1. My son is studying the plant life cycle as part of home school right now, so I decided that when we planted a mini terrarium that I would plant the Aerogarden at the same time so we could compare how quickly the plants grew in both environments.
The Aerogarden, after working GREAT for like two years straight, after an earthquake and things, is working a lot more finicky than it used to. I have to carefully lift the lid with the plant pods in it and scrub the aerator holes every time it come out of hibernation (to open them up wide) or it doesn't get enough air flowing through it. It is a real pain in the neck. If I had the money I'd upgrade to the newer spiffy Aerogardens with way more growing holes and the spiffy LED lights on them, but stuff like that is definitely out of my budget for the foreseeable future, so scrubbing the old aerator is the best bet at this point. Bright side, hopefully within the month, we'll have romaine lettuce straight from the "garden" to eat. Since we are currently experiencing hurricane force winds (some people are reporting gusts up to 90 mph in my area right now) and have tons of snow still on the ground, having something growing...it makes the house a bit brighter and makes me feel like I'm doing something to help secure some food security around here.
2. We all got a haircut this week. My husband cut my hair, I cut the daughter's hair, the husband and I both cut the son's hair (he isn't thrilled with getting his hair cut) and I even tried my hand at giving my husband a trim (while sweating bullets as I didn't want him to look awful since he still has to go to work every night being an essential service). He assured me that I did an okay job and we'll just work on me trimming a little bit more every week until he has something resembling an actual haircut going on. We aren't even sure if barber shops are open right now and honestly neither the husband or I were thrilled with him going somewhere to get his hair cut even if they were open with how things are.
While awaiting the next trim, I'm studying YouTube videos on how to cut hair and am hoping to have an idea of how to do it before I have to trim him up next.
3. While out getting the son some French fries (the lack of a regular therapy schedule gets to him from time to time right now) I let the family stay in the truck and eat while I ran into the store to see if there was anything that I could get in the way of food. I managed to hit the store right when a truck came in (yay!!!) and I was also thrilled to see that they were putting limits on bread, milk and other necessities, so hopefully I won't have to panic about where we could find fresh milk for the son to drink. I was able to get some cheese, bananas, another big bag of potatoes (which my WWII rationing books might as well be titled "1001 Ways to Make Potatoes Into Everything"), some lettuce (which was awesome as we were completely out of everything but potatoes around here) and some other things we needed. It was a relief to find food in the stores, I have to say, even if the choices were limited and things like paper products and some meat was still non-existent.
4. I called around to my local medical offices, including our pediatrician and our doctor's office to see how THEY were doing and if they needed anything. They were shocked and rather touched I thought of them. If you have extra toilet paper or other supplies that you might be able to spare, please be sure to check in with your doctors to see if they need anything. The stress we are under is multiplied by about 10,000 for those working in the medical field right now. I am hoping to sew some masks so that my husband's work will have some should they need them and to make sure our doctor's offices have some if they need them, but that is IF I can get the kids to bed at a decent time (since we are back to schoolwork this week I have a much better shot) and find time to pull out the sewing machine and get some work done.
5. Just a side note, but as I run across funny things, nice music, free things companies are doing and things during this time I'll be sharing them on Facebook. I'm hoping to compile a list as I run across things (as it seems like this whole situation might last a while), but in the meantime it's just a lot easier to hit "share" or just paste a URL into the Facebook field instead of having to create a new link page and everything.
6. I mended a few shirts that had holes in them.
7. I spent many free hours the last few weeks taking a detailed inventory of my food storage. I am working on compiling it all into a spreadsheet so that I'll be able to keep everything super organized. Other than my time this has been free for me to do and will hopefully make it so I continue to rotate my food storage in a good, timely fashion and also makes it so that nothing (and I mean NOTHING) goes to waste around here.
8. With therapy being closed with everything else, I have definitely saved money by not going anywhere for the most part and have saved the money in the way of gas usage.
9. The sun has come back to a good point where I am able to (on non-hurricane-force-winds days) turn off the supplemental electric heat in the house during the day. Hopefully this will see a reduction in our power bill as it got scary during the cold winter.
10. I tightened up some furniture and other small maintenance needs to avoid doing delayed maintenance, including replacing batteries in smoke detectors.
11. I began Spring cleaning a little bit. My goal is to start doing a few tasks a day and then hopefully I'll be done with Spring deep cleaning in no time :).
12. I cancelled my daughter's orthodontist appointment to see about bottom braces and told them I would reschedule when the world wasn't crazy anymore. They understood and were really good about it.
And there you go folks. My rather short list of things going on around here. I'm trying to make more a point to write things down as they happen, but I've been so busy and preoccupied that I just plain haven't thought to do it much the last little bit.
Well you have certainly kept busy this week! I'm still trying to get myself into a routine since my office has been shut since March 17th. I am working my way through my apt. so Spring cleaning will be finished early this year.
ReplyDeleteI too have been doing some stocktaking in my pantry as I plan to make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow and I plan on it being the last one for at least the next three weeks. I need some fresh fruit & veg and some dairy so I hope to be in and out quickly. They are expecting the peak time for the virus to impact us starting around the end of this week so I hope to be safely inside. My city is in lockdown aside from going to the grocery store, drugstore, a medical appt., one walk outdoors - but away from others - and if you are still going to work as an essential service person.
I had a couple of medical appointments scheduled for April but they will all have to be postponed.
My first appointment when things are back to normal will be to my hairdresser's - luckily I decided to let my hair go grey about a year ago and I was thinking of growing it a couple of inches longer anyway so I will try not to hack at it too much!
Stay safe.