Just Sit Right Back and…

April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 ~ Joliesattic ~ 15 Comments

you’ll hear a Tale… a tale of a fateful trip…

Yep! I’m beginning to feel like I’m on a 2020 fateful trip, stranded on an island, feeling pretty damn helpless.

I got a call this morning… my sweet step brother Michael will be having surgery for appendicitis. It hasn’t burst… yet. That’s bad enough but he has pneumonia as well. No Covid-19, thank goodness! Later tonight, they still hadn’t gotten to him. They blame it on Covid-19. I am certain he will be fine, but good grief! He said the pain meds they gave him were working and he has a good attitude. I told him he was a survivor.

I don’t want to bellyache, but I’m venting because what else can you do when you can’t expend all this angst any other way?

Could things get any worse? In case you haven’t followed my family saga, let me fill you in.

In the last two weeks, I had to put my little kitty down, I know it’s not a human relative, but it was still emotional. She’d been with us 18 years. Then, I learn sometime later that my cousin died the same day! Over the years we’d lost touch and I knew she’d been in the hospital with pneumonia, then had several strokes to follow. She’s the same age as my sister who has been in ICU for over a month and she is family, so all of that was just one more thing. If I don’t sound unusually sad, it’s because she had Parkinson’s and has been suffering of late, so it was a relief for the family to know she is in a better place.

My sister, btw is showing marginal improvement, not great yet, but we are trying to be optimistic.

Still…

What makes all of this so hard is, I can’t go running to be with either sibling, given our isolation status, besides hospitals are no longer allowing visitors anyway.

Then…

As you know, we sprung a leak, but the good news is, it wasn’t as bad as we’d thought it could be. Apparently the winds managed to channel water through a vulnerable section which is being sealed, as we speak. The overall roof is fine. The roofer said he wouldn’t charge us until we knew for sure the repair worked and… we have more storms coming, so we’ll be testing it out soon. He lives down the street.

And then…

Have you ever felt like Big Brother is watching us?

This was so weird so tell me if any of you have experienced this phenomenon…

After the roofer left, I told hubby what he’d said, about the roof and that we could possibly need new gutters after reinforcing the last layer of shingles, which were not done properly and the wood fascia was rotting at the roof line. Well, this morning my junk box (thank goodness it went straight to junk, but I still clean it out each day, so I noticed) was inundated with solicitations for gutter replacement. NO WHERE HAD I WRITTEN THIS DOWN. It was only a conversation we’d had in the proximity of our computers… and hubby’s phone!!!!

This has happened to hubby more than me and we were in his office, not mine. I have an iPhone, he has a Samsung. Whether that has anything to do with it, I don’t know. I’m wondering if Apple is insuring it’s users more privacy.

I’m not inclined to be a conspiracy theorist, but … I am beginning to wonder.

On the good side…

I went to Costco and I’m proud to say Californians are well masked and adhering to the proximity requirements. At least they were at Costco. I was double layered, in fact. I knew when I got home I would take my outer layer off in the garage and spritz myself. Hey! Can’t be too careful.

I covered my hair and wore glasses so my eyes would be somewhat protected. If I had swimming goggles, I might have worn those. Heck who would have recognized me anyway? Hmmm now that’s an idea…

An interesting note. While I was in line, waiting to check out, there was a grumpy guy in the lane next to mine barking orders to his wife. In the lane in front of me, the woman saw my cooking oil and realized she’d forgotten to get some, so I told her to run. The checker was then ready for her and she’d not returned yet. He looked up and around and she came running, shouting “I’m here!” Then she says how grateful she was that I was behind her. I said, “Well, you know in this time, it pays to be kind to one another”

Grumpy heard the exchange, “You can’t mean everyone, some people don’t deserve to be kind to” I looked at him and sweetly replied “I said, “yes, every one, you don’t know how that might change their day”. His wife chimed in and said, “She’s right, you never know”. Secretly, I hoped I had changed his.

the car…

Earlier in the week, I took my car on a drive, I was told it needed to be driven now and again and I happened by Home Depot. They had roped off a section to filter customers into the store a little at a time. Home Depot was doing their part, but… the people in the line were not proximity conscious and other than the employees, only two or maybe three were wearing masks. I did not stop. Only observed.

Time on my hands…

What am I doing with my time other than entertaining conspiracy theories and whatever else, I can come up with?

Weeell, hubby’s home a lot which means . . .

I get to have lunch with him and . . .

And… I’m actually trying to be useful. My neighbor, God bless her, is making masks. I’m not as useful, but I did help a little (very little) with making straps for them.

Strawberries . . .

Now I did buy strawberries from a neighbor, who has a large family. Her hubby is a gardener, so I’m guessing work may be limited. She and several others in the household do housekeeping, so I’m sure they’re not working right now. She doesn’t normally come door to door, so I’m guessing things might be tight. I practically threw money at her, but I just couldn’t turn her away. We didn’t talk except through the closed window. Her son was wearing gloves and mask, she wasn’t. He usually goes along to interpret. I told her to set the produce down and after awhile, I went out and hosed everything down just to be safe. I felt badly that it had to be that way. I don’t think she was offended, after all I didn’t just turn her away.

Well, that’s the story of our fateful trip for now and it’s not over yet. Our mayor is talking about this lock down not being over until we’ve had 28 days of no new cases.

So in the end, like Gilligan and the Castaways, you roll with it, add levity, look for the positives and hope for a rescue.

Soon.

We Done Sprung A Leak

April 7, 2020April 7, 2020 ~ Joliesattic ~ 14 Comments

As you know, I’ve been complaining, or maybe I’ve not complained enough about the weather we’ve been having in California. Rain, is something we don’t get a lot of and when it does rain, it is generally manageable… at least in our neck of the woods.

Well, today it not only kept a steady pace, but the wind was unbelievable. My friend Jim was talking about the wind possibly getting in the way of a good bike ride. I better warn you Jim, it’s headed your way, so watch out, it’s aggressive. If you’re lucky it’ll settle down and you will get that ride in anyway.

It isn’t bad enough that we can’t go anywhere because of the Covid-19, but we can’t even go outdoors in our back yard! The gardeners haven’t been able to finish their work and what we have plenty of is mud. His goal was to eventually put in a French drain, so the water doesn’t continue to run toward the house, but we didn’t get that far. So, now it just puddles.

Then this evening, Russ got ready to practice on his guitar a bit before going to bed and there was water by his amp, which sits right next to my side of the bed. I looked up and “shore” enough we have a leak, all along the seam where the addition was put in and the roof-line reconfigured. So we get some totes and lay them in the line of fire and hope that’ll catch most of it. leak1

leak2

We were going to stay in the room but the pit pat was too much. So we moved over to the spare room. It’s kinda nice having a four bedroom when there’s just two of you. When he or I get sick we self quarantine and it’s all good. Sometimes.

If that isn’t bad enough, he went to use the bathroom and there was water puddled on the floor that I think came through the vent. Out comes another tote. leak

I had been in there moments before to look. I look again but I still don’t see any roof damage or water buckling like what is evident on the other side of the shared wall. That made me wonder if perhaps the water was due to the velocity of the winds blowing it into our turbines and perhaps it flooded the entire roof? Or perhaps it is a combination of both.

It also means strangers will be entering our home during lock down.

In California, not many homes need air conditioning because with the right kind of venting we blow the hot air out or just open a door or window in front and back and we get a nice breeze.

So, it’s 11PM and there’s no way of getting anyone to look at it right now, but in the morning, I guess we’ll have to pull out the warranties and insurance contracts and call a roofer. Ugh!

That’s bad enough during good times, but now?!!

So, it’s late, but I text my neighbor and ask if she knows any good roofers, thinking she’ll answer in the morning, but she’s up and texts right back that “Fred” down the street is a roofer, so at least we have someone to call after we call insurance.

What’s been interesting during this whole thing is Russ remains calm. In fact, he thought we needed to wait until it stopped raining. I say no, we call and they can put something over until they can get to it, but in the meantime we won’t be flooded. That’s the difference between a guy who didn’t grow up around construction and a woman who did and was a realtor to boot. We kind of have to know those things.

He doesn’t seem perturbed in the slightest and I will probably not get a wink of sleep!

F**k 2020!

We’re dealing with COVID-19, but what’s a virus in the first place?

April 1, 2020 ~ Joliesattic ~ 5 Comments

What and why it does what it does. You can help.

Health Secrets of a SuperAger

Everybody knows by now that the United States and the world are in the grip of one of the dangerous coronaviruses called COVID-19, but what’s a virus and how can it make us feel ill? Why do our bodies react the way they do? Are viruses alive?

“Viruses aren’t considered alive – in class I call them pseudo-alive,” says Dr. Eric Mendenhall, an associate professor of biological sciences at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

coronavirus-540x540

A virus has got to have a living cell before things can rock and roll.

“They require a host to even begin to function. However, since they use DNA or RNA to pass information to the next round of viruses the cell makes for them, they are subject to some of the same principles of evolution and selection that alive organisms are subject to,” Dr. Mendenhall says.

View original post 808 more words