I Think I Actually Have Enough Yarn. Not.

I've been exploring the area here and there as time allows, earlier in the week I came across a flier advertising The Christmas Tree Store which sells of all things, yarn. I got off a little early and toodled down there - it's a huge store that actually sells not only christmas stuff and yarn - but linens, cleaning supplies, seasonal decorations, toys, furniture, a little bit of this and that to be exact - and pretty discounted. I finally located the yarn - it's not a lot but they did have Lion Brand Suede in fairly decent colors (part of the problem with bargain yarn is it's cheap but has a tendency to come in neon orange or be some strange novelty yarn). As I started to load up on it ($1 a skein as opposed to $5 in other stores) it suddenly dawned on me - I had absolutely NO use for this yarn. None. Nada. It was too heavy for a sweater, I would need a cart to buy enough for an afgan and there is a limited amount of ponchos you can make. And can you believe I actually put it back?? I know! Neither can I. Hmm. I suppose it had to happen someday but not so soon. But since I have a knit picks catalog and they are having a sale I think I will recover in a fairly timely fashion. Anyhoo, we have a few things on the boards today, I have to go "de-cat" Ray's room, my car is going to be inspected today and I have to organize for Monday. The weather this weekend is supposed to be really nice and the fall leaves are brilliant - whoo hooo!

Busy Week.

Yes, I know, I know!! that AOL is closing thier journals yada yada yada - I still have until the end of the month so keep your pants on. I've been quite busy lately with work, just like if you don't exercise it's pretty hard when you start back up again, work is the same deal. Due to delays in selling the house and being ill, my couple of weeks off ended up stretching into about 5 or 6 weeks off. It's not so much the work that gets you, it's the lack of time -  by the time I swing in the door and get the dog walked, the mail in, the cats fed, etc it's 8 pm and  I feel like I've accomplished not much at all. Once I get to know the area things won't be quite so bad, as a visit nurse you can get quite a few errands done in between patients if you plot them out right but for now I feel like I've won the battle if I can just find my way back to the office! The job is going well, I've been off of orientation for a couple of days and am seeing patients, they did honor my request not to give me a full day for awhile until I get my feet under me. And of course I had the Snowball Effect Patient today - you go in for one simple thing and the next thing you know the doctor's office is involved and you're running stat labs and making all sorts of phone calls. It's just a little bit more cumbersome since I had to call the office to find out where the closest lab was and I'm not familar with any of these doctors at all. So the reduced schedule is fine for now as it takes twice as long to do everything it seems. and it doesn't seem to be a problem though because when I'm in the office I help with the paperwork since I'm very familar with it. Pets are fine, we met with the pet sitter the other night who is very nice and will be looking after the cats for us. Claw was disdainful but Vincent insisted on acting as if the petsitter brought a knife and fork with her - he's such a scardy cat!

Gainfully Employed

I had my first day at work- it was a bit confusing for all parties involved. They've never had anyone come from another office which put me on equal footing as I've never been employed by another office either. Since it's the same outfit they could use a lot of the stuff I did when I started at Interim, I'm familar with most of the paperwork, they just started with thier new computer program so they have to learn it before they teach it to me so I spent a bit of time reading the newspaper and pottering about. The only blip in the radar was when the person doing the orientation decided I DID need to retake the drug test (even though I scored 100% on the last one) - the test is pretty standard and I'm generally ok with it if I know I'm going to be taking a test. However, as we all know surprises and I don't get along very well - so when she went back through my paperwork, looked up and then said "gee, I think I should have you take a test" and then handed me a 30 question drug test to take cold and right now, I had instant test anxiety. I did pass it, but didn't appreciate it. The rest of it was alright though, I'm going to have my own desk and they give you a laptop! and I'm going out with a nurse today on visits. I think they would give me a longer orientation period but I just want to get back to work. In other news the people that bought our house in WV have looked all over and there is no sign of my coat anywhere - and it's my good coat of course. So we think the good coat might be at Goodwill, sigh, of course it had to be THAT coat, didn't it? It couldn't be the coat I bought for $20 in the Kingwood thrift store or the one I keep toting for no reason at all. My winter boots are also gone along with a few other things I'm sure as it was all packed in a box. Oh well, off to work.

Timber!

This house has very large, very old pine trees out front. The problem was they were not only blocking the sun but they weren't in the greatest of shape - all the branches on the bottom were dead and the rest weren't looking so hot. So David decided to take 3 of them down, not an easy task since we live on the road. But he did it and now it looks so much better. Of course now he has to deal with the branches and so forth, he's piling them outback and then will rent a chipper in the spring after they've dried out a bit. I've been busy just pottering about this weekend, the satallite tv is pretty neat - they even have a channel devoted to horror movies 24/7! The weather has been pretty crappy so there's not a whole lot to do outside, well aside from wreaking havoc on the local fauna. The mushrooms are finally fading, with the cooler weather coming in I knew that would happen. I got my new license plates and now have to get my car inspected AGAIN even though it was just inspected in August. I'm working on the sweater, I'm glad I bought all that yarn as doesn't go as far as I thought it would. I heard from the people in WV, they haven't come across my coat so it's either here somewhere or it got misplaced - since I don't have it both of those options suck. I start work tomorrow!

Saturday

The weather really turned much colder last night, when I took Pearl out this morning the grass was a tiny bit frozen. There are no street lights here at all, David can't understand why I don't want the lights on when I take her out - but in the dark here, you can see the stars so clearly - it's astounding and breathtaking. The Big Dipper was out the other night and it was so huge and so close you could almost touch it. I wish I could take a picture of exactly what it looks like, but I can't you will have to wonder. Anyhoo, I got my next knitting project off the ground, it's a hooded sweater with allover cables. I have the pattern set so it's hopefully smooth sailing from here on out. I got the yarn at Big Lots - if you haunt them from time to time you can get some boffo yarn for next to nothing. I got Elite Premire yarn for a song - I looked it up on the internet and it usually runs about $5 apiece, I got 20 skeins for $20. I didn't exercise this morning as my legs are a bit sore, it's funny how you can exercise every morning but if you stop even for a little while your body forgets and you have to start all over again. David and I went out to the chinese buffet again last night, I think that will be it for awhile as we are in danger of Overdoing it. I'm starting to look foward to work on Monday, there is only so much you can do to amuse yourself and since I no longer have being sick to occupy my time it leaves me with a bit too much time on my hands. I did sign up at the local library which is very tiny, but they had the latest bestsellers and a knitting club on Wednesday which I'll try to make - it runs from 4pm to 5:30 so if I have patients in the area I just may be able to catch the tail end once in awhile. It's not much but it's a start. We met a couple more of the neighbors, they have a cute baby who may end up on my knitting list and they are very nice of course. They also had the same problems with Verizon that we did, it seems everyone else has a horror story about them! Oh, and here is Adam's address as he has a birthday coming up on the 13th

SHSN Lester, Adam M, Supply Dept

USS Harry S. Truman (CVN75)

FPO AE

09524-2875 (Box 52)

That Dark Horse

While looking for my winter coat this morning I finally came across the screws for the livingroom tables which is nice as David put them together before he left for work so I no longer have to guard my glass on the floor. The bad news is we never came across my coat which leads me to suspect I might have left it in WV so I'll have to contact the people that bought the house and hopefully it's there. I finally resolved the job situation after long and careful thought which was NOT performed while walking Pearl. I had thought I could ponder the pros and cons while admiring the fall leaves but just trying to keep Pearl in line takes any and all thought so I had to ponder on the elipse. I had decided to go with the agency I interviewed with on Tuesday but out of nowhere Interim called on Wednesday with a slightly higher salary, a much lower benefits payment and decided they wanted me full time instead of per- diem. The other deciding factor was the on call, both of them are once a month but Interim it's only a 40 mile radius as opposed to a 6 county radius from the other office which is 30 miles from here. I still had to think about it, gone are the days of impulsive behavior as it tends to lead to more trouble than it's worth. So I called Interim back this morning and accepted the job which I'll start on Monday. I called the other agency and talked to Paul who then said if he knew there was competition he would have been "much more aggressive with the salary offered"  - ARRGH. But I don't know how much more aggressive and it still doesn't change facts. But he did say if Interim didn't work out to call and they would be more than happy to hire me - works for me. The weather turned last night and there is a definate chill in the air (hence the Wintercoat Hunting), the rain is just making it chillier. I guess I'll have to make plans for my last weekend as a free person!

How It's Going So Far

Well, I still miss Jackson a lot and I'm still homesick - but I'm down to crying about once a day and that will pass. I feel better about Jackson now that we've heard from him a few times (he's written a couple of letters) and David has been hanging our pictures and stuff so it's starting to look more like our house every day. He fixed the faucet in the bathroom so that when you take a shower it no longer sounds like whale is trapped in the basement even though that was totally funny and annoyed the cat. Love the new stackable washer/dryer thing, works like a top.  I took Pearl for a walk and saw Larry the neighbor, they have a little west highland terrier and Pearl who usually wants to eat small dogs decided she liked Biscuit and wanted to play with him. However, if you've ever seen a Vizsla play you'd realize that is NOT a good idea and in the interest of maintaining  a good neighbor relationship I kept her on the leash. We're still keeping the cats in for awhile, at least until David put a fence up in front as a diversion from the road. I'm still mulling over my job decision, not much progress there. I'm also still trying to get over some stupid dream I had the night before I left for LI - I dreamed I was carrying a package of raw chicken across the kitchen and  - this is so gross - took a big bite of it! It was so  vivid I could actually taste it and in the dream I spit it out but I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth no matter what I did - and it's still bothering me. Yuck-o-la.