It’s Monday morning and I wake up famished. It’s four in the morning and I get up and get myself some orange juice to hold me over until it’s time for breakfast. I get back to bed and start to think and that is always a bad sign lol. This morning I am thinking about my car. I’ve had my trusty Honda Civic for many years and it is about time to let go. However, it has some cosmetic things that could use some upgrading. Like the hubcaps for example. They are shot and look really ugly. Looking to see if it is worth purchasing new ones or not. Also, if I should get the Honda brand ones or the aftermarket kind. Plus, I was side swiped at one point and the other person’s print is on my front bumper. Should I get that replaced or not even bother. Will that really make the car worth more or will it just be a waste of my time and money? This is what I am thinking about this morning. The other think I’m thinking about is a project that I have at my parents house. I’d like to clear out the basement. There are multiple couches and desks some bedroom furniture. I’d like to get rid of as many items as possible as they are simply just sitting there and not getting any use from anyone. Then there is another side of the basement. I looked in there and holly mother, there is so much stuff in there. All leftover things from when the house was built way back when. There are small pieces of rugs. Jars filled with writing utensils. At one point my father was all about making his own wine so we have barrels and other wine making things in there, which I don’t even think I can give those away. Plus all of the extra things that he has there as extra parts. For example, there are at least four broken chandeliers that he was going to make it into one. I will have to take one out at a time in order to get rid of them otherwise they grow legs and come back inside. Much like the mop I threw away the other day. The mop is old and dirty and it doesn’t clean anything. Also the handle is rusty and it’s all around a piece of garbage. So, I tossed the thing out during one of the weekends that I was there doing the cleaning and the laundry. And whatta you know the next time I went to the house to do some clean up, the rotten mop was back in its rightful place. Right next to the fridge where the other pail and broom are located. How in the hell did this thing grow legs and come back into the house is beyond me. If it was my father, he’s an idiot because he doesn’t clean the house, so why would he need it? It it was my mother, it’s the same thing. She says her arms hurt and that she can’t help with the floor cleaning. And that is ok. That’s why I go there every weekend. To help clean the floors and wipe down the bathrooms as well as do their laundry, change their bed sheets and so on. I’m on a mission to clean up that place and throw out as much garbage as possible. This weekend will be no different. I will get to one of the rooms and do one section at a time and toss out as much as possible. As for this morning, I worked on my own basement. Moved a bunch of things, really heavy things, around and made room for my little one to have a nice space to play. I was at this for a few hours in the morning before work. This is why I’m loving to still be working from home. I get to do whatever it is that I need to do in the morning hours prior to logging online. I notice I’ve been keeping things in my basement that I no longer need or want. For example, I have a collection of shot glasses. I don’t use these glasses and the have been in storage for many years. So I am going to unwrap all of them and take a photo and put them up for sale. There are some other household items that we no longer need and those items are going to go for sale too. We also have a set of end tables and coffee table that we simply just do not use and they are not needed so I took pictures of them and will post them for sale online soon. By nine I am tired from doing all of this work and ready for a nap, but I must log on to work as I have a product launching today. At nine on the dot I log on and start my work for the day. Shortly after starting to work, I hit a wall. I got really tired and don’t have any energy left for the day. I did so much this morning already that I can’t function any more. I go into the kitchen and take my vitamins to see if my energy picks back up. From the vitamins I get a small burst and make a few phone calls. Making phone calls are exhausting for me but I must do them. I’m still feeling tired but during my lunch hour I get to the church by my parents’ house and get them their meals for the week. I take care of a few things at the house. I then drive over to the catholic school and get my little one matriculated. I continue to feel terribly exhausted as the day goes on. It is hot outside and the heat makes me even more tired. All I want this afternoon is to take a nap. But it’s time to get back to work. I’m working but I am dragging along. I do get all of my work done but I taking much longer than usual to get everything done. Some of my friends message me through our instant messaging system and I haven’t messaged them back. I’m too exhausted to socialize. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m just so, so tired today. After work we have dinner and the family goes out for a drive but I stay home. Shortly after I am in my PJs and ready for bed. Good night all.

It’s Tuesday and I wake up at two in the morning. I keep on waking up at this time almost every day. I turn over and continue to keep my eyes closed but my brain is wide awake. It takes me about an hour or so to fall back asleep. It is then four in the morning and my husbands phone alarm goes off. I wake up instantly and try to wake him up but to no avail. He is sleeping like a rock. I turn off his alarm and turn over to get back to sleep but who am I kidding, I am now awake and will not be falling asleep any time soon. Then his alarm goes off again and this time I am able to wake him up. I then roll out of bed and take a quick trip to the bathroom. I then get back to bed. I am still not able to fall asleep so I turn on my audiobook and am listening to Year of Yes by Shonda Rhymes. After about an hour or so Shonda’s voice lulls me to sleep and I eventually fall asleep and don’t listen to almost any of the book. I’ll have to practically start listening to it again from the beginning. At six my phone alarm goes off and I hit snooze and keep on laying down in bed for another half hour. I was thinking of getting on the treadmill and then I got up and realized that I feel all achy. I did a lot of work yesterday morning and my muscles are all achy. I moved around a few bags of roof shingles and they were about seventy pounds each. I feel like I did cross fit yesterday and all of my unused muscles are hurting. So I opt out of my workout today. Eventually, I get up ad get the coffee going. I also get sliced bread and put in the toaster for toast and I have my breakfast nice and early. It’s early but I get online as I want to get some work done but I am feeling very down and out and am having trouble concentrating. Instead I do some cleanup of the bedroom like take the laundry to the laundry room, make the bed. I then get dressed and then rub retinol oil on my feet as they are also hurting from yesterdays shenanigans. Actually the heal of my left foot has been tingly for the last few days. When I step my foot down I get a bit of a tingling feeling. Is this a sign of diabetes creeping in? I sure hope not. After about an hour or so I get some energy and am back online and doing some work. I am working and working and then I get stuck. For some reason I don’t have java in my system. I need to have an old version of java in order for the system that I work on to actually work. I send an email to the IT department as I need to have a certain version of this program in order for another program to work. Crap…I should have had this particular item posted yesterday and I was going to quickly take care of it this morning. But now, I can’t do it because of system issues. While I wait on out IT system to get back to me I get to some other work that needs to be completed. Then I get a message that a couple of items that I posted on the site yesterday are incorrect. I’m working on quickly correcting these and then my email and instant messaging and other items on my laptop crap out. I have to close out everything that I have open on the laptop, and I have a lot of files open, so I could restart it. Oh brother, today is not going well at all. Plus, I a continue to feel achy. I’ve already taken a couple of pills for the achy pain, but it continues to linger. The medicine eventually kicks in and I am able to get through the rest of the day. However, I get to bed early I talked to the IT team and made a deal with them to get my old laptop back. The new is not allowing me to get my work done. So back to old faithful it is. I get to bed early so that I can get out there into the wild and get into the office.

It’s Wednesday and I need to go into the office to pick up my old laptop. This new one that I have is not responding to Java and I need it to work for updating my website. I was on the phone with one of the IT guys yesterday for an hour to try and figure out why this program was not working on the new laptop and we couldn’t figure out why. With that, I will need to work with the old laptop and that is why I need to get to the office. I get up at six in the morning and get ready for my day. I picked out my outfit last night so that this morning I wouldn’t have to rush and wonder what I should wear into the office. It’s been very hot outside and I need something to keep me cool while I’m out in the wild outdoors. I choose a loose pair of pants and a nice short] sleeved blouse. Everything is nice and loose and I feel comfortable. Traffic this morning wasn’t too bad. There were pockets of slowdowns but overall it was smooth. When I got to work the door were locked and my badge wouldn’t work. Then I noticed a sign that everyone would have to go around back to the loading dock area in order to get inside the building. I swipe my badge and it didn’t work, so I had to ring the doorbell. Someone came out and they had to check my temperature and then I needed to have a document stating that I was clear to come into the building. I couldn’t find the flipping document. I had emailed it to myself but I could not find it anywhere. So the next thing was to scan a barcode to sign in. I don’t have a barcode reader on my phone, so that didn’t work either. The last resort was to log in to a particular website in order to sign in. At that point my phone’s internet was crapping out and it just did not want to log in. Oh brother, I’m not going to be able to get get in and get my laptop today, I thought. What in the world am I going to do. Then I took and deep breath and looked at my phone again, because I could have sworn that I did not delete that email. Did I file it away somewhere, I though. So I looked at my work folder and ah ha! There it was, I was free to go to my desk and get my work done. I get to my desk at eight thirty and get a head start on my day. I have a few meetings in the morning and then I was able to get some more work done. For lunch I went to the big box store and picked up a whole bunch of things. I also returned a couple of bags of flour that we had that we are just not going to utilize. We’ve had them for a few months and it’s just going to be a waste, so I took them back and returned them. The lady at the store was trying really hard to help but she couldn’t find the purchased bags of flour on my card so she told me that I would need to make and exchange for the items. I said that it would be fine as I have a whole list of things that I need to purchase today. I did my rounds at that store and got almost everything on the list. They were out of a few things, but the majority of the items I am able to get. I then decided that it was time to go home. There was no need to get back into the office again. I would go back home and log back in from there. When I got home I had to clean out all of the groceries with disinfecting wipes and place the items away. My mother in law helped with placing the cold items away in the fridge. This was a great help as I had a meeting shortly after. I put the rest of the groceries away and get to my meeting. After my meeting I had a bunch of email requests that had come through for me to post on the website. They are very important items that can’t wait for tomorrow. It’s now way after five and I am still working for the man. By seven I stop working and we go ahead and have dinner. After dinner my little one and I played a bit with her toys and Pokémon cards and then it was time for me to hit the hay. I am tired from waking up so early and I need to get some shut eye.

It’s Thursday and I wake up with the alarm but stay in bed for a little while longer. I am glad I am working from home today so I won’t have to get up and run around to get ready to go into the office. I get my coffee going and then I start logging on for work. I have a bunch of things that need to be taken care of and I go ahead and get an early start. I am still in my pjs and then I thought, it’s still so early, I’m going to take a shower. So I did that and took my time. I put on a ton of lotion and did some self care as I had plenty of time prior to my nine o’clock start. I then logged back on to work and kept on posting content to the website until lunch. During lunch I get out to the store and make a few purchases then get back home and get back online to work. Thankfully, the afternoon is nice and easy at work. I have to post a bunch of content and do just that for the rest of the day, but those and nice and easy things to do. They are time consuming but I work on them nice and steady and get everything done. In the evening we go out for a drive. Then get back home and I still have to put the dishes away and put out the garbage. After all of that I finally get to bed.

It’s Friday and I wake up at six and decided to go for a walk on my treadmill. As I’m walking I’m also watching Ozark on Netflix. I walk for about four miles and then hit the showers. I have the coffee going and have myself an apple turnover for breakfast. Don’t know why, but I love these things. I then log on to work and get to my product launch. The team wants a couple of products launched as soon as possible, so now I have to rush to get the information on the website. Good thing I had a bunch of items already set up and ready to go otherwise I’d really have to rush to get everything done. This afternoon I have to take mom to the doctor and I am dreading it. She has become very difficult as she doesn’t want to do anything anymore. She doesn’t want to get out of the house and doesn’t want to take her medicine, she plainly is sitting on the couch constantly and barely gets up to do anything. During my lunch hour I took mom to see the gastroenterologist. Surprisingly, she was willing to go and did not make a fuss. She changed her clothes, put some deodorant on and cleaned herself up. At the doctors office, she tells the doctor that she does not have any pain and that she feels just fine. The doctor was at a loss and didn’t know what to tell us besides sending her out to do blood work. After leaving the doctors office I raced home and dropped my parents off at their house. On the way to my own house there was a detour on the road so I had to go around a neighborhood that I don’t really know how to navigate. I had to turn around a few times but I finally figured it out how to get to my own house. Then the boss sends me a message about an emergency items on one of the websites I work on. I’m trying to log on but the internet won’t work. They must have shut it off as they were working on the road. I had to reply back about that and let her know my internet isn’t working. The internet finally came back on at five thirty. I logged back on and it looked like the issue was resolved. They didn’t need me after all. In the evening the family decided to go out for a drive, but I decided to stay home. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow in the yard and my parents’ house. I need to rest today. While at home I watch a few videos online about anxiety and how the brain works. And am falling asleep while watching these videos. I eventually get under the covers and fall asleep.

It’s Saturday and I get up at six in the morning. I try to get get online and am trying to work on my blog, but my laptop craps out. I click out of everything and then select restart. It system was spinning and spinning and spinning. So I turned it off manually. And turned it back on and it was still on restarting mode and spinning. I’m thinking, did I break the laptop? Like, already? I just got this new laptop. Ok calm down, I tell myself. Let’s turn it off again. Count to ten then turn it back on. This time it worked. The laptop turns back on. It took a couple of years working in IT in order to learn that trick lol. This morning I am thinking of what I need to do this weekend. I have to clear out the backyard of the tall grasses and weedwack them. I also need to pull some weeds out of the flower beds. More like bed of bushes. We don’t have any flowers this year. I don’t have the time nor the energy to get out there and plant flowers. Maybe once my daughter gets older and I have more energy to garden. I used to love to garden when we first bought the house. Not sure what happened, but I no longer want to be out there and plant. After clearing the grasses with the weedwacker, which can take hours. I am tired and no longer want to be out there to plant. To be honest, I really want to toss all of the pots that I have in the back yard. I have a decorative pots but am feeling tired of them. I’d like a simpler yard and not have as many things back there. When I get the courage I’ll get rid of all of these items. Meanwhile, I have been cleaning out my closet a bit. I have a few items that are old and some wholes. They really should go. I’ve placed them in a black garbage bag and will be bringing them to a charity. There are a bunch of items of clothing at my parent’s house that they no longer use and I will be doing the same. Tossing them in the bag and donating them to charity. In the afternoon I got enough energy to take care of the house. I sprayed ant away spray around the house and then some roundup type of spray for some of the weeds in the front yard. Then the big job of weedwacking the back yard. I did the majority of the area but then ran our of battery. I will need to finish tomorrow or next weekend. I also want to clean out the patio but the broom broke a couple of weekends ago and I don’t have an item for bleach, so I called it a day and headed back inside. While in there, I notice there are a few things that I can take over to my parents house. Things such as picture frames. The have a few photos that don’t have photo frames. I have a few that are in boxes and not getting any use. I will take them over to their house and place photos of the kids on them. As for tomorrow, I will be going over to my parents house and showing the fish tank that we have to someone who may or may not want it. It’s a heavy piece and it was made by my husband many years ago. I am giving it away as we no longer want it. Hopefully this person wants to take it and we will get rid of it once and for all.

It’s Sunday and I get up early. I want to get a few chores completed and get up with my alarm clock. Today I will be going over to my parent’s house and placing a bunch of things for sale to plainly get rid of them from the house. The other day, I notice there was a boom box as well as a bunch of cassettes and cds in the closet at my parents house. I haven’t looked through this music in years. A lot of the cds are ones that the record companies sent to the radio station and I took them home to copy them and then wound up keeping them at the house. Anyway, at the house I did the laundry, the dishes and vacuumed. I also took a few photo frames to place photos that were plainly all over the place in the kitchen. The rest of the photos were added to the wall they have of their grandkids. They have a lot of pictures of my daughter as I made a collage on their kitchen wall with a bunch of photos of her as a little baby. Now what I need to tackle is the garage. There are so, so many things in the garage that I don’t know what to do with. I’ve found hubcaps, car seats from cars they used to own, shoes all kinds of spays and so much more. Of course there are tools as dad and my oldest brother were mechanics in their passed lives. There are tool kits and drawers filled with tools. In the main house there are closets filled with clothes. These clothes will never be worn again. I’m to blame as well. I notice that there are more articles of clothing that I still have in the closet at my parents’ house. Some of them are party dresses and coats that no longer fit. Not sure if I should donate or put up for sale as they were all very expensive and well made. After leaving my parent’s house I make my way to the bank and get a couple of bucks out as I need to make some cash payments this week. I then get home and the family has gone out for a drive. I put all of my stuff away and am feeling tired. Not much energy left after all of the work that I have done today. But nevertheless I will need to take a shower as all of that work made me all sweaty and gross. Before my shower I am feeling hungry and have leftover sushi and am listening to my audiobook Didn’t See that Coming by Rachel Hollis. I was listening to the book the entire time I was at my parent’s house and doing my weekly cleaning. For the most part I wasn’t paying attention as I was working on taking photos of items to get rid of or concentrating on clearing something out. What I did hear, I liked. I’ve always liked Rachel Hollis. She talks about her divorce as well as her brothers suicide. But she also coaches on how a person should reach their best selves.

In the evening I thought about doing a bunch of chores at home. Things like clearing out the weeds in the backyard with the weedwacker and cleaning up the garbage pails, washing my car and a few other things that are on my list. However, I was feeling physically and mentally tired. So instead, I took a nice hot bath with essential oils and Epsom salts. I was in there for a while and did my best to relax, I was able to do that for a good twenty minutes but then I got bored. I washed my hair and rinsed with clean water but left the essential oils on the skin. My skin is now nice and smooth. Shortly after my bath, the family came back home so I had to rush to get dressed. They went to the grocery store and I got out there and helped my husband with bringing in the groceries. We continue to clean out all of the items that come inside the house with disinfecting wipes. While he was doing that, I brought the items inside the to the kitchen and my mother in law was helping by putting the items away in the fridge and the cupboards. Meanwhile, my little one was keeping the dog entertained so he wouldn’t run outside without his leash. It was a team effort. We hung out for a while and then they had dinner. I opted out as I had just had some of the leftover sushi about an hour prior to them coming home. We watched tv for a little while and before we know it, it’s time for bed. The day passed really fast today. Tomorrow is another fun filled work week. I may need to take a day as the roofer is to go over to my parent’s house to fix the roof and some of the interior of the house. I have plenty of vacation days left so I my do just that. While I’m there, I may just do some more clean up of the basement and toss out some of the clothing that my parent’s no longer use. Place some more items for sale. I’m sure I’ll keep myself busy.

Until next time.
Stay Safe.
Best,
Isabel

It’s Monday and it is Memorial Day here in the States and I have off from work. However, I still wake up early. Way too early. It is four in the morning and I wake up out of the blue. I fluff my pillow and do my best to get some more shut eye. I am able to sleep for another hour or so and then I get up to use the bathroom. I hear the dogs collar jiggling and hear the slightest sound of people talking, so the tv must be on. I walk over to the living room and my husband and the dog are on the couch together. I pet then both good morning and head on over to the kitchen to make my morning coffee. It’s still cold this morning and it continues to rain. But the weatherman said that the day will clear up and it will be sunny this afternoon. I have much to do in the yard and need the day to get to it. I have lock of weedwacking to do and spaying for weeds and ticks and other critters. However, it is early and it’s still raining this morning so I get my coffee going and then get to my writing. I write and edit then write some more and edit. I then look at my work emails and answer to a few of them. One of them is for a response to getting a refresher laptop. I’ve had mine for a few years and it’s the lease must be up because I now need to get a new one. Good thing too. The one that I currently have doesn’t connect to wifi in the house. From my understanding, it has something to do with the windows 10 upgrade that messed a bunch of things up and the wifi does not work on the laptop. I have to have a direct wire plugged onto the laptop from the router. Right from the closet into the bedroom/office. Hopefully with a new laptop I’ll be able to use the wifi at home and not be stuck plugged into a wire in one location of the house. Maybe I can even work outside in the summer. Who knows, there are lots of possibilities. That reminds me, I must add clean the back patio to my to do list. The small table and chairs we have out there are filthy. Filled with pollen and plainly dirty from the wear and tear of the winter and spring.

It’s Tuesday and I get up and get to the treadmill. As I’m walking my tummy starts rumbling. I’m hungry this morning. After my three miles, I get my breakfast going. Today I am having cinnamon rolls for breakfast. It’s more of a dessert, but I really want some. So I heat some up and eat them really fast. There goes all of my hard work right to my hips lol actually for me, it goes right to my belly. For someone who doesn’t drink beer, I have a bit of a beer belly that I just can’t get rid of. Anyway, my day was going just fine and then I hit a wall. I got really tired and was contemplating calling in sick, but it was already nine in the morning and I have a nine o’clock meeting. I don’t want to waste the day, so I log in get onto the meeting. After the meeting, I have a little bit of time between my next meeting, so I lay down on the bed for a few minutes. I’m suddenly really cold and get myself a zip up hoodie. After a little while I log back on and get some work done. One of my meetings was very quick, so I took the time after we all hung up to make appointments for my mom. All of the doctors are so busy that the next appointments are for next month and all during office hours, so not good. I set them up anyway. Hopefully, I can get work something out with my brother and split the visits to the doctors. This puts me in a bad mood. Don’t know why, but I start getting angry. I’m getting overwhelmed with making appointments and other things that I’ve got running in my head. During my lunch hour I get to the church and get some lunches for my parents. They will eventually have them delivered to their home, but meanwhile, I am picking up the meals for them for the week. While there, I take care of dishes and clean up a bit after them. I also talked to the neighbor. She’s really nice and is willing to help out any way she can. I am glad I was able to talk to her for a little bit. She told me that what she does during her lunch hour is take care of yard work lol. I told her; same! I get to do yard work or drive over to my folks home to bring them things. Even though I had a nice conversation with her, I continue to be in a bad mood and everything irritates me. So I leave my parent’s house before I get mad at them about something. I get back home and I miss one of my meetings. Oh well, if there is anything that needs to be completed, I’m sure they will let me know. My mood decides to get better but I continue to feel tired, so I lay down again and close my eyes for a few minutes. I know I will be online until late tonight, so I feel ok taking some time to destress. Shortly after, my husband gets home from work and then we have dinner. After dinner, I get back online and work some more. It is the beginning of the month and there are always new things to post onto the website I work on.

It’s Wednesday and I wake up cranky and in pain. All of my muscles are achy. Especially my arms and lower back. It’s probably form doing a bunch of work over the holiday weekend. Or maybe I’m coming down with something. This morning, I hit the snooze alarm a slew of times. I would really like the day off and sleep all day, but I have a lot to do at work so I get up and start my day. I’m also feeling a little down mental healthy wise. I was feeling really bad yesterday and today is no different. I take some medicine but it is taking it’s time to take effect. I’m looking through social media to see if something sparks my happy thoughts. I find a lot of happy things like prom photos, birthdays, gatherings of friends and family and all of those put a smile on my face. But my heart feels dark. I probably need some time off from work and my daily routine. Something different that will bring me some spark and meaning in life. As for my new job endeavors, I’ve gotten a call back from one of the marketing jobs that I applied for. They gave me an offer and I countered it. Unfortunately, they did not go for my counter offer. That’s too bad. I would have loved to be making more that the original offer they provided. I’ve also offered to help out my current team on anything they need as I transition over to the new job. But the new boss is not into that kind of situation. The new boss would like a clean break. So no more IT for me. I will be a full blown marketing specialist. This however, is not going to start any time soon. The negotiations behind the scenes took a while and apparently what I am currently doing with the websites is very special as none knows how it’s done. Only I have all of the knowledge. My boss has had me create documentation on how to do my job and I’ve done a lot of documents and updated a lot of documentation that was old and needed new screenshots. I am exited and nervous for my new endeavors. I love to learn new things but sometimes it takes me a while to get what I need to do. I’m nervous about that portion. I want to ensure that I am a great employee not just mediocre. So I will need to plan a few days to relax prior to starting my new position. I hope that my feeling like garbage goes away soon and that I will be back to a somewhat normal self soon. This feeling like garbage comes and goes as my mental health is unstable. I take medicine for it to be stable but at times it gets to be a bit out of control. In the morning I get a bunch of work done. Then for my lunch hour I go out to my parent’s doctors office, dropped off all of their paperwork and set up an appointment for them. The appointment is two months from now. I was hoping to have it sometime this month so I could take them both there. But they are so busy that it won’t be possible. After the doctor, I passed by the carwash and got all of the pollen and dirt off the car. Now the car is nice and clean at least on the outside. The inside could also use a cleaning, but I don’t want anyone inside my car. I will take care of it on the weekend. I then get home and get a quick shower in. Then back to work as I have a meeting right at one in the afternoon. In the late afternoon I have a meeting with one of my mentors and he congratulates me on my transition. Meanwhile, he asks me what’s next for me. And I told him that I’d like to be in the managerial track for my company. I tell him that I think I would do well working in projects with a team. If there is such an opportunity, I’d love to jump on it and give it a whirl. I haven’t managed people in a long time, but I think I would be a good manager. I don’t micromanage, I let people do what they are best at and let them take care of what they need to take care of. In the evening I am beat. I have been really mentally drained all day long and am still felling like I’m dragging along. I’ve jotted down all of the things that I must do all week long and then some and highlighting the ones that have been completed. The highlighting gives me a sense of completion. It’s a mental thing. I’ve even jotted down to pick out an outfit for tomorrow as I will be going into the office for the first time since last year. I need an updated laptop and that is the only reason why I’m going in. The office is to officially open in the middle of July and I am not looking forward to it. I like working from home. It is comfortable and I get to wear what I please. Also, I get to wake up at whatever time I need and get to do my exercises in the morning hours if I’d like. This new routine will be different as we are to only go into the office a few times per week to start. Hopefully, the company has realized that us employees working from home get a lot done. At times, more that if we would actually have been in the office. A lot of us start working way before nine in the morning and stay on way passes five in the afternoon. As for me, at times, I wouldn’t even break for lunch. Especially if there was a lot of work that needed to get done. Tonight, I will go to bed early and get plenty of shut eye so I may get to work on time or even better, early enough to be there before the nine o’clock start.

It’s Thursday and I am up at five in the morning. Today I am going into the office and I can’t recall if I used to leave the house at six or seven in the morning. So I opt for six thirty. Luckily there wasn’t much traffic wise. It did start to rain so we all slowed down on the highway. I got to the office parking lot at five to seven. So I am very early. I decided that today I would put some makeup on. I have a small bag of tricks in the car and put on some makeup cream and eye shadow and eyeliner. I also put on some coverup and mascara. It’s still early but I decide that it’s time to get into the office. I had to walk in through one of the many front doors and get my temperature checked by security. I then take the elevator up to my floor and notice there are arrows everywhere for people to walk that direction. In order for me to use the bathroom, I have to go all the way around the other cubicles. There is none near me today so it is really quiet. I am cleaning up a lot of stuff from my desk. All of the paperwork from last year. I still have a 2020 agenda that was fully stopped in March. I also have a bunch of paperwork that I no longer need so I am putting a pile of papers together in order to toss them out in the recycling box. I then get to work as there is a lot to do today. Right at nine I have a meeting so I stop what I’m doing and take my mask off. It is making my eyeglasses all foggy and besides, there is none here who could breath on me. As I take my many trips to the bathroom, I put my mask on and take tissues with me in order to open doors. I also use a bunch of sanitizer. My hands are going to be all dried out by the time I get home tonight. During my lunch hour, my laptop was taken to get a refresh. The lease is up on my old one and the team is transferring all of my files to a new one. At this time I get out and get some much needed fresh air. I wanted to go out to the store and pick up tracks for my kitchen. But the location is over thirty minutes away and then another thirty minutes back. This would take longer thank an hour and I don’t want to mess with the corporate gods where they will see that I was out to lunch longer than the allotted hour. I look around and there is none, there are a few cars in the parking lot. Nice cars too. So all of the management and higher ups must be at the office. Not that many people drive expensive cars like that unless they are making a nice salary. I pass by the lunchroom and there is only one lonely person sitting in one of the back tables. I only have an hour for lunch, so after an hour I get back in and the laptop isn’t ready so I start to do some cleanup of my desk. Tossing out old paperwork and throwing out things that were cluttering up my drawers. I had protein bars that are so old they needed tossing. Then a whole bunch of teas that may of may not be flavorful any longer. Those I placed in a bag and will be taking them home to try. I will need to get a whole new set of teas when I get back into the office in the middle of summer. So I waited and waited for my laptop to arrive. It eventually came back at a quarter to five. I so wanted to get out of there that I mainly agreed to everything the IT guy said. But this took a while as I want to ensure all of my files are available to me. So I took a quick glance and it all seems good. My email is available, my files are available. All good. I got a new docking station as well and I am very happy about this as the old one was on the fritz. After the IT guy left, I packed up really quickly and made my way out of the office. That’s when I saw a couple of people by the door. Look at that, I’m not the only one here. I don’t know who they are so I don’t say anything but smile under my mask. I get in the car and drive home. The drive wasn’t too bad. There were a few pockets here and there of slowdowns but overall it didn’t take me the usual two hours to get home. Only an hour and fifteen minutes. When I got home I went straight to the laundry room and placed all of my clothes in the hamper, including my shoes. You never know what could have been brought from that place. I then go ahead and take a nice hot shower. Then get some dinner with the family. I missed being home today. I get to see my daughter throughout the day and see how she is doing. I also get to uses the bathroom as many times as needed. At the office today, I didn’t drink as much water as I usually do because I didn’t want to be going to the bathroom at every hour of the day. I think I was the only one on that floor who used that bathroom but you never know who else could be utilizing the toilet and have something that I could catch. At home I drank a bunch of water and ginger ale for dinner. We then sat on the couch and the tv was on, but I wasn’t watching. Shortly after, I got up and went to bed. Tomorrow is another fun filled day of work and I want to ensure I get all of the work that I missed this afternoon completed so I won’t have any issues with my current boss.

It’s Friday and I can’t sleep. I wake up at midnight and can’t seem to be able to get myself to fall asleep. So I turn on my phone and look through instagram. Looking at pretty photos is helpful to get my mind out of other thoughts. I eventually fall back asleep but then wake up again at two. There I go again with looking at instagram. And they cycle continues, of falling back asleep and then waking up again. This time I woke up at five. And I said, forget it, I’m getting up. My husband is still home and we chat for a bit while he is getting his things together. I get the coffee pot going and heat up a cinnamon roll for my breakfast. I then get to my bedroom/office and start to set up my new laptop. I need to get the wifi password, which I of course forgot. I finally figure out what it is and get online. I then notice that I don’t have microsoft teams on my laptop. I try to download it, but my single sign on credentials are not working. So at six in the morning I am calling the company’s helpdesk in order to help me with this. I have meetings that are through teams today and need the application on my laptop. I also need it to add all of my documentations for my transition from IT into marketing. I also notice that my excel document with a bunch of shortcuts is not available. This makes me mad. I need that shortcuts file. It has a lot of my passwords and links to pages that I need on a daily basis. I send an email to the IT guy who took care of my laptop refresh yesterday. Hopefully, he can email it to me so I can place it on my desktop. I should have sent it to myself via email or something so I’d have a backup. I really need that file. During the hours of lunch, I was in meetings. So I took my lunch later than I should have. Hopefully it won’t be an issue for the boss. So I went to my friends’ place of work and picked up a couple of items that we need for our kitchen. She designed our kitchen and I love it. However, some of the tracks are no longer working and I ordered what we need for the kitchen. I then raced back home because I thought I had a meeting in the middle of the afternoon. Turns out, no meeting. However, I have a product launching on Monday and I’ve only received content this afternoon to post. I generally request for content to be provided two weeks prior to launch so I have enough time to get everything completed correctly. This way, I am rushing through and hopefully I don’t make any mistakes. My husband gets home later than usual this evening and he wants to go out for a drive. I opt out as I am tired and quite frankly just don’t want to go out tonight. So I stay in and continue to do some work for the man so I can get ahead. But the the sites start to get wonky and I am receiving errors. At first, the developer is online and he helps out by giving me the advise to work on an incognito window, and that works for a while. But then I get the same errors and that is when I call it a night. Meanwhile I am listening to Dr. Caroline Leaf on youtube. She talks about mental health and goes over books with her guests. I am tuning in and out of these conversations but it’s something to listen to in the background so it’s not completely quiet. I turned off the air conditioner as I was getting chilly and it was really quiet as the family went on that drive with my husband. They just need to get out of the house. I get it. I then make myself some tea and have cookies with my tea. All of a sudden I feel really sleepy. So I have the podcast on and lay down on the freshly made bed, I figured for only a little while. Before I knew it, it was three hours later. So I roll out of bed, put on my pjs, do my evening toiletries and get to bed. Falling asleep was easy tonight as I was already tired from the day. I was up early and worked and worked all day long.

It’s Saturday and it is two in the morning and I can’t sleep anymore. I’ve been awake for a little while and then I start to get ideas in my head of what I need to do this weekend and what I need to get done for next weekend. I take out my phone and start sending lists out to myself. Things such as getting a medicine list for both my parents as I will need them for doctors visits next month. Follow up on doctors appointments for everyone. Clean up the closet at my parents home and donate clothing that we no longer need. Place a few old pieces of furniture for sale as we no longer need them. And so on and so on. Today I will be going over to my parents’ house as there is a team of people who will be taking care of the front yard and I am planning on helping out. I will need to take my rubber boots and gloves to do some of the hard labor. I’m also planning on taking iced tea mix, a pitcher and some cups for them so I can be a great host. I’ll see how the weather is and I may just need to get to the store and get some bottled water and sodas. Maybe even some pizza for lunch for them. We will see how long they will be there and how many people will actually be helping out. I am also planning on doing laundry and see if there is anything that needs cleaning inside the house. We had a cleaning person go to the house last week. Hopefully, it continues to be clean. I may need to sweep or pass the vacuum in the rooms but overall it should be good to go. Then I will need to clean out that fridge. It is a bit on the dirty side and I don’t think the cleaning lady took care of the fridge. Also, the cabinets need a nice cleaning. I’ll have to check and see if those were take care of. Lots and lots to do. That’s will only be half my day. On the other half I have the backyard at my house to get cleaned up. It is filled with pollen and droppings from the trees. There are also little sticks and other things that the dog keeps on chewing on. It needs a nice cleaning and the weeds need to be sprayed. I also want to organize the basement a bit. There are toys and other things all over the place and those need to be organized and maybe placed in boxes or some other storage bins. There is also a bunch of things that could probably be returned to the store that we no longer use. My husband used to make bread everyday during the pandemic but that was short lived. So now we have a bunch of flour stored that we won’t be utilizing for a long time. Yes it’s good for making cakes and pies and other items, but we’re not going to be making these any time soon. So these items are simply taking up space in the pantry. At my parent’s house I clean out the basement and there are a lot of things that can go. There is a box filled with clothes that will never fit him so I place them in bags and will be placing then in a donation box near my house. Its for the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Hopefully they will go to a good home. I’ve also placed a bunch of things for sale on facebook. If you, my friend, see anything that you like, please let me know and I will give the item to you. There are so many things just stored away that we don’t use. They could go to a good home. I’ve took a quick peak in the garage and oh my lord there are so so many things in there. There are valuable things that could be used or sold but they are all on top of each other and it is all so disorganized. I can’t make heads or tails of it. Also, there are multiples of things because my mechanic father wants to use parts from one to the other and fix them. The problem is that whenever I throw out things, they tend to grow legs and come back inside the house. For example, I placed an old mop in the garbage on Saturday as Monday is garbage pick up day. Next Saturday that I visited that old mop was back in the kitchen. I don’t know what the obsession is with keeping things that are old and broken. And this isn’t the first time. Almost every time I toss out something that seems that it could still have a tiny bit of a life, it grows legs and comes back. The worst part is that it comes back into the kitchen and it is placed on a random place like the kitchen counter. They have the energy to go garbage picking, but not the energy to clean the item and put it away. So, what I usually do is, I take the piece, place it in my trusty Honda Civic and bring it to my own house and place the item in my garbage pail. It’s such a challenging process to get something done. At my own home I was able to spray the house for ants. We have large carpenter ants that are coming inside the house. Don’t know where they are coming from, so I spray around the entire house a couple of times. I then am working on taking bleach to the playground so I can spray the weeds. I transfer the bleach from one container to another that has a sprayer. Then notice the sprayer is leaking all over the place. The rotten thing is leaking from the bottom. I pick it up to inspect it and I get bleach my the pantleg of my jeans. Darn it, I then try to make the same type of design on the other pantleg so it’ll look even. But instead it looks like a big blob of bleach. We’ll see when it comes out of the wash what kind of ugly design my jeans will have. I quickly then place the bleach back into it’s original container and try to figure out how I’m going to spray the playground so there won’t be any weeds and my little one can play outside. I will need to find another type of spray bottle of some sort in order to do that. At this point the family is tired of being at home and they opt to go out for a drive. I stay home as I still have a bunch to do around the house. The patio needs to be swept and I would like to get that done today. So I grab the broom that we have and start to sweep. The handle kept on coming out of the brush and it was becoming very annoying. Then, just as my luck would have it the brush broke in half. I worked it so hard that it gave up on me. So I go inside and get out the small broom that we have and continued with my sweeping. Then I noticed that in my husband’s truck there was a large broom that they use at their jobs. I sneakily took the broom and continued my work. This is much better, the broom is bigger and its industrial strength. It took me no time to sweep out all of the sticks and other debris from the patio. I of course had to move all of the toys around and the small table and chairs that we have in order to get everything out of the patio. After that I placed everything back and then started to pluck all of the little weeds that are growing around the patio. I pulled them all by hand. This was probably a bad idea, my fingers will be feeling it tomorrow. Once that was completed, I took out the weed killer and went to the front yard and started to spray the weeds that are on the mulched area of the property. Hopefully, these will be eliminated so I won’t have to pluck them by hand. After doing all of this, I am satisfied with my work for today. I go inside and am ready for a bath. I filled up the tub and soaked for a little while so I could relax from the day’s hard work. I gave myself a simple pedicure and manicure while soaking in the bath and my toes and hands are ready to be polished so they look pretty when I get back to work on Monday. Yes I will still be working from home, but it is nice to be pampered. I then turn on the water to take a shower and wash my hair and use a wonderful body wash called dark kiss. It’s from Bath & Body Works and it’s scent is just wonderful. After I’m all nice and clean I go to the fridge and see what I have as leftover so I can have some dinner. I have leftover rice and sausage. As I am eating I am listening to the book, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman. I am thinking about what I have to do tomorrow, so I’m not really paying attention to the audiobook. I will have to rewind and listen to it again tomorrow. After dinner I am looking around the house as I feel like I am forgetting to do something. So I get to the basement and look around. I get some items that are needed like paper towels, sugar, napkins and a few other items. I bring them all up to the main floor and place them all away. At this point it is nine thirty and I should get ready for bed. Tomorrow is another fun filled physical work day and I need my beauty rest.

It’s Sunday and I am awake at one in the morning, again. I keep on waking up at random hours of the early morning and then have trouble getting back to sleep. I get my phone and look at pretty pictures on Pinterest. I am looking to get my hair cut in a few months and am looking for inspiration. I want to donate my hair to Wigs for Kids so a kid with cancer or some other terrible disease can have a beautiful hair piece. From my understanding, these wigs are provided to the kids at no charge. This is something that I have done in the past and it makes me feel happy that I will make a kid happy, even if its for only a little while. Anyway, I am looking for a short hair cut so that I can donate as much as possible of what I currently have. There is one hair cut that I’ve had my eye on for a while. It’s a little long at the top and shaved at the bottom on the neck. I’m even thinking of coloring it a lighter color. We will see how the wind will take me at the time. Looking through these images gives me the good feels and I eventually fall back asleep. However, I wake up again at three. I look through my phone again this time on instagram. I see my friends and family members having all kinds of good things happening. Ball games, graduations and all sorts of other celebrations. How wonderful for them. I fall back asleep but it’s short lived, I’m tossing and turning until about six in the morning. At that time I am tired of trying to sleep, so I get up and make myself some coffee. Meanwhile, I am working on fixing all of the listings I have on the items that are for sale. Updating pricing and descriptions of the items as well as adding the location on the description. All the while thinking about what I must do today and what I need to do for the rest of the week at work. I would like to take a day off next week. But I’m thinking that I have a product launch and it is still the beginning of the month so there will be lots of new price lists and promotions to add to the site. Not sure if it is a good idea. In the afternoon I head over to my parent’s house. I have added items for sale on facebook and someone is coming to pick up a toy and then later someone it to come pick up the fish tank that my husband made a few years back. I am giving away the fish tank and everybody wants it, but no one is willing to come pick it up. The first person who wanted it flacked out, the next person was waiting on a truck that never came so good lord I gave up and came home. The darn piece is so heavy that we can’t take it out ourselves. It’s well maid but it needs a lot of TLC at this point. While I was waiting, I get to my old bedroom and notice there is yet another box of stuff. This one was filled with correspondences that are plain garbage. I don’t understand, the old people get so much correspondence and they never throw anything away. We could have ourselves a nice bond fire with all of the paper that they have. And all of it is get rich quick type of correspondence. Also, my father started getting mail regarding psychic predictions and he started to buy into it. It’s so terrible how these people take advantage of the elderly. Another box that was in the closet were clothes from my college days. They are all size zero and I’ll never fit into them and to save them for my daughter will be a waste of time and space. So I cleared out the box and placed the clothes in a couple of bags as I will be bringing them to the church and place them on their charity bin. There are a couple of items that were left over that my husband had forgotten about that are useful for us like a drill that he brought a long time ago and a couple of extension chords. I place them all in a box and brought them home with me. At my parents’ I feel like I got hit with a ton of bricks. It is hot in there as they are always cold and don’t want an air conditioner. It is cooler that it is outside but it’s still a little sticky. All of a sudden I don’t have any energy to do anything. And all I want to do is go to my own home and maybe take an afternoon nap or just sit and relax for a little while. As I am driving home I am feeling a bit sleepy and that is not a good thing. When I get home I get to the laundry room place my clothes in the hamper the head to the bedroom. The room is nice and cool and I am ready to take a nap. So I lay down on the bed and sleep. About an hour or so later I wake up and am refreshed. I am then figuring out what I need to do for the rest of the day and for next week. I have to set up an calendar invite with my mentee. I’ve got to get to the big box store to make purchase. I usually go during the week because it is calmer and there are less people in the store. Especially in the evening during the week. I also need to set up set something up for my parents to get assistance when it comes to the heating for the house in the winter. The paperwork is endless but it’s needs to be done. They are on a fixed income and can not afford all of the high prices of heating oil. Hopefully filling out of this paperwork will help with cutting costs. At my own home I need to clear out a few things from the basement and organize a bit. I was to do some of that today. But as of now, I don’t have the energy to do heavy lifting. Maybe next weekend, I’ll have the energy for it. I also need to do a bunch of weed whacking in the back yard. I cleared out an area next to the vegetable garden and now it is filled with grass. We can’t get the mower back there because there is a huge branch that fell from one of the trees in the way. So weed whacking it is. Again, maybe next weekend.

Until Next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel

It’s Monday and I wake up all sweaty and sticky. It’s humid and I am feeling all that humidity. Don’t want to get out of bed today so I snooze the alarm a few times. I then eventually get up and get to the treadmill. Before the treadmill, I check to see if the machine in the basement is working properly as we had a flood last night. The sump pump machine broke and we had water all over the place. My husband fixed it and I did the clean up. It was a team effort. So this morning, I’m checking and everything looks to be in tip top shape. Thank you husband for a job well done. I get on the treadmill and walk my three miles than I into the kitchen and start up my coffee pot. As the coffee and toast are making I go ahead and take my quick shower. I then get to work in my bedroom/office and I am in shorts and a tank top. I’m working and working then pause and take a quick break and go outside. Outside is kind of chilly. I should have opened the windows instead of having the air conditioning on. Anyway, I get back inside and make my phone calls for my parents for meals, visiting nursing, repairs and a few other calls. For my lunch hour I get out to one of the local churches by my parents house and fill out an application for them to receive weekly meals. We’re not always available to cook for them. So this is a sure way for them to get meals delivered to them on a weekly basis. The nice man from the Knights of Columbus also called and mentioned someone is to go to my parents’ house today to start working on cutting some of the low hanging branches from the trees in the front yard. I am so grateful right now I don’t even know what to say or do. Besides saying thank you God for these blessings!

It’s Tuesday and holly headache. I snoozed the alarm and kept on trying to sleep. My head is aching hard and I get up out of bed just to take medicine. I didn’t walk today but slept for a couple of hours longer. After a little while, I get to my bedroom/office and get to work. I do a lot of standard operating procedure documentations and at noon I break. I go to my parent’s house and bring them food for the week. I then hurry up and get to the big box store and make my purchases for the week. When I get home I clean out all of the items from the store and my mother in law puts, practically, everything away for us. All I do is take some of the items down to the basement to store them away. I then change my clothes and get back to work. Work is a little easier today, not much going on so I continue to create my documentations. In the evening we have dinner and then put on a movie. Wonder Woman I think it was. Wasn’t really paying attention to it. Shortly after it was nine thirty, way past my bedtime. I bid everyone goodnight and got to bed.

It’s Wednesday and it’s a good morning. I wake up feeling fine, put on my sweats and get to the treadmill. I walk for three miles and then look at my tracker and it’s not working properly so I restart my phone. It’s still not working. Son of a gun, I like to see how many steps I’ve been taking. Oh well, hopefully it’ll fix itself. I then get to my breakfast of an english muffin with butter and jam and of course, coffee. I then take a quick shower quickly get to work. Work was nice and smooth. Lots to do but nothing outrageous. In the evening I go to my first therapy session. She gets me talking about my childhood. It isn’t good. And then about the time that I was molested by a family member and by someone who was very well known to the community. I had quite the shitty childhood. Then the fact that none was there for me is the saddest part as my therapist put it. Another thing is that I haven’t had closure with these and it continuously ruminates in my mind. Thinking about these things makes me very uncomfortable and it made me cry in my session. I’ll never get an apology and I am sure it will be denied, because he’s a sneaky a$$whole. We talked about other things and how I feel about myself and overall, and it isn’t good. I will be seeing her again sooner than later to work out these issues. I get home and the family has gone out hunting for Pokémon. I get o have a quiet dinner and watch a bit of Hamilton on Disney+ and have myself a glass of wine. I’m loving the play, it is so good so far. I still have about an hour to go. It’s too bad I can’t see it live. Maybe someday. We used to go into the city every so often to watch shows. I really enjoy them and so does my husband. We’d have dinner in the city, walk around a bit and then see the show. Sometimes after the show, we’d go to a nearby bar and have ourselves a celebratory drink. Hopefully after covid, we’ll get back to doing that again.
Tonight, I can’t fall asleep. I keep thinking about what my therapist and I talked about. All of these heinous images come to mind and I can’t seem to get any rest. I eventually fall asleep but wake up very easily with sounds of the air conditioner or the racoons outside. Tomorrow is not going to be such a great day.

It’s Thursday and I am tired this morning. I had trouble sleeping and am felling very tired. I didn’t get to my treadmill this morning as I wanted to sleep in a bit more. I got up at seven thirty and made my way to the kitchen to take care of breakfast. I’m not very hungry this morning so I’m only up for coffee. I’ll eat something later. I then get to work by eight. I have a few items to take care of and start my day early. I take care of the items and then rest a bit as I have a phone interview this afternoon. The pay isn’t fantastic but it is a bit more than what I am currently making. So I will talk to their HR department and see what they have to offer. Meanwhile, I am making phone calls with lawyers for my parents to see what can be done to protect their assets and sign up for Medicaid. Especially for my mom. She is need of help at this point and we need someone to go to the house and help her out. She is in a fragile state and it would be best if someone went there every day to help her with her daily tasks. She can get herself dressed and bathed and things like that, but she doesn’t want to take her medicine and is very depressed with life overall. She has dementia and may have Alzheimer’s as well. We need to see a neurologist to find out. Same for dad, he may have Alzheimer’s as well. They both need to see a neurologist. I am working on setting up appointments and getting them seen. However, I need to work with siblings in order to get these doctors paid. This has become a bit of a pain as I have to ask Paul to ask Mary to ask Peter to get something done. It’s a process. As for my interview, it was a quick and painless process. I think it went well and hopefully they will call back for a second interview. By three in the afternoon, I hit the wall. I am tired and in the need of a nap. I instead get myself some team and cookies to finish off my work day. My evening is a normal one. Dinner and play with the dog, watch something on tv and then, bed.

It’s Friday and I am not feeling it. I’m a little down and don’t have the energy to get to the treadmill. So I linger in bed for a while after the alarm. I eventually get out of bed and make my morning coffee. Then get to work earlier than nine. I have been working on documenting on how to do my job for the next person and this morning, I continue to do just that. I decide that this morning I will talk to my HR department person to see how she is doing and to get some advise on current happenings at work. It’s a nice conversation that we have and now I’ve learned that my bosses are all rooting for me and my success. This makes me happy but not fully content. I’m not looking to work for free over here. I’d like to have a better paycheck. That is my ultimate goal. During my lunch hour I go out to the local market and get ourselves vegetables for dinner, as well as some doughnuts. Couldn’t help myself. Then I pass by our local pharmacy and pick up my medicine for the week. I then head on home, clean up all of the groceries and get on back to work. Work is nice and easy this afternoon. We have a couple of meetings and then I am working on a product launch for two weeks from now. It’s only one product and I am updating the how to documents on launching products on one of the many websites I work on. When my husband comes home, I help him to put away all of his stuff. Cooler and clothes and other things. Then I get to be the lucky one to check him for ticks. He is currently working in a location that is close to the woods or actually, it’s within the woods. Anyway, he’s been coming home with pets and we gotta get rid of them. Thankfully, all is clear. No passengers today. No free rides for these little guys. He then goes and takes his shower and I get back to work. But I am spent. There is fifteen minutes left of work and I am ready for quitting time. But I progress and continue to work on my product launch and my documenting. After the five o’clock bell. I get out of my bedroom/office like a rocket. I am done and ready for the weekend. We all get together and get ready to go out. We need to take the dog to the vet and then we’re going out to get something to eat. The poor dog received a couple of shots for Lyme disease and some other parasite and then we drove around hunting for Pokémon until we decided what we were going to have for dinner. We eventually decided that we haven’t had Taco Bell in a long time. So that is the direction we went with. The line was really long and we waited and waited. We eventually got our food and then drove around to find a spot to eat as the parking lot was full. As we were driving around we were also eating, might as well get it while it is hot. We then drove around some more and that was that for our Friday evening. We got home pretty late and as always, I am ready for bed while the family stays up for a while longer. I bid everyone good night and head on over to bed as tomorrow is going to be another work filled day. I’ll be heading over to my parent’s house and doing some physical labor there. Plus the doctor is coming over to see them and give us his feedback on how my parents are doing and what our next steps should be for them.

It’s Saturday and I wake up way before the roosters. Don’t know if it was a bad dream or if I just needed to head on over to the bathroom but man oh man, I got up at six in the morning and started my day. I made myself coffee and toast and am thinking about all the things I will need to do today over at my parents house. Things like cleaning, laundry, paperwork. Print outs that I have to do at home. Meanwhile, I’m looking outside and it is raining out there. Bummer, I wanted to get some things done outside as well, but not today. So I head on over to my parents house and start cleaning. I start with doing the pile of dishes that are in and around the sink. Then start with the laundry. And there is a lot to get clean. There are clothes, towels and eventually I drag mom out of bed so I can get the sheets washed as well. As the clothes are washing I am spraying down the bathrooms and letting the bleach soak into the dirty crevices. My brother is visiting and he asks if the washing machine is still working. I say yes otherwise I would have complained already. He said that he fixed the machine last time he visited. Wish he would have said something at that point in time. This way we’d know the machine is potentially broken. And maybe shopping for a new one. Silence tends to be his forte and sometimes that doesn’t work out so well for him. He’s also taken care of removing the leaves from the basement steps. I didn’t even realize there were so many over there. He says it’s a fire hazard. And I bet it is. Didn’t even think of going around the house and ensuring the steps were clean. I am more focused on the inside of the house and the cleanliness for my elderly parents. After a few hours my parent’s doctor came to visit and my other brother came to the house as well. He is more in tune with my parents’ heath as he has taken over giving them their medicine and taking them to the hospital. Mom was in the hospital a few weeks ago and he was the one who took her and took care of everything there. So when the doctor asked about her latest visit to the hospital, he answered the questions. After the doctor left the three of us talked a bit about the future of my parent. How can we afford to have them stay at home but have someone go to the home to help ensure they take their medicine, make sure they eat balanced meals. Help with cleaning and other items. I am currently in charge of taking them to see a few doctors. Setting up appointments and taking them to the offices. Mom needs to see a slew of doctors and a few are able to come to the home others, I will have to take her to them. We have divided tasks and will take care of mom’s health. As for dad, he needs to see a neurologist and that is about it for him, for now. We also talk about our beloved Portugal and the assets my parents own there. I will be talking to my friend to see if she knows the laws and if she can help us out with anything regarding said assets. Thank goodness for my friend. She is a good lady and has been one of my best friends. She’s really been there when I need her. I am truly blessed to have her in my life. We then go ahead and talk about more business. And by noon I am exhausted. I take some medicine and vitamins for energy so I can keep going. But it is short lived. Shortly after I have lunch of leftover chicken and cauliflower. It could have had a little sauce or something to make it better, but I didn’t bring it and they currently don’t have any at the house. So I settle for what I have. I then tried to clean the kitchen floor, but people kept on walking on it and it was no use. The old people are like children. They don’t listen and do whatever impulse thought they have at the moment. So, I became overwhelmed with that cleaning and didn’t do such a great job finishing it. The floor isn’t as sticky as it was before, but it’s still not the clean that I would like for it to be. After that disaster, I finished up the laundry, which had the bed sheets. The same, but clean, bed sheets were place on the bed and room was cleaned up a bit. There is still a lot of work to do, but that will have to be for next time. As for today, I am done. I don’t have any more energy and I need to get home. Next time I will be taking care of some of the outside items and throwing out as much garbage as I possibly can. Today, my oldest brother helped me to toss out a tube tv that has been in the kitchen for the last five years. This tv hasn’t been working for the last seven years or so. It was just there in the kitchen collecting dust. After the tv was placed out on the curb. Here comes my father asking where the tv went. So I took ownership and told him that it was me and my decision to get rid of a tv that hasn’t worked in many years. I wonder if the tv will gain legs overnight and come back. Most things that I toss out have a tendency of coming back inside. My parents grew up in an era where things were not easy to come by or they were so expensive, they were out of their reach. So they keep everything. If it wasn’t for us children tossing things out every once in a while, their house would be a hoarders house. Filled to the top with things. They even save all of the plastic take out food containers, meanwhile they have a set of nice glass pirex containers. I’ve tossed the plastic ones out in the past, and they grew legs and came right on back to the house. Same with old clothes, towels, shoes, you name it. They all come back. I have to sometimes take the old items to my house and toss them our in my own garbage pail in order to get rid of things. Or tell them that there are things that I would need or would be useful for my own home and then they are ok with betting rid of whatever broken object they hold so dear. It’s a process. Today I overstayed. I told my husband that I would be home by two in the afternoon. I wound up getting home at four. Taking and planning with multiple people took longer than expected and I got home late. By the time I got home, it was deserted. The family went with my husband to the doctors office and I did some self care. Took a nice long shower and then relaxed a bit before they came back home. Tonight we planned on eating tacos from a local restaurant. We love these tacos. My favorite taco of late is the portabella mushroom taco. It comes with the portabella cut into thick slices, it has a shaving of cheese and some delicious sauce. I really enjoy it. The other taco that I like is the shrimp BLT. The shrimp is a tiny bit spicy and it is delicious. We then always try their specialty tacos and they, for the most part, do not disappoint. Except for today. A few of the specialty items we ate were low in seasoning and did not taste as delicious as they usually do. Even the duck taco that we always love, is a bit on the dry side. Oh well, guess it can’t always be a home run. I had a glass of red wine with my meal and everyone else had ginger ale. I finished off the bottle and had shortly after changed my clothes and got ready for bed as it was late in the evening. Don’t worry the bottle only had one glass left of liquid. I didn’t drink a full bottle of wine tonight. My mother in law and I had so of the wine from that bottle the other day. Then shared it again a few days after that. Now there was only one glass of liquid for me to finish off. I cleaned the dishes, cleaned up a bit and then right to bed as it was already passed my bedtime. I like to wake up in the early hours of the morning and get some of my writing in as well as some quiet time for myself to collect my thoughts and figure out what I need to do for the upcoming day or week. I need to write everything down on my little journal book of tasks that I need to take care of. I also like crossing off things that I have done. For example, I need to use the weedwhacker in a few areas around the house. So, on my list I have things such as charge batteries for weedwhacker machine. As well as cut grass around back stoop, around trees in the front as well as cut grasses around the playground. By the end of the day, I can cross off a few things from my list and it gives me much needed satisfaction that I have accomplished something today or this week. Plus it’s reminders that I am being useful around here. Sometimes I feel like I am just part of the furniture and don’t contribute much. These lists make me confident that I do contribute. Yes, that’s the depression talking. It’s very loud at times and I need these little reminders to keep me in check.

It’s Sunday and I wake up way too early. It’s six in the morning and I am up before anyone else. I try to keep it quiet, but I am not very diligent with my feet and tend to be noisy. I get my coffee going and then get to my writing. Don’t know if it’s the typing, but my husband wakes up shortly after. I didn’t think I was that loud with the typing, but, guess I must be if he woke up with it. Today I write to my cousins to see how they are doing and to see if they have any ideas as to what I can do for my parents. Keep them here in the USA or maybe send them over to their motherland. Figuring out our options and seeing if my girls have any ideas to help us out. Hopefully, they have some sort of idea that will fulfill a solution for us. I feel for my parents and I would like the best for them overall. I have to write them in Portuguese and have to use google translator to help out with some words and phrases. Google user Brazilian Portuguese but that’s ok, I can figure out how to turn it into what I need. For breakfast, my little one wants bacon and eggs. Daddy doesn’t hesitate. He gets right to work on making what she wants for breakfast. He’s a pleaser like that. Then he had the idea that he wants bagels for breakfast. He finishes off the bacon and heads on over to the bagel store. Meanwhile, we stay home and my little on is creating a video of her playing with her LPS toys. She plays, talks for them and sings along. It’s very cute. Shortly after, my husband comes home with bagels and cream cheese. We all sit down on our kitchen table and have ourselves a nice long breakfast. In the afternoon I have chores to do. I dust out the bedroom, clean the mirrors, clean the filter for the air-conditioned then vacuum the whole thing. I change the sheets from the bed then use a Swiffer wipe the floor to finish it off. Haven’t done this in a while and it is a good day to get it all done. It is a rainy day an it is a good day to do indoor chores. I’ve added all of this to my little book of tasks and then get the satisfaction of crossing it off my list as completed. Next, I need to look into pet insurance. I’ve looked in the past and not gonna lie, I got a bit overwhelmed with all of the information and options. However, our veterinarian made a recommendation and I am in charge of getting all of the information and seeing how much it will cost to have insurance for our Rufus. My husband will then make the phone calls to see if he can negotiate a better deal. He is very good at that. Better than I’ll ever be at negotiating. Today is a rainy day and we are having trouble getting the dog to do his business quickly. He poops on the carpet, but we can’t yell at him. His time was due to go outside and do his business. It was pouring outside so we decided to wait it out a little bit longer than usual. I had him sit on the little pad that we have for him to do his business inside the house, but he didn’t get it and pooped on the carpet instead. My dog is an odd bird because he doesn’t just poop in one spot. He drags his behind and drops pieces here and there. What he did in the house was no different. Unfortunately, I didn’t see one of his droppings, so I stepped on it. Darn it Rufus!! I clean off the mess from the carpet then take my socks off and put them in the hamper to wash off the poop. And the weather continues to not cooperate. It keeps on raining. And it rains all day long. In the afternoon we decided that it would be a good time to go out and get the pup a rain jacket. If the rain keeps up he doesn’t do his business on the weeweepads nor on the patch of grass we’ve gotten him to do his business inside the house, we’ll need to get him outside. Then he’ll smell like a wet dog, even though I clean him up with a doggie wipe down wipe that smells like lavender. It doesn’t really help, he’s still stinky. Every pet store that we went to were sold out of the doggie rain gear. However, they did have a nice save the planet t-shirt that my husband bought for him. His idea is for the dog to wear clothing so he gets used to having a shirt of jacket on. We don’t want him to get wet in the spring and summer months and then in the winter, we don’t want him to freeze when we place him outside to do his business or just simply to play a bit outdoors. We also have a new collar that has a little blue bow on it and he looks so dapper. He is in need of another bath after this weekend. But the veterinarian mentioned that it would be best for him to be bathed only once per month. If it’s more than that the oils on his skin and coat could get dry and he may be uncomfortable and then have dry skin which can lead to rashes. If it was up to my mother in law, he would have a bath every week or so. Oh well we will see how smelly he gets then we will take it from there. Looking around for raingear took all afternoon. We then were hungry and were thinking of what to have for dinner. At this point I am a bit hungry and could go for food. Any food really. I’m not that picky. There are a few things that I don’t like to eat, but I don’t necessarily have cravings for any particular type of cuisine. My mother in law suggested cooked sushi from the local Japanese restaurant that we go to. So we drive on over there and place our order. We order enough so that we have some left over for tomorrow. My husband likes to eat the leftovers the next day at around eleven as a midday snack. We order rolls called ‘Pink Lady, Out of Control, Christmas Santa, Sunrise’ and other silly named rolls. We take them home and they are delicious. We also open up a bottle of wine as tomorrow is a holiday and we get to sleep in for a while longer. We have ourselves a rose called sparkling angel. It was potent and it paired well with our dinner. Shortly after dinner, I am ready for bed. It is again way passed my bedtime and I am a bit tired from the days’ cleaning bit. Also, it is still raining out there and it is chilly. Having my warm pjs on is heavenly. I bid everyone good night and get to bed. I’m looking through some of my social media and then shortly after I fall asleep.

It’s Monday and I got up at seven and did my exercise for the day. I’ve walked a few miles while watching the Queens Gambit. After my workout I get to my breakfast and then right to work. I get to my meetings and then have phone calls to take care of. Doctors for my parents and other helpful things for them. The Knights of Columbus are to call me back to let me know if they can come over to my parent’s house to help with yard work. Hopefully they can as it has become very overwhelming. They have a big yard and a big house and it’s hard to keep up with life and everything else. Then I get a message from the doctors saying mom will need surgery and may or may not be better after it. Don’t know what to do. Should the surgery go on or not. She may suffer either way. My thought process is for her not to suffer any longer. She has gone through plenty of crap and suffering is the last thing I’d like for her to go through. Reaching out to God to put this on His hands and do what is best.

It’s Tuesday and I am up a bit after the alarm. I slept for half hour more than I should have. I then got my gym clothes on and headed to the treadmill. I’m a bit anxious and nervous about mom as she continues to be in the hospital. On the treadmill, I run for a while until I was tired and then I walked some more. I was doing my exercises until half hour before I had to log on to work and be in a nine o’clock meeting. After my meeting I took my very much needed shower. As I’m in the shower, my phone rang a slew of times. When I checked it, they were all call backs regarding my parents. One was from the Knights of Columbus. They are willing to meet with me to see what kind of work is needed for the house. I am so very thankful for this. I hope they can help us out. Not sure what I can do to return the help, besides provide them with funds, which I don’t have. This is why I’m requesting help from them in the first place. Another phone call was from a church near my parents’ home. They can provide meals for them, but they will need to be on a waiting list. Once they are approved, they will deliver the meals to the home. This will be so tremendously helpful. I am again thankful for these services. As for work, I am swamped with items to post. I’ve been a bit distracted and quite slow at doing the work since mom is not doing well. But I march on and get the majority of the work done. I get the items that have to be done. The other ones can wait for later or tomorrow.

It’s now Wednesday and I am up at five in the morning. My phone is acting funny so I leave it for the battery to die and maybe it will reset itself and fix itself. With that, I don’t have an alarm so I asked my husband to wake me up before he goes to work. And that he did. I get up and fill out paperwork for my parents than I get changed and get to the treadmill and walk for a few miles. By eight, I give my father a phone call to wake him up as someone will be going to the house to give an estimate on cleaning the inside. After my walk I get right to work. There is an urgent request that comes in for promotions and I am on it. I get those done and then go ahead and continue with other items before the work clock even starts. At nine thirty there is meeting regarding the mentoring program that I am part of as it is coming to an end. I am sure I will continue to talk to my mentee as she is a wonderful human being. Then there is another and another meeting. A lot of planning to do for our websites for next year in the first quarter. During my lunch hour I am sending messages to my loved ones letting them know that my mom is better and is back home. She was in the hospital again but her numbers came back up and she is doing better. My cousins and good friends are all very happy with this news. For lunch I making more phone calls for my parents for insurance quotes this time. And then I hit a wall. I feel like I can’t breath, it’s hot and humid and maybe I’m simply filled with anxiety. There is a lot going on in life and dealing with it all is a bit much for now.

It’s Thursday morning and the alarm goes off and turn it off and sleep for another hour. Then I get hot and get out of bed. I get myself ready for the treadmill and get sweaty. I’m on for a while and then I have a nine o’clock meeting. After my meeting, I have plenty of time between another meeting so I take my shower then. I then call the vet and make an appointment of the pup. He keeps on getting ticks on him and we need to get him a collar. He is getting his hair cut today and will look all sorts of purrty. Can’t wait to see him without his shaggy hair. In the evening I have a doctors appointment that I must go to. In the past, I’ve made phone calls to my doctor. But today, she has free samples for me, so I put on my mask and am on my way. After the doctor, I go to the carwash as my little Honda needs a cleaning. The carwash place is full and I wait for about half an hour to get my little beep, beep washed. Now that it’s all nice and clean, I drive away and head over to the library. I have books in the trunk to donate and the library is has a donation bin right outside their doors. I have old college books and kid games that we no longer use and feel great about donating them as opposed to throwing them out into the trash. Hopefully they will help someone out. I then head on home and my husband has already arrived and is on the couch saying how bad his feet hurt. He thinks he may have nerve damage or something along those lines. I get out the foot lotion and rub, rub those hard working feet. I then get a scrapper and take out a bunch of dead skin from his feet. Then, some more rubbing, especially the heals. He is on the couch with his feet elevated, but I still have to bend in order to rub those footies. I too am getting a back ache. So I pause for a little while and then I get back into it. After a while he goes outside with the pup and the rest of us stay indoors. Then he comes back in and I am ready for bed, but I promised him a back rub as well. His sciatica is hurting as well and some menthol medic aided rub is needed on his back. I rubbed and rubbed until the gloves ripped. Then I got another pair and rubbed some more of that terrible smelling medicine rub. Now I am mentally and my arms are physically tired from all of that rubbing. Hopefully this is helpful for him so he can get back to work tomorrow and have a better day.

It’s Friday and I slept and slept this morning. Didn’t do my morning walk, but did my best to relax instead. At eight I got up. Made my breakfast and then headed on to work. I’m mentally tired but I move on ahead with work and get a bunch done. I need to create standard operating procedures or SOPs, and these take forever to do. At one point or another I skipped a step or two and messed something up because I was doing them so slowly that I got myself confused and was typing the wrong directions. I had to go back and read through then fix and then go back again and fix again. What a day. I didn’t get to do as much done as I needed or should have. These instruction documentations take so long to do. There are so many steps to take and so many screen shots to place on the document it’s a wonder I get anything done during the day, these systems are so convoluted that I have figured out a few shortcuts along the way. I’ll be sharing a lot of those in my documentation for the next person who is to take over what I do. During my lunch hour I had to get out to the pharmacy and pick up my medications. It’s a hot one out there. Going out into the wild made me tired and this afternoon. It also made me not want to come back inside and work. But, I gotta do what I need to. So, I get back inside, have a quick lunch then log back in and continue with my SOPs. It’s more exhausting to teach someone how to do something than actually doing it myself. But on the other hand. Teaching someone to do something and teaching them how to troubleshoot and do it all themselves helps to save so much time later on in the future. This is why I am taking all the time in the world to ensure that the next person who does what I do, will do it correctly and will know all of the tips and tricks there is to know. In the evening, after work, I’m tired but not physically tired. I am mentally tired. I’ve been working so very hard all week to get things done on the weekend for my parents that I’m just simply brain dead. I’ve looked into the state and county for help for my parents as well as private help from company’s around the area they live in and everything is so expensive or there are a lot of hoops to jump through. I don’t know how people do it. I’m ready to throw in the towel. I’m so tired but the work is not done, so I must tell myself to keep going. A vacation or some time off would be nice right about now though. Something that would make my brain energy would be best. That’s really what I’m searching for. Energy!

It’s Saturday and I am up way before the roosters. It’s three in the morning and I can’t sleep anymore. I get out of bed and get some water, use the bathroom then try to go back to sleep for a little while longer. I have a long day planned and am a little nervous to be honest. I will have to talk to roofers and others today to help out my parents. I am actually a very shy person and don’t like to do negotiating especially when it comes to home improvement items. I’m not the quickest with the math and measuring and I get all discombobulated with all of the numbers that are give to me. A very nice man came by and he is going to bring his crew to help out with the cleaning of the yard. He said he’ll bring in a crew of a few guys and they will do all of the clean up within six hours or so. They are coming in through the church and I am so very grateful. I am going to have to do something to give back. Not sure what yet, but I’ll be sure to do so when I can. The rest of the morning and afternoon were filled with estimates for the roof of the house. So many number flying around. Not sure which direction to go at his point. I’ll have the two older ones make some sort of decision. This will cost us a lot of money and I’m not certain what the budget is. So, all I can do is get the estimates and send them along. While the roof guys were coming over, I was also doing their laundry, cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming. Tried to get mom and dad to take their medicine. But it was a little tough. Mom is really not into taking them. Not sure what her deal is but she is not eating much and does not want to take her medicine at all. It’s a struggle. Meanwhile, I’m all about taking my medicine in front of them. I will get out a glass of water and tell them to do the same and bottoms up people. Take your meds. After getting my head all jumbled up with a bunch of numbers and finishing the clean up, I head on home. I am tired from doing all of this work and being awake for so many hours that I’m ready to go home. At home I take my shower then I am so tired that I lay down on the bed….just for a second. Then I fall asleep for about four hours. The family is out for the afternoon and it’s all quiet in the house. The air-conditioned is the only loud thing that’s on. The family eventually gets home at some point. I wake up way after they got home as they were all sitting on the couch watching a movie. We then talk about dinner and we decide on sushi. We haven’t had sushi in so long, I miss it. We eat and it’s already eleven in the evening. I am ready to go to bed as tomorrow is another day of work. In my yard this time. I have to clear out my little ones play area and place some bleach or something else on the ground in order for her to be able to play out there. I will also need to do some weed waking as the grasses in the back are getting very tall. It’s supposed to be a hot day so I will need to do all of this early in the morning. Hopefully, I get up on time and get all of it done.

It’s Sunday and I wake up with a terrible sinus headache. It’s nine in the morning and it’s already heaping hot. I will not be working outside today. It’s way too hot and my head is hurting. In the afternoon, the basement flooded. The pump we have down in my house broke and the water spilled over. Now I have to suck all of the water up, bring it up the stairs and dump it out. My husband now has to go to the store and get a new one to replace it. Meanwhile, the landscaper finally got to my parents house this afternoon and he called me to say that someone had already cut the front yard. I’m thinking that a good neighbor has helped us out and cut the grass for us. I mentioned to the landscaper to take care of the back grass. I then call my father’s phone. He tells me that my brother was there this morning cutting the grass. What the hell?! We talked about getting a guy there to take care of landscaping, and now he’s doing it, but only half of it. What is happening?! Watch now this shit is going to somehow come out of my pocket. Because I deal with dummies. Why do these people gotta complicate everything. I was taking care of this and this guy just stepped on my toes. Not happy about this at all. I hate working with people who don’t keep their word. Makes life difficult for everyone. And then there’s the flood in the house. Good thing I didn’t get out there this morning and with this crazy heat and start working. I’d be exhausted by now and be grumpy as I’m helping with the cleanup. At the end of the day, it all worked out. My parents house got taken care of. And my house has been taken care of. I’m tired from the days events and go am ready to go to bed early. Good night all.
Until next time!
Best,
Isabel

Over the weekend we celebrated mothers day. We didn’t do much but ordered out.

It’s Monday and I am tired. Was running around all weekend with my furry child and I did not want to wake up. I hit the snooze button on the phone and get back to sleep. I eventually get up by eight and am looking to see if I need to walk the dog or if my mother in law has already done that. But I don’t want to wake anyone up. What to do, what to do? We need to figure out a plan here so we know who take the dog out and when. Shortly after the two ladies and the pup wake up and I have a nine o’clock meeting. The pup has already been walked and I am on my way to my bedroom/office and get to work. Work is easy today. Don’t have a lot to do today. But enough to keep me going all day. During my lunch hour I get outside and place pepper flakes inside the garbage pails. We’ve had racons go through our trash and leaving a mess in the morning. By placing the flakes or powder, it should detract them from coming back. From my understanding, it is the females that go through the trash to get food for their babies. These ladies need to go to someone else’s house if they want something to eat. Also, during my hour, I am making phone calls to doctors and elderly care places, roofing companies as well as lawn care. All for my parents house. I set up a meeting with a social worker for my mom. She has ben assigned to her after she left the hospital and I would like to take advantage of her knowledge. With that, I’ll be taking the day off tomorrow in order to meet with her and with a roofer as well as take care of cleaning and accompanying my elderly parents. They need the company and a thorough cleaning of the inside of their house. They also need some organization in their life. Their belongings are all over the place in the house. I’ve cleaned it up a while back, but now, they are back to their old selves and placing everything anywhere. No organization skills whatsoever. When I has a minute, I checked for pricing to get my pooch groomed. As well as look for insurance for him. It’s not easy having a furry child.

It’s now Tuesday and I have a day filled with physical labor. Going to my parent’s house to help them clean up and speak to a social worker to find out if we can get some sort of help for them in their elderly age. I’m also looking for someone to fix the leak on the roof. So I get to their house at around eight in the morning and look around. There is much to do. There are so many dishes and the bathrooms are horrendous. They are in their eighties and don’t do much when it comes to cleaning. Their laundry also needs to be taken care of. They need to take their medicine and the house needs to be cleaned. The grass needs to be mowed. Lots and lots to do. So I get started with the dishes. Everything needs to be cleaned. Then I move on to the main bathroom. That one needs a major scrub down. Then the doorbell rings. It’s the roof guy and he is early. He was to be there at ten in the morning and he got there at eight thirty. So he gives me an outrageous estimate. I thank him for his time, but I won’t be calling him at any time soon. I then get back to my tasks at hand, the bathrooms. I clean the main bathroom and then start to collect all of the clothes that are on the floor to see which ones need to be laundered and which just simply need to be put away. Shortly after, the social worker comes and my brother also arrives to talk to her. We talk about a plan to get my parents some sort of daily or weekly help and get someone in the house to help them out with taking their medicine, maybe do some light cleaning and cooking. I’ve already called meals on wheels and this is a process that may take a month or two. We also need to talk to an elder lawyer in order to figure out if we need a trust or what else we can do in order for them to be eligible for Medicaid. There are so, so many things that need to be done that I don’t even know which way to turn. I take a bunch of notes and the social worker gives us a lot of paperwork to look into. I’m seriously overwhelmed. After the social worker leaves, my brother and I talk a bit more about our tasks at hand and we divide tasks and what we will be working on in the future. So, so, so, so much! After he leaves, to get back to work, I am back to laundry and cleaning up. My father has so much correspondence from medical items to psychic mumbo jumbo, in my opinion, to other garbage about winning a bunch of money. Even the social worker said that we live in a society that takes advantage of the elderly. It’s a shame really. My dad was writing checks to the psychics every month. The man lives on a fixed income and barely has money to pay for the home taxes and he is writing checks left and right. We had to take these privilege’s away. It took a lot of convincing and just plainly taking away of things like small children. As at this age, that is kind of where they are at. I kept on cleaning up and threw away a bunch of boxes filled with garbage correspondence. And did about five loads of laundry. And threw out a bunch of clothes that were ratty and just plainly gross. Wish I had enough money to get them the help they need without having to do all of this work. Also wish they had planned something for themselves. They have no plan whatsoever. We, the children now have to have the burden of figuring out what they want and the best way to get it. At this point it may not exactly be what they want, but what we can get. By five in the afternoon I am spent and finish the last load of laundry. I still have shopping to do for my own family and need to head over to the big box store and get my shopping done. I wave good bye to them and they say that they can not repay me for the work and effort. That may God pay me for all of the help. They are very catholic and believe in God very much. I’m hoping that God may bless me, not only for my efforts for them but because I am a genuine good person. I head to the store and make my purchases then head home. At home I clean all of the items with disinfecting wipes and bring everything inside and put them all away. I then take my clothes from the day and place them in the baskets in the basement as they are gross from the days work. I take my shower to remove all of the day away and then I have my dinner. After dinner I receive phone calls from all sorts of people that I’ve requested quotes from. But I am exhausted and talking to people makes me even more tired. Don’t know why, but having conversations is very exhausting to me. Especially making deals or talking about money. I get all sorts of discombobulated and it makes me very tired and then I can’t concentrate. Tomorrow is another day and I will talk to these people then.

It’s Wednesday and I get up at four in the morning and am helping my husband with his lunch for the day and helping him with his boots. He is so tired and his back hurt so much that I help him with as much as I possibly can. I then take the dog for a walk and whatta you know, he actually did his business with me. He’s usually too exited or anxious or whatever and we usually run or try to do tricks. We do back inside and then he goes into the crate. He is howling as he wants to get out and be free. Sorry pup. I go into the basement and get onto the treadmill and walk for a few miles. Meanwhile, I am watching the Queens Gambit on Netflix. I like the show, it was a bit slow in the beginning, but it is picking up. After my walk I take the pup out again and he doesn’t do anything, all he wants to do is go back inside the house. Guess, he’s a homebody. Who knew? Thought dogs liked to be outside and play and play. We get inside and my daughter and mother in law are up and ready for the day. I get to my morning meeting and my work day goes on from there. I have meeting upon meeting and don’t get to do much work today. I then get a message on linkedin about an opportunity that I may be interested in. I ask to learn more about it. It is a far fetched opportunity, but who knows, I may just qualify. There are more and more meetings to attend to and my workday day is completed with yet another meeting. After work, my mother in law has an appointment and my little one goes with her. It’s just me and the pup. I try to get some of my work completed but having the pup is like having a small child, just have to keep watch so he doesn’t do his business on the carpets or the wood floors. He isn’t fully potty trained yet and doesn’t know when to let us know when he is ready to go outside to do his business, so we have to keep watch. I gave him a doggy bone for him to know on but he kept on going for my shoes. had to stop the work that I was doing. I will get up early tomorrow and work on this while the house is still sleeping.

It’s Thursday and it’s a blur. I wake up and get to the treadmill and do my walking. I then get to work and work until five on the dot then take the dog out for some fresh air. In the evening, we receive a message that mom will need to head back into the hospital. She has internal bleeding in her belly and the doctor said the best thing to do for her is to send her back to the hospital. My brother takes her there after work as it is not an emergency, as per the doctor. I called the volunteer fire department to see if they could transport her to the hospital and they said I’d need to call the emergency number. I then called the volunteer ambulance of their town and was not answered. I left a message for a few people and they never got back to me. Some kind of volunteer! I wonder who they volunteer for if not for their community. I made a slew of phone calls after that. For estimates for the roof, for the lawn for cleaning services at my parents house. Then calls for my dog to get him groomed. Then some more phone calls for lawyers for my parents. Day and evening was filled with these types of calls. I’m the type of person who gets very tired with small conversations especially ones that include some sort of negotiation. I’m terrible at negotiating, especially for myself. I have to think long and hard on what I’m going to do or say. Not fantastic at spur of the moment type of talking. So, with this, at the end of the day, I am tired of talking. All I want is peace and quiet. But with a little one, there is none of that. At the end of the day, she is finally done with her homework and is watching a movie called Zombies 2. She loves this movie, especially the singing and performing parts. She will skip the movie to these parts and play them as loud as her little ears can withstand. And this is our night, watching this movie for the fourth time.

It’s Friday and its another blurry day. Today I stay in bed until seven. Don’t have enough time to get my walk in. I simply get dressed and ready for my work day. Mom is till in the hospital and I am very worried about her. My brother has been taking care of things at the hospital and everything is running smoothly. She’s recuperating and is feeling better. The doctor mentioned that she may need more assistance after leaving the hospital and we are working on figuring out how we can do that. As for my little one, she’s been feeling better and better as each day goes by. Not sure if we are completely out of the woods but doing much better. This afternoon, we notice that the pup isn’t himself. He is very lethargic and won’t eat much of his food. He’s also not drinking much. Usually, in the afternoon, he gets a jolt of energy and wants to play, but not today. Today all he wants to do is lay down. We are all hoping is not sick. Hopefully, he hasn’t eaten anything that may have made him sick. He likes to chew on grass and sticks outside. Hopefully he hasn’t chewed on something that has made him sick. As for work, there is a lot to do and I get to my tasks. It keeps my mind out of thinking about my mom, the dog, my little one and other day to day things that I usually need to think about. I receive a message from a colleague that there may be yet another opportunity. He sends me the information and it is a fantastic opportunity. But when I look closer, it may not be for me. It seems way too advanced for my little brain. I don’t know, my heart and soul are down today and don’t have the confidence that I need. I will look into this opportunity over the weekend and decide then. In the evening, my husband and the family decide that it would be best to take the pup to the vet. We set up an appointment with a vet and take him over. At the vet, we can’t go inside with our pup. The nurses come to the car and talk to us then take the pup inside to get him checked out. My little boy is dehydrated and turns out he is a picky eater. He doesn’t particularly like the type of food we have been giving him and we need to change his regiment. A bunch of hours and dollars later, we find out that he is well health wise and to bring him back if he continues to be lethargic. We take him home and he is doing well.

On Saturday I do some housework, my usual of doing the sheets and vacuuming. We then work on taking down the Christmas lights from the house. My husband has a great trick and he takes them down. I then pick them up and place them in a box and stow them in the basement by all of the other holiday items. The family then goes shopping and I stay back to take care of the weeds and spray the playground area for weeds. Next weekend I will need to spray it again. I will need to take care of the tall grasses and the ticks. Wish we could have some chickens in the yard to take care of the ticks, so the dog could roam free. But for now not so much. After I do all of that work, I decide that it is a good day to take a salts bath. I’ve had Epsom salts in the bathroom for a long time and it is time to use them today. I also add a sudsy bath wash to my bath. I lay down in the warm water, but can’t stay still for too long. I grab my foot scrubber and start to remove my dead skin from my feet. As I’m getting older, my feet are getting grosser. I have a bunch of dead white skin that needs to come out, so I scrub and scrub away. Meanwhile, the dog is hanging out in his favorite spot of the house which is the rug in the bathroom. It may be cooler there and that is where he lays while I’m in the bath. In the bath, I am listening to the book Professional Troublemaker by Luvvie Ajayi Jones. It is a book about her life and it inspires me to ask for that raise and ask for what I need help with. To not do everything by yourself as a person always needs help from others. After my bath I am still home alone as the family continues to do the shopping. Once they got home, they surprised me with dinner and the fact that they had gone to the grocery store and bought what we needed for the week. I was planning on going to the big box store on Sunday evening or during the week. But no need anymore. Thanks guys!! We have dinner and shortly after, I go to bed.

On Sunday, I get up early and have my breakfast. I then pack up left over food and my paperwork and head over to my parents house. They need their house cleaned and want to see how dad is holding up. When I get there, he is already awake and is having his breakfast. I notice there are a ton of dishes in the sink and a bunch of stuff on the kitchen table. I ask him if he has already taken his medicine and he says yes. But I think he is lying to me. I double check and the medicine is no longer in the pill tray. So, I move on to my tasks. The house is in poor shape and need a lot of cleaning to be done. I start with some of the dishes as there are a lot including pots and pans. The coffee pot is a mess, the stove is filled with stuff and now the floor is sticky and has something that is dark in color splattered all over the place. I then go ahead and start to clean the on suite bathroom. I bleach the bejeasus out of the toilet and sink. Then also bleach the floor. I feel dizzy just with the smell of the bleach. I then get to the windows in the bath and master bedroom. These too are very dirty. Now I know why the quotes from the cleaning people are so expensive. I then move on to the other bathroom. Bleach this one too. Have to turn on the fan to get the fumes out. This one doesn’t have a window to open, only a skylight and it is filled with bleach fumes. As the bleach is penetrating in the bathroom, I move on to the kitchen. At this point I am feeling very exhausted. I send a message to my brothers stating as such, that I am overwhelmed with all of the work. If we can pull some money together to get someone to go there and do some cleaning. After going back and forth, we agree and I will be talking to someone next week to see if she can go there and do some of the basics. I then continue with the cleaning. I clean the kitchen floor but it continues to be sticky. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing when it comes to cleaning so sticky it will continue to be. I take a cleaning break and get to look for paperwork and it is a mess. They have so much paper, there could be a whole forest in this house. I look and look and finally find what is needed. I’d like them to qualify for Medicaid and we need all sorts of things in order to do that. Now that I know where the items are we can get started on filing. I then get back to some more cleaning. They have clothes all over the place as well and I am now working on tossing some of their stained and ripped items out. I am surprised that I don’t get any lash back from tossing things out. They are from an era that they didn’t have much and they would keep every piece of scrap in order to fix a broken piece. There is no need for that nowadays, but they still have that mentality. So I put everything away and hope for the best. By now it is two in the afternoon and I have to get back to my own home. Dad has his lunch and makes a big old mess with the microwave and there I am, cleaning it up. I then take out the garbage and then grab my things and head on home. I am physically and mentally drained. Seeing them like this makes me very sad and mentally out of sorts. But I must keep my head up and keep it moving. Tomorrow is another day and I must get to work and be happy to be there. I also must be content with my own life.

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel

Over the weekend I had a lot planned. Things such as: cleaning the siding on the house, cleaning the bench in the front yard, clearing out weeds, taking down the Christmas lights and so much more. I did some of those things, mainly cleaning with bleach. Bleached everything, the siding even the bench the weeds. Everything got a little cleaner.

On Saturday afternoon, after my cleaning spree, we go for a drive out to eastern Long Island. It was a very nice drive as it was a nice day and surprisingly, not that much traffic. This afternoon I am feeling nauseous. Don’t know why, but I ask my husband to please get me a ginger ale for my stomach. When we stop at the gas station, I open up the car door and give up my lunch. No idea why I felt like that. I was told that maybe it was my nerves. But why? My daughter is now feeling better. My mother is also doing fine and she is home from the hospital. Everyone else in my life is nice and healthy, as far as I know. No issues, no drama. Why would I be feeling sick to my stomach with nerves?! My mother in law said to her son to take me home. But he instead made a left instead of a right to take me home. He asked me if I was feeling ok and when I said yes, he continued on his way. I had no idea where he was going, all I knew is that after giving up my lunch, I felt better, no more cold sweats. We drove for a few miles and then he pulled into a parking lot that had tacos. I all of a sudden was kinda mad. I just puked and now you want to take the family for tacos?! What is going on? Then we saw a parking sign that said “puppy parking only.” I looked around and didn’t get it. There weren’t any dogs around and why does a taco place have signs for puppies. I am very confused. Then, the light shines…We’ve been looking for a pet for our daughter for a while. They’ve been going to pet stores and shelters and some more pet stores. It dawned on me, duh this probably is another pet store. So we go in and look at a few pups. We see their size and temperament. We sit with a few dogs and my daughter is all about the German Shepperd. That dog was very cute and he was all over the place, very exited. We thought, he’ll go home and eat everything. We saw a few other dogs. All sorts of mixed breeds. We pet them and play with all of them. Finally, the woman who was helping up told us about a pup that is very docile and if we’d like to see him as well. We saw the cocker Spaniard poodle mix, a cockapoo pup. Very sweet and gentle. Also, curious. And we all looked at each other and nodded. He is it. He is the one. So we played with this cockapoo for a while and he didn’t bark or bite. So, so sweet! Such a good pup. We made arrangements to take him home. We got him a bunch of things including a collar, carpet spray, bowls, toys, treats and other items. I held him as my husband filled out all of that paperwork. So this is it!! It’s a boy!! My little one now has a boy to play with. He is sable in color and is very shabby at the moment. A four year old cockapoo without the tude. I am in a state that I don’t know what to say. I am content. So content, I don’t know if I want to shout it out from the rooftops or what. I am very satisfied with our decision. He didn’t bark or make a fuss in the car. So pleasant. I don’t even know how to handle it. In the car we call out names to see what my daughter likes. We yell out names like: George, Chewie, Joey and some others. Then my husband says; what about Rufus? She likes it. We all like it. It sticks. That’s his name now. Rufus the sable colored cockapoo.

It’s Monday and I am spent. The alarm goes off, but I snooze it. I am really tired this morning. I eventually get out of bed by eight thirty and get myself ready for the day. I get to the kitchen and say hello to everyone including our new addition, Rufus. My little one and mother in law have taken him out to do his business this morning and now she is getting ready for her class and the pup is in his crate and is making all sorts of “get me outta here” noises. As soon as class is over, he is taken out of the crate and taken outside. As for me, I work until noon. Then I get a quick lunch and get back to work. I work until about six and then we have dinner. After dinner, we take the pup outside and then I get back online. I notice there are promotions that need to be posted today and I take care of them way after hours. I’m then looking through doggie insurance to see how much it’ll cost us per month. I notice there are some that start at twenty dollars others are at one hundred. Something isn’t right. I ask a few friends who have dogs if they have insurance. Most say no. Need to ask more people if they have insurance and who the provider is. Do you have pet insurance? If so, who do you use? Need to keep researching.

It’s Tuesday and I get up at four in the morning. As my husband is getting ready to go to work, I take out the pooch for a walk. It is misty out there and he is not happy being wet. But he gets out there and does his business anyway. He’s a smart boy…he’s already learned to sit and understands that he needs to do his business outside. Once he is done, we come in and I get dressed for my walk on the treadmill. The pooch hasn’t gone to the basement yet, so I place him in his crate for the hour that I’ll be exercising. He wines and I feel bad, but he’s not ready yet to be left alone. Also, he wines when he’s alone. Soon, he’ll accompany me on my walks, but not yet. After my exercise I take a shower, get dressed for the day and then I take the diggi out again. It takes him a little while but he eventually does his business, but it wasn’t without a fight. After he peed he really wanted to get back inside as he was scratching at the door. But I told him sorry buddy, you’re gonna have to poop too. It took him a bit, but he did it and then we got back inside. It was still early and I played with him a little bit. He keeps on taking my daughters sandals and the weewee pads to play and I keep taking them away from him. And that is how our morning passes. Him taking the things he’s not supposed to take and me telling him “no, no those aren’t your toys.” We’ve got him plenty of toys to play with but he seems to like the pad and the sandals the best. It’s shortly eight thirty and I gotta get to work. So I place him in his crate. My daughter, his mama, will be up in a little bit and she will then play with him and take him out again. Since he is not fully potty trained yet, we don’t want him in the bedrooms. He may have an accident on the new rugs and for now, we do not want that to happen. In his crate he has his water bowl and a couple of toys and plenty of room. He of course, wines, but shortly after my little one is up and playing with him. Meanwhile, I am in meetings until my heart is content. Joking, so many meetings that could probably have been emails. But it is good to talk to people, doesn’t make the day so lonely. In one of the meetings, I learn that one of my friends is leaving the company. Going to greener pastures, as they say. He has taken on a job that is fully remote. We are all very happy for him. And some of us are a little jealous lol. Hopefully, my company follows suit and will also turn out to be remote. We will see. During my lunch hour I go to my little one’s school and pick up some of her school work and drop off things that she has done. I then get home to more meetings. My two o’clock meeting was a brutal one. It went on and on and on. They were talking so much technical stuff that I was not following. Something about Ldaps and some other data bases. I was not following at all. But that’s ok, my job for this project is to do testing. So when they talk about testing, I am all about it. When it is finally over, I am hurrying to finish up posting events on the site as I only have one hour to get all of this work done. Then, we get a message that our four o’clock meeting is cancelled. Nice! Now I can take care of all of these events and do the other items that I need to do. In the evening we take turns taking out the pup and my day is complete.

It’s Wednesday and I wake up with raging headache. My sinuses are hurting, my eyeballs are in pain. The alarm went off and I hit the snooze….a few times. I eventually got up at eight as the dog needs to be walked and I don’t know if my husband has done that yet. Don’t want the poor thing to have an accident while I’m sitting here with a headache. I eventually get up right before I need to log on and I take medicine for my head. I then log on to work and notice that I don’t have any meetings until nine thirty, so I have some time for my head to stop aching. For lunch I had some cottage cheese with pineapple and it is delicious. Pineapple is my favorite. Now, my headache is gone and I am feeling better. The afternoon flies by an I’m ok with that. I’ve bee looking for new opportunities at my company and it looks like there are a couple of them that I may qualify for. I am very exited about this.

In the evening, I continue to work way past five. There are plenty of things to do and I am vey busy working on them. When I’m done with the work I log off and get to the living room where the family is hanging out. The dog was just taken outside and he didn’t do his business. It is raining out there and everyone is not happy about this. Shortly after, I take the pup outside again and he eventually does his business on the dirt, then we quickly come on back inside and clean him up with a towel and then with doggie wipes. We don’t give him treats today as the poor thing has been having diarrhea and it may be due to giving him so many treats. He’s been such a good boy that he deserved those treats. We hang out for a little while and then it’s time to go to bed. I am tired and ready for a good nights sleep.

It’s now Thursday and I get up and I notice my husband is still home. Oh, that’s right, he’s going to be working nights for the rest of the week. I really dislike it when he works at night. It can be very dangerous out there. People are crazy and they don’t pay attention, they don’t pay attention during the day, at night, it’s even worst. We say our good mornings and then I get to the treadmill. I am a bit tired and don’t walk as much a I would like. I walk two miles, my goal is three. I will eventually get to the three mile mark today by walking the pup. I then do some sit-ups and do some stretching as the coffee and toast are being made. I eat and then take my shower and head on to my bedroom/office and get to work. Work is nice today. Not a lot on my plate. Just enough to keep me working all day long. In the evening my daughter has a doctors appointment and she goes with grandma as I stay back and continue to work and help get my husband ready for work. I don’t do much help him today. I mainly take the dog outside so he is not in the way. As my husband is heating up his dinner and running around getting his things together for his shift, me and the pup are outside enjoying the afternoon. After my husband leaves, it’s just me and the pup. I try to get some work done but he won’t stay in the bedroom/office. He goes to where my little one’s desk is propped up and he lays there next to the desk. I can’t let him just stay there by himself so I get one of the toys that has a treat inside of it and bring it to the bedroom/office. Trying to entice him to stay with me. But it’s no use, he wants his girl and so he goes back to his little spot by the desk. I get a couple of things done and there for work but am constantly having to get up and see what he is up to. After about an hour I take him outside again to see if he would do his business. This was a tough one because he kept on coming back to the door and scratching at it because he want to play with his girl. I told him she wasn’t home, but he’s not listening to me. After what felt like an hour fighting with him and trying to get him to use the backyard as a bathroom. I gave up and got back inside the house. As I was washing dishes, he decided that it would be a good time to poop on the wood floor by in the living room inside the house. Son of a gun. We were just outside!! Well, it’s cleanup time on isle four. I clean up floor and notice he also got a bit on the fug. So I clean up the rug too. So far, he’s peed on every piece of rug we have in the living areas of the house. I thought he understood he has to do his business outside. We’re going to eventually have to get new rugs for the house. Thought we were done with that since my little one isn’t so little anymore. Like people say, having a pup is like having a little child in the house. Need to child proof everything. And a lot of positive reinforcements.

It’s Friday, and I wake up at two in the morning. I notice I left the radio app on and Elvis Duran was talking to me. I turn off the radio and then start scratching the back of my hand. I have eczema and it comes and goes mainly on my left hand and arm. At this point it is bothering me at the back of my hand. As time goes on, it gets even more itchy, so I get up, turn on the light and put cream on my hand. I then try to go back to sleep and I am having a hard time doing that. But I try and try and then finally succeed. Then my phone rings, it’s six in the morning and it is my husband. Oh no, hope everything is ok. It turns out, he doesn’t have house keys and needs me to let him in. My mother in law wakes up at the same time to take out the dog. My husband takes the dog so everyone can go on their way back to bed. Since I’m up, I will get dressed into my gym clothes and get myself to the treadmill. I walk for about three miles and am watching “Good Girls.” I’m half way through the episode and the tablet turns off as it is out of battery. Already?! It was at thirty percent. Oh well, I’ll have to finish my workout without any entertainment. I have my phone in my pocket as I need it to count my steps. You see, there is a friendly competition at work to walk eight thousand steps per day for the month of May. This is about three miles or so per day. The challenge is called “Kindness Around the Globe.” The point is to walk that amount of steps everyday. Then incentive is, of course to be healthy, and for a chance to win a fifty dollar gift card from Amazon. The challenge also gives information about where you’ve travelled throughout your steps. So far I’ve gone to places that…well, I don’t know where I’ve been. Haven’t really read the emails. I’ve been too busy with work and the dog to read through those emails. I’ve been saving them for a day and time that I will have of leisure to look through them. After my this morning walk I get to the bedroom and notice the dog is on the bed and my husband is sleeping. I laugh as the dog is ready to leave but can’t get himself out of the bed. He’s small little pup and the bed is up high. I was going to leave him there so I could shower, but then I thought better. It’s been an hour or two and he probably should be taken outside. So I took him and gave him some water and he drank it all. Boy was thirsty and good thing I took him out. He did his business right away. Wonder if I would have left him on the bed if he would poop the bed. We’ll never find out. After, I take a quick shower and I have the dog in the bathroom with me. He is wining because he wants to leave the room and does not like to be enclosed. I quickly get out of the shower and let him loose throughout the house. He then is missing his mama and he is scratching at my daughters door. I try to keep him busy as she is still sleeping. I tell him that she’s going to be with us soon as it’s almost time for school. Shortly after, my daughter and mother in law are up and it’s time for me to log into work. I log into work as they get ready for school. I log on and there is a lot for me to do today. In the afternoon we have a send off meeting for one of our friends who is leaving the company. We talk about the good old times of our digital marketing services division and about some of our old bosses. After this fun meeting, I have a dry as toast meeting about a project that we’re working on and it is simply not working. Our business partners are not happy about it, but that’s how it runs. The dog has a vet visit this afternoon and my husband takes him. Then I get a phone call from my husband that he left his wallet at home an if I could take it to him to the vet. I look and look and can’t find the wallet. I then get to the basement and notice that the pants he had worn today were already in the wash. Could it be? I quickly turn off the machine and look through the laundry. And, yup there it was, his wallet, nice and clean. I the get in the car and drive it over to the vet’s office. At the vet, only the dog was allowed in to see the doctor. We spoke to the doctor on the phone and we got the doctor to give the pup a couple of shots, mainly for Lyme disease and some other type of shot for when the dog may encounter urine or other particles from other animals. We want all of those things as we live out in the country and deer come very close to our door. We then head home and the pup is extra docile. He is very scared of being in the car and was a bit weak from getting the shots. He was all out of sorts that he pooped in the house. Way before we usually take him outside. I of course cleaned it all up and sprayed the carpet with odor eating spray and told him he was a bad boy. But didn’t yell to much at him as I feel bad, he’s had a hard day. We then watch a bit of TV and then head on to bed. Tomorrow is another day of getting up early and getting the pup out again.

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel

This week was fun filled with doctors appointments and worrying about my mom who was in the hospital for a few days. And then of course working on launches and working some more on other items. By the end of the week everything turned out alright. Still working on results for and need more testing done to figure out where the low grade fevers are coming from, but in the end it’s all worked itself out.

Monday again and I wake up with some energy. I put on my comfy clothes and get to the treadmill and walked for about three miles. I then get a call from my husband asking me to check out our accounts to ensure that everything is in order. I stopped what I was doing and logged onto our account. All looks like it’s supposed to and we’re both relived. I don’t get back on the treadmill as by the time it’s said and done, it’s time to log on and work for the man. As for work, there is a lot of it. I’m all discombobulated this morning because I received a message last night that my mom is in the hospital for weakness and weight loss as well as her sugar levels being very high. She has diabetes and doesn’t take care of herself like she should. Her sugar levels are very high and she is very weak and fragile. I can’t go visit as there is only one person who can be in the hospital with patients. I have to rely on my sibling to provide information. Back to work, and there is a lot to do during the day, but I am very much not present as I keep on thinking about my poor mother. Later in the day I get a message that she is having issues with eating. The doctors were thinking of placing her on a feeding tube, we decided against it. As for work, I did as much as I could with all of this worry on my shoulders, which wasn’t much. I was requested to launch a product last minute and I did something stupid, overpromised and underdelivered. The item did not launch on the day that I had mentioned to the team. I had to wait for the developers to do a bunch of things on their end and it took longer than expected. Now I know to put some padding onto what I can promise as I can only do so much. I end my day at six as I can no longer push anymore. We have dinner and I get to bed earlier than usual.

It’s Tuesday and I wake up ready for the treadmill. I’m so stressed about my moms situation and my little one being sick. I’m also still a bit sick myself with remanence of the second covid vaccine. I figured, going for a walk would do me good. And it did, for a little while at least. I had enough energy to go ahead and take a shower and get dressed in a decent outfit and logged in for my nine o’clock meeting. The meeting was mainly technical talk. Mainly it went right over my head. During my lunch hour I am making phone calls to set up appointments for my little one and finding out pricing and further information for caregivers for my parents. I then had a quick lunch of cottage cheese with honey and back to work I go. I then have a meeting with my mentor. I am asking him how I can ask for a raise without bluntly asking for a raise. He tells me that it’s all about opportunity and if there is any opportunities to have more responsibility. I’m sure there is, but I am already fully booked with what I am currently doing now. If I get more responsibilities, I may have more work and then I will really have to work over the weekends. Meanwhile, I am doing my research on how to request for a raise without asking for money. Youtube has given me some ideas. Such as, requesting for more responsibilities and asking what I can do in order to expand my work abilities.

It’s Wednesday and I did not wake up with the alarm. Slept right through it. I wanted to get up early to get to the treadmill and walk a few miles, but my head must be too tired if I didn’t hear anything. I did get up on time for work and was ready for my morning meeting. Shortly after I was given some good news about a possible opportunity. The possibility seem to be very positive and for that opportunity, I am thankful. My mom continues to be in the hospital as they now found something in her heart and she may need surgery. We’re finding out if she is a candidate as she is old and fragile and may not qualify. As for work, it is a relative light day as I haven’t been bombarded, yet, with items to add to the sites. I have a bunch of things to do that will need to be postdated for the future. I am very surprised and delighted that things are being provided to me in advance. Usually, I have to drop everything to get things posted or completed. But not today, at least not yet. The day is still young… In the evening I continue to work and getting ahead as the time goes by. Trying to not think about what is actually happening around me too much, and not worry myself until I finally fall asleep.

Thursday comes and goes as I took the day off to take my little one to see a few doctors. She is still felling a bit under the weather and continues to need medicine. In the morning, I went to the store to do the major shopping and spent a lot of time, money, and energy. Having to put on the mask then make sure nothing except for the essentials is touched, looking for the needed items, then checkout is a long dreaded process. After that, taking all of the items to the car and stacking them in such a way to make sure everything fits in my small Honda. At which point there is a young man who is going around in the parking lot asking people for money because he is hungry. And, mind you, not wearing a mask. I offered him a box of cereal and he declined it. So yeah, he wasn’t hungry. He just wants money. I remember the days when we didn’t have much and only had the essentials. A box of sweet cereal would have been a delight, no one who is hungry would turn down such an offering. After that encounter, I had another encounter with that same young man. He was asking for a ride to the train station. I told him, sorry but I am going the other direction. I felt for him because he didn’t look high nor did he look like a drug user. Just a lost kid, hustling for money on the streets. I then went home and unpacked all of the refrigerated items and cleaned them all up with disinfecting wipes. I left all of the other items in the car and raced to the shower to get all of the shopping off of me. Then raced to get dressed as we already a bit late to take my little one to see the doctor. All good at the doctors. She is getting better and healthier. In the evening, after all of the doctors visits. I unpacked the rest of the groceries and cleaned everything up with the disinfecting wipes. This grocery shopping thing during covid season is exhausting. But the day is still young and I need to take out the garbage pails to the curb as tomorrow is garbage day in my neighborhood. Then I get inside and have dinner of leftover lasagna. Yummy. At this point I am tired and ready to relax, but I log onto my work email just to see what I have in store for me tomorrow. And I have a lot. There is a product launch on Monday and there is a lot to do for it. For some reason, I thought the launch was on Wednesday. But nope, I was completely wrong and it’s earlier than I had planned. I’m frustrated and I immediately log off the work email and looked through my personal and didn’t find anything important. I then get to the couch and join the family, my husband put on Netflix and we were watching Shadow & Bone. Seems like a good show, I was enjoying it for a little while. At one point I get up and get a snack and grab some more for everybody to enjoy. Shortly after it was nine thirty and it was bed time. I take my medicine and get to bed. I couldn’t sleep for a little while so I here I am, watching stupid things on tiktok, I mean really stupid mind numbing things. And eventually the mind goes numb and I fall asleep.

It’s Friday and I did not wake up with my alarm. My little one has yet another doctors appointment and I did not get up on time. My brain is exhausted from the frustrating week that I’ve been having. My mother in law was the one who woke me up. I rolled out of bed and ran to get dressed and make some coffee and toast for breakfast. Need something in my belly in order to take my medicine. At the doctors office, we checked everything and all is clear. Need to figure out where the low grade fevers are coming from. We will need to do more testing. After the doctors we go to McDonalds for a treat. My little one was so good at the doctors, she deserves a little treat, even if it is bad for you. After this, I get right to work. There is a lot to do as I’ve already missed almost half a day. I work and work and work and then I work some more. I have a launch happening on Monday and everything needs to be ready. We also have other items that need to be posted and it takes me a while to get everything done. I am on until seven and then my back and neck start to get achy. I take some medicine for that and keep on working. By nine I call it a day. I can’t and shouldn’t do it anymore. Working way too many hours overtime and not getting compensated for it. I do get some recognition though. My boss notices that I am online until late at night. I also copy her on emails that state as such. I’m a good employee! I get my work done and get it done on time and am responsible. I’m a good asset to have. I really am! Meanwhile, I am writing things down on my little book of things to do like setting up appointments, getting receipts for my FSA, and a reminder to clean the siding of the house. I have a lot of projects to do outside. We still have our Christmas lights out on the house and they should really be taken down. So I will be doing that this weekend, if it doesn’t rain of course. It seems that every time I make any sort of plan that has to do with the outside world it tends to rain. So I’ll play it by ear and will go by the weather.

Until next time.
Stay Safe!
Best,
Isabel

This weekend was filled with working outdoors and then finding out my little one is going to be sick for a while longer and my mother is so fragile that she needs medical attention.

On Saturday I worked my behind off outside picking up all of the sticks and branches that had fallen in the yard over the winter. And my goodness there are a lot. My willow tree shed like crazy over the winter and there were so many stings of the tree on the ground, it took me a long time to pick them all up and dump them in our very large back yard. We have a special place for all of the sticks I get out of the lawn. I also did some weeding after I was done picking up all of the sticks from the front and back yards. The weeding wasn’t too bad as we had mulch put in last year, or was it the year before? I can’t remember, all I know is that there was plenty to pluck out of the ground and toss. I notice the spring flowers around my outdoor bench are coming in just beautifully. For some reason, I thought there were more to cover the entire section of where the bench is located but no, there are only a few, the deer must have gotten to them first. Need to get out there and get some more bulbs to plant flowers for the next spring. Once I was done with the front yard and pulling weeds out of the flower beds I got to the back and cleaned out the leaves that the fall had left us which are stuck right right next to the house. This took forever to take care of. Raking the leaves was fast enough. Getting rid of them once cart at a time is what took a long time to do.

I paused and I saw some pretty flowers in the yard and decided to take photo.

And another of a lonely daffodil in the front yard by my outdoor bench.

While I was taking care of the lawn and the spring clean up, my husband took our little on to the doctor. She’s been feeling under the weather lately. She is all congested and can not sleep most nights. We’ve gone to the doctor earlier in the week and she recommended tylenol and benedryl. These unfortunately, are not working and she continues to be sick. This morning she had a fever and the doctor said she wanted to see her. So he took her to the doctors office while I stayed and worked on the cleanup. At the doctors office, only one adult can go in with each child so I would have to stay in the car if I would have gone with them. We decided that it would be a better idea if I did not go. The doctor said that she should go get her blood drawn and find out what is really happening. So, it turns out that she has strep that wasn’t detected at the doctors office. Her sense of taste is very low and all she will eat is mcdonalds, so for lunch that is where they went. As for me, I had leftovers of rice and sausage. And then got back outside and did some more manual labor.

In the evening we gave my little one her medicine and she was feeling much better. We ordered dinner from Tony’s Chinese and Sushi from East Moriches. I had a Tai dish which was spicy. We asked for it to be mild but my taste buds are not used to spice and it cleaned out my sinuses. My husband and mother in law had Chinese dishes. Unfortunately, we weren’t very impressed with the dishes and we may just go back to our usual restaurant in Center Moriches that serves Chinese and Japanese foods called Mikado Japanese.

Later in the night I got a text message from my middle brother stating that my mother is in the hospital. She has diabetes and she doesn’t like to take her medicine. I’m not sure what her symptoms were for my brother to think that she should go to the hospital, but nevertheless, she is there and being taken care of. She is an old lady and doesn’t take care of herself as she should. Before covid, I used to go to my parent’s house almost every weekend and do some cleaning. I’d bleach the hell out their bathrooms, as they have four bathrooms in the house. And they use all four. I’ve already asked them to reduce the bathrooms to one or even two so that I wouldn’t have to do so much cleaning. But they are both old and one; they don’t listen and two; when they gotta go, they gotta go. So they use whatever bathroom that is closest to them. I’d also do their laundry and most days I would ask them to remove the clothing they had on their backs so that I could give them a proper cleaning. I would also change their sheets. Some days I would wash the fleece, warm sheets they had on their bed and place them right back on the bed. I’d also do some vacuuming and dusting. As well as take care of all of the dishes and other items that were left all over the kitchen counter. Since covid, I’ve been to their house once to do some major cleaning. I had to take double masks due to adding so much cleaning products to the rooms. Hopefully my mom will recuperate quickly and get back home to her bad habits of not taking her medicine and being all sorts of depressed. The doctor has given her depression medicine but, like all her medicines, she will not take them. She for the most part forgets. But I think she simply does not like the taste of them and just doesn’t wanna do it. We’ve already talked about getting someone to go the house and help them out with their medicine but it turns out that it is very expensive and we cannot afford it. Everything is out of pocket and these agencies charge a lot of money. Their retirement amount is too small of an amount and it barely covers for the property taxes. They have a large house and the taxes are a lot of dollars and we plainly can not afford it. We’ve tried to get my parents to sell the house but they do not want to do that. They don’t want to go to an old folks home. Also, they are very expensive and we don’t want to separate them by sending them to separate homes. They’ve been together for over fifty years, we’re not now going to separate them now. I wish I had the means to place them somewhere they could thrive at their old age. But without selling that home, there doesn’t seem to be a way at this point in time. As of now they can still do for themselves. They can bathe and get dressed. My mother has decided that is no longer cooking so we take food to them all of the time. My father has tried to cook, but he burns everything. I suppose I am like him that way. I always burn everything too. For me, I start to think about other things that I need to do and then forget that I have things cooking on the stove and then they are either overcooked or bunt. I am better with baking. There is a timer and when the item is done, the timer chimes to let me know it is ready.

On Sunday I get to calling a bunch of different places to see how much it will cost to have someone come to my parent’s home and help them out with reminding them to take their medicine and do some light cooking and cleaning. Most places charge from twenty to thirty dollars an hour. Also looking for a service to provide them with meals. Suffolk county has a service and I have called and left them a message. Hopefully they will qualify and we won’t have to bring them food all the time.
While I was doing all of these phone calls I also got the courage to take care of my hair and color those pesky grays. I haven’t fixed my hair in a long time as I have been a bit down on life and haven’t cared enough to do it. But now that I’m looking for new opportunities, I’ve dedicated a bit of the day to fixing this mop. Hopefully a new opportunity will present itself and I will be presented with a decent offer. I keep telling myself that I must keep my head up high and keep moving forward.

Here is my mop before coloring it

As for my hair, it has grown so much, that it is now down to my waist. I want to donate it to kids with cancer who can’t grow their own hair. But with covid, I haven’t gotten the chance to get to the hair dresser and my hair has grown a lot in the last year or so. It’s also fallen a lot. The bathtub drain is constantly filled with hair. It falls out so easily. All of the hair that has fallen out this year could have probably made a full wig.

This is the after. It’s a bit messy, but it is done and for now, and that’s what’s important.

Until next time.
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel

Over the weekend I felt like garbage. I had my second covid vaccine on Thursday and for the entire weekend I was feeling all of the aches and pains I get when I have the flu. It was a rough weekend. The week was a tough one in the beginning but by the end of the week it calmed down and it was all smooth sailing.

It’s Monday and I am up at four in the morning. I get to the kitchen and have a snack. At ten to five I go ahead and wake up my husband so he could get up and get to work. He woke up all startled since it was me who woke him up. The lights were already on and everything. He probably thought that something was wrong because I never wake him up. He got up and started getting ready for his day and I was just there in the kitchen…half awake half asleep, zombie like. After about an hour or so I felt itchy, I still have remanence of my allergy from last week, so I take a Benadryl and get back into my bed. I thought the medicine would put me to sleep, but nope, I was up the entire time, watching makeup tutorials, of all things. Not sure how I got into these, must have clicked on something on Facebook, or was it Instagram? I can’t recall what site I was on. I just know now that if I am ever to get out of the house again I need to get this old face professionally taken care of. There is so much contouring and eyeshadow and concealer to put on ones face that it makes me not want to do anything at all. I was never a big makeup person anyway. Usually some eyeliner and mascara and I’d call it a day. Now that I’m getting older, I probably need a little more coverage. But who am I kidding, I don’t have the patience for all of that. As for work, it was a busy day. Working on launching products for Wednesday and am very busy with that and all of the other items that I need to do.

It’s now Tuesday and I do nothing but work. There are products and accessories launching tomorrow and I have lots to work on. By noon I am tired but I truck on. I work and work and work until about seven in the evening. I then break for dinner and some chores at home, like doing the dishes and taking care of the garbage. Then I log back on and get back to work. There are more assets to add for tomorrow and I keep on working until I’m too mentally drained to work anymore. I stop working at about eight and then take a nice long shower. Scrubbing away my feet and hands as I notice I need to get a pedicure and manicure badly. Once my hair is dry enough I get myself to bed.

It’s Wednesday and I get up at four in the morning. My husband is up and getting ready for work. My mother in law is also up and we talk for a little while. My little one is getting her beauty rest as she needs it. She’s been sick and hasn’t gotten enough rest these last couple of days. Poor thing is now all congested. Maybe seasonal allergies. In the early morning hours I have myself a snack of a muffin top. Since I’m up, I might as well eat a little something. So, I may have slept all crooked because my neck is really hurting this morning. I take some medicine then I then tell my husband to have a great day at work and I go rolling back to bed and try to sleep for a little while longer before work starts. I eventually do fall asleep and wake up at seven with the alarm. I can’t stay in bed anymore so I get up and log on to work and start working on my product launches. This morning, we launched new MAXIFY MegaTank printers and Inks. It took forever for these to show up on my site, but we did it. For my lunch hour, I head over to my little one’s school and pick up her new math book and other homework for her. I quickly get back home and get back to work there are a few things for the launch that I must take care of before days’ end. Luckily, this afternoon is a little slower work wise, for a change, and I get to relax a bit. Of course there are things to do but they are not urgent so I get to work at a normal pace. Today I log of early on time and am logged off by five.

It’s Thursday and I can’t get enough sleep. The alarm goes off and I hit snooze a couple of times. I then get up really fast, I notice it is five to nine. I think to myself if I have an early morning meeting and I can’t remember. I roll out of bed, log in to work and check my daily schedule and what do I see…yup a meeting at nine. I run to the bathroom really fast and then I log on to the meeting right at nine. After this meeting I have another one. I am a bit late for my second meeting as I had my coffee brewing and I was waiting for it to finish before I got to this second meeting. This is ok if I miss a bit of the meeting as it is a SCRUM where the developers talk about what they did yesterday and what they have planned to do today. Usually in these meeting, I’m just there to listen. I don’t have any items proposed so I would have been ok if I missed the meeting altogether. Today is a lighter day, since I don’t have any product launches coming up so all I need to do is my daily day to day items. And of course, whatever the teams sends my way today to post during the day. As for my little one, she is still under the weather. She barely sleeps as she has some sort of post nasal drip in her throat and her sinuses are not her friend right now. I feel terrible for her. During my lunch hour I head on over to the pharmacy and pick up a bunch of medicines for us and quickly head on home. I can’t remember if I have a meeting at two or is it at three? I get home and log on and notice I still have some time to get something to eat. I eat some raviolis and cauliflower and then head on back to my laptop. The afternoon if filled with meetings and I am very busy for the rest of the day. In the evening I am beat. I am mentally drained and am ready for a nap. After dinner while the family is watching something on TV that I am not interested in, I go to the bedroom and lay down on the bed and am looking through my social media and shortly after, I fall asleep. A couple of hours later I wake up and it’s now ten in the evening. I get up an put on my PJs then I’m reminded that I have to go out to the car to get the medicine that is out there in quarantine. It’s cold out tonight, so I put on my jacket over my PJs and go out into the wild. I heard the sound of an owl, they are out there in the woods making friends. I get back in and am ready for bed when I notice that the dishes are still in the sink drying out. Grrr, I gotta take care of this too as my husband uses the sink to place his cooler in the morning to fill it up with his lunch for the day. At this rate, I’m never going to get to bed tonight. I take care of the dishes, take care of the rechargeable batteries that are on on the floor as I place them in a bag on the counter for my husband for tomorrows work. I then look around to see if there is anything else that I may have missed. I then get an inkling for some chocolate, I rummage through one of the goodies drawer and get me some Reses’ peanut butter cups and enjoy my evening snack. Now, I am ready for bed.

It’s now what, Friday?! Wow the week has flown by. I was so busy with work all week, my daughter being under the weather and me also being all achy during the week that this week just flew on by. This morning I got up a little after the alarm. Good thing too because I have a meeting at eight thirty with the ladies from Women in Tech, a “Virtual Lean Coffee.” I get to talk to these ladies about my trials and tribulation as a Business Analyst. They’ve told me at one point that I shouldn’t be doing my work alone. That the boss and others should be helping. Especially since I am so new to this type of work. I’ve also made connections on LinkedIn with these ladies and it makes me very happy to connect.
Today my schedule it light regarding meetings and I am networking like crazy. I’ve heard there may be an opportunity available in the future and I am working on taking advantage of this opportunity. But, for some reason I am being very shy about it this morning. I straighten up and am pushing through my shyness and reaching out to team leaders to have a chat with them. So, in the early afternoon, I chatted with a few of the leaders and these chats all went well. However, my ears were ringing and usually that is not such a great sign. Hopefully, it doesn’t mean anything. We will see. In the evening I break for dinner then log back into my work email as one of the developers has updated one of the sites. But it looks like everything will need to be taken care of on Monday as everyone has left the building.
As for the weekend, I have much work planned. I need to out into the wild and take care of the lawn and prep it for spring by removing all of the sticks and other items from the grass. I also need to take care of my hair. I haven’t had any energy lately to do anything. I’ve been under the weather and haven’t had any energy to get basic things done. But this weekend I will get up early in the morning get my coffee brewing, have a hearty breakfast and get my work done. Well, here’s hoping my energy keeps up.

Until next time.
Stay safe.
Best,
Isabel

This week I am going to get my second covid shot from moderna. I hope that I won’t get any of the symptoms some people are having to the vaccination. The first vaccine I got an allergic reaction to the shot. The doctor called it “covid arm.” Here’s hoping the second time around will be better.
Well whatya know, my second shot of the moderna vaccine gave me all the symptoms read on to find out what happened.

It’s Monday and it’s a typical Monday morning. Get up at 8:30 with the alarm clock, get something to eat and coffee. Work goes by so fast today it’s not even funny. I have so many things to post and so many things to do. At one point I really need to pee from all of that coffee and that is the only time I take a break. It’s been so busy that I worked over the weekend to get ahead. Over the weekend, I posted a bunch of items on the websites as well as prep for this weeks’ product launches.
During my lunch hour I get outside and get some fresh air by taking out the garbage pails and placing them on the curb as tomorrow is garbage day in my neighborhood. I’m not just going outside for the hell of it. I’m constantly working on something. I quickly get back inside and online. I work and work and work until about six and then have dinner with the family. After dinner, I log back on until about nine in the evening. As mentioned, I have a few products launching this week and need to get the content taken care of as well as the rest of the work that I need to get done. As for my daughter, she was very ill last week but this week she is doing much better. She is recuperating very well and I am happy to see her happy. No more fevers and no more rashes.

It’s now Tuesday and the day is flying by again. Got up at the same time and did the same thing as yesterday. Have a meeting right at nine in the morning and then another, and another. Tons of work and tons of requests. Took a break at noon and before I know it, it’s one in the afternoon and I have yet another meeting. But this is a good meeting, no work involved. Just a conversation with colleagues about how to excel in a virtual environment. Of course I missed a bit of it as I was pulled into a meeting during this meeting. It was an important one too. One of our internal people is having issues with signing up users. Now these users are people who go into the site and make purchases. I need to ensure that this individual is able to do her work. So, I get on the horn with the developers and get them to take a look and figure out why this is happening. By five I’m still working on the product launch for tomorrow. I’ve just received last minute content to post and I am working on adding it to the site. Plus, I am testing a site is going to be upgraded next week. Login process is still not working correctly. Here goes another email and another ticket for the team. It’s a never ending cycle of emails and tickets.

It’s now Wednesday and I wake up at six in the morning. Might as well get up because the alarm is going to go off in a little while. I have products launching today and I might as well get to work. So I log on and get working and working. I then pause to get some breakfast. This morning I am having an egg quiche with broccoli and cheese. Yummy goodness. Of course, I didn’t forget my morning coffee. This morning I launched two new lenses and a couple of accessories from the Camera team. If you’re interested we launched the EOS RF100 Macro, RF400 and the RF600 lenses. Today, I communicated with the teams until my heart was content. So many emails flying back and forth to the team. By early afternoon, one of the business people wanted their products launched as well…today, like, now! So, I dropped everything and launched their products as well. If you’re so inclined one of the last minute products launched was the imagePROGRAF TX-3100. These are the nice and large format printers that the company I work for offers to customers.
By three I am toast. I’ve been up for hours and hours and am in the need of a break from all of this work.
I take a break and of course, eat. I have myself some cottage cheese with honey. I can’t stay away from work for too long though, as there is a lot to do. After my quick break, I get back on and continue with postings. As for my baby girl, she is doing fantastic. She is feeling so much better and she even logged on to school this afternoon. She saw her little friends and learned a bit of math. She’s doing really great and I am grateful.

It’s now Thursday and I do not want to get out of bed. The alarm goes off at seven and I’m hitting snooze. It then goes off again at eight thirty. And, yeah, snooze again. Later on I wake up all startled because I remembered that I have a meeting with the team from Vietnam. I look at the clock and it’s ten to nine, so, I roll out of bed and log in. After a while I notice the meeting was cancelled. Great, I got up all startled for nothing. I check my calendar and notice that I have meetings today, but only in the afternoon. All I want to do is get back into bed. So, I do that, just for a little while. I then get up and log on and I have plenty to do. I have more products launching next week and need to get all of that content up on the site as well as all of the other content that I need to post. At noon I take a shower as I have to go out this afternoon to the hospital to get my vaccine. I will be getting my second dose of the covid vaccine today.
The day goes by quickly between all of the work that I need to do and before I know it, it is time to go to the hospital. For some reason I am feeling a bit of anxiety. We keep on hearing that some people get bad reactions to their second vaccine and I am not up for feeling unwell. I’ve already had a terrible week last week, as my daughter was not feeling well, I don’t want to have another terrible week. I get to the hospital and the doorperson takes my temperature and I get on line. There are only a few people ahead of me so it goes nice and quick. I sign in and then they send me on my way to the vaccine pod. The nurse asked me the usual questions; do I feel well today, do I have covid. The she asked me if I have gotten Botox in the last few weeks. I thought that question was very odd and interesting. I wonder if that is the connection of the women who have had blood clots after having their vaccine. I then had to let the nurse know that I had a reaction to the first vaccine as I had a rash in the area where I was vaccinated. This means that I will need to wait in the waiting area for a full half hour. I got the shot and then I sat on the chair and waited. With nothing to do, I just sat there looking at ahead for what felt like forever. At one point one of the nurses was asking the people in the waiting area if they knew anyone who needed the vaccine. If so, they could come on in and get it. Guessing people aren’t taking their second dose and they have plenty to give away. After my half hour of pure boredom, I am released and am asked how I feel and I feel fine. So I go out, in the rain and get back into the car and head on home. It’s funny but last time I was at that hospital, it was raining as well. I remember, because I stepped on a puddle and got my sneaker and foot all wet. So, during my first vaccine, it rained. During my second vaccine; rain. No wet feet this time though. After the vaccine I head on home and go straight to the basement. I take my clothes and place them in the hamper and head on over to the shower. I need to get all of the hospital off of me. After the shower I get dressed and then I log in for a quick peak at what I have missed at work. I see that I have missed a lot and there are a bunch of item that I need to get posted on the site, today. It’s way after five but I’m logged in and doing the work. I take a break for dinner but then log back on again and finish up. After a few hours I am tired. I can continue to do work if I really want to as there is plenty to do. But I stop myself. It’s late and you know what? Tomorrow is another day to do work. I head on over to the kitchen and get an ice pack because the arm where I got the shot this afternoon is hurting. My husband helps me with placing a wrap around the ice pack and I go to bed with the ice on my arm.

It’s Friday and day one after my second covid vaccine. I feel like crapola this morning. My arm is hurting and so are my back and legs and basically all of my joints. I take medicine for my aches and pains and it relieves my aches for a little while. I log on to work and see that I don’t have many meetings today, which is great, I don’t think I can handle much today with all of these aches. After a couple of hours after taking the medicine, I feel achy again. So I take more medicine. Again, this is only helpful for a few hours. My hips are really hurting, more than my arm where I got the vaccine. I then take Dayquil for my achiness. Hopefully this will help me to keep on working along. I have a launch next week, lots of items and accessories. I have a lot of content to post and much to do content wise for the other website I manage as well. Oh brother, it’s seven and I am still online working. I have a ton of items to post for Monday and must get them done tonight, or have to work over the weekend. Meanwhile, my medicine is wearing out. I am now feeling achy again and will most likely get to bed soon. I can’t be taking medicine every few hours, I may give myself a heart attach.

It’s Saturday and I am up at four in the morning due to aches and pains. I can’t sleep anymore since I’m so achy. I get to the kitchen and get myself Nyquil. This is helpful for a little while. But then I get aches again. My back especially is the worst. It’s going to be one of those weekends.

Until next time.
Stay safe!
Best,
Isabel