Time to get cracking

OK, Ms. Packratty has been a lazy slug, but there has been a whole lot of ugly at work and many strenuous things happening at work and home.

First of all, work has been a seemingly endless successions of FUBARs. Not FUBARs that can be laid at the feet of yours truly, but FUBARs related to Ms. Packratty's unspeakable manager and other workplace morons as well as horrible things happening to a couple of co-workers. One of Ms Packratty's direct coworkers, with whome she shared the late shift, was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and is only now slowing recovering from the first of at least 2 surgeries. A second coworker went into the hospital to remove a mass on his lung that was thought to be benign (non-smoker and all that) only to be dead within six weeks of advanced lung and bone cancer.

So things have been less than good at work. Plus there has been a lot of software changes and system updates, many of which have gone poorly.

Biggest news has been that my parents now have a dog, a delightful little Norwich from Marleen and they are moving to the DC area within the next few months to an apartment which will be much better for them than the split entry foyer house they are in now. However this means that Ms. Packratty's mother is proceeding to gift Ms. Packratty with more things than Ms. Packratty can presently accommodate. Books, china, clocks and artwork for the most part now, but larger things are coming. Room must be made; files must be emptied, closets consolidated.

With that said, Ms. Packratty is on a strict yarn diet for the rest of the year. Even though she is drooling over the Shorelines jacket, 2200 yards of what she wants to knit it in just won't make it into the budget. Budget you say? Well, there's a painting to be paid for and a HELOC that needs to be paid off ASAP. Plus all the normal bills.

So that's that.

On a health note, Ms. Packratty has been trekking to a farmer's market in the parking lot of her church and buying beautiful, beautiful fresh goodies every week. Radishes and tomatoes and arugula and cucumbers made it into the bag this past weekend, along with some lovcely flatbread and brioche rolls from a new bakery. Yummy.

We'll see how the fiscal diet goes - details to follow. The basics are no more yarn. Not even sock yarn because the Packratty premises currently contain enough sock yarn to accommodate knitting socks until the end of the year, easily. No new clothes - with the exception of underwear and hosiery. No doodads. No gewgaws or goodies. Food and household necessities only with an eye to buying those as frugally as possible.

We'll see.