Less Hustle More Coffee

Nice to have a bit of sunshine in our lives. After raining for several days, the clouds parted and the sun came through. It’s Friday and has been a busy week of working toward everyone’s agendas. At work and at home. Very little time for play or personal projects.

At work, the month end taxes have been paid as well as the quarter end taxes. I’m about half way through with the withholding returns. It seems to take forever, this process, but I’m slowing ticking the boxes through. We tried to add another state to the system and the system said “nah ah, not gonna”. Can’t pay taxes and file returns with “nah ah, not gonna” system information so that all has to be figured out with programmers before we can finish out the quarter, or even do reconciliation.

I was hoping it was Jesus, but it was just a double rainbow —“just a double rainbow” —I catch myself saying but in comparison to Jesus one can say that. Rainbows are special and so is a double one as it’s a sign of God’s promise, but Jesus himself parting the clouds would have been better —for believers anyway. this particular rainbow was so vivid. It’s the brightest most magical one I’ve seen and it was only part of one. It was a pleasure driving down the interstate toward it. To me it meant God saying, “I’m here, the rain is ending, I’m not going to flood the earth and it’s all going to be ok.”

We went out Wednesday night with Paul and Judy to eat with them and they brought a pile of leftover food from freezer and pantry, bless them. We bought their dinner in return. Their house closed Thursday, movers came supposedly and they are off to Florida now for their retirement home. Can I whine and whimper? It’s been fun having them around, good knowing friends are around the corner, people that care, someone you knew that would have your back when needed and for them the same. I’m thankful for friends that have understood my flooring situation with the dogs and my unwillingness to entertain with that going on. Both Judy and Lisa have still embraced me without judging (I hope) as we have mainly spent time at their houses. Now that we have new flooring, I will soon be able to pay the favor once Mom’s grocery boxes are gone from the living room, but Paul and Judy are gone! We will miss the annual ornament party too and our LRC games. I hear the invitations may still go out one day and they’ll see who shows up in Florida, lol. Maybe one day we’ll get a December vacation in FL. We could see Aunt Martha and Uncle Ken and then see Judy and Paul. But I don’t think they are close to each other. Complete opposite ends of the state. But we also want to go back to Maine for a vacation sometime so we’ll see. Lots of travel plans stuck in the back pocket, just waiting for “time” as always. Once we retire, we’ll have a bit more time. Our only limits then will be finances or health issues.

So we have spent some time planning our upcoming trip to East TN in December. The last I typed we just knew the dates and what we wanted to do but we have the timeline down so I can go ahead and book hotels. I’ve figured out one hotel and just have to pin down the other. I’m almost ready to get them booked.

We have had family conversations about Christmas. As of now, it appears that Cody and Katy will not be coming for Christmas because everyone will be coming there at River’s birthday in January. At this news I’ve requested that we at least be able to “do Christmas” together at their house. I was glad to have our little bundle of joy last year but I missed our special Christmas time still and I don’t want that to become habit. It’s important to me to have our “opening”. It doesn’t have to be on Christmas Day, as some have demanded in our family, but I’ll take what I can get.

So now conversations have to happen about what is happening as it is time to order gifts before we get so involved with Mom’s move and getting her settled. Will need to have time to ship things there or just order on Amazon and send there. I’m not sure what the answer is. They also don’t have much space and there is construction going on around their house with the addition of a new bedroom. So…we have to figure this out so we can get things started. We are flying to TX so won’t have a car load of gifts to take.

We’ve also asked for Christmas Wishes from them and also Aunt Martha and Uncle Ken, who also wanted ours. So we have things we will be ordering now, again, once I can get some time. Weekend is coming although it is shaping up to be quite busy. It seemed a clean slate but as the week has gone by we have added more and more to it. We are to take Fancy for a trim, Mom wants to eat breakfast out, George wants to go to yard sales while out. I’ll have to have a few hours to do laundry and prep for next week, a mini grocery run, need to get these hotels booked, some shopping done on line, and get this video done. The video is screaming at me. It longs to be finished. An hour a week doesn’t get it, lol! So I’ll be blogging a bit less to get some of this done. You all seem pretty busy too. I am sure people are reading as I get about a 100 hits a day but not all are serious blog readers!

So all that is going on around here is mainly this:

Gearing up for Mom’s move as George orders the moving van this weekend. PTO time is already put in and the time requested. They better NOT move the dates around at this point as we have already scheduled our lives and asked off for work and all.

Getting plans in place for Christmas, shopping starting.

Getting these hotels booked.

And me over here trying my best to get through the to do list so I can work on a video, most of my own personal to do’s taking a back seat to all the rest of the goings on. Tis that time of year. But I’m determined and I plan to find time to finish the video this weekend. Just a few more edits and tweaks – almost there. I just love the entire process of making/editing the videos. The hard part for me is just finding the time. It’s fun to finish one up and then pull in the next folder into the time line to see what we have and how to blend it together. I’m usually surprised as I forget things I’ve video’d. But I’m anxious to get more done as I keep them in my iPhone/iCloud til I’m finished but it still makes my phone slow at times. I’ll delete them once the video is made. They are already in folders but once I deleted them off my phone and they showed up black in the video. So I’m afraid to do that now in case there was a connection. But this is the time of year I get further behind in the videos. We have less time due to the holidays.

So the busiest time of the year is upon us. Do you feel things ramping up on your end? Or is it just us? We are just pushing early this year due to Mom’s Move falling at the time we would normally be out shopping so want to make sure we get it all in before we go in sane.

Better go and get on the road. My soul and my psyche needs more coffee. Ya’ll have a splendid weekend ahead. I’d love to hear your plans for the weekend. Anything special?