Office geranium
On Monday morning I was up at 4:30AM and got the stoves going. I had done a good job of stoking them the night before and the house was warm, even though it was pretty cold outside. I got my post up, and went upstairs to pull up shades.
The spare bedroom’s bed was covered, 4’ deep, with boxes, but I had told my helper friend to leave room for Larry by the pillow, as he’s taken to sleeping up there during the day.
My general helper was here on Sunday and saw the last box needing to go upstairs and took it up. She put it in the convenient hole, so when I went up Monday morning, there was a disgruntled cat up there.
I had been waiting for that one box to go up as it’s the first to go into the store room. So I stopped and played Tetris and got all the boxes back in. The cat was much happier and I was glad to not look at the mountain of boxes any more.
A good thing was I found my window snowflakes at the bottom of a pile. Now I can put them up.
Next I cleaned up the kitchen and got the laundry sorted. I had 10 minutes until my ride to exercise class came when I remembered I was staying for the lunch and movie after class.
So I raced around, heated up some soup, put some yogurt and jam in a container, found pretty dishes and a napkin, polished a couple spoons and got it all in a basket before she arrived. Whew!
I was quite tired from exercise class and didn’t feel like working on the puzzle. So I found a Christmas book and tried to read, but was too tired to concentrate. I brought it home to read later.
The movie was on YouTube, and the grossest ads came on while we were eating, so I kept getting up to hit “skip” when they came on. This is the movie. It was ok but not even Hallmark quality.
One of the other women gave 3 of us rides home. I had forgotten to stoke the stoves before I left. The masonry heater was ok, but the wood stove needed attention. Soon the house was warm again.
I took it easy, except stoking stoves and lighting candles in windows and changing over laundry, all afternoon. I made an early supper as my #1 intern was coming to help me learn the Zoom.
It started right at 7PM and she helped me navigate the program. I did ok, I think. I was the only one not from Maine. The program is put on by University of Maine Cooperative Extension and was called Set Your Farm's Future on the Right Path! It was a free program about setting up a transition program for farms from older people to the next generation.
The facilitator kept me back when the session finished and asked if I wanted to be put in contact with her colleagues in Massachusetts. So she’s going to contact them about me and hopefully that will be a useful tool in my tool kit. But I will still do each class, taking as much of the info that might be useful. It runs through May.
I had been so nervous about doing this, so far out of my knowledge base, but I did okay. But it was so exhausting! She had asked if any of us would prefer a morning meeting and I said Yes! She offered Mondays but I said Thursdays would be better. That way I wouldn’t miss an exercise class.
I finally got to bed by 9:30PM after getting stoves going and pulling shades.
On Tuesday I need to finish laundry, clean up the kitchen, and figure out what I need for making chicken stock on Thursday. My helper friend will be here at 9:30AM and has errands to do. I think we will start cleaning one of the rooms not done before Thanksgiving.
I have an appointment mid afternoon but don’t plan to do much except keep stoves going as it’s to be bitterly cold and cloudy.