The big achievement was that Wizard and I did a huge cleanout of our storage closet upstairs. This extra walk in closet will be a selling feature, so I wanted it to look roomy and organized.

Youngest and his wife came by, and we went over to the house to see the progress of rough plumbing. Maggie  had a great time, but she slept after they left I really wish I’d thought to take a picture of her in the back of his Jeep. He had the sun roof open, and she’s sitting there with her big doggie smile and her tongue hanging out. It’s always the best day ever in Maggie’s world.

So books. I started listening to a new-to-me audiobook, and the first four chapters are droning on about how the heroine’s so depressed she hasn’t showered. My patience is wearing thin. I get it, she’s depressed that she caught her husband with another, younger, woman on her kitchen table. But then she mentioned that it was months ago and I’m rolling my eyes. I know there’s a plot building, and I’m trying to be patient. I also think this might be more annoying in audio than it would be in print where I can skim over stuff like that. It’s not as easy in audio, so this one repetitive thing is annoying. In fact I was so irritated as I listened in the car, I snarled out loud, “Take a damn shower and move on.”

It’s also a reminder to myself as an author.  We don’t need to hammer a point, especially something like this. In real life, depression can be very dark and debilitating. But in a book, or movie, we don’t need to hear or read it over and over. And it’s lazy writing, relying on a prop to illustrate depression, rather than showing us her state of mind. Most of us can quickly understand that it sucks to be cheated on and betrayed by a significant other. But she’s really relying on not showering, while mind you, the character is spitting out one liners that are supposed to be funny.

So why am I continuing to listen? Because somewhere in this mess, a mystery character showed up. I can’t figure out if the character is a ghost, or what. I’m curious. I’m not liking the heroine much, but this mystery character is interesting.

And the heroine finally took a damn shower

So that was my weekend, how was yours?

I was all proactive about doing physical therapy, willing to work as hard as it takes to relieve my nerve pain without doing x-rays, MRI’s or injections to handle the discomfort. PT is usually the first step so I’m here for it.

Or I’m trying to be. But as it turns out, I can’t get an appointment for at least a month.

Apparently it takes Elon Musk less time to buy Twitter in his bid to control the hearts, minds and opinions of the world than to get a physical therapy appointment.

Hmm, maybe if I complain on Twitter, Musk will fix access to the health care that I make substantial monthly payment to supposedly ensure my access to???

So how’s your Wednesday going?

Aside from computer problems, the weekend was good.

Friday, I went to my doctor and he believes it’s not my cervical spine causing the pain, but a compressed nerve at neck level on my left side. It was amazing the way he isolated the pain points. Plus I have garden variety tendonitis in my left elbow. All of it is from overworked muscles But the doctor wants me to continue with yoga, and as long as I don’t feel pain while doing it, I won’t cause any more damage. So he did a shot in my left elbow, then two anti- imflammatory shots, and he’s sending me to physcial therapy to see if we can release that nerve. For now, the shots are helping some of the pain. I’m relieved that it doesn’t appear to be my spine, and am very willing ot do the work. The shots have helped some of my pain and I’m grateful for that.

Saturday was my mother-in law’s-brithday. My two sister-in-laws did the bulk of the work and made it beautiful for her. Lovely table setting out on the patio, gorgeous flowers and catered food. All I really brought was the cake. But my mother-in-law seemed to love it and I was thrilled.

I really wish I could show you the cake. But my computer is cranky as a wet cat. My bottom tool bar that allows me to run multiple windows, and control other key elements, is frozen. I have yet to find a solution. I also just discovered that I can’t move files from my cloud to my harddrive or even download and save a picture…grrrrr! I’ve tired relauching programs (windows explorer specificially) and other troubleshooting, but so far no luck. The old computer is getting contrary and mean. I’m taking it persoanlly, LOL!

Sunday, Maggie and I took a long walk, did yoga, and then Youngest came over. Maggie got to go in Youngest’s Jeep to go see our house in the framing stage. She showed him all her favorate spots, then she got back in the car and curled up on his sweatshirt. I laughed and thankfully, Yougest doesn’t care. Wizard missed out since he was gone racing in RC cars and hanging out with his friends.

OK I’m inserting the cake picture using my phone:

How was your weekend?

Wizard and I went to the grocery store. We have this down to quick routine. Our biggest challenge is the part where the courtesy clerk bags the groceries.

Lately, they’ve been an interesting group.

There’s Aggressive Guy. A middle aged cheerful man who threw…and I mean like picked up each item and lobbed them into the bag. Whatever his hand hit, it went in the bag until no one could lift it. Tomatoes and cans of soup became intimately acquainted. They finally moved him to stocking shelves.

Then there was Engineer Kid who I liked. He was slowish but that’s because he would stop and think. I could see him scanning the groceries, mentally fitting them into bags, then following through. No one trained him, but his engineer brain was sorting it out. I don’t know what happened to him, he just vanished. Probably making the others look bad.

The one today packed most things fine…until the end. She was down to the last bag (we bring our own…because California makes everything expensive and complicated). I bought two dozen eggs which is more than I needed but one dozen wasn’t enough

So there’s one bag, two cartons of eggs and bags of heavy fruit. I see her mental struggling for a second and started to turn to the checker to tell her I’ll buy another bag (Because…California…don’t ask.)

Before I could she put the two cartons of eggs side by side in the bottom of the last bag.  I turned back and stared in horrified fascination. It’s like watching a car (make of egg shells) crash in slow motion.

Next she put in two bags of heavy pairs. On top of the eggs.

Then two bags of bananas.

And she finishes it off with a bag of apples. (Yep we eat a lot of fruit!)

Thank the Lord I didn’t buy bricks. Or a bag of cement because it would have gone on top too.

Then, she lifts the bag, and proudly tells a frozen Wizard, “Your eggs are in here, so you might want to be careful.”

She was so sincere that I clamped my mouth closed on hysterical laughter. Once we were out the door, I said, “Good thing I bought extra eggs.”

Wizard turned his head slowly, still processing what he just witnessed. “You saw that?”

I couldn’t hold back anymore and laughed. Hard. Most of the time, I’m aggravated, but today in a world filled with violence and rage, this just cracked us both up. She’d been so genuine and sweet about being careful with our eggs — that she’d just piled ten pounds of fruit on top of, that how could we not laugh?

We rearranged the groceries in the car while I kept laughing and Wizard grinned at me.  I think my reaction was more amusing that the eggs. But honestly, he didn’t see the way she turned to him holding that bag like precious cargo, and his face frozen into deer in the headlights expression.

The eggs made it home.

And before anyone asks, we sometimes say something, and sometimes don’t. These grocery folks are overworked and undertrained, and I strive to keep that in mind. Heck, at least they’re working, and working hard. Add to that, we don’t have enough stores in this part of my town so they are crazy busy, and times are tense in general. I pick my battles. This girl packing today was trying, but she was clearly not trained and thrown out to do a job she didn’t know how to do. I wasn’t there to embarrass her when I was going to fix it myself once we got to the car anyway.

Some days, it’s better to just laugh.

Happy Wednesday!

Hope all who celebrated had a good Easter! We went to Middle Son’s and daughter in law’s. My DIL is an excellent cook, and she smoked a pork loin. I’m generally not a port eater, but this was good. I ate a slice and a half, which for me, is impressive Youngest son loved it, and was quizzing DIL on her recipe and methods. I see a smoker in his future, LOL.

Middle Son and DIL had an egg hunt for Turbo too. It was so cute. He loved it. DIL’s mom had filled a bunch of plastic eggs with toys, chocolate and money for him. I thought it was really sweet.

And we all got to play with Jett and Hazel. I didn’t think to take pictures (my phone usually stays in my purse), but they are super nice dogs. Jett, however, doesn’t know he’s huge, and can bowl people over with affection, so we have to watch him around Turbo. Poor Jett is confused by us holding him back when his smaller, gentler sister plays with Turbo. But then he plopped down and watched like a good boy.

It was a fun and relaxing family day, and Youngest got a box of homemade cookies out of it   I made two kinds of non dairy cookies and took them all just to get them out of my house. I really wanted to test the non-dairy white chocolate macadamia nut recipe. Especially since it was vegan and getting those to turn out can be a little tricky. I got a positive response from everyone which was nice.

Otherwise, Maggie and I took two walks on Saturday, and the second one involved climbing huge stairs in to the side of hill (it’s part of a trail).  I haven’t tried going up those since my neck surgery. I was too afraid of falling because some of the risers are so large. But we did it on Saturday. Only problem was once we went up, we had to go back down. Maggie was fine because she’s part goat. But I’m just a two-legged human with cranky knees. I handled the normal spaced steps, the but big ones had my knees yelping as I tried to step down. I had to tell Maggie to wait at each step. That part was slow progress, and I had to look ridiculous, but we made it! I call that a win.

This week is going to be busy with appointments, we’re babysitting Turbo Thursday (I think) , and I need to do a cake for this Saturday so I need to run around getting stuff I need for that.

How was your weekend?

Yesterday, Wizard and I went to the movies for the first time since Covid barged into our lives. We went in the middle of the day and I think there were four other people in the theater with us. I think we were probably safe

We saw THE LOST CITY with Sandra Bullock. It’s an old story: Reclusive romance writer gets dragged into one of her own stories kind of plot. This one had a few fun twists too. We enjoyed it.

The first scenes with the romance writer really hit home with me. She’s struggling to write the final scene, but with every version of the scene she writers, she’s hearing critiques in her head and hits the delete button. Wizard was laughing and elbowing me. Yep, that’s me! The rest of the movie was entertaining. I was totally surprised by Brad Pitt being in the movie too.  Channing Tatum was also in it.

For me personally, it was nice to see three well-known actors not taking themselves too seriously as they made a movie meant to entertain. But maybe that’s just me

Anyone else seen any good movies lately?

Hm, there’s not much to roundup this weekend. The highlight was that we went out to oldest son’s house for hamburgers Saturday evening. We played with Turbo (of course!) and hung out with CPA Boy and Special K.  It was a nice kickback evening. Turbo and I had a big adventure going behind a shed in their back yard. This is NOT a place I wanted to go. It’s basically a narrow, dirt strip between the shed and the fence. But Turbo said, “Grandma Jen, please?” Then he held my hand.

Being the brave and fierce grandma, I battled the snakes and spiders slithering around in my imagination, and went with him. There in his secret tunnel we discovered a magical kumquat tree (branches hung over from a neighbors yard), and guess what? Grandma Jen was actually tall enough to pick the fruit! Turbo was impressed and excited to get two paper cups full of his treasure.

Nor did we die from the imaginary snakes and spiders in my head.

FYI, Wizard knew what I was thinking though and made smirky faces at me behind Turbo’s back. Which is why I ate a cupcake when he was playing with Turbo and didn’t tell him about it until we were driving home.  Teach him to smirk face me I will get revenge with baked goods.

Also, four year olds are awesome! It’s so easy to make anything a fun adventure.

The rest of the weekend was unremarkable. How was yours?