Busy December doings

The first week of December is over (see how my weird little German Advent calendar has 8 windows open?) and I feel very on top of things. Last week was card-writing week, and I got 46 written and mailed, plus one we'll give to our next-door neighbor with a plate of cookies, after I bake the cookies. 

All that's left is the German cards. We send three cards to the German relatives and those take a while because we write them in German, which neither of us knows very well, despite Rocket Boy's years and years of study (and my year or two of study). First we have to stress about them for a while, then very slowly and painfully (with some help from Google Translate) we write them, then we feel bad about how lame they are, and then we have to go to the post office and get special stamps, and finally we send them.

I enjoyed the (English) card-writing process -- it didn't feel like drudgery. I broke it down into steps, and there are a lot of steps: (1) order the stamps, (2) buy the cards, (3) draft the letter, (4) get RB's approval, (5) make the copies at Kinko's, (6) finalize the list of recipients and print out a hard copy, (7) mark on the hard copy who gets which card, (8) pull out 10 cards at a time and put stamps and return address labels on the envelopes, (9) write the addresses on the envelopes, (10) write those 10 cards, and continue back and forth with envelopes and cards until they are all done. Oh, and (11) make Rocket Boy sign them too, 10 at a time. And then (12) go to the post office and mail them.

There were only one or two cards that I had to pause over, think about what to write. One friend of Rocket Boy's, in his 80s, has been a problem for a few years: we haven't heard from him in a while, though RB did call him a few years ago. Once or twice our card to him has been returned by the post office and we've had to search for a new address. Last year it didn't get returned, so we had hope that this year's card would get to him, but first, just to be safe, I googled him. Whoops -- here's an obituary from January 2024. Oh well.

I know this is going to happen more and more, as we get older and our friends and relatives get older. Unless we suddenly make some new (younger) friends, our list will shrink. It's OK, it's life.

***

It was a busy week, in general, with some sort of activity every day.

• Monday: Teen A came home from school at lunchtime and I took him to his eye appointment at noon. He's doing well with his contact lenses, and we went ahead and ordered a bunch more (he has to use a new pair each month).
  
• Tuesday: Baby Kitty got his nails trimmed at 1:45 pm and Teen B got his hair cut at 5:30 pm, after which we went to the boba place nearby. According to the FlyLady, December is pamper month -- you're supposed to give yourself little treats every day, as a way to not get frazzled by all the extra work that the holidays cause. So I got myself a mango boba, which was good, but then I was too full to eat Rocket Boy's dinner (mahi mahi burgers). I just had some salad instead.
  
• 
  Wednesday: the wreaths had come in (band fundraiser), so I went to pick ours up around 5 pm. It's hanging on the front porch now, looking a little lopsided, next to the Halloween spider web which is still up (complete with spider).
  
• Thursday: I went in for my 3-month blood tests in the morning, and in the afternoon Rocket Boy went to Golden to attend the holiday party of the agency he's working for as a contractor.
  
• Friday: I got my Covid shot at 2 pm (the new Novavax shot), and at 5:30 pm RB and I left to drive 40 miles south during rush hour to attend the holiday party given by his actual employer, which was held at TopGolf Centennial, a very very weird place (see below).
  
• Saturday: RB, Teen B, and I went to the library for the annual holiday harp concert, which was very lovely as always. My favorite piece was "Tame Her When the Sna Comes," which we've heard them play before. We skipped the Parade of Lights in the evening, though. I was sorry, but the kids weren't interested, so we didn't push it. Another year RB and I can go alone.
  

A little more about that holiday party... I was kind of excited to go to it, since I haven't had the opportunity to go to a work holiday party in many years. I suppose the last one would have been in 2018, when I was a research assistant. I can't remember where we went that year, out to dinner somewhere. Brasserie Ten Ten? It wasn't very good, as I recall. By December 2019 I had quit my job, and after that my only chances to go to holiday work parties would have been with Rocket Boy in St. Louis, so that obviously didn't happen.

Since the party was at a golf place, we knew we shouldn't get super dressed up, but at the same time, it's a holiday party, so you want to dress up a little. I thought I'd wear one of the sweater sets I've recently been able to fit into, but when it came time to get dressed, I waffled. I decided to wear my purple velvet sweater instead (something else I haven't fit into in years) with a purple t-shirt, but when I put it on, the combination looked frumpy. The main problem was that my pants were too big and made me look huge. So I poked around in my closet and found my one pair of non-sweatpant black pants. They were too tight last year, but this year they were loose. And then I pulled a dark green cowlneck sweater out of the closet and decided to wear that. It's stretchy, so it was OK, even though big.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I had this problem: all my clothes a little too big. Yet, I must have -- I've lost weight before. I lost 50 lbs the year after the twins were born. But I don't remember... Anyway, I haven't lost enough weight to start buying new pants -- for instance, today my stomach was bloated and sticking out (more on that below). But hmm, maybe start thinking about it...

The party itself, when we finally got there (traffic was terrible) was really weird. At the golf place we were directed to go up a steep flight of stairs and then to walk "all the way to the right." What we were walking past was a long series of "bays," open to the air and overlooking a huge "green" with different colored areas. The bays consisted of low tables and couches, and beyond each one was a little putting green sort of thing and a lot of consoles. You were supposed to sit and eat and drink, and then one at a time people could go up and hit golf balls out into the air. I didn't try it, but Rocket Boy did.

We introduced ourselves to RB's boss (who he had only spoken to on the phone before), ordered drinks (Sprite and an Arnold Palmer), and then found a place to sit. I noticed an older couple sitting alone looking sad, so I asked them if I could sit in their bay with them. It was a good choice. I think they were about our age, and after several false starts, we managed to have a conversation. The background music was terribly loud, so "conversation" is maybe a little too generous. We shouted at each other for a minute or two, and then took breaks. They turned out to be Republicans, so that was a little worrying, since we obviously weren't. But it's my goal these days to find ways to connect with Republicans (since I refuse to believe in the narrative that says half the country hates the other half), and I did my best. And we ended up getting along fine. It's all about staying off politics and not mentioning Donald Trump.

There were trays of appetizers all over the table, and we sampled those. Chips, dips, veggies, fruit, that sort of thing. I ate some carrots with a crab-cheese dip. For dinner there was a buffet, not very exciting. I had some salad, some roasted veggies, a little bowtie pasta with a cream sauce, and a roll. There was also chicken and beef. Dessert was donut holes, which you could inject with Bavarian cream, chocolate sauce, or raspberry sauce. Very messy. But it was fun. I'm glad we went.

***

Two other mildly interesting things happened this week. There's been a trailer parked across the street from us for a week or two, and we've been puzzled by it. It was big, and a little junky looking, and when we backed out of our driveway we had to be careful not to hit it. Just kind of annoying. We couldn't figure out who it belonged to. Anyway, Thursday evening, while Rocket Boy was away at his other work party, a tow truck came and took it away. There was a car with a City of Boulder sticker on it parked behind it too, I think Parking Enforcement probably. Teen B and I watched through our front window with great interest. If Rocket Boy had been home, he would have gone out and talked to them, but I was shy.

Friday was mess day: we discovered that Sillers, overnight, had vomited and pooped all over the living room and dining room, and was continuing to do so that morning. So I put her outside on the patio while we cleaned. We washed a couple of rugs, sponged off others, sponged off large areas of the floor, and in general had a fun time. I had just vacuumed everything the day before, so I recognized the accidents as brand new. Someone on the neighborhood listserv mentioned that a bobcat had gotten one of their chickens that morning, so I brought Sillers back inside. But by then her problems seemed to be over. I didn't feed her until that evening, and she hasn't had any trouble since. Must have eaten something weird (she loves plastic, so it could have been something like that).

Also on Friday, our next-door neighbor was having some tree-trimming done, and after a while the tree trimmer came and knocked on our door. He explained that our dead aspen in the backyard was leaning against the fence and needed to be taken out and did we want him to do it? I had been in the backyard the weekend before and the aspen wasn't leaning on the fence, but Rocket Boy went out and looked, and sure enough, the aspen had come unattached from the ground and was attempting to fall over, taking the fence with it. So he called the guy who took our other collapsed aspen a few weeks ago (for firewood) and asked him if he wanted this one too, and the guy came, and the two of them managed to get the aspen to fall into our yard, not the neighbor's. The photo shows them pulling on the aspen with a rope.

***

Last night, it being Saturday, Teen B and Rocket Boy and I ate out at Shreddy's, our neighborhood taco place. The kids and I had eaten there twice before, just after it opened, and had two bad experiences, but we had heard that it had gotten its act together, so we tried it again (Teen A was out with friends and didn't want to go). They've changed the setup so that now they have a waitress and they bring your order all at the same time, so that was good. I ordered horchata and a cheese & bean quesadilla. The quesadilla came in 3 pieces -- I ate one and took the rest home. 

Late last night, the part of the quesadilla that I had eaten came back up. And today I have the worst diarrhea I can remember in a long time. So I don't think I'll be going back to Shreddy's, and I've already dumped my leftover quesadilla in the compost. Teen B and Rocket Boy enjoyed all their food and are not sick today, so it's probably just me. Maybe it was the horchata? Diabetics should probably not drink horchata (nor mango boba, by the way). But I really like it.

Time for the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 231
• Weight this morning (after 24+ weeks on Mounjaro): 230.8
  

I am cross about this -- only down .2 lbs after throwing up??? -- but it's not worth it to be cross. Friday and Saturday when I weighed myself I was 229. Eventually I will move on from this "stall." I think the main thing I could do to help myself is exercise. I just haven't wanted to go out and walk in the cold. I need to work on that: shorter walks, a new route that keeps to the sunny side of the street -- anything to get me out there, moving.

And on the plus side, the results of my 3-month A1c test were great! In September my A1c was 6.7, and this week it was 6.3! That's out of the diabetic range, finally, and into the pre-diabetic range. Next goal: the normal range, which starts at about 5.6, I think. 

***

This coming week should be much less busy, with only two things on the calendar so far: the choir concert at the high school on Tuesday night, and the book group coming here on Wednesday. But it's the last week of school before finals, which means there may be projects to complete and whatnot. We're supposed to get a little more snow on Monday, but probably only an inch or less. Our last snow still hasn't melted completely.

For me, it's going to be Shopping Week -- I will attempt to do all my holiday-related shopping. Christmas shopping has gotten very difficult, with the twins not really wanting anything and yet wanting things to open on Christmas morning, and this year I can't buy Rocket Boy a shirt! He has so many shirts, they don't fit in his closet. So shopping will be a challenge, but at the end of the week I will say, DONE, it's OVER, and I can go back to enjoying the season.

I plan to go to a different store, or shopping area, each day. Here are some of the choices:

• Flatirons mall (Old Navy, Macy's, the store with anime things, etc.)
  
• McGuckins, Grandrabbits, JoAnn's, Petco (all in the same general area)
• Target and Barnes & Noble (across the street from each other)
• Downtown -- Pearl Street, the Boulder Bookstore?
  
• Hmm. Out to Walmart and Kohl's in Lafayette? somewhere else?
  

I may be forgetting something. Also, I may end up taking two days to do one or more of these. It is harder for me to shop than it used to be, because I always need to go to the bathroom after a little bit, and not all these stores have bathrooms.

Oh, and the other thing this week is Colorado Gives Day, which is the Colorado version of Giving Tuesday. I will have to figure out who I am giving to this year. I usually give to Hillside School (the dyslexia school where Teen A finally learned to read), the local humane societies and the one in Park County where the cabin is, and an organization in St. Louis that helps poor people there -- Mission St. Louis. Then beyond that I do different things. Sometimes I give to a Desert Tortoise organization, but I've forgotten which one -- there are several. One year I gave to a group that tries to bring music back to Denver schools, and I will forever get their emails. 

I'll have to give this some thought before Tuesday, or perhaps on Tuesday. Rocket Boy may have some ideas too.