Thursday, February 23, 2012

Slowing Down, FINALLY

Tomorrow's a month since I started the move, and I will get the last of my stuff that's in the other place at lunchtime. The new place is nowhere near sorted out yet, but it's functional, and it's getting sorted, in baby steps.

My allergies have been absolutely wretched this month, especially in the last couple of weeks. I had hoped to go down to Sherwood Forest Faire outside Austin this past weekend with some friends to celebrate a birthday, but I knew by Wednesday that it was better for me to stay home and not expose myself to the predicted weather and the abundance of cedar trees. In the end, I came directly home on Friday night and went to bed. Saturday morning I had to get up and get a couple of errands done, then came home and went back to bed for awhile, then got up to make some bread, in an effort to have less processed bread for my sandwiches. It was a dismal failure, as I don't seem to have a really good place with enough warmth to have it rise properly. By the time that I finished it and got it baked, it was after 10. I knew that I wasn't going to get to church for the 9:30 contemporary service, so I didn't even try. I spent most of Sunday also sitting on my butt, hoping that the crud I was coughing up was not a lung! I'm still only operating probably around 85 or 90%, but I've made it to work every day, and what I have to get done this weekend is fairly minimal. This is my last quiet weekend before NTIF and then a quick trip out west for the Midland Scottish-Irish Faire.

I have new neighbors upstairs, a young couple that seems very nice, they asked if their walking was too loud, and said that they're trying to walk softly, because they've noticed their windows rattle sometimes. The neighborhood overall seems pretty quiet. Of course, since all the units really close to mine are 2 bedrooms, that limits how many people can legally be living there. The building nearest my front door has both units occupied, a total of I think about 5 people, including a couple of kids, maybe 10 or so years old. The building at my back door is only half occupied and I know nothing about them, since I don't ever go in & out of my back door. There's another complex about a block away with more units and it seems lots of kids, but they stay pretty much near those buildings, and on the other side of the street. My cats are all much happier, although little baldy is going to be unhappy when I get my hands on a large enough crate to retrain her litterbox habits. I'm hopeful that it won't take more than a week or two to accomplish, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'm just grateful that she's using linoleum instead of the new carpet that was installed before I moved in! Overall, we're all much less stressed and feeling better, even my 2 little snotbuckets (such a lovely trait they inherited from their mother) are less snotty than they ever were in the other place. And we have central HVAC! And a REAL OVEN.

The other excitement this week has been the birth of my first great-niece, who arrived on Monday evening, beautiful and perfect. I'm hoping to be healthy enough to go meet her on Sunday. I've got a book for her, but before I give it to her, I have to get my voice back, because I need to read it onto a CD for her.

It's been a rough couple of years, but 2012 is shaping up to be a fabulous turnaround, and for that I'm grateful!