My Birds

We are in the midst of two weeks of dreary weather.
Below freezing temps so it is frigid & dreary.
Apparently, it was just us in Canbyland & Hubbard (and I heard Silverton as well). Everyone else was enjoying freezing temps and Sunshine.
We have been trapped in some fog/cloud inversion layer.

I hang both my bird feeder and my hummingbird feeder so I can see the little birdies duke it out by the kitchen window. I had one hummingbird who turned and gave me the stink eye because his sugar water was frozen solid.

I ask for black thistle seed (niger) for christmas every year because I enjoy watching their antics. There is definitely a pecking order to the disappearance of 3 cups of seed in a few hours.

My sasanqua camellia is nearly done blooming by the front door.
When I prune it in the spring, I always find a bird's nest inside.

This was our first snow in Canbyland - more of a frozen frost than actual life-size snowflakes.
Canbyland gets a little banana belt thing going on. The rest of the Portland area has had snow several times in the last month.



Still working six days/wk with o/t.
I am hearing a rumor that my junior clerk might come back in about three weeks. This will give me some much needed days off as well as make the possibility of working four days/wk with 30hours come about.
I am figuring out how to deal with issues of my giving too much customer service to  my customers. They are not going to like going back to dealing with Miss I Quote Regulations.
But I don't need to work so many hours. It was not easy getting thru Christmas at work and my auto-immune was screaming.
Having the junior clerk take over some of the retail will not be popular with my customers, but it will enable me to take care of myself better and have time for my other life. I miss it --- my other life.

The one where I can sew and create, dream and play.

We went and saw the movie, Jack Reacher, on Christmas Day and now I am about halfway through all the novels that Lee Childs has written about Jack Reacher. This has been good winter reading. Working, reading and sleeping are what I am into these days.

On another bright note, I helped a customer re-pack something so we could save him a pile of money and the items smelled so good. Turned out they were loose teas from his friend in Seattle going to another friend somewhere else. These friends were all bartering their finds back & forth. The next day, he brought me a huge sack of various loose teas. Now my workplace smells divine.

My favorite tea is the  hand-tied jasmine flowers that unfurl under hot water.
I think what has gotten me through this tough time at work has been my buying an electric kettle at Amazon.com. It's difficult to take any breaks during the workday but I can boil water fast even if I often drink the tea cold by the time I get back to it.

Electric kettles are all over the place in Europe as they heat water fast to save electricity. I wasted a couple of months trying to figure out what they are called before I found one at Amazon.com that answered my need.

Here's hoping I get some help at work even if it is not the best help and I will have more time for watching my birdies squabble over who gets to sit front & center at the bird feeder.

Downton Abbey - anyone else watching season three?   Fabulous.