Up, caffeinated, and sheveled. I need to do a load of laundry today. And buy salt.
Gordie likes Guinness. But I have a feeling Alex Catt may have sworn off catnip after St. Patrick’s Day
There’s a program in my county called Boost St. Mary’s - if you buy a $25 gift card at participating restaurants, you get an extra $10 on the card. This is an effort to get people to get takeout from local restaurants.
Just so happens that Salsa’s is participating, as is Olde Town Pub and a few other places I’d never heard of, but may be inclined to try. Feel free to share the link with your local chamber of commerce or whatever - it’s an idea worth spreading, methinks.
Meanwhile, I’ve mowed the back yard and the strip along the side road. And I trimmed back some wisteria that was getting a bit handsy. :eek: And I started weeding the corner of the hill. Right now, the weed whacker battery is charging - once it’s done, I’ll whack the section of hill that’s too hard to mow.
Go me!!! 
Highlight for this rainy day: finished the Saturday NYT puzzle. It required dredging up Haudenosaunee out of some distant memory, but yay me. I think it’s a good day for a simple marinara sauce, cuz that’s about the extent of my ambition right now.
Took care of what erranding needed to happen, including cashing recycling (just found out recently they WERE still open). Safely at home, laundry churning. Not sure what further productivity the day holds, since I’m pretty tired.
When I got up, I’d hoped to get a little transplanting done. Well, that didn’t happen, but I mowed everything, including the overgrown hill area next to the driveway and the path thru the woods. And I weed-whacked the front corner (which is a pain in the patoot to mow.) So the yard is looking pretty good.
Unfortunately, I saw a lot of poison ivy and you’re not supposed to spray it until you have 3 or 4 dry days in a row… We’re expecting more rain tomorrow. But we shall see.
Roxy is spending the night with her other grandparents. I need to figure out dinner for **FCD **and me - daughter and SIL are on their own. And since Roxy is going to be gone and it’s warm enough for the house to be open, I’m going to shampoo a couple of particularly dirty areas of the carpet. Not sure if I’ll do it tonight or first thing tomorrow.
Productive day! 
It was a nice day here. The local Von Maur department store opened today. The Incomparable Sunflower (hereinafter to be referred to as TIS) loves to shop there, but the men’s department is not geared towards my taste. I bought TIS a nice Frye handbag for an early Mother’s Day gift. We stopped at the local garden center to check on the planting recommendations for some geraniums we bought last Sunday. and then had a nice lunch at Culver’s. It is drive through only but they have a few picnic tables outside. We sat in the nice sunshine and a fresh breeze and enjoyed each other’s company as we ate. It was almost like the Saturdays we had before the Mexican Beer Virus.
On the way home, we stopped at Trader Joe’s. I bought a mixed case of wine and a really nice Hydrangea for our yard.
I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Well, I made gravy. And scrambled eggs. The biscuits were leftover from last week. Tonka helped me eat my egg.
Sounds like your Tonka and my Mauser would get along.
The mushrooms are scrubbed and de-stemmed. The parmesan is freshly-grated. All set to make escargots tonight.
Baker: Is Mauser a cat, or a dog? Tonka doesn’t like dogs, and will attack them if they enter his territory. (He doesn’t like other male cats either.)
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Afternoon all. Nappage has been completed, need to do a little shopping and grab some sustenance (have plenty of food in the house, but doing my bit for the economy). Ordered dinner from Olive Garden for tomorrow, so far my pickup meals have been great and without problems, we’ll see if that continues.
hippy, good on ya for Mom-day and that’s a great name for wife/significant other/complete stranger… We’ve got a Culver’s nearly ready to open here, along with a Freddy’s Steakburgers and Custard, both are within 3 miles of me and both are unlikely to open until after the virus pretty much passes. Will try them both when I can.
FCM, that’s a good idea your county has; hope mine gets the same idea. And be careful of the poison ivy.
Cookie, congrats on the puzzle, I don’t work them much any more, usually go for Sudoku and Word Jumble to check if brain functions are still operative.
Hope Nelson enjoyed the playdate, red.
Ok, best to clean up and be about it. All y’all take care.
This sounds like my kind of Zoom meeting. I’ve been thinking of asking someone from work to Facetime me (or Zoom or Google meet or whatever) and take me around to see some of my animals. I miss them so much- the animals and the people. And the job itself, for that matter.
MetalMouse
We also have both Freddies and Culvers here. The burgers are very similar and we like them both. Culver’s has a more varied menu with more chicken and fish
dot, unfortunately, I have to crate Nelson during Zoom meetings or phone calls for the most part. He takes a notion to bark until I’ve put him in the bedroom or in his crate. Too bad, some of the folks in the meetings might be easier to deal with if they saw his cute face. 
We spent two and a half hours at the dog park. He was overjoyed to see Watson and Chip, as well as Bailey, the French bulldog and Dakota, a small hound - terrier mix. We humans brought our own seating so’s we could space ourselves >6 feet apart. A good time was had by all and Nelson is still napping.
Bibimbap and ginger-garlic-sesame baby bok choy for supper.
I went for a long walk this morning. It was raining. I figure that’s why God made umbrellas and went anyway. Nobody else was out walking today. Maybe that whole “no umbrellas for us tough northwesterners” stuff just means people don’t go outside when it rains.
I called a friend I haven’t talked to in a while. She’d been crying. Her late husband’s birthday would have been yesterday, and she’s been struggling. We talked for almost 3 hours! It was well worth it, though, as she was feeling a lot better when we finally hung up. If you’ve been through grief, you know that first year is studded with emotional landmines. 
I woke up to a small crash last night but was too sleepy to investigate. Turns out a picture frame crashed to the floor. I used those velcro strip things for hanging, as I live in an apartment, and I think this one just got old and tired. I shall replace that next.
My sister has been urging me to order at locally owned restaurants to support them. I rarely went out to eat before COVID (too pricey, and I like to cook), but I think I’ll order food and walk over to pick it up in a bit. There’s a Mexican restaurant not too far away, and I can walk it. (They’re not on Door Dash or Uber Eats, or I’d get it delivered.)
Swampy, you know what posting all your food porn makes you, don’t you? A [food] porn star. And I’m willing to eat succotash. Actually, I’m fond of succotash, if I pick out the lima beans. (Sorry.)
Moooom, hope it was satisfying to whack those weeds! I miss weed-whacking. Also mowing.
hippie, I’ve been to Culvers! Home of the Butter Burger! There aren’t any out here. I’ve had **them in the midwest. Yum!!
cookie**, I’m impressed you completed the NYT Saturday puzzle on your own. Nice work!
It’s been a lazy evening. I’m about to mosey back to bed and watch some Brit TV.
Maybe I’ll do a quick carpet clean so it can dry overnight. It won’t take long… hmmmmm
Did laundry, walked Gordie a bunch, now it’s dinner time(Paprika Chicken with rice and green beans with garlic and red pepper). I had a mint julep while wearing my bowler, since it’s (postponed)Derby day today.
nellie, I don’t use an umbrella, but it’s because it’s hard to hold Gordie in one hand, pick up the poop with the other hand, and hold the umbrella in the third hand. And Command Strips seem to have a 6-8 year lifespan. Which is not horrible. ((((hugs))))
Dots, good idea!
The snails were good.
Yeah, I can cook snails.
I played Run for the Roses and drank some decent bourbon to celebrate the traditional Derby day. My SIL’s late parents used to go every year when they lived in Bardstown. Even after they moved to Indiana, they would get all gussied up in their derby finery and sip mint juleps while they listened to the race. After Miss Beth went to the nursing home, SIL and her sister would take in big splashy hats and sip whiskey (with permission from the doc) to celebrate.
Up early for no reason, except the house is quiet and with Roxy away, I can surf in peace.
I did clean the carpet before going to bed - it only took about 15-20 minutes, because I just had to do the area around Roxy’s high chair. I love my carpet cleaner!!
Rain is on tap again, so I don’t know what, if anything, I’ll get to do outside. It might just be another book day. We shall see.
Happy Sunday!!
There’s a different between ‘can’ and ‘should’ :dubious:
I was planning on checkin’ on the bees yesterday, but forgot there was a meeting for the zoo (online, of course) at a time which would have made it pretty awkward to go (you want to time it so most of the flying bees are out at work, to minimise aggro). Bleedin’ typical, had basically 2 plans for the week and they both turned out to be the same time. I can’t go today, it’s raining, but tomorrow looks better.
If anyone was wondering, it looks like the zoo’s gonna be OK for now at least. It’s wound up eligible for a decent size grant, the staff have been amazing and have organised a pretty successful fundraising programme, and, to everyone’s surprise, the insurance company has accepted a claim. Everyone thought they were only insured for loss of earnings due to animal disease (which they got added on after some problems with a local foot-and-mouth disease outbreak years ago), not human disease, but the wording was unclear so they thought why not try, though no clue how big the payout will be.
A few other small zoos have apparently already gone into administration though, there’s likely to be a lot of animals needing new homes, I hope there’ll be enough space available; rehoming kitties is bad enough when they’re not 3 meters long and bitey.