Category Archives: Life

Winding down and revving up

Kenn and I both retired from federal civil service in 2019 (me in April, him in December). In August of 2020, Kenn started a job at the local agricultural research center. As time passed, he asked if I would be interested in similar job. I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but I also wasn’t necessarily looking for a job. As an introvert, it’s easy for me to go into hermit mode; I’m perfectly fine being at home for extended periods. However, Kenn talked me up to one of the scientists, I met with him, and I started my job at the research center in July 2022.

Even though I wasn’t looking for a job, I’ve really enjoyed mine. I get out of the house a couple of days a week, my boss and coworkers are great, I get to spend time outside (as opposed to a cubicle), and I get to perform a variety of tasks. The atmosphere is extremely laid back and my schedule is flexible. If Kenn and I decide to take a road trip for a month, there isn’t any drama; our bosses just say, “See you when you get back.”

Our boss decided the team needed hard hats while implementing one of his more “interesting” projects.

Due to the types of positions we have, our bosses have to renew our jobs each year – which has never been a problem until now. Why now? Well, we work on a government facility. I’ll let you put the pieces together. As a matter of fact, I had already been notified that my position had been renewed for another year only to be told a couple of weeks later that I wouldn’t be renewed after all. I don’t blame my boss, he has done all he can; these decisions are being made by individuals further up the chain. Kenn has been told that his position likely will not be renewed in August.

We’re fortunate. Kenn and I don’t need our jobs. The extra money, while nice, isn’t necessary to our survival. I really feel for all of the full-time employees who have lost their jobs – most with little to no notice. Being a government employee isn’t easy; for some reason, we’ve always gotten a bad rap. (There’s nothing like working your butt off only to get told how lazy government employees are.) And now, we’re being demonized even more. However, if the loss of my little part-time position makes it easier for even one full-time employee to keep their job, I’m all for it.

The one thing that has surprised me about all of this is how emotional I have been. At times, I’m really sad. I have truly enjoyed the last three years. At other times, I’m angry. Don’t tell me that I’m good for another year just to turn around and say, “LOL! Just kidding!” Right now, my primary emotion is… honestly, I’m not quite sure how I’m feeling. At this point, I’m just ready for it to be over with. If they were to come to me tomorrow and say I could stay for another year, I’m not sure I would; it’s hard to stay motivated with the sword of Damocles hanging over your head. I’ve already made plans to fill my “extra” time with volunteer work. I’ll also have no excuse not to finish going through that last box of I-have-no-idea-what-to-do-with-this stuff that belonged to my parents. Of course, I’ve gotten a little teary-eyed while writing this – and I rarely cry. Sigh. As the tattoo on my forearm reminds me daily, this too shall pass.

My tattoo on the day I got it – February 28, 2015.

Since I’m pouting, I can’t even think of any questions to post here. So, hit me with your random thoughts or facts.

Meet The Clowder

A few of my cats have made appearances in various posts, but it’s past time to introduce y’all to the whole clowder. So, here they are in all of their furry glory.

  • Name: Molly
  • Age: 16
  • Nicknames: Molly Mayhem, Molly Mae, Girlfriend
  • Notes: Molly is the sister of Desmond; they got their names from the Beatles’ song, Ob-La-Di.
  • Name: Nellie
  • Age: 14
  • Nicknames: Nelliekins, Nellie Girl, Miss Thang
  • Notes: Nellie is the last of our outdoor cats; she made her transition indoors almost a year ago and is doing well.
  • Name: Cricket
  • Age: 13
  • Nicknames: Beaver Butt, Brick, Baroness von Underbite
  • Notes: Cricket is probably the clowder member I worry about the most. She has feline herpes which manifests in her as respiratory issues. The poor girl sneezes constantly and always has a snotty nose. Steroid shots only help for a few days so we deal with it the best we can. As for her nicknames, Beaver Butt is due to the fact that she has a really thick tail. Brick comes from the character of the same name in the television show The Middle. (I love that show.) Brick has a verbal tic of saying “Whoop” and Cricket frequently makes a similar sound.
  • Names: Bob (r) and Tippy (l)
  • Ages: 11
  • Nicknames: Bob the Blob and Tippy Cat
  • Notes: We inherited Bob and Tippy when my dad died in 2016. They are my gaming buddies and insist on lying on my chest while I’m playing video games.
  • Name: Nyx
  • Age: 10
  • Nicknames: None
  • Notes: Nyx has adopted the kitchen as her territory. She’s fairly aloof unless we’re in the kitchen, then she comes in and weaves around our ankles and “talks” constantly. It’s not exactly a nickname, but we call her our house panther with kitchen specialization.
  • Name: Kota
  • Age: 9
  • Nicknames: Floofy Butt, Princess Floofy Britches
  • Notes: Kota’s name is an acronym which stands for Kitten of the Apocalypse. Kenn found her near the storm drain behind our old house and was upset that yet another cat had shown up. I said something to the effect of “Dude, it’s just a kitten. It’s not even the kitten of the apocalypse,” and it stuck.
  • Name: Bear
  • Age: 5
  • Nicknames: Old Man, Baby Bear
  • Notes: Bear has probably made the most appearances in my blog. He’s just an all-around cool guy.
  • Name: Roxie
  • Age: 2
  • Nicknames: Roxie Pants, Bunny Butt
  • Notes: Roxie’s biggest claim to fame is always looking shocked about everything. She also has the quietest meow of all the cats.

Do you have any pets? If so, what kind and how many?

It is finished – for now

Congratulations, y’all – we have successfully survived another transition to daylight savings time! We may be sleepy, but we made it. Personally, I love daylight savings time. I’m all about the longer days and extra sunshine. However, losing that hour of sleep sucks. At least the time on my my alarm clock automatically resets. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m lucky it did. I have a new alarm clock that I’ve only been using for a couple of months and I didn’t even give it a thought when I went to bed last night and didn’t set a back-up alarm on my phone. Fortunately, my clock did reset, my alarm went off as it should have, and I made it to church on time. Of course, I was patting myself on the back earlier for having reset the other random clocks in the house when I realized I haven’t reset the one in my car. Oh, well. I’ll get to it eventually. (Changing the time on a couple of our vehicles was so unnecessarily complex, we just didn’t bother.)

Now to enjoy the next eight months before we fall back to shorter days and longer nights.

Image from depositphotos.com

When Kenn and I married, I asked him when his various bills were due. He replied, “I just pay everything at the end of the month.” Yeah, that’s not how due dates work. So, I took over the finances and almost thirty-nine years later, I’m still the money lady. Sadly, part of handling the finances is taking care of the income taxes. I still remember the days of doing the taxes manually and pulling my hair out over the insanely complicated formulas for determining various entries. Who even came up with these ridiculous computations? I am extremely thankful that there is now software that makes completing income taxes relatively pain free. Now, if we could just not owe the federal government every year.🙄 At least we usually get some sort of refund back from the state to offset a little of the pain of what we owe. Even better, I don’t have to deal with this again for a year!🙌

Image from depositphotos.com

So, daylight savings time: love it or hate it? Income taxes: do you do them yourself or use a tax preparation service?

Late to the show

I have to admit that I have a contrary streak a mile wide. I’m not exactly the best at being told what to do. Ask me, and I’m fine. Tell/order me and take your chances. (I had to have a chat with the boss who entered my cubicle and said, “You! You need to do (whatever he wanted me to do).”) I’m also a resident of Georgia and don’t like the Georgia Bulldogs. I’m actually not a sports fan, but I don’t like the Bulldogs because they are everywhere, all the time – not just football season.

My contrariness has caused me to be reluctant to read certain books or watch certain television shows. (Still haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey and don’t plan to.) I’ll write a separate post about my reluctance to watch Criminal Minds.

I had never seen an episode of Friends until 2024. When the show first aired in 1994, I was married with two young children and a full-time job; I had nothing in common a bunch of single, late twenty-somethings living their best lives in the big city. Everyone telling me how great it was didn’t make me want to watch either. However, sometime last year, I realized that Kenn kept the television in his workshop on Friends. I was shocked. He said he just used it as background noise. (Big Bang Theory is one of my “background” shows.) At some point, I caught a couple of episodes and decided that – wait for it it – I like Friends. It has now become one of my background shows as well.

Kenn went to a blood drive in early December 2024. When he came home, he tossed something at me and said “Here, you can have these.” It turns out that the Red Cross had given him two pairs of holiday socks. Kenn is strictly a black socks kind of guy while I like bright and colorful, so the socks were perfect for me. The one thing I wasn’t expecting was that the socks were a Red Cross/Friends collaboration – a combination that I would never have guessed existed. I guess it was in honor of Friends thirtieth anniversary.🤷‍♀️

The pair not shown has a turkey wearing sunglasses and a fez.

When it comes the the characters, Joey and Phoebe are my favorites. (Ross is my least favorite.) I recently caught an episode I hadn’t seen before featuring Joey’s “moo point.” Not only was it hysterical, but I also love cows so I had to get a shirt. I guess this officially makes me a fan.

Do you like Friends? Who are your favorite/least favorite characters? Are you contrary?

Oh. You’re a redhead.

Being a redhead comes with its share of quirks, such as:

  • We require more anesthesia than non-redheads. (I can vouch for this. I’ve never had a dentist be able to fully numb my mouth, which has a lot to do with my dental work phobia.)
  • We produce our own vitamin D. This one makes sense since our lack of melanin means we can’t get as much vitamin D from sunlight.
  • Redheads don’t go gray; we go blonde and then go white. I’m well into the blonde spectrum now. I’ve heard it said that redheads don’t go salt and pepper, we go cinnamon and sugar. I love this!
Just call me quirky!

I’ve stumbled across a few other traits over the years:

  • When I gave birth to our oldest son, another redhead had given birth a couple of hours earlier, The other redhead had hemorrhaged and the nurses watched me like a hawk because apparently we bleed more than non-redheads.
  • When I had my wisdom teeth removed, the oral surgeon said that redheads bleed worse and swell worse than non-redheads. I did fine. When my oldest son (also a redhead) had his wisdom teeth removed, the poor guy had so much swelling, he couldn’t eat solid food for a week.
  • I had an endoscopy a couple of years ago and was given Robinul to dry up the secretions in the mouth and throat before the procedure. The nurse warned me that it would cause my heart to race for a few minutes but it shouldn’t last more than five or ten minutes. Hahahahaha! An hour later I was still experiencing periods of a racing heart. It was like have an hour-long anxiety attack; I was not having fun. The nurses finally called the anesthesiologist who came in, looked at me and said “Oh. You’re a redhead.” Lucky me! On that note, it will be a cold day in hell before I let anyone give me Robinul again.
  • The most recent instance came up last November. I had a bone density scan which showed osteoporosis in my spine and osteopenia (precursor to osteoporosis) in my hips. During my appointment with my general practitioner to discuss treatment I told him that I have been taking calcium supplements for thirty years; my now-retired gynecologist had me start taking calcium because he said that my being a “tall, slim, Caucasian female” made me the textbook description of someone who would develop osteoporosis. My GP nodded and said, “Also, your red hair.” Wait, what? I said “Seriously? That’s another one of the weird redhead traits?” He nodded. “Yes. Red hair/Norse ancestry make you more likely to develop osteoporosis.” Whoo hoo! He also said that without my calcium regimen, I probably would have developed serious problems five to ten years ago. So now, I have added once-a-month Boniva to my medication regimen and will have follow-up bone density scan in a year.

Are there any “quirky” traits associated with being blond or brunette?

❄️❄️❄️❄️‼️

Y’all, we got snow! *twirls like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music* There was a chance of snow a few weeks ago, but it didn’t make it this far south. Now, many of you may live in areas where snow is a fact of life, but around here, it’s as rare as hen’s teeth. (The last time we had snow at our house was 2018.) When the forecast hints that we may get snow and/or frozen precipitation, I become a big kid. While I may be calm on the outside, on the inside, I’m all pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. So, when snow was predicted for January 21st, all of my fingers and toes were crossed. It started snowing shortly after lunch and continued through the next morning. We ended with a respectable four inches, and, for once, we didn’t get a layer of sleet to top it off.

Yes, that four inches shut everything down for a couple of days, which makes northerners snort and roll their eyes. However, we have reasons for our caution. Here in the South, we don’t have snow tires or equipment to clear the roads. Okay, Atlanta has sixty snow plows, but the rest of us just have to wait for everything to melt. However, the biggest reason for us to stay off the roads is because we don’t know how to drive in the snow; it’s best for everyone if we just stay home.

In true southern weather fashion, last Wednesday, we had snow on the ground, and this Wednesday, the temperature is expected to be seventy degrees (Fahrenheit).🙄 I know we’ll have a few more cold snaps before spring, but I doubt we’ll have more snow. So, I’ll leave you with a few photos.

The snow was too powdery for a snowman, so I made a snow angel instead.
Already the top contender for our 2025 Christmas card.

Smackdown!

I look back at 2024 and I’m not sure what we spent the year doing.🤷‍♀️ We didn’t get to take a big trip, but we did take a few short ones. At least we didn’t spend the year making a lot of expensive home repairs; we only had one appliance die on us in 2024: our range. Now, I’m side-eyeing our refrigerator because it’s the only appliance we haven’t replaced since we moved in.

I’m not really a resolution maker, but I have set myself a few goals:

  • Exercise more
  • Keep going through the items that I’ve allowed to pile up because I either a) don’t know what to do with them, or b) just haven’t wanted to deal with them.
  • This one is more of a wish than a goal: selling our old house. Our youngest son and his girlfriend rent from us and had expressed an interest in buying the house. Unfortunately, J (the girlfriend) lost her job and it took a few months for her to find a new one. However, she now has a new job she loves so it looks like we may be back on track to sell this year. I really hope it works out; Kenn and I are both tired of being landlords.

As for the title of my post, my word of the year was chosen by Merriam-Webster. Participants just had to take a screenshot of their GIF that was scrolling through a series of words, and I got “smackdown.” I showed it to Kenn and he said “Oh, crap.”😂 So… *crack knuckles* let’s do this?

Do you make resolutions?