cold and snowy
2-25-13,

That's the weather up there; also a pretty accurate picture of my life this past week. After digging out multiple times from a nasty Tuesday snowstorm (one so bad that my boss actually let us go home early, and even bailed herself, my reward was to come down with a nasty cold on Thursday. Friday I made it through my half-day of work, went home, and crawled into bed, but I was so wracked with aches and chills that even an electric blanket on high, extra quilts, and a bed-buddy that's a canine heat machine couldn't get me warm enough to fall asleep. Finally I gave up and got up, but I wasn't worth a nickel. I ended up having some oatmeal and a lot of cold medicine for dinner, and falling back into bed.

After a nearly sleepless night (between getting up to pee, coughing & horking myself awake, and achy feverishness, good sleep didn't stand a chance), I got up and plowed into some housework (chores are chores whether you are sick or not) and since Spouse was working a half-day, I got quite a bit done. I cleaned the kitchen, did several loads of wash, and got myself pulled together so I'd be ready to go out & run errands. And since he had to work, I even cleaned the bathroom, out of the kindness of my heart. I had to sit down a lot in between bouts of work, since I was light-headed and having trouble breathing, but I kept plugging.

When he got home, Spouse ran the vacuum and then cleaned himself up, and we went out to take care of the necessaries. First stop was the tax lady--got a modest refund there. Then the pet store for B's special food, Sam's, where in addition to some groceries, I got a refund on the bad blu-ray and picked up my new glasses.

Which I kind of hate, but what can you expect when they take away your old glasses, put drop in your eyes that further blind you, then give you ten minutes to go pick out what you want to look like for the next two years? It's always a crap shoot. And then there's the things you can't predict, like the fact that your prescription in these frames is going to make your head look all distorted and weird to people if they look you in the eye. (Honestly. It's like a fun house mirror. Ugh.) Or that the prismatic effect of the lens edges is going to make you see little colored flashes in your peripheral vision. And that once your lenses are in them they�re going to be so effing heavy!

I truly hate getting new glasses. My eyes aren't so bad that I couldn't go back to my old pair, and damn if I don't want to.

So after Sam's, we went next door and finished up our shopping, stopped & got gas at the Sam's station because it was nearly 30 cents cheaper than anybody else, and made one last stop at GFS to pick up veggies for the B.

When we got home, I was a little bitchy and put my foot down to my food hoarder, because all of our food storage is full. NO MORE until we eat some of this stuff up, dammit! (oh, you're gonna laugh like hell in a couple of minutes!)

But I managed to get everything stowed somehow, and then made a simple dinner of oven-ready bbq ribs from Sam's, oven fries, and a quick tossed salad. Not great, but considering I was sick as a dog, he was worn out from a turnaround shift, and we didn't get home till five--not so bad. Not as easy as the delivery pizza I wanted, but he was happy.

Needless to say, I didn't make it much past the dishes before I went to bed, hoping desperately for some sleep.

Yeah...not so much. Slept horribly for the first half of the night, but my fever broke in there somewhere, so I did much better in the second. I actually felt almost perky come Sunday morning.

Sunday was sunny, maybe that helped. I got up, took care of B, finished the laundry, got showered & dressed, and then made breakfast (Spam, eggs, hash browns, toast, coffee & juice) while Spouse chatted with Auntie on the phone. LOVING my new commercial cookware, BTW! After we ate & cleaned up the kitchen, Spouse got dressed and we ran over to the pool store to buy a new liner--the manager gave us 20% off the 2012 price because she still had a couple in stock from last season. We upgraded to a heavier, patterned liner called "boulder swirl" (lovely shades of blue) and still got it for under $150, so that made me pretty happy!

We stopped in at Menard's for a couple of things that were on sale--hoarder boy wanted MORE toilet paper and laundry soap, and I had to buy some more shelving for the basement--mainly because hoarder boy won't stop buying MORE toilet paper and laundry soap!

I got the same shelving I bought last time, which wasn't exactly what I wanted at the time (Spouse put the wrong one in the cart) but turned out to work quite well. So I got a couple more units. With the rebate check we had from the "save 11%" sale, they came in at under $25 apiece and that made me pretty happy.

We had one more stop before heading back home--Spouse wanted to go to the "Try & Save" because he had a $20 gift card leftover from Christmas that he wanted to burn up. This is where you get to start laughing--yes, he bought more groceries!

Okay this is where I wandered off and didn�t come back for three weeks, so we�re stopping abruptly. Deal.