It’s only 2pm, but I’ve done just about as many useful things as a person can do in a single day. I handled a staffing issue this morning, had breakfast, chatted with my dad and a few friends, taught Caleb how to trim weeds with the weed eater head, set up an appointment with my instructor to see what my options are for the capstone, turned yesterday’s leftover dashida into egg drop soup with rice to feed everyone, checked on the sick kid, had some others do some laundry, read more on coronavirus, did some pushups, helped Sydney register for two semesters worth of classes at USU (just in case), swept the floor, did the dishes, spread some mulch around that was leftover from last year’s garden and took pictures of the flowers.
Like everyone, I’m dependent on stuff outside the house for my usual routines, and without traveling on the roads for hours every day, I suddenly have TONS of time.
Things continue to be crazy in the news. We are closing land borders now. This is one step closer to internal travel restrictions. I am reading that some folks are still trying to go to places like Six Flags — which did not close until today?!?!? My hometown Walmart was closed last night after a looting incident. I decided I needed to try and do something exercise-wise, but I am not the only person dying for the gym: every size kettlebell on Amazon is sold out. I may buy some resistance bands, but I don’t really want to spend the money. We are well above the income thresholds being tossed around for the stimulus and will not get the $1000/adult checks, so I’d rather keep this as cheap as possible. I’m suddenly housing and feeding five adults, one who is sick, plus dealing with the seven aides and my 89yo aunt next door. It’s a lot, but it’s also not a lot.
We have eaten from our long-term storage every day so far. Yesterday we had the leftover Chinese and rice. I had Caleb make a big pot of rice, so we made beef dashida soup with rice instead of rice noodles and I had Jared and Sydney Go down to the spring house and pick wild watercress to add to it as something fresh. I always put fresh corn in it, too, and we also added tofu. It was good.
As I mentioned, we had leftover broth, so I stirred in some egg whites (discovered 9 eggs were broken) and made “egg drop“ soup that we served over the rice again.
I’m not sure what to do with my time — I keep checking on my 6 or 7 good friends or sending memes and working on my garden. I can read, I suppose or watch tv or paint, but none of it seems very appealing at the moment. Yesterday I spent most of the morning helping Sydney dye her hair pink and visited my aunt. I also took our sick lesson to the doctor. We went to the Minute Clinic so that we’d only have to go in one place. There was a cute momma with three young boys like in front of us. The littlest one had to go in for a shot and he hollered and cried like crazy, poor thing. His brothers made fun of him when he came out, but I told them they only gave stickers to the heroes, and their brother was a hero, so that’s why he got three stickers. :) Mom gave me an elbow bump, and we had a nice visit. I can’t imagine being cooped up with three active boys. It was warm yesterday, but today it’s cooler and breezy, which makes it hard to be outside. I’m sure a lot of families are having a rough go.
Monday we spent the day cleaning for Emma and Caleb to arrive. We had pasta with the sauce I made this winter from my tomatoes. Sydney couldn’t eat it because it had sausage in it, so I made her a salad with some feta cheese topping we had left and heated up some of the beans Jared made.
We are doing okay so far. I did let Sydney go to a bonfire last night with some friends, but she came back sick from the smoke. She “self-isolated” herself, but I checked her temperature and told her she was fine. She took some Benadryl and is napping now. The boys are working, and Emma is still sick in bed, so there we are. 8 more hours of this day for me to fill. I’ll have to come up with something for dinner….
But at least my flowers are gorgeous:
Grape hyacinth 
Pink creeping phlox 
Purple creeping phlox 
Candy tuft 
Marieke 
Marieke 
Sailboat daffodil
And Im not sure what to do with this Brussels sprout I allowed to overwinter. It’s starting to grow new sprouts:
Old sprouts 
New sprouts 
More new sprouts
Here are some more flower pictures for reference. It’ll be interesting to compare to other years to see what’s coming out early and what isn’t:
New dawn 
Irises
