27 May 2011 - Friday
Last night I got busy washing kitchen walls, and did not get the sponge cake baked; so I need to get on that this afternoon.
TR and I ran errands this morning and stopped at a yard sale and The Sonshine Corner shop.
http://www.sonshinecorner.com/index.html
While at The Sonshine Corner, TR got some blank note greeting cards and I bought a book about widowhood by Miriam Neff:
From One Widow to Another http://www.widowconnection.com/
Miriam Neff is a fascinating person who is being used by God in many ways to minister to women. Sometimes she is on Midday Connection with Anita and Melinda on Moody Radio. I am going to donate the book to our church library after I read it.
The landlords usually go out of town for the Memorial Day week-end, so we dropped off June's rent this morning. Our landlady asked why we had yellow CAUTION tape all over the driveway. They saw it late last night when they drove past our house on their way home. So we told her about the 3' deep sink hole. The conversation was kind of like this...
LL: Hey, guys! How are you? What is with the yellow caution tape in the drive? Is that something to do with the roofing job?
TR: We have a 3 foot deep sink hole in the drive now. Here's the rent money. Have a great safe holiday! Bye!
LL: Wait a minute! Don't leave! Tell me what happened? Why are you paying the rent so early?
TR & KJM together: Explained the entire sink hole situation. Told LL it is the holiday week-end and we know they are leaving town and just wanted to get the rent to them before they left. (is 4 days really that early?!)
After that great conversation, we stopped at the local diner and each got a piece of pie for take-away.
TR picked peanut butter and I chose rhubarb. We had our pie with coffee after lunch today. Lunch was veggie omelets.
This afternoon, as I play on SS, TR is helping Neil with his landscaping business. His 4-weeks-on and 2-weeks-off chemo treatment schedule is leaving him healthy enough to sit on a mower, but too weak to stand for long periods of time with the weed-whacker. After he is done there, TR will head for work.
Did I mention that this week TR started training J to be his back-up for the hospital outbuildings? A good thing, we were thinking, because of Jon's wedding in Texas this autumn.
Last year, TR wasn't allowed to take off any more than 4 days in a row because there department was short-handed. So he has already told his boss that they can fire him if they want to, but he *WILL* take 2 solid weeks off; he is not missing his son's wedding!
For training, TR gives J instructions, and while J does the daily stuff, TR works on special cleaning projects, like the walls, windows, etc, that only need done periodically. So this has been a good thing because when D was doing the job, he wasn't doing much of it. The outbuildings are filthy, so with J doing the daily stuff, TR is able to get some of the filth cleaned up. And his boss has already received some glowing notes thanking TR for doing a great job.
Sounds like everything is going well and we are FINALLY adjusting to this modified 2nd shift work. This morning, TR's boss called to say that S, who works the hospital trash route, "hurt his arm" and will be off for the next 6 weeks.
So you can probably guess what this means for us. Starting Monday, TR will be on 1st shift again! (At least 6 weeks)! TR was supposed to be OFF on Monday because the outbuildings are closed for the holiday!
So now, TR thinks that J will be assigned as outbuildings person after S comes back to work in 6 weeks; and TR will be back in the hospital on days again.
This is a good news/bad news situation for us. Being morning people, we do much better mentally and physically on 1st shift. And TR loves the patient contact in the hospital. But there is so much political garbage and pure hatred within the staff in his department that he does not relish going back to........ I am praying he keeps his wits about him when he is back there and walks away from bad situations.
Weather-wise, the skies have been overcast all day, and it has already rained a couple times. The temperature is only 60 today, a drop of 17 from yesterday at this time.
Thanks to all this rain, the strawberry bed is semi-flooded and the main garden bed (which we were hoping to plant this week-end) looks like a large puddle. The grass near the beehive and in some places in the side and back yards is about 18 inches high.
