2021 has been crazy but not nearly as bad as 2020 was. So, to catch up my readers (all, like 5 of you, LOL) my entire family has been fully vaccinated. My boys went to school virtually the entire year because I sure as hell didn’t want to expose my oldest. who has thus far had clean scans from his cancer four years ago, to COVID. While I would say virtual learning wasn’t better than being in school, the two of them past with only one (my youngest) failing math that requires four weeks in summer school to make up. I’m not chastising him too much because, well, I sucked horrifically at math in high school so, I get it. My oldest graduated high school this year. (OMFG WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE!!??) A week before graduation, they lifted the two tickets per student limit for graduation and opened it to anyone and everyone and made it one big NORMAL graduation ceremony with kids sitting next to one another and no “6 feet apart” (of course masks if you hadn’t been vaccinated). I cried. A lot. My sister and Mom…cried..a lot. He is so happy and proud and went around showing everyone his class ring. Have you ever seen that commercial of the mother watching her son grow up and stating through each scene “if he xxx, it’ll be a miracle” and at the end of it he’s graduating high school and she says, with a tear in her eye “its a miracle”.. Yea. I said that. I live streamed his graduation for those that couldn’t be there and you can probably hear me say that on it, LOL! Five years ago when he was diagnosed with cancer I was fearful I would not see this day. I’m not overly religious but I thank God everyday that he has come through that and I thank all those that prayed through their various religions for him to beat this. It was so touching and heartwarming friends and strangers were praying for him. I’m getting choked up about it now again remembering. One more year and he will be considered cured and be placed in survivorship status and just monitor for side effects of the treatments. And if you are the praying type, I’ll take any prayers you wish to offer on his behalf to make sure he has no return of cancer or side effects. (I thank you in advance)
Work is work. Working remote three days a week, but that goes to two days starting next week and unless something changes, back to in the office fully in August, which I am not happy about. I like working remote. Anyway, still an assistant to a visually impaired woman (who I adore) but apparently my memory issues from a previous car accident make it difficult to remember all the nuances of information I have to remember to enter into the computers when entering plans for her. Bad review last quarter with the threat of letting me go if I cant get the knack of it. That, was a lot of stress for me. I kept it together during the day and when I got home I broke down to hubby who told me not to sweat it. If it comes to that, we’d be just fine. This is why I love this man…one of the many reasons anyway. If it comes to that, I am going to take this as a sign that office work is not my niche. I’ll figure something out. Its not great pay anyway, which you’d think with a state job it would be better. Maybe I’ll take the plunge and do my art fulltime. We shall see. Why can’t I just win the lottery?? This would solve a large portion of my problems. LOL!
We have done a lot of work on our yard. Hubby has gotten the terracing bug and working with stone creating walls and putting levels in our yard and a pond (not quite done yet). We have a larger garden this year. The smaller garden that we started with last year has peas, radishes, lettuce, carrots (which failed but for three, can’t figure out why either) and some stray tomatoes that came up from seeds that had fallen last year. The larger garden has about 8 tomato plants, corn, beans, a couple different kinds of peppers, basil and cilantro. We did ornamental gardening too. Planted a Bartlett pear tree, fig tree, 5 strawberry plants, Japanese kousa dogwood, vanilla/strawberry hydrangea, a couple more lilacs, four rose bushes, a blue rhododendron, another regular hydrangea and a climbing hydrangea near our one fence. I also scattered moon flower seeds around my yard to see how they come up, which probably won’t be till next year but here’s hoping they take in those dingy corners of the yard that have a lot of rock.
Health…gained weight. COVID was not kind and I, like everyone else, baked ALL THE BREAD! Worried about my current state of health I had all that special fasting bloodwork done and while one thing was slightly elevated (thank goodness that was all!), they just stated to make lifestyle changes and get more exercise. So…I’m doing just that. I’ve started doing more, watching what i eat, logging all that goes into my mouth and counting calories. I’m also working out in smaller time bits instead of one chunk of time. I am finding I’m doing more exercise that way and its less boring to do it in ten to fifteen minutes segments than 45 mins to an hour in one shot. I hate exercising. Boring as fuck to me so breaking it up and doing different things helps me still get movement in. One of the things I do is every time I go down to the basement to do a load of laundry, I jump on the bike for ten minutes. Usually gets me about two miles in that time.
Family life is great. Hubby and I couldn’t be happier. Still haven’t gotten our honeymoon yet (five years married this past May) but eventually we’ll save up the money to do it. I’d really like to revisit Italy especially since I just heard they are opening the tunnels under it for the first time for the public to view.
Still knitting socks. Cross stitching things too as that seems to have become a re-budding interest. SCA events are starting back up after over a year hiatus of them being canceled due to COVID. I went to a friend’s elevation for Chivalry a few weeks ago and it was glorious to be in garb again and hug friends I hadn’t seen in ages. The best comment a friend made as he approached me for a hug was “this is going to be awkward” because he planned on hugging long. I laughed, but not awkward at all and it made me so happy. Of course, about 2/3s of my garb was tight due to weight gain but there was a lot of laughter because EVERYONE was saying the same thing “this was the only thing that fit me”. No one cared. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was happy. I missed that so much. I look forward to the normalcy again, which I know is still a ways off. But, its a start.
Alright..back to work. Ciao!
Eat, Pray & Suck it Up! 