Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

It’s the little things, you know?  That add up to the huge irritations and inconveniences.

That’s been my life, of late.

Actually, considering all that’s gone on, I’ve been in pretty good – make that extremely good – spirits.  But, alas, my composure sort of slipped this afternoon.  I was confused, irritated and impatient, for which I had to apologize. 

Well . . . of course, I didn’t have to apologize, but I did.  And to a very sweet lady at the local hospital who was reading my lab orders and trying to figure out what all to do with them and if and when she could draw my blood for the tests ordered, etc.

Sigh . . .

I suppose having the shingles and being in great pain for two weeks, despite pain meds still once or twice a day, would be enough to get anyone down.  Add to that, being out of town when the horrific pain began, coming home for one day, which was terribly busy, and then having back to back company for the next full week and you begin to get the picture.

Thanksgiving day I felt a bit better, but was on my feet in the kitchen cooking for five hours straight to prepare our Thanksgiving dinner.  We’d been so busy and I’d felt so bad that I did not prepare the first thing until about 10 a.m. Thursday morning.  Dinner was a bit late, too.  It wasn’t ready until 2:30 p.m. instead of my planned time of 1:J30.  That was because (here’s where the "minor" irritations really began piling up) my watch stopped in the middle of cooking, which I didn’t figure out for 45 minutes.  Boy, that caused some consternation on my part because I then had no idea how long several of my dishes, including the turkey breast, had been really cooking.  

It was "guess"-timation from that point on, but Tom still declared the meal perfect, so I was happy, although tired (and in pain by then).

Friday was my first day at home alone for the first time in two weeks.  I was hoping to rest all day, which I’m supposed to be doing to help get over the shingles, but instead I did five loads of laundry (I was way behind, plus we’d had a lot of company), folded all of those and hung them up, changed the sheets out on the bed, scrubbed – and I do mean scrubbed! – the plates beneath the burners on our electric stove, scoured out both drains in our kitchen sink and generally wore myself out all day long, without ever sitting down.  Luckily, Tom wanted a leftover hot Thanksgiving meal for dinner in front of the TV, so I was finished for the day.

As I was taking the dirty towels off the double towel rod in our bathroom Friday morning, I noticed the left side plate against the wall was pulling out a bit.  I showed it to Tom, who said he’d screw it back in after work on Friday. (Newspapers have to be put out every day, so he had to work all day Friday.)  Another "minor" irritation that not only needed to be repaired (like my watch that I was missing really badly), but also showed that we had now been in our new house for a few too many months.  (I mean, is that possible?  We thought we’d have at least five to 10 good years before we needed any work done on the house, and it’s only been a few months, for goodness sakes!)

Anyway, back to the loose screw on the towel rod. 

To Be Continued . . ..