To say that we were all looking forward to having some paid time off from work over the July 4th week is a severe understatement. I mean, coworkers were damn near throwing punches. It was time for us all to get away from each other, the building, customers, etc. I consider myself very lucky that I am the newest hire there, but still got the paid time off like everyone else. It's just one of the perks of the job! But I had pushed myself way too far on the last weekend of work before our break. By the time Sunday rolled around, which was the last day open for 10 days, I wasn't feeling right. By the end of the day, I had a headache (which I don't get anymore), I was feeling rundown, and lightheaded. I had been up since 3 a.m., and because I am working with a 16 year old who values her phone more than doing her job, I had to myself push far beyond my limits to make sure everything got done. I too would love to stand at the counter and take the online drivers test on my phone while someone else worked and I got half of the tips. Okay, so no on the drivers test, but I would love to stand at the counter and read a book and then collect half of the tips. Said child is also now requiring that I stay until closing, which means I work 9 hours on Sundays. This is the same child who was sending me home so early from numerous shifts that I lost hours on my paycheck and picked up a second job. Yeah. Once we closed, I delivered an order to an invalid customer. I was very close to a friends house that I hadn't seen in awhile and I had a graduation card and gift for her daughter, so I stopped by there too. By the time I got home, my headache was horrible, I was even more lightheaded, and just needed to rest for the evening.
I woke up Monday morning still with a headache, laid in bed for a bit and thought that if I got up and moved around, I'd feel better. My head still felt weird, like it would after a migraine that I would get back in the day, but once I got up and moving, the actual headache went away. My goal for this staycation was to get lots and lots of rest and to move at a slower pace. Art? Yes! Reading? Yes! I stepped outside and dead-headed my flowers, watered the plants, collected marigold seeds......and something so stationary as collecting those seeds and laying them out on a drying screen was my undoing. I was so tired and disoriented and I forgot I had the bench behind me and when I went to step back, I caught my bad ankle on the foot of the bench. I started to stumble, and would try and right myself, stumble some more, still trying to continue to right myself. I was falling to the left, and stumbling along the way. I ended up slamming my left hip into the rolling dehumidifier, and caught myself with my left arm (the one that gives me trouble after being fixed and having that allergic reaction to the covid and tetanus boosters) as I slammed into my altar cabinet. I cried. More I think from being startled, and feeling battered, than from actually being in pain, but I was in some pain. I ended up spending the rest of the week trying to get my arm back to good, and I still have a bruise on the side of my leg.
When my youngest son woke up and came downstairs, he said that he needed me to hook up the trailer to my car so he could haul the stone over to the oldest sons house around the corner and finish the landscaping. There was much to-do between myself and hubby about this situation. The two of them went over and wiped out ALL of the greenery. Native, non-native, all of it. They were supposed to leave the flowers, because those come and go on their own and don't need anyone to do anything with them. But gone. All that was left to do was lay the stone. The same stone (pea gravel) that I got for free from a house down the road and that hubby didn't appreciate. But, because hubby didn't want to spend any of his time of his vacation on spreading the stone, it was left up to me.
So I informed the boy that I had fallen, but would do what I could. I hooked the trailer up to my car (which if you saw how tiny I am, you would know that takes a lot of strength for me to do that), the boy grabbed the buckets and shovels. Only to find out that hubby only left us with 3 5-gallon buckets. That was not going to cut it. I was not going to make 12 trips back and forth, especially since I was going to have to try and back the trailer in since our yard sits way back from the road. The last time I tried backing in the trailer, I jack-knifed it into my car. I don't feel less capable, I don't care if men make fun of me, we all start somewhere and I knew that I just needed practice.....and to do it without hubby in the car getting pissed off and making me more nervous. So we found more buckets that the boy had brought home from his job. I told him to fill as many as we could fit in the trailer, because I'd rather go with too many than have to keep making trips back. He didn't listen.
We got over to my sons house and agreed that he would dump the stone and I would spread it, thinking that would be less physical for me. He struggled, I ended up picking up the slack...which is the theme of the my life. I believe one day I shall write a book called, "Picking up the Slack of the World Around Me". Once I got moving, I was feeling ok, but still being careful of my arm/shoulder. We had to make another trip back, which means I needed to back the trailer in the driveway and then make a turn in the yard to get closer to the stone. It took several tries of pulling forward and backing up, but damnit, I did it. My son was very patient! And he listened to me to take aaaallllll of the stone. We finished the job, except for some edging pieces that needed to be laid to keep the stone from spilling out into the yard, but hey, I wasn't getting paid to do this job, the boy was.
I kept asking hubby if he watched me on the Ring camera? Did he see me shovel? Did he see that I actually back the trailer up?! It took me several times of asking before he watched it and.......he wasn't impressed. Kind of made fun of me, actually. That's okay. I don't need his praise or approval, I know I did a good job!!!! But I certainly don't need his judgements either.
On Tuesday, I was still feeling out of sorts and did some stuff around the house and went sat outside for about an hour. But that always leads to having to listen to the neighbor scream at her kids and dogs. I've learned to take my earbuds outside with me so that when I hear them come out, I pop those babies in and listen to soothing music. I do prefer the natural sounds of outdoors though, and the birds, but I have to keep my sanity somehow. When hubby got home from work, I asked him to take my blood pressure. He always feels my blood pressure is high when I go to the doctor, but they never seem concerned. With pushing myself physically so much, and the stress I am under at home and work, he was sure my blood pressure was high. And for the first time in a very long time, it was absolutely perfect. I usually am 127/80-something, but this time I was 102/71! Over the next few days I started feeling better...which was good because I had what turned out to be a very busy week ahead!
On Wednesday, my morning exploded fielding texts and calls and trying to fill out some documents online that Woodchuck asked me to do, but I needed to hit the road, so those were going to have wait until the evening when we were together. The documents were concerning a home North of our land that went up for sale! It also had another 10 acres with it, and butted right up to our land. It all seemed so perfect! For the same amount of money the banks were going to make us take out in a construction loan to build our house, we could get an established home and 10 more acres, which included the small part that we have been trying to buy from the home owner for the past couple of years and it had about 2 acres in the CRP program that we have our forests in. I know for a fact that this homeowner, as well as those all the way down the road, do not take care of their forests as the CRP program dictates they should. I was beyond excited at the thought of getting my hands on more land to make healthy and native. So we needed some paperwork to go thru before seeing the house, but for now I had to get going!
I was meeting a friend (a previous coworker that I've known since Elementary school) for breakfast and then I needed to go to another town to pick up my name badge for my second job that I am starting. My job situation continues its dysfunction from last year. Places of employment just aren't what they used to be and my bullshit tolerance meter remains at zero. The goal right now is to work both jobs, the existing full time and the new part-time. The part-time starts off as seasonal (90 days) and only about 20 hours a week, with the chance of being offered a permanent position after that 90 days. Between the two jobs, I'll be working around 60 hours a week. I took this job because the boss's 16 year old was sending me home early any chance she got, and I lost hours. I didn't realize when I accepted the new job that the hours were so low there, so I have to work at both places.
After breakfast and picking up my name badge, I stopped at my mothers house since I hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks. She looks so healthy now! Though her chemo curl has started to relax, and that irritates her, she is happy to be back at normal life now...minus smoking! Now when she smells someone smoking, or someone who has recently smoked, she is horrified at the way she and her home and things used to smell. Her husband brought up that he's ready to move a retirement place, even naming the place that he would like to live in. But after looking it up, it's not what he thought it was (a place for people over 55), it's for all ages and a high-end apartment community building. I really worry about them and the decisions they are making and how I can't just trust what they are saying, but have to do a lot of checking in to things on my own to verify.
Woodchuck and I did indeed finish the online paperwork, got the documents we needed to the realtor and made an appointment for Friday morning to stop at the realtors office to sign some documents, and then meet over at the home to walk through it. If we were going to move forward with buying that home, and our offer was accepted, we would have 24 hours to get our home on the market. That means we went from having 1.5-2 years to clean out, pack, and get this place on the market, to less than a week to get this place ready for photos. That was stress inducing! So on Thursday, we spent 8 hours cleaning out the workshop and it still isn't done! We donated several bags of things, threw out stuff, and Woodchuck took a lot of totes of things to the pole barn.
Friday morning we went to town to meet with the Realtor, picked our new glasses (I have a slightly stronger prescription now and have gotten no-line bifocals!) and then headed to the house. We had concerns pretty much as soon as we walked in the door. From floor plan, to weird placement, to shotty work, each room we walked into dropped our enthusiasm more. We had ten minutes left to finish looking through the house and still needed to see the upstairs and basement. Really shouldn't have even bothered. Long story short--> nope. We will stay right now with the original plan of building in a year or two. But hey, it was worth a shot! I know from working at an auction place that pictures can make a turd look like gold. You really have to lay on eyes on it yourself to know how it really looks. And our realtor is the BEST! She had our best interest at heart, and even in the heat and dress clothes, she walked our land with us when we were done at the house! I think it's safe to say that she felt the magick there too. Once we were done there, Woodchuck and I ran some errands and then headed home for some R & R and cocktails on the patio. Everything in due time, everything is happening as it should.
Saturday was Woodchucks last day off for the holiday, so we headed to the land to get some work done. He needed to mow and I was going to pick up garbage from the front along the road, and then work to remove invasives from along the driveway. I initially was just going to do a little but went deeper and deeper in. I unfortunately found the first tree of heaven. It was luckily a juvenile, and thank goodness I caught it now, but damn, I am so tired of dealing with these asshole invasives and of course it has to be one of the most difficult ones. Because this isn't in a spot that gets mowed because there's a bit of a ditch right there, I will have to repeatedly check on this area and keep cutting it by hand and treating it.
You can help identify them from other look-alike trees by the "thumbs" and if you scrape the main stalk and it smells like peanut butter? Yep. You've got an invasive asshole Tree of Heaven on your hands. I cut down this one, plus numerous honeysuckles, I left the mulberry for now, and ran face first into a massive burning bush. While there is a native burning bush here in Indiana, my experience with the land is that we rarely have the native anything in spots like this. Even though I told myself not to take anything out unless I was 100% sure it was bad, the massive structure of this thing told me it couldn't be good, and it didn't look good with trying to keep a cleaner property line and native plant system. So I began chipping away at it, but didn't even get halfway through it!
The main bush itself was at least 7-9 foot tall and going out in all directions!
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