Cookies and Milk Chat

Hello there!  It's been a fairly long week behind me and a busy two weeks.  I'm so glad I took the time to sit down and write a 'chat' post when I had the time then!

So come on in...It's getting a bit late.  I don't have coffee or tea at this hour, but there are cookies and milk.  Have some? I took the last roll of chocolate chip cookie dough from the freezer yesterday and patted into a pan after it had thawed.  It seemed to be more thrifty to make them that way, since I had a casserole in the oven already.  Two birds/one stone and all that good sort of stuff.   Help yourself and let's have a bit of a talk before this new week gets started.



I'm afraid I'm a bit fuzzy brained at the moment.  Lack of sleep will do that to you, you know.  Makes you feel like thinking is a real effort.  And it is. It's the loss of all that good REM sleep and such.  It also makes me feel a bit weepy and prone to feeling anxious.  And snippy.  I'm doing my best to overcome.  I'm adjusting to our new work schedule, you see.  I say 'our' work schedule because it's a major change for John which has meant major change for me.  I've slept some which is better than none by far!  John is doing well, too.  But today it hit us both rather hard.

I was up early, awake at 7am on the nose, and got up to make coffee and start the dishwasher before he came in from work.  The trouble was I didn't sleep as well as I wanted last night.  I just couldn't settle down and then I woke a mere 2 hours later and lay awake for a couple of hours, sigh.  So be it.  I refuse to break the pattern entirely by getting up and  moving about or reading.  I find it just exacerbates sleeplessness.  I'd rather lie in the dark and think quiet thoughts or pray.  It seems better suited to dark hours and I usually will doze off and sleep once more whereas if I get up I get interested in the book or a movie and lose still more sleep.

I've been trying to back up in my thoughts and recall what I did the past two weeks.  Groceries were bought...I spent a day with Mama while John worked an extra shift....we went to visit the new synagogue...John took me out on Tuesday of this past week to buy new books which he insisted I needed, lol.  I didn't and I did.  I seldom get the opportunity to handle brand new books, books that I'm first owner and first reader of or get to handle prior to purchasing (as in my club)...So it was nice to choose, but so very very hard!  I ended up with two new paperbacks (they cost less than one hardcover) and I'm savoring one of them at odd moments and as night time reading at the moment.

John changed shifts at work and we are both adjusting.  Everything in our lives is affected really.  For one thing our nightly prayer time...we moved that to afternoons about an hour before he leaves.  We had an early communion last night but at sunset I lit a second pair of candles to have Shabat lights burning.  I missed my day with Mama this week but John and I talked it over and agreed I'd go back to the usual day routine with that in two weeks.  Meals are different on these work weeks, too.  John eats all three meals at home, takes a light evening snack (like my milk and cookies tonight) with him.  He's here all day every single day now.  That's different, too.  It's been nice, but it's different.  We're slowly working into a routine of sorts.  If I can just get myself sorted out at night and stick to the off week routine I should do well. It's settling down at night when there's no one to pray with or snuggle with.  That's different.


John and I visited a new synagogue last weekend.  It was a lovely building, filled with natural light which is one thing I do love.  I can't say it was friendly nor unfriendly.  I thought being in the House of the Lord was right where I was supposed to be and I enjoyed it.  Today we didn't either of us feel up to the drive up and the long service.  So we had the best of both worlds here at home.  We listened to the service on livestream feed and skipped the ride.  And yes, we sat still just as we would have in synagogue and listened to the full service.  I slipped to the kitchen to do a bit of light prep for dinner and then slipped back in again about 15 minutes before service was over to finish it off. I've done that many and many a day at synagogue on Oneg dinner meetings!  Nothing new there.

We're going to see how we like this place.  No hasty decisions.   I know what I want, but I also have to trust that my husband  as head priest of our household knows best what we need.  I know he's praying about it so I'll trust his decision.  I've found all too often that what I want isn't always what God wants me to have nor what I need at the moment.


I managed a few days of major cleaning this week.  I can tell summer is drawing to a close.  There is no sign quite so telling as my desire to clean hard and deeply!  This week I managed to get a good start on deep cleaning the guest bath.  I moved china from the chifforobe in the kitchen to the buffet.  I have more to move but was waiting for aching ankles to heal before climbing the step stool for the second set of work.  The guest bedroom has been sorted out.  Over this past month I worked on our closet (needs a wee bit more work), the rearrangement of the two pieces in the dining room, emptied out the old washstand we sent home with Jd and sorted that stuff out, cleaned cabinets, finished the living room wall arrangement and yesterday evening right after John left I got busy cleaning ceiling fans in the rooms.

One advantage to his being home showed up plainly yesterday.  I'd made dinner and was clearing up when I noticed an unpleasant smell coming from under the sink cabinet.  I pulled out the stuff and discovered water standing under there.  I had a major leak from my faucet!  John helped clean up the mess, then went to work on the faucet and we thought it was fixed but no, it most definitely wasn't fixed.  Three hours later he was installing a new faucet having had to run into town while I stayed home and manned the towel changes under the sink.  One thing and another the new faucet is nice, but necessitated removing the little shelf I had put under the window to hold plants.  I'm glad he was home to deal with this but he missed sleeping perhaps another hour or two while he worked on that.  I confess a bit of anxiety as water spewed because the dishwasher was smack full of dirty dishes.  I was envisioning having to haul it all to one of the tubs to wash.  Not a happy thought at all!  Hence I started a load of dishes this morning after we were sure the electric outlet under the sink was as dry as the cabinet.

I'm puzzled why the builders put that outlet there.  It doesn't seem in the least logical or realistic considering there's water pipes all over.  Especially given that we were told we couldn't have an over head light in the laundry area because of 'fire hazards'.  Now honestly does that make sense to anyone?  It's not an enclosed space, it's basically a closet and all the closets have an overhead light...I digress.  Anyway, I waited until John was coming up the drive before I plugged in that dishwasher.  I figured if I got knocked to the ground by electrocution at least he'd find me in a timely manner, lol.  As you can see, I had no such horror story to relate, just a morbid imagination!

I've spent the past 12 hours working on genealogy pages again.  Still stuck on the same family segment I've been working on for months now.  I've located all but two of the children of that family but I'm just flat stuck on one.  It's a 20 year old female and I suspect she married but finding any marriage record has proven crazy hard.  Most marriage registries are set up by the name of the groom.  Since I've no clue who the groom might be, I can't find her anywhere at all after 1870 when she was still at home with her father and several siblings.  Today I resorted to reading an entire marriage registry from the county where she was listed in the 1870 census.  No luck.  When I tried a neighboring counties books I found the records were copies of the original faded spidery handwritten pages from the 1800's...Hard to read isn't the word for the level of difficulty they present on screen.  However, as with most things, while looking for an elusive something in one area, I found a bit of gold in another.  Her father, whom my mother assured me was a Methodist minister, indeed showed up on a document that was well hidden in the depths of pages as one of the first ministers of the community at the newly established church, placing him in the town at least 10 years before any census record that has been transcribed.

And that is the reason why I dig and dig and dig.  It's a bit like any other game of chance, except, thus far, my research has all been free, done in leisure hours and hasn't cost a penny.  But it's like winning big time to find one little nugget of information.

I do have goals for August, but I'm lazy now and sleepy and can't be bothered to get up to find them in the other room so I can share.  In fact, I think I shall end here and take my good book and slip into bed.  It's a little bit early for me, but perhaps, just maybe, I'll slip right off to sleep and wake up ready to tackle the chores that await me tomorrow.