The cabinet guys come on Monday so I’ve been slowly but surely emptying the kitchen and breakfast room so they can do their work. In the breakfast room, along the windowsill, I found one of those temporary hooks filled with face masks. Various designs, although a preponderance of black. This kind of “put up a hook and hang stuff of it” is right up YA’s alley so the only surprise was that I hadn’t noticed it earlier. This is in addition to various other places we have masks, including a little pocket of them in my car.
Then later the same day, an Amazon package got delivered and YA came up stairs with two boxes of covid tests (I almost typed COVID-19 because that was the protocol at my job but now I don’t have to, do I?) When I asked YA why she got them she said “we’re running out”. There was a lot of testing around here when YA had covid in July and then we were seriously exposed the end of August, and then the first weeks of December to make sure my cold was really a cold.
In the last two weeks I’ve been to the theatre and to a concert. The concert required a mask and the theatre recommended (and I complied). YA and I mask on planes.
The new normal feels like it has snuck up on us, although considering we’re 3 years in, it’s kind of a silly way to think. But if you stop to think about it, most new normal do sneak up on you. I could never have imagined today’s technology and medical advances when I was a kid.
Anything you never thought you would ever get used but eventually did?
Trail Baboon 
As a pre-schooler, my daughter fell in love with the Berenstain Bears (a series of kids’ books). One adventure named “messy buildup” as a gradual condition that overtook childrens’ rooms. I could always see it there, but was inured to it in my own space.
Early this week I looked at one moderately unused room in the basement. I removed (and donated) deposit bottles and cans from one corner, and plastic bags from another. I filled up our little car and took everything to places that receive such mess. Those corners now await new buildups, but, for the moment, are refreshed.
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Yes, I think clutter gets extra points for sneaking up on everybody.
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We have a cracker sized box of fenugreek leaves that we keep trying to use up. It was the smallest amount we could find in the East Asian grocery store in Fargo
I imagine it will outlast us. I also forgot how light bay leaves are when I put in an order for them from Penzeys, and I got so many they more than filled up a quart jar. That is a lot of bay leaves.
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To be more clear, the fenugreek is in a box the size that graham crackers come in.
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That’s a lot of fenugreek as well
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
The years have snuck up on me. How did I get to be almost 70 years old? My Grandma was 70. My Mom was 70. But me? I find the passage of time to be such a strange experience. But if time is not passing, then I am not here at all! I must remember that.
OT: Meanwhile, yesterday we finally got my mother qualified for hospice after a number of previous assessments in which she came out as “right on the line.” This was getting frustrating because she needs more help and attention than she was getting, and there are times she has needed extra pain and anxiety relief that she could not get without hospice care. I was in the assessment yesterday via telephone. Mom unknowingly helped with this designation by starting to wail in the middle of the assessment because something hurt, although I was not clear what hurt.
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Whew – glad that finally is in place, Jacque.
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OT for baboons in the TC. I’ve just been out running some errands and the main roads are OK although slow. But if you need someplace that you need to get to that need side roads, I’d rethink that.
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Thanks for the info. We have Togo dig out a friend who has a fever of 101 degrees.
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St. Paul is similar, but West St. Paul started their plowing earlier and it’s pretty much business as usual there.
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I must have you and YA pegged as party animals, vs. When I read about your hook that has become the repository for masks, I immediately thought of those masks that cover your eyes and part of your nose at a masked ball. “Why do they have so many masks,” I thought. It wasn’t until you mentioned Covid that I realized that’s not the kind of mask you had in mind.
Now there’s an idea! Make the more mundane masks we wear in public more festive by extending them to cover the eyes, and festooning them with sequins, colored feathers, and other such fineries, depending on the occasion, of course. Wouldn’t a trip to the supermarket be a lot more fun if people wore “enhanced” masks? Having seen the photos of Anna and her daughter’s annual door “thing,” I bet they could have lots of fun with this idea.
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This is great, PJ – love the image of us all going around in something like Mardi Gras masks… I do remember a bit of this at first a grocery store.
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Funny, now that I take a closer look at the header photo, I see the masks. When I looked this morning, all I noticed that the tree branches outside the window didn’t have the elaborate snow covering that the branches outside our windows have.
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I remember at the beginning of Covid, thinking I could not tolerate staying indoors so much, and I ultimately got kind of used to it, even welcomed some of it. Not to say I wasn’t overjoyed to get out and about again…
When I was first out on my own, I remember thinking essentially – “You mean I have to cook for myself most every meal for the rest of my life?? It didn’t take long for that reality to settle in, and I found different ethnic foods made it more fun.
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A neighborhood friend posted this on FB, and I’m sharing it here because I know some of you are not on FB, and also because quite a few of you are into music and singing. The Angel City Chorale, an incredible group of fun and talented singers under the leadership of Sue Fink, is a joy to listen to. Enjoy!
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That was AMAZZiNG!!!!!’
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Wow
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That would be so much fun to sing in!
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My Mother’s blood pressure cuff and my Dad’s automatic foot massage machine.
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Long ago, when people first started using words like “chairperson” and “spokesperson” instead of “chairman” and “spokesman”, it sounded really strange and awkward. Now I don’t give it a second thought.
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