Working nine to five; what a way to make a living…

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Only three days into the first working week of the new year, and I’m exhausted. I have a self imposed goal of closing last year and opening this by week’s end. The alternative is to have two years open at once, and in twelve years I cannot bring myself to do it. Government accounting is too complex and my brain too fossilized. I make neat piles and dispose of them systematically and am done. I cannot worry about two years at once.

The program turns red X’s into green check marks as the close progresses. I was down to one red X yesterday, struggling through the warning on the screen that I was in in statutory violation of some important thing and could not continue until I cleared the refund I made to the road super of the health insurance I over deducted. 

I struggled with the fine print for an hour and by luck and tinkering found I could make a negative allocation of the amount back to the payroll account and hey, presto, the green light came on. Good enough for the government, as they say.

The clerk before me retired in his seventies, as I am now. I teased him he didn’t want to deal with CCR registration on-line. That’s Central Contractor Registration, not Credence Clearwater. CCR was the original platform for awarding government grants. It has morphed into the colossus that includes IPP and SAM, which I must use to obtain government funds.

I told a completely disinterested trustee recently that state government is pushing on us to file our accounting records in GASBE or GAAP format. It would mean mapping all our accounting records to look like, at year’s end, some general accounting formats prescribed by the National Accounting Standards Board. Still not the real thing, but on the road to uniform records from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

To that I say baloney; that’s why we pay the auditors, and we must pay them anyway. This year I had to pick whether I was filing one of the G’s, or my old friend, Regulatory. Next to Regulatory was a note, Not Recommended. Sez you; and I filed Regulatory. The year I don’t have a Regulatory choice will be my CCR year. End of my term or no, I’m outta there.

Add physical therapy and fetching children from appointments and I am beat. This afternoon I took a nap, waiting for Laura to come out from jazz band practice. Tomorrow she has art after school.

At lunch time today I rearranged the stock left at the gallery.  We changed the display to feature two right angle sections, and I think it all looks much more accessible.  I put everything on nice coat hangers today, put a scarf through one of the grids, and went back to work.

I need to weave this weekend!

Reverie

This morning I set myself the mind boggling task of filling in the 2016 township calendar on the website. Before I started on the calendar, I put up a picture of the road super, retired after thirty three years. I found the perfect picture, don’t you think. 

Trustee and zoning meetings on the calendar are fairly straightforward, but when I get to brush and leaf pick-up, I boggle, my mind and my eyes wander. I looked up at a picture that has been on my wall for twenty years. Everything in this house is old, me not the least among the detritus.

I love that picture, Stalking the Wild Yarn. My friend Nina presented it to me one winter, the seasons I set up shop in her antique gallery and waited for the spring to arrive.  Below that, exhibitor buttons I accumulated over the years at the big fall show in Louisville, St. James Court Art Show.

I loved that show, and never did it alone. I always took Ann or Beth, or both, who did more than help set up, tear down and sell. Both of them could keep the map of Louisville in their head and knew how to get to the restaurant and the motel, even if we were lost.

Did you wonder about the ostrich head? The speech bubble says “They’re how much?” Linda came across that, an ad for a long forgotten product. She presented it to me shortly after we both exhibited at the Letchworth Park fall show. It’s actually a fall color weekend event; the exhibitors are an afterthought; the sort of show where artists stand outside their booths and declare to the sky “God strike me dead if I ever do this show again.”

I was behind my booth on a smoke break and walked back to the front past one of the millions examining the jacket from hell and saying to the world, “They’re how much!?” “They're obviously made of solid gold, you fool,” I said on my way by. From the other side of the sidewalk Linda’s husband Dick looked up from their booth, crossed, patted my back and said “Take a break, Joanne.” So I went and looked at leaves for fifteen minutes.

The postcard came from Laura, in the mail, more than ten years ago. The front door picture—Nina, again. She set herself the project of photographing every front door in Boston. They are famous in the community, and displayed at most events. That’s Angus, the best Cairn terrier who ever lived, looking out the front door. The only Boston door with a dog, Nina said.

You all know Toby, the spoiled cat. Good lord, how much stuff can I accumulate? Back to the cat and the yarn and suddenly I saw the dust. All of it. I dusted down the wall and went back to work.

What to do with the rest of the day after a 9:30 a.m. eye doctor appointment

I’ve been on Medicare these many years, plus supplemental private insurance. In the olden days, when I was under insured anyway and did not carry a vision plan, I had my eyes checked every two or three years.  The first eye doctor visit after I’d rolled through the obligatory sixty five years, and the youngster checking me in asked for my insurance cards, I demurred. “My insurance doesn’t cover that,” I explained. And in return was told Medicare would check my eyes once a year.

This year, however, the technician asked the reason for my visit, and I replied my annual visit. She responded my doctor had scheduled me annually for these several years because of my cataracts, “but you don’t have those anymore.”  We settled on dry eyes, which are the truth, and the exam proceeded.

It was still overcast and raining as I came home, so I only needed one pair of sunglasses to offset the numbing and dilating drops. Though I drive right past the town hall, I didn’t go to work. I only have two tiny jobs to get done before Wednesday’s payroll, and they can keep till then. I never like waiting for my eyes to return to normal, and less so at work.

I did decide to weave some more on the scarves. I’ve finished six seventy to ninety inch scarves since we put the new warp on the loom three weeks ago, with another almost done. After those initial painful sessions I can weave about an hour at a time. Not without hurting, but in a more weaverly fashion. I’m now convinced there’s more arthritis going on in my shoulder and arm than broken bone recuperation, and when I visit the arthritis doctor in January I will slap my disc of shoulder x-rays on his desk and say “Do something, please.”

When I see the physical therapist tomorrow, I will astound him again with progress brought about by toughing out the weaving. With my arm fully extended I have about eighty percent of all motion down pat. This morning the young technician checking me in stopped about half way through all the new computer stuff, clasped her hands behind her back at her waist, stretched her arms straight and lifted them chest high.

I got up from the chair and tried it myself. I only reached bottom of my rib cage height, but I’m making progress.

And, I’ve spend the rest of the afternoon wondering how I am going to set up an inventory accounting system so I can figure cost of goods sold for this year’s taxes. Note how brilliantly I’ve avoided it for another day.

Change of the watch

I've mentioned the road super retires the end of the year. Last January it was a bad joke; this December it's about three days away.

If you haven't followed those last several years, the road super is Tim, the poster child for conservation. Tim who guarded a sunflower in the crack of the township drive from the Memorial Day parade.

Tim who nursed several volunteer pumpkins in the gravel bin for the entire summer. When a full grown pumpkin disappeared, Tim put the rest in his "pumpkin protection program," until he could display them for the kids on Beggar's Night.

Tim with all the snapdragons growing last summer, in the gravel bin.

The weather has been so mild that all the snapdragons continue to grow out there, lush, green little bushes. I took my camera back after lunch to take a picture. I found:

The new road super, who's training with Tim this month, was in the building. I nailed him. Before lunch, he explained, he took a truck load of gravel to fill a washout on Major Road. 

A snapdragon, toes up. We'll see what we get next summer. I also have a new road super to educate.

Tim showed me his first pay stub, from thirty three years ago. He had a delightful story. His first job was on the road department in the village, Peninsula. One day at lunch time the super handed him a pink slip. No more job.

Tim was a volunteer fireman back then, too, and stopped at the fire station, which at the time was in our town hall. He saw Ed Hodges, the township road super, in the yard and told him he had just been laid off down the road, in the village. Ed told him to come back after lunch, he was now hired in the township.

"So," Tim added, "for my entire working career I have been unemployed for exactly half an hour, and that was unpaid lunch time."

Some pictures when I came home. From the world's coolest rain gauge, an inch of rain yesterday. Hence the washout on Major Road.

And, the garden thinks it's spring. There may be hell to pay next summer, but I am loving this weather.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

It's not snowing at my house, and probably won't, but that does not stop the calendar. The snow will not be missed and Christmas cannot be missed, so all is right with the world.

A few weeks back, in November, John Grey wrote a bah humbug post about hating shopping, especially for Christmas decorations for family to hang on their respective trees. 

I thought at once of my friend Linda, and her ornaments. She began making ornaments for friends and family, probably as far back as 1965. She's still making one every year. It's never too late to start.

I wrote on John's post that day of the ornament Linda made a couple of years ago, after Alberta moved to Florida to live with Marcy. I remembered Linda cleaning out Alberta's apartment, looking at all the downsizing that was left behind. "What am I going to do with these?" Linda  sighed over a box of Alberta's collection of salt cellars. One showed up at my house, months later, with a red ribbon tied around it, a tree decoration.

How about a post of Linda's annual ornaments, I decided, and called her.  "They're all in the attic," she said, and not coming down this year because I'm going to Cara's." I am so rude. "Go look anyway," I wheedled, not to be deterred.

Later that day I got emails, loaded with pictures. A dear friend of Linda's did a downsizing move this year, and not bearing to dispose of any of her collection of Linda's ornaments sent a box full, which Linda laid hands on immediately, and stood in her attic and photographed a few. 

I asked if she wanted them attributed and she said no. You see a cute picture, she explained, and throw it in a drawer and later on make it. Someone else does the same thing. These projects just go round and round, anyone can do it. I know Linda, she'll be explaining some of them. The little bird house goes back to 1985; her dad helped with those.

The star is Linda's ornament for 2015; hanging on our tree.

And here's an ornament my sister thought of earlier this year and made one of for each of our brother Walt's children. Sawdust from a board the old cornmudgeon master wood worker never used. Those stickers are a mystery, but there was a roll of them on his drafting table, so Jan added one of them, too.

To all my kind and lovely blog friends,

wonderful holidays to you.