Sitting at home
January 5th, 2012

It’s a fun day in the Barnett household.  Justin’s ears are blocked up so he can’t hear very well.  My throat and sinuses are raw, so I can’t talk very well.  I decided that if I need to tell him something, I’m going to carry a dry-erase board and write it to him.  Or text it to him.  :)  Mostly, I’m just hoping that we don’t catch Isaac’s ear infections.

My hands are already much less chapped than they were on Tuesday.  It’s amazing to me how quickly my hands react to the change in humidity.

I used my new coffee maker this morning.  It was awesome!  We picked up coffee and filters at the store yesterday afternoon.  It’s so easy!  I mean, not as easy as Erica’s spiffy Keurig machine, but still pretty easy.  I’ll try to take pictures or something tomorrow morning when I do it again so I can show you.

We’re pretty sure that what hit me on Monday wasn’t the flu, mostly by the fact that Justin hasn’t had any stomach troubles at all.  Generally, he’s going to catch whatever it is that I’ve got, if it’s contagious.  It’s surprising that I got sick first this time, actually, with this stupid cold.  But my immune system was already taking a hit, so that’s probably how that happened.

I’m already frustrated at being sick.  My nose is sore and flaking and my head hurts.  It’s annoying and I’m ready for it to be done already.  I have stuff I wanted to do in the handful of days between getting home from our trip and going back to work.  But “the best laid schemes of mice and men” and all that.

You know, I just looked up that reference.  Did you know it’s from a poem from 1785?  It’s nearly impossible to read about half of it (link) because of the changes in English, but it’s a man talking to a mouse scampering away from the nest he just plowed up in his field.  (Wikipedia has a translation here.)  I find that interesting.

Anyway, I hope you’re all doing well.  I think I’m going to try to drag our luggage upstairs and try to get some semblance of tidiness to this place.  Or find another anime to watch and drink more hot chocolate…  Decisions, decisions… :)

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Home again
January 4th, 2012

Justin and I pulled into the driveway last night shortly after 2:30.  Other than being miserably late in the morning, the travel went very smoothly.  Both of our flights left and landed on time, the gate for our connecting flight was the gate directly next to where the first airplane landed, and all our luggage made it safely home.  Slightly damaged, but nothing terrible.  All in all, it was a very smooth flight home.

This morning, I had to drag myself out of bed for a 9:00 dentist appointment, which I was late to because I set my alarm to ring at 9:30 instead of 8:30, so I woke up at 9:00 and ran out of the house.  I didn’t even brush my teeth!

And then we had a chiropractor appointment at 2:00 where I got to tell about falling down the stairs and get all the kinks twisted out of my neck.  So many kinks!!

Other than that, and picking up a bunch of stuff from the grocery store, we’ve been incredibly lazy.  Our luggage is still on the floor of the dining room — sprawling open because I dug through there to find my glasses at 9:00 and then pawed through there again to find my new tea infuser this afternoon.

I’m feeling miserable.  My tailbone is still kind of sore, especially after all that sitting on hard airplane seats.  But mostly my nose won’t stop dripping and I’m sneezing.  I keep getting chilled and my sinuses are raw.  It’s probably just a cold, but it’s not any fun at all.

Between the tailbone, the cold, the bruise I got from running into an armrest on the airplane, and the mild case of food poisoning I dealt with on Monday that’s still lingering a little bit, I’m just a mess.

I’m assuming that was food poisoning, anyway.  It lasted all Monday afternoon and evening, but I’m feeling mostly better now.  I got a little green in the grocery store for a while this afternoon, but I haven’t been having the stomach cramps since yesterday.  (Tim, Erica, Luke, and Krista, did any of you also eat the stuffed mushrooms at the Chinese buffet?  I’m trying to pin down what it might have been…)

I miss you all.  It was wonderful getting to see everybody!  And I am happy to be sleeping in my own bed and lounging on my own couch watching TV.  But I’ll be honest:  I almost started to cry several times between Sunday and yesterday evening, saying good-bye to everybody.  It sounds like everyone made it safely back to their destinations, even though several of us are still sick.  And I know we’re all ready to get back into our own routines and prepare for everything that 2012 is going to bring.  It’s going to be an exciting year!  And I can’t wait to see you all again in November!

I love you all!

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Merry Christmas!
December 25th, 2011

Merry Christmas everybody!

Justin and I are lounging around in our pajamas, eating breakfast, and relaxing a little this morning.  Our church had a big service last night and no service this morning — most of the ministry staff travels to spend the holiday with family and they encourage the rest of us to do the same:  spend time with loved ones and enjoy!

We’re having people over this afternoon, and I’ll have to get up and shower here in a little bit and make sure that the house is presentable and there are enough clean plates for everybody to use later on.

I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to call later this afternoon, especially with guests in the house, but I wish you all the merriest of Christmases and I hope you’re having a fantastic day and I can’t wait to see you all soon!  (I texted as many of you as my phone would let me earlier and then realized that some of you were probably in church already — SORRY!)

God bless you all and be well!  I LOVE YOU!

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First day of vacation!
December 23rd, 2011

Today was my first day of my vacation and I did what I bet about half of you do/would do on your first day of vacation, too:  I CLEANED HOUSE.  Okay, first I slept in, but when I got up and out of bed, the first thing that came to mind as being my Task For The Day was serious cleaning of the house.  Dusting.  Vacuuming.  Putting all those things that have been put not quite where they belong actually back in their correct places.  AWESOMENESS.

There was a brief interlude toward the beginning of my cleaning quest when my fantastic husband took our Miele vacuum apart to figure out why it wasn’t working.  Turns out the problem could have been fixed by replacing a $100 part OR by putting in a $1.50 rubber washer.  Guess which one we did?  Woo!  $1.50 fix!  And nobody lost an eye to the crazy spring in the cord reel mechanism!  WIN!

So Justin fixed our vacuum and I went absolutely to town on the cleaning.  I dusted, I mopped, I finally got the bedding off the sofa bed that’s been on there for months and months, I dragged all the random stuff that’s been piling up at the bottom of the stairs piled up in my office where I can figure out what to do with it all, I finally strung the Christmas light up the banister of the stairway, and, happy day, I vacuumed!  The vacuum has been broken since before we got our Christmas tree.  This place has been in serious need of cleaning.

I finally stopped when it just wasn’t as much fun anymore, which was maybe 4 or 5 hours of cleaning?  I’m not sure.  But the living room, dining room, kitchen, stairway, and bedroom are looking awesome!  And tomorrow I’ll tackle my office and laundry and getting stuff back up into the attic and maybe pull some of the leaves out of the bushes in the front yard.  I’m not totally sure yet.  I still can’t find the stupid key to the storage closet outside, so I can’t get to the rakes or big trash bags.  And we have been looking all over the place for that dang key!  It’s getting seriously annoying.

Justin thought I was a little crazy because I wanted to clean and I didn’t mind that he wasn’t doing any cleaning to help.  He did help (awesomely) fixing the vacuum and helping take care of the light/fan fixture in the living room.  And tomorrow he’s going to help with laundry and he’ll clean the bathrooms (I hate cleaning bathrooms) and getting stuff into the attic.  But it felt SO GOOD getting the house clean again!  It’s like all this static noise is gone and I can think about other things.  I don’t look in the living room and see how much the end table needs dusting and that there’s bedding on the bed and all the pine needles on the floor.  Instead, I’m thinking about all the mess in my office right now, and how there’s paperwork that needs to get addressed and boxes that need to go into the attic and handwash clothes that need to get washed.  I’ve reduced the mess that I need to think about down to just a handful of places and that’s such an enormous relief I don’t think I can explain it.

After tomorrow, the mess should be small enough that I won’t have any of that static at all and I’ll be able to focus on other things — like getting ready to see everybody over the holiday!

Our neighbors are having a party tonight — I can hear loud bass music pulsing through the walls and people chatting outside.  Justin just went to the grocery store to buy a frozen pizza for dinner.  I’m sitting on the recliner in his office typing this in my pajamas, freshly showered after all that cleaning.

It’s been a wonderful day and I’m looking forward to a continuation of the wonderful for the next two weeks!!

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I quit!
December 19th, 2011

I handed in my official resignation letter today.  My boss already knew it was coming, since I told him I didn’t apply for the job that they put up on the job board as a counter offer to the position pulling me away.  But I have my offer letter now for my new job and I’ll walk that over to HR tomorrow sometime.  I’ve given my present job my 2 week notice.

The unintentional thing about that is that I’m here this week – one of a very short list of employees in the office this week – and then I’m out on vacation for 2 weeks.  So I’ll work this week and then when I come back from vacation, I’ll start my new job!  Talk about short notice! 

It makes for interesting compare and contrast to my previous job in Toccoa.

When I quit my job in Toccoa, I gave them a 3 months notice.  And when I left they still hadn’t interviewed anyone to fill my position.  This job:  They’re hoping to offer someone the job later this week.

When I quit Toccoa, there was a huge amount of guilt laid on because I was leaving my “ministry.”  Here, people have told me to do what I think is best for my career.  They’re sad to see me go, but completely supportive.

It’s exciting and terrifying.  And I’ve got a couple days to try to wrap up all my projects, get word around to people who work with me on different projects, hand off the 5S program to someone else, and try to write up a manual explaining how I do a lot of the things that I do.  And I’ll miss the people who I work with right now, but I’m looking forward to a new direction.

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