Day 10 through 12 - Begin Again

 

Today is the 12th day of my latest effort to lose the weight and stick to the Nutrisystem plan. I originally prepared this blog to document the beginning of a new job, but over 2 months after being laid off there is no job in sight. Therefore, I am choosing to use this for something positive.

I didn't write the past 2 days as I just didn't feel inspired. Minnie spent a lot of time snoozing in my lap and I spent a lot of time playing Cookie Jam and watching YouTube. I also got some things done !

Doug came by on Wednesday and mowed the lawn, about 15 minutes before I intended to go out and tackle it myself ! Since the hard job was out of the way, I went out with the trimmer and took care of the weeds. I went all around the house first and then the signpost and phone pole out front. Last up was the fence between the houses. It's amazing how much nicer everything looks ! Thursday I went out and trimmed the bottom of the rhododendron where it was dragging on the ground. I also pulled and cut all the weeds in that area, then used the trimmer on the bits of grass around the perimeter. It looks so much nicer ! Last step was the weeds out behind the garage. I pulled and cut all the tall stuff so it looks much nicer. There is a lot of twigs and leaf debris that needs to be raked up but I was too tired for that yesterday. I'll tackle that once the rains have passed and its had a chance to dry out. While I was out there I also discovered that some of my lilac trees have leaned so far over that one was resting on the roof of the cat house ! I managed to prop it up so the weight isn't on the house. I don't want to cut the tree as its branches help hide the house and shelter it from wind, rain and snow. I'll take a closer look at the situation another day and decide if I need to do anything more. I was paranoid about coming into contact with poison ivy while I was doing yard work, so I was careful to change my clothes and shower both days. I also washed my hands and forearms thoroughly when I came in from outside. So far, it seems like I avoided it ! I also spent some time yesterday clearing off the dining room table, which again became the junk collector. A lot of stuff just ended up being moved to my office, but at least it's out of the way. 

Wednesday was a beautiful sunny day, so it was the perfect time to get the yard in shape ! Yesterday was nice too but we didn't have a whole lot of sun. Today there was NO sun as the remnants of Hurricane Debbie moved in. I woke early this morning to the sounds of a decently heavy rain, but it didn't last. The power went off at some point because my fan was off when I woke up (at 9 am !) and the clock on the stove was blinking. It just have been just a momentary outage, because I didn't get a text or email from National Grid about an outage. By 11:30 am we'd had some light rain and a shower or two, but the radar showed the massive size of the system that was moving in, so I knew much more rain was on the way !

I made sure to have my tablet and phone fully charged. I also had a fully charged power bank ready in the event of an outage. We're not expecting thunderstorms so the power grid should be fine, but you never know. Vehicle accidents do happen during heavy rain and something like that could cause localized outages. I try to be ready these days since I've been caught unprepared in the past. Nothing worse that having your phone at 20% when the power goes out ! I bought the power bank to take to Disney in 2023 since my phone was close to dying on my way back from Disney in 2022. I never needed it, but it was nice to have it available ! I did use it during our fall foliage train outing in 2023 and I was shocked at how fast it charged my phone. 

I haven't applied to any jobs over the past couple of days and I already got a "thanks but no thanks" from the Dow Jones job. I've read so much about people applying for thousands of jobs and getting nothing but rejects, so I'm not surprised and I'm not defeated yet. I will keep applying and see what happens. I've already decided I will "retire" if I find nothing. Well, after writing this I spent some time on LinkedIn and it's like a bottomless pit of nothingness. I did apply to another job at Infosys, which pertains to mortgage loan processing. I don't have any experience but the job has been posted for several months. Either they suck at updating their listings, continuously recruit or never found a candidate. The worse that can happen is they say "thank but no thanks". I applied for a job on 6-27 that I've never heard back on, but my application is still open. I'm 100% qualified for that one, so I'd love to hear back from them !

By 1:38 pm the rain was steady but light - nothing to make you worry about flooding. Looks like the rain will end for a couple hours around 5 pm. Well - scratch that ! Shortly after 2 pm the heavy rain rolled in and the rapids started traversing my backyard ! Fortunately for me, when Doug graded my yard he did a great job and the water drains away from the house. Unfortunately for him, it ponds in the side yard of the house he now owns .. lol ! My sump pump got a workout and has been running every few seconds. Unlike the rain we had last July, the water didn't overtake the pump. Last year there was several inches of standing water in my basement during the storm and the sump pump had to run continuously for quite a while to clear it. Today it was able to keep up and that was a relief. By 3:15 the worst of it had moved on and by 3:30 it had nearly stopped. At the height of the storm I moved the dining room security camera to a point where I could keep an eye on the sump pump from my phone. That's how I saw the lake forming in Doug's yard. At one point the pump was coming on about every 4 seconds. By 3:45 it was every 7 seconds and the skies had brightened as the sun tried to pop out ! What a crazy weather day ! The forecast indicates no further rain between now and Sunday. The lake in Doug's yard was gone by 4:30 but my sump pump was still working hard to keep the basement clear.

Shortly after 4 pm I went to the fridge to get some cheese sticks for a snack and discovered an orange mess trickling from the top shelf all the way down to the bottom of the inside of the fridge ! The culprit turned out to be the bag of fun size candy I had bought and took to PA last weekend. Apparently the M&M packaging is paper and the bag clearly wasn't sealed as water from melting ice in my insulated bag had gotten inside. The M&M's were soaked and the color had ran out. I had to throw away all the packets of M&M's but the Milky Way and Snickers bars were in plastic wrappers and didn't get wet. Well, I'd been wanting to clean the fridge so cleaning up that mess was a good start ! I unwrapped the remaining candy and dumped them all into a ziploc bag. I guess that's a sign to not buy any more candy ! I'm glad no one wanted any candy while I was away, as that would have been quite the mess to deal with on the road ! I have to wonder why the M&M wrappers were paper while the candy bars were plastic ?!?!

I have one pizza crust left but I have no mozzarella cheese, unless I want to slice up some cheese sticks. I have enough sauce for one last pizza, along with plenty of pepperoni. It's going to be hard to give this up but I have to do it. I have a ton of Nutrisystem meals and a new shipment pending, so I need to start eating all this food. The good news is my latest order processed on Monday but hasn't shipped ! I am out of breakfast items but I will pick up something at Walmart to tide me over. This morning I had Pop Tarts, since I had 3 packages left. I do still have one package of Nutrisystem french toast, so I might have that tomorrow. I like this item but I stopped buying it because too often they were shattered into pieces and too hard to toast. They deep freeze the items so they are super brittle. I've never had an issue with the pancakes or waffles, but that could be because there are 2 of them in each package. With only 1 slice of french toast, there is nothing to cushion it during packing and shipping. I could actually buy some low cal bread and make my own french toast for the freezer. I might just do that !

By 5 pm the sump pump was running about every 17 seconds, which is a huge improvement ! I'm so glad the lawn was mowed and I took care of the weeds, since it will be wet for a while. The forecast calls for rain Sunday into Monday but the rest of the week looks to be dry. I'd like to get out behind the garage and rake up the junk out there, some of which was washed into the yard. I really need to dig a trench out there or install the metal edging I had bought to redirect the runoff to the back of the yard. Maybe I will work on that this week !