Weekly Review January 29 '21

 When I was writing last week, Frank was gone to work and I didn't know when he was going to get back. He didn't get home until after 8:00 pm, but thankfully he decided to postpone his overnight job (otherwise, he would have gone straight to that job without coming home at all...there's no way he could have done another night's work on only 3 hours of sleep!) so he was able to stay home and go to bed, once he got home. This week has been much calmer for him although he's always really busy with work. At least he didn't have any overnight jobs this week, which helps a lot. He's pretty busy working on building a new database, plus he's had a decent amount of work to do for clients too.

I took both tax tests on Saturday and I got my results on Monday. I passed both of them...only missed one question on each test. That means I didn't have to do much with taxes this week (just answer a few emails from the site coordinator and sign some papers) and I enjoyed the break! I feel like I was still pretty busy but I'm not sure why. I did get to talk to Jared one day for a while to help answer some questions he had about his tax return. It was nice to take some of that stuff I've been learning and put it to some practical use.

I did better with exercising this week but I still didn't get it done every day. I've had more trouble sleeping lately--have nights that I wake up and can't go back to sleep for hours--so that means I wake up later and don't always have time to exercise. Hopefully I will move back into a better sleep cycle soon.

I did a little bit of cleaning and de-cluttering this week. It's going very slowly but that's okay because I am seeing improvements. This week I finished cleaning / going through everything in the entertainment center in the living room and I also cleaned out my desk in the kitchen. Cleaning my desk has made a big difference because it's one of those areas that accumulates a lot of stuff and it looked pretty bad before. (Once again, I forgot to take a "before" photo.) I rearranged things in a way that I think will help it stay neat longer, too. 

Seth didn't have school on Wednesday because Tuesday was the end of the 1st Semester. I had scheduled a dentist appointment for Wednesday afternoon but I had a bad headache on Sunday evening and it hung on for a few days, plus on Tuesday morning when I woke up my throat hurt a little bit. So I decided that I'd better postpone my dentist appointment (for at least the second time). When I woke up on Wednesday I felt fine, though, and yesterday I did too. Today I have a headache again. I'm wondering if it's hormonal or something. At least I felt well on Thursday because I was scheduled to take a friend to a doctor appointment and I also had book chat last night. I would have had to cancel both of those things if I hadn't been feeling well. It turns out that I didn't take my friend to her appointment...when I got there to pick her up, she told me that her appointment had been on Wednesday. I don't know where the miscommunication happened but thankfully she had managed to get to her appointment the day before. 

At book chat last night we discussed China Dolls by Lisa See (not my favorite book, and a lot of the other people in my book club agreed) and now we are going to read Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. Apparently, it's a re-telling of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. I missed book chat in December and we had to push back this month's meeting by 3 weeks so it had been quite a while since I'd been to book chat. It was great to go again...I always really enjoy it!

We did not have church in person on Sunday but we did go to the church later in the afternoon so Seth could be set apart as the 2nd Counselor in the Teacher's Quorum. On Tuesday the YM and YW had a combined virtual activity--we made chocolate chip cookie bars, using Frank's "famous" recipe, so our family was basically in charge. It was fun and I was happy to see that a couple of the new girls who just moved into YW from Primary attended, along with a few girls in my class and a handful of YM. I think everyone who came had a good time. 

Today I updated the budget as usual but as part of that I set up several of our bills so that I can pay them online. I have already been paying a number of our bills online for quite some time, but still have a few that I mail checks. However, with all the problems we've been having with the mail lately a few payments that I sent weeks in advance actually arrived late. The problem is also happening the other way...a few bills that I know I should be paying haven't even arrived yet! So I decided it's time to switch everything to online so I can avoid these problems. I still have a few things that need to be switched over (I ran into problems trying to set them up) but almost everything can be paid online now. Hopefully this will make my life a little easier.

I have done a lot of crocheting this week and I'm on target to complete the afghan next week sometime. I watched a couple of BYU Education Week presentations which were really good--I only have a few left to watch. 

Seth's Spanish class is a one semester class so that means he finished it this week. I am really glad because this means he doesn't have an online class on Monday afternoons anymore, which makes Mondays a lot more flexible. (Up until now, the only day he didn't have an afternoon class was Wednesday. Now he has two days each week like that.) Of course, his whole schedule is going to change in a couple of weeks if they start the hybrid model as planned. (Still not sure it that is really going to happen, but hopefully it will.) I have no idea yet which days he will go to school but we are supposed to find out next week. 

That's everything that's been going on around here (or at least everything I can remember) and I once again did not take any pictures, so sorry this post is kind of dull. We are still alive and overall life is good, just not very exciting lately.

Weekly Review January 22 '21

 There's not a ton to report this week. It's mostly been the usual stuff. However, I did get out of the house a lot more over the weekend than I usually do these days. Saturday was really busy because I had my second 3 1/2 hour tax training session in the morning, then a hair appointment one hour after the training session ended. In between, I watched as much of Bryn's funeral as I could. I caught the part where the last 3 boys were sharing their memories of their dad and then all 3 girls sharing their memories too. I was sorry I didn't get to see the rest, but what I saw was very good. After my hair appointment, I went to the mall to look for some shoes for Seth. He has outgrown his Sunday shoes and I have been having trouble finding shoes his size. (Even Amazon failed me.) Fortunately, I was successful at finding some shoes for him in the second store I went to. I was so glad, since shopping is not something I enjoy! It was weird to be at the mall again after so long. Thankfully, there weren't a lot of people there. 

On Sunday we went to church in person for the first time since before Thanksgiving. It was nice to be there again. There was a pretty decent sized group of people there, although it's still much fewer than it used to be, of course. 

Monday was MLK Day, so Seth didn't have school and Frank didn't have to go to work either. I spent the morning getting chores done like laundry and vacuuming, and Frank and I even did the Walmart shopping in person (instead of picking up an order). First time I've done that in a long time! After all the chores were done, I got to go visit with my friend Rebekah for a few hours. It was great to get caught up with her. Seth had dentist and orthodontist appointments in the late afternoon. I actually managed to get them set up so one was right after the other, which was nice since they are both about 30 minutes from our house. I went into the orthodontist with Seth but at the dentist they preferred I stay outside, so I waited in the car. Imagine my frustration and chagrin when the office manager called me to say that Seth had been playing with the buttons on his chair and put it all the way up, and it got stuck that way so we were going to have to pay to get it fixed. (They did tell him to leave the buttons alone, but he didn't listen, and started playing with them when they left him alone in the room.) Ugh!! I know if I had been allowed to go in with him, that wouldn't have happened because I would have made sure he didn't mess with the chair controls. But of course I was also upset with him for not obeying them. He really should know better! In all of my study of ADHD, I have learned that a child with ADHD is about 3 years behind in their maturity level, and I believe it. (That means Seth behaves more like a 10 year old than a 13 year old. I have definitely seen this!) Another characteristic of kids with ADHD is that they have a really hard time thinking through the consequences of their choices. I have definitely seen this too! But setting all that aside...I still believe Seth should be obedient to simple requests and should be held accountable for his choices. It turns out that when it was time for him to get out of the chair, they tried one more time to get the controls to bring it down, and it worked. So it looks like we won't have to pay to get it fixed after all. (And Seth has escaped forfeiting his allowance for the next couple of years!) However, there have still been some consequences for Seth this past week, since we want to impress upon him how important it is to be obedient. I'm still not happy about it, but one good thing...I have told him for years when we are at doctor's or dentist's offices not to touch things or mess with the equipment (he is very curious and always wants to play with it) because he might break it and those things are expensive. I don't think he ever believed me. I think now he understands!!

After all that, the rest of the week has been pretty calm (thankfully)--at least for Seth and I. Frank has had a very busy week with work. He had 3 overnight installs scheduled--one each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights. The one on Tuesday got postponed because the guy doing the work (Frank is there mostly to supervise) got sick and couldn't do it. Of course, Frank found this out AFTER he had already driven to the location, which is about 90 minutes away. He wasn't too thrilled about that. Wednesday night's install went as planned and last night's did too...he got home around 5:00 am both this morning and yesterday morning. However, something went wrong with last night's install because some of the equipment fell off the wall this morning! The guy who did the actual installation was not available (sleeping) so of course Frank had to go take care of that. He left around 10:00 (after getting maybe 3 hours of sleep) and I haven't heard from him since. This place is also over an hour away, so I'm not really thrilled that he had to go back, especially when he's so tired and also when he still has to work all night tonight again. I hope he gets the chance to come home and get some rest before he has to work again tonight.

Seth and I have just been doing the usual stuff. On Sunday afternoon he had an online training meeting (for all the class / quorum presidencies); I attended the end of it because they needed more leaders to help with break out sessions. On Tuesday he had a virtual activity...they played the same online Pictionary type game that my YW class played a few weeks ago. My class had a combined activity with the older class and once again I didn't have to attend. It was nice to have the evening off (I got to talk to Amy all evening instead) but since we had Sunday School on Sunday, I am feeling a little cut off from my YW class! I will see them all for our class on Sunday though. (They actually asked me to teach RS this Sunday...I guess they forgot I am serving in the YW organization now.) 

I crashed and burned on exercising this week...only did it twice. I had too many mornings that I didn't wake up very early. Yesterday I had to pick up an order from Walmart before 9:00 am and last night I didn't sleep well at all so I woke up really late. Hopefully I will do better next week! 

I am still working on my afghan and making progress...I think it will be done in a couple of weeks. I keep forgetting to take photos of my progress. I did a little bit more de-cluttering and cleaning this week (kept working on the spare room and did another section of the entertainment center) but I didn't get a lot done. That's because most of my spare time was spent working on tax stuff. I've been working my way through the test. There are 8 tax scenarios and I have completed 6 of them and answered the corresponding questions. I'm hoping to finish the other 2 either today or tomorrow. I'll be glad to be done with that! I also had a short online training session yesterday. 

I guess that's it for this week. I am glad we made it through the presidential inauguration without any more violence. I really wish the new president the best and hope things get better, even though that can be tricky since I don't agree with most of his policies. Mostly what I have felt this week, though, is that I am grateful to be American. I love this country very much. I think there is a lot to be positive about, and a lot to look forward to!

Weekly Review January 15 '21

 Welcome to another exciting week with the Clevelands! (Just kidding; it wasn't very exciting.) I've left the house a few more times than last week, but not a lot. Last Friday (the 8th) I went with Frank to our banks to deposit a couple of checks. Then we got some frozen yogurt for a treat. I drove Seth to the church on Tuesday evening for a YM activity (they played volleyball). On Wednesday I had to go to Seth's school to return some materials and pick up a few more things (they do that periodically). I made two trips to Walmart to pick up orders (but I haven't actually walked into a store since sometime in December). Last night, however, Frank and I went out for dinner to celebrate his birthday, so that was really nice. As you can tell, though, things are still pretty quiet around here.

That doesn't mean I haven't been busy. Actually, I've been really busy this week. That's mostly because I've been working a lot on tax stuff. Last Saturday (the 9th) I had a training session. It wasn't boring; as a matter of fact, they overestimated how much material they would be able to get through in that amount of time so it felt like we were rushing through everything. I do not work through tax scenarios very quickly--it's in my nature to go through things really carefully and thoroughly, but that also means I'm really slow--so I didn't have time to complete the scenarios we went through. That means that the training was not as valuable for me as it could have been because when we went over the answers I hadn't managed to work out all my answers yet to see if I was correct. We were supposed to complete 3 tax scenarios, but we only got through 2 of them so the instructor asked us to work through the last one and said we'll go over it at the beginning of the next training session (which is tomorrow). So I've spent a lot of time this week going over the 3 tax scenarios we did in the last session but I have also been trying to complete the ones that we are doing in tomorrow's session so that I'm better prepared for the training tomorrow. It's been a lot of work and taken a lot of time, especially since I get interrupted a lot. Tax law is complicated! And thanks to Covid, there are a lot of changes since last year that make it even more complicated. Anyway, I still have some work to complete for that today, but hopefully I will get more out of tomorrow training session than I did last week. I should be able to take the test to recertify sometime next week.

The other thing that kept me busy this week is that I've been trying to do some more cleaning and de-cluttering. I didn't get as much done as I would have liked, but I did clean off a bookcase in the living room and one section of the entertainment center. The bookcase always accumulates a ton of stuff because it's near the front door. As I suspected, most of it was junk that just needed to be thrown away. The book case looks much better now--I really regret that I didn't think to take a "before" photo so that I could post both "before" and "after" photos and you could all be impressed! 😀 The part of the entertainment center that I went through has all the video games and movies. There were quite a few games that Seth didn't want and we also decided to give away a LOT of movies. We just don't watch them much anymore, and most of them we can access through the many streaming services that are available. We have a stack of movies that Frank is going to digitize, but we have an even larger stack that we're giving away. That part of the entertainment center looks a lot less cluttered now, too. Oh and actually...I forgot that last Saturday I did quite a bit of de-cluttering in the spare bedroom which led to me doing some de-cluttering in my closet too. So I actually got quite a bit done this week--there's just a lot more left to do still! 

I already mentioned that Seth had a YM activity on Tuesday evening; it was combined with the Priests and I think he had a fun time. I didn't have to attend the YW activity that evening because it was a combined activity with all the YW and there was not a need for all 6 leaders to be there. (We don't have a lot of YW in our ward and a lot don't come to activities so we're trying not to overwhelm the girls who come with too many leaders.) On Wednesday evening I attended a virtual RS activity though. We did an activity to get to know each other better, and it was pretty fun. 

On Wednesday I also made dinner for a sister in our ward and took it over to her. She needs surgery and it keeps getting put off so she's been waiting for about 9 months for the surgery to happen. That must be REALLY frustrating! I haven't seen her since the pandemic broke out, so it was really nice to see her again and to visit with her for a few minutes. Her life has never been easy, but this last year has been particularly difficult.

As I mentioned before, yesterday was Frank's birthday. He worked all day, but he did get the chance in the afternoon to open his presents:

I'm sure you can all tell what they are, right?! One of them is a wrench set and one of them is a clock that projects the time and temperature onto the ceiling, and I honestly don't know what the other thing is (some cool computer gadget he wanted). For dinner, we went to a place called Mexicali Cantina which as you probably guessed is Mexican food, and it was delicious! He wanted cheesecake instead of regular cake and he wanted mini ones, so that's what I made for him. 

Seth had one of his headache episodes yesterday afternoon so he skipped most of his afternoon class and he didn't go with us for Frank's birthday dinner. (He doesn't like Mexican food anyway.) We got a milkshake for him on our way home from dinner. He feels fine today. I really wish we could figure out why he is getting these headaches. At least he has started to recognize them coming on sooner and if I give him medicine for them soon enough, we can avoid the nausea / vomiting part of the episode. Actually, he did feel a little nauseated yesterday for a while but he never vomited. I consider that a big plus!

Seth has been called to be the 2nd counselor in the Teacher's Quorum (although he hasn't been set apart yet). There are really only 3 active boys in the Teacher's Quorum, so it wasn't a surprise that he's in the presidency. After serving as Deacon's Quorum president for a year, he is really happy to have this job instead. Reminds me of someone I know, haha! The Deacons and the Teachers are going to meet together for most of their lessons and activities because there's only one active Deacon. (I mentioned that we don't have a lot of YW in our ward, but we have even fewer YM.)

That is everything that's been going on around here. This morning we had a really beautiful sunrise, so I'll finish up with a few photos of that. I don't know why the photos always look so different from real life--especially the color. It must be my camera. The sky was actually a really bright pink, but it looks more orange in the first photo. It still looks pretty, just different. Anyway, enjoy!:

Weekly Review January 8 '21

 This week felt really long to me for some reason. New Year's Eve seems MUCH longer than a week ago! I guess I'm just not used to being back in the normal routine. We have all had to adjust back to the Eastern time zone, too, which has not been easy! 

Last time I left off it was New Year's Eve. We did get out a puzzle, but since we were later than normal getting started on it, I decided to see if we had any 500 piece puzzles (most of our puzzles are 1000 pieces). I found two and we chose to do one that is very similar to the one of the Grand Canyon that we did at Mom's house (same brand and artist) except that this one was a painting of Provo, Utah. I thought we had made it before, but when I opened it, all the pieces were still in the factory plastic bag, so I guess we never made it! We all stayed up until midnight and Frank and I worked on the puzzle although we didn't get very far. We all went to bed shortly after midnight.

On Friday the 1st, I spent most of the day getting the budget caught up. I also took down all the Christmas decorations. (Frank offered to help, but I wanted to organize everything in a certain way, so I told him I'd do it myself.) For some reason doing the decorations was really hard on my back and it was quite sore Friday night. I was really worried it was going to get worse, but thankfully after a good night's sleep it felt a lot better. I was really careful on Saturday, though, because I knew it would be easy to over-do it. Frank and Seth took all the boxes of decorations back to the storage unit, broke down a bunch of computer boxes (Frank was doing a lot of work for clients shortly before going to Utah), and took out the trash. I did a lot of sweeping and vacuuming (lots of "pine needles" and glitter everywhere!) and also mopped the kitchen floor. The house looked a lot better by the time we were done. I also planned meals and put in a grocery order for Monday morning. Frank was able to get a Covid test done that morning, after waiting in line for a LONG time. Frank went to do some work for a client that afternoon and when he came back he had somehow tweaked his back so that it really hurt, especially whenever he used his right leg. So on Saturday night, he was the one with the sore back instead of me.

We worked on the puzzle a bit more on Friday and it looked like this by the time we went to bed:

We finished the puzzle by Saturday afternoon:

It was a fun puzzle--kind of slow to start, but then it really picked up and went together quickly.

Sunday was our day for in-person church, but we didn't go since we were quarantining. We did tune in to all our meetings virtually, though. Our Sacrament Meeting time moved from 10:30 last year to noon this year, but we have our "2nd hour" meetings first, at 10:30, so we're still having meetings during the same time slot, they're just in reverse order. So we all had Sunday School first and then Sacrament Meeting. Seth also had his interview to become a Teacher; he did that over the phone. I had a virtual presidency meeting with my YW class to plan the next 3 months' activities. It seemed like that day went by fast. Frank got his Covid test results that evening and he was negative (not a surprise) so that was good news. He was able to go to the office to work this week.

The rest of this week has not been very eventful because Seth and I have been quarantining. (Today is our last official day.) The only places I've been since we got back from Utah are to a restaurant to pick up food curbside (on the day we came home) and to Walmart 3 times to pick up grocery orders. I did not get out of the car any of those times. I have walked down to our mailbox a couple of times too. That's it! I've just been doing all the usual household chores, keeping an eye on Seth, working on the tax preparation course, and working on my afghan again. I also started doing some cleaning / decluttering although I haven't done much yet. I organized the pantry and cleaned the stove. I'm noticing that pretty much everything needs to be de-cluttered and organized better. 

Frank had to do some work at a restaurant on Tuesday night from about 10:00 pm until 1:00 am. When he woke up Wednesday morning, he had a really bad crick in his neck and his neck has been quite painful every since. It was really bad on Wednesday but has improved slightly since then so that it's not quite as bad. (Meanwhile, his back is better at least.) 

I had a virtual YW activity on Tuesday evening--we played an online game that is basically Pictionary (the website is called Skribbl.io) except you don't have teams--one person draws (you take turns) while everyone else tries to guess, and you each get points based on the words you guess correctly and how quickly you guess correctly. It was pretty fun! That reminds me...for family night activity on Monday we tried out Seth's new Pictionary Air game. Let me tell you...drawing in the air is harder than drawing on paper! We did have fun, though.

On Wednesday, Frank ordained Seth to be a Teacher. Our bishop gave us permission to do it at home and he also gave us permission to stream in on Zoom, so we got to invite Mom, Frank's parents, Scott, Tanner & Darlee, and Jared & Jessie to attend too. It was really nice to do it that way, and to see all of them (briefly). 

I was supposed to have book chat last night but they decided to postpone it and I'm glad since I wouldn't have been able to go anyway. I already missed last month's meeting so I'm glad that I won't be missing another one. 

I only have one more chapter in the tax course to go over so I will be finishing that up tonight. This year they are doing some online training so I got an email about that earlier in the week and I had to sign up for two online training sessions. My first one is tomorrow morning and the second one will be the following Saturday morning (the 16th). I hope they are not boring, because they are 3 1/2 hours each.

The Covid numbers in Maryland are apparently a lot worse so they have decided to remain virtual longer...they were supposed to be going to a hybrid model at the end of this month. Now it's been moved back to February.  

That's all the news from around here that I can think of so I'll just finish up with a few sunset photos.