Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 21 June 2020

LOL, AQ.

Good Morning. Very warm here already. Going to just float around today, without any exertion!

Hope the nurse can help with your sore toe, OG. Annette, it's become fashionable here to have quite neutral pale walls, with one wall in a contrasting & perhaps dramatic dark colour. Works best in large rooms, I think. Wendy, your poor daughter, she will be even more nervous of dentists now.

Hope you have a better day, Heather.

PHEW!!! I'm melting - sorry!

Glad that you got at least some of your problems sorted, Heather.

Quiet on here today. Perhaps everyone is just melting, as OG says. It was about 29 degrees here, so I stayed indoors for most of the afternoon with a fan on in the sitting room, and watched a film I'd had recorded for ages, and wanted to see: "Spotlight", about the Boston newspaper exposure of the Catholic Church scandal. Very well done.

Wrote a few emails (unlike AQ,who says she has her computer in one of the hottest rooms, ours is in the cool study at the front of the house. I can hear the birds singing through the window and also hear next doors endless deliveries - she seems to have at least two parcels or loads of groceries every single day!) Have received an email from friends who share our premises in Wales, and they have been shielding as they are both vulnerable due to health reasons. Not sure if and when they might venture that far, but think they might at some point as its a place they are very fond of, and regard as a second home.

Must go out now its cooled down a little, and water my pots.

I am also melting, and my feet feel like lead.
I have just walked up three flights of stairs to my flat, after checking on something on the ground floor.
I could not get out to water the containers until midday, but I am sure the plants needed their water as much as I did when I got back in!

I have bought a hair brush for undoing jungle hair. It says on the label that it smooths out naughty knots. I have plenty of those since not being able to get the hair cut. I have thick hair and struggle when I wash it now.

Thanks to all who have found the energy to post today. Also, best wishes to those who have not.

Evening all: Nice temperate day here with early clearing of the coastal overcast. Just waved bye-bye to the second of the two bookcases we had for sale. Apparently very tall bookcases are hard to find. The guy whose took the second bookcase was from Watford!! Amazing. His Mom lives in Abbots Langley. I used to work at John Dickinson there (paper/stationery) back in the day. We also got a call from a lady in Los Angeles who is building a house (!) and wanted three of the bookcases (but we have only two for sale dearie) to form one wall of her new home. I suggested she might want to have custom made built-in bookcases and she said, 'but you've already got them.' Not sure about that reasoning.

Other than that, I stopped by the gym to see what changes they made. Just a handful of people there. Everything is spaced out which means half the equipment has been stored or has tape around it saying it's not in operation. Lots of hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes available with instructions to wipe equipment down before and after it's used. We'll see how things go.... I'm not rushing anywhere.

Hope the UK weather settles down so you can all get a good night's sleep and enjoy the days.

Sudden call from Dau yester pm, could I come to look after Trio. Her f-i-l was in palliative care and she wanted to sit with her OH. She had spoken to the Trio, one just refused to talk about it, next wanted to talk about God, third opted out by falling asleep, so I felt quite daunted when they talked (or not) about G-pa at teatime. I muddled through. I can’t remember how I dealt with my children so many years ago. Dau & OH were back before I had read the promised books but I did so before leaving. Four books appeared on my lap; I think MissJ sneaked an extra one.

LINDA – It is summer when my computer room is so hot. These months it is freezing as all our a/c is the “other end”. Cloudy, no rain today. OH has gone out to lunch. Yeay. How shall I spend my “freedom”?

Just a thought

Missing . . . You never miss a place until you leave it, until you see it from a distant hill.
You never miss a face until it's absent from those around you, those who love you still. (Karen Rene)

Hi, all. 

I can empathize with you folks coping with your hot weather. It's supposed to be 92 F or 34 C here tomorrow. I need your wind from Antarctica, AQ.

I need to go shopping. Ugh. If my car starts well and I don't have to charge the battery, I'm going to leave at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. That way I can shop without anybody invading my 2 metres, and I won't have all that tension from making sure I'm going the correct way in the aisles and other Covid-related rules. I find shopping very, very anxiety producing now. I don't know why, because most of the people here don't pay any attention to the rules, anyway. In the small town where I live, nobody ever wears a mask. It's become highly politicized.

I went to the convenience store on the highway tonight (because I've been putting off shopping and I'm out of food) to buy an egg salad sandwich and a lemonade. I saw the beautiful pileated woodpecker. The pair is nesting along the creek this year and being very noisy.

AQ: I'm very sorry about the illness in your family. I loved the article about the appearance of the mountain tarn. Lovely! I'm glad you felt great after your return to church service.

OG: I hope your very sore toe is on the mend now. Stay cool! Glad you were able to cut EE's hair! 

Annette: That's a wonderful coincidence that you ran into the man from Watford! It's really a small world. Not many people, even wealthy people, have those koi ponds here. When we have one of those polar vortex winters, all the fish end up frozen. I think some of the species are expensive. White paint is nice, because then you can change the colors of your furnishings when you get tired of them, and you can choose any new color.

Rosy: 3 flights is a long walk; take care! Like you, I have also lost the plot about the current Covid rules here. Our governor has a very complicated tiered plan for re-opening and gives a press conference every day to issue qualifications and updates, but nobody here follows any rules, anyway. Frankly, the sole goal of the federal and most state governments has been to force everybody back to work immediately, whether our people die is irrelevant.

Heather: Like you, I also lie awake at night and think about all the things I didn't check before I went to bed. Also, every possible thing going wrong in my life. (I need to practice those tips that SunnyKate suggested.) Glad you're getting the technology sorted. That was probably a good decision to turn over the greenhouse to family. I vote you put a sun lounger there with a little table for books and tea. :-)

Wendyb: Your landscaping is gorgeous! I'm jealous.

Lindy: That's a shame about the garbage left in the nature space. What's wrong with people? I really, really need your OH's energy. Does he take magic vitamins?

PatO: I've never seen a Moorhen in Indiana. In the U.S., they changed the name to Gallinule, to differentiate our species from the ones in Europe. A few of the Common Gallinules--the black ones with red faces--come to Indiana to breed, but they aren't common here. I've seen them in Florida, though, and they also have purple ones, too, that are actually very pretty.

dibnlib: I haven't seen a single ladybird this year. Strange! Hope you're well.