Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Life in our little cottage in the country

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Day Three Hundred Fifty-Two

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Sorry for my absence yesterday! We were getting our grocery list together to order online and then we were trying to get earlier and closer-to-the-house appointments for the vaccine. The vaccine stuff is very frustrating. Even though Walgreen’s shows plenty of appointments available, they only offer the option of First and Second Dose or Second Dose. So, if you click First and Second, if the computer thinks they don’t have an appointment available for a second dose three weeks later, they won’t let you book it. So, you get all excited about appointments and you aren’t eligible for any of them! I don’t know if that’s peculiar to New York state or the policy everywhere.

To make things more complicated, Don somehow got one for Tuesday afternoon about 45 minutes from us, but I didn’t. And then to make things even more complicated, my friend Heidi, who works for a great organization (food pantry, thrift store and community café) in a town north of us, called me yesterday. Her organization was contacted by another group who wanted a list of people 65 and up who might not have been vaccinated yet in order to (perhaps) vaccinate us this week. So we put our names on the list.

Everything is in flux. And in the middle of this, we have to get Don to his retina doctor on Wednesday and the car is getting an oil change and an inspection tomorrow. For two people who sit around most of the time, that’s a lot of activity.

Anyway, it all took up a lot of time yesterday and I just said “I’m going to take the day off from the blog,” as I couldn’t do all of that and post on time. As always, I usually post something quickly on IG letting you know that I’m not posting and that I’m okay. So check there.

Newest puzzle (worked on very gingerly because of my back.):

The cover of the box.

And this is what I have so far:

I tried working it on the kitchen island, instead of at the table. It worked fairly well, but I still did too much and was sore at the end of the day. Today, I will be more disciplined. It’s a challenge, as it’s rainy and damp and I get restless.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.

 

 

 

Day Three Hundred Fifty

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Finished.

You’d think this puzzle would have been easier than the Piano Lesson, but in some ways it was harder. Of course, the entire process was hampered by my back problems. The back is getting better, by the way. It will stay that way if I remember to be careful and manage my puzzle time – and refrain from sitting there for hours.

I neglected to take a picture of the box for the next puzzle project, but I’ll share it with you on tomorrow’s post.

Another lovely sunny day today. Don is going to retrieve the stockings full of salt (or maybe the salt has melted and they’re just empty stockings?)  from the gutter because it’s going to rain Saturday and Sunday. We don’t want them clogging up the works.

Exciting, right?

We’re watching a series on Amazon Prime –  A French Village. It’s all about a village that is occupied by the Nazis in WWII. It was recommended to us by a friend. It premiered in 2009, so it’s several years old, but we’re hooked. It’s really compelling and Don, especially, is fascinated by that time in history.

I’m enjoying The Moving Toyshop  by Edmund Crispin. Crispin is considered one of the stars of the golden age of British mysteries. He writes whodunits with wonderfully eccentric characters and has a wicked sense of humor, as well.

Other than that, I’m deleting tons of photos from my laptop, which is an ongoing process. And I’m trying to figure out why my iPhone won’t turn on sometimes, even when it’s charged. So far, and it’s only happened twice, if I plug it into my laptop after unsuccessfully trying to boot it up, it turns on immediately.

I don’t need a problem with my phone during this lockdown. There is no way I’m heading to an Apple store, the nearest of which is over an hour away from our house. And in a mall. Wish me luck.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Day Three Hundred Forty-Nine

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I’ve been babying my back, but I can’t stay completely away from the puzzle. I did some work yesterday afternoon, alternating between standing and sitting. I’m getting close to finishing.

It was just a few days ago that we had 3 more inches of snow and cold weather. And then, the next day, it started to warm up. I started checking our window to make sure there was no evidence of leakage and yesterday I went outside and climbed up on one of the mounds of snow in the Secret Garden and confirmed that the mounds of ice in the gutters had completely melted. It’s clear to me that they melted a while back as water has been freely flowing out of the downspout and into the rain barrel. Yay, nylons filled with salt! They really work.

We did make appointments to get our first dose of vaccines yesterday. I finally figured out that I shouldn’t take ‘no appointments available’ on the state sites as the last word. I clicked through to see the availability and found there were indeed appointments available at some sites – not every site. At the same time I was discovering this, I read an email from a reader that suggested I do that very thing! (Great minds, etc.) Anyway, I had to yell to Don to “Get over here!” in the middle of making an apple pie because I saw two appointments available back to back and I wanted him to grab one of them. Long story short, we got them. BUT. It’s not until April 9th and it’s quite a distance from our house  – like, a two hour drive away. We’re perfectly willing to do that in order to get vaccinated, but we’ll keep checking locally and if we find something earlier and closer, we’ll grab it and cancel the first appointment.

I will say it was an enormous relief to know we had an appointment. No matter what, we’ve got one and it’s only a little over a month away. All the frigging hoops you have to jump through to secure an appointment, let alone two, are insane. But you know that. Or at least some of you do, depending on where you live.

I’m reading The Moving Toyshop  by Edmund Crispin, as well as another book that I’ll review on Monday. It’s not the kind of book I normally review, but I thought I might find it interesting. We’ll see.

The sun is shining. The snow is melting. We have rain on the docket for Saturday and Sunday so that will melt even more snow. I know from long experience that none of this means that we will now be rid of snow for the season, but it’s nice to hope!

Stay safe.

Happy Thursday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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