COVID

I felt absolutely horrible yesterday.  Barely slept at all on Monday night - restless while exhausted.  Couldn't get warm.  Got warm then too warm.  Then cold again.  Over and over.  It was an awful night.  

I felt disoriented and off all day yesterday - did what I could to help J. in the garage but ended up taking a nap.  Still felt horribly crummy after the nap.  

At 5PM, I enjoyed a Zoom call with friends from California - we talked non-stop for two hours - it was a blast.  It was also timed around happy hour so I enjoyed a couple small glasses of our Gamay Rouge from V. Sattui.  

The hardest part of COVID is thinking anytime you feel off or not great that 'this is it.  I've got it.  If I feel this bad with zero fever, zero congestion, zero breathing difficulties, what will happen if this IS it - will I even survive it?'.  I hate having those kind of thoughts....but I thought them all day yesterday.  

I also frequently notice aches and pains and think 'now THIS is IT'.  No, actually - your muscles hurt 'cuz you move a lot more and do a lot more in this house than you did in your old house.  Lifting stuff, moving things - it all adds up.  My arms feel super sore today but it's 'cuz I've been doing what I can to help J. with culling the garage.

This morning, we put all the Christmas decorations up on the overhead shelving.  The garage is looking pretty lean and it feels great.  We've let so much stuff GO!

I slept like a log last night (thanks to CBD drops which I skipped on Monday night) and woke up this morning feeling 1000% better than I did at anytime yesterday....so it was just a bad night's sleep combined with sinus stuff that today is much better.  

Whew!  I can't wait to get the vaccine to hopefully build up some immunity so having COVID won't be the first thing that comes to mind with every ache.  

We unpacked a small, compact stereo system and we played the only CD I had handy - John Denver.  A compilation CD a friend gave me before I retired.  Walking down memory lane all day with songs that I love and some I'd sort of forgotten about.  We look forward to music in the house daily - 

Also found the PS2 Slimline player we have - considered donating it but there are a lot of PS2 games in the cupboard and I'm always looking for 'stuff' to do - so we kept it.  And it can also play DVD's so that's great, too.

I didn't know when we moved that VHS players were no longer being made (apparently).  I don't know what we will do with the TONS of VHS tapes we have to play - and nothing to play them on.  

Tomorrow, we head to Reno for our NYE blast - I think we're going to do shots of tequila as the clock strikes midnight.  Seems like a fitting way to end the year and welcome a new one.  I'm really looking forward to playing and enjoying fun with J. .  

As 2020 Winds Down

This has been the longest year ever.  You agree?  I can't wait for midnight on 1/1/21 to say goodbye to this year.  

There was beautiful snow on the ground this morning - likely to get additional snow later this week.  

J. and I have spent two super productive days working on finishing up our culling of the garage.  

I finally went through the bins of stitchery 'stuff' from my Mom.  I let a lot of it go - but I found the small pair of scissors (in the shape of a bird) she used when she was doing her needlepoint.  They are beautiful and I remember them from when I was a kid.  I kept a lot of the embroidery floss, some of the cross stitch fabrics, all the hoops and frames and a few 'kits' that were pics that we liked.  We let a lot go to our local thrift shop and as we put each donation item in the box, I'd think how happy someone was going to be when they found these treasures.  

Also worked on going through my quilting/sewing bins and got rid of a ton of stuff from those as well.  I barely even remembered that I made a couple quilts when the kids were babies - and my taste has definitely changed in 30 years.  Small calico prints aren't my thing anymore.  And a lot of fabric quarters I'd saved for a miscellaneous patch work quilt (or two...or ten) don't really make me smile with joy, either.  So I let them go - if/when I want to make quilts, I have 3-4 kits that I saved which will be fun to work on.  

J. made two trips to thrift stores today - including a trip with the car filled to the top with storage bins.  The huge size we used in Tracy worked because we had two boys to help us get stuff up and down from the rafters - but with just us two now, we're transitioning to smaller size 'flip top' bins (from Costco) to make it easier for us to store stuff on the garage ceiling shelves.  We let 8 huge bins go to charity today along with a bunch of other stuff. 

We've got one or two more trips planned tomorrow and we should be winding down 2020 with so much less 'stuff' than we started the year.  It feels FABULOUS to let all this stuff 'go'.  I may even sleep on it tonight and in the morning, I might feel like giving up even more of the quilting/sewing stuff. 

I didn't know that I have dozens of quilt books - and if I were to quilt, the last place I would look for ideas is in a book....I'd cruise the Internet for days seeking ideas.  You Tube videos abound, too.  

We're letting the books go as well.  

Christmas will be put away by the end of this weekend for sure.   

We're heading for Atlantis Reno on Thursday for NYE.  Sort of debated spending the night but we have a room and we figure why not.  We both want to go - and play - and then we really don't like the idea of driving home late at night on a holiday where people drinking and driving might be more prevalent then other days of the year - so we'll stay.  I've warned J. that I plan to play slots into the wee hours of the morning hopefully.  (I hear the slots are fairly loose on NYE and I want to play late to see what happens.  There are so many HUGE jackpots on the machines - it could be a very exciting night).  

We're starting 2021 off with a great lessening of stuff.  There will be two cars in the garage and a 'gym' area as well!   

A List of Stuff

 A random list of stuff I've been meaning to share.  Time goes so fast these days - which I'm grateful for given that we're in 'global pandemic' status still so staying home with not a lot to go out and do is a good thing.

• Working or not, my favorite part of pretty much any day is climbing into bed at the end of the day and waiting for the snuggle factor to take me to dreamland.     

•  Today, I picked up my first online order at Walmart and I have to say I am SUPER impressed.  AND the BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER:  my order included a bottle of 409, a bottle of Clorox Clean Up and 3 bottles of WalMarts multisurface grease cutter/cleaner!  I ordered them fully expecting them to be unavailable when we picked up the order - but they DID have them in stock and so we scored!  I was so giddy about the cleaning supplies, J. was laughing at me.  409 has been completely unavailable for close to a year.  It was like the best Christmas gift EVER. 

• The order was complete and perfect.  I didn't allow any substitutions - partly because I wasn't sure what their parameters were for substituting.  I will research that.  For example, if I request ground chicken and they have none, will they substitute turkey?  If they won't substitute something completely different but would substitute a different brand (Jenny-O vs. Foster Farms ground chicken), that would be OK.  But chicken vs. turkey, not so much.  So I will continue to fine tune.  
  
• I am not a huge fan of Walmart but the prices are the lowest we have available here in Carson City.  I wish we had a Winco and maybe someday we will - and while I truly don't like a lot of things about Walmart and dread shopping there, we are on a budget so lowering our food costs is what we need to do.  
• J. and I are binge watching The West Wing on Netflix again.  The series leaves Netflix in two days so we're re-watching the first few seasons (our favorites).  I proposed on Christmas Eve we should try to watch all the Christmas episodes which are epic.  
• The electricians installed the dining room light fixture now that we have the dining room table.  It looks beautiful.  
• Just after Thanksgiving, one of our neighbors across the golf course decorated her back fence.  I hadn't even thought about decorating in the back - no reason to do that in our Tracy home - but since we back to a golf course and our house can be seen from a street nearby, it made sense.  I can't wait for next year and have already given J. a heads up that we have a LOT more decorations to purchase for the backyard next year.  WAY MORE LIGHTS.  And fence decor.  Bows, maybe - lighted bows and/or lighted scenes'.  
• As I type this, I remember that last night, we had HUGE winds here and we woke up this morning to find the two dogs, the llama and the dachshund decorations in the front in a pretty sad state AND the three lighted packages we had out front are gone.  We have no idea where they went - we drove around to look - but they are GONE.  Totally gone.  
• We're not sure that they weren't stolen.  Seems like they might have been 'cuz they had to be unplugged.  

I have to stop the bullet point format.  It's a PITA and I keep saving this update and then when I get back to it, the bullet points torture me - so I'm moving on.  Back to paragraph form.  It's a hodge-podge post and I'm OK with that.    

We've had numerous discussions with B. about being here for Christmas and we've decided against it multiple times.  It's hard on him - especially him - who got through months of being deployed in a not great assignment and not great area - and the thought of spending a minimum of two weeks with us got him through a lot - so to have that event postponed indefinitely is heartbreaking.  For all of us - but especially for B..  We have a Zoom call planned for Christmas morning and will spend some time sharing our plans for the day, reminiscing about Christmas' past and talking about what we're looking forward to in 2021.  Hopefully adding travel back into our lives will happen. 

Last night, we went to Atlantis - our casino host gave us a voucher for a free dinner (there was an issue which I will share in a future post) so we headed to Reno.  We arrived around 1:30PM and played until our 5PM reservation.  (One of the Covid guidelines in place here for all restaurants is 'must have reservations'.  It's a way to ensure the place doesn't exceed the 25% allowed capacity limit).  I played for a couple of hours on what I initially put in to begin to play - moving up and down on the range of 'in the red or in the black'.  Pretty typical day.  At 3PM or so, I headed to other machines to play my free play for the week - turned $200 in free play into $300 in cash and then headed back to my favorite Dragonlink machines.  I was shocked when I hit a Major jackpot at a little past 3:30PM - and then twelve short minutes later (moving to another machine), I hit a second Major!  It was epic.  Truly.  

Food was fantastic, service was awesome and we had a really fun time - got home a bit before 7PM. 

Also have freeplay on Saturday so fingers crossed there won't be weather that makes it impossible to get there.