An-n-n-n-nd she's back!

Current US COVID related deaths: 905,661

US COVID deaths as of 6 days ago: 888,623

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1/29/2022 - The basement is still a mess:

but my honey found all of the pieces and parts to my desk, and we got it moved back into position, with a makeshift chair (as all of the chairs are buried in the bedroom and currently irretrievable), and a makeshift level for my keyboard:

So, you may thank him when you see him for this blog entry!!!

I started out the week trying to write what I did each day….but that got old on the very first day as I only type with one finger on my KINDLE, so I just have a series of pictures…and I’ll talk about them. As you know, we wanted to get rid of the carpet in the basement and put in a hard surface floor (with a few area rugs in a few places). We ended up with something called LVP, which stands for ‘luxury vinyl plank’. I would like to tell you just how good I think our contractor is....On Wednesday of this week I started talking to the contractor about painting the walls, as everything was already ripped up. We went to pick out paint colors on Thursday afternoon and texted him what we wanted around 3:30 PM. He had painters at our house the very next morning (Friday) at 8:30 AM and they began taking stuff off of the walls. The paint was delivered around 9:30 AM, and the painters were completely done by 6:30 PM. If you saw everything that they painted….all of the nooks and crannies, and inside of closets, AND all of the trim!!! you would not believe they could get it all done in a day.

During the morning the floor guys were also there, putting in the quarter round on the second half of the floor. Our contractor and all of his crews have been EXCELLENT and we would recommend him to anyone for anything! We couldn’t believe the speed with which he got that painting going, after only initially talking about it on Wednesday for the first time.

So, pour yourself a cup of coffee and get caught up:

I got a few small things moved last Sunday night....3 under the bed containers got moved to the top of the pool table:

-and this box that has been living in that spot on the floor for literally YEARS got cleaned out and the contents either filed (only a little) or thrown out!!!

-Josh (our contractor), Jason and Scott

showed up bright and early on Monday morning to start moving things. They took ALL of the furniture from the guest bedroom, the walk-in closet in there which was full of tubs and tubs of my yarn, Michael's art room, the under the stairs closet and half of the big room, and piled it all on the other half of the big room floor:

-I baked peanut butter cookies to give them energy in the afternoon:

I headed over to Martini Night at Pat's house in the late afternoon Monday:

-she had a yummy charcuterie board for eats...and an amaretto based martini...yum!

We all had a great time, sitting around talking and eating:

-Joyce & Alice

-Andie and Pat (our hostess)

Bonnie & Barb

By the time I came home, Jacob and Scott had ripped up all of the carpet from the afore mentioned areas, and piled it all in the backyard:

Tuesday morning (1/25) a different crew showed up (sorry no pic) to lay down our new floor:

I made Michael's giant chocolate chip and toasted pecan cookies for them:

Or course I had set up in the kitchen to work on some quilts:

and by Tuesday morning, after stitching down the label and weaving in some binding ends...I had a totally finished quilt:

On Wednesday morning, the carpet guys came back...they moved ALL of the furniture to the side of the big room where the new floor had been laid down, and ripped up the carpeting on the remaining half, and in my fabric closet. They also took ALL of my bolts of fabric off of the shelves:

in preparation for painting. Oh yes...another thing I threw into the mix was to ask Josh if I could have shelves just like this put at the other end of this closet....they came to measure and talk to me, and that will be happening on Monday. I still had leftover chocolate chip cookies, so that's what the workers got!

I stitched in the kitchen on another quilt:

and by the time I went to bed, I had another totally finished quilt:

This was particularly important, and I'll tell you why. Several months ago, when Josh (the contractor) and I started talking about getting new flooring in the basement, in the course of talking about many things, I discovered that Josh is a veteran, his brother is a veteran and one of the guys who works for him is a veteran. I had 2 completed Quilts of Valor in my front bedroom (which is basically a storage room for all finished quilts which have yet to be given out/away!), and I knew I wanted to complete a third one to be given to these 3 veterans. Josh doesn't know anything about this, and fortunately, when he was a bit under the weather earlier in the week, I got a chance to talk to his wife. We texted back and forth with the upshot being that I sent along 3 quilts to her (without Josh's knowledge), by way of Scott (one of the carpet guys)

and she will arrange to have them given to the veterans at various social type events. I am OVER THE MOON about this....and I think Josh will be thrilled....stay tuned :~)! She asked me to come to the presentation for Josh...but I need to write and explain why that can't happen. If you know me well, you will understand...if I tried to do that...I would just cry through the whole thing...and I'm an ugly crier...and then the focus would be on me...and would totally defeat the purpose! So, it is much better that I stay home and just ask for pictures of the event.

Of course as I was getting the quilts ready to put in the bag.....Ethel had to check out the bag:

Thursday morning I was up and out to quilting. We had 17 vaccinated people (our number of attendees are slowly going up as we come out of yet another COVID surge) and some really cute show and tell:

Thursday afternoon Michael and I dropped Cookie off at the vet's office. She's been having severe diarrhea since sometime Monday and we needed to find out what was going on. Both of us were afraid that it meant her cancer was back...but it turns out that it was just an upset tum, and with some probiotics she seems to be on the mend. She was, however, apparently exhausted from her visit and every time we got up from the sofa in the evening...she hopped on up:

We headed to the paint store Thursday afternoon, with a sample of flooring and picked out paint for the walls.

Friday morning I headed out for a hair appointment, but as I mentioned earlier, there were painters and flooring guys already working when I left. And I had already baked up ginger spice cookies for all of the workers. I had a routine doctor's appointment in the afternoon, and picked up ARBY's fish sandwiches for dinner on my way home. We had a relaxing evening and stayed up a bit later than usual...it was nice knowing that we could sleep in on Saturday morning, instead of jumping up to be ready for workers!

*** I may not be Wonder Woman….but I can do things that make you wonder. ***

*** Rhinos are just unicorns that have let themselves go. ***

*** One day you’ll find someone that’s obsessed with you.

It’s probably going to be a dog…but it is what it is. ***

*** A dating website matched me up with bacon! ***