Now for some nice, relaxing work

My four days off are almost always exhausting of late. Really, when you're on night shift, your days off are nights, so unless you plan on prowling all night the last night before you go back to work, or unless you manage to stay awake on the day of your first night off, you really only get three days off.

Monday night was my last night of work. I went right to bed when I got home Tuesday morning. I was probably asleep by 8:00 in the morning and slept until 2:00 in the afternoon, when I got up to unload my mother's car from grocery shopping.

Wednesday I bounced out of bed at 10:00 in the morning and immediately set to work mowing the lawn. With a break for breakfast at the 2/3 mark, I was done by about 2:00. Then I showered, got dressed, and took my mom to an appointment. When I got home it was time to take out the garbage - and the neighbor's cat.

Thursday was pretty much a free day due to rain. I spent some time with the kittens, and then went out on an epic shopping odyssey. I spent enormous amounts of money making sure I will actually get to eat some of the millions of blueberries ripening on my bushes. (The four foot long wooden stakes at Lowes are labeled 98 cents, but their computer says they are $1.77 apiece. Just so you know. I might have been better off with the equally-expensive plastic stakes or the more-expensive steel ones.) That evening I met some friends for dinner.

Yesterday I took my mom to another appointment. While I waited I stopped at my house across town. I checked the mail, watered my tomato plants on the windowsill, hoed a bit in the garden, picked some radishes and purslane, and made a start at mowing the lawn. After picking up my mom I had a lunch of breaded fried Tilapia (breaded and fried by me) with a purslane, radish, and blue cheese salad. Then I went back across town to finish mowing. I also weed-whacked, used a hedge trimmer on some weeds, planted three of my potted tomato plants (started from seed, of course), celebrated the fact that one of the tomato plants eaten down to the stem by birds is coming back, and then sprayed my grapes in an attempt to stall the Black Rot virus that is already showing up on the leaves. (Dammit, I knew I was supposed to apply this stuff when the vines first started leafing out!) Then back over here to painstakingly attach nets to my wooden stakes with little tiny pound-in staples. (Imagine trying to pound in 1/4" double-point nails with no heads and the points aiming in two different directions. That's what I was doing.) As daylight faded I pounded the stakes into the mulch mountains around my blueberries, trying not to entangle and remove more ripening blueberries than I left attached. (One of the very expensive six-foot stakes snapped in half, leaving me with two very expensive three-foot stakes.)

And now it's back to work for four nights. Time for some nice, relaxing money earning.