respublica

Puzzle two

Since New Year's I've gotten into the jigsaw puzzle habit. I have to confess, I feel guilty doing something which seems like a total time waster and live with Dale who does not see the point in this at all. Well, we're even then, I see no point in his constantly tearing down walls in the basement to construct more bookshelves. But it is what it is. I find doing these puzzles good for my mind and it fills the time spent staying at home. And it stops me from constantly finding something to clean.

Anyhow, here is the second one by Jane Wooster Scott. Today I'll receive a third from Amazon and I'm looking forward to this because it is a Charles Wysocki puzzle. His puzzles are great and they sell out pretty fast, I haven't found one around here lately.

I just ordered one more thing

Since the Covid thing began and we have been pretty much tucked into our house, I've noticed a lot of things that our house needed and many it didn't. The ease of getting something has had me living the "immediate gratification" life.

Most have been things we did find useful, one of which was the air purifier. It worked so well in our bedroom I got a second for the TV/kitchen area. They seriously cut down on dust which we had constantly from Dale taking down walls in the basement and sawing other things down there. I do not regret this purchase. I dusted for the first time in a couple weeks and almost no dust on the rag.

Today I woke up once again with a really dry nose. It is obviously from the heat in the house drying the air and the frigid cold dry air outside. We'd talked about a humidifier but quite honestly didn't want to bother with the constant refilling. But today I bit the bullet and ordered a small one just for the bedroom. My feeling is anything will should help this dry air while sleeping.

This is what being home all the time does to a person.

I've also bought a lot of bird seed lately at the Wild Birds Unlimited store. Do not regret this at all.

Things to help around the house

I confess I've often been a sucker for ads promoting an easier way to clean things around the house and since we've moved back I've been rather obsessive about this sort of thing. Yesterday I received my latest device (or gimmick if you think this is the case). It's an electric (battery powered) scrubber made for many things, but especially tubs and showers. I'm hoping this works because being stooped over a tub or shower floor is rather painful these days. It has a long handle and 4 different shaped scrubber heads.

This got me to thinking of the other items I've purchased sine July. My favorite so far is a 5 dollar drain opener from Home Depot which clears out the slow draining bathroom sink amazingly. Our main floor bathroom sink gets the most use and with all the hand washing these days, soap builds up and slows down the draining. This is quick and easy.

Then came a hand held steamer which works nicely and I have used it mostly for freshening up heavy comforters which don't fit in the washer. I have also used it to loosen up dried drips on the stove top. Lots of uses for this thing.

I did see an ad today for an interesting item. This is a battery powered, hand held seeder like you use in spring on the lawn. But this also works for spreading ice melt onto snowy, icy sidewalks. Actually I could probably just use one of the non battery powered spreaders we already have.  I just may do this if we keep waking up to snow and slick spots.

 

It's a small world

On Saturday Concordia Seminary announced the name of the person who will be its next President, Dr. Thomas Egger. We've known him a long while and he's a great guy. He has a son (Andrew) who works in Washington DC as a media writer. I told our daughter about him later that day and she contacted him as one child of a seminary president to another working in DC. As they talked she learned his sister went to college with a woman who works with Katie.

In Lutheran circles connections like this happen all the time.

Finding things to keep busy

This stay at home unless absolutely necessary was ok for a while. We had the advantage of moving back to Collinsville and all the work that entailed. We've done a lot of things around the house, but for me at least after all these months, my list is pretty much down to dusting and laundry. Dale is still crashing around in the basement taking down walls and creating bookshelves everywhere. So with cold winter weather and no outside things to do, I'm bored.

Which has put me into jigsaw puzzled working. It passes the time quite nicely even though I have to deal with Dale who does not understand the point of it.

Two things constantly on my mind

Every day I either obsess over or give hourly thought too food and health. The first is what I'd guess is on everyone's mind and that is when or if we will ever get the Covid Vaccine. This is totally out of my control and we are at the mercy of whenever our names come up on the registration list. But it's hard to stop thinking about.

The second is what will we have for dinner. This past 11 months of being stuck at home meant eating in every single day. We aren't prone to going out to eat although we miss this a lot. We also don't do pick up very often, maybe 5 times during the shutdown. All this means is that I have run through our meal rotation many times. We've tried meals seen in magazines. I've run out of ideas and have been tempted to start buying cooking appliances I know in my head I'd only use a few times. Such as the air fryer, instapot, etc.

We do eat more vegetables with dinner and I buy a lot of the frozen type since they are just as nutritious and last longer than fresh. We've done chicken, ground beef, roasts, pork in many forms, fish. We've had umpteen pasta meals, rice meals. We've made Mexican, Asian, and American meals. We've had breakfast for dinner and dinner for lunch.  I tired of my cooking.

This is what I needed to read today

Since we moved back to Collinsville we had a lot of work done on the house. Most of it was done before we actually moved which was a great blessing. But since then, Dale has been tearing up a good portion of basement walls in order to replace them and set in many many bookshelves. He has a lot of books. What this has meant was a lot of dust trickling up into the rest of the house. It doesn't help that we've had to keep the furnace running and dust filtering all over. I've noticed a mild sort of stuffy-ness every morning and at one point went out and bought an air filter. This has helped a lot, but not totally. We probably need another one for the second floor.

So I was interested in what this woman, who had also recently moved, wrote:

"I woke up every morning with red, itchy eyes and a sniffly nose. I usually don’t get winter allergies, and we hadn’t been around other humans recently, so I was confused about what was happening. When I desperately texted a friend about my possible December-allergy scenario, she didn’t seem surprised at all."

Dust. It's what we all have. Unfortunately the only solution she had, which works for her, is to wear a mask in the house, especially when cleaning. In our case I am convinced we need to have our duct work cleaned. Besides Dale's basement work, we also had a basement water treatment done which meant lots of concrete floor jackhammering...and dust. I'd bet a duct cleaning is what would help the most rather than constant dusting.

 

The car clacking fixed!

As I mentioned a week ago, my truck (Ford Sport Trac) had begun making a loud clacking noise when we drove it. It was fairly nerve-wracking to say the least. Yesterday we had an appointment at Buzz's Auto shop in Collinsville and the cause was determined in minutes and a part acquired. At the end of the day we had the car back! They were terrific and we will certainly go back anytime we have car issues.

The cause was a part we'd never heard of, the Actuator. This sits behind the dash and sends information to the climate control computer and controls the temperature and air direction. Ours had part of it worn out which caused it to make that clacking noise when the heat was turned on. We were given our old Actuator which I may keep on a book shelf just for fun.

How to get somewhat dust free

Dust is so ever present and I don't know why exactly. We now have re-finished hardwood floors instead of carpeting, no drapery, so why do we have so much dust?

There are many reason why this may be so and in our case it probably originates in the basement where Dale is constantly cutting wood or pulling down sections of walls. The dust trickles up through the heating system or even up the stairs. We can change the furnace filters til we're blue in the face, but the dust still comes up to the main floors. This is why I found this article interesting and somewhat helpful.

11 Easy Solutions to Make Your House less Dusty.

The one which made me laugh was this one: 11 ways to make your workshop less dusty.  Ha! Perfect! The funniest was hanging a furnace filter in front of a box fan so that saw dust and other work dust would be sucked by the fan into the filter. I'm going to see if I can talk someone into trying this.

I do believe we need a company to come out and clean our heating ducts.

The 2020 puzzle is finally finished

Yesterday I completed the puzzle I've been working on since New Year's Eve and I am happy and sad at the same time. I love doing these jigsaw puzzles and when they're done, I miss sitting down and working on them. But this was one of the hardest to do until I learned the pieces all have letters on the underside and the cheat sheet has a grid on the back with letters. That had me zooming along.

Now I want to use puzzle glue to keep it together and put it on top of my desk as a work pad. I have the glue but need to find a board or something to put under it so the glue doesn't wreck our dining room table.