Birthday doings - April 29, 2020

The Husband had a reasonably well-acknowledged birthday, I suppose.

His co-workers decorated his office with balloons and gave him a basket full of his favorite snacks and a walker.  Yes, a walker.  LOL!  I told him I would make him a pouch that he can velcro onto his walker so he can carry his ukulele with him wherever he goes.  ;)

I made The Husband's favorite birthday cake - German chocolate cake with coconut-pecan frosting - and fed him a steak for dinner.  He received lots of calls and texts and messages wishing him a happy birthday.  It seems like he had a pretty good birthday.

I spent most of the afternoon working on The Granddaughter's quilt.  It will take 30 log cabin blocks, 20 striped square blocks, and a bunch of half-square blocks to finish out the edges.  The log cabin blocks are almost complete - just have one more round of strips to sew around the blocks.  Only 8 of the striped square blocks are done, and those are such a pain.

The Grandson spent the night here last night.  He just rolled out of bed and asked what's for breakfast.  He wants pancakes.  Time to cook.

Dried butterbeans - April 28, 2020

I cooked dried baby lima beans for dinner last night.  This was a first for me.  Oh, I've cooked plenty dried beans in my lifetime, but I've learned that not all dried beans cook the same.  I soaked them for the recommended time and cooked them for the recommended time (plus 2 more hours!), but about 50% of the beans WOULD NOT GET DONE.  The rest went to mush.  Is this common for dried lima beans?

Today is The Husband's birthday.  We can't have a party, not even for the relatives on the hill - we're all practicing social distancing.  But I am going to make him a birthday cake.  And I'm going to grill him a steak instead of making him eat leftover meatloaf and rattle-y lima beans.  Thankfully, one of his  presents arrived yesterday, so it won't be a total non-birthday kind of day.  We'll just think of it as being spread out over however long it takes for his presents to arrive. 

Yesterday I worked on The Granddaughter's quilt.  It's coming along.  The log cabin blocks are fast and easy to assemble.  The striped squares, not so easy.  I created a world of trouble for myself when I decided to try this:

I  may have said this in another post, but I took The Granddaughter to the fabric store and asked her to pick out one piece of fabric that she loved.  The plan was to use that fabric as the basis for the whole design.  Here's what she picked:

You can't tell it from the picture, but that stripe is printed DIAGONALLY on the fabric.  It will almost cross your eyes to look at it.  It kind of "radiates" when I look at it.  The fabric automatically said, "quilt border."  But it seemed necessary to incorporate that stripe into the main part of the quilt top, too.  I wanted to use it in big sections, to better show the fabric design, since it was the basis for the whole quilt.  It took a long time to figure out what to do with it.  I decided to play up the eye-crossing aspect, a trompe l'oeil, so to speak.  The log cabin blocks are meant to look 3-D (it is more apparent in pictures than in person), and the striped blocks are meant to "radiate."  I wanted it to cross your eyes AND make you dizzy.  ;)  This striped fabric tricks the eye in another way.  Those radiating colors seem as though they are neon shades.  They are NOT neon.   They are pastels.  At a distance, pastel-colored coordinating fabrics seem to clash.  Up close, neon colors seem to clash.  I picked out one of the blue tones and one of the green tones and ran with it. 

This is what I came up with:

That's about 1/4 of the quilt.  Those blocks will finish 10" square. 

Running the stripes vertically or horizontally instead of diagonally requires cutting the block pieces on the bias.  A bias edge stretches, thus when I cut the triangles to make the striped squares, ALL THREE SIDES of the triangles were stretchy.  Getting those stripes to match is a b*tch.  (A walking foot helps with the stretching problem.)  7 down, a million to go. 

Cowbird - Monday, April 27, 2020

Tomorrow is The Husband's birthday.  He'll be 60.

When he was about to turn 50, I planned a big blow-out birthday party for him.  The night before the party, it rained.  I'm not talking about a spring shower.  It was literally a FLOOD.  Our county executive called it a "thousand-year flood."  We had to cancel the party because our guests could not get here because of flooded streets.

It would be nice to throw him a 60th birthday party, but . . . well, you know . . . the virus.  Ordinarily, I'd go ahead and invite the relatives on the hill to come over for hamburgers and birthday cake, but one of the relatives is a nurse, and though she does not currently have the virus, she is keeping her distance from us and from my mother-in-law, who is in her late 70s.  We can't chance making Nanny sick with all the other problems she has.

Poor Husband may not even get the birthday presents I ordered for him two weeks ago.  Some things have not even been shipped, and it appears that the rest are coming by turtle.

Damn it.

We were going to host a reunion for cousins in my mother's side of the family on May 23, but it looks like that might not happen, either.

On a lighter note, the wren eggs in the window nest have hatched.  They chirp like crazy when a parent lands on the perch.  I can't see anything but their beaks, but I'm halfway wondering if one of the birds is a different breed.  For a couple of weeks, we heard strange noises around the yard that sounded like water dripping.  Two drops - bloop BLOOP -  then silence.  Two more drops, then silence.  With all the rain, I first thought it was water dripping.  But the regularity of the noise, and the fact that the noise was usually repeated from somewhere else in the yard, made me think it was an animal, not water, making the noise.  A frog?  A bug?  I googled, and the most similar noise I found was the call of a Brown Headed Cowbird.  And I actually saw one land nearby, so I know they're around.  The article I read said that these birds do not build their own nests; they squat in other birds' nests and let other birds hatch their eggs.  What a shyster, huh? 

We had noticed the wrens acting strangely while all this bloop-BLOOPing was going on.  First, their birdhouse, which is suction-cupped to the living room window, became un-suctioned on one corner.  We had thought that the female was already sitting on the nest, but we began to see both the male and the female adding more material to the nest.  They were frantic about it, and worked hard at it for several days.  Then, suddenly, the female was nesting again, and it seemed like no time had passed before I heard the first baby chirp.  And it seemed like a couple more days passed before I heard more chirping voices from the nest.  Was that first chirp a Brown Headed Cowbird baby that had hatched earlier than the wrens?  We won't know until they all come out of the nest.

I hope they do it while I''m here to see it.

From the back porch - April 24, 2020

I am going to the office for a little while this morning.  I'm a little irked about it.  This was to have been my first day alone in the house all day, and I was planning to work on my book without distractions.  Sure, it won't take long to do what needs to be done at the office, but my mojo may be gone by the time I'm done.

Yesterday, I took Nanny to the doctor for a blood test.  Bless her heart, she hates it that she needs help, and she kept apologizing.  We both wore our face masks in the car.  I dropped her off at the door and stayed in the car while she had her test.  Truth is, it was kind of nice.  I took my sketch pad and tried to come up with an idea for The Granddaughter's quilt.

On the way to the doctor's office, I asked Nanny if she had my cell phone number so that she could call me to pick her up at the door when she was finished.  She pulled out her little flip phone and began scrolling through the numbers.  Bloop-bloop-bloop.  The number she had for me was my home number, so she began trying to add my cell number.  Bloop-bloop-bloop...P-Q-R-S...bloop-bloop...T-U....  I wanted to pull over, grab the phone, and put the number in, myself.  Instead, after about 30 minutes, I said, "Maybe you could just write my number down."  Bless her heart. 

When we headed out, I was worried that we would not be back in time for me to pick up my grocery order, which was scheduled for pickup between 2 and 3 p.m.  As it turned out, there was plenty of time for me to take her home and go back to the store for my groceries.  These days, picking up an online grocery order is a little bit like Christmas morning.  "What did I get?  What did I get?"  I ordered a jar of alfredo sauce and two jars of cheese sauce.  Instead, I got three jars of alfredo.  I ordered a large can of red enchilada sauce and a large can of green enchilada sauce.  I got two medium red sauces, and three medium green ones.  But I got the chicken I ordered, which has not happened in a couple of weeks.

While Nanny and I were out and about, we passed a fried chicken restaurant, and it gave me a craving that would not go away.  After I picked up my groceries, I stopped at a local place and picked up a WHOLE BUCKET of extra-crispy chicken (with fixin's).  Land sakes, it was good to eat someone else's cooking.  Cruel, selfish thing that I am, I ate all of the delicious, crunchy crumbs from the bottom of the bucket before anyone else got home.

Time to get going.  Tune in tomorrow for another exciting story.  ;)

Bread - April 23, 2020

I bet you've been waiting with bated breath to hear what I did yesterday.

Well, I'll tell you.

I took a morning stroll around the yard.  I'd found a cool weed (I guess it is a weed) the day before and went out to take a picture to show you, but the blooms were closed up and it looked mostly like grass.  I took a picture, anyway, thinking I'd take another picture when the blooms opened, but it rained later in the day, and when I went back out to take picture #2, they were closed up again. 

When The Grandson got out of bed, he wanted to try making bread again, so we gave it another whirl.  We followed the recipe to the letter.  The bread rose.  We punched it down, let it rest 10 minutes, then put it in the loaf pans to rise again.  It rose.  A few minutes after we put it in the oven (heated to the specified baking temperature), it collapsed.

I have no clue.

While the bread was rising, I washed and dried and put away five loads of clothes.

Today, I'm going to drive Nanny to the doctor.

Tomorrow, I may start a new quilt, or at least decide on a pattern for a new quilt.  I have a goal of making a quilt for each of my five grandchildren.  Three down, two to go.  The first grandchild quilt that I made was for my oldest granddaughter.  She was 6 years old at the time.  When I asked her what she wanted on her quilt, she said, "Princesses!"  She has out-grown the princess phase, and I believe the quilt is in storage, somewhere.  This has taught me a lesson.  When I asked granddaughter #2 what she wanted on her quilt, she said, "Marvel comic characters!" 

She is not getting a Marvel comics quilt.

Garden Plans - April 22, 2020

When it comes to productivity, I was nearly as worthless as teats on a boar hog yesterday.

Did some research for my book.  Watched the wrens add material to their nest.  That was about it for the morning, except for a bunch of pondering.

After lunch, I went to the local garden center to buy seeds and garden plants.  I am a little worried that this country is about to face something of a food shortage.  This has been apparent since the first coronavirus restrictions.  The grocery stores do not look like they used to look.  Shelves are empty in some places.  I've never seen this. 

In the 20+ years that I have tried to raise a vegetable garden, I have often thought that we would have starved if we'd had to depend on what I grew to sustain us.  Last year, I didn't even try to have a garden.  For a few years before that, the plants lived, but did not produce much.  Maybe it's because I've grown older, and less energetic, and less willing to expend the energy necessary for successful gardening, but for the past few years, I have wasted my time trying to grow vegetables.  I'm going to have to do better. 

So. 

I bought seeds for green beans, purple hull peas, okra, cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini.  These are things that have (occasionally) grown well here in the past.  I also got 12 tomato plants, 6 cayenne peppers, and 6 pimiento peppers. 

I asked The Son to drag the tiller out of the shed and see if he can get it to crank.  I'm not sure if he did it, but I will ride his *ss until he does.  ;)  It's too wet to plow right now, but I want to be ready when the ground is right.  I hope I can keep these greenhouse plants alive until then.

I made a pass through the little locally-owned grocery store up the road from the greenhouse.  They had some nice-looking hamburger patties, and I picked up some to grill for dinner. 

My mother-in-law kept The Grandson mostly occupied yesterday by talking him into helping her in her yard.  He came home around 5 o'clock and said he was in the mood to go fishing on the pond.  We couldn't find a usable fishing pole in the shed, so I took him to the old store up the road that sells everything from bologna sandwiches (made to order, not wrapped up in foil under a heat lamp) to crickets.  They had fishing poles.  We bought two of them and came home and dug worms from the yard, and tromped through the leaves and poison ivy and mud to get to the pond.   He went to one side of the pond, I went to the other.  After about 5 minutes, I caught a bass, just a bit bigger than my hand.  He came around to my side, fished for another 2 minutes or so, and said, "Grandmama, I might not have the patience for fishing."  We twisted our line around our poles and came to the house.

The Husband was home by then, and he saw that I'd taken the cover off the grill and placed the charcoal nearby.  He fired up the grill, and we had hamburgers and french fries for dinner. 

So, what am I going to do today?  I'll let you know tomorrow.  ;)

From the back porch - Tuesday, April 20, 2020

Yesterday was an all-around bust.

We had to have the septic tank pumped AGAIN - third time in a month - because of all the rain we had over the weekend.  The pumper guy is feeling sorry for us, charging us less and less each time, bless his heart.

I went to work for a little while yesterday morning.  Didn't stay long, as there was nothing much to do, and I'd left The Grandson home alone.  I stopped at a grocery store on the way home to pick up some cream of chicken soup for a casserole I intended to make for dinner, and while wandering the baking aisle, I spied some yeast packets on the shelf.  The Grandson had asked about making bread, and I thought this would be a good way to occupy our time, so I picked up a packet.

We started the bread not long after I got home.  To my utter shock, it rose (I've never had much luck with yeast bread).   We punched it down, put it in loaf pans, and let it rise again.  When I moved the pans to put them in the oven to bake, the bread collapsed.  I re-checked the recipe.  We'd left out the salt, which I subsequently learned helps to keep the bread from collapsing.  We ate it anyway.

While the bread was baking, I started the casserole.  I'd planned to put the cream of chicken soup in it, but made the mistake of googling recipes and chose one I'd never made.  It did not call for cream of chicken soup, but it looked good.  And the final casserole did look good.  But it tasted . . . blah.  We ate it anyway.

I scorched the green beans that I'd intended to serve as a side-dish.   We ate them anyway.

After dinner, I stirred up a chess pie.  Hadn't made one in years.  It came out of the oven about 10 o'clock last night, and I left it on the counter to cool.  This morning, I cut into it.  The top had a nice crust on it, just as I'd remembered, but when I stuck the knife in it,  it gushed liquid.  It's in the oven again.  It has already cooked an extra 20 minutes and is still liquid.  I've set the timer for 20 minutes more.

Between the kitchen duties, I spent time on the porch, watching the birds.  The wrens that have nested in the birdhouse beside the porch have been acting strangely.  Last week, I believed the female wren to be sitting on eggs, for the male wren was bringing her bugs and worms.  Over the weekend, we saw both birds adding material to the nest.  There'd been a cold snap over the weekend, and we thought perhaps the birds were adding insulation.  But that did not seem right, if the female had already laid eggs.  Then yesterday, I saw what I believe was a brown-headed cowbird.  We have been hearing a strange "bloop-BLOOP" noise that sounds like water dripping into a puddle.  I had just googled "animals that make sounds like water dropping" when a large bird that I had never seen came flapping around the porch.  It landed on the statue that sits below the birdhouse, and I got a good look at him.  Big old dark thing, with a dark brown head.  It acted like it wanted to go into the wren house, but there was a wren in it, working on the nest.  After a minute, it flew away, and I continued googling the "bloop-BLOOP" sound.  I do believe that the big bird that landed on the statue was a brown-headed cowbird.  It apparently has a habit of laying eggs in other birds' nests for other birds to hatch.  I wonder if it has been in the wrens' nest?

I just took the chess pie out of the oven.  It has baked for an additional 40 minutes and is STILL liquid.  Maybe it'll set up as it cools.  If not,  we'll eat it, anyway.  I'll just serve it with a straws instead of forks.

But for the pandemic, we would have gone to a Willie Nelson concert last night.  How cool would that have been - a Willie Nelson concert on 4/20?

Hey. April 16, 2020

Well, good morning, reader.  I hope your umpteenth day in captivity goes well.

Calling it "captivity" sounds ungrateful.  Truth is, I'm loving it, except for being chained to the cookstove.  And even that sounds ungrateful, doesn't it?  At least I have things to cook and a place to cook them.

The plumber worked on my toilets again yesterday.  The tanks had continued to leak after the first fix.  He came back yesterday and replaced the whole guts in the tank, not just the flapper.  I think that did the trick, for I am not hearing the toilets hissing and groaning today. 

But the septic tank is full AGAIN.  We had a bodacious rain over the weekend, and the leaky toilets didn't help the situation. The plumber told me he can built a gravel pit in my yard that will catch the rain water before it gets to the septic tank.  I have told him to put me on his list.  I just hope this doesn't cause our whole yard to collapse!

The plumber told me to call the line locator people to come out and mark the paths of our utility lines, so I did.  Less than two hours later, a dude was out here with a beeper machine and a can of orange spray paint.  At least there's some color in my back yard now.  ;)

After The Husband left for work this morning, I strolled my second cup of coffee around the yard.  The narcissus are blooming, almost a month earlier than usual.  These narcissus were here long before I was.  The Husband's great-grandparents had their house just outside of what is now our yard.  Apparently, the great-grandmother planted these bulbs.  When we prepared to build our house, my father-in-law came up here with the tractor and plowed and disced and smoothed our yard (that had lately been a horse pasture) so that we could plant some grass.  I guess he's the one who scattered these narcissus around.  There's one here, one there, a clump over yonder, and some down the hill in the gully.  For years, I've said I need to dig up those plants down in the gully and move them to the yard, but...snakes, poison ivy, mud...you get the picture.  Now, I'm 'bout to get too old and stiff to make the climb back up the hill.

The little head-high plum tree that I planted about three years ago has a few little plums on it.  It bloomed for the first time two years ago, but I never saw any plums.  It was just a little stick then.  Last year it bloomed again.  No plums.  I was beginning to worry that it needed a mate to produce fruit, and that would've been a problem, for there is no place to put another plum tree.  We also have a smallish apple tree that has never had fruit.  I planted it when I planted the plum.  It blooms later than the plum, and I was thinking maybe it needed a mate, too.  It's too early to tell if there will be any apples this year, for the blooms are just now withering.

The roses are budding. 

Phlox are a foot tall, or better.  So are the daylilies. 

Solomon's Seal has dangling blooms.

Birds are nesting.  I have put out a basket of thread clippings for them to use to build their nests.  Yesterday, I saw the wren get some and take it to her house.  I wish I could see the nest up close.

Cat - April 14, 2020

A black cat (with a white spot on his throat) showed up at my house a couple of weeks ago.  It has been someone's pet in its former life, for it is not skittish of people and rubs against our legs if we stand still long enough.  It wants to stare right in a person's eyes when it meows, and if you turn your back on it, it'll go around to your front side and meow louder.  I'd seen him prowling around the neighborhood on my way to/from work and believed him to be a neighbor's cat who would eventually GO HOME, but it appears he has decided to stay.

I have tried to discourage this decision for several reasons.  First, we don't want a cat, or any other pet.  Second, this is the meow-ing-est cat in the world; it is worrisome as hell.  Every time I go out on the porch, he comes to the porch and screams at the top of his lungs.  I tried to run it off by squirting it with water pistols and depriving it of food.  One day, as I shot him (with water) to run him off, I hollered to his backside (in my most villianous voice) that he should embrace his inner cat-ness and catch a mouse.

And I'm damned if it didn't do just that, right in front of me, that very afternoon.

I was impressed, and fed him some dinner that night.

I know: big mistake, if I want him to leave.

But that's the thing.  Maybe it's a good idea to let it hang around.   We have a LOT of varmints around this place:  raccoons, possums (O'possums, I reckon), squirrels, rabbits, SNAKES, armadillo, otters, BOBCATS - all of which are annoying in their own special ways.  I'm thinking that letting the cat stay around might discourage some of these other critters from hanging around here.  We did not see so many snakes and moles and such, back when we had outdoor pets.

I believe I can eventually put a stop to the frantic meowing.  It has learned what a water pistol looks like, and what it does.  All I have to do is pick it up, and the cat runs away.  For a minute.  Sometimes I have to give him a little dose before he knows I mean business when I tell him to SHUT UP, but he's learning.

I keep calling it a "he," but I suspect it's really a "she."  And you know what that means:  kittens, eventually, unless her previous owners had her "fixed," which is unlikely.  I certainly do NOT want to deal with kittens.  And she probably hasn't been vaccinated.

Okay, so maybe it's NOT a good idea to let the cat hang around.

P.S. - I just called animal control and asked them if they'd work a deal with me: I'll keep the cat, if they'll help.  They're supposed to call me back.
 

Quarantine Part ? - April 8, 2020

Just leaving "markers" here, I guess, so I can keep track of what day it is.  (It IS Wednesday, isn't it?)

Nothing much happened here at home yesterday.  That's a good thing, I reckon, these days.

I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon researching for the book I'm writing.  It is amazing what faint tracks the poor people of the world leave in the history books.  Unless one was rich or powerful (and those two things usually go hand-in-hand) or notoriously evil, there is very little historical record of his/her existence, except in the memories of the offspring.  If the memories are a credit to the offspring, they might be passed down for generations; if they are embarrassing enough, they die after a generation or two.

I have spoken directly with cousins who grew up at "ground zero," where this story takes place.  One of these cousins, while doing genealogy research, stumbled across the Alabama Supreme Court case that sparked my research.  This cousin shook down her oldest relatives and asked them if they knew the story.  Most of them didn't know anything about it; the rest of them said that their ancestors had refused to talk about it, but that it had caused a family split, of sorts, back in the day.  The cousin who lives at "ground zero" could not even pinpoint on the ground the original location of the ruckus.

Paper records are hard to come by.  In some cases, there simply weren't any official records.  Where would pioneers record a marriage (other than in a family bible) when there were no official record keepers in the vicinity?  When county governments were established, the record-keeping began, but courthouses all over the south have burned at some point.  If storms or chimney fires didn't get them, the Civil War did.  We are lucky that any records have survived from the earliest days of the counties.  The courthouse at "ground zero" did not burn, as far as I know.  The original courthouse was a log structure, built in the 1820s, off-side the tract that would become court square.  Twenty years later, a new brick courthouse was built.  It still stands today, encased in additions that have been built over the years.  However, a number of years ago, when the courthouse was heated with boilers, one of the boilers burst and flooded the basement, where some of the oldest records were kept.  The worst of the old, damaged books and documents were destroyed; the rest are now housed in the vault of an old bank building that now functions as the county archives.  The Church of the Latter Day Saints has microfilmed and put online some of the records from that county - marriages, land transfers, etc., but they did not film all of the court minute books (or if they did, I haven't found them online).  I need to spend about a solid week scouring those minute books in the hope of discovering some of the details I am missing.

Mid-afternoon, I took a break from researching to get up and move around a little bit.  Since the weather this week has been so pleasant, I have been spending most of my time on the back porch, and every day I've sat here and watched the grass grow in the back yard.  There is always a time in the spring when I enjoy the scruffy look of new grass and the little pops of color from the yard weeds.  Tall white daisy-like things.  Low-growing yellow oxalis.  Wild violets.  I let them grow until they look shabby, then I mow them down.  They got shabby yesterday.  I cranked up the push-mower and tidied up the part that I can see from the back porch.

Come evening, I made a batch of beer bread from scratch to go with the hamburger steaks (with tomato gravy), creamed potatoes, and sweet peas I planned for supper.  I'm not much of a bread-maker (except I can make a decent biscuit and edible cornbread), but I've made enough quick bread to know that there was something wrong with the beer bread recipe I was using, once I stirred it up.  The recipe called for "3 cups of flour (sifted)."  It said to mix up the ingredients and "pour" them into a bread pan.

Now, to my way of thinking, "3 cups of flour (sifted)" means (1) measure out three cups of flour, and (2) then sift it.  Apparently, my thinking is wrong, for I ended up with a dry wad of dough that was nowhere near "pourable."  I took my dough bowl to the sink and added enough water so that I could at least stir it a little bit.  It came out a little dense, but it was tasty and sopped up tomato gravy just fine.

Between the researching and the mowing and the cooking, I did some plumbing inspection.  During the latter part of March, our septic tank filled up with rainwater, and we had to have it pumped.  The pumper guy told The Husband that he saw water trickling into the tank from the house and thought we might have a leaky toilet flap.  The Husband risked his health to go to the hardware store to buy a new flap for the suspected toilet, and The Son installed it that night.  For the following two weeks, as I've been out here on the porch, I've heard strange belching noises coming from the septic tank.  We called the pumper guy back and, sure enough, the septic tank was full again, partly from water running back into the tank from the field lines, and partly from the trickle that was STILL coming from the house. 

I garbed myself with a mask, went to the hardware store (which was doing curbside service only - keep 6 feet apart, please), and bought THREE new toilet flaps.  The menfolk installed them that night.  Yesterday, I went around checking the water level in the toilet tanks, and it appeared that they were ALL leaking.  *sigh*

I called a real plumber this morning.  Amazingly, he answered.  He said he'll come see about it tomorrow.

I should probably clean all the toilets today.  ;)

Quarantine - April 7, 2020

This post is going to be longer and more boring than usual because I have nothing better to do.  ;)

Today it has been a full week since I have gone to work.

Last Tuesday, I got up, showered and dressed for work, and was ready to walk out the door when my son came home from working a double shift and announced that he was feeling feverish.  I panicked, afraid that he had come down with the coronavirus.  He took his temperature:  98.6.  Because he was exhausted, he showered and went straight to bed.  I called my boss and told her what was up.  She told me not to come to the office.

A couple of hours later, my son took his temperature again:  99.something, and a couple of hours later, it was 100.something.  He said his throat was sore, and his ears ached.  He had a cough, but it was not a dry cough.  A while later, he blew his nose, and - well, I'll spare you the description, but it looked like he might have a sinus infection.  He did a video consultation with his doctor, who opined that it probably was a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics.  By the next day, his fever was gone.  I called my boss that night and told her I would be at work the next day.

Wednesday, when the boss came in, she sat far away from me as we talked about what we needed to do.  Since she is a judge, and since the courts are closed for everything but emergencies, we have very little work to do at present.  We are both afraid of the coronavirus and have been limiting our exposure to other people.  However, we both live with sons who work in facilities that employ hundreds (thousands, in my son's case) of other people.  We decided that we should take turns going to the office every few days to return calls, open mail, etc., so as not to expose one another to whatever our sons might bring home.  Since I live 15 miles from the office and she lives only 2 miles from it, she said that I should just stay home for the rest of the week, and she would drop by to check on things the next time she had to leave her house.

Since then, the governor has issued a stay-at-home order, and people are not supposed to be out in public except for essential errands.

I have been doing my grocery shopping online for several months.  Lately, the wait time for pickup has sky-rocketed.  I ordered groceries last Wednesday evening, and my earliest pickup time was Sunday afternoon.  So Sunday afternoon, I went to the supermarket to pick up my order, and when I got there, they said they had no record of an order for me.  I checked my email on my telephone, and could not find an order confirmation, so I left the supermarket, intending to pick up a few necessities at a locally-owned grocery store that is not usually very crowded.  When I pulled into that parking lot, it was crawling with traffic.  No, thank-you.  I drove to a Dollar General store that is not far from my house and managed to pick up enough stuff to see us through the next few days.  When I came home, I checked the supermarket order that I thought I'd made, and discovered that my cart was still full.  I added a few things to it, and finished the check-out process; it would be Wednesday, April 8, before I could pick up my order.  Fortunately, we had enough food in the house to keep from starving until Wednesday, but I only have enough half & half left for one more cup of coffee, so things are about to get real around here.

In the days between my last trip to work and today, I have been making masks.  My sister-in-law is a nurse in the cardiac ICU at a hospital.  Two weeks ago when I asked her if her hospital needed masks, she didn't seem too concerned, but said it wouldn't hurt to have a few re-usable masks, just in case.  I made her about a dozen masks before I ran out of elastic.  A few days ago, she said the hospital's mask supply was getting low and asked me to make a dozen more, with ties instead of elastic.  A day later, the coronavirus experts were recommending that everyone wear masks out in public, and The Husband asked me to make masks for him and his 28 co-workers.  So I got crackin'.  Sewed all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Making the ties slows the process, but I figured out a fairly quick way to make them using a 1/2" strip of fabric with a 1/4" bias tape maker.  I'm still a few masks short of The Husband's requested 28 masks - ran out of ties - but I took the day off from sewing yesterday to give my neck and shoulders a rest.  I plan to finish my quota today.

When my son goes back to work on Thursday I will have the house to myself during working hours, and I plan to resume work on a book I am trying to write.  This book is based on a real story, something that happened in my father's family prior to the Civil War, the details of which I stumbled across as I was doing genealogy research.  These people moved from South Carolina to Alabama before 1820, before Alabama became a state.  Tribes of Creeks and Cherokees still had territories in the surrounding areas.  Our family was working class - blacksmiths and sharecroppers - moving with wealthier families to help them start new cotton plantations.  Mary, the "heroine" of the story, was just a child when her family moved to Alabama.  She never married, but gave birth to four illegitimate children by at least two different fathers, one of whom deeded property to Mary and their two children prior to his death.  When he died, Mary had to file a lawsuit against the man's one legitimate child in order to gain the property deeded to her children.  The case went on for years - went all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court and for years afterward - with many twists in the tale brought on both by human subterfuge and by the onset of the Civil War.

I'll let you read it when I'm done.  ;)