bits of thursday going into friday

It has already been a long week, and I close again tonight.  I have opened three mornings, two of them with freight.. and really sometimes I wonder how someone my size moves that much heavy stuff even after I have just done it.  I'm careful not to do anything I really cannot do - but I also am very good at physics tricks and using every weapon in my arsenal.  I moved something like thirty toilets over the course of three days (only counting freight, no customer orders), along with showers, vanities and of course all of the other goods we sell in our department.  I absolutely said I would not move a cast iron sink down from above my head on a pallet where they had stuck it up there on the truck.  I could have done it with one of the portable lift machines if I didn't have any help at all - take about five to ten minutes extra to maneuver it up to the pallet and lever the box into an upright position, then slide it on the lift inch by inch - but the delivery crew came back over and I thanked them as they put it down on a cart.  I can handle a lot - but a hundred pounds above my head is not one of those things.

The pink hyacinths are in bloom - Mark took a picture of them.  The white and pink daffodils are getting ready to bloom, if the snow in the forecast this weekend does not knock them out.  Esme is going to a play for school today, and she was excited about that.  She thought I was mad at her the other morning when I was really just tired and trying hard to keep us on schedule.  We've both had to be up and get ready at the same time three days in a row... and I have to leave when or sometimes before she gets on the bus, so Mark has had to get up a few of those mornings and take over that part at the end.  The stress was coming through in my voice and the way I brushed her hair, I guess..  made me think hard how these mornings and not getting sleep affects her, too, if she goes through the morning thinking Mom was mad at her.  We haven't had a lot of time for other things lately, either.

The greenhouse things are not yet coming up, but they are moist.  Esme's school cabbage is doing well.  I have put the laundry in and plan to make some rice to bring to work after I nap a bit.  Reading 'Rhapsody of Dreams', which is an interesting past-lives, what is the Universe about book.  Just finished 'Highland Vow', by Hannah Howell.. another of the Murray family saga.  I've had that on my wait list for a few weeks.

I don't know if I'll be able to get the garden cleaned up and ready to till tomorrow on my day off.. we need groceries, too and Grandma probably does, as well.  In many other things we are doing well - I got that guillotine off my neck for the month by getting the app at work I needed to get... and Pumpkin's kittens are doing well, the hamster is still friendly and enjoying her treats and her exercise wheel.  We got her a hamster ball coming in the mail, and I'm sure Esme will have fun with that if we can master the trick of getting her in and out of it.

 tree blossoms

 pink hyacinth

 not a blossom.. a bluetick coonhound named Nova