Scattered Thoughts . . .

You awaken in the middle of the night to the smell of burning wood.  You get up and quickly run through your home to see if you can find the source of the burning wood smell.  As you pass a window, you notice that your neighbor's house has a little bit of smoke leaking out of an upstairs bedroom window.  You call 911 to report a house fire, frantically trying to summon help. After reporting the fire, you then call your neighbor's house to awaken them in an attempt get them out of the house.  The neighbor answers the telephone but states he can't access the rest of the bedrooms in the house where his family is located and he, himself, is trapped inside due to fire.  The situation is quickly becoming dire. As you run out of your house to see if you can help somehow, the Fire Chief pulls up in his Chief's vehicle.  He orders you to stay away from the house.  As you try to get past the Chief, a fire truck (a ladder company) and an engine pull up (pumper for pumping wa

Sometime after midnight last night, I got up out of bed and wandered to the bathroom.  On my way to the bathroom, I passed by one of our windows and instantly noticed that the ground was covered in white stuff! This morning, I awoke to a little snow squall outside our windows and everything was blanketed in clean, soft white...   It is not yet after Memorial Day weekend so this snowy weather should come as no surprise.  After all, we are almost as far north as southern Alaska (54° latitude vs 45° latitude) .  Sheila, however, is in a bit of a lousy mood over the snow.  She's usually done with snow falling from the sky by mid-January.  Personally, I like when the muddy brown spring landscape is covered in fresh snow.  The snow hides the lack of vegetation and all the mud while it blankets everything in a clean soft look.  Plus, spring snow always melts on its own requiring absolutely no shoveling (almost always anyway). On the positive side, we haven't done any plan

Just like everyone else in the country right now, we are having difficulty stocking our pantry and keeping it stocked.  This, of course, is what people would refer to as a "first world problem" and they would be correct.  This is just one reason (of many) why I say that the United States is no longer a first world country.  Supermarket supply chains have broken down.  Many critically necessary supply chains have broken down.   Sheila and I realized in recent weeks that getting simple things like meat is difficult so we need to place orders of only meat that range from $200 to $300...  and that is just for two of us!  I don't know how families with children in the household are managing.   When it comes to purchasing meat, we can't seem to get much from Shaw's using InstaCart (I should point out that there is nothing 'instant' about InstaCart either...  it requires up to five days to get an order).  Schwann's has a two week wait for delivery.  And,

Lukey and Kenzie were featured on the local evening news today.  They had written a short little song about their feelings about COVID-19.  Liza recorded it...   then Pop submitted it to the news station...  then the news Producer needed Liza to release the video and give authorization for them to use the video clip on their News broadcast...  and here it is! </>

Just about all of my "cold and flu" symptoms seem to be behind me but my level of fatigue is still quite overwhelming.  I spent just about all of this past weekend sleeping.  I awoke only to use the bathroom, eat and take medications.   I still have some minor symptoms of a cold...  some gunk in my nose and running down the back of my throat at times.  The fever has been gone for days though so that is good.  Headaches still come and go but are so minimal at this point that they are hardly worth mentioning.  I still get bouts of difficulty breathing but that could be due to my primary illness since I do experience this regularly anyway.  What I was experiencing a month or two ago, however, was well beyond my usual breathing problems (since being on medications to control these problems).  Overall, most of these untested, undiagnosed "cold and flu" symptoms seemed to have dissipated.  The fatigue is worse than usual though.  It is lingering.  It is overwhelming.