Groceries!

I did it!  I had an online pick up order from Walmart on Monday. Originally the website said the soonest time slot they had was April 7 but apparently they had a cancellation. The first thing I did before going to pick up my groceries was set up a cleaning station in the garage.  I had watched a video with a family practice doctor and he showed how to clean your groceries. He recommended dividing your kitchen island in two, but I just used this table.

The video I watched was on YouTube. If you type in “How to safely grocery shop during coronavirus” by Now This News, it should come up for you. I think he explained his reasons for how he cleaned the groceries very well.  He also explained how putting things into the freezer would not kill the virus. He said coronaviruses have been proven to able to survive in freezing temperatures for two years!  One thing he recommends is to take things out of their outer packaging if possible. Things like cereal that has an inside packaging. The inside package would be virus free and throw away the outer cardboard or plastic packaging.  I did this with the Texas toast and the pop-tarts that I purchased.

 
I had never used Walmart pick up before, but it was super easy. They sent me an email telling me when it was ready to be picked up. I just parked in one of the pick up slots and texted them which space I was in and the color of my car. They brought the groceries out and loaded them and even signed for me. I didn’t have to touch anything.

I brought everything home and unloaded the car and put it all on the floor. Then I washed my hands and started cleaning. I washed my hands four times in about 20 minutes.  I think I’m getting paranoid, but our case numbers just keep going up here in Washington.  Unfortunately, I think that’s happening all over the world.

This is the stash of groceries after I disinfected everything. Yes, there are two bags of chips. My husband requested them and they will probably last us about two months. We don’t eat many chips, but I don’t want to have to go back to the store. The one thing I forgot to get was bananas. There are some fresh vegetables, bread and eggs behind that pile of frozen vegetables. And yes, those are pop-tarts in the dish in the front.  I haven’t bought pop-tarts in quite a while now, but I love them and they are comfort food to me. I need comfort food once in a while during these strange days. I offer no apologies! Ha!  I didn’t have to get very many things as I stocked up pretty well months ago. I actually started out just ordering the frozen vegetables, chicken broth, bread and eggs and everything else sort of jumped into my virtual cart.  Dennis takes the frozen burritos to work for his lunch.  He loves them.  I can’t stand them.  :-). They actually had everything I ordered and they only substituted one item. I had ordered Great Value frozen pie crust for chicken pot pies and they substituted Pillsbury crust for the same price. I consider that a win!

Now, onto the Knitting. I finished four more pair of mittens. That brings me up to the end of April for my weekly quotas. I like being ahead of schedule for a change.

I ended up having to frog these socks all the way back to the cuff.  I had set them aside for so long that when I started knitting again I messed up the lattice work on the sides. I am now about back to the same spot once again.  I’m using Dee’s Dublin Bay Socks pattern. It’s really not difficult, it was completely a user error on my part.  In the past I would have called it a blonde moment, but I have more gray than blonde these days. :-)

I’ve done just a bit more on my sock yarn blanket.

This is what I played with Saturday and Sunday. I made a whole flock of peeps! Is that what they’re called? A flock? Anyway, I posted a picture of the ones I made for Piper on Facebook and several people wrote to me asking if I could make some for their grandchildren. They certainly are fun, and addictive too.

I hope you are all weathering the storms of this plague that is sweeping around the world in relatively good spirits. We mustn’t give up. Hang in there my friends. I’m thinking of you all and keeping you in my prayers daily.  Dennis is continuing to go to work every day. They have started a mandatory taking of temperatures when they walk in the building and again at noon. There is one employee that is responsible for reporting everything to the corporate office every day.  Our governor is talking about making even stricter rules about lockdown in our state.  I have certainly found myself wishing frequently that we had retired and moved closer to family already. I really hate being here alone during this time.

Our middle child, Jamie,  lives in Montana and this was posted on our family WeChat conversation this weekend. It certainly made us laugh and it is so true!

Our church secretary has been emailing encouragement to everyone in the congregation each day. This is what she sent today.

Wishing you all safety and good health. (Oh, and the icing on the cake for me? It’s supposed to snow again tonight.) Yuck!

Blessings,

Betsy

Normalcy?

I don’t think I had even heard that word before just a few weeks ago. If I had, it wasn’t used very often. Now every time I turn on the news I hear someone ponder the question, “when will life return to a sense of normalcy?”  Isn’t that a great question that we would all like the answer to?

But, we all get enough of that on the news, so I would like to share some of the things I’ve been doing this week.  I am forever grateful for my huge stash of yarn. I could stay isolated for years and not run out!

I added a couple of inches to my scrap yarn blanket. I am making this using the scraps of a lot of the socks that I have made. You also hold a strand of one continuous color throughout, which I have chosen to be the off-white. It’s Loops and Thread Woolike that I found at Michael’s.   The pattern is the “bits and bobs blanket” and it is a paid for pattern on ravelry. It makes a nice and squishy fabric and I think will be a great blanket when done. It will be a long-term project for me that I pick up and add a few rows between other projects.

I also made four more pair of mittens to add to the bag for the children.

Yesterday I made some Easter peeps. It is the “Easter marshmallow bunnies” pattern by Doni Speigle.  You can find a link to the pattern on Teresa Kasner‘s blog, over on my side bar.

Teresa posted that she had made one of these peeps about three days after I saw and printed out the pattern too! Great minds think alike!  These will go to Miss Piper whenever I can get to the post office again.

I was going through a box of photos on Wednesday and look what I found. This is my handsome husband on June 6, 1987. He worked full-time during the day and went to school four nights a week for seven years to get his bachelors degree. I married a brilliant and very hard-working man.  He hasn’t aged much at all but I certainly did.

Piper was meeting with her teacher online yesterday. After that she had a group chat with a bunch of her schoolmates. How life has changed for these children!  Who would have thought just a month ago that this would be happening?

Alex made it safely back to Tokyo where he is once again in quarantine. That boy seems to spend most of his life in quarantine in some country or another. He flew from London through Qatar to Tokyo. Tara is finally feeling a bit better. We have no idea if they had the dreaded C-virus or something else, as neither of them were able to get tested.

We woke up to several inches of snow.  I think it was on Tuesday but who knows?  I’m losing track of the days when I don’t go anywhere! It melted by noon but it was still a shock as it was completely unpredicted.

Dennis is still going into the office every day as he is considered an essential employee. He has a letter he has to keep in his truck at all times in case he gets stopped. His secretary is still sick. She has been sick for almost 2 weeks and was finally tested on Wednesday, but we have not heard the results yet. I haven’t left the house since my last post.  The soonest day for grocery pick up at our local Walmart is April 6!  I’m glad that we are still OK and don’t really need much of anything.

Last night we met with our Bible study on Zoom. There were 10 of us and it seemed to work out very well. It’s not the same as actually being with them, but it was wonderful to see their faces and hear their voices and for all of us to be able to interact together.  Life has definitely gone through some changes recently.

I hope you are all well and weathering the storm we’re going through as well as possible. I am a homebody  at heart anyway, so this is not difficult for me. It’s just the stress of the unknown and worry about the other people in my life.  I am spending a lot of time in prayer and listening to Christian music and that definitely helps. I have had to wean myself away from watching much news. I’m limiting myself to just a few minutes in the morning and then an hour or so at night with Dennis.  I think that is much better for my mental health!

Take care and wash your hands!

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  Psalms 118:24

Blessings,

Betsy

Spring!

Spring has sprung! Or as my mom used to always say “Spring has sprung, the grass has rize, I wonder where all the birdies is!”

I miss my mom. She had the best sense of humor and would be weathering these days of isolation just fine. Give her a good mystery novel and her rocking chair and she would be a very happy lady.

How are the rest of you coping? I’m finding myself very, very grateful for social media. We again watched a couple of different church services that were live streamed yesterday and enjoyed them very much but we’re missing seeing our church family too.

I put out some of my spring decorations. Here is the spring egg tree and the sweet little family of bunnies that I found at Hobby Lobby last year.  They make me smile just to look at them.

The birds have come back for the season....

Along with a little bowl of Easter eggs.

I finished another crocheted baby blanket. It will most likely go to the hospital when I am allowed to make a delivery again. I have quite a pile of blankets and baby hats ready to go.

Last night I started a new blanket. It’s called the  Bit’s and Bobs blanket and is a paid for pattern on ravelry.

You use two strands of fingering weight yarn held together. It’s supposed to have quite a pronounced ridge pattern but mine isn’t looking like that for some reason. I’m hoping as I continue on it will be a more defined rib but we’ll see.  It’s not a normal Knit one, Purl one ribbing pattern.  You actually knit into the stitch below. It’s fun, but not turning out quite like I expected it to.

And a friendly reminder for you.

We didn’t go anywhere all weekend but Dennis is back at work today.  We feel very blessed that he is still able to work when so many have lost their jobs, but it is still a worry that he has to be around other people.  They are trying very hard to abide by the 6 foot rule and he assures me he’s sanitizing everything he touches.

I had to go to the bank this morning to get something out of our safe deposit box. The branch lobbies are all closed so I had to call them on Saturday and set up an appointment for 10:00 this morning. They met me at the door and let me in and then unlocked it to let me back out again. Very, very high security. I wore gloves and used hand sanitizer and washed my hands when I got home. I also used Clorox wipes on the steering wheel, seatbelt, car door handles, etc. Now, I don’t have anywhere that I have to go in the foreseeable future. My neurologist’s office even set up a video appointment for me for next week.  Luckily, I love being home so it’s not a problem to stay here.

How are you are coping? Do you have nay new projects that you’re working on?

“Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10

“So not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”. Philippians 4:6

Blessings and love,

Betsy