company within the week. I would work at Great Midwestern twice, for nine years and I wore many hats. The first time I worked there, I took classes in the morning, worked there in the afternoon, and worked at the Mexican restaurant at night. When did I sleep and do homework? Who the hell knows.

 25.) My 19th job was detasseling corn the Summer I turned 26, but I already kind of talked about that. Basically, I was trying to save up money to move to Albuquerque to see if job prospects might be any better after I graduated from college with a "very practical" English degree. The guy I was dating at the time had a cousin who just moved to New Mexico who had a little apartment that used to be a garage where we could stay for free until we got set-up.

26.) Surprise, surprise, my 20th job was working at one of those crappy mall pizza places in Albuquerque. It was so bland and boring that I don't even remember the name of the mall OR the pizza place. What I remember most about that job in 1991, was that New Mexicans put Ranch dressing on EVERYTHING. Ironically, Iowa would later be known for doing just that, but back then,  I hadn't really seen that before.

 

27.) While I was in Albuquerque I discovered I was pregnant with The Oldest. Not having been around babies much, I thought I should move back to Iowa and family. I was lucky enough to get my old job back at Great Midwestern. I worked there through both of my pregnancies. I worked on the line, was a janitor there and a shift manager. It was the last restaurant job I ever worked. As usual, the most important part of that job were the amazing friends I made and still have today.

28.) When my oldest daughter was old enough to go to kindergarten, I was finally able to afford to leave my abusive ex-husband. I would only have to pay full-time day care for my youngest daughter and the before and after school program for my youngest. I got a full-time job at the hospital working as a nursing assistant in the Ob/Gyn clinic. I took  home $1200/ week there. $600 went to pay for daycare and $600 went to my rent. Everything else had to come from my part-time job at Great Midwestern. I did love my job at the clinic. I did phlebotomy, I assisted in all kinds of different procedures, I taught med students how to use a sterile field and catheterize women, I was pulled to translate for Spanish speaking patients, and my favorite part of the job, was advocating for patients. I had to make sure they weren't getting pap smears less than a year than their last one, so their insurance company would cover it, and I had to help them through some painful/scary procedures. It was the most heart breaking/rewarding job I've ever had.

29.) Because being a nursing assistant only paid $7.80 back in the late 1990's, I took a typing test, and got a job as a patient account representative in the business office of the same hospital where I worked at the ob/gyn clinic. Even after cleaning toilets for a living, this was probably my least favorite job. It was a lot of dealing with insurance companies that screwed over our patients, seeing people lose their farms and their homes because they had astronomical hospital bills they couldn't pay, and every phone call I answered produced ridiculous amounts of work I didn't have time to do, before the next call came in bringing its own ridiculous amount of work. At least some of the calls were amusing. Aside from half of them starting out with, "You fucking people...". I had a guy tell me that the Pope said he would pay his bill, and he gave me the address of the Vatican to send it to. I wondered if the Pope would pay my day care costs too. I also had a woman tell me that I was in cahoots with Janet Reno in causing the Oklahoma City bombing. I had no idea Janet Reno caused the bombing, or that I was so powerful (you'd think I'd be making more money). 

 30.) Since I was not super happy at the business office, I was applying for all kinds of other jobs. I did it like playing the lottery, I didn't think I'd get them, but it didn't hurt to try. You never knew...I finally got lucky and started working at the Admissions Office at a big 10 university. In April, I will have worked here for 22 years. When I started there in 2001, nothing was online. All the applications were paper and they, and any supporting documents were sent through the mail. We had a toll-free line to answer any questions and a huge space in our office was taken up by all of our paper files. I have seen everything change and our work force decrease by probably 70 %. Besides me, there is now only one other person who was there when I started still working in the office. My job has changed a bunch of different times, and I was just told that I will be learning something completely new to me in the next few months. I get good insurance, and get paid well for what I do. I have no idea how much longer I will be at this job. I hope I will be able to stay until I can afford to retire, and in my best fantasies, I get to that place sooner rather than later.

31.) I am counting donating plasma and mowing an older woman's lawn as one job. They were what I had to do to be able to afford to pay my mortgage after I first bought my house in addition to my full time job. Lucky for me, I only had to do them for a little over a year.

So, 31 jobs. No wonder I'm tired. I really hope I don't have to add to this list. I would love to somehow get enough money to retire and my only job will be to take care of my house, my gardens, and my fun hobbies. I can't even imagine how luxurious that would feel.

May you all be able to afford to retire the minute you are ready.

I Was Working as a Waitress in CockTAY-al Bar, That Much is True

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Photo found on the internet.

 Okay. So, it's time for round two of me listing every shit job I've ever worked. Let's see, where were we?

10.) The tenth job I had was being a line cook at Snow Summit Ski Resort in Big Bear Lake, California in 1985/1986. I found this job because a couple who worked with for the US Forest Service and helped with our job in the California Conservation Corps during the Summer, also worked at this ski resort during the Winter. They helped get my boyfriend at the time and I jobs and even let us stay at the their parent's A-Frame cabin for a couple of weeks when we first got there. 

I wanted to learn how to snow ski, and by working there I got free lift tickets, rentals, and lessons. It's really the only way I would ever have been able to afford to learn how to ski.

In the 1980's this ski resort attracted a lot of B-movie actors, and bands that were on their way up or down. One year every one of my co-workers got sick with every kind of flu/pneumonia/pleurisy/cold you can imagine. So, on Christmas morning that year it was me and one other guy who didn't have insurance and couldn't afford to go to a doctor, making breakfast on one of the busiest days of the year there. We were both just as sick, we just couldn't get a doctor's note getting us off of work. So, sorry people like Jan Michael Vincent and the band Berlin if we gave you a horrible flu that year.

 11.) After the ski resort, my boyfriend and I moved to San Francisco. When I first moved there I got a job being an assistant manager at a shoe store on Shattuck Avenue on the Oakland/Berkeley border. I was 20 years old, and that company took me for a ride. They paid me minimum wage as if I were only working 40 hrs/week, but expected me to work at least 60 hours a week for that.

Worst of all, like most companies back then (and today too), it was a HUGE good-old-boys network. The regional manager was an old dude with a gambling problem, and the manager was a younger dude who just covered for him.

When I finally got sick of everything enough to quit, the manager told me that I was only quitting because I was worried about spending enough time with my boyfriend. (It couldn't POSSIBLY be because I was smart enough to know I was being taken advantage of, and in a toxic work situation or anything...). Later on I found out that the old white dude was stealing from the cash register to gamble and after I left, it wasn't possible for the young white dude to hide that fact from the company. They fired both managers and laid off everyone else under them. I felt bad about the other co-workers, but those two manager dudes had it coming.

Me when I was 21 in the apartment I found from my co-worker at the Courtyard Cafe.

 12.) My twelfth job was working as a waitress and barista at the Courtyard Cafe on 24th Street in San Francisco in 1986. It was kind of a fancier place. I waited on Burt Parks, Robin Williams, and Alice Walker's daughter there. I have a million stories about the cafe, but that will have to be their own 20 different blog posts.

I will say, I met a woman working there who let me rent a flat with her and her friend, and that friend and another roommate who came along later were some of the best people for me to be around at that time.

13.) My next job was as a bar back at a fancy restaurant in the basement of  Macy's Department Store. I loved this job. I was actually more of a bartender, because the person I was supposed to be backing wasn't really into it, and so I learned a lot just doing her job for her. Don't worry, I still made tons of money. Either this woman knew every famous person who ever lived, or she had a wonderful imagination, because she would tell me all these stories like, "So, we were at this party in Paris and I went to the bathroom, and I see Salvador Dali just watching me. You know, he was a terrible voyeur..." She was endlessly entertaining.

The hardest thing about that job was how many of my friends and co-workers were contracting and dying of AIDS at that time. It was such a sad and scary time.

15.) My 15th job was back in Iowa City where I decided to go to school again and see how I did. In the Summer I was working back at the Mill at night, but I also worked at The Farmers Market and Bakery on Linn Street as a cook. This was kind of a hippie/artsy place where the livin' was groovy. I learned how to make soups here, and other valuable lessons like, don't use more barley than is called for, and just because a little dill is good, it doesn't necessarily mean that a LOT of dill will be better.

16.) Once I was in school in the Fall, I got a work study job to go along with my job at the Mill. I worked in book stacks at the main library. Imagine me handling books all day. The sad thing was that I wasn't able to read them, and I couldn't even take the time to peruse the jackets for book descriptions. Frankly, it got a little frustrating.

17.) I moved back to San Francisco at the end of 1987. My old boyfriend and I were having many issues, and we were going to give it one last chance to see if we could make it work (spoiler alert: we couldn't). I got a job in the mornings at a place called "Bakers of Paris". It was owned by a Vietnamese company. 

Originally, they had hired all these gorgeous French women because they thought it would bring in a lot of business, but many of the French women were very rude to the customers, so they were forced to hire Americans who maybe weren't quite as beautiful. It was an easy job, because the manager liked to smoke a lot of weed. So, because he was smart, he organized everything so well that he could do his job when he was really high without having to think very hard. That worked for my ADHD too. The best part about the job is that we got free baguettes and pastries

18.) While I worked at Bakers of Paris in the morning, I also took the J Church straight to Macy's, where I went after I moved back. There wasn't a bar back job open anymore, but they hired me to work on the deli side of the restaurant. I still made pretty good money, and we would cater parties to things like Vanna White's new clothing line, where because it was about fashion, no one there would eat, and we would get to have all of the leftovers.

19.) Here's where things get a little muddled, because I thought I only worked at the Mill twice, but now that I'm writing this, I must have worked at the Mill THREE DIFFERENT TIMES! So, I worked there when I came back from San Francisco a SECOND Time. Just thinking about this is making my head hurt. I'm so glad I'm not young and moving every six months anymore. JAYSUS!

21.) My 17th job was working in the juniors department at The Glendale Galeria in Glendale, California. I had lost my Iowa residency while I was in California the last time, and I had to pay out of state tuition, which was ridiculous for me. I thought I would go back to California and pay in-state tuition there, and my newer boyfriend was an actor who thought he had a line on a gig there. We were both wrong, but before we figured that out, I sold clothes to people like Punky Brewster, and to whomever it was who was in charge of costumes for Bernadette Peters in the movie "Pink Cadillac". 

I made a fun friend there, named Barbie who was a self-proclaimed Cuban American princess and we would ride around in the candy apple red BMW her parents gave her for graduation. This was in 1988, and there was all kinds of talk about gang violence. I was 23 years old.

22.) After I moved back AGAIN to go to school in Iowa City. My brother had a talk with the residency office for me, and after over a year, I finally got to pay in-state tuition. I worked two jobs. The first was as a line cook at a Mexican restaurant. It was a shit show in a lot of ways, there were some issues with cocaine and some of the servers (again, this was the 80's/early 90's), BUT I met one of my favorite people and future roommates here, so no matter what kind of bullshit I had to put up with, it was worth it.

She was the brilliant one who suggested we play "The Love Boat" at work. The bartender would of course be Isaac, the old dude who waited there would be Captain Stubing, the doofy guy we worked with was Gopher, the most prolific cocaine user waitress got to be Julie the activities director, and she decided all of us women cooking on the line would be the special guest appearance of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (duh). 

23.) During this same time, I worked my 23rd job. I used to be a nude model for art classes at the university. It paid almost twice what minimum wage was, and the hours were flexible. I was already working almost full time and taking 17 hours/credits at the university, so I didn't have a lot of time for anything else. Also, modeling nude wasn't all that weird for me. My parents were artists, we were raised to see the human form as beautiful and not shameful.

One of my "greatest" memories was once when I was modeling for a painting class. There was a guy painting almost right in front of me. Different students would take a break from their paintings, walk by his, and laugh. Since the painting was facing him, I couldn't see it from where I was sitting. Finally, after I got to rest in between posing, (it actually hurts to sit still for long periods of time) I went over and checked out what he was working on. It turns out it was a painting of a rooster's head with my body riding a giant phallus. In my head I laughed to myself, "It doesn't look a THING like me".

It looks like I'll be doing a part three to this. It's amazing just how many crappy jobs I've worked when I lay it all out like this. I do apologize for the bad typos, and misspellings. I could really benefit from a good editor right now...Or even a bad one would probably help.

In the Same Boat With a Lot of Your Friends, Waitin' for the Day Your Ship'll Come In

Oh, kids. I've been fantasizing about being able to afford to retire for the last couple of years now. I get that I am lucky to have a job, and that since I've worked at this same institution for 26 years, that I get paid well for what I do, and what with my latest health problems, I am EXTREMELY lucky to have the health insurance I do, but I'm worked out. Of course, I probably have at least ten years before I can even entertain the idea of retiring, but a girl can dream, can't she?

People tell me that I'll be bored when I retire, or that I will lose my social outlet, but I beg to differ. First of all, the only time I'm ever really bored is when I'm at work. My job basically consists of me inputting classes and grades from other colleges into a computer and answering the same questions via phone and email for the last 21 years. Also, it is true that I have made many great friends in my past jobs. My friend Ed G. used to say, "It's a good thing that Churly is poor and had to work so much, or she wouldn't have any friends." But I don't have tons in common with most of my current co-workers. They are all perfectly nice and all that, it's just that they aren't like people in my past jobs, that weren't in offices, who I still see and hang out with over 30 years later. If I didn't have to work the majority of my waking hours, I would have time to go hang out with people I DO have things in common with.

Most importantly, I have so many things I could be doing with my days that I just don't have time for now. So, right now I fantasize about it.One of these decades, I hope I can afford to retire for real. While I'm thinking (obsessing) about all of this, I thought I'd look back on all of the many, many jobs I've had in the past. I think after reading about them, you'll see that I have earned the right to be tired of the grind.

1.) My first "job". I think I should have stopped after my very first job, because it probably wasn't going to get any better than that. When I was 9 or 10, our next door neighbors in Mesa, Arizona asked me if I could take care of their dachshund, and her six newborn puppies while they were on vacation for two weeks. It was by far the best job I've ever had.

2.) The second job I had was when I was eleven. I took over my brother's old paper route, delivering the Chicago Sun Times and the Tribune in Alsip, Illinois. This was in the late 1970's. After they caught John Wayne Gacy, I was never so glad to be a paper GIRL.

3.) My third job was as a neighborhood babysitter when I was in junior high. The few things I remember about this job was trying to spread the cookies out in their packages to make it look like I didn't eat as many as I really had, watching Saturday Night Live after the kids had gone to bed, and reading the naughtiest parts of  the parent's copies of "Forever" by Judy Blume. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single family I babysat for had a copy of "Forever" on their book shelf in the late 70's.

4.) In high school I wasn't really allowed to work outside of my legal guardian's house. I did PLENTY of work inside it, though. I was allowed to sort boxes at the company that one of my legal guardians managed from time to time, and I was allowed to detassel corn every Summer. For those of you NOT from Iowa, detasseling is where a bunch of people who are desperate for money go out in corn fields and pull the tassel of certain rows of plants to make hybrid seed corn. It usually takes place for a few weeks in July, so it is hot as hell, you get really bad corn rash walking through the aisles of corn, there are bugs everywhere, and if you're really lucky, you'll grab a tassel that has this goopy disgusting mold on it. I did this particular job all four years of high school, and one Summer right after I graduated college.

5.) When I first moved to Iowa City it was really hard to even find shit jobs. You know, Reaganomics and all that. I did have a stint trying to sell magazines over the phone, but that lasted about a week. I hate to bother people in general, and I hate to try and sell people things they don't want or need specifically. So, it was about the worst situation for me.

6.) My sixth job was at a pizza delivery place called Pizza Wheels. It was one of those shit jobs where most of the people you worked with were great, so it was fine in general, except when the big boss came to town, crapped all over everything, and left again. I quit this job without giving notice because the band Husker Du was playing in this guy named Robot's art studio on a Sunday night in December of 1984 (Bob Mould still had long hair back then), and my boss wouldn't give me the night off. The show was worth it.

8.) My eighth job was working at Amelia Earhart's Deli, mostly as a dishwasher, but I would cocktail waitress on occasion when there were bands. Like most restaurants in the 1980's the owner appeared to have a little cocaine problem, so she would have me try the soups, since she didn't have much of a sense of smell or taste. If I could actually make money tasting soup for people right now, I would never want to retire.

9.) My ninth job was working in the Salmon Restoration Project in the California Conservation Corps in 1985. This was the most physically demanding job I've ever had. There were about 20 of us, all 18 to 22 years old, living in trailers right on the banks of the Eel River in Leggett, California, a town of about 150 marijuana growers (back in the 1980's weed was illegal. The growers booby trapped all of the areas where they had crops, so you couldn't hike around there unless  you really wanted to tempt fate.).

We were all trained to fight wild land fires, and floods, and could be pulled to help with those situations whenever we were needed. We were called fish heads because our job was to enhance the salmon population in that area. Back in the day, logging companies would just clear-cut whole forests, take the trees they wanted, and bulldoze the rest into rivers so they could then drive their trucks over the log jams they created. Because they didn't care about anything but money, they didn't realize they were killing off the salmon and steel head trout populations by doing that. Derrrrrr. Salmon will only spawn where they were spawned, and if they can't get there because there are fifty foot high log jams in their way, they don't reproduce. Our job was to use chainsaws to cut up these log jams and then recreate the creek habitat after the jams were busted up. As hard as it was in so many ways, I loved this job. 

I met my first real boyfriend there, I saw a bobcat and a mountain lion out in the wild for the first time at this job, I made tons of mistakes, and learned so much, and woke up every day, walked out into my backyard of  Redwood trees and thought, "Damn! I can't believe I live here."

My 7th and 14th jobs respectively were both working at the Mill Restaurant. Remember when I said I still have friends from jobs that I worked thirty years ago? A lot of those friends I met at the Mill. I met a friend and roommate who helped me get to California the first time. I met my first husband working there. He turned out not to be the nicest person in the world, but I have two amazing daughters from that marriage, so I have to look at that as a good thing. 

I think for me, the reason that the Mill was so important, was that I had just turned 19 the week before I started working there the first time, and I was 23 when I finally quit the second time I worked there, and I grew up there in a lot of ways. I met the kinds of people who I wanted to emulate (and plenty of people I wanted to make sure and NOT emulate). Musicians, artists, writers, and just good, complicated, interesting, hilariously funny friends who helped me figure out how to be an adult...Not a mature adult, mind you. More like they showed me I could be an adult without having to be mature. 

I worked as a line cook there and there were some insanely busy nights, and really bad folk music, but also some nights there was really GOOD folk music, and a lot of people drank too much, and I was experimenting and trying out all different kinds of ways to be, and for me, the Mill was the best place to do that. I honestly don't think I would be the same person I am today (for good or bad) if my brother hadn't helped me get a job at the Mill when I was 19.

Okay, this is way too long already, and I have tons more jobs to talk about, so I'm calling this Part One, and I'll start Part Two in the next day or two
 

And This Old World, is a New World, and a Bold World for Me, Yeah Yeah

Well kids, it's a new year. Intellectually I know that December 31st 2022 isn't really any different than January 1st 2023, but I really don't see anything wrong with portioning out a year, and then going back and reviewing things, and seeing what worked, what didn't, and what I learned from all of  the shit. Like most years, 2022 was a mixed bag. It ended pretty well but I had to deal with some crap for a while there.

I always try to start a year out by playing outside when I can. So, for 2023, I did a two mile run, and was able to obtain my beloved runner's high. It was how I'd like the rest of my year to go - playing outside and getting endorphin rushes as much as possible.

We ended 2022 in  mellow tone. On New Year's Eve I did my first indoor bike trainer work-out, and picked a show that I can only watch while I'm on the bike trainer, so if I love the show, I will do many more work-outs. In 2018, when I picked "Game of Thrones", I got into incredible shape. John told me that I should start sprinting on the bike any time they showed boobs, but I told him I would be dead at the end of almost any episode. 

Anyway, this year I chose "Yellowstone". My brother told me it was a soap opera, but I don't care. If it's fun and the scenery is beautiful, even if I don't love Kevin Costner, I'll hopefully be engaged and want to do tons of bike trainer work-outs just to watch it. As you can already guess, I'm not the biggest fan of working out indoors, but I live in Iowa, so what's a girl to do?

We thought about going to the Dublin Underground for Irish New Year, which takes place at 6 o'clock Iowa time and is PERFECT for old people like me and John, but John was worried that it might be a super spreader event on account of how crowded it gets, and my meds supposedly lower my immune system, so we stayed home. 

I bought a bottle of non-alcoholic cosmo mocktail stuff and we played Scrabble and watched the latest Knives Out/Glass Onion movie. It was actually perfect, AND I didn't have a hang-over and hopefully not Covid either the next day.

So, as you probably already guessed, this is my year in review post for 2022. I turned 57 years old in July. My birthday was super mellow, but also really nice. John and I did a gravel ride to The Amanas and met the girls and one of their boyfriends and had food truck food and sat in a beer garden. Friends, family, bike rides, beer, and food truck pizza. What's not to like?

Trips we took:

At the end of January, John and I drove down to Bentonville, Arkansas to watch Cyclocross Worlds in person and try to do some mountain biking. It was great to be in 60 degree temps in January, but I had a bad cold and couldn't really ride as much on the mountain bike trails as I wanted.

In May The Oldest turned thirty. For her birthday, she wanted the whole family to road trip down to New Orleans together. It was such a wonderful trip. We all split the costs and took turns paying for meals, and it wasn't horribly expensive for any of us. I visited three new states for the first time: Tennesse, Mississippi, and Louisiana. I went to two museums for the first time: The Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, and the World War II Museum in New Orleans. They are both amazing, and I hope you all get a chance to check them out. I sipped on a hurricane and wandered around the French Quarter, I accidentally bought a sculpture of an orgy at the French Market, and we got to dance to a free show of Tuba Skinny. Most importantly, I was lucky enough to share all of these experiences with my family.

For John's birthday in September, he wanted to go back to Moab and ride bikes and hike. My brother came with us. It was an interesting trip in some ways, because it was only a month after my hyperthyroid/Grave's Disease diagnosis, and I wasn't supposed to get my heart rate up. The weather was perfect on this trip. I think we saw at LEAST 10 or twelve new Arches, we rode our bikes into Arches National Park, and went to Dead Horse Point State Park.

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know that as I age, I like to try new things. I know a lot of people who get so depressed and bored, and can't seem to get excited about anything as they get older, and I prefer to remain a spaz, and find new things to get excited about as I age. So, here are some of the things I did for the first time in 2022:

1.) I went on a ghost, vampire and voodoo tour in New Orleans on Friday the 13th. I passed out right in front of LaLaurie Mansion at the end of the tour. The Oldest's boyfriend was sure I was somehow possessed with some kind of evil spirits from the house. I think it might have just been a migraine. It was so very dramatic, and I was pretty embarrassed, but it sure makes for a good story. Maybe the evil spirits that supposedly inhabited me left behind the Grave's Disease while they were in there as some kind of parting gift?

2.) I got to ride my bike to dinosaur tracks in Moab for the first time. It was all very Jurassic Park, without all the blood and gore.

3.) I did a low level white water rafting trip. Because I had no idea what anything meant when I booked it, the trip was way more mellow than I imagined it would be. It was supposed to rain that day, so everyone else canceled, and it was just John and myself and the guide, and we had a great talk, and got to float past Kevin Costner's latest movie set. Again with the Kevin Costner...

4.) As I mentioned before, I got a lifelong disease for the first time. I'm hoping my breast cancer doesn't come back, so I'm not counting that as a lifelong disease. This was not a fun thing to get me excited about aging, but it is a thing that will affect my aging, so I'm listing it anyway. At the end of July I noticed that any bike ride I did, I was twice as hot, and would get super tired and dizzy when I went up a hill or exerted myself even the tiniest bit, I also lost ten pounds in about 2 weeks, and I had really bad dry eye (which I've had on and off for years, but hadn't had in a while). My doctor is amazing and astute and decided to do a TSH and Free T4 test. My TSH was .001 which is almost non-existent. I then had to do an antibody test, and ate irradiated iodine and did a scan to see if I had any hot nodes (it sounds way sexier than it is). I tested positive for Graves disease, and negative for any kind of cancer. I started taking meds in September, and it takes about 4 to 6 weeks to really make a difference. There are also some really stupid side effects, like weight gain, which is annoying, and for me, they gave me a dull migraine almost every day for a couple of months, and if I even had ONE beer, that migraine would turn blinding, and I couldn't function. So, I started getting into checking out non-alcoholic beers, and making fun mocktails. The headaches seem to be calming down now, thank jeebus, but I'm still just limiting my drinking. I'll still have a beer or a margarita here and there, but it's been more like once a week or two, instead a few times a week. Who said there was anything wrong with moderation?

 

 

 

I didn't get to run or ride as much as I usually do in 2022, but we did manage to go on some fun rides with friends, and eat and drink somewhere during those rides. I feel very lucky to have the friends we do, and I never take that for granted.

 

 

Another thing I try never to take for granted, is the fact that my husband is so damn supportive of all my hair brained schemes. I'm sure half the time he feels like he's married to Lucille Ball. When I told him I wanted to turn our entire front yard into a garden a few years ago, he said, "How can I help?'. When I told him I wanted to paint our front door a ridiculously bright blue, he said, "That sounds great." This year, even before we stayed in the Bywater in New Orleans and saw all the amazing art work on every house, I asked John if he was okay with me painting anabstract pollinator mural on the alley side of our garage. Had I painted a mural before? Of course not. Did I have any idea what I was doing? Hell no! But John said, "I trust you, and I can't wait to see it." 

I didn't get it finished before it got too cold to paint outside. I still have to shade the brown-eyed Susans, and put some more grass and stuff on the bottom and draw and paint the bees and the butterflies, but I got a good start to it. I hope to finish it next year. Wish me luck!

As I've mentioned before, we live in a cottage that was built in 1950. We don't have tons of money or time, so we fix it up in fits and starts. Last year with tons of help from my brother, we renovated our one, small, bathroom. In 2022, we worked on the living room. We always say that best thing you can do to make your house look better, is to get rid of half the shit in it and clean the hell out of it. Which is what we did in our living room. We also saved up for 12 years to buy a new period to the house appropriate couch, love seat, swivel chair, ottoman, coffee table, and side table. The cats got a new condo too, and we found that entertainment center at the Habitat for Humanity store for $38 dollars that I will finish restoring when it gets warm enough to take outside, sand it down and refinish it. We still need to refinish the hardwood floors, but that is a project for another time.

 So, yeah. 2022 was another challenging year. The climate is still changing for the worse, the Pandemic hasn't gone away yet, and there are still way too many people willing to hurt other people for money. I'm always curious to see what a new year brings, and if it's bad, I just plan on gardening while the world burns. I just hope it's better...For everyone, and every species.