What Day Is It Anyway?

I think it is Sunday. The day and date faded in and out all day leaving me wondering.

We did watch CBS Sunday Morning. I remember having tears and laughter as the show progressed between the deaths of the famous and Jim Carrey’s humor. The most impressive moments of the show were these:

Amazing.

But as with most shows these days, a lot centered around COVID19 and our new normal.

I knitted my day away. We actually finishing Independence Day Resurgence. I didn’t find it so awful as I had the first time I watched it. And my husband and I found interesting faces and storylines that seemed not to tie in as they should. Come to find out there is a book (Independence Day: Crucible) that should be between the two movies. So I ordered it. I will try to read it when finished with this Outlander (at chapter 117 of 142-?)

The ID2 story seems more to ring true with COVID19’s global threats. Never in my lifetime do I remember having so much in common with other countries. Sure we lived through the ducking beneath our desks in case a bomb hit. Like that would ever help. But we were very young and the in-class movies showed us the importance.

Then we had an assassination of an actual president, that we most loved. In our protestant house, there was fear of him. My parents hated that I was glued to the set as Catholic services and movies kept the sadness front and center of everyone’s minds. But I don’t remember much about how the world handled it. It was mostly global in our heads.

How about the moon landing? That was massive. But was it? It was USA landing and claiming. Sure we connected in country but maybe that wasn’t as global as we thought.

So as a reverse independence day started occurring in March, as our social groups grew smaller our minds seemed to see farther than we have, well, at least in my lifetime. On the movie Independence Day, it was by Morse Code that we connected globally to attack the enemy. For twenty years the world stayed in harmony until the next threat of the alien beings tried to kill us all.

Do you think there will be a day as we fight the enemy that all countries will unite and kill the virus and we will be at peace? Will we find a happy ending to all this? This is far harder than shooting guns and flying spaceships. The enemy is unseen. So small most of us wouldn’t know what it looks like. We wear masks not to protect us but others. There is no shield we can hold up. It is only in seeing loved ones or people two degrees from us that we can see it not as a laugh but as serious as the insectoid/octopuslike aliens.

How odd to have something so deadly pointed at us and to stand weak, yet caring for others. The old adages of TV Westerns where the hero stands between the bandit and the loved one doesn’t apply. None of the rules of the games we have learned work for this. I know my mother and parents of we older boomers worried about the scum in ponds that could, in their minds, cause polio. But I don’t think that disease was as contagious as this. I know it was horrid. I remember stories. But I don’t remember meeting anyone who had it. I did meet a couple people later in life that had recovered from it with crutches and skinny legs. I was still too young to understand anything about it. We still got to go see our grandparents and go to church and school.

With the #WDIIA, we have a prompt that helps us to meander through our thoughts. Today, the day after Independence Day my thoughts see a tiny invisible thing that is more powerful than what Will Smith had to deal with. Today means that it is day 1 on fourteen days we who are more vulnerable have to stay isolated because others need their crowds. How many will die because you need to party? Couldn’t a day of introspection of how we won our Independence and the lines left for us, “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” be better than beer and hotdogs? Isn’t my life as important as your need to carry a gun?

Okay, that was a lot of wandering around. I know others can say all this so much better than I. But I needed to say it. And now it is nearly Monday #WTIIA

Lookie What I Did!

A Scrubby!

I used 32 pegs of a KB Hers of a His and Hers Sock kit. The yarn is Scrubby Cotton. And it hurts and is hard to purl with. Since the pattern calls for one-row knit and one-row purl. that second row of each part of the garter stitch took me forever! And it hurt from pulling and pushing the little texture knots through the former stitch. The knit rows were easy-peasy. This took me a day and a half. Partly because I had to frog it due to the first loom, the wood with metal pegs sock loom, I think it is a KB also. I tried to pull the stitches onto a circular needle but the loom crunched apart in my hands so I just frogged the project. My brother was able to fix the broken loom back to new. But meanwhile, I just grabbed the Hers loom and started again.

If I had attempted this pattern by crocheting I think it would have been finished in an hour. Maybe it was the yarn and I should try it with the yarn recommended in Kristen’s tutorial. I think I’ll go order some of that when I get finished with this report. Here’s the Youtube tutorial again. I know! You watch this while I do a dish or two so I can report how it does its job.

Did you enjoy it? Yeah. I know. I was on my own doing those dishes. Oh, well. Oh, yeah. The dishrag easily did the job my scrubby sponge could. So there’s that. By the way, GoodKnitKisses has a left-handed tutorial, too.

I still have my craft project taking up the whole coffee table. Oh well, I think the family is used to me. They all have places to call their own. I lost my hobby room when my son moved in. So if anyone has a complaint… No one does. They are pretty mellow guys with their own hobbies so…

Speaking of guys, As of today, I have been married to this terrific man for 17 years. We’ve been together as of the fourth of July 25 years. Go us!!!

Oh, and it was a Monday because the Easy Writers group Zoomed. I do enjoy getting with this group of ladies. Each seems to have unique personalities and styles. Anyway, that answers the What Day Is It Anyway question. #WDIIA

Happy Monday

and

 

One-Liner Wednesday — What Day Is It Anyway?

Half-Birthday Beach Parties Are The Best!

That’s the One-Liner for Wednesday answering the #What Day Is It Anyway? question. Except the Half-birthday was two days ago. So here’s how it happened:

My friend sent out little boxes to those who attended. And she sent the Zoom address to get us to the party.

The box:

An alligator squirt gun, a shell-shaped soap, a Booktastic trivia card, a baggie of wipers, a postcard from the beach, and a beach ball. I immediately blew up the ball.

Sorry for the quality it is a picture of a picture, and so on, and so on.

So despite the lock-down, lack of money, Weather that tries not to look like June, my Half-Birthday Virtual Zooming  Beach Party was a success! I have fun friends!

 

Stream of Consciousness (What Day Is It Anyway?) Saturday

Let the Fanfare Begin

Do you remember when you were young and someone asked you how old you were? And you’d square your shoulders and tell them your age plus a half or three quarters or even larger fraction according to how much math had been imparted to your brain. Then somewhere mid-thirties or forties that all started changing. I, for one, reversed the numbers to reflect a smaller number. 41 became 14, 52 became 25. At one point that became useless. Face it. When that happens you have reached maturity. Scratch that, You’re old. Fantastic. I was hiding from my actual age the whole time I’ve been alive. Never happy with the moment wanting to be older or younger. I would have loved to be 33 forever. Mature enough to make my own decisions and young enough to do everything I ever wanted to do. At that age, I could even play in the park without feeling silly as my kids needed the accompanying adult on the slide and the swings. Then I could enjoy a drink and pretend to be a full adult.

Pixabay.com

Well, here I am at 07 and thinking maybe I should be the fan of the half or three-quarter again. Maybe if the world didn’t have a pandemic and other apocalyptic things like murder wasps, I wouldn’t embrace this. But for those of us with birthdays in December, which has never been a great month for those who were born under its cold, crazy, Christmasy times, the fact may be that many of us might not be here for our birthdays. If and when we do, all the better to show we fancy every moment of life.

So today I attended a half birthday Zoom party. There were elements of fantasy as this was with a cosplay bunch of friends. I could have sworn one of the ladies had elf ears. Anyway, I thought this idea was fun and look forward to my half birthday in a few days. We have life. Let’s celebrate it. even if only on Zoom with friends and family. It may be we are closer to loved ones now than ever before as we need to keep in touch often. Wouldn’t it be great if we could measure our lives in Love? Is Rent playing in my head again? Let me share the earworm. (One of my favorite songs of all time!)

Each second should have always been this precious. We should have never put aside our elders, how quickly we become one! As we try to save lives let’s make sure to pull it in and let it sit with us. Before COVID19 a car accident or cancer could rob us of a loved one but it was so seldom that we didn’t bring it in until it was too late. We’ve been given a bit of a gift to look at saving and loving our lives and loving the lives of others.

Half-Birthday? I’m a fan. I might even enjoy a three-quarter Birthday! Hey, remember being a newlywed? We got so sappy! Two-week anniversaries were fun! Let’s get back to that kind of excitement. Life is a gift. We can still be careful and distance and hand-wash, AND love life!

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “fan.” Use it by itself or find a word that starts or ends with it. Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

2019-2020 SoCS Badge by Shelley! https://www.quaintrevival.com/

#WDIIA

What Day is it Anyway? Thursday, March 26th, 2020 — This and That Thursday

On Linda’s Page (prompter of What Day Is It Anyway?) she talked about not getting to sleep until the third hour. In comments, I mentioned how it isn’t fair that the senior hour for shopping is early mornings. That isn’t really fair and is assumptive of the rule-makers. (I do understand that the cleaning and shelving of products happen at night. Thank you shop-owners for being so kind. This is a life-long issue for me! A night owl by nature.) Though there must be seniors that are early birds, I would guess a lot of us fall into the tossing and turning and seeing holes in the ceiling and stars above, or mountains or monsters that are just clothes or bedding tossed on the corner chair or table–and those are the creative moments. Most of the tossing and turning is pain enhanced by what-ifs, worst-case scenarios, or guilts of what didn’t get done the day before, or that never-ending list of things that must be done tomorrow–which never get done. And we of the senior variety or high-riskers have the most to worry about.

And that leads me to the wake-up with a back story. It is a non-COVID19 story. <shock-face> One night a month or so ago I was rolling over in my sleep. I grabbed the blanket to cozy in. My hand felt crusty-gooeyness. Yuck! I was so sleepy I wanted to ignore it. But YUCK! I’m sure it was upchuck! So I got up and removed said blanket, washed my hands and donned another blanket with a note to myself to keep the cats off my bed. Yeah. That’s gonna happen!

Solution: I found an old pink blanket to put on top of my regular covers. My day starts with me waking because two cats are lying on my up facing side (I sleep on my side) while Kali is curled up near my tummy. I wake because I know that this cozyish moment could turn into World War III including teeth and claws if I don’t get ahead of the situation.

I get up. I yell, “Everyone out of the pool, now!” I do the fastest bedmaking because Teddy is impatient to get the special blanket. Which comes next. It is an old pink blanket. Though thin, it should protect a little against possible crusties. Teddy seems to smile at me and steps right on it and curls up with a sigh that says, ‘Finally!’

As the morning moves on one becomes two as Rosey joins him. These two can be the worst of enemies but it is obvious they like to be together.

 

 

In other news:

I love it when my nails get this long.

There are things you can do with nails that you can’t without. Like a good back-scratching. And they make my fat fingers look nicer. But regardless of the science that says nails stay cleaner when they are short, I tend to disagree. See how clean these sweeties are? When I have short nails, the free-edge gets blackish with dirty, greasy, grimey, crud. I use the brush and have to scrub harder. Without nails, there are things I can’t do with nails, like rub my face. It’ll be nice not to scratch my eyeballs! Though we are advised to keep them short during the pandemic, this is the stage I have to cut anyway–rebel much?–because they break down below the quick. That hurts! So bye, bye nails!

Guess what. I know it is Thursday because last night was Chicago Med, Fire, PD or the Josh Gates shows which are on at the same time so we watch them on the weekends.  I love C. Med. I like C. Fire. I tolerate C. P. D. I love all the Josh Gates shows. I will share the trailers in a moment. I just wanted to finish my thought, it is Thursday and we already took out the trash for tomorrow! Now the trailers.

 

I think of Josh as another of my sons, in fact, he looks and has similar humor to my step-son, so I love him! And I think the shows are very exciting while being educational.

I know. I just noticed this is two trailers from the same show. He has other shows but I didn’t want to wear you out with YouTubes–no, more like, I didn’t want to wear me out looking them all up. Sorry. <–I wanted to say, ‘My bad’ but I hate that phrase!

And now, for no particular reason, a picture of Kali. I think she wanted equal time with the cats starring on this one. Sorry that you had to see the (cleanish except for the cats’ scratchpad cardboard flakes) piddle pad and her ‘hide the biscuits’ (really dog treats not the other) towel. But hey, there’s Pictionary!

Gotta love that face!

😍😘🥰🤗

How is your day going? I hope you are all staying safe and well! Enjoy the close you can get or the internal reflections that can bring you peace, hope, and love. Whatcha cooking? Today we are having Lana Burritos.  Leftover beans and rice with smashed (pressure cooker) potatoes.

 

One-Liner Wednesday – Change

Sometimes change comes in drips or drops,

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sometimes change comes in a tsunami.

Pixabay.com

 

Yeah. I think we’re past the dripping. It seems we refused changes of beauty before. Now maybe this tsunami of illness will bring a strong-armed change. If we take the time to be responsible people we may find the best in all of us.

 

I don’t know where that quote came from. I looked it up on Google and didn’t find it. If anyone knows who said it first, I will be glad to give credit where it is due.

One-liner Wednesday is a fun prompt of Linda G. Hill’s creation. It is easy and fun. Click on the blue link.

What Day is it Anyway? Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

Wow! I have to ask myself, what did I do today? It is 10:30 PM. My wake up was a little over 12 hours ago. Here is a little of what my day held for me.

On Sundays, we wake up and watch CBS Sunday Morning. I eat my breakfast toast or bagel during the show and get the coffee or other caffeine onboard. Anyone who has been watching “live” shows sees a big difference in how the shows are done now. Even our Sunday Morning showed the social distancing in effect. That makes me both happy and not so much. Knowing that we are still in the early stages of this pandemic. How will it change? Much of the show was dedicated to our new normal.

I know we watched another show after that but I can’t remember what it was. I know with all the bingeing we did we are now trying to catch up on our recorded shows. I might not remember because the highlight of my day was taking a stroll or two or three around the yard. I’m nearly ready to leave for a real walk. Thank heavens for sunny warm days. Yes, 55 degrees is warm. We are still dripping faucets at night as it is in the 20s. But after a cold, low snow winter, I was able to walk without a sweater or coat. I must have adapted to this weather as I used to freeze at 67! I’m not ready to wear shorts like some friends and a neighbor out here, but no coat is a thumbs up!

Most of my day is knitting, as you know. I’m anxious to take my daughter’s first sock off the loom. I want to try a certain cast-off and I feel I want to be aware of the tutorial on YouTube to make the best stretchy cuff for her. Meanwhile, the second sock is at the cuff part and the stitches used are more time consuming so I put it off. I do have her boyfriend’s first sock to the point that I’ll be making the heel soon. Now that I have his on two of the same size looms I am trying to keep both socks nearly caught up with each other. So I may put off the heel one until sock two is caught up. I still have a couple of hats in the making. But I only worked on boyfriend’s socks today.

During the knitting, I watched Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets:

It was weirdish but good for entertainment. In spite of whoever did the chest plate for our female star, must have been male, there were plenty of good lines from out starlet that I not only applauded, I shouted out to my three males of the house!

There might have been other shows. But it is Sunday and my evenings are usually watching The Walking Dead and The Talking Dead. I think having watched so much of these kinds of shows in the past few years, I find myself not as panicky. You see it isn’t about the zombies, but how people come together. How the good and the bad are affected. How old rules of social life can change and how to adapt.

If you haven’t watched it and are into it, this was a great show and there were tears. I hope that wasn’t too much of a spoiler. But The Talking Dead helps me get over whatever trauma I hold from TWD.

By the way, this is not tonight’s show. More on that in a moment.

Tonight’s show was done from the homes or offices of the stars. Like all live shows, keeping the social distancing so as to stay alive and well.

While I did my Duolingo lessons, I focus on German and Spanish but have added French and Esperanto. and while writing this blog I have had on one of my favorite go-tos: Alaska the Last Frontier. My brother knows the Kilchers and has shared his experience being up there one summer with me as I watch. I love that family. I wish I would have tried living up there like that when I was younger and energetic. I wonder how they are dealing with this new normal? Probably just fine as they are already socially distant.

Well for some people this is a boring kind of day. But for us, this is how we’ve been living since SSDI and then retirement SSI. I keep my hands busy trying to do something for others (yay! socks!) and keep my mind occupied watching writing, directing, acting out stories. Or listening to stories on Audible or Kindle Text-to-Speech.

So this is my version of What Day Is It Anyway? A prompt given to us by Linda G. Hill.

Per Linda:

Why I’m writing this post:

Because if you’re like me and stuck at home already, or if you’re going to be like me soon, the days of the week are going to be hell to keep track of. We have a wonderful community here on WordPress and all over the Internet as well, and I’m sure many people are feeling nervous and/or isolated. I want to make sure every one of us has somewhere to congregate and someone to talk to.

What Day is it Anyway? #SoCS Edition Saturday, March 21st, 2020

 

 

 Something I keep telling myself.

And the thing is many of the worries we have in life turn out pretty good. I can’t predict which ones but I do have to report that the Bank issue resolved itself bringing our balance back to helping our food stock to keep us fed for two weeks. Yay!

Another issue that we caught by looking at the bank statement worked out by calling the source. The specialist at that business saw the problem and solved it immediately. Reversed the charge and all was good. I hope you are all finding good things in the midst of all of this like we did today.

Took a walk, several times today. It was just in the yard but the sun was up and two of the four outings I could just wear a T-shirt! Wow! It was wonderful!

Maybe laundry is just a thing you get done in your house. I remember when in the family of six I was chief cook, bottle washer, and laundry matron. Now just getting my own laundry done is something I put off until there just isn’t anything else to wear and I’m down to my last towel. I remedied that today. Woo Hoo!

With fibromyalgia and arthritis, there are days of aches and pains, tiredness, and worry of fever. And this is spring so there is congestion going on. Normally I wouldn’t worry about any of it. I had gotten used to all those feeling and knew what to take to make it better for me. For the last couple of days, and this is just for the record, I’ve had all of that. Breathing is easy. The walks, though not with a lot of energy, were bearable. So I am claiming fibro and allergies. I’m not going anywhere more than I have been before, so I’m not spreading around my nearly hypochondriac sickness.

I did send out a question to our community about a mountain that my adult offspring like to camp at. It is only 12 miles away. And though the road is pretty rough, once you get there the scenery is awesome and the smell of pine trees is so uplifting to the spirit! But I was told that this is the season of wolves and big cats and one should take a gun. Not sure I want to deal with that. Still, it might be a nice ride for us and we could stay near the car. We have seen bear scat up there. But I think it might be a little soon for them. We’ll see if the cabin fever wins over the wilderness fear.

A friend of mine mentioned the importance of paper journaling during a pandemic. I have mentioned, and not followed through, starting to write more by hand. I am going to try and do that.

So the last thing I want to mention is: What a beautiful sunset we had tonight! Picture a lot more reds and pinks.

 

 

So this was a combination #WDIIA and #SoCS Thank you, Linda, for the wonderful prompts!

 

 

Stream of Consciousness Saturday –Wire

Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wire.” Use “wire” as a noun or a verb or any way you’d like. Enjoy!

More slipper socks finished. Yay!

And the snow is falling. About an inch in an hour. Here’s the latest of my porch banister that was just wet and brown an hour ago:

(revised edit: two inches now at the finish of the blog)

That is the peaceful scene I wished for in December or January. Here we are early spring and I wanted to start getting out for walks. But I guess it is helping all of us stay inside and meditate our lives.

You know at any moment we all could have died. Let’s say by accident or gunshot or our own stupidity. I guess the risk-takers would have been more prone to death than those who live from a cautious point of view. It’s all according to how we are wired.

Heck, we have enough coyote-to-roadrunner ratio here that we could have been hit by:

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The loss of life from any or all those incidences are devastating. Yet, they happen every day, bar the anvil. We try to protect ourselves as best we can from any of these, yet our thoughts don’t stray to or remain on the what-ifs.

Our new shared reality is built of constant worry on top of the regular worries of paying bills and surviving winter.

Some of us are wired to be gregarious. We must be around people at all times. Others of us are more of quiet wiring. Many taught to greet with a hug or handshake are shaken to bows or not even meeting people. Besides, who has toilet paper these days? You don’t want to shake that hand!

This is a time for the introverts to enjoy not feeling guilty for staying home, enjoying our own company. This is a time to reflect on how death has always been just around the corner. But facing that it may or may not be your own is hard to grab onto.

We came into this thinking it one more hoax, one more conspiracy. A joke. But even if so, life has come to a halt. Many I know are finding people they know have the virus. Many have it that can’t be tested. It is fear upon fear.

It is like we just opened a new book and we find ourselves in The Walking Dead or something like it. Panic is our worst enemy. Take a lesson from the disaster movies. Stay put and use your time to ponder.

I am finding it hard to listen to the constant fears of others. I’m 70 after all! I have lived a wonderful life. I have a great extended family and fantastic friends. I would hate, at any point in my life to have lost any of them.

At the same time, I have been the young mother as my young children romped about me. I chose not to take my children to see grandparents if any of us were even the slightest bit ill. So I don’t believe in my heart I cause their demise. Yet, at my age, I have lost many I have loved. This is something you never get used to. I assume if it happens on a large scale the loss will be overwhelming. Let’s hope that that doesn’t happen.

Meanwhile, what if we only have a few days to be alive? A few days to enjoy the amount of health we do have? Why spend our last moments worrying. Outside of proper precaution, what more can we do? I’m not saying ‘eat, drink, and be merry,’ I’m saying love your people. Spend as much time as you can by connecting in the ways earlier pandemics didn’t have: Skype, FaceTime, google chat. Talk on the phone if you can handle it. Write out your thoughts, email. If you are so inclined: write letters. I don’t know if sending the letters is advisable as others will have to touch and handle the mail to their detriment. But once this passes, and it will pass, there will be ways to reach out or remember each other.

I do believe we are wired to LOVE.

Pixabay.com

 

 

Sad Sunday

I love it when family and friends come to visit. I absolutely turn to jello and can’t find my keys to the new-to-me car I’m so sad.

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Then I spend the ride home thinking about the good feelings of no bra, no shoes, and sweatpants. And fish and chips. And a wonderful newish car. I look at it and even though I am comfortable and self-soothed, and Kali snuggles, I miss the daylights out of my family and friends. Even the recommended Daylight Savings Time nap didn’t take away that sad.

Back to life as we know it. Watching Doc Martin season 9 while knitting and snuggles. I am feeling grateful for all the love, happiness, and health that surrounds me. I wish it for all of you, too!