🙂 At last we are back in our own home. Christmas decorations are finally gone and I feel like I have caught up on most things here. Still have tons to do at my folks’ home.
🙂 People who pray for us! What a gift–both from the Lord and from those who do it!
😦 Childish pettiness from adults who should know better.
Last winter I wrote about how our next-door neighbors, who live at the end of our relatively-short private lane, were not plowing the lane anymore, but letting Emily spend an hour snow-blowing it. Some of you offered “maybes” in the spirit of giving them the benefit of the doubt. I usually do give people the benefit of the doubt (one of the reasons my hubby & girls think I’m naive), but this had happened too often to not be deliberate.
So here we are with the first heavy snowfall of the winter (a bit late, but that’s okay). Emily saw Frank plowing his driveway (a sort of round clearing at the end of the lane), & then he put the plow up (so it won’t plow) & drove up the lane. A little while later he drove back down the lane, again with the plow up. It would have taken him maybe five minutes to plow the lane, but it will take Emily about an hour to snow-blow it.
A while after that, Emily noticed Frank pushing a snow-blower up the lane (off, not blowing) to snow-blow his other property around the corner. He couldn’t even just snow-blow a straight line up the lane. 😦
When he used to plow, he would leave a big pile of snow at the end of our elderly neighbor lady’s driveway. (They didn’t like her, & she didn’t like them.) I would shovel it out, as well as shoveling her driveway, & cleaning off her car.
Even before this refusing-to-plow thing started, we had discovered Frank & his wife to be very negative people prone to pettiness. They must be miserable. I pray for God to save & deliver them.
🙂 Let’s all pray that God would reveal Himself to them, save them, & fill them with overflowing joy!
🙂 Off to the Pinewood Derby to cheer for the adorable grandson. I’ll have adorable granddaughter duty while there–aforementioned grandson has to play basketball . . .
🙂 😦 Poppy is back! Agent read the first eight chapters, really liked them but had more tweaks. Someday this book will be done . . .
🙂 If I can make all the tweaks in the next week, I will have finished the entire project from genesis to revelation in almost exactly two years.
🙂 I have no idea if that is good or not, given the magnitude of this project, but I’m calling it God is good. In the same two years I’ve had one grandchildren, written two novellas, marketed five projects, packed, house hunted, moved, unpacked, traveled four times on big trips, made innumerable friends, taught seven Bible studies and researched and semi-mastered WWI and Oswald and Biddy Chambers’ lives.
🙂 I may have just had a one-month novel writing hiatus, but I could not have done the above without the leading hand of God, the mercy of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
😦 Of course now the manuscript is back in the house, sleep has fled . . .
🙂 😦 Penance boot camp at the gym. I’ve been taking this tough class two days a week. I even have to pay extra for the pain, to make up for my bad attitude in December.
Tough is the operative word (64 lifts of a ten pound weight on each side?), but I’ve gotten much stronger and lost weight despite the eating . . . Debating whether, shock!, I should continue another month!
🙂 Really hectic end of the week, with overtime, a night meeting and intense writing day on Friday (but the WWII story was worth it). Meanwhile, our cold case project which was an L.A.-wide project involving all our newspapers kicks off Sunday. I wasn’t too involved, but am glad the months leading up to it all are over with, lots of angst in the coordination of it all
😦 Looks like a couple more hedge-fund types are in a final (?) bidding war to buy our national chain of newspapers. Not the best outcome, but I’m not sure there are good outcomes for newspapers on the market anymore. Really missing the days of the family-owned newspapers that treated their employees well and seemed to care about the product they produced for readers — rather than bottom-line $$, no matter how many cuts are required.
🙂 Looks like my former roommate and good friend will finally get together for Christmas — in April. 🙂 She’s on spring break for a week from teaching so I think I can nab a day off around then also. Christmas and New Year’s just blew by for me this year. And by the time she’s on winter break from school, my vacation time is usually over and I’m running again at work.
😦 Family loss and stress among wanderers. Praying for you all.
🙂 Off to the vet’s to pick up Tess’ meds. At least that launches me out of the house at a reasonable hour on a lazy Saturday, the vet’s office closes at noon and it’s a good 30-minute drive for me to get there.
🙂 Church casserole to make after that, but I did manage to get the shopping for it done last night on the way home from work.
😦 I need to exercise more and eat better again. Physically I’m feeling like a complete slug.
😦 Prices went up at the vet’s for meds, they said as of the first of the year all the prices went up (meds, lab work, etc.). I almost asked if this was due to that one provision in Obamacare, but my vet is in the town I grew up in and is largely African-American – since the waiting room was full, and I suspect many like the president, I didn’t ask. 🙂
🙂 😦 The counter person then says, “Everything goes up, nothing comes down.” I replied, “Well, my income has gone down — so there, that disproves that point.” 🙂
🙂 Thanks to good timing, I also was able to drop of Annie’s overdue fecal sample. Sorry, gross, I know. But they couldn’t extract anything from her when I took her in for her annual checkup maybe 2 months ago so they sent me home with a little container.
The problem, though, is that she’s an indoor-outdoor cat and almost always goes outside for that. Unless I followed her around, I’d never catch it in time (2 hours is the limit for delivering it unless you want it put it in your refrigerator which just makes me shudder).
So this morning after I fed the animals, I glanced outside and noticed her covering her business up in the backyard. I found the container the vet had given me, dashed out and collected it (I’m sure the cat thinks I’m half crazy anyway). I was set to leave within 20 minutes so the sample would still be good for delivery. 🙂
🙂 Celebrating the small, earthy victories in life. And I’d even already paid for it at her checkup, so no cost for that today.
🙂 It was 81 degrees when I drove home, according to my car temp readout. But we’ve had some strong winds so the views are nice — I could see the Hollywood sign as clear as ever on the drive north along the freeway.
“… Although veterinary healthcare is not addressed in the Affordable Care Act, equipment intended for human use but also used in veterinary medicine–such as IV fluid pumps, endoscopes and cardiac monitors–will be taxed. Devices sold solely for use in veterinary medicine are not subject to the new tax. …”
” … Although veterinary healthcare is not addressed in the Affordable Care Act, equipment intended for human use but also used in veterinary medicine–such as IV fluid pumps, endoscopes and cardiac monitors–will be taxed. Devices sold solely for use in veterinary medicine are not subject to the new tax. …
‘If a veterinarian is pricing a service that includes the cost of the equipment and the equipment cost goes up, in a general business sense, the charge to the client should go up,’ (Veterinary consultant Gary) Glassman says. ‘I think the veterinarian will have to consider how much the additional cost is.’ …”
🙂 Interesting driving through town today coming and going to the dog park which is near the waterfront — long line at the medical marijuana dispensary (with a few kids on skateboards, hmmm); we have several of those establishments in our town.
There’s also a huge cruise ship in port; two big container ships stacked high with containers sitting idle in the harbor; and between 10-20 big ships “parked” outside the breakwater waiting to be called in, all due to the ongoing labor-management contract dispute that has brought operations to a near halt in the harbor.
🙂 Enough for a “junior” casserole tonight along with the church-mission meal — I try to buy extra so it can provide for a dinner for a couple nights for little ol’ me.
okay, I think that I have decided that you don’t pass up a trip to Hawaii. 🙂
I will modify their trip and leave a day later than they are. I return home tomorrow and they are leaving on Wednesday. So I will have another day at home and leave on Thursday. Then I will return a day before they come as I have my appointment at the SocialcSecurity office on the 5th.
Happy Birthday, Jo! When is it? Happy travels! And thanks for your encouragement about not going on the trip. It helped a lot. I think I was suffering from “how will this look” anxiety.
Wandering Views 
😦 My husband’s brother has died.
🙂 At last we are back in our own home. Christmas decorations are finally gone and I feel like I have caught up on most things here. Still have tons to do at my folks’ home.
🙂 People who pray for us! What a gift–both from the Lord and from those who do it!
LikeLiked by 3 people
😦 Kathleena. Prayers for your family ma’am. 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂 Snow!
😦 Snow.
😦 Took 2 hours to clear because I have to stop often.
😦 I’m paying for it already.
😦 Stupid snow.
LikeLike
😦 Childish pettiness from adults who should know better.
Last winter I wrote about how our next-door neighbors, who live at the end of our relatively-short private lane, were not plowing the lane anymore, but letting Emily spend an hour snow-blowing it. Some of you offered “maybes” in the spirit of giving them the benefit of the doubt. I usually do give people the benefit of the doubt (one of the reasons my hubby & girls think I’m naive), but this had happened too often to not be deliberate.
So here we are with the first heavy snowfall of the winter (a bit late, but that’s okay). Emily saw Frank plowing his driveway (a sort of round clearing at the end of the lane), & then he put the plow up (so it won’t plow) & drove up the lane. A little while later he drove back down the lane, again with the plow up. It would have taken him maybe five minutes to plow the lane, but it will take Emily about an hour to snow-blow it.
A while after that, Emily noticed Frank pushing a snow-blower up the lane (off, not blowing) to snow-blow his other property around the corner. He couldn’t even just snow-blow a straight line up the lane. 😦
When he used to plow, he would leave a big pile of snow at the end of our elderly neighbor lady’s driveway. (They didn’t like her, & she didn’t like them.) I would shovel it out, as well as shoveling her driveway, & cleaning off her car.
Even before this refusing-to-plow thing started, we had discovered Frank & his wife to be very negative people prone to pettiness. They must be miserable. I pray for God to save & deliver them.
🙂 Let’s all pray that God would reveal Himself to them, save them, & fill them with overflowing joy!
LikeLike
🙂 An able-bodied & willing daughter who not only snow-blows & shovels, but loves doing it.
LikeLiked by 3 people
🙂 And the younger daughter, who hates shoveling, but we love her anyway. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂 Off to the Pinewood Derby to cheer for the adorable grandson. I’ll have adorable granddaughter duty while there–aforementioned grandson has to play basketball . . .
🙂 😦 Poppy is back! Agent read the first eight chapters, really liked them but had more tweaks. Someday this book will be done . . .
🙂 If I can make all the tweaks in the next week, I will have finished the entire project from genesis to revelation in almost exactly two years.
🙂 I have no idea if that is good or not, given the magnitude of this project, but I’m calling it God is good. In the same two years I’ve had one grandchildren, written two novellas, marketed five projects, packed, house hunted, moved, unpacked, traveled four times on big trips, made innumerable friends, taught seven Bible studies and researched and semi-mastered WWI and Oswald and Biddy Chambers’ lives.
🙂 I may have just had a one-month novel writing hiatus, but I could not have done the above without the leading hand of God, the mercy of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit.
😦 Of course now the manuscript is back in the house, sleep has fled . . .
🙂 😦 Penance boot camp at the gym. I’ve been taking this tough class two days a week. I even have to pay extra for the pain, to make up for my bad attitude in December.
Tough is the operative word (64 lifts of a ten pound weight on each side?), but I’ve gotten much stronger and lost weight despite the eating . . . Debating whether, shock!, I should continue another month!
And there’s the timer. I’m off!
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂 Saturday
🙂 Really hectic end of the week, with overtime, a night meeting and intense writing day on Friday (but the WWII story was worth it). Meanwhile, our cold case project which was an L.A.-wide project involving all our newspapers kicks off Sunday. I wasn’t too involved, but am glad the months leading up to it all are over with, lots of angst in the coordination of it all
😦 Looks like a couple more hedge-fund types are in a final (?) bidding war to buy our national chain of newspapers. Not the best outcome, but I’m not sure there are good outcomes for newspapers on the market anymore. Really missing the days of the family-owned newspapers that treated their employees well and seemed to care about the product they produced for readers — rather than bottom-line $$, no matter how many cuts are required.
🙂 Looks like my former roommate and good friend will finally get together for Christmas — in April. 🙂 She’s on spring break for a week from teaching so I think I can nab a day off around then also. Christmas and New Year’s just blew by for me this year. And by the time she’s on winter break from school, my vacation time is usually over and I’m running again at work.
😦 Family loss and stress among wanderers. Praying for you all.
🙂 Off to the vet’s to pick up Tess’ meds. At least that launches me out of the house at a reasonable hour on a lazy Saturday, the vet’s office closes at noon and it’s a good 30-minute drive for me to get there.
🙂 Church casserole to make after that, but I did manage to get the shopping for it done last night on the way home from work.
😦 I need to exercise more and eat better again. Physically I’m feeling like a complete slug.
LikeLike
😦 Prices went up at the vet’s for meds, they said as of the first of the year all the prices went up (meds, lab work, etc.). I almost asked if this was due to that one provision in Obamacare, but my vet is in the town I grew up in and is largely African-American – since the waiting room was full, and I suspect many like the president, I didn’t ask. 🙂
🙂 😦 The counter person then says, “Everything goes up, nothing comes down.” I replied, “Well, my income has gone down — so there, that disproves that point.” 🙂
🙂 Thanks to good timing, I also was able to drop of Annie’s overdue fecal sample. Sorry, gross, I know. But they couldn’t extract anything from her when I took her in for her annual checkup maybe 2 months ago so they sent me home with a little container.
The problem, though, is that she’s an indoor-outdoor cat and almost always goes outside for that. Unless I followed her around, I’d never catch it in time (2 hours is the limit for delivering it unless you want it put it in your refrigerator which just makes me shudder).
So this morning after I fed the animals, I glanced outside and noticed her covering her business up in the backyard. I found the container the vet had given me, dashed out and collected it (I’m sure the cat thinks I’m half crazy anyway). I was set to leave within 20 minutes so the sample would still be good for delivery. 🙂
🙂 Celebrating the small, earthy victories in life. And I’d even already paid for it at her checkup, so no cost for that today.
🙂 It was 81 degrees when I drove home, according to my car temp readout. But we’ve had some strong winds so the views are nice — I could see the Hollywood sign as clear as ever on the drive north along the freeway.
LikeLike
My rave above should have made clear that the community where my vet is located is largely African American — my vet isn’t largely African American. 🙂
And this is what I was wondering about with regard to price increases (that were expected also to get passed on to clients):
http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/obamacare-reaches-veterinary-medicine
“… Although veterinary healthcare is not addressed in the Affordable Care Act, equipment intended for human use but also used in veterinary medicine–such as IV fluid pumps, endoscopes and cardiac monitors–will be taxed. Devices sold solely for use in veterinary medicine are not subject to the new tax. …”
LikeLike
http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/obamacare-reaches-veterinary-medicine
” … Although veterinary healthcare is not addressed in the Affordable Care Act, equipment intended for human use but also used in veterinary medicine–such as IV fluid pumps, endoscopes and cardiac monitors–will be taxed. Devices sold solely for use in veterinary medicine are not subject to the new tax. …
‘If a veterinarian is pricing a service that includes the cost of the equipment and the equipment cost goes up, in a general business sense, the charge to the client should go up,’ (Veterinary consultant Gary) Glassman says. ‘I think the veterinarian will have to consider how much the additional cost is.’ …”
LikeLike
🙂 Interesting driving through town today coming and going to the dog park which is near the waterfront — long line at the medical marijuana dispensary (with a few kids on skateboards, hmmm); we have several of those establishments in our town.
There’s also a huge cruise ship in port; two big container ships stacked high with containers sitting idle in the harbor; and between 10-20 big ships “parked” outside the breakwater waiting to be called in, all due to the ongoing labor-management contract dispute that has brought operations to a near halt in the harbor.
LikeLike
🙂 Enough for a “junior” casserole tonight along with the church-mission meal — I try to buy extra so it can provide for a dinner for a couple nights for little ol’ me.
LikeLike
🙂 And I love the fragrance of onions & garlic wafting through the house. 🙂
LikeLike
Sorry Chas. 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wow, Donna, just wow.
LikeLike
8 in a row. That’s almost like getting 100
LikeLike
well someone had to hold up the conversation.
and I like talking to myself.
LikeLike
Am I talking too much?
LikeLike
okay, I think that I have decided that you don’t pass up a trip to Hawaii. 🙂
I will modify their trip and leave a day later than they are. I return home tomorrow and they are leaving on Wednesday. So I will have another day at home and leave on Thursday. Then I will return a day before they come as I have my appointment at the SocialcSecurity office on the 5th.
What a way to celebrate my birthday! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, no, not at all, Donna.
Happy Birthday, Jo! When is it? Happy travels! And thanks for your encouragement about not going on the trip. It helped a lot. I think I was suffering from “how will this look” anxiety.
LikeLike
OK, so one of my comments was a duplicate because the first time it never posted. But it did, as it turns out.
LikeLike
someone stop me
LikeLike
self discipline, Donna.
LikeLike
but …. but …
Mmmmmmm
Zip
this is killing me
LikeLike