The Up Side of a Bad Situation

First of all, let me apologize to anyone who has left a comment on my blogs and not received an answer.  In the past I always got an email notification when a comment was left.  It was only after Linda Osborn sent me a facebook message that I realized I’d been missing comments.  Thank you, Linda.

It is fixed now and I will receive email notification of comments. 

I think we’re about to start the fifth week of the stay at home order. So far we are all well and actually I don’t know anyone who has gotten sick.  In the mean time, I am beginning to make some progress at clearing out my house.  Today I made room for the cat boxes of the three cats we’re inheriting any day now.

We’ve been pet free for a while now and it will be a change.  No more leaving the door open when I go out in the yard.  But then there will be furry bodies cuddling with me.

For a long time I have been basically not cooking anything that couldn’t be microwaved.  And then being stuck home happened and I rediscovered my stove.  It’s kind of a weird set up.  I don’t really have a stove.  There’s an oven and a range top.  The oven is electric and the range top gas.  The person who remodeled out house before we bought it twenty-five years ago was all about style and not much about substance.  For example, all the exterior door knobs were really meant for inside.  They were white porcelain and looked nicer than the silver colored knobs we had to replace them with after the porcelain ones kept falling off.

There are cabinets directly above the stove top, so there is no hood with an exhaust fan.  Instead the there is a button that makes a vent rise up at the back of it and an exhaust fan goes on.

It’s not ideal, but changing it would have meant tearing up the kitchen.  It used to bother me, but suddenly now it doesn’t.  I have been making stir frys and tapioca pudding.  Boiling spaghetti and ravioli.  There have been my use up stuff dishes where I threw in odds and ends of vegetables, added some curry sauce and rice.    There have been cakes and the promise of more.  I pulled out my bundt pan and once I got rid of the cobwebs, I was back in the baking business.

My family couldn’t be happier. 

I have been doing pretty well most of the time.  I have always been a self starter, so getting up and getting dressed even if I have no place to go is never a problem.  I am working on two books for two different series right now.  And I didn’t know how it would be going back and forth between them, but they are different enough that it seems to be okay.  It is life as usual in both books with no mention of masks or social distancing. 

I started moving all my yarn around.  The plan was to clear out the room I use enough so I could get the sewing machine into the room so that I could make masks.  In the process, I have found numerous works in progress.  Finally I couldn’t take the cleaning anymore and had to spend time crocheting.  It’s the best.  I find it relaxing and I will end up with something nice when I finish.

I am hoping to start on a vegetable garden soon.  Or at least scatter the package of flower seeds I found when I was clearing stuff up.

I feel like I’m making the best of the worst situation. And Costco had toilet paper!