Friday FOCUS

[Twins' Mom]

Focus! Be focused today - whatever your task or goal. Let's end the week with a focused, productive day.

[Lynlee]

Its been a cold day here for us.

I'll try a late focus in the Kitchen.
The radio can be my company.

Prayers for Dee and her family, safe travels, healing as needed.

Finally
- scored a call from church member, it seems my phone isn't sharing sound once I pick up for quite a while, which puts us both off.
- success on a call to DM. Her leg is slowly healing. Its been 7 weeks thus far.
- txt from DD1 re meeting up on Sunday for lunch. Hoping something is open. 10 only is the rule, if the 4 sq M rule allows even that many. Sunday promises to be colder.

At least we aren't in Perth that is expecting a cyclone merging with a cold front on Sunday for their easing of restrictions day. I think they will hunker down there.

Prayers for healing, coping and wisdom for us all, and heavenly help for our leaders,
in whatever way is needed.

[Twins' Mom]

I hope Dee and dd have decent driving weather going north today. Looks like we will have rain off and on today. That will make eating or sitting on our porch difficult tonight since the cushions will likely be damp, if not worse. Looks like dMuffin may not get a morning walk anytime soon - the rain is coming down.

I think dh is going to the grocery for me later (he's in a meeting now, and blowing off the afternoon I think.) That leaves me to finish cleaning the house and make challah and prep for dinner.

I stayed up late last night reading. I wish I didn't have so much to do today - this would be a ideal day for curling up with a book!

Right now I need to get busy!

[CathyS]

Hi everyone!!

I focused on getting all of the dishes done as soon as I got up this morning. I even made the bed today! Of course, the cat showed up as soon as I was done and plonked herself right down in the middle. So, all of the dishes are clean and I have nothing to do for the rest of the day other than cutting the grass and that is an afternoon thing.

Supper will be leftover goulash. Dh declared it the best goulash I have ever made.

[Kathryn-in-Canada]

I downloaded an app, Focus To Do, which is a pomodero timer (25 min work, off 5, 25 min on) and I'll work with that until noon.

So far I'm up, washed hair, s2s, removed toenail polish, trimmed and worked on toe-nails a bit to make look better (no polish), had breakfast with the grands (dd mentioned in an email dgs is tiring of this and it might end soon) and styled my hair. I look fabulous today, wearing a dress I got on the cruise.

[Twins' Mom]

What I'm doing with 45 min then 15 is a modification of the Pomodoro method, of course. I find that 5 min doesn't give me enough of a break, Kathryn. I recall that there's a longer break after three rounds, perhaps?

Dh is making me nervous. He's moving the daybed that was in "my" office to the bonus room, without me. I wish he would wait until we could both focus on in, but maybe he prefers to work alone on this? I did get to specify where I want it. Haven't asked him yet about getting rid of that great big inversion thing that he bought that he's used once. I'm assuming it's going.

Most of a.m. routine done, sheets in washer and bed remade. At 10:45 I go again.

Ddog is sticking close to me because of the T storm. I went ahead and gave her the Tradazone for the storm anxiety. She may need it today...

[Twins' Mom]

Quiet morning in the village. DH got the day bed moved and has gone to grocery. I haven't been up there to look at the "damage."

I'm down to vacuuming the great room and the breakfast bar area. There are some other odds and ends to do but I'm in good shape. I'm taking LadyM's advice about not needing to damp mop weekly; she has more dog and child traffic than we do!

[MysteryWoman]

Slept in this morning. Actually, woke and took my thyroid at 7, then went back to sleep, so there was plenty of time before breakfast. This has been my problem lately -- there was no trouble spacing things out when DC was at school because I would take the thyroid first thing and not have breakfast and the rest of the meds until I had dropped them off. But since everything shut down, I've been going back to sleep as often as not and waking when I'm ravenous.

I did make those snickerdoodle bars last night and ended up staying up late doing so -- the butter kept refusing to soften enough to be creamed, and I had cut it up and popped it in with the sugar when I thought it was soft enough, so I couldn't pop it in the microwave to soften. Or could I have? It didn't occur to me to put the whole bowl with sugar and butter in there, so I just waited for time and room temperature to do their work.

I think I was not influenced by unhappy homemakers because I didn't know any -- my mother worked outside the home, as did my grandmother. Grandma ran a punch press; my mom, having more education, worked as a bookkeeper. I had enough education to not work! I didn't go to college for "the M.R.S. degree," as we referred to it; I worked as a technical editor for several years, but when the stress of that job was so bad that we had trouble conceiving, we could afford for me to stay home. Living on a teacher's income wasn't luxurious, but it's been good enough. (Of course, he had been teaching for ten years by that point, so it was a good bit more than a starting salary.) (Not that Mom wasn't unhappy; it was just that what made her happy wasn't working or not working -- it was getting rid of my father, who was no peach.)

I need to start doing something useful with my time; laundry, I think. I've actually been good at keeping up with laundry, and I think I've reached the point where I can start DC throwing some of their mountain of dirty laundry down the chute without gumming up the works -- as long as they don't throw down so much at once that they clog the chute itself. (For any of you wondering about "chute": In this area, most houses have the laundry area in the basement, and often, a chute runs through the wall down to the basement, so dirty laundry doesn't have to be carried down. If only we had dumbwaiters to carry the clean laundry up!)

BBL, I hope!

[BookSaver]

Hello, villagers ~
This has been quite an up and down week.

1) Struggling to figure out if and when my library can reopen to the public. Current plan is to continue our take-out only service for 2 more weeks, and on June 8th start an experiment to allow patrons to make appointments to use computers. I saw in the library director's written plan that those patrons will not be allowed to browse the bookshelves, they will only be allowed to use a computer. I'm not sure how we'll be able to enforce that. A lot can and will happen in 2 weeks, so I'm not going to worry about it.

2) Struggling to figure out if my sewing group can meet in June. The church where we rent a meeting room has been locked down since mid-March. I was told last week that it wouldn't be available until July 1st. Sunday I got a message that it would be available June 1st. Yesterday I got a message that it won't be available until mid-June. Right now the governor's proclamation says we are not allowed to gather in groups over 10 people, but that limit expires May 27th. I think we are unlikely to have over 20 members show up to a meeting right now, and our meeting room is more than large enough to keep 6 feet of space between 20 people. Plus, members have been sewing masks so I'm sure they will wear them. At the same time, although I miss seeing my sewing friends and their fun projects, it won't break my heart if we have to wait until July to get together. Really all I can do is wait for the governor to change the group limit to be over 10 people, because that's the legal obstacle no matter if the meeting room is available or not.

3) Making weekend plans with DMom. I had a fun day with her on Tuesday. DSis and DBil are leaving this morning for a long weekend away on their motorcycle, going to a vacation spot somewhere in southern Iowa. DMom has been concerned about being alone for 4 days, especially being alone in the house for 3 nights. I told her on Tuesday that I will come up Saturday morning and stay through to Monday morning. When I posted that info to the family group message loop, older DSis said she will go this afternoon and stay overnight until I get there tomorrow. Therefore, the only times DMom might be alone will be today between the times younger DSis leaves and older DSis arrives, and then Monday between the times I leave in the morning and younger DSis gets back home in the afternoon. Two nieces and a nephew have promised to stop by sometime during the weekend, though they couldn't say when; I trust all of them to take precautions around DMom. Even if DMom is alone all day Monday, she'll be fine because she has her weekday routine of TV shows.

OK, I need to focus on what needs done today.
* pack a weekend bag
* pack sewing projects and tools
* pick up a few groceries that I hope DMom will like
* clean the kitchen

[CathyS]

Dh has come and gone for brunch.

I have been sorting through my cross stitch books. So hard to get rid of any. I guess that they all bring me joy. LOL!!

There might be an electrician coming on the weekend to look at the job that dh wants done in the kitchen. We blow a breaker when anything gets used at the same time if it concerns a wall plug and the microwave going. Heat something in the microwave and push down the toast or turn on the kettle and it's time to go reset the breaker... When dh replaced the ceiling light, he noticed that there seemed to be too many wires in that general area. The one electrician who happens to be a neighbor never came back and always seems to be unavailable. To be fair, he's older than us. Dh called someone else and they are supposed to be coming this weekend.

It really looks like dh has a busy weekend. 3 different parts deliveries plus a tire delivery this morning. Plus someone coming over to see why their transmission is being wonky. It happened after the guy filled up at Costco, so dh joked that it was the cheap gas...