And it's my baby brother's 43rd birthday! :)

Had a sick water heater and dead sump pump replaced this morning. Not ideal timing. I feel bad for our plumber. He has a kid with major health problems, so he has quite the safety protocol to go into each house. I'm sure it's getting very old.

Garbage & recycling day here too - DH takes it out early and I bring the cans in after pickup. Mission accomplished. We also have a remote tax appointment this afternoon. Even though we don't have to pay until later I want to know now how much we're going to owe. My joy for today is that the ice is out on the pond (aka water hazard) behind our house and the water fowl are back. It's a peaceful sight to see Mr & Mrs Mallard floating along.

Today was our trash pickup day too. We have 2 days of regular trash pickup each week along with recycling pickup and then 1 day of yard waste pickup.

This morning I noticed the Ruby Throated hummingbirds seem to be more active so I guess we are skipping spring and jumping right into summer. Temps are supposed to hit near 90 for the next few days. Turned the solar up on the pool to be able to float in it this weekend. It’s not quite warm enough for me yet. Tried last night but could only go in up to my knees. Haha!

Hubby is off today so he added a new sprinkler head to our irrigation system. He also dug up a big bunch of dianella (flax Lilly) that has threatened to take over one of my flower beds.

It is a beautiful day!

Hello everyone, sun is shining and so thankful for that. Even though I'm not posting much, yours are keeping me company.

Woo hoo. Trash pickup tomorrow morning and so I get to take a trip to the curb This evening. Even more exciting, it’s also recycling day. Two trips to the curb!

In other news, something stole my suet bird feeder. I suspect the neighborhood raccoon.

I'm losing track of what day it is.

I just checked my calendar. Today I clip one of my Devon Rex's nails. HAHAHA! Marlene you crack me up with your drive-by throw away one liners.

I'm having the most exciting day. Decided to edge the front garden beds and I'm cursing the day we decided (on recommendation from the guy who did our landscape installation) to use Tiftuf Bermuda grass. What did we know? After all, being Chicagoans all we know about are cool season grasses and mostly Kentucky Blue. But here in NC most of the plants are different varieties of things I'm familiar with or entirely new-to-me plants so I listen to the locals. Big mistake. This will take a while.

This is the first real day of our stay at home order, although I wasn't going anywhere that wouldn't be considered "essential" anyway. But I've had my grandson for a couple of days and so was picking him up or delivering him (his parent is a first responder, so childcare for them is allowed), but today child care isn't needed, so I'm on my own.

Yesterday, I made a last ditch trip (curbside service, no human face to face outside my truck) to a small farm/garden store and bought a truckload of bagged organic garden soil and compost, so I can plant a garden this year, so that's what I'll be doing if the weather cooperates. Too early to plant, but I can at least unload the bags from the truck.

When I retired, all I wanted was to be able to sleep in every day and have to go NOWHERE at all. This wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I have to keep reminding myself, I finally have that!

When I retired, all I wanted was to be able to sleep in every day and have to go NOWHERE at all.

Not exactly what we had in mind, was it, Olychick? I checked my calendar too...crickets.

So I cleaned our bedroom, the kitchen and breakfast room. Next up, the family room. Eventually. It’s a beautiful day and I’m going to spend the afternoon enjoying some sunshine for a while. No schedule here.

"HAHAHA! Marlene you crack me up with your drive-by throw away one liners."

Oh Thank You, DLM!!!!

Sadly with social distancing in place, drive-by throw away is all I can do safely ;-)

I've vacuumed the house twice in one week. Pretty much a record. I have loads of work to do, but I can't seem to make myself crack a book. Tomorrow.

My 90 year old dad keeps calling to tell me he has nothing to do this week except X or Y appointment. I remind him they've all been cancelled and he says he forgot. We have the same conversation everyday. He's actually quite with it, I think he just can't comprehend the situation.

No cleaning lady today, so I am doing a light cleaning all around the house. Had DH help me flip our and son's mattress. I'm also washing my mattress cover. My excursion today will be a quick drive to the post office to drop some paid bills in their mailbox. Need to remember to bring one disposable glove to wear on the hand that will touch the door and mailbox handle.

I knew it was Thursday ... only because my landscapers showed up!

chispa - I'm curious about the glove. When/where and how do you remove it? Just wondering how you remove it without touching it with the ungloved hand. Perhaps you just "quarantine" the gloved hand until you get somewhere that you can remove it and then wash both hands. Which would then make me wonder about the value of the glove. I ask because in the cases that I've worn my gloves to get mail, etc. I've considered how not to touch anything with the gloves before I get them off and how to get them off without touching them. It's tricky.

Rode a horse....mowed a good bit of the driveway lawn!! Tomorrow is trash day here. The anticipation is a almost unbearable! Got my Misfits Market box this morning, so I sorted, photographed and put the produce in the fridge. I need a nap after all that!!!

I should be landing in NYC right now, ready to meet my sister and head to our cool Kimpton hotel in Manhattan that we got a such a great deal on by booking last fall. Once we settle in we should be going out for dinner somewhere nice. Tomorrow we should be enjoying a Broadway show, and we should be eagerly waiting to use our reservation tickets for the Statue of Liberty. We should also be excited about seeing the MOMA and of course the library.

What I'm actually doing is goofing off online instead of finishing cleaning the house. On the bright side I just used my Cuban mop for the first time and hot diggity that thing really does work great!

I also realize that no matter how much I pay my housekeeper, that lady deserves every penny and then some. Of course this session she got paid as usual and didn't come to my house. No worries her job is MORE than secure....

3katz, you grab the glove with finger and thumb, just inside the inside edge, by your wrist, and slowly peel off inside out. Keep holding it from the same spot and drop into trash or other container.

If you have ever picked up dog poop with the poop bags it is the same idea.

It would be harder to do if your disposable gloves are too small/tight.

Running, who knew it had a name! My cleaning lady has always used my swifer-wet handle as a cuban mop! She uses rags/towels instead of the swifer velcro pads.

Running’s link to the Cuban mop is to a pricy model. They’re available at many grocery stores around here for about $4.00. Best mop you can own.

Just be careful to protect it, mine have been cut up to be used whenever a dowel rod has been needed.

Ah ... losing track of the date. I keep a daily log for a medical matter. I've temporarily expanded it to include some information about activities. I learned to do that in 1988 when I was installing mainframe computers in China. The city I was in is a very modern place today with more that 16 million people. Back then, it had 8 million but was primative. The baggage area of the airport was a lean-to with a metal roof. No internet of course. TV was only in hotels for westerners (programming was reruns of Mission Impossible in dubbed in various languages, a Chinese opera with a flying pig, advertizing for heavy equipment like backhoes, and the weather). Electricity was wildly unstable. An interruption could be for 15 minutes, the rest of the day or anything in between. They rotated scheduled day-long outages among key industries. Our day off was Wednesday. Their work week was 6 days. My hardware guy had been in China a long time and warned my right off the bat to do something to track the days. When he was in Harbin, their day off was, say, Tuesday. Someone who had been to the US thought that the "day of rest" in the US was Sunday. Since it was just another foreign word to them, they thought they were helping the foreign guest by calling Tuesday "Sunday." Naturally, the hardware guy got totally messed up on dates, and mayhem ensued when he had to talk to our office in Beijing to order parts and such. Even without renaming days, you can easily loose track of dates absent communication in a shared language or other markers.

I just picked my first ripe tomato and ate it right there. Yummmmm

The housekeepers at our hotels use Cuban mops for spills in the lobbies. They also use tennis balls on sticks to get black shoe marks off the hard floors.

Donna

My dog was just diagnosed with diabetes, my kitchen sink backed up (plumber here now), and I think there is a raccoon in my crawl space. Not fun!

The vet made DH stay in the car while they took the dog in. Talked over the phone. The plumber has extra precautions and wants a 12 foot bubble. I’m just so glad he came out.

I've never heard of a Cuban mop, but thank you! We just moved into a house with all hard floors. I don't have a Swiffer, I was planning to get one. Just picked up a cheap fuzzy mop in the meantime. I'd much rather use microfiber cloths that are reusable. I'll get DH to make me one of these!

Thanks for the explanation chispa. I see how you can do that. Of course that only works if you stocked up on disposable gloves.

I had quite the busy day.

Virtual Zumba by Zoom at 9:30 out on the deck

11:00 virtual meeting

2 hours of virtual student advising for summer and fall

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Grooming success. This is my golden persian after my first attempt to trim her. Quite a transformation.

3katz, I have always bought the Costco disposable gloves to have at home for cleaning projects, preparing raw meats, cutting up onions (hate that smell on my hands!), etc and also offer them to my cleaning lady to use when she cleans here. Cleaning chemicals can be harsh on the skin.

Actually the last few years I have given my cleaning lady a box of disposable gloves and a bonus check at Christmas time, the gloves so she could have some of her own to use when working in other houses.

So no intentional stocking up on my part, just luck that it is something I have always had at home. I also have some N95 masks as part of our earthquake and fire preparation.

2 hours of virtual student advising for summer and fall.

Gsciencechick, my kids have had similar conferences with their college advisors, and I believe it's giving my kids a sense of hope to be looking ahead and planning for their next semesters. They found themselves back home indefinitely, and we are all so focused on the here and now. But looking ahead to their fall schedules and knowing this, too, shall pass has been helpful for them. So thank you for what you're doing--it's probably a lot more than you realize.

Feathers11, it's really been great interacting with the students, and I think it's good mentally for all of us. Fortunately, we also offer a lot online in the summer.

gsciencechick, my DD got an email from her school yesterday saying that if students choose, they can take whatever grade they currently have in a course or they can complete the work assigned and have the grades on that work incorporated into their final grade. She had come home prepared to write 3 final papers and probably will, but it was a great relief to her to know she had the option.

ETA: I had this wrong. They are giving them the option of taking a pass (GPA neutral) if they choose. Some instructors seem to be giving students different options. My DH is not impressed that they don't seem to have a well-coordinated plan.

Like feathers, we are pretty impressed with how her post secondary is responding at a time when many of the students are just focussed on packing up their lives on short notice and getting home to their families.

My DH is an administrator at a post-secondary here so I know how much effort everyone is putting in to make this work.

Thanks for all you are doing.

daisychain, wow, that's pretty good. Our students have the ability to elect S/U for any course this semester all the way until the last day of classes. We had to develop in about 2 days' notice an internship project for students on internships who were not finished and who can no longer go to their sites.

I am getting ready to go out on a bike ride before it gets too crazy out there.

Mimou, I had a cat develop diabetes due to steroids. I learned it was something many vets just do not know enough about. Luckily one vet in the office was well educated on the subject. I learned a lot from Feline Diabetes Message Board. Don't know if there is a similar for dogs. I tested at home, using numbers from tests at vets are higher since pet is stressed. I never did a blind shot. Have Karo Syrup on hand to put on gums in case pet needs to come around (I had that happen once). With a diet change and discontinuing the steroids, my cat was able to come off insulin in a few months. Good luck.

Yesterday was such a sloooow day. I've been staying up later, so getting up later. I like quiet time in the mornings, so DH is waiting until I get up to go on his morning walk. I haven't cooked this much since our three children were still in the house.

On the agenda for today: water orchids, termite bait station inspection and Ozark Season 3 starts on Netflix. BIG DAY!