Things That Make Me Grumpy

 There are some things that make me super grumpy.  Take my ResMed CPAP machine.  Apparently they either have a manufacturing issue or a redesign boo-boo.  Either way I just installed power supply box number 3 for the year 2024.  Please understand that I am a fiber artist not an engineer.  I am not an expert. This is not my field of study, expertise or work area.  However this is July 19th and that means a power supply is lasting a little over 2 months each. I personally think that they should last much longer. Maybe even a year or 2.

I would like to point out that this is not a way to build customer satisfaction.  It is also bad for the environment.  E waste is hard to dispose of properly, many people do not have the knowledge or resources to dispose of e waste, so most land up in landfills.  It is definitely not the way to increase your bottom line. ResMed you have to do better. 

Another thing that makes me really grumpy is when a super big corporation buys a health food store then a few years down the line a new CEO takes over.  The new CEO decides that there are too many items that the store carries.  He looks at his labor cost and eliminates a very large portion of the healthy and vegan food, only to replace it with junk foods.  Yes, the “food” you replace the healthy food with is junk food. The employees are instructed to send the customers to the frozen food section for the items that we used to get made in house. The things do not taste as good.  Also cutting back the number of dairy free alternatives that taste good and not like cardboard is a mistake. I personally don’t consider soda to be a healthy choice.  Yes, Amazon and Whole Foods this is you. 

You have also turned a good portion of the front end into an Amazon return hub.  Eliminating indoor seating in the middle of the desert. You have cut off the restaurant hours to 2 days a week, instead of 7.  You have also cut the quality of the prepared food to go. Yes, people have noticed.  I am now buying my fruit at different grocery stores.  Safeway has a nice selection of cut up fruit at a better price.  Sprouts has a better selection of fresh fruit at a lower cost too. Trader Joe’s has a limited but good selection of fresh fruits and vegetables at a lower price.  

The specialty sector of the food industry requires knowledge of the food industry is a very hard market to do well in. It requires someone with a food industry background and experience. The food sector typically has a lower profit margin. That is usually made up with volume. Maybe it’s time to hire someone with experience in the field to run Whole Foods  

The last thing that is making me grumpy right now is my body and its inability to handle the heat. I was in a warm room for 3 hours on Wednesday morning.  It is Saturday morning and I am still dealing with the aftermath.  My spoons are low. I am aching almost every where.  I want my 30 something body back.  

This blog post was written over 2 days.  

TTFN

Is The Day Over Yet?

As I write this, I note that the time is only 11:30 am. I have been up with Eric since midnight. He had leg cramps and I did 1 1/2 hours of physical therapy to try to loosen the muscles and cox him back to sleep. He usually falls asleep during physical therapy, but not this morning. Being so tired after so much activity left me on the nauseated side. So it took another few hours to convince my tummy that all was right with the world. So I took a nap from 4:45 to 6:30 am.

Breakfast was on the run. A vegan scone from Whole Foods that I picked up yesterday. You really have to try the oatmeal one, it is so yummy, even better than the chocolate chip one and you know how much I like chocolate. I did not have time to make tea so lemonade it was. Somehow my tired mind decided that a scone and lemonade was a perfect breakfast.

Eric and I headed across town to a doctor's appointment. His g-tube is fine, but he has a killer headache, I think it matches mine. I wonder if it is from lack of sleep or the storms or both. So as per the doctor's advice, I gave Eric Tylenol and put him to bed to watch and hope that he sleeps off his headache. I will slip him extra water today too. We will also keep an extra eye on him too.

While all this was happening I managed to insult someone, because I did not have her direct line. I was never given her direct line. I am throwing my hands up with this one. It is too silly to deal with at the moment, I am not in the mood to stroke egos today, you need to look elsewhere for that today.

All this and the only cleaning I have managed today was sending roomba through Eric's room while we were out. I still need to put away laundry, clean the kitchen and dust mop the hall. I am really not sure If I will get all that done and my to do list too. I am doubting knitting or spinning time.

Well the boss a.k.a. Eric needs me so off I go.

The Small Things in Life

Sometimes it is the smaller things in life that I am most grateful for.  Take yesterday for instance.  We managed to get to the monthly local vendor fair at Whole Foods. We walked around inside the store and tried some samples.  Then we had lunch at the in store bar.  We got to listen to some great music while we were eating lunch.  

Then it was a little shopping and we headed home a lot more relaxed.   As I said before it is the small things for which I am grateful. 

A Busy Sunday

I managed to get all 5 loads of laundry done today despite my very late start. I did not get the first load in until 7:30 a.m. which is quite late for summer.  I usually stop the washing machine when it hits 100 out side and then wait until it cools down to 100 again. if I am very lucky I can keep things running until 11:00 a.m. or so and then restart everything back up after dinner. This is what I mean by giving the appliances the afternoon off.

The great part about living in Tucson in the summer is that the grocery stores tend to be pretty empty when it is over 100. So today I went in the middle of the day. I got everything I needed without getting bumped by a bunch of carts. This was a good thing today. My Safeway has gone through another upgrade. I am not sure if this is do to the merger with Albertson's or that a brand new Whole Foods will open up across the street in a few months. This meant that I had to go up and down all the aisles. Everything was in a new place, this makes it hard to do a quick trip in and out.  I noticed that quite a few things were gone and a lot of upgraded stuff was brought in. They have also added a lot of "organics" gluten free and "health food" along with bins full for all kinds of things including teas, pasta, grains and specialty items.

I managed to do a bunch of odds and ends but no big projects got finished. Yesterday I tried to cut back on caffeine and today I got the headache in return. I guess I will try that at a later date. I am waiting for Eric to settle down for the night, but it might be a while.

Mostly on the Mend

Eric and I are doing much better. The antibiotics are working their magic. John on the other hand has gotten what I hope is a milder form of what we had. 

I did figure out why I was running out of clean clothes. I have not done any laundry for John and I since Eric got sick.  Today I took care of that. Yes Eric still had more dirty clothes than we did. I have been doing at least 2 loads a day for him since he got sick. 

I did venture out today to Whole Foods for a few things we had run out of and dinner. It was nice to get out but it did leave me a bit tired. 

After dinner I finished a hat that I had started 2 days ago. Then promptly cast on the next hat with bulkier yarn. I did not get much spinning done today. It seemed that every time I got my rythem I got interrupted.  After 30 minutes and 4 interruptions I gave up. 

We'll it is time to call it a night. 

Hump Day Do Over Please. Minus the....

I started out today already behind schedule before I even got out of bed. Eric had an early morning doctors appointment across town. I managed to get there on time, but by the time they were done with their cranky computers we were 5 minutes late.  Since I did not get breakfast before we left, I did stop off at Nadine's for breakfast to go.  Two shopping bags full of baked goods later we were back in the car headed home.  After some green tea and Danish the world was a little better place. At least in my corner.

I also managed to break 7 nails today and the strange part is that I did not do any laundry. The cleaning bug hit between appointments and I got everything done but mopping the floors.  Then it was time to head out across town again.  

We managed to get there on time. Since it is snow bird season ( not one of the 20 or so handicapped spaces we need to deploy the ramp were open) we parked at the back of the lot and walked across the  lot. We also saw an older man park his truck, taking up 3 parking spaces for 1 truck. Get out of his car to check his parking. He seemed very satisfied that his truck was in 3 parking spaces and headed in for his appointment.  The appointment took so long that I finished 1 hat, then cast on hat 2 for the day and almost finished it too. I did manage to finish 3 hats today so for those who are keeping track that is 26 hats finished so far and should be finished well before the November Knitting Guild meeting.  Oh, by the way Eric is fine.

On the way home we stopped at Whole Foods to pick up dinner and a few odds and ends. It took John's will power to skip all the goodies. Did you ever notice that they sample more goodies at dinner time than they do durning the day? I even managed to pick up the wrong cheese for Thursday nights pizza , since there was not a line the cashier went and traded the cheese out for me. Then it was time to head home.

Eric was very happy to be home for his percussion treatment. Since we were running so late we had canceled Eric's aide for the night.  John and I make a great team and shared getting everything for Eric done.

I also think that this was the first time that we had dinner close to 7 pm since John retired. It was a simple dinner of tuna cranberry salad sandwiches on the marbled rye that I got at Nadine's earlier today with gingered beets and butternut squash with glazed onions from Whole Foods.

I also looked at my current yarn storage briefly tonight and may not have to buy more yarn storage containers after all. I think I will handle that on Friday afternoon.

A Wonderful Day

Today was a good day all around. This morning the stitches came out. I can not tell you how wonderful that feels. To celebrate I tried to stop by a yarn store for a treat ,but mercifully they were closed. I have knit through enough yarn that I can take some out of the garage and put it away in the house.

 Eric is well enough to go to his program tomorrow. I am still knitting at a good clip. I only have 6 more soap bags to knit for the fund raiser. Then I will use the scrap bag to make What Nots.

Whole foods had some oranges that I like in stock today. They also had some beets for tomorrows beet salad. I also picked up some of the chicken we liked.

So I am ending this short update on a very good note.

How did It get to be Wednesday?

We are still in recovery mode from Eric being sick. Not a lot got done around the house today. I was caught up on laundry so I only had 2 loads to do today. I also think the worst of the cold snap is behind us. Although I do find it very curious that Eric was home sick during the cold snaps of the last 2 years.

I have hit row 101 on Teri's shawl and really think that I will have to spin a fourth skein to get the project finished. I should start spinning that tomorrow. I am almost finished with my current hat on the knitting needles. After that one get done the monochromatic one is next.

I also got out to the new Whole Foods store at River and Craycroft. I have never seen that parking lot so full. I do like the way that they transformed the interior of the store. If you have seen the other stores that this replaced you will know instantly what I mean. It is very up-scale with a bakery, the small snacks did seem a bit pricey to me, but then again I am very competent in the kitchen and think nothing of throwing a quick something together. If You are Gluten Free they have a whole lot of little areas although the store for you. The produce section was nice, I really liked the golden beets that they had. The beets made a nice addition to dinner. The wine section appeared to be quite large, but then again someone else will have to drink our share. I could not get very close to the meat or deli counters but they seemed worth another trip back in a week or two when things slow down a bit. I like that they still carry dairy free because a lot of stores are dropping dairy free to go gluten free. Now if we could just reclaim some of the ice cream section and get rid of everything coconut. Yes, I know it is for the Paleo Diet but do you really think cave men ate ice cream?

Well I have to go break apart the ginger and cashew chocolate bark I made for tomorrows guild meeting. I will be there even if Eric is home. John said he will stay with Eric so I can go.

La Shana Tova

First off I would like to wish everyone a sweet New Year. May you have a year full of health, happiness and learning. With that out of the way I would like to say that I admire my friends that have spent the entire week cooking for their families for this occasion. I could not pull my self together enough to do any cooking this year. I would like to thank the cooking staff of my local Whole Foods for the wonderful grilled salmon and the side dishes that I served for dinner. Also to Beyond Bread for the bread and honey cake.

It just seems to me that the sicker that Eric becomes the less I am ready for the holidays. This is coming from the person who gets the most excited about birthdays and holidays in this house. So tonight instead of putting the last minute touches on a holiday dinner, I sat at my spinning wheel and plyed some yarn. I still had time so I started spinning another skein. For some reason this gave me more joy than cooking tonight.

I will probably not understand the reason for this for years to come. For right now I will chalk it up to being to tired. Also not having the energy to put into a truly fabulous meal or the shopping involved. With that said my sincere hope is that Eric sleeps tonight.