So I got a package of thin-sliced chicken breasts today.
Or what was supposed to be thin-sliced chicken breasts. I think they are actually a tray of scraps that were mislabeled, because what was actually in the package was:
*Two regular breasts with holes in them
*Six thin shards of meat that are too small to use for the recipe I bought them for (chicken saltimbocca)
*A stray rib bone.
WTF, Walmart? Never again.
When I am dead and gone, and they come to empty out the house, and they move my bed, somebody is going to exclaim “WTF is up with all these holes in the floor???”
(failed attempts at hitting the inner wall from the basement in order to feed electrical wires to a new light fixture)
mmm
The trick there is to drill one small hole down from the top right up against the baseboard. Then go into the basement and drill the real hole upwards ~2" farther wall-ward.
Don’t ask how many holes I’d made doing it the other way before I broke the code. 
I made a document with assigned roles for the upcoming federal grant monster and now I know exactly what I need to do and it’s an incredible amount of work to face down. I’m guessing I’ll be working through the weekends for at least some of this.
I’m also working on a different federal grant at the same time. Along with the usual deadlines.
I used to enjoy writing federal grants but I’ve been doing this for about a year now non-stop, often even two at once, and I’m starting to hate it. I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath all year. And the federal government doesn’t want to fund anyone so I don’t understand why we keep doing this.
Also, next week my son starts “observation week” at his new school and I think we have to pick him up between 2-3pm every day that week which is wildly inconvenient especially with so much on my plate. After that I think he’ll qualify for after school care.
I often wonder what the hard limit is. At which point I say, “Sorry, I can’t do all this.”
Are any of your federal grants Ulysses S?
I believe they are literally US grants.
LOL.
Not sure if I’m too early for this one, but I did just look up the dates…
I do an annual event the first Saturday in Nov. I used to do a race the first Sunday in Nov. The two don’t go together because between getting up super early on Sat, the drive there, the work I need to do & only then being able to leave for the race means I was tired before even towing the starting line; therefore, I haven’t done said race in many years as it’s too far away & too much effort & money (entry fee + travel costs) to do shitty. Looking at the calendar some months back I realized that Nov 1st is a Sunday this year. Great! I can do the race on the 1st & then do the other event on the 7th…except I went to the race website. Apparently they do it on the first Sunday after the first Saturday so they are still on back-to-back days. 
Hope built up then dashed is far worse than no hope at all.
That is a very true statement.
No wonder i was so tired before starting, I was towing the starting line instead of toeing it…Mebbe if the impound yard wasn’t so far away! D’Oh!
I moved, so it’s in my best interest to change pharmacies. My Vyvanse, which is a stimulant medication for ADHD, can only legally be filled at the last minute, so I called it in to a CVS on Monday. The app says “action required: cannot be filled” and told me to send the pharmacy a message, so I did, and was told I’d get a response within one hour.
No response at all that day.
The next day I called and asked them what was going on. They said the medication was out of stock and it would come in that day.
It didn’t. So it’s now Wednesday and I don’t have my medicine. I’m getting by on some extra stuff I had as a backup, but this is a significant problem because when I don’t have that medication, I go into hard withdrawal and cannot function at all. I don’t have the time to be in medication withdrawal. My son’s school orientation for child and parents is Friday. And you know, US Grants! I was planning to work through the weekend.
I want to pillory the assholes who made the law that I can only get refills within 48 hours of needing them, and I want to tar and feather the corporate assholes at CVS who keep everything perpetually understocked and understaffed and can’t be bothered to provide useful information in their app.
I have whined in multiple threads about aging and having to move, most likely into a retirement facility, but certainly living in a big two-storey house (three if you count the basement) is becoming increasingly infeasible, not to mention outdoor gardening and mowing and such, which I no longer do.
The big problem is that I’m a professional procrastinator. No one procrastinates better than me unless there’s an immediate deadline staring me in the face.
I keep going over and over in my mind the famous aphorism by Frederick P Brooks, who managed the development of the OS/360 operating system, which was notoriously late and from which he learned valuable lessons:
Q: How does a software project get to be multiple years late? Not just a few months, but literally years late?
A: One day at a time.
A very profound observation that applies as much to our lives as to software development.
Why are our arms long enough to scratch our bellies, which seldom need scratching, but not those spots on our backs which always do?
My arms are long enough to scritch the dog’s belly, which frequently needs skritches, even when I attempt to stop skritching*, sometimes because they’re not long enough to comfortably skritch whilst I’m in a chair & she’s lying on the ground next to me.
-* Seriously, she will spread her ‘fingers’ & claw my hand back to her chest because she’s not done with being skritched.
But will she scratch your back?
I am such a procrastinator that I wait to procrastinate until it’s too late, and I end up getting things done promptly as a result.
It forces us to interact enough to make friends (or family) who can do the scratching for us.
That’s one option. Another is to buy a back scratcher, or improvise one from a kitchen utensil! 
Or get a good harness around your dog or cat and dangle them behind you. When they flail out in a panic, lean your back into it for some vigorous scratching.