Busy Life, Busy Gal

As the World Turns .... an old soap opera ... but sometimes life can feel like a soap opera!  Or is it that soap operas began by imitating life?

Either way, life's been busy for this ol' Gal.  Mom and sis flew down for a visit with my Aunt Marge.  Both my sis and aunt have cancer.  Sis is fighting it with chemo, my aunt has decided that she's lived 81 good years, she's not going to try chemo.  But it's affecting her, and she gets tired easily now, and she's losing her appetite.   So a quick trip was needed!

Sis is doing well, tolerating the chemo really well, and nothing is growing or spreading as of the latest scans.  Sounds like a plus in my book for now :)  So we're happy with that.

Mom and sis stayed at my house, a FIRST!  because my aunt has a bigger house, more rooms, they usually stay there, but aunt had other company come in as well.  My mom's other sister flew in as a surprise, so the three of them spent days together, laughing it up, remembering old days, and reconnecting again.  Such a joy to see them all together!  I was happy to be able to squeeze in a long afternoon with them, even though work was incredibly busy this week.

We're doing inventory at my BigBox store, which means a crew of about 40 people come in and yes, they physically count every piece of merchandise in the store.  There's always a goal in mind of what the final tally should come up to, dollar wise, and anything short of that is NOT a good thing.  We fell short, and life at work just became that much more difficult.  Again.  I think the major issue in my particular BigBox store is a lack of training, quality time between managers and folks who work in each department.  You can't just say "here, go do this" without someone having an understanding of why they're doing something, and what makes that task important in the bigger picture.  When a team micro-manages their employees and doesn't share reasons behind the scenes ... it's a recipe for failure in my book.

I've been in retail for 16 years now, and when I look back at my first couple of years, I know there were things I didn't do correctly because I didn't understand.  Yes, I'd worked for another company and we did inventory every year as well, so that part I comprehended.  In retail, it's a little bit different, but it's still counting and adding up to the big nut.  Failure to meet the numbers means that we'll have audits from outside folks in our building, asking questions about how we do things.  And of course, changes will be made as well.  I hate those the worst!

Being busy at work means micro-managing my own life, as well.  Poor Sadie has been stuck at home more days than she likes, but it's as it has to be.  Rebellion is her nature, and she shows me her displeasure in a little pile by the door on a daily basis!  Thank goodness for tile floors and throw away rugs!  Can't wait to be back to normal for her as well as my own sake!

Just before mom came, we had 36mph winds, and it knocked all the palm fronds out of my tree!  It took me several hours to stack and tie them into bundles of about 8 fronds, then arranged with the city to have them picked up, for a charge of $22.  Not bad!  At least they're gone.  They were stinky, because of the birds who live up in that tree .....  'nuff said.  All cleaned up now, though, and I'm happy for that! 

Even though my life is busy, crazy and hectic, I still try to make time to enjoy mother nature's little miracles!  I love the little cactus blooms that happen in my yard!

DIY Daddy's Girl

Sometimes you just feel like you gotta share parts of you that some might not know about.  I'm the eldest child, and was a daddy's girl, but not in the stereotypical way.  I was more the tomboy kind.  I wanted to do everything Dad did.  When we moved into our house in 1966, we needed to put on a new roof at some point.  I think I was like 14 years old, and there I would be, up on the roof, pounding nails with my dad.

My dad could fix, work on, figure out just about anything.  And make it work right again.  I inherited that part of him.  I also inherited my mom's dislike of being wasteful.  If something is still useful, she'll keep it and find a way to use it ... eventually.   Take that combination and it makes for a very .... different kind of gal in our society who likes to "use it once, throw it away, buy another if I need one again".

This is my new computer desk.  I repurposed an old entertainment center, utilizing the top as the desk, and cutting up the sides, putting it all together to make something that I can actually use.  My old desk was one of those cheap self-assembly kind from a BigBox store.  I'd taken it apart and reassembled it twice in the past.  It was 10+ years old, I think I got all the use I could get out of it.  I ended up buying an rolling file cabinet that slides right underneath, because having a desk without a drawer or two wouldn't work for me.  I added two shelves above the desk to hold computer speakers, a couple books and the usual loose items a desktop often collects.

That's me.  The fix-it gal.  There's always something I'm doing, taking apart, rebuilding.  My son's bed is a platform bed that my father built when we moved to Arizona.  But now that he's moved out, I needed the platform to fit a double bed, not a single.  So I disassembled, cut, refinagled, bought a new piece of wood for the top and reassembled it to work for me.  Then I bought industrial pipe and created a bookshelf.  Looks awesome, in my opinion!

For another project, I collected old pallets from my BigBox store, took them apart, picked out the neatest looking boards, did some staining, painting, a mix of different things and created a headboard as well.

Sometimes, I tell myself that it's time to STOP thinking up projects!  But I'm a DIY kind of person, and it doesn't seem to stop :)

so thanks, Dad, for teaching me how to be hands on, how to think outside the box, how to do something with what I have!!