2023 in Review, the Second Six Months

 

 As has become my tradition, I will look at what 2023 was like for me, according to my blog. Here it is, 2023- the second six months. (In case you're interested, here's the first six months.

July

We picked blueberries at Uncle Billy's house this month.

I began the month with a 4th of July post about when Ward's mother got her US citizenship. Later, I talked about a baby shower I was having and about Wally and Theo getting a new place. I ended the month with a travelog about the trip Ward and I took to Pennsylvania. And, as always, I featured what was growing in our yard. 

The highlight of the PA trip was a visit to The Ruins, an abandoned coal mine adorned with hundreds of mosaics.

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August

A volunteer sunflower planted by the birds.

I did six posts in August. In August, we took a day trip to Pennsylvania to visit Camp Micheax and found other interesting things along the way. I chronicled the odyssey of trying to find a new rug and did a meanderings post in which I talked about an eye patch I had to wear and tomatoes that needed to be processed. In addition, I did two focused posts - one about my perfectionism and one about coping with the overwhelming bad news we hear every day. And no month would be complete without some flower pictures.

One of the few structures still standing at Camp Micheax. 

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September

We had a surprise iris bloom in September.

I did seven posts in September. We began the month with a trip to West Virginia and Ohio for a family reunion. While there, we explored Marietta, the first settlement in the Northwest Territory. At the end of the month, I was chronicling a trip we took to Peaks of Otter Virgina. In between, I talked about singing and a broken apple tree branch. 

Flat Top Peak at Peaks of Otter.

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October

We hiked along Smith Mountain Lake during our VA vacation.

I did eight posts this month. The month began with a continuation of our trip to Virginia. Back home, Ward and I hiked at a local Audubon Sanctuary, and I blogged about being inspired to do more outdoor things in the cold after seeing a TV show focused on Maine. (BTW, still working on that goal. I don't like cold!) And I did a couple of posts where we were beginning to see signs of autumn.

The fall mums were blooming this month.

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November

Beautyberries were providing some November color in the yard.

I did five posts in November. Several of the posts this month involved the planning we did for our Thanksgiving dinner with 30 people. We had our credit card stolen, and we bought new furniture without fretting over it for a long time, as we had done in the past. Kris did a post telling us about her new cats.

Kris's cats, Pippa and Stuart

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December

It was short-lived, but we had our first snow of the season in December.

I finished up the year with 10 posts in December. Most of the posts this month talked about Christmas, including four posts featuring ornaments from our tree. On Christmas Day, I did a tribute to my mother. And on a non-Christmas topic, I mentioned the extremely long false eyelashes I had been seeing and wondered if anyone had any insights into this trend.

Ward sent me Christmas flowers at work.

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So there you have it - my Blogging Year, 2023, in review. I would call it a year of maintaining the blog posting about once a week. I didn't have regular features, but I did post many flower pictures, which may be my favorite kind of post. I continued to have writer's block as I was conflicted about rambling about my mundane everyday life and wanting to say something more meaningful or clever. And that resulted in me not posting anything at times. 

What does 2024 hold for Live and Learn? We shall see. Maybe I'll spend more time on the blog and write some meaningful regular posts here. Or perhaps you will get to hear more of my everyday ramblings. Tune in. :)

Until next time...

2023 in Review, The First Six Months

 As has become my tradition, I will look at what 2023 was like for me, according to my blog. Some day, if I give up on privacy issues, the review will be a more accurate picture of life as I know it. And sometimes, I wonder why I even bother about online privacy. I think Google already knows everything about me, and what they don't know, Amazon probably does. Anyone with a bit of time and inclination could figure out anything they wanted. But I digress. Here it is, 2023, according to my blog.

I didn't do a lot of posting this year, with a total of 73 for the year. Over the 12 years I've been blogging here, that number is just above my lowest year in 2017 when I did 70 posts. My highest year was in 2013, with a total of 278 posts. 

January

This is what I thought for most of my posts this month.
Source?

I did six posts this month, two of which were a review of 2022. Most of the posts were This and That with no central theme. We took a hike on New Year's Day, I worked on my Storyworth Stories (an autobiography of sorts), and I tried speed blogging to stop procrastinating and post something. That worked for that one time. I should try it some more now that I've been reminded of it. The one themed post I did was about being left-handed and directionally challenged.

This was the sign that inspired the post about being directionally challenged.

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February

Snowdrops were the 1st spring flower in our yard.

I did six posts this month, also. I was excited about seeing snowdrops, our first spring flowers, but I lamented that none of our crocuses were blooming like I had seen elsewhere. Ward and I took a trip to West Virginia and Virginia, and we celebrated Valentine's Day by doing couples yoga for something different. We visited our first parks in our quest to visit all of the parks in our town. 

A pocket park we visited in our town.

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March

I did four posts this month, and they mainly featured spring flowers. I was excited that spring had finally sprung.

The crocuses were blooming this month.

So was the ornamental plum.

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April

This month, I did five posts. There were a lot of pictures of the continuation of spring blooming around the yard. We celebrated Wally's birthday with a hike, and I was sprouting beans in baggies on a window in preparation for a STEM program I would do. I also summarized the driving trip that Ward and I took to Georgia and South Carolina to visit family and friends.

Our trip south included hiking to various waterfalls.

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May

Rhododendron were blooming.

I did four posts in May. I continued to feature the blooming flowers and the hazy skies we had from the Canadian wildfires. I did a review of Crumbl Cookies, and there was a tribute to our cat, Leo, who passed away this month. 

Leo

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June

Bee with pollen sac on tomato plant.

I did five posts in June. Along with the flowers, I showed vegetables that were growing. Also, I did a Father's Day tribute to my father and presented my father-in-law with a book I made for him chronicling his life. We took another hike with Wally.

Apples were growing for the first time on a tree we planted a few years before.

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Tune in next time for the next six months.

Time for "Happy New Year"

 

"Again, time elapsed."
― Carolyn Keene, The Secret of the Old Clock

Happy New Year!

Another year, another week, another day. Time is such an interesting thing. We use it to keep track of things as they pass, and sometimes, it's important, and sometimes, it's not. Some people can keep track of it easily, some can't. In some countries, the trains run on time. In other countries, they don't.

It has been measured using different standards by different cultures. 

Well, I was going to develop this post with interesting anecdotes (Wally and Theo stories) and with scholarly and philosophical ideas about time. I was going to discuss how different cultures use time (stories about Ward's background and mine). And I was going to finish up with a quiz about time.

But you know what? That takes a lot of thinking, and I'm not in the mood to tax my brain right now. 😀 Not to mention that it's time to go drop off one of Wally and Theo's gifts that Ward made. I'll show it in another post.

So until then, I hope you are having a relaxing day and thinking about all of the great possibilities ahead in 2024.

Happy Ending

The clean rug on a sunny day.

A few months ago, I sort of went off the deep end looking for a new rug for the living room after our cat peed on it. (If you want to remember, you can read the details below in a post I did at the time.) After a lot of effort, we decided to give up and just live with what we had. That was until I was at work one day, and a coworker mentioned that she was waiting for a call from the rug cleaners. One thing led to another, and we ended up taking the rug to professional rug cleaners. Because we were out of their pickup and delivery zone and had to drop it off ourselves, they gave us a substantial discount - about $350 cheaper than the other one we got. 

We got the rug back this week, and it looks good. And although it still shows a little wear from cat scratching, the stains are gone. One end is a little faded, so we solved that by turning it and putting the unfaded side toward the window. And Ward says he doesn't even notice any of those things.

Yay! I guess good things come to those who wait. Next up is to get new chairs for that room. The chairs we have are inexpensive ones we bought at Ikea to stage things at our last house when we were selling it. And, of course, the cats scratched up the sides of them. But for now, they are working. And I really don't want to go furniture shopping anytime soon.

Until next time...

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 25, 2023

Rug Crazy

 

The original rug. It's hard to see the stains and fading in the picture.

It all started when we planned to have a baby shower here for my nephew and his wife. Or maybe it really started when our cat Leo died, and his remaining sister decided to show how she felt about that by peeing at various places around the house. Or maybe it all started even before that when Leo, in his old age, was peeing in various places before he could make it to the litter box. Not really sure.

But there was definitely a problem because I could smell cat pee when I passed the living room. That was after we removed the bookcase that had been used as a litter box. The smell wasn't strong, and Ward couldn't smell it, but it was definitely there. And I didn't think we needed to host a baby shower with any extra odors because of the heightened sense of smell accompanying pregnancy. So, after more investigation, we figured out that the rug in there had been peed on sometime in the past. We rolled it up and took it to the basement to store until we figured out what we were going to do with it.

Rug #2 on the porch airing out. BTW, the blue rug in the back, I picked out the first place we went. We weren't trying to match anything and just needed something so the floor wouldn't get scratched. It serves its purpose and adds a little color.

The day before, I had visited Aunt Martha and saw a new rug she had ordered online and liked the looks of it. So I ordered one from the same place, and with miracles of shipping, it arrived Thursday before the shower on Saturday. However, it came in a box and had a lot of creases in it - too many to fall out in just a couple of days. So we rolled that one up and put it aside until we could figure out what to do with it. We had bare floors for the shower, but in the end, I don't think anyone noticed.

We brought the new rug back out, and while the colors were okay, I didn't like the looks of it. It was one of those washable rugs that are made to go into a washing machine. We have a couple of runners like that, but I didn't like the looks of it in a bigger 8' x 10' size. So we returned it, but only after paying a hefty shipping charge. So I said if I got another rug online, it would be with an easy, free return. 

We shopped many stores to see what was in stock. And I spent who knows how much time shopping online and couldn't find one that fit the bill anywhere. The colors were right, but the pattern was wrong. The pattern was good, but the colors weren't right. Too thin. Too expensive. Too cheap looking. Nothing seemed to work. 

In the meantime, I was looking for a place that would clean our old, smelly wool rug. We had had it for many years, but overall, it was in decent shape except for the stains and pee smell. It took a while, but I finally found a cleaner who would clean it for $400. About twice as much as we paid for it (granted, that was years ago at Costco), and that was more than we wanted to spend.

So, figuring we had nothing to lose, we borrowed Miss Landers' carpet cleaner and cleaned the rug even though that was not a recommended practice for a wool rug. We got a lot of dirt out of it, but the stains remained. And while the pee smell was gone, it smelled like a wet dog, even after it was dry. The smell lessened with time but still smelled, and I was bothered every time I walked by the room. (Once again, Ward could smell nothing.) So then, I liberally spread baking soda and borax over the rug and let it sit for a few days.

Rug #3 clashed with the floors.

But I couldn't help myself and continued shopping online until I found another rug that seemed just right. Good colors, a good design, and an okay price. But when it arrived, the colors weren't right, the pile was low, and it stunk. Three strikes and it was out. I was so disappointed, but we returned it with much less hassle than the first one if you don't count the awkwardness of carrying around a bulky rug.

Then, it was time to vacuum the old rug to see if the baking soda and borax had performed their magic. And what a mess that was. I spent two days on it and ended up with fine, white dust over everything in the room. I hadn't realized that even though all of the dials on the vacuum were set correctly, instead of sucking up the powder, it was blowing it everywhere. Eventually, I got it under control, and the rug smelled better. It still had an odor, but it was faint. The stains and fading still bothered me but weren't obvious at first glance. I guessed we could live with it.

That was until I stopped by Homegoods one day to see what rugs they had. And there was a decent one that seemed to fit the bill, so we bought it and brought it home. Granted, it was a nice-looking rug, but it clashed with the floors. I had always considered the floors a neutral background, but they're not. The golden red oak floors did not look good with the maroon red of the rug. Ward didn't see a problem. (Have I mentioned that all of my senses are more sensitive than his?) So we took that rug back today.

We're back to what we started with. And yes, you can call me obsessed, crazy, or whatever other term you want. I have used all those words to describe myself during this rug quest. However, Ward has only rolled his eyes at me a couple of times and has not said a word during this rug drama. And what a remarkable man he is that he didn't say what he must have been thinking. And for that, I am thankful.

Merry Christmas!

 Merry Christmas to One and All!

The holidays, especially Christmas, are a time when emotions seem to surface more readily. And often, they are tinged with sadness. While I have shed a few tears this year, my emotions were not as raw as they were my first Christmas after my mother passed away. Here is a post I wrote back then.

If you are feeling sad, I hope you can find at least one reason to smile today.

Christmas Smiles

My mother, last Christmas

Tears flow easily these days. I miss my mother. I have always heard that the holidays are especially hard when you have lost someone, but I've never really experienced it like this. It's taken me by surprise because, in my logical mind, I thought I would be thinking about all of the special Christmas times I had with her and be sad. But logic is not necessarily at work here. It's not the Christmases I miss. I miss the emotional connection.

My mother had dementia and slowly left us over the years in many ways. It was discouraging and sad to watch, but no matter what her outward appearance was, I always felt a connection between us during my visits. Towards the end, she was usually quiet, often with a distant stare. But then I'd say something, and there would be a little glint in her eye or a slight smile, and I knew that she was communicating in the way that was available to her at that point in her life. We were connecting, and it made me happy. Before I experienced the last couple of years with my mother, I never would have thought that those difficult times would be the ones I missed the most. But for now, they are.

However, life goes on no matter what the circumstances and this grief is not consuming my life. It's just a part of it. I am ahead this year in many things and feeling more relaxed than usual. I am enjoying the Christmas lights and the Christmas music. I am having good times with my sisters and friends. Ward and I are having long talks and making fun plans.

With all those things, I'm trying to live what my mother taught me until the end of her life. She kept living even when it seemed to the outside world life wasn't worth it. So, as I think of her little smiles, I smile, too. Through the tears.