Joys For The Past Week

The first full week of May came to an end much quicker than I ever expected. Countdown for TheHub's retirement continues and though he still has double digit work days remaining, we are now in the teens. I am looking forward to him not having all the stress this job has beaten him up with for many years.

It will be great for him to have it in his rearview mirror as he "rides off into the sunset" leaving it behind*.

Monday: TheHub had to take my car to work. Something is wrong with his and it had to be towed to the shop. Consequently it left me no option but to stay at home. It was not what I had planned, but my days are fairly fluid and it was easy to change. Thankfully it was a beautiful day and there was no reason why I should not sit on the porch, listening to birdsongs, while drinking coffee. 

Other than that the day was filed with laundry, rearranging things, and reading. Did I mention reading?

As an interesting aside, at a little after 11 Monday night I was reading and replying to some blogs. I had just made a comment about being envious of a bloggers travels and asking if it was petty of me, when out of the blue (I am sure, at least I hope,  I accidentally hit something on the computer**) Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor began playing. I guess I got my answer!

Tuesday: TheHub's car was not ready, so he had to take mine again. Normally it does not bother me to be at home, but take away my means of escape and I turn into a caged panther, walking back and forth looking for a way to go ANYWHERE. Then I have to remind myself my "cage" is pretty nice and it is not like there are not millions of things I could do/see/clean/read on a day at home.

I did have a phone call with Sluggy which makes any day better. She has interesting (unusual?) people all around her and now I need to look for some out of the ordinary folks around here. Most likely I will need to leave the suburbs to find them though.

TheHub got home a little early. We had planned on going to trivia and this time went a few minutes after 6 so we could get a table. We still did not play officially  but had fun playing along with the "serious" trivia people. The table next to us was stuck on one answer, so we told them what it was. We left before it was over so I have no idea if they won or not, but hope they did.

When we got home we had time to begin a new series "The Tattooist of Auschwitz". I read the book and thought it was good, so I had high hopes for the series. After episode one it looked  like the show might match or exceed my expectations.

Wednesday: I finished my class for the year and afterward we all went out for lunch (way to early for lunch IMO, but majority rules and I followed suit) and had a lovely time with some nice and relaxed conversations.  We decided we would meet for a bite monthly during the summer.

I also talked on the phone with my niece, who is one of the sweetest humans I have ever had the privilege to know. The bonus is being related to her. I hope we can visit her before too long.

Other than that it was just a regular day with a little washing, a little cleaning and some reading.

Friday: I read a lot, caught up on the rest of the laundry, and would like to say I did a ton of housework and had every single thing in place before the weekend, but i didn't. The beautiful day, the porch , and my book were calling me. From the look of the house in the early evening I seem to have obliged. I did make a quick sweep of the house putting up errant objects but that was about it, and amazingly life went on. (One of my joys that I don't mention often is having a partner in life who is comfortable with the way I am)

We usually go out to eat, Friday night, but TheHub had been at a golf tournament most of the day (work related__mostly) , and was hot an tired. We decided instead to have a quick meal in, and watch more of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

(Another joy I don't mention often is having an overly stocked freezer that allows me to create a quick meal easily. I know I did all the cooking for prepared foods that I froze, but without the space to hold them, I would not have so many offerings to choose from.)

Saturday: We woke and were both ready to do our usual running around, when we got a call from Son2. I had volunteered my vehicle to load and transport things from their existing house to their new one and they were ready to take me up on it. 

When the seats are down I have a ton of cargo space and we made a couple of trips taking both some furniture and boxes over for them, then unloaded and put things where they wanted them. It is funny how some bookshelves, lamps, desks and so forth start making bare rooms look not quite so bare.

By the time we were back home it was a little later than I wanted to start cooking. We managed to snag the last rotisserie chicken Publix had, so I am counting that as another joy. Not so joyful though is that the chicken had gone up another 50 cents. It's now a buck fifty over what it was a year ago. It is still a good deal and much cheaper than picking up food to go, but jeeze, are these price increases ever going to slow down?

Sunday: It was Mother's Day here. At our house it happens without a lot of fanfare, but a house without kids at home is much different that one with it. We went to church, stopped on the way home to pick up a meal we split for lunch, then started to watch the last episode of The Tattooist of Auschwitz. About 5 minutes in, the doorbell rang and DIL2 and Son2 were at the door. 

They came over to wish me a Happy Day, sat and visited for a bit then left. I was happy to see them but did not expect them to drop by. 

Their new place is on the other side of town and they still have a few touch up things to do to the reno.  Since they both work and the weekends are their main workdays they did not need to spend that time coming here. I was glad to hear they needed to go to Costco, which is on my side of town, and were not just dropping by for Mother's Day.

Both the Portland son and the Nashville son called and we had nice conversations with them. Another joy I rarely mention is having devices with great speakers so TheHub and I can both be a part of the call. I would like to see both sons more often, but am so thankful for technology that makes being part of their lives so much easier.

Books read in May:

A Rip in Time

The Lost Symbol

Look for your joys, no matter how small, they are always out there.

May all your weeds be wildflowers.

Anne

* I do not think TheHub will completely stop working. Mostly likely he will do some freelance consulting work , but it will be soemthing he enjoys without the day to day stress his current job requires.

**Earlier in the day I had been playing my Spotify playlist If it's not Baroque and that was the next song up list, before I paused it. But talk about timing!