Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.
Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).
The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.
So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?
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NOTE: The comments page will now split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page and use the link.
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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
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Good “morning”, Motley Meese! The week begins …
Morning low of 46 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Sunday Meese. 54 going up to 72 here in the Catskills
Had to laugh at this
(Grinning) Good one, Sis!
Puerto Rico
Some history
Lovely Sunday morning here — 70 degrees & clear. Better weather would be rain, we haven’t had any in a while. But I have the front door open to let in fresh, cool air. I have a tab open to Offer Up to buy a 3 step ladder because I went to change a light bulb in my bathroom yesterday and couldn’t reach the fixture. I can’t remember how I changed it before, but the 2 step ladder I have won’t do. So, I hope that’s what I’ll do after church — go get a ladder then change the light.
What’s going on in Austin??!!? My Internets say that your hospitals are admitting 200 people a day with COVID. Stay safe!
Sunday sermon
The overnight/just at dawn temp was 65. So I did all my housework/Sunday chores as soon as I fed the cats and managed to get everything done before it hit 80. Which it just did, going up to 91 and while the heat index isn’t supposed to be much more than that I’m suspicious. It’s feeling sticky already. But it is sunny and that’s good. We generated 22 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 267, very much on track still.
For all the clouds we had last month, we didn’t get that much rain. The ground is hard. It’s still mostly green and only the cherry trees (wild and domestic) are starting to drop leaves, so not anywhere near the shape Aji’s area’s in. We’re still not in wildfire hazard territory yet like they are. (Which is why they need to drill that well and set up an irrigation system, as expensive as that is. They haven’t been able to grow their own food or hay for the horses in 4 years and the drought is getting worse.) We don’t need the rain as badly as they do but we do need it.
The political situation is basically dire. And the feedback loop between the political situation, the economic situation, and the pandemic is worse than dire. Unless the fascists have decided now is the time for an overt, constitution-removing, military-coup type takeover, they’re gonna let us have this election. That’s the way it’s worked since Nixon. Eff up the economy, suck it dry to the point of no-return, then hand off to the Dems just long enough to bring it back (making their bought-for-cents-on-the-dollar “worthless” stock quite profitable again). It’s why we’ve managed to have White House and Congress at the same time for only the 1st 2 years of the Dem president’s run. They set their propaganda machine to take back Congress in the 1st mid-terms and stop any changes that would make elections more fair and MSM less of a propaganda machine. Basically, even with a grand-slam Blue Tsunami in November, we’ve got a year to 18 months to get everything done. If we want longer than that, part of what we need to get done in that year to 18 months is election security, fair districting, and reduce the propaganda machine to manageable. And this has been life since Nixon. And I don’t know if it’s too late already. We will find out. Whatever happens, like Puerto Rico, we will survive. And get the “American Dream” back – the real one, the one about freedom and justice for all, the one about everybody having rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. It will take longer if we don’t stop them now. I won’t live to see it. But if we stop them now, my grandsons could. So we will do what we can.
Need to close up the house, get coffee, then head over to Dee’s Sunday Sermon. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and cloudy in Bellingham. The deer fence around RonK’s veggie garden is also a perfect drying place for the old quilts my grandmother made. Some of them are showing wear now and I’m trying to decide how to preserve them. I could just put them away as they are, or I can rebind and mend them so they can continue to be used. I think I want to keep them in use and try to find compatible fabric for new bindings. Fortunately the owner of the local quilt shop will have good advice so I’ll confer with her. It’s nice to see my grand mother’s stitches, and to remember watching her sew quilt pieces on her treadle sewing machine. She set up her quilting frame over the dining room table and it was a perfect place for me to “hide” and listen as she visited with family and finished the quilts. Lots of memories.
Best wishes to all on this quiet Sunday morning.
Hi, princesspat, I like your idea about still using the quilts! What vegetables did RonK plant in the garden? Glad you have the deer fence.
Apparently the 17-year cicadas are coming out next year and this year the female cicadas are laying their eggs in trees. No one I know has put up netting over their trees to prevent the laying of eggs.
I think about the old things and what happens to them when the old people are gone and the new people don’t have the connection to them that we do. My mother’s quilt is on the bed in the spare room but I have insisted that people not use it as a blanket, just as bed spread to be pulled back. She let each of the kids choose their colors so it is a personal gift,irreplaceable. It is in pretty good shape but faded from sunlight. Someday it will probably be put in a box and then stored until a future generation opens the box and wonders what it is. It is easy to get sad about that and I am not sure how to get past it – it is what will happen to all of our own things eventually.
Yes, it will. When we were downsizing for the second time to move here, I wondered what to do with the beautiful baby blanket that my maternal grandmother crocheted. I posted in our family Facebook group and some cousin or other said she’d like to have it, so I gave it to her. She never thanked me nor reimbursed me for the postage, which she had said she would. Duh.
Jan, I too wonder what will happen to all the needlework I am preserving. The quilt I washed the other day was given to my mother and mom used everything so it was worn when it came to me. The central star motif is still in good shape but the muslin blocks are showing sun damage, some quilting stitches are missing, and the edges are fraying. If I mend it our son can continue to use it as a summer blanket, but if I don’t it will need to be put away, so I think I will mend this one.
I also have quilts made my both of our great grandmothers and those are a dilemma. I’ve carefully washed them and put them away as they are to worn to display or to use. I think I’ll tuck a note inside and leave them for my kids to decide what happens next :)
Good Sunday morning, Moosekind! This morning we had a low of 56 F. in Ashburn, with a projected high of 74 F. Right now it’s 68 F. I’m late checking in because after cooking breakfast and getting dressed for the day, I wanted to go for my walk while it was still cool and still morning.
The sun has been playing hide-and-seek with a cloud layer since dawn. Right now it’s overcast. Visited the garden patch today and the tomato plants are huge and tall! Couldn’t see many tomatoes, though, only flowers. The Lone Zucchini has gone wild—it’s huge and there are already sizable zukes on it. This morning there were three enormous yellow blossoms too.
This place is opening up to visitors tomorrow with caveats. Everyone must wear a mask and check in at the clubhouse. OK. They seem to want families to walk through the building to get to residents’ apartments. I am seeking clarification on this.
We are getting Stanley Steemer in here on Wednesday to clean the feelthy carpets. Of course, they won’t stay clean. We have a dog.
Went through a huge box of “stuff” last week to collect an offering for the Shred Truck. Now I have to file everything neatly and put the plastic bin back in the walk-in closet. I received a composition and some drawings from Mr. Rising First Grader yesterday. It seems that he and his family went for a walk on a sunny day and came to a bridge. He didn’t see a fish but saw a “water shark,” whatever that may be. He helpfully labeled all drawings of himself with an arrow labeled “Me.” LOL! I was charmed.
Lunchtime. Got to feed The Man and The Dawg. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 46 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 75 with variable cloudiness. Tomorrow we get a heat wave with highs close to 90 and we will have to close the windows again and turn on the air conditioning. Well, it was nice while it lasted – now on to summer. Next Sunday is Summer Solstice and it feels like the Wheel of the Year is spinning at a higher rate than usual.
It is ghastly what red state governors are doing to their citizens, sacrificing their lives and health in a vain attempt to prop up their failed leader. Arizona, Florida and Texas. :( I laughed at the Michigan tRumpers setting fire to the absentee ballot requests that arrived in the mail. Not to worry! People that ignorant are unlikely to survive to November to vote anyway. Goddess, we have so many stupid people. I wish all stores would insist on masks to get service – I wonder if they realize that their mask-optional policy keeps more people away than it draws in. Perhaps they will figure it out.
I would like to think that this is finally when the Confederacy is put down and the glorification of those who led and fought in a war so that they could own other humans is relegated to the dustbin of history. There was a lively conversation in a group I follow about leaving the statues up as “history”. Bullcrap! If you want the statues for history, put them in a museum, not on the town square next to the statues of people who fought in World War I and World War II. They. Were. Traitors. Treat them as such.
I have a weeks worth of work to try to get done this morning and it is not going well. The projects stacked up and the weekend was spent spinning my wheels so I begin the morning the same way I ended Friday afternoon. I need to do triage and figure out what to do with my limited energy.
See all y’all later!
Monday Meese
53 going up to 77 and sunny here in the Catskills.
poll
Puerto Rico
Short walk this morning — calf pulled me up short. Should have stretched more yesterday. Today: work, stand up every hour, alternate stretches & abs every 2nd hour. Joy Reid’s special on poverty & the pandemic last night was powerful.
Good Monday morning, Moosekind! We’ve had breakfast, carted the rubbish out to the hallway, and I’ve stripped the bed. (Monday is change-the-sheets day.) The dog is letting me drink my coffee in peace, for once. I told him he owed me for letting him eat the bacon rind from my breakfast.
Today is partly cloudy with weak sunlight and rather coolish. Feeling pleased that I managed to make some headway on the filing yesterday. We need to get lots of stuff done today because Stanley Steemer will be here tomorrow at 9:30, Goddess willin’ and the creek don’t git up.
It was interesting to learn that Mary Trump, Thing’s niece (daughter of his late brother Fred) has written a tell-all book that will come out before the Rethug convention. He will not be happy. She dislikes him intensely because of how he treated her family.
My political granddaughter texted me yesterday. I knew she was in Ohio visiting friends, but I was surprised to learn that Emily’s List will close its Washington, DC office until next spring. At the moment she’s in an air-bnb in Columbus, but she has taken a six-month lease on an apartment there and will move in next month. She lived there before, so she knows people and has friends there, as I said. Weird stuff keeps happening.
It’s disheartening that we have so many stupid, brainwashed people in this country that they refuse to wear masks and practice social distancing. Still, if they fall ill and die, they have no one but themselves to blame. Read a quote by a maskless person out and about in Washington, DC yesterday in this morning’s WaPo: “I don’t need a mask,” she said. “I trust God.”
I once had a friend who “trusted God” for contraception and ended up with two children in addition to the one she already had.
And with that, I’ll wish everyone at the Pond a good day.
I was pleased to see that the science caught up with what it seemed to me had to be true regarding mask wearing. Everyone felt that the mask protects others from you but did nothing for the wearer. It turns out that there is some protection for your mask-wearing self from the maskless – someone said about 40%. It makes senses because the airborne virus does not have unfettered access to your nostrils and mouth, some of it will land harmlessly on your mask. So besides saying “I care about you” it says “I care about me and reject your unsanitary ways!” The “I care about you” is still important, it is why businesses generally mask their employees. But they need to take it one step further by insisting on masks to be in their stores. Maybe the new outbreaks will make corporate headquarters rethink their policies. I believe that Costco still has their policy and Menards – a big home improvement store based Up Nort’ and run by a trumper – does as well. People complained and said they would never go to Menards EVAH again but their store seems busy when I drive by. Yesterday the allowed occupancy for stores in our county was bumped to 50% of capacity which is actually a lot of people. The only time they get close to 100% is during Black Friday events. I don’t even want to think about Black Friday sales – I think they should cancel them.
Overnight/just before dawn was 65 but it’s already in the 70s heading for 90. I’ll close up the house when the outside temps hit 80. We got afternoon clouds yesterday – no rain, just clouds – at would otherwise have been peak production time so 18.6 KWHs and 286 m-t-d. That’s still on track for the month but not quite for the day. The ground’s hard and the lake levels are slowly dropping but we got so much rain in spring they aren’t even down to the “full pool” level (we got within a foot of needing to open the floodgates). We’re nowhere near drought conditions (unlike Aji whose area is in “Extreme Drought” and has been which is why they need to drill the well and put in an irrigation system for their fields). Rain would be nice but not necessary. Clouds and no rain are just cutting electricity generation. (OK, it also is keeping the highs from hitting 100 so there’s good there, but still…)
I’m moving slow this morning. Don’t know why. Just some heavy lethargy. Not helpful. My son brought the 6 gallons of blueberries from the local guy yesterday. So of all the not-normal things going on this year I have one normal – my stash of local blueberries are in the freezer for next winter. It took some doing to get everything back into the freezer and not everything made it. Several lbs of the cooked chicken and the 3-lb “emergency ham” didn’t so they’re in the fridge. The cooked chicken will hold for a week, then I’ll make soup with the rest and that will hold for another week. The ham I’ll have to bake once it thaws. The thawing then the cooking gives me about 2 weeks there. I’ll eat that for breakfast in lieu of my usual sausage patties. What’s left after that I’ll re-cook in a casserole or something to give me another week. Such riches to be planning how to best use my stocked-up stock of protein before it spoils rather than having to plan how to stretch insufficient protein so everybody gets at least some daily. And I most assuredly will use it before it spoils. I would not so dishonor the life force that gives me life. Whether we’re talking pigs or carrots, nothing I have control over will be wasted, everything gratefully going to support my heath. Blessed Be.
Between emails and twitter I’ve seen most folks I keep track of so know they’re at least alive and online. Hanging on but getting awfully tired of just hanging on. Plus jolts like Aji’s dogs still missing and Fineena learning her sister has cancer, well, that doesn’t help with the hanging on part. If I can ever get my own house stuff finalized (waiting on paperwork from the insurance company and the roofing company – just confirmation of that “paid in full” and the life-time warranty) and get somebody to show up and at least give me an estimate on fixing the water-damaged (but not covered by insurance) soffit…well, I’ll be able to help a little again. That and finding a way to send money that doesn’t hit me with a cash advance charge as my credit card companies started doing last month. Well, I know a way – let PayPal draw directly from my bank account. But I don’t want anybody with direct access to pull money directly from my bank account. That’s why I was using the credit cards in the first place even though there was a small fee from PayPal for that. So I need to talk to my bank about options – and security if I let PayPal connect to my account.
I know I need to get on the treadmill while it’s still cool but I just don’t have the energy. Nor for real “channeling” (as opposed to thinking/worrying). So I’ll have to let hope do today. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Can you open up another account at your bank or an account at a credit union (usually free) that you replenish as needed? You usually can’t tie payments to savings accounts – they can impose a monthly limit per banking regulations but some banks are pretty generous with the limits. You would just need to be sure that it is not tied to overdraft protection that rolls over to your checking account – that would defeat the purpose!
That’s probably what I’m going to end up doing. It’s a hassle but…I don’t have enough money for cash advance fees and interest.
Good morning, 56 and raining in Bellingham. We’re having a carefully planned graduation party for Emma next Saturday, so getting my part together will keep me busy this week. Thankfully the party will be at her other grand parents garden because ours is still looking overgrown and semi tended. I will be providing flowers, table linens, serving dishes and baskets, tables and chairs, etc.
I walked away from my flower space in the garage after Christmas last year and haven’t really been back so yesterday I had quite a clean up to do. It’s nice to have the space clean and ready for use again but I was really tired after finishing. Sometimes getting older is discouraging, but oh well.
Diana, RonK has a bumper crop of radishes and lettuce growing right now, and a variety of herbs are ready to use. He’s planted sweet peas around the fence so we should have lots of flowers soon. He also grows tomatillos, chilies and cilantro for salsa “from the garden.” And later this summer we’ll have green beans, basil, and tomatoes. It’s not a large garden, but we do have room for a row of dahlias so between the flowers and the fresh veggies it’s a productive space.
Best wishes to all on this rainy morning.
Thanks, princesspat. I love to hear about people growing their own herbs, vegetables, and cutting flowers. It’s one of the things I miss most about living here, although this year I asked for and received a vegetable plot. It’s very small. I’ve never had any luck at all growing zinnias. They’re always too short.
Yet once I visited a house in Fairfax, Virginia, and in the front, on each side of the door, there was a narrow flower bed full of tall zinnias. They must have been a good three feet high. And mixed in with the zinnias were equally tall tomato plants and skinny, elongated lavender-and-white eggplants!
(Sigh.) Some of have a green thumb, mine is black, alas.
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 48 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 81. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Hurray for LGBTQ job protections! I am not going to praise Gorsucks – he will forever be the man sitting in Merrick Garland’s seat on the Supreme Court – but I admit to some Schadenfreude when he “turned on” his sponsor. tRump said he read the ruling (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! As if he could read!!!) and was satisfied that the ruling was correct. I wonder if they sedated him for that. I suspect that when I open the news sites later this morning, there will be some real anger from his base. I do know that we can expect a suckier Gorsucks when the rulings knocking down women’s reproductive rights come out. The right of women to control their bodies will always be a bridge too far for conservatives. By the way, this should NOT end the attempt to pass legislature to enshrine the LGBTQ job protections – what the Supreme Court gives, the Supreme Court can take away. We see that with Roe v Wade, Brown v Board of Education and dozens of other precedents treated with contempt by the Roberts’ Court. If you want a right to be lasting, pass a law protecting it because there will be a right-wing court that will try to take it away. The Civil Rights Law being respected as the law of the land is important. A Reproductive Rights Law that guaranteed a woman’s right to choose would put a roadblock in the way of those who want to deny those rights.
See all y’all later!
I so envy your weather. Thinking of weather where I’d need long sleeves in the morning….
That’s the truth, Jan. If we win in November I would like to see Gorsucks impeached as well as Kavanaugh when 46 takes office. If that’s not possible, I would like to see three more liberal justices appointed.
There is no law that says there have to be nine justices.
We have to find a way to dilute the tRump nominees, both of whom are sitting in stolen seats – one from the people who re-elected Barack Obama and one from the majority of Americans who voted to elect Hillary Clinton. I know that purists hate the idea of expanding the court and I say to them – tough sh*t. They are usually privileged straight white males for whom any court is “just fine.”
Tuesday Meese. 52 going up to a sunny 81 here in the NY Catskills
media racism …ABC
The background
Puerto Rico
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Good morning. Today’s exercise is stretching & standing abs. I will get that leg better, darn it. Austin has a spike in Covid cases, so city & county officials are begging people to stay home & wear masks. The 96 degree highs may help with the “stay home” part. Anyway, what am I going to do today? Same thing I do most weekdays: get in 9 hours of work so I can cut out early Friday.
Good for you, another, making “Friday” into “Freeday”!
It’s 71 heading for 90 again & I’ve got to get some exercise while it’s still cool enough. My back’s gonna “seize up” on me if I don’t. Anyway it’s sunny, which is good, but clouds are forecast to move in this afternoon, which isn’t as far as electricity production is concerned. There’s enough humidity it’s not dropping below 80 until about 10 and not below 70 until midnight. Summer time. Anyway, we did get 22 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 308 so we’re still on track.
Aji & Wings got a “sighting” of the dogs yesterday midmorning and spent most of the day looking for them and putting up posters. No luck but they’re hoping the posters will mean they get told of other sightings sooner. Travel time is part of the issue. If it’s really Chinook and KitFox, they’re on the other side of the county – and quite probably don’t know how to get home by themselves. More prayers or whatever. For so many things. For so many people. Channeling Healing/Helping Energy to everybody, to your shaping.
It’s 75 already. I’d best get on the treadmill before it gets any warmer. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Tuesday morning, Meese. Today will be another day of the sun playing hide-and-seek with the clouds, although the clouds are projected to win by noon. Right now it’s 62 F. in Ashburn, with a high of 76 F. in the forecast.
We’re still frantically tidying this place so Stanley won’t faint dead away tomorrow morning when he arrives at 9:30 with his Steemer. We’re planning to take the dog out for the two hours it takes to clean the carpets.
Miss Pink Cheeks wrote yesterday pleading for a sleepover with us, as she hasn’t seen us since February except through FaceTime. I’ve been collecting her writings and drawings in a folder and each time am absolutely enchanted with her vocabulary, writing, and drawing skills. She told me that June 11 was the last day of school (what school?). I emailed our ED, who said it was fine for her to have a sleepover as long as she stays in our apartment and wears e a mask when outside it.
Having just learned that cloth masks are more effective, I need to set about obtaining others. The nail place was selling them last Friday, so I bought one for me and one for Dearly. I don’t want to wash them every day in the washing machine (which is acting up anyway), so we’ll need more than one each. I wonder whether cloth masks are better at preventing sunglasses from fogging up? I wear my wraparound sunglasses when I go to the grocery store because I’ve heard you can get “it” through the eyes.
Okay, time to close. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.
This morning I have a whole raft of unpleasant phone calls to make, so I’d better start on that. I want to get my walk in while it’s still more or less sunny.
Yes, the fogging up is an issue. I think the “get COVID via the eyes” was debunked, by the way. It is always a possibility but the blood vessels in the eye are not the right kind to get the virus to the places where it can harm you. One guy – who happens to be a doctor – is certain that is how he got it; his colleagues differ with him.
I need to try to find masks that allow for better breathing. My daughter has to wear a mask for 8 hours at work and reports headaches, probably from breathing in a lot of her own carbon dioxide. I am not sure what is available.
Good morning, 54 and partly sunny. Yesterday was so rainy and dark the outdoor lights (on a solar cell timer) were on all day. It was wet and gloomy! I did go to the flower shop to order flowers for Emma’s party and it was nice to be there again. Unfortunately some people refuse to honor the request to wear a mask so my friends are discouraged. I will never understand why basic health decisions that benefit everyone have become so political.
I also found and washed the vases yesterday, so today’s task is to cut and prep the greens. I’ll use salal and ivy from the garden and the stems are all new growth so they are a lovely color of green. New stems are a bit tricky to use though because sometimes they can’t take up enough water and as a result wilt. By cutting them early and putting them in cold deep water I’ll know which ones will be safe to use.
Best wishes to all on this partly sunny day.
{{{princesspat}}} your arrangements always sound so lovely. Healing Energy & more {{{HUGS}}}