Frustrations Build, Lost Files, and Technical Difficulties

We’ve been so busy I’ve not even had a chance to show my pretty plant that Katy gave me for Mother’s Day. Didn’t even get to blog yesterday!

Yesterday it was very odd to start a Saturday without doing laundry. It’s been almost a week with no washing machine and the clothes, sheets, and towels are starting to mount. As is my morale.

I cleaned the kitchen, fixed us some eggs, helped take care of doggies and the doggies have not actually been very good lately. Also not helping my morale. Maisy is having some episodes and Findlay, while having a good time, we are probably missing her queues to go out to do potty business. So we have been cleaning sections of carpet most all weekend long. ::sigh::

The new toilet quit working yesterday. Well it kept running. And running. And running. And George has to go to Lowe’s to buy a part for it. I mean really? All the toilets on the shelf and we buy the one with a faulty part and it doesn’t work a week before breaking?

I had a virtual shower to attend at 1 p.m. and got on that. My internet quit working momentarily and kicked me out of the room half way into the shower. Only the host could let me back in. Since the host was opening gifts – I had to text relatives to please have the host let me back in (give permission). I was about to give up and go do something else but finally I was allowed back in the group.

You see a theme here? Life is trying to beat me up this week. What did I do wrong? Simply Exist?

Yes I know, I know. You have to stop and smell the roses. Well, I don’t have any but I do have some pretty peonies.

After the shower, we went to Publix. I had to get my blood pressure meds refilled and we needed pet foods. We still left with a cart full. I needed freezer foods to take for lunches. I’m just so tired of frozen food for lunches. I’m tired of eating at my desk. Quite frankly I think I am a bit tired of everything – I’m still struggling here with time crunches, old or broken everything’s, and enough frustrations at every thing I try to touch not working appropriately – that I could just scream. But I’m trying to be calm and go on and just let it be. Go on to the next thing. I’ve done that so much I’m becoming ADD and running in circles all at once. Can’t finish AnYTHing!

But anyway at Publix I reached in for my mask and it’s in my work bag and not my purse. George also forgot his mask. Grrr. I felt naked and afraid, lol. But we did not go home. We just took our chances.

Oh yeah, I’m also way over this COVID bit too. I think if one more thing happens I will go over the edge. If I do I’ll send a post card. 😉

On the way to Publix we talked with my BIL and SIL and we are going to have them over – and also plan to eat dinner with them. Kevin (BIL) is going to look at our internet situation and see if he can help me. My iMac just turns off the internet after a while – it’s why I got cut out of the virtual shower yesterday. I have to reboot and then it connects again. It’s so annoying to be in the middle of something and then it won’t connect until reboot. And I’m supposed to host one of my own showers in June. I know that with all the technical difficulties that ALWAYS surround any piece of anything that I touch – I already know this will be an issue. The evil computer gremlins know they can knock me to me knees with these technical glitches – so they basically do.

In light of this, my SIL kindly suggested (she knows me well) that it worked really well for the person opening the gifts to stream from their location. Amazing idea. I am ok with paying for the premium zoom account and letting Ellen have the password and controls. She will have family on her end to help while she opens/shows the gifts. So likely we will try to do it that way. If I have connection issues at least it will only impact me and not everyone.

There is always a black cloud that follows me with things going wrong, going sideways, and basically attacking the world I try so hard to control and keep upright.

After we did our shopping, I was starving. I’d not had time to eat lunch. So I asked George if he would go to the new Slim Chickens place. Oh my – I am going to love this place. We went thru drive through of course as we had groceries in the car and it was 80 degrees out. Their menu looks amazing. I will be going here every chance I get. I will risk the COVID. They have outside seating also with a covered patio. I really wanted to study the menu but George is not a fan of the drive thru ordering for other people. (Once he backed into a Sonic backwards so I, the passenger, could place my own order, lol lol lol lol.). Anyway I just made it easy. It was almost 4 p.m. and dinner would be happening at some point, so I just said get the pepper ranch chicken sandwich – something like that after pulling them up online to get advance quick start to the menu. Oh my heavens it was lovely. It had those onion straws on there and the ranch sauce with just a slight bit of heat. And lots of pickles and I am not normally a pickle person but it all worked so well. I’m trying to like pickles as the vinegar is good for your gut! It just occurred to me that I like to eat so well because it seems to be the very ONE thing in life I possibly have any control over!

Oh yeah, I’ll be going back here. They had some salads that looked really good. And some sides. Yeah, this place is going to be a staple with me. I’ll be running extra errands just so I can go thru the drive thru. I wonder if they have breakfast? Probably not. I’ll have to try their tea. They have milk shakes, but I’ll be staying away from those.

I had so many notes of “to do’s” that I had to work in to my to do list yesterday. At least after putting the groceries up I was able to kind of regroup. Most of it is just geeky stuff to do with the blog or the movie clips or the creation of YouTube channels. I’ve managed to create quite a list. But some involve other things going on that eventually need to be done. Even some reading and watching. I put some things on here so I won’t forget about them, like the remaining gift card balances that need to be used up that have been in my purse for year.

Back to yesterday, I refilled the vitamins and supplements for the next week and peeked at the wardrobe to make sure I had enough pants to wear next week in case I didn’t get time to wash anything once the repair man (hopefully) fixes the washer. I’m afraid to hope that it will be fixed Monday. These days there is no guarantee that a said repair person will even show and if they do, can they get the part? What another week? I know I’m a bit pessimistic. I prefer to call it that life has taught me such and it’s realistic. So if it does take a week to get it fixed I can say “that is what I figured”. Otherwise I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I’d really like to go to sleep, wake up and everything be fixed, working, and in order. But that would be boring right.

I also looked up how to get soap scum off the shower stalls. This has plagued me for years. I’ve got something I’m going to try before ordering a $23 bottle of something Mom suggested.

The bathroom curtain I bought it pretty, and it covers it up – but it’s just weird to have to cover the bathroom stall window up. It’s just flat weird. And that has also been really bothering me. As the floors/carpet/kitchen.

I just want to wake up and everything be to my standards of living. I’ve been highly aggravated this week with all of it. It’s been building up for the last few months. At least George doesn’t have to fight with the plumbing. I know he is relieved to have his desires met. And I’ll probably enjoy the water filter, although I cannot say I can taste a big difference but maybe I’ve not had time to slow down and really notice. Mostly I’ve had coffee or mixes FROM THAT SHAKE/SUPPLEMENT COMPANY I USE but I did have a bit of straight water to drink in the overnight. Thinking back – I think it was less metallic, less chlorine tasting. It’s in the overnight when I usually drink the water unless I pour a glass after dinner. I think he paid a couple of thousand more to have that filter installed and then all faucets put out the fresh filtered water. So hopefully it is doing what they said it would. Normally at night when I get water from George’s bathroom sink – it DOES have that metallic taste and it wasn’t like that last night as I remember. So as I sit and ponder that – I think it is going to be a nice thing.

I got baby shower gift ordered for Ellen and Justin, the one we are doing the shower for. Katy and I went together to get it and it’s being sent via Amazon. George came in and helped me decide because he needed to be involved too. I didn’t want to be the only one deciding. I’m happy with our decision.

And I also gave Maisy a bit of a trim yesterday. (As well as myself.) She looks quite a bit better and was very patient. She looks a bit refreshed. I will try to work on Roger in an effort to hold on to our June appointment. If our groomer is still in business and working by then. I guess I should call but I’ve just not had time. I called once and no answer and left a message with no return call so I think they had been shut down and not worrying with the phone system til they got back. I need to check on it but I’ll wait til we are less busy.

Mom called yesterday through the House Party app so we could video each other and she had fallen and landed on her tailbone earlier in the day. She said for a long time she could not get up. She had her car keys in her hand and set her car alarm off so the neighbors would come out and look. Two neighbors did and they helped her get up. She was finally able to walk again and said she even cleaned off the porch but it was hurting her to sit.

So I ordered her a doughnut pillow. She didn’t think it was broken but just sore.

As I’ve been sitting here typing, my neck and shoulders have been tightening up and I think I slept funny. Starting to get a pain in my neck. Yes, I guess this week has literally been a pain in the neck with all that has gone wrong. A few things have gone right though so there’s that to hold on to.

I started working on the video/pics that I took over the last week to week and a half. What do I really want to do today? Work on that! But I at least got to geek out for a few minutes. In the few minutes that I worked on the project – probably an hour – I discovered that all of my iMovie audio library (the music and the sound effects that came with imovie on my iMac) is missing. Dammit. What is the deal? What have done?

Do I have time to deal with this? NO! I will finish this video and then I’ll save the project. I will use my Epidemic Sound music and sound effects. Then I guess I will do an uninstall and reinstall of iMovie (????). I don’t want to mess up what I currently have in there. I could just go to Movavi as I’d downloaded that too. It’s just that my learning curve is not as far along with that and I gave up trying it last week, getting frustrated.

I’m trying to be patient with life but right now – nothing is going according to plan. The things I even enjoy are going South. There is SUCH a big learning curve to the Mac life and jumping in and trying to do videos right off the bat, on top of it, is just crazy. I am trying to learn both at once. I think I got my files in order and learning how to do that. However the icloud thing confuses me. I’m not sure what to add to the icloud and what not to. Photos are in the cloud except I move them off the cloud b/c they show in my phone if they are in the cloud. I don’t want all of them on my phone. Anyway I’m not going down the file path here but it still is kindof a confused mess to me. I can at least find most files though which was more than I can say a month ago – and I will need to back them up if not in the cloud. But have I moved things around so much that I’ve deleted or moved the audio files for imovie? Perhaps so. I’m just in shock right now, having just discovered this. It literally makes me sick to my stomach. I’m not sure why everything has to be amiss and so complicated. That edge I was talking about? I think I’m there!

And me being one that won’t quit til I find an answer – this will irritate the entire fire out of me until I figure it out. And I don’t have time to figure it out this week.

So anyway, there will be a VLOG at some point. But I have to stop to do life. I can’t just full time figure all this out. Most things you can learn via YouTube. But it just takes time. Hey at least I cranked a couple of videos out. But I decided to just “start where I was” and try to capture a week of video and pics. I had more than I thought. I have to whittle down about 33 minutes of footage to 13 and I’m working on an intro. I’ll probably be doing a lot of voiceovers and have to get used to that. So it’ll be a week or two or three before the video is available and they will be few and far between at first til I get a handling on this iMovie thing. Geez. As if making the movie itself isn’t a learning curve, the files have to go missing from the program itself? Can I curse here? Ok I won’t. But I sure feel like it. lol

So I’ll be working on the house today and trying to get it in order. Maybe that will give me some calming down time away from the computer which is supposed to be my calm time.

And I need to begin working on the invitations.

And we get to see Katy and Cody today. Excited about that at least. They leave tomorrow.

And I am through griping for the day. At least on the blog.

George is not going to be a happy man when I tell him not much show watching this week. I’ll be doing my to do list. The invitations are up at the top of the list and they are not going to send themselves. ha.