WOMEN AGES 50+ FOR MAY 2020

yesterday was the pits, no energy; but today is better, i used a mask - since we now have them - and cleaned with it. i was diagnosed very highly allergic to dust mites a good 10 years ago, so after 30 min of cleaning i'm often wheezing and sneezing and need a break. but w mask i was able to do a good hour and then probably another half our or hour later in the day. good to know.
i once had a young roommate who had such strong hayfever she had to wear a mask when walking in a park. (she could pass out and go into shock). i'm not big on being "precious" and ultra careful in life but as long as we are required (now,here) to have masks, i can see some positive in it.

In my work i really need to keep up to date archives of images and videos etc, but i have not been up to date. a friend asked me to answer a few questions about my confinement in a video that he's going to edit and put online as a promotional thing for his GF's serious business in the field and also a plus for those of us who participate. he knows my work and knows that i have done videos before and won't use the same angle all the time, for example. i had to do the filming last weekend pre-deconfinement here (deconfinement here= no self-authorization paper required to go out, and allowed to go 100 km rather than 1 km, and allowed to go out for more than an hour, without any explanation of why, and as many times as we like in a day, and a nearby woods is open). but today i worked on the archiving and looking up SOME of the old images etc, and assembling labeling, and putting them on a heavy flash drive and a new external hard disk (2T).

It's taken most of the day. sometimes when waiting for transfer i could do a little cooking or cleaning.

I cooked up some veggie stew today: simple: potatoes, carrots, zuke with tamari, curry paste cumin and a dash of olive oil; and had 2 soft boiled eggs and a can of sardines; later crackers with 100% choc (no sugar) squares and tahini. not so bad.

my friend often runs very late, and today is no exception. he said he was going to arrive "late" without specifics. i didn't mind as i was running behind but an idea of when would be welcome. usually he's better w communication. surely something came up. it's tricky for many of us as we have been confined for 2 months. he was also seeing his parents (w social distancing) for 1st time in 2 months, to go for a walk. they are surely around 80 or older so they or something may need more attention than expected.

I was gonna go for a walk in AM but worked instead on tidying and work. I guess i'll go for a walk now. it's 7:30 pm. i wonder if those people down the street still play festive music every night out the windows at 8pm since relative "deconfinement".

RITA ~ So sorry about the bad news about your brother and the fact that he has a disabled child to see after is a major worry for all that are in her life and his. Enjoy your sewing machine...I finally remembered how to rethread mine but don't have any material. Boo!

Carol in GA

Amber TX - Thanks, Im going to make this tuna salad. Sounds really good.

BARBARA ~ I looked at your "To Do" list and and am tire just imagining all the things you accomplish.

HEATHER ~ The outside picnic looks like a lot of fun. We a have been doing this with our son's family, but, we all are outside just at a very good distance from each other.

This is an old photo that I have shown before, but, it is what the grands do when they visit:



Carol in GA

So we were not allowed to meet friends or family outside of our abodes for 2 months. i had to give a friend a flash drive today and then we walked a few blocks to a quiet bench to sit and then talked a good while and then walked some more. it was a great treat after 2 months w no live meetings. meeting another friend tomorrow for a walk. of course: with masks, no touching, keeping a meter distance both times.

0000

Today's feast! Fish Tacos!
Three street taco sized tortillas with homemade coleslaw, oven baked salmon with a nice herb butter drizzle, and course cut shredded extra sharp cheddar cheese. It was heaven! Simple yet so filling. My body loves coleslaw!

Wanted to share with you all my Dads photo. When he was healthy, before his dementia, and Lewy Body's disease. My parents divorced after 25 years marriage, when I was in high school. As a young adult our relationship was interesting. We worked at the same bank, I as a installment loans clerk, and him as Assistant Vice President. He called me Miss Curtis, and I called him Mr. Curtis. We would meet for coffee in the morning, and sometimes for drinks after work. He valued my opinion on gals he was dating. I would meet them at a dinner at a restaurant, and some he would see my raised eyebrow about. Like I was a deciding factor in the relationship going any further. At times I would refer to my father as a friend, because fathers you could call and they'd be there. Many times, in high school, I would call and call and he would be out. So in my mind, he had lost that father status. Towards the end of his tenure at the bank, he would eventually be transferred to the audit department, a humiliating downgrade. He audited our department, and spent a day with me at my desk! What a crazy day that was! He was an amazing Dad though. And a proud grandpa. Being parental wasn't a natural thing for him. Being a father to us three girls was drama filled!

💖Rebecca

SuziQ: I love the humor and will try to be sure I don’t turn into a hater. There are already plenty of them, and I am definitely not a *kitten* whisperer. :laugh:

Pip: Thanks for a photo of your beautiful yard, and handsome dog. :bigsmile:

Rita: I’m so sorry about your brother. Your sunset photos are wonderful.

Margaret: Out of control aggressive dogs are dangerous. I don’t know whether you would have law enforcement support on the matter. Contacting the authorities is a good first step. A change in your fence to increase its height & strength could help. I know it would be expensive, but it might be worth it. Just a thought. I think Pip has given you good advice. :flowerforyou:

Karen: Great post on meat.

Last night we had facetime calls from our daughter and family, and also from our son and family. The calls were a birthday greeting for DH who just turned 73. All of us enjoyed it.

I picked up a prescription for DH today and did a little bit of grocery shopping. I am home now and happy to be here. The dehydrater is working on the parsley I’m drying, but it seems slow. I’ve considered moving it to a slightly higher heat. I’ll give it more time before I decide whether to boost the heat. The current setting is for herbs and parsley fits that category.

Katla in Beautiful NW Oregon

Hi Gals,


SuziQ -that is a great idea!!!! I have a container of Watermelon in my freezer, I couldn’t finish a whole watermelon last summer so I pureed it and froze it and have not used it… this is a wonderful idea.



Kim from N. California

Dinner this evening....General Tso Shrimp stir fry, homemade....and the view from my courtyard. Storm is moving in.

barbiecat - I had more run ins with the cable company, and they always say the same thing, unplug wait a few seconds and then plug it back in. Now when I have problems I do this on my own and it makes me feel like I fixed it without any help..LOL Electronics are not my thing either, and I have lost so much sleep over dumb stuff. Your not alone...

Have a good night,

MaryBeth in Ohio

Did a Tammy Lee stretching DVD. The plan for tomorrow is to do a Jane Fonda Workout DVD (yes, she still does them)

Rebecca – I wouldn’t be surprised if we worry about our children even after we die. I one time tried to explain to my son that even tho I was over 40, had three children, was on my third house, I was still my father’s “little girl” and I would always be. How I miss him now.

A friend just told me that she thinks the Y in Titusville (FL) is going to open next week. Well, I do have to say that that Y was always fairly clean, you didn’t see dustbunnies around unlike one of the gyms I go to and the floors were clean, you didn’t see hairs on the floor unlike another Y I go to. The only thing I can think they may consider doing is eliminating the carpeting. Most people were very considerate cleaning the equipment but I think part of that is the fact that that Y has a lot of senior citizens who aren’t in so much of a rush.

Now that summer is here (for some of us) instead of ice cream I have grapes frozen. Lower in calories. I also freeze those individual containers of applesauce. A good “pop” is to take unflavored yogurt (32oz) a 12oz can of OJ concentrate, thaw the concentrate but don’t reconstitute it, mix the two together and put into ice pop molds. I usually can make 20 from one tub of yogurt and MFP says they’re 90 calories each. I also found that if I make my own yogurt I can drain it more so it is thicker

M – I think the saying is “if you want to make God laugh, make a plan”

Kate UK – I’m so sorry about your BIL

Things our grandparents went thru – I remember my grandmother one time telling me about how she came to the US. It broke my heart. To leave your parents, brothers and sisters and know that you’ll never see them again to go to a country where you don’t speak the language and the foods are different. That must have been so very hard. Then the depression and all the other things. Yet, they somehow managed.

SuziQ – I would say that I shop the same as you. I have my list and usually stick to it unless I see a healthy food on sale and it can be frozen. Then I stock up. Like bananas were 15 cents a pound so I now have three (well, it’s down to 2 now) bags in the freezer. Vince laughed at me, but that’s too bad. About something like this he just doesn’t understand. I measure everything. For some reason, I don’t have a scale (don’t ask me to explain that) but measuring cups and spoons – got it covered. Congrats on that weight loss

Have more yogurt in the IP being made. I like to drain it in the evening because otherwise I’m afraid I’d have some before it drained all the way.

Tonya – how does your MIL attach the paperclip to a mask that she’s already made? I would think it wouldn’t be that hard to do when you’re making the mask but how do you do it when the mask has already been made? How does she do it? The day will come when you don’t cry for your father. On that day you’ll start to accept the fact that he’s no longer in any pain and only wants the best for you. I’m afraid of an increase in covid, too, as things are opening up. More and more people seem to be getting lax.

Lynette – I really miss my father every day. When he was alive I didn’t appreciate him. I’m thinking Denise is going to be the same way.

Yesterday when I was in WalMart I was in line keeping the 6’ apart and this woman just walks up and cuts in front of me. I figured it wasn’t a big thing since she only had one item so I really didn’t say anything. She was in line on top of the guy in front of her, of course no mask, then she got mad at the cashier because she was buying cigarettes and she didn’t have her ID. Some people!

Was about to string the popcorn when the yarn place called. My yarn was in! Since they will be closed tomorrow and Monday, I went and got it. Then just for jollies stopped in at the Salvation Army. Saw quite a few of the things we donated. Then went to Sams since we had some money that could either go towards a purchase or applied to our credit. They did finally have the rib eye that I wanted for Steve so I got a little bit of that. I figure we’ll cook that, the other rib eye I got along with the tenderloin. Then bought gas and then had to go to Food Lion to get Vince his milk. Then home and IN THE POOL (yippee!). It was a bit chilly, would have liked it warmer. But then I strung some popcorn. Oh, I also sprayed these blocks for the Christmas decorations after having Vince put in more nails. I may have found the secret to getting him to do things, or at least one secret. He likes working with electronics. He’s talked about how to put lighting at the bottom of the stairs to the pool. I told him before we start on another project, let’s do some of the little things that need to be done. So today he cut out the covering for the outlet (that’s only been needing to be done since last year), I took the stakes off the landscaping edging but Vince realized he needed something else. I don’t understand it…neither Lowes nor Home Depot sold this, he had to order it off ebay from some guy in SC so it’ll probably get here Wed.

In my travels, I was surprised how many people were not wearing a mask. At Sams there was a line to get in the store. But I didn’t see as many people coming out as were going in. There were a few people with masks on, but there is no way they were standing 6’ away from each other.

Judging from how much meat there was at Sam’s, I don’t think this “meat shortage” is going to be anything much. Food Lion has a fair amount of what they had.

Carol GA – I know that I feel so good when I get out, even if it’s just walking around the neighborhood

Katla – one of the things that I have on my Christmas list is a Roomba. I think that will be so good for getting things like cat fur dust bunnies. Plus, it can get under things like the china cabinet. I’ll probably still have to get the things out of the corners, but I’m thinking this will really help day-to-day. Since it’s not something that I HAVE to have, it’s on my Christmas list

Tonya – I can’t wait for a vaccine, either. Then hopefully things can go back to the way they were

Rita – wow! So much going on. But glad you got your sewing machine.


Bananas – I’m very proud of Jess, but yet…every time she calls here she sounds so “down”, maybe it’s just the mom in me who is worrying. She doesn’t sound as bubbly as she usually is.

Went to Lowes Hardware after dinner. Looked at mulch but didn’t buy any. Did get paint Vince needs but they didn’t have the connector he needed. Came home and strung some more popcorn. Now going to take a shower.

Michele NC

margaretturk wrote: »

I love dogs.

What do you do when the neighbor behind our son has a pit bull who aggressively tried to get into son's yard when we were outside trying to do some work on his retaining wall in the alley. He got lose from their yard when a number of people were there visiting. I noticed when I am in the yard he barks at me and not in a good way. One problem I notice for the dog is they live on a busy street and when he is outside in their fenced yard unattended he gets upset by all the passing traffic. We had a small dog behind us for years with same issue.

He scared me with how aggressive he was. Any thoughts on what I should do to protect myself when at son's short of not going in the backyard. I don't want it to come to this.

Should I report the dog. If I do who too! Right after this...They did take dog inside. Neighbor with her child were biking in the ally. I did warn her and another neighbor about dog.

A few years ago our neighbor had a friend with a pit bull visit. When I tried to go to the door the dog was tied up in front and was aggressive when I tried to go to the door. I just moved away. Shortly after that he attacked my neighbor's dog. Unfortunately he had to be put down.

Here, we report dogs to the local council. Check their website.

We'd like to report a couple dogs who bark and bark and bark and bark but unfortunately they charge us a fee for reporting, and we have to keep meticulous records of all the barking, then if they think there are grounds to check, they do, and if they discover we're right ... we get the fee back. But if for some reason they think we're wrong (like if the owners caught wind of what was going on and took the dogs in so they didn't bark) we don't get the money back.

We haven't bothered to report yet.

And that's another thing I like about this shut down ... one of the dog's people are home so it isn't barking. Ah ... peace!

However, reporting an aggressive dog might be different.

If the process of reporting is too much of a pain or won't likely have good results, the other option is to put up a good, solid, tall fence between the dog's house and yours.

Because we rent and can't make too many changes to our fence, we've got bamboo in pots along the fence and a screen up behind the area where we sit in the summer. We chose bamboo because it grows quickly. The bamboo and screen mean the dog doesn't see/notice us as much and so it doesn't bark every single time we're out.


M in Oz

Snowflake1968 wrote: »

Tonya - in comparison to some other countries Canada has done well.
Tracey in Edmonton

A comparison of daily new cases between countries ... but be sure to look at the scale ...

I've chosen the US, UK, France, Canada and Australia because I think that's where most of us live.

And I got these from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Machka in Oz