Less Hustle More Coffee

We have had lots of beautiful sunrises and sunsets and rainbows. I’ll scatter the pics across today’s post. The camera doesn’t quite catch the beauty, especially in the window. I’ve used my photo editing on the Mac to try and correct the photo to what I actually saw. The iPhone camera seems to be deteriorating over time. Is that possible? It just doesn’t have the precision it used to, but soon I’ll be upgrading to the 13 – either Pro or Max – not sure which.

I hesitate to even blog today. Have mostly been working on quarter end and the next video while at home. Thank goodness at home, I’ve had less to do. It’s the calm that God is delighting us with before the storm of a busy season and moving again of Mom and getting her settled.

I only have two more returns to do today and both are bigger ones. The federal return for Transport, I stayed and worked on yesterday and have a draft copy ready to go. I will seek advisement from my boss on the COVID amounts and how that impacts it. I will let her look at it before sending it in to have it blessed before I do. I also have an STT return to do and pay the tax for – for Oregon. That takes about 1.5 to 2 hours and the computer (online) does not save your work for manual entry. So you have to have something to drink, have been to the bathroom, and a good stretch of time, and no interruptions because if times out – you are screwed and have to start all over. Can you tell I’ve been there done that?

I had a return yesterday that even though it had a save button, I didn’t know that the system had already timed me out. I had stopped to answer a question or phone call or something like that and went back to it. (This was doing the Oregon “all in one” return where I have to manually enter all the employees, their earnings, their withholdings, their hours worked). I entered everyone and it let me but when I went to save it – it would not do anything. I printed out the page before trying to save it (thank goodness) as I had looked up all that info from various reports. But I had timed out and it went back to the log in. (Insert eye roll emoji.) So putting it back at least when I entered it the 2nd time – I at least had a print out and didn’t have to look up the data from various sources again. Except it was in a different order (insert favorite eye roll emoji here). Then I was .52 cents off, lol lol. But I found it pretty quickly.

I wasn’t going to eat lunch out but this week I’ve not had any good frozen meals that looked appealing. I’ve eaten those for weeks now. And I don’t want McDonald’s which is the only fast food place really close without driving 10 to 15 minutes. So I went to Santa Fe and got fish tacos one day. It’s really close to work.

They were real corn tortilla’s. The fish was good and on my “list” of things to eat once a week at least. So it was all so good. And I was done in 45 minutes which was surprising.

I did the bad thing and went for fish and chicken dinner at Captain D’s yesterday. It was good to have the time away and my head out of the numbers and papers for a few minutes. It appeared that I would have time to get everything done and I’m on the last stretch and will barely make it.

We’ve had a lot of rainbows.

I’m sorry my iPhone camera is just not pulling through for me these days but hopefully it’s better than nothing. It was also a low light situation with the sun just coming up.

This was a great shot after work yesterday. There’s my car too.

A beautiful display of the storm squall as it passed through and also appeared to be dissipating. I’ve started taking the back roads. The interstates have been full of aggressive drivers lately, people just trying to run over you, pulling in front of you, tailing you, racing and threading in and out of traffic at high speeds. The trucks are going fast and often do not seem prepared to brake (some do and I give them credit), but the ones who don’t taint the outlook of having to drive with them around. Lately there have been people shot at on the interstate, pointing guns at people on the interstate, police chases, horrible wrecks shutting it down (of course, stupid drivers aggressive behavior catching up to them), fatalities, and you know, I want to live to see my grandchild grow up and be able to enjoy my retirement days. So I’ve decided to take backroads. It takes 10 to 15 minutes longer on some days but I just enjoy the ride now and go at safer speeds and usually the crazy people are on the interstate. Not always but usually as they are too impatient to take back roads. There are more lights and school zones. I just have a good audio book on and it gets me through. Or some good music. So my commutes are back up to 45 min long now instead of the 23 minutes on the interstate during virus times. But oh well. At least I’m safer. Not really sure what it will be like when I have to go to the new plant. All that remains to be seen and we’ll either readjust something or make some “difficult decisions”. A lot of our office employees live even further out than me and our offices will be moving south of town. I’m pretty worried about losing a lot of our office staff when the time comes. Some people already spend 45 to an hour getting there and will be looking at doubling their time. Change comes and it comes often and we have to be prepared. At least there are job openings everywhere now. Some even at home or anywhere you want to be as long as there is internet.

I love my job except for maybe a few weeks out of the year, this being one of them. It is not always a convenient job for being able to go see my family in Texas. Quarter end and holidays are always the best times for us personally to go but not the best time for me from a work standpoint. That has been tough. We wanted to go for Thanksgiving which is ideal personally and also for Katy but it puts too much stress on others that have to do my job when I’m gone. So we gave up that idea. Only 3 years to retirement. But we’ll have to see what this move brings and how long the drive is on the back roads because I don’t want to take the interstate. That is in an even rougher part of town.

We have enough going on right now though than to worry about the office job location change and commute. We’ll worry about that one later. Right now we are about to embark on moving Momma again.

Monday we see the house from the inside for the first time. And then a week from today is closing. We are all getting excited. We are not excited for the move itself. I worry about George but it will be easier and we can take our time this time. Mom will have to buy a lot of appliances. We’ll have to line shelves and all that. It’s going to take a bit to get it all settled enough for her to move in. But it’s about to happen.

I like to organize and decorate so will help her with that. I also like unpacking but it’s hard when it’s someone else’s stuff.

I’m also looking forward to having my big bed back, my closet back, my bathroom back and more space across the board. I’m looking forward to us eating while we watch a show and not at the table, so we have time to watch our shows again. George has to rush to the back to Mom’s room where his computer is to pay the bills and do things on line so he is usually doing that after dinner – either that or delaying dinner by doing it before. He often would get in there in the mornings but she is asleep so he can’t do it then. It’s been a reshuffle for sure on our routine but it’s been for a good cause and we knew it was only temporary. When I move back into my bedroom, I will have the bigger closet space and shelving and can get my fall clothes out and will have my shoe rack back instead of this two little baskets I’ve been using. Then I can put my office stuff back in the closet shelves and bring my extra office table back and my supplies and camera equipment can sit about again and I can get the office stuff out from the baskets under the bed. I have to stand on my head to get any thing out of them. So I’m glad Mom will have her own space and we can go back to what we are used to. And to our routines. I’m also going to be glad to have my recliner back. I’ve missed it!

So not only do we have to move Mom but we’ll be doing some internal moves in our own house as well getting things back to the way we like them. Even little things like having my robe hang in the bathroom instead of the bedroom and having my towel rack back. And not having to change the bathroom trash as often. I’ve had to change it every other day instead of the usual once a week. An easy task but that has been one Mom has completely “let me” do. I have to chuckle at that. lol

Anyway, I’m going for more coffee and need to head in to do this last day of Quarter End. I’ll probably be back on Sunday for an update. The last hoorah weekend before we start running around like chickens with our heads cut off again. I’ll work on the video tomorrow instead of blogging but will be back Sunday. I’m making good progress on video but likely be the following weekend before it’s up and live. Just a bit more editing and graphics and overlays and it’ll be time to upload.

Oh but let me leave you with this. This is the audio book I’m doing currently. It’s pretty good. It involved an RV trip is why I downloaded it. ha!

Have a great weekend! What you gonna do this weekend? I think we are gonna rest! Might go to the new Christmas shop though.