Saturday and Lunch

This morning I will work two hours and that will finish making up for losing hours on Good Friday. Then I will immediately drive to Bartlesville to meet with Myra for lunch at noon. When I return from that I will mow. Bob says he will help me but he really shouldn't have to since he no longer lives here in the fourplex.  He says it will be good exercise though. I will not have breakfast with Bob this morning since he is going to a Lion's Club breakfast and afterward they are going to clean up the Plaza downtown.  That's one of their service projects.

Missy wanted to go out this morning while it's balmy. It's 51 here. I let her out but followed her around since she tends to wander off and I know there are at least two other cats in the neighborhood.  I don't trust her to be able to hold her own with a tom cat. The one that resembles her came over and wanted to investigate her and I made her come in. She had had a good opportunity to eat grass and lay in the grass too so I didn't feel bad about making her come in and that tom came right up to my door. I ran him off.

I am using the desktop computer this morning. I have been following directions for charging the new battery but I don't believe it's going to hold a charge any longer then an hour regardless. That's disappointing. But at least I will be able to sit in the living room and use it for that long. The other battery just quit.

I need to go to the market before I go to work this morning and get the ingredients for my corn casserole. I will take that and my cherry pie dessert to the basket dinner tomorrow. Luckily Country Mart is just three blocks away. In fact, the Dollar General is just down the street a half block and I could probably get all I need there. It opens at 7:00 AM too.

More later....

I went to the market to get the things I'll need for tomorrow's dinner.  Then I went to work. Katie had charged the staff with the job of cleaning out the frig there in the kitchen.  It was pretty bad. I told them I would do it. I had been keeping the dishes washed anyhow. It took me some time and I threw away a lot of spoiled food but I washed the entire thing out and put everything back in order. Now they can find their stuff.

I left at 5 minutes until 11:00 and went on down to Bartlesville to meet Myra.  We had a great meal and a good visit. She had found several things at Christopher and Banks that she thought I would like. They had several racks of great garments for 14.95 each. I bought two vests and two tops and some earrings and socks. I hadn't intended to buy anything else new but at those prices, I couldn't stand not to get what I can use next fall and winter.

I got home at 4:00 and asked Bob to come over and start the mower for me. Then I mowed my middle yard and the east yard just off my patio. I did not do the back. It doesn't belong to me or Marilyn. They have a riding mower and will have to do it themselves.

Bob came in for wine and left about 6:00. There's nothing on TV on Saturday night.

I will take my bath in a bit and  put my PJs on. I am very tired after all that shopping.   I get paid on Wednesday so I will pay another car payment then and also pay my Christopher and Banks bill.

Friday At Last

Thank goodness it's Friday. I am always ready for Friday. Standing for four hours at the library always wears me out by week's end. I do have to work tomorrow for two hours to finish making up for the loss of the Good Friday hours.

I got up and got ready for the day before I got the ribs into the slow cooker but they are in there now. They should be finished by 11:00. I will just keep them warm until I get the potatoes and veggie ready.  I already have Bob's salad here.

This has already been an interesting morning. I am in the process of charging my new laptop battery.  This morning when I had it all charged up for the third time, I could not open my browser.  I rebooted the computer and then ran check disc. Now it appears to be running fine. To train the new battery to charge at capacity you must fully run it down and then charge it to 100% and run it down again five different times. That is supposed to train the battery to charge to full capacity.  We will see.

Tomorrow after I leave the library at 11:00, I will go to Bartlesville to meet Myra for lunch.  After I get home, if the weather permits, I will mow. Bob insists he will help me.  He got his mower oil changed and gassed up. I cannot start it so he will have to pull the rope to start it for me. If you recall this landlady refuses to  have the yard mowed every week. The grass is already eight inches high and looks bad so I will mow again this year between the times she has it mowed.

We have a guest minister coming Sunday at church and we are planning a basket dinner.  I will fix my corn casserole and a dessert of some kind. Also Sunday evening Karan and Bobbie will have the Living the Questions group.  I imagine that will start at 7:00.

More later....

Today at the library, I put away a lot of DVDs but not as many as usual. Then I did some shelf reading. We need a new kit to repair and clean the discs. Yesterday the one disc that repairs the disc, came apart. So Katie is ordering another kit.

She came and told me she wanted me to go over to the children's side of the library and find about twelve books that did not get a full bar code scan. Whoever scanned over there did not notice they did not get the entire bar code scanned.  So those books did not get scanned. All Katie could do was tell me the books on either side of the partly scanned bar code and I would have to check for the one in the middle of those two. It took me an hour to find all the books with the partly scanned bar codes but I finally found them all.  Katie must stay up nights looking for work for me to do. But maybe not. The last 45 minutes I was there she had me cut out bar codes and cash redemption coupons on Campbell soup labels. They can redeem those for supplies for the library. Some of the work I do there is just child's play.  Oh how I miss the courthouse. The work I did there was interesting.  Oh well, it's all work.

I came home to read the paper and my Consumer Report Health Newsletter.  Bob came over to watch the news and left at 7:00.  I took my bath and put my PJs on.  Bobby and Karan came over and picked up his dinner from the bar b q ribs. They were good but I will be eating with Myra tomorrow and we have that basket dinner at church on Sunday. So we shared with Bobby.

A Busy Thursday

I did my laundry this morning when I first got up at 5:15. I wanted to wash my sheets and towels and PJs.  Then I began my regular Thursday housecleaning. I got the bathroom and kitchen floors done first then vacuumed the carpet.  I didn't dust yet but I will get to that. I let Missy out again this morning and after some argument, she did come back in. It becomes a battle of the wills.

Yesterday I cleaned DVDs at the library and organized some more magazines and put away the new books. Katie also had me send out some "past due" letters.   It was a relatively easy day....no scanning. I was still exhausted.

The plumber came yesterday morning at 10:00. First he fixed the leak under the sink then changed the hoses so the hot water is on the left, then he put a new faucet of my bathtub. All this was done in an hour. I sat down afterward and wrote both the landlady and the property manager a "thank you" note and an apology for my anger expressed so heatedly. There's no excuse for rudeness.

After that I fixed swiss steak for Bob and myself for lunch. I had potato salad left from Easter Sunday and also baked beans. I also had cupcakes. He left when it was time for me to go to work.

We were under storm warnings yesterday afternoon and I was so afraid my car would be hail damaged but all it did was rain and wind. Last night at 2:00 int he morning the storm hit again but although it woke me up with all the noise, all we got was rain and wind again...no hail.

Bob came over yesterday afternoon while I was at work and his computer downloaded updates. That changed the configuration and he was upset over that. I fooled with it for awhile this morning and we got him familiar with the changes and he is happy with it again.  He has Windows 8 on his computer and he's not all that happy with it. But he'll get used to it.

I will cook the rest of the ribs Karan gave me last month. I had made two batches out of them and this is the second.  I will have boiled potatoes and a veggie and Bob's salad. I still have two cupcakes for dessert.

More later...

I don't know what I was thinking about. I have to do those ribs in  the slow cooker and it will take 4 to 5 hours. So I fixed some baked pork chops instead. Tomorrow we will have the ribs.

I didn't do any scanning today. I put away a bunch of DVDs and helped Paula do that. Then I repaired and cleaned some DVDs but Katie is going to have to order another kit. I have worn those completely out. I am still worn out from all that I did before I even left for work.

Wednesday and The Problems Persist.

If you read last night's blog, you learned that I am still waiting to get the leak under my sink fixed.  In another hour I will call the plumber and tell him Martha will be calling him sometime today to fix my leak under the sink but I wanted to contact him early to be sure to get it done today.  If necessary, I will pay his bill myself and just deduct it from the rent. Or he can bill Martha....whatever...I just want the sink fixed so I can cook and clean up afterward.

Yesterday was another nightmare at work too. Katie had told me to scan bar codes on all the magazines in the back room at the library.  I got all the 2014 and 2015 done on Monday so the ones I had left were all the Kansas History ones for decades and all the National Geographic Magazines  for decades and that included ten shelves of magazines. I started with those on the top shelf and found only a couple with bar codes. As I went through box after box of old magazines, I found only a bar code here and there....usually 2009 or newer. It took me three hours to check them all and scan what I found. Finally, I went to tell Katie what I had discovered. She came back to check what I was talking about. Then she said, that's because we didn't do bar codes until recent years. She could have saved me a couple of hours work if she had told me that to begin with.  Oh how I miss the courthouse! She also told me Adrian had found two stacks of magazines that I had bound that were to be saved. I looked at them and they they were not on the list at all. She then told him to put them on the list. I guess I was supposed to know that by osmosis. I scanned them and then put them in the proper magazine boxes and labeled them.  That's the most unorganized place I have ever worked. And...it's a library!

Life is certainly not simple anymore. And, at my age, I don't cope well with folks who drop the ball whether it's a library director or a landlady.

Today, even if the plumber does not come until afternoon and Bob has to let him in, I will cook this meat I have thawed. We will have my leftover potato salad and his salad and the baked beans from Sunday. I will just have to stack the plates and wait until I have a working sink to run the dishwasher and wash them.

I wonder what Katie will have for me to do today?

More later...

I reached the plumber this morning at 8:00. The property manager had already called him last evening and arranged for him to come over this morning.   I don't know when... but I'm just happy he's going to take care of the sink leak. I will send her a thank you note with an apology for my temper last night.  I'm going to try to cook today if the plumber is not still here. I am hoping he will be here fairly early so I can.  My meat was thawed yesterday.

Missy wanted to go out this morning so when I had my coffee ready I let her out and went out on the carport to drink my coffee and eat my banana.  When I was ready to come in the apartment, I tried to get her to come too.. This time...no go.  She would not come in. She loves the outdoor and wants to eat grass and also lay in it. I tried to get her with the broom but she just hissed and growled at me. Finally I went in without her.  When I came back out to try again to get her in, she was gone.  I got my flashlight and went looking for her. She was just east of my apartment next to the apartments next door eating grass. I tired once again to get her to come in but she absolutely refused and ignored me. I finally just picked her up under the front legs and carried her into the house.  She was not happy but she did not bite me either.  Now she is in for awhile. It's much too much work to get her to come back in. She just loves it out there in the grass. She eats some and she lies in it.  If there weren't other hostile cats in the neighborhood, I would let her out but she is so fragile anymore that I don't dare. If she got into another fight and lost like she did two years ago, I might lose her. She had a heck of an infection from that fracas.

Tuesday and A Problem

I was cleaning up after Bob left last night and suddenly I felt I was standing in water. I opened the cabinet doors  under the sink and found it had been leaking under there. I grabbed a towel and sopped up the water and got all the stuff I store under there out.and onto the floor in front of the sink. I tried to call the landlady but she was not home. I called her property manager and she called her maintenance man but he was not available. She tried to call a plumber but they had an answering machine on their business phone and did not answer.  So I left the doors open to dry out the wood and put all that stuff up on the counter top. They are supposed to send a plumber out this morning. If they don't get it fixed by noontime, Bob and I will eat out. I can't cook without water and enough water to clean up too.   What a mess! I didn't think I would sleep a wink last night but I was so tired after yesterday at work that I did. I did wake up a couple of times but got back to sleep until 4:45 when I just got up.

The cabinet floor was mostly dry but my little in front of the sink rug is still drying on a chair out on the the carport.

I will just take the cakes up to Independence and come right back home. I would like to be here when the plumber comes...if the plumber comes.  I would like him to switch the lines correctly to the hot and cold water. For some reason Wayne had them switched wrong. Instead of the right being cold water, the left was the cold water and the right was hot. I have used them that way for the two years because I didn't want to trouble Wayne but I will have them corrected if a plumber is coming, Also, the bathtub faucet drips all the time.

I will be scanning bar codes on all those magazines at work again today. What a mess!  I am already looking forward to the weekend and I still have to work two hours on Saturday to finish making up for the Good Friday holiday. Saturday at noon, I will meet Myra for lunch. Bob will be on his own.

More later...

Well, it's nearly 11:00 and no plumber has come yet. I wonder when I can expect him? I can't cook with the kitchen in such a mess and so I imagine we will have to eat out at lunch.

We did have to eat out at lunch. 

The plumber never came and when I checked on it the property manager said the owner was having her maintenance man come to work on it after he got off work. I waited until 7:00 PM and then called her back. She said she thought he would have been there by 5:00. He never came. I lost it with her and told her I had thawed meat for our dinner and needed to cook it today. She said she would call the plumber in the morning. I will call the plumber myself at 8:00 just to make sure it gets done early. I never dreamt I would have all these problems getting  a simple plumbing job done.  This landlady is the pits. I told her property manager that when one owns property, one has to expect some problems to come up and it is the responsibility of the owner (or property manager in her case) to provide the service needed. I told her Bob Miller and I owned property at one time and we took care of any problems immediately. I also told her the rent I had paid had never been even one day late and I expected better service.  They have never been able to rent the apartment where my brother in law lived and it has been empty since November. It really didn't pay them to raise the rent and do away with the business account for the TV. Now they have lost six months rent on that apartment.

I was angry!

Monday and A Hair Day

I will go to Independence about 9:00 for my 10:00 hairdo and cut day. I will go to their Wal Mart store to do some shopping.  It is a superstore and ours isn't. Ours often does not have advertised items. It is such a dud of a store. I seldom buy my produce there because their produce is rated so badly by Consumer's Report.

If the timing is right, I will go by Big Cheese and buy a small pizza for our lunch before I come home. I do that about every three weeks. When I have my long appointment, it simplifies lunch for me.

Missy wanted out this morning and since it is warmer, I let her out. She wanted to eat grass and since the birds are chirping, she also wanted to be out to hear them. Several years ago, when we lived on Catalina street, and before I sold the house, she was able to catch and eat birds. That always aggravated me but I know that is their nature. Now that she is older, she no longer can do that but she still enjoys hearing them chirp. 

I will work this afternoon. I don't know what project Katie will have for me today. Saturday morning I spent the entire two hours I worked, peeling the green stickers off DVDs that were no longer "new". When books or DVDs are new, they put a green sticker on them and put them in a "special" place so people will know they are "new". When those books and DVDs are six months old, they have me take the green sticker off them and merge them into the bookcases with the others. I finished that project on Saturday morning.

I ordered a new battery for the laptop. Dell says the battery is "defective" and an error message came up and suggested I buy a new battery. It was shutting down suddenly without warning. So I am back to using the desktop for my work. The little laptop needs a new  battery too but I will just buy one at a time. They evidently have not shipped the new battery yet. I haven't had an e-mail telling me it was shipped.

More later....

What an exhausting day! Today Katie said I need to scan bar codes on all the magazines in the back. There are hundreds and hundreds of those. Luckily I had organized the last two years into magazine holders and put them in order too.  I got all of 2015 and 2014 done in two hours by working right along. The sad thing is that Adrian had told me to not worry about the order when I bound the older ones to be discarded or recycled.  He said just make the bundles small enough that I can handle them without hurting myself. Katie learned today that Adrian had not taken them off the inventory when I bound them up. So he is opening the cords and taking all those of the inventory too. But he is getting them put back just where I had stored them.

So now I have to scan the hundreds and hundreds of old Kansas magazines and old National Geographic magazines.. There are seven shelves full of them. Hopefully when I get those done, the worst will be over. Surely it can't be any worse.

A Very Busy Sunday

I got around early this morning and baked my coffee cake for the breakfast at church. I took the potato salad and baked beans in and put them in the frig at church to take to John and Leslie's after church.

The worship serves went well.  The 10:00 one was basically a prayer service with testimony. About five of us spoke. There was a lot of scripture and hymns and some video about the resurrection. The breakfast came at 10:30. It too was a great success. Then the 11:00 worship service. We used the video taped music because our only pianist was out of town with her grandchildren for Easter. That worked fine. There was a skit and later, after the service, we met a member who had never come before. His mother, from Texas, was a member and she talked the family into coming We hope he and his family will come back. His wife belongs to the Church of the Nazarene and they usually attend there when they go to church.  The man was very interested in our group.  He may try to talk his wife into alternating Sundays.

After the church service, we went to Leslie and John's for dinner. The other grandparents were supposed to pick up their grandchildren but they decided to leave them with John and Leslie. That was unfortunate because just as we were ready to sit down to our meal, Leslie was called out to work. She was on call this weekend. So Cyndi and I were in charge of the girls and cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. That worked out fine because Cyndi pitches right in. Leslie's patient had decided to try to commit suicide today. I didn't hear how that came out since Leslie was still gone when I gathered up my stuff and Bob and I left. The girls went upstairs to watch TV and were there when we left. They are 3 and 5 years old.

When I got home, I put away the leftovers and did my letters for the congregation and got the two I sent out snail mail out on the mailbox.  

Later Bob came over for wine and 60 Minutes. He left at 7:00 and I took my bath and came in here to do an update on the blog. I am really tired this evening.

Tomorrow I get my hair done in Independence and also get it cut again. I plan to bring home a Big Cheese pizza for our lunch. If there is time, I will go to the market in Independence and buy the groceries I need. Then I will go to work here at the library at 1:00.  Tuesday, I take our cakes to Independence again to the Christian Church. I will bake my cake Monday evening.