Sunday Smiles

[LadyMaverick]

Church was good this morning. DS8 and 2 of his friends sat with me and I had to shush them a couple of times. But otherwise, they were good.

We went through several lunch plans today.

Plan #1 - A few days ago DD asked us to Chuck-n-Cheese for DGD5 birthday celebration at noon today. Before church, I txt DD to confirm the time. DD txt back that she had canceled DGD5 birthday celebration.

Plan #2 - We went to our typical Sunday café. However, there was a long waiting line to get a table. Tried a couple more local restaurants but they were packed too. Our church is near a recreational lake which draws large crowds during holiday weekends. Those crowds swamped the restaurants.

Plan #3 - We opted out of the crowds and decided to stop at the grocery store and get a few things to make a quick lunch. I bought frozen chicken strips that had been marinated fajita style, a couple of bell peppers and some onions. It didn't take me much over 15 minutes to make some amazing fajitas when we got home. DS8 selected a Lunchable at the grocery store which is something that I normally don't keep on hand.

I am enjoying some Sunday afternoon down time. DS8 is patiently (NOT) waiting until he can go swimming. I told him that I would watch him swim at 5 pm.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

Blessed: I agree, you should drop the dear for a while!

Had a great day. We're resting in the hotel before dinner time.

Dfs and wife came by at 11 and we walked up to the Citadel. And by up, I mean UP! Got there in lots of time for the noon gun - got the interpreter telling us all about it and then watched the gun be fired from 20' away. I've been listening to the gun all my life and it was special to learn more about it.

We toured the Citadel museum for a bit, took in the special display mimicking the WW1 trenches. We'd all been to displays elsewhere (including the National War Museum) but this was the best, possibly because it was outside and it was a grey, damp, day.

Dfs suggested he could take us on a tour of his ship. We questioned him on that and he said it wasn't regular day so just the duty watch people would be on board and yes, we could go, it was just fine.

So we walked down to their car and he drove us over to the naval yard and we left our phones and cameras in the car and entered the base. From there we walked for ages until we got to his ship which was rafted off another one. So bonus - two ships!

He's on a frigate and we saw the flight deck, the hangar (for a helicopter), then down to deck 3 which has the cabins (12 to a mess, 3 bunks high, very little room for anything), the galley, the canteen, the main electrical room (where he serves his watch), the electrical repair shop (he's an electrician on board) and then he took us up to the bridge and then back down to the hangar and off the ship.

It was great to see where he lives and now I'll understand his stories and what life is like aboard for him. He's currently off ship for 5 months taking courses but goes back in 2 weeks. His next tour is Arctic Circle over to Northern Europe.

After the tour we went out for lunch along the waterfront. Then they headed home (they have mass tonight) and we headed up to Unc's to visit for a bit.

I'm exhausted. In total I've walked over 12K steps so far and done 31 flights of stairs. I might lie down for a bit with the heating pad on my legs. The musles are pretty sore.

[blessedw2]

d kathryn so happy you had a great day

[Nancy]

Blessed that is why I do the mowing here the guys cannot disguinish flowers from weeds.

Watching the bee movie have not seen it. #1 3yo boy likes it, 1yo is napping. I do not work tomorrow. Store run this evening. mowing tomorrow h is going to work on the truck Mon. I may mow.

[Lynlee]

Saturday report
tai ci
shopping

My Sunday report
read one of the chapters for the last of our study sessions. Much food for thought.
thought on that a while
dressed and ate toast and avo bfst.
1/2 hr late for church so sat outside in a gathering area where there are tables etc and listened via loud speakers. Those speakers are louder than the in church ones, imo.
Last study session.
I think I'm invited to sponsor someone in the future , along with the strong suggestion to join other ministry teams. My own thoughts have been on starting a replacement MH support fellowship, following an authentic proven recipe.
In the afternoon I played catch up rescue of the kitchen with the help of a FL inspired chat place. (and a NZer who was 2 hrs ahead of me.)
Day 4 of walking 3k.
Dinner - cooked meals to freeze as diced turkey was desperate to be cooked.
Even washed those dishes.
Washed hair along with bath and teeth. lights out 12.30.

Today Monday
TMeds at 7.
helper coming at 9 or soon after.
Last 1pm support group. I think I'm saying no to staff down approach re mtg time, and a host of other orders given on staff whim. I think I'm done. In its pure form, the program was good. Seems like chef (wrong word) spoiled broth. IMO
I want to contact other 'refuge es' from there and see if they are interested in alt mtg and support system.
I don't want to pull the whole thing apart, if others want to keep with it, and I expect they will be more cooperative with 'staff decisions' than me.

Tomorrow is rubbish bin day and green bin day. I want to make a start on the chopping branches up and filling it today.
Also getting sun on my summer sheets before they go away.
Rest of washing away would be good.
Wash towels etc.
And May take time on the beach after group again if I can. And walk 40-45 min.
How will that all fit in?
Try a beach walk.
And I thawed chicken stuff to make soup/ stock. So that needs doing at some stage as well. Without waiting for it to be passed desperate.

blessed - one of the things a neighbour did before he was known to have terminal brain cancer was to spray the food garden beds with poison. Wonky brains making wonky decisions.
I'm so sorry about your garden beds.

[LadyMaverick]

DH volunteer to watch DS8 swim so I am able to do other things.

DFriend Lilly recently asked if I could open a protected file. Tony always protected his office files (word, excel, etc). He sent the password he used to Lilly (by txt) before he died. She forgot about it during those months of mental fog after Tony died. She changed phones a couple times and during that time she didn't transfer her text messages. Fast Forward to now. Tony has been dead for 6 months and Lilly has started going through Tony's stuff. She went to open the files and found them password protected. It was then that she realized her blunder of not saving her txt messages. She has tried multiple times to guess the password without success. She sent me one of the protected doc files to try to open. The file Lilly sent me is one that Tony wrote to A (his son). I have tried unsuccessfully multiple times to retrieve the words contained in this protected word document. Frustrating to say the least.

[Harriet]

((LadyM and Lilly)) What about the device from which he sent? Would that device/phone still exist in the home, with text memory?

((blessed)) Ohmigoodness.

Racing news here from two directions. Dstepson is at World 600 (Cocacola 600) right now and the young man's ddad has just (? - early morning or yesterday) driven the Foyt car in a pre-race track parade at Indianapolis. So lots of stories will be upcoming I'm sure.

Good visit. The boys took over my kitchen upon arrival (thank you, dailies ) and made cake with their Mom. We had a great trip to the lovely local plant nursery yesterday morning where dd37 spent too much on me. She was letting me pick out individual annuals for a homemade basket while remembering other items I'd admired in the front part as we walked through. When we all got to the place to pay with my annuals, she walked up behind us and added a complete basket of an unusual annual I'm going to have to look up (blue) and a "chicken" wind-powered decor piece.

The young man arrived for mini-party after the lunch I cooked, and shared that with us and helped set up the croquet set HRH bought for general lawn fun. Then they all played Apples to Apples inside. The boys are fascinated by him.

Lack of sleep for such an assortment of reasons plagued us all. Middle of last night, especially, a sleeting thunderstorm and then power outage caused various automatic and other type troubles.

We did go to both SS and church. Whew, with so many of us. 3 older boys were allowed to stay together in their class since little britches reads very well. We went to the enforced class, of course, and there saw the fraction of attendance that is the new normal. Dd37 felt worry, I'm afraid. She's sort of known, but it hits home when you see it.

Right now dd18 is over at ds' and ddil's just holding down the (hopefully) quiet fort while they have date-night. They put the children to bed first, and of course a lot depends on whether they can sleep.

After my nap I awakened with energy and have spiffed the kitchen and have 2 loads of laundry to flip.

[LadyMaverick]

DLilly broke her phone so switched to Tony's phone. When she looked at Tony's phone he has thousands of contacts (personal & professional). She took the phone to someone and had them wipe it clean of Tony's information and put only her contacts on his phone. So the text messages on her and Tony's phone were all deleted.

After DS8 finished his swim then he went on a bike ride with me. (he rode bike while I walked).

For the 4th day in a row, I have tracked details of 6 health categories and the result they have on my weight. I am awarding myself 6 different colored dots for when I finish a category each day. I find it silly but motivating to earn those dots. I want my dots! I am planning to continue doing this detailed tracking until Tuesday and then will make the decision whether to do it again the next week.

Tomorrow we will do a soft start to resume homeschool. I'm taking DS8 and DGD6 to a Memorial Day run/walk event at our local park in the morning. Then we will do a couple hours of school work. It is going to be a challenge with DGD6 here while DS8 needs total quiet to focus. I'm trying to keep my expectations low and focus on developing the summer process instead of the results.

[Harriet]

Have a personal report on that mattress-in-a-box purchased for dd18's room. With houseguest-musical-beds, I finally slept on it last night, such as the night's sleep was. It's fine for sleeping on - no complaints. (I already knew dd18 liked it, but teens can sleep on anything.)

These easy-purchase types are, by necessity, softer on the firmness scale. The brand we chose was Tuft and Needle, and the cost of a double bed mattress was $500, delivered to door (a-river). There are some cheaper and some more expensive ones. I guess the heavier parts of your body do sink in quite a bit while anything lighter doesn't, for instance allowing hip to sink a lot. The only moment I felt that was truly awkward was when sleeping on my side with my shoulder sinking down and my forearm, extended out without much weight, was resting higher. I felt like I was waving to myself. The difficulty for me is that I am used to sitting on the edge of a bed to put on shoes or whatever, with no trouble. That is not smart with the in-a-box mattresses - there is no "edge" stitching the way even the foam upholstery-type mattresses are finished at all edges - with sturdy, piped double-stitching. You'll just be leaning forward, sinking off the edge as you tie shoes, and won't sit there long, lol.

Bonus, however, for this particular need - dd18 sleeps in my great-aunt Virginia's white-painted iron antique bed. It's slightly smaller from headboard to footboard than today's beds, plus of course we are hoping the white enamel paint won't be worn away. So this is ideal for that need. So soft all around that it babies the old surfaces while being thick enough to look high and attractive.

[lucylee]

Smiling at everyone!

That is about all I can do -- absolutely NO voice at all above a whisper since yesterday morning. This is very tiresome to me. Plus I still have sore throat and cough.
We went to church, though, and Wmart tonight. Cooked supper when we got home. Vetoed dh's idea to invite ds & family. I just did not feel like it. Both grands will be here tomorrow night while ds & ddil celebrate their anniversary (7 years, can y'all believe it? I know y'all remember when she was just The Girl. ) PLUS Wed. night we'll have dgd while ds & ddil & dgs go with the church to one of those indoor trampoline parks.

I generally do smile at people a lot, I think. I try to be friendly, and I think it was hard for me to be seen as a really strict disciplinarian at school b/c I was generally smiling and seemed happy. Y'all have probably heard the familiar advice to teachers: "Don't smile until Christmas." I could never follow that advice.

I've s/s the kitchen, but apparently my approach to the bathrooms and laundry is "Ignore them and hope they go away."
* SIGH *
I know that's NOT going to work, but I'm giving myself one more night to relax and baby myself. I'll try to get back into the routines tomorrow.

Kinda jealous of Dee's ds & family -- Disney, PLUS such sweet gift bags! That was a great idea, Dee!

I've heard the same complaint about those mattresses, Harriet, and that people feel like they sink TOO deep into them and feel trapped. We like a fairly firm mattress. Ours is 32 years old and dh doesn't even like for me to rotate it b/c he loves it so much. (Sealy Posturepedic, if anyone is wondering.) He can't stand hotel mattresses more than a couple nights at a time.

LadyM (((BIG BIG HUGS))) for you AND dLily. That must be sooo incredibly frustrating. I do hope somehow y'all can find a way to get into those files.

(((Blessed)))

Waving to Lynlee... Nancy...

and (((Kathryn))) Don't stop smiling -- just do so from a safe distance!