Guess what?! Gregg and I both have appointments to get our first jabs tomorrow! The friend offered to get me in, too, and I was thrilled to accept!
My principal was happy to let me have tomorrow afternoon off for such an important event. We have a 2:30 appointment.
I'm so excited and grateful! I'll have to bake the friend a cake or cookies or something as a thank you. I feel incredibly fortunate!
I'll check in tomorrow and let you know how it went.
It's already the midpoint of the work week, thanks to having Monday off. I'm glad. My job is really slow and boring these days thanks to the pandemic. Our in-person student enrollment is way down and we strictly limit visitors allowed in the front office. I can't wait until next year when things are expected to be almost back to normal. They've released the calendar for 2021/2022 and are planning to have all the students back in person five days a week. They're planning to get us all vaccinated well before then to make it safe. We'll see if it actually works out, but I do hope so.
Speaking of vaccines, Gregg texted me this afternoon to tell me that a friend of his who works at one of the hospitals has offered to get him in for his first jab on Friday! I'm really happy about that. It will be a load off my mind to see him vaccinated and safe.
After a solid week of cold, gray, rainy weather, we finally had a sunny day yesterday (our first day back at work after the long weekend, because of course). Today started off clear but by lunchtime the dark clouds had rolled back in and we're in for more rain and gloom for the rest of the week. I won't complain, because my friend Meg in Texas just went three days without power or water thanks to a snow/ice storm hammering the state. She has a husband and three young children, and they've been really roughing it out there. It was 43F in her house when their power finally came back on a little while ago, and they're still boiling snow for washing and using bottled water for drinking. Several days of cold rain is nothing compared to that!
There was one ray of sunshine this afternoon, though: Little P.! He had a new trick to show me that he had learned in school. He lifted his shirt, stuck his right cupped hand under his left armpit, and proceeded to make farting sounds by cranking his arm up and down. He thought it was the FUNNIEST THING EVER. He had to demonstrate it to me several times, and he even tried to play "Old McDonald Had a Farm" with fart noises. (!!!) At some point he informed me "If you don't wear deodorant it's even more real!!!"
All I could do was laugh and laugh. That boy is something else.
That's all I've got for now. Happy Humpday, everybody!
This is life around here at the moment.
According to our local weather guy, Ed Piotrowski, out of 44 days in this year so far, our area has had at least some rain on 29 of them. It's pouring today and the forecast doesn't call for any dry weather until next Wednesday or Thursday! Ed says that we're above average in actual rainfall but nowhere near records, so for the moment at least we're not having any substantial flooding problems. Everyone is longing to see some sunshine, though. A couple hours' drive to the north and you'd run into a lot of snow and ice. I suppose you could say that we're lucky in just having cold rain to contend with, but it's disappointing to not even get a little bit of snow with all this precipitation. At least snow is a pretty novelty in these parts, whereas rain is just messy and cold and yuck.
I've also noticed that nothing is blooming early this year. Normally if we have lots of sun and plenty of rain in February trees will start to flower prematurely, and then we worry about a hard freeze ruining them. There are buds swelling, but no signs of blooming yet. (That's a good thing). I'm looking forward to my next door neighbor's magnificent tulip magnolia coming into flower, and the redbuds off in the woods turning pink. At this point I'd just be satisfied to see a little sun, though!
Poor George. He hates going out in the rain to pee and poop. For that matter, he hates going out when the ground is wet even if it's stopped raining for a while. He'll hold it and hold it until I get worried and put a leash on him and make him go out. Such a prissy way for a big giant half pit bull to act! Ginger never was that finicky, but then she spent her first three years living the life of a carefree country dog. She loved being outdoors in all kinds of weather. George came straight from the shelter to a suburban neighborhood home and he definitely wants to be an inside dog.
There's nothing much to blog about today.
Oh, wait, I remember something I wanted to tell you about from last night! It's pretty gross and it made me so mad! On Wednesday I bought a pre-seasoned pork roast that is meant to be made into pulled pork. You put this brand of roast in the crockpot on high heat for 4 hours and then shred it up when it's done. We've had one before and it was yummy. So I bought one on Wednesday to be cooked Friday afternoon. I got off work early yesterday (and it's a long weekend, yay!) so I dashed home and put it on to cook so we could eat at a reasonable time. When the roast slid out of the packaging I noticed it had a kind of odd, almost slimy texture. I thought that was probably because of all the spices and sauce rubbed into the meat, and again, I was hurrying to get the 4 hour cooking time started so I didn't stop to look closely. Mistake. At 7:30, when it was time to eat, I shredded the meat and noted it had a kind of weird smell. So I sampled a small bite. And it was most definitely off. It tasted kind of sour, and not in a good vinegar-based sauce kind of way. By now alarm bells were ringing in my head, so I dug in the trash.....
Then I flipped the package over and had a look at the expiration date.
I nearly threw up. I had swallowed a small bite of pork that had been expired for a month.
I'll be going to the Food Lion down the road and finding the manager today to complain. This particular store has been going downhill lately but this is a bit too much. A person could get seriously ill from expired pork! Last week I was in the other Food Lion a couple miles away (the one I shopped at before we moved to this house) and I was stunned at how much cleaner, brighter, and well stocked it was compared to the one I've been using. After I go complain today, I think I resume shopping at the other location even though it's a tiny bit less convenient to get to. And you can bet I'll be checking dates on food a lot more closely from now on.
I didn't realize it was a long weekend until late last week. Monday is President's Day. I wish there was somewhere to go, or something different to do, but there just isn't. It's wet, it's February, and there's still a pandemic. Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, but I don't imagine many people are feeling very romantic this year. It's never a big deal in this house, but I'll be glad for the chance to buy discounted chocolates on Monday. And for the extra day off, of course, even if I spend it at home, sitting inside...again.
What about you, dear reader? What's going on in your world this weekend? I hope you all find small ways to treat yourself to something you enjoy over the next couple of days. Goodness knows we all can use it right now!
I've mentioned before how much I love all the animals we see in our neighborhood. The proximity to portions of Jeffries Creek makes this a great part of the county to live in if you want to see many varied mammal, bird, amphibian, and reptile species. We didn't realize it would be that way when we bought this house, because we're right off busy Hwy 76 and less than a mile from the center of the city. What a lucky break! When we lived way out in the country back in 2007-2010, we reveled in the wildlife and the quiet, but the 40 minute commute to work (which we couldn't share because we had very different schedules) got to be too much. It was a pretty place, though, and we were sorry to leave.
When we first found this house and bought it we liked the fact that even though it was off a main highway, it was tucked away and had no through-access. It's a half mile loop that's tucked away with woods and creek bottoms on one side. We've seen all kinds of animals, from large turtles to owls to foxes. Then there's the deer. We see two or three deer several times a week on our early morning/late evening walks with George. One neighbor, we discovered, was feeding some at her back fence early, early in the mornings late last fall. We would always stop and look for a minute, then move on. But we hadn't seen them lately.
Then yesterday morning as we walked past this neighbor's house, her dog was in the back yard for a change and barking loudly at us as we passed. Just as we both were about to say "So much for seeing the deer today..." we realized two does were standing at the fence, behind the fiercely barking dog, completely unfazed and apparently waiting for their breakfast! The dog obviously didn't mind the deer and vice versa. We couldn't believe our eyes! Then the woman walked out, saw us looking, and waved. All the while the two does stood there patiently, looking back at us. How cool is that?
We see two and sometimes three deer at night in other parts of the neighborhood, too. I'm sure it's the same ones. When we see them, we always stop for a minute and look and then slowly move on. They never seem afraid, nor do they bolt. They just look back at us and watch us pass. It's almost like we have neighborhood pet deer and I love it so much! A close encounter with them always gives me a few moments of pure joy. Those are few and far between these days, so I savor them.
Well, the weekend has rolled around again and once again, we have a gray, chilly, wet day. We've had a lot of rain this year, and consistently cold temperatures. I don't mind the cold but the endless gloom is getting old. On the rare afternoons when it's not totally overcast it's been heartening to see the extra minutes of daylight we've gained so far.
An email went out at work last week that the district is making plans for our vaccine rollout. They've been partnering with one of the local hospitals to make sure that as soon as the shots are available to school employees we'll be able to get them. That was nice, but then later that same day I heard on the news that our lovely Guh-vuh-nuh (Ol' Foghorn Leghorn, as I like to call him, the bastard) is balking at the state department's insistence that educators need to be cleared for the vaccines. This is after he's pushed and pushed for schools to remain open, no matter what. So who knows when it will happen, but I'm hopeful that by the beginning of March our turn will come. The school nurse had her second shot on Thursday, lucky thing, as all school nurses and some types of therapists were already given the green light. What a relief it must be for her! I can't wait for my turn.
Saturdays have been long and lonely for me lately. Gregg works until 7pm or a bit later on Saturdays these days in exchange for an extra day off each week (Sundays). Pre-pandemic I treasured time at home by myself, but now that that's my only option on Saturdays I'm growing tired of it. Hopefully by the summer most of our friends and family will have had the vaccine and we can relax a little about socializing.
I was thinking that I'd like to host a small cookout this summer--Marla and Martina along with their husbands, Toyo and Will, as long as we're all vaccinated by then. It would be so good to have a small gathering of friends, mask free, when we can all be together and talk and eat and laugh and feel like normal human beings again. It's nice to look ahead to that time and plan for a party (or two) to celebrate. It's something I've been thinking about all day today.
I did go out and run a few errands after lunch. I picked up a prescription for Gregg at the drugstore, went by the bank to make an ATM deposit, then to the grocery store for a big (much needed) shop. I even went by the butcher shop and restocked our freezer with meats, since we've almost finished what I stocked up on back in the fall. I've also started making a "spring cleaning" list for the house. If we're going to be able to finally invite people over by the start of summer, I'd like to give the whole house a good deep cleaning between now and then.
Are you making any plans for your post-jab year? What are you looking forward to most by the time summer gets here?
Oh, and just for fun....I thought this might make you smile. It made me smile. Have a good weekend, everyone.
No? Do you want it to snow? If so, I have good news!
My 7 year old friend Little P. shared a method for summoning snow with me this afternoon and it's sure to work!
Step 1: Flush ice cubes down the toilet.
Step 2: Put your pajamas on backwards.
Step 3: Put a spoon under your pillow, then go to sleep.
And voila! Here comes a snow day!
So says a little boy who's longing to see some snow for the first time. I hope he gets his wish.
February is here, and this morning dawned gray and wet and cold. Unfortunately we won't be getting any of the snow that's blanketing the northeast. Just dull, cold, wet weather that makes you want to stay home and hibernate.
No chance of that here. I'm typing this on my phone, at work. It's so quiet here today. Half of the office staff are out for one reason or another, and I hear we have lots of absent teachers. One of the absent teachers actually showed up at work today after her husband tested positive for Covid because she "needed to pick up some items". Seriously. It makes you wonder how some people manage to finish college and get teaching jobs when they're so lacking in common sense. Of course, she was sent back home immediately, hopefully before she had a chance to spread her germs around. I'm glad I come in to work at 8:30, after she'd already left.
I'm feeling so down in the dumps today. Saturday was a long lonely day at home (Gregg was working all day) and I couldn't shake my feeling of sadness. Late in the afternoon a friend from my book club called to give me the news that two of our members are in the process of moving away. That made me even sadder. Who knows if I'll get to see them again before they go--probably not. For that matter, who knows if we'll ever be able to resume meeting up when this virus is under control. Life doesn't stay static as the months continue to pass. People go on with their lives. I'm beginning to think nothing will ever be the same again.
It's unusual for me to feel sad for days on end like this. I try hard not to complain about Covid restrictions because I recognize how lucky I am in a lot of ways. But I'm missing my friends and my family (the ones I still have a relationship with, anyway) and most of all I still miss Ginger terribly. Things just seem like shit at the moment, to be honest.
Sorry about the negativity. That's all I've got today.
