Welcome 2018!

Wow, I can’t believe I haven’t posted since the middle of October! And I was doing so well. Irma threw me off my rhythm, and then I just never got it back. But I’ll do my best to catch y’all up on the last couple of months.

We’ve had mixed reviews from our jobs. Harry’s job at Publix has come and gone. It just wasn’t for him. He was doing bagging and bringing in carts from the parking lot, with a little floor cleaning thrown in on the days that he worked the evening shift. Between having to bend slightly to do the bagging and hefting around rows of carts outside, his back was taking a beating. It got worse and worse, and finally in the beginning of December, he had to accept the fact that he couldn’t keep it up. We decided the job wasn’t worth the toll it was taking on his back. So he is now staying home and keeping stuff caught up around here. His back is still not back to normal, but once it is, he is going to get back to working on our painting and other improvements that we haven’t done anything with for the past couple of months.

My job at Home Depot, on the other hand, has been going great. I really love the work, and the people that I am working with as well. The job is similar to what I did at Amazon – picking product for orders. However, there are a lot of differences. Some of the orders are online for pickup. Those I bring to the service desk, or another location in the store if they are large. Then the customer just comes in and picks them up at some point. Sometimes I will get a call on the store phone I carry that the customer is there, and their product might be back in Receiving or some other place. So I have to go get it and bring it up to the service desk. There are other orders that are delivered. The customer either came in and placed the order, for delivery, like an appliance or some flooring. Or they ordered online and chose the delivery option. So after picking the order, I have to arrange it on pallets and get it wrapped up and ready to go on the truck. I am also being trained in driving equipment – the fork lift and reach truck. It will be at least another few weeks before I feel ready to take the test to get my license. And of course, the other big difference is that there are customers walking around all the time too. So I get asked as I walk around the store where this or that product is located. I am getting better at knowing where stuff is, so I don’t have to pull out my phone and look it up! I am enjoying the challenge, and it’s been a really positive experience. In other good news, I have also found out that they will let me do a seasonal leave of absence when we go north next summer. So I will be going back to work in October when we get back here.

On the home front, we are just loving life here in our little house. This place is the perfect size for us. After the rv, it seems really large anyway. We have bigger plans for coming years, but this year we have just been making small improvements. One of my favorites - we did not like the steps that came down into the Florida room. They were really rough and not made for bare feet. So a few weeks ago, Harry got some wood and made some replacement steps. They look so awesome! I listed the old steps on Facebook Marketplace and they were gone in a day.

I have been really enjoying the kitchen here. I’m not sure why this kitchen seems more conducive to baking and cooking than the one in the fifth wheel. It’s not that much larger, but I guess I’ve been inspired anyway, because I have been doing so much cooking and experimenting. In the past couple of months, I’ve made pizza dough, dinner rolls, pies, and I am about to start making my own bread, as soon as my breadmaker arrives in a few days.

 

The kitchen is coming together! That kitchen cabinet at the end is where my breadmaker is going to be sitting by the end of the week. I hope!

Luckily for my waistline, our exercise is still going very well also. We are training for a half marathon that we will be running in Sarasota in March. So between that and my active job at Home Depot, I haven’t gained any weight from all my baking and cooking…and eating! Phew!

We had a lot of fun decorating our place for the holidays. We got one of those zero percent financing coupons from Home Depot so we used that to stock up on basically everything in the Christmas decorating field.

So I guess this update is long enough for one day. I shall attempt to get myself back into the swing of things and get back to posting more regularly.

Happy New Year!