What's New.

Em's still sick, although not as bad as he was. He's eating a little more now, his cough is more productive, and he's able to walk around some. Still off the cigarettes, although he asked me yesterday what happened to them, beseeching me to NOT give them away because he might want one. He still hasn't been outside and I think he's given up on the coffee. No. 1 stopped by yesterday with two more bags of CUTIES; Em's going through them like crazy. They're tangerines that sell in the stores this time of year, if you're unfamiliar. From MY perspective, he needs to eat a whole lot more and forget about smoking at all. He was already skinnier than 170 lbs BEFORE he got sick, and he's down to 160 now. Not big enough, IMO, for a 6' tall man. But, that's from MY perspective, and he's his own man.

No. 1 and I went shopping this past weekend together several times, as well. Mostly grocery sale items to replace soups, cough/flu medicines for us, but there were sales on makeup, so No. 1 took advantage of those, as well. I needed potting soil to do some household transplants and start the seeds for this year, so we went to Home Depot where we got a big bag of soil and THIS:



It's 100% plastic, 100% made in China, but works really well. Instructions state that it holds enough water for 11 hours, but I filled it 2 days ago and it's still shooting out spurts of steam (as you can see). No. 2 has one just like it. I'd asked her where she got it, but she didn't say Home Depot, and when I saw it there I just grabbed it and put it in the cart with the soil. I think we needed a fun addition to our home, so don't feel at all guilty. I love to just sit and watch it spoof and we didn't have a humidifier or vaporizer, so I think it's playing an important role in curing Em of his chest congestion.

Also in the "we didn't have" department, I bought us both slippers at Thrift Town last week Monday and within one week they've become a part of our lives. I don't think we noticed cold feet before this year, but now we wonder how we ever felt comfortable without slippers. Thrift Town had a 30% off sale on Monday of THIS week that I would have loved to attend, but life is what happens when you have other plans.

No. 1 will be doing 25 hours of community service at Texas Masonic Retirement Center to fulfill the requirements of one of her Social Work classes. She stopped by (with the cuties) yesterday after checking out the place. "This is where RICH people go to die; the place is a MANSION!" The social worker who will be showing her the ropes of elderly institutions (her desired specialty) told her that other places will NOT be this nice. Besides that class, I think she's taking Anthropology and 2 literature classes. No. 2 is taking Nutrition, Ethics, Music Literature, and College level Algebra, while #3 is taking Advanced Operating Systems, Computer Forensics, and Advanced windows administration. He's on quarters, while the others are on semesters. Lots of school and work going on with the younguns this year.

I'm thinking a lot lately about this year's garden in addition to getting some painting done inside. We're totally not handy and have no desire to paint walls and ceilings ourselves, so I'm going to call a guy who did some work for us a few years back. He's handy AND local. Not sure he's still doing handywork, but it's worth a check. He had a truck (last time we used him), so he could haul some gardening stuff for us, too.

Think I got a small piece of glass in my left foot. There's a little hard BB-type "ball" shape underneath the skin right on the outside edge parallel to the metatarsal arch. I remember a walk we took a few weeks back wherein I had to remove my sandal to shake some (most likely) glass that was hurting my foot, so I think a little piece of that glass got stuck and I'm just noticing now. I've already started "surgery" to remove whatever it is.

In the Who Knew? department, there's THIS:



D'OH!