Christmas Shopping Local and Getting Things Done at Home

George and I had a great day yesterday. I needed to have my morning until lunchtime at least to get a few things done. And then we ventured out on the town for the afternoon hours for Christmas shopping, to vote, and he needed a few things from the store for our dinner last night.

I started on laundry in the early hours of the morning. I got up about 4:30 or 5 because my eyes are normally used to being open then. This helped get most of the laundry done.

I wanted to show your our very inexpensively bought laundry baskets that are collapsible (might come in handy to take on vacation or for other uses). Because of Dexter dog, I put these in our rooms. You cannot lay anything down for a second without him pouncing on it. He loves socks and underwear, but will chew a hole in anything in a second. So I ordered these to keep in our rooms all week til the weekend and then we can drag them to the laundry room.

It was a productive morning. The kitchen has been behind on the dishes because the dishwasher is not getting things clean. It leaves baked on crumbs into all our glasses and then of course they have to be rewashed or run through again, and in most cases have to soak before I can even get it off. So George has been working on it trying to figure out what to do. He bought some kind of conditioning cleaner with vinegar in it I think and ran an empty cycle with that. I think we are going to start using the extra long cycle. So I had a huge amount of dishes to wash yesterday morning. And cleaned the counters real good.

I had to call Comcast as the streaming box in the kitchen would not work. The first call took about an hour and then they did some kind of update that was going to take another hour and if it didn’t work we were to call them back. It was late at that point and then life got busy and it’s been over a week now, so I finally called back and they started to go through the process again and I stopped them and said “no we’ve done all that – look at the records – just send us the box please. So they always thank us for being with them since 2008 (longer than that really but if you add in other addresses and locations) but anyway we’ve been in THIS house since 2008. So they have promised to send us the new box and we’ll send the funky one back. It must have been second hand to begin with b/c it didn’t work very long.

I also got our sheets changed on the beds – both of them and have them washing. I have two sets of sheets. So go the next set on so as not to have to wait on these to be washed.

Picked out my outfits for the work week.

And promoted the video a bit on social media. Thank you for watching if you did. I appreciate it. If not, and you want to check it out, it’s in the previous post.

The next one is about the Hermitage visit, home of Andrew Jackson, one of our past presidents. It’ll be more informative, set to good music, and may be surprising as to how much it has to offer. Hoping to get it finished for next Saturday. I think I will be able to. I think that there probably won’t be a lot of views for that. I remember thinking the Nashville zoo one would get some watches and it didn’t really. But I want that video put together for me, if no one else.

I started to video our shopping day yesterday and I decided I was not in the mood to. I just put a few things on social media instead. If you want to follow me on Insta you can @lesshustlemorecoffee and I try to post daily on there as to what is going on each day and lots of daily Dexters!

I did take a few pics of our outing. Including Nutrition Nova where I got a $10 replacement shake with lots of protein. It tasted like Isagenix but I can get the isagenix one at $4 a shake. I may order some more as I miss them. Or I may figure out how to make them on my own. I don’t drink them a lot in the summer. But I think in Spring of 2023 I’ll fix me a smoothie bar set up. I’m going to start collecting the recipes and then in 2023 will buy things like greens powder, protein powder, and peanut butter powder. I’ve got to get some of the weight off again and these types of shakes really helped me being high in protein. I had so much energy too.

We tried to vote and was unable to because of the traffic for Halloween in the Park. Our voting district is in there. We could have if we wanted to wait but we’ll try next Saturday. I won’t have time during the week this week. I have to take Dexter to doggie daycare tomorrow and pick him up. And Tuesday is my long day with payroll and Mom’s extra hour that I work to cover our once a month eye injection Friday. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I will have to live at work to try and get my “last man on the totem pole” work done to save the day and the department from looking a fool. To put it bluntly “ain’t none of us in the department had time for quarter end processing”. It’s just so behind I can’t even begin to worry about it other than to keeping saying “it is what it is”. I refuse to pressure myself like I have in the past where it nearly makes me sick every quarter. But I will throw some extra hours at it out of the kindness of my heart so we don’t all look like bafoons. A week to do a month long process, doesn’t work for me and is quite frankly impossible. I’ve done what I could do ahead of time but it’s just been busy getting our normal payrolls done and with garnishments and employee needs and needs from other departments and fixing errors on everyone’s part, and system issues, and incorrect information and the list goes on of our inefficiencies, so yeah…it just simply is what it is. So all that to say is early voting won’t happen unless we can get to our voting center next Saturday, no time to have a life of my own this week.

We enjoyed our shopping day out visiting several stores – maybe 5 or 6 or so in the Mount Juliet area. One was a consignment shop with second hand things and had actually really good prices. I bought like new tops for $13 to $19 dollars each. George was supportive and laughed “I thought we were Christmas shopping” but I found 3 tops and also a pair of cropped jeans. So it was a win situation. I will probably be back in there every week now, lol. Well maybe not every week but the shop is at the end of our neighborhood.

This was so much fun going in and seeing people in the local shops. And so many of them had really good prices. One or two were beyond my normal means and I probably won’t be back unless it’s Christmas. But this was fun.

There was another 2nd hand shop that had lots of decor items and I could have bought up several things yesterday that I wanted but I let them go. They had artwork for the walls very inexpensive. And Tia’s boutique was very moderately and affordably priced.

We also went to Aldi and had a very successful grocery shopping run there. I bought some fruit and some meats, we bought dark chocolate, and several frozen items, and a few canned. We bought a bottle of wine that looked good.

So last night we came home and put up groceries, finished up some chores and projects, and took care of Dexter. George fixed a special chili with a packet of Giuseppe’s chili mix.

And I read some in my book. I’m making headway and determined to finish it before the end of the year. Probably by end of November. It’s been a good book but I think it’s as long as Gone with the Wind. It’s historical fiction about a lady that lived in one of the houses (plantation houses) that we had dinner in not long ago. I did a video on it a while back just showing the outside. Our financial advisor lives there. And out of courtesy did not film anything inside of course. But the book mentions a lot of the other plantation houses at that time also. And the names of people that surprisingly are street names in Nashville. It’s been very interesting to read about things happening, including the civil war, then you live and are familiar with the routes and areas. So I’ve been reading just a few pages a week but getting more chapters in recently. Some weeks I’ve not picked it up at all. But I’m 3/4 through so it’ll go fast from here I think. It’s been so good and well written too.

Well I only have 20 minutes to get ready for church. Busy day today too. No time to give you our to do list for the week but I’ve pretty much told you anyway. And today we have really will go get Mom’s groceries and the rest we couldn’t get at Aldi yesterday. Have a store to stop at today and will get a quick lunch with Mom and take the dog to the dog park and then to finish our to do list late afternoon. Enchiladas for dinner.

Be back mid week or so I think. Much going on.