Tuesday, May 16, 2023

We are home! Justice was a wiggly, happy, little guy. He contentedly took a nap with us, enjoyed a long walk in the sunny, windy 65 degree weather, then slept plastered to my side last night. I guess he didn't forget us!

Last night we went out for an early dinner at our recent favorite local spot for meatloaf Monday (Mike's favorite) with SIL and caught up on the details one shares in person. No word yet on whether her DIL's second surgery resulted in clean margins. If not, the next step would be a mastectomy.

Today we are driving out to Mike's house here to swap cars for the one we need to bring back to Florida. Everything is in motion for the condo closing a week from today. We just need final figures to initiate wire transfers and to finalize home insurance.

Reading about garage parties and commenting on my former neighborhood's driveway parties yielded a lot of nostalgia. All my former neighbors still think about those days with fondness. During the summer I think we had one most nice weekends. The adults would gather with their drinks (beer, lemonade, wine, whatever) and talk while the kids were playing their outside games. At some point we would realize it was dinner time and either do a potluck with grilling involved or order pizza, etc. We would generally move the gathering to the back deck/patio of one of our homes and stay out talking until it was time to put the kids to bed. The kids would play nighttime games like something called Chase (which I don't know the rules of to be honest). They would get quieter as it got later because they would hope that we would forget them and let them stay up later. They generally did get an extra hour or so after their bedtimes. When one of the group's sons died in his early 20s, those evenings were one of the times that all the kids reflected on during the service as Stephen was one of the ringleaders.

Enough reflection. Time to fold laundry and put away clothing so I am organized enough to pack for Florida later this week. One key thing we learned on this trip was to stop OVERPACKING! Lugging one big suitcase, one carry-on size and one large underseat bag was more effort than we wanted to expend after a while and we both wore about 50-60% of what we brought even in 5 weeks. Having laundry on the ship was a huge help so we only had 2 weeks when we had to accumulate dirty clothing.

Have a thinking Tuesday!

The monsoons have arrived! We got nearly a half in of rain yesterday evening. Bet the forest is loving it. I didn't get nearly enough sleep. The painters were here before 6. The a/v guy comes today and has to do some stuff in my room and closet, so I need to tidy in there.

I may have some good news on the glucose monitor front. I honestly was struggling to believe my numbers were that bad so at the suggestion of someone on the FB group for this company, I bought an inexpensive finger stick checker to verify. And it was 24 points lower than the arm thing! Apparently you can do that and enter a calibration into the app. So maybe I'm not pre-diabetic after all. It would be nice to finish out my subscription and be able to learn without feeling like I am failing if it's just monitor being off. I will say I understand why this company was less expensive than the others. Same equipment, but very little informational support!

I am down another 0.4. An interesting thing I've learned about snacking and insulin is snacking doesn't give your body time to burn off what you got from your last meal. So your glucose accumulates and doesn't have a chance to drop. That's sort of why you want to eat your carbs toward the beginning of the day versus before bed. Gives you time to use them rather than ultimately store them when you eat them when they aren't needed.

Anyway, enough of that. I should go make my bed even though I would pay big money to crawl back in it!

Tare care and enjoy your day!

Such interesting knowledge from insulin monitoring!

I hope your painters aren't going to be there too many days? We just found out that the concrete outside our new condo was targeted for replacement next week when we are moving (the work would make it impossible for us to get in - yikes!). Luckily they are happy to change their plan and schedule it after we are gone.

I think it's going to go fast. It's a big crew! They spent the whole day yesterday putting plastic on all the back windows, fixing cracks and fixing the parapet walls (roof walls. They put some kind of polymer with sand in it on them to keep them from cracking so soon. Major cause of leaks in AZ). Today they are painting the first coat of two on the back of the house and then will likely start all over with the prepping the front. I did go out and look. It's a good color match and it's not too shiny!

Such a lucky catch on the concrete work!! That would have been such a nasty surprise if you didn't know.

Sounds like great progress!

Feeling stressed over stuff leading up to the condo purchase next week (CC has been there). Finalizing dates, wire transfers, insurance,... Then I just found out that USPS told the IRS, my investment company and perhaps others to change our address since we have mail forwarded for more than 6 months. So I have to change it back but with the new condo I need to make it that address in a week. Argh!!!!!

So stressful!!! Darn the post office!

My wiring pain was that the limit online is 100k for safety reasons. And while my bank has an ATM here, the closest walk in branch here is almost 2 hours away.

Tip I learned because of all the massive wire fraud. Call your escrow company and verbally verify the wire account numbers. The bad guys can get into emails and replace attachments to show their accounts and they otherwise look like they came from the right people and look legitimate. The guy st my bank who did the transfer said he had two customers in the prior few months who lost everything to wire fraud that way during house purchases.

Thanks for the warning! We just contacted our lawyer about making sure we get the information securely. One has to be so careful these days!

Another beautiful day here, sunny and warm. I planted some flowers yesterday, but still have many more to go. I try to discipline myself, I can't buy anymore until I get these in the ground. I will do anything to avoid doing squats at the gym, but I'll happily squat, bend, lift, push, pull to plant my little bedding plants.

Closings are stressful! Not that I would have much experience with that, as I am living in the only house I've ever purchased, way back when I was 25. Crazy to think about.

Liz it is lovely to think about those times when we had a tight community, I think, especially when it involved our kids. DD and I were just reminiscing about a hayride we went on without fail every October, with the same group of friends from the time the kids were toddlers until they were teenagers. Lovely to remember.

Not much else, I think I will sit on the porch and enjoy the warm air while reading the newspaper. There will be no more winter surprises, but some days could still top out in the low 60s, so gotta grab it while you can.

Greetings all

Time for me to decompress. I just spend about an hour trying to pay the gallery minimum income tax payment. The on line account set up is ridiculous and would not work because it says I don't match their info. Wants all these ridiculous security questions like my favorite child hood game. I finally had to call some and turn off our call screening so they could call back. Then the person who called was a moron. Enough.

Liz glad you are home safe. I would be fussing and worrying about that closing too. Glad they could reschedule the concrete. Always something. And yeah I bet Justice is so glad you are home.

And today DH took the electric car to the dealer for scheduled maintenance only to be told the tech called in sick. Supposed to go back tomorrow which is not a convenient day either. Oy vey. And I am supposed to go to a gallery membership meeting tonight but I am skipping. There is nothing important on the agenda and I have already had a stressful enough day. I was also forced to drive our clunky 25 year old SUV since the electric car was supposed to be service. I gave my proxy for the gallery as there probably won't be enough people there to have a quorum.

Yep overpacking is an epidemic. I do it too. Didn't use half of what I took to brother's.

Scrabble today. Won two, lost one. I learned that "anemic" takes an s to pluralize.

CC glad the house stuff is moving along. A good crew can paint a whole house in a day or so. Hope they are quiet now. 6:30 is the middle of the night for me.

Yay DD bedding plants! It's so easy to go nuts and buy them all. I am limited by what I can carry which is a good thing. Hope yours get in the ground. Are you totally beyond frost dates?

Well time for me to calm down and get a glass of wine. Cheers. Diane S