This and That

 It's been over a week since I checked in, so it's time, I guess. But I'm not feeling it. I have been having a general feeling of unease and tiredness recently and am not motivated to do much, including blogging. Part of the reason for this is construction fatigue, especially knowing that it will be at least 2 more months before we can begin to put the house back in order. And the other factor is that Ward is formally retiring this week. An event that is welcomed by both of us but is a major life change nonetheless. Changes invigorate some people. Not me. They fill me with anxiety even when I know they are good ones. But experience has taught me that change is desirable and necessary and will be worth whatever growing pains it causes.

In the meantime, we have joined a gym. Ward will be losing his gym at work and wants a place to take exercise classes. He thrives in classes and has better success with regular exercise when it is scheduled. I'm not a gym person, but I have joined him and am slowly dipping my toe in. The gym seems well run with a lot to offer. I have been trying different classes and finding all are challenging in one way or another. But Zumba and circuit training classes have been the favorites so far. Zumba because it is a very friendly atmosphere, and circuit training because it involves working all major muscle groups. 

The weather has been cold, rainy, and windy, so I haven't spent much time in the yard. There is more of that to come in the next few days, but spring is here, and we will slowly have more warm days than cold. The few vegetable plants I had planted survived a couple of hard freezes with protection, and I may plant some more things soon. Still deciding what that might be, but the top contenders are carrots and lettuce.

So I have told you about how I am unmotivated and tired these days, so I question my sanity when I say that I am considering doing the April A-Z challenge. I have no themes and feel like I don't have anything to say, but I do love a challenge. So I may start, and there's no penalty if I don't do it.

How are things in your neck of the woods?

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Okay. I've only sat down to do a post about spring at least 5x, but have never finished it. So now I'm going to publish it as is. I had more plans, but at the very least, there are some pictures of pretty flowers. Here it is.

Spring is here! It has been slowly revealing itself, but lately, it has been in a hurry to show its colors.   An exciting time to be sure.

One day I found the first daffodil beginning to bloom. I planted daffodils in various places in the yard a couple of years ago, and they're starting to flower. Yay!

The next day it looked like this after four inches of snow and frigid temperatures.

Another day, I found our first set of crocus blooming.

The next day, they looked like this after one of God's furry creatures had a midnight snack.

One day our trees looked like this, 

And the next day, they looked like this plum tree. 

Snowdrops. The earliest flowers to bloom in spring, and they are already gone.

The second wave of crocus.

The third wave of crocus. Depending on the location, they bloom at different times.

The same goes for the daffodils. These were the first to bloom.
They are the same ones as in the first picture.

These were the next to bloom. Some of the daffodils are still only leaves that are half up.

Hellebore 

Forsythia

So there you have it - for better or for worse. Now I'm out to get beds ready for some cruciferous vegetables. Until next time...

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today is a celebration of our Irish heritage. According to DNA analysis, I am about 40% Irish, and Ward is about 25% Irish. While I look the part with red hair and freckles, Ward doesn't with his black hair and olive skin. That's what is so interesting about genetics and our varied backgrounds. You're never sure what the almost infinite combination of genes will come up with. When I was younger and would lament to my mother, I wanted to be like one of my older sisters; my mother would always say how boring the world would be if we were all alike. She was right. 

Now to add a little more about St. Patrick's Day, I'm running an updated version of a post from three years ago.

  St. Patrick's Day This and That

Irish dancers in St. Patrick's Day Parade, Washington, D. C.

I usually don't do a lot to observe St. Patrick's Day except wear green--a habit that started in elementary school days to avoid being pinched. If you didn't wear green, you were fair game. I wondered how that crazy tradition got started and found out that, most likely, it was started by Irish immigrants in this country a couple hundred years ago. Supposedly, wearing green made you invisible to mischievous leprechauns who would pinch you if they could see you. A pinch from someone reminded you to be aware that a leprechaun could sneak up on you at any time.

However, it wasn't until last year that I learned about wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day. Apparently, you wear green if you are Catholic and orange if you are Protestant. A friend, whose mother is Irish, said she was always insistent that they wear orange instead of green on St. Patrick's Day. I think that detail was lost on most of us in this country, or at least me.

Shamrocks (white clover)

I learned another new thing this St. Patrick's Day--what a shamrock is. Sarah, my special buddy, gave me a shamrock plant for St. Patrick's Day. It was in a green pot from a store and labeled as a shamrock. However, it looked just like white clover to me and was not at all like my image of a shamrock. But I was surprised when I looked into it. While there is disagreement among the Irish about which clover variety is a shamrock, it is a clover plant. Yellow clover is what most agreed on, with white clover coming in second. I have a white clover plant. I'm not sure if I will let it join the rest of the clover in my yard or bring it inside. I may make it a house plant.

And while I usually don't do a lot on St. Patrick's Day (not green beer drinker or corned beef eater), I have been to a few parades. This was especially a big event when we lived in New Orleans. The fun part about a St. Patrick's Day parade was they threw vegetables from the floats to make an Irish stew. That means that they threw cabbages, carrots, potatoes, and onions along with the beads. We usually took them home and did just that--made a stew.

We've been to one parade here, and while it was enjoyable, it didn't quite live up to the vegetable throwing in New Orleans.

So as I go and figure out what green thing I'm going to wear today, I hope you have a Happy St. Patrick's Day, however big or small you choose to celebrate it.

Construction Update-We Have a Floor

 Construction continues with progress being made. However, most of it is still prep work for when the "real" stuff gets in, like cabinets and appliances. But we do have the new floor done, except for the threshold transitions. The floor took about a week with some additional inconveniences involved. First was, the washer and dryer were unhooked and in the garage. The next was that we couldn't walk on the floors during various parts of the process. That meant we had to go outside and around the house to enter the basement where our food and temporary kitchen are. While both of these were annoying, they were not really a problem. As I have said, I am lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have these kinds of issues.

Here are a few pictures of the floor being done. (Realize that these captions are from someone who doesn't really know how to install floors. I'm just describing what I saw.)

You can see the beginning steps of the prep here. First, they wetted the floor with water. Next, they spread mortar (thinset) on the floor. On top of that, they added an underlayment layer (Schluter Ditra) and pressed it down with the roller you see under the window. It took about two days to do the entire area with additional drying time (i.e., a time we couldn't walk on it.)

After the underlayment was securely dried in place, they added another layer of mortar to the top of it. This required another day of drying time.

Then they started laying the tile on top of another layer of thinset.

They had a complicated system of gadgets to space and level the tile that I didn't quite understand. I don't know if there is a difference in function between the red and blue pieces. It took about 2 days to lay the tile and another day or so to grout it.

The workman had the completed floor covered up with paper for protection before I got a picture of the finished job.

They have also been doing finish carpentry work in the pantry on the shelves. The picture makes the pantry look bigger than it is, but it is bigger than what we had before.

They were also doing finish work around the opening into the kitchen.
You can see the washer in the background. It's disconnected again
in anticipation of working on the floor molding in the laundry room.

This is an air filter that Ward built from 4 Hepa filters and a box fan. It works as well as or better than the commercial one we bought and costs about 1/2 as much. However, the commercial one is sleeker and takes up less space. Also, in this picture, you can see the displaced cleaning supplies which now live on the hearth.

Now for the disappointing news. The cabinets that were supposed to be done by the end of February are now slated for delivery at the end of April, which puts the completion time for the project at the end of May. But it is what it is. We're too far into the project to turn back now. So patience is the name of the game at this point.

Until next time...

Lucky, Blessed, and Fortunate

I was listening to a show on the radio today talking about mental health and the war in Ukraine. Basically, the experts said as a collective whole, we've been under a lot of stress for an extended period of time with the pandemic and now the Ukraine invasion. Among other things, one point discussed was the guilt felt of living a normal life while so much suffering is going on. The advice here was to do what you can in your sphere of influence and live your life. Even people in dire circumstances do what they can to live and celebrate life. So with this in mind, I will continue writing about everyday things--good things (you can get the difficult news in another place) and try not to feel guilty. Thus begins my series of Lucky, Blessed, and Fortunate.

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I know that I am lucky, blessed, and fortunate that I recently went to see Jesus Christ Superstar at the Kennedy Center, an iconic landmark in Washington, D.C. It has world-class productions, and you often see the President and other celebrities attending performances there. Any time I visit an iconic place, I get excited, and this time was no exception. Ward used to go regularly to the Kennedy Center with his mother to see the National Symphony when he was in high school, but he hadn't been back since then. So besides seeing the rock opera, it was also a nostalgic visit for him. 

We went with Miss Landers and her friend, who treated us to the tickets. Ward did the arduous task of maneuvering through difficult traffic, so all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the trip. I'm not sure we would have made it if it had been up to me. I don't like driving even in the best of circumstances, but Ward always delivers. 

The production was fantastic. It was an hour and a half of nonstop music and drama. I knew most of the songs by heart, but I had never seen it as the opera it was intended to be. Seeing it this way brought new meaning to a very familiar story. What I didn't realize before this was that the play was told from the perspective of Judas. It all made better sense now. I remember when the album was first out, the adults around me saying that they were not happy that it ended with the crucifixion and not the following resurrection. Judas hanged himself before Jesus was hanged, so it makes sense that the story ended where it did.

We were seated in the balcony and got a good view of the beautiful lights in the ceiling.

It was a very enjoyable afternoon, and I'm proud to say that no one had to shush me from singing along too loudly, although there was a little humming under my mask. :)

The weather was nice that afternoon, so 
 we spent time on the terrace overlooking the Potomac River after the show.
That's Georgetown in the distance.

 

Take a Ride

Come take a ride with me as I share my stream of thoughts this Tuesday evening. 

Coming soon, I hope. This was our first crocus bloom last year on March 12.

I have high hopes for what Amazon delivered to our door this evening - an air purifier. Since construction began on the house, I have been miserable at home with sneezing, stuffiness, runny nose, and itchy eyes. The dust is driving me crazy. Theo and Ward aren't suffering the same way, although Theo is at work most of the time and has his own air purifier running in his room when he is home. And to think that we almost got rid of that purifier when we were cleaning out my parents' house. 

And speaking of my parents' things, we almost gave away a little fridge from them that is in our temporary kitchen in the living room. It works great but is very loud. We have tried everything to remedy the noise to no avail. So if you want to have a conversation, you have to go into another room. Lucky that we have other rooms to go to. 

But back to the air purifier. So far, so good. It's been plugged up for a couple of hours, and I haven't sneezed once. My nose is still stopped up, but that's okay. I can live with that. The real test will be tomorrow, when they will be doing a final sweep of the subfloor before the floor guy starts laying the tile. That's bound to stir up a lot of dust.

And speaking of the floor guy coming tomorrow, when I get up from here, I need to go clear the stuff off of the tile in the garage. We have been using the boxes of tile as a flat surface to put things on. I'm not sure where everything will go, but I'll start with putting the ice chest back in the car. And because the floors had to be cleared, the washer and dryer are in the garage, too. I did laundry over the weekend, so we should be good for a while, but there's nothing like not having a working washer to make one think they need to do laundry.

Theo made a delicious Japanese lima bean curry for supper. A few years ago, I would not have thought I would like anything like that. But somehow, he fixes lima beans in a way that takes away their bitterness, and I like them. A lot. He has various lima bean recipes, and they're always good. Well, except for the lima bean-baked bean recipe. While it was well done, I just couldn't wrap my head around sweet lima beans.

And speaking of food, I made a pot of vegetable soup yesterday using up several things in the fridge. The soup was made with two things in mind. One was to use up the chicken broth, old carrots, and onions, and the other was to have some lighter, healthier food around. We have been eating even more take-out than usual recently, and while it tasted good, it was not the best nutrition for the calories we were consuming. Cooking regularly is difficult for us in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. We'll see if our new bright and shiny kitchen inspires us to cook more when it's done.

I feel very lucky to have these first-world problems when much of the rest of the world is suffering in one way or another. One which is being thoroughly documented before our eyes. 

Time to go clean up in the garage.

Until next time...