Moving On

Today we will finally tackle removing all the Christmas décor and the tree.  My goal is to get the wife to go through the tons of decorations and thin it out so I can make the shed a little more manageable.  But I know that is probably a unattainable goal when it comes to her and the decorations.  Not sure how far we will get since the Granddaughter has stayed with us since the Saturday get together.  I assume she will go home today.  Two nights is usually 'K's' limit being sleep deprived during that time.  

Saturday(our family Christmas) seemed to go well.  Everyone stood around and watched the baby open her gifts.  Even the other Grands set theirs aside to watch.  She is 23 months now and really understands what presents are all about.  She thinks all the presents are for her.  

There were no issues with the pup and her.  Unless you consider a toddler kissing a dog right on the nose every few minutes is a issue.  We tried to stop it when we could but that was difficult since her and the pup fell in love with each other.  He has become her protector and best friend.  

We have a lot of wings left over.  I don't think we ate as much as we did previously.  I will freeze the rest for later use.  All in all everything went pretty well.  I was pretty subdued.  I assume it was from the anticipation of the previous day and all we had to do.  It was good to just sit back and watch all that was going on.  Now that we have that off our plate it feels a little more normal and we can try to move on to getting back to what ever may come next.

Happy Trails

It's Christmas!!

Well not really but it is for us.  We will finally have our family Christmas today.  Son#2 and his family all tested negative and will finally be able to get out of quarantine.  More importantly we will get to see the baby after more than a month.  I think she will also stay with us a couple nights.  At least that is what we are hoping.  I am not sure we got the final OK yet.  

I cooked all the meat yesterday.  I should have taken a picture.  We are having wings.  I had so many on the grill it nearly filled the entire thing and it's a nice size grill.  It took a while to cook that many.  We get the wings from Costco pre packaged as Party Wings.  They aren't full wings just the parts.  I think I cooked 8 packages.  Not sure how many but it was a lot.  

We had the other Grandkids for one night this week too and they will be back.  The pup really loves them.  We hope things go well with the baby.  It's a different ballgame with a toddler.  They can be a bit intimidating to a dog.  He is so well behaved I don't anticipate any problems.  As long as we keep the baby from pulling his ears or stepping on him things should fine.

Well I gotta cut this off and help wrap up the details.

Happy Trails

COVID COVID COVID

Son #2 and his wife (she had COVID along with the Granddaughter) got tested again yesterday.  'IF' all goes well, we are planning on finally having Christmas with them this coming Saturday.  Lord willing.  We have left all the Christmas decorations in place.  If not, we may not have an actual 'event' for Christmas.  February brings many Birthdays, the Granddaughters is the earliest on the 5th.  There is a chance that they will have house guests then.  That will keep us from being there for that possibly as those guests don't practice any COVID protocols.  We are missing the baby quite a bit.  Since she was born she has been at our house overnight almost every week.  This has been a long stretch.  The new pup has helped with that by having our attention focused on him.

I have not been able to get a vaccination yet even though I am in the B1 category.  It appears that as soon as some becomes available it is reserved within a few minutes.  Personally I think there is some monkey business going on with that.  I am not really going to search for any and twist my panties about it until it gets more widely available.  I know those eligible for the first round have to get a second round within a certain time frame or they are back to square one.  As bad as availability is on the first round I'm sure the second round will be just as bad or worse.  If they pass the deadline, do they get to get back in line again for the first round ahead of those that haven't gotten it yet?  I'm sure they will.  So I'll just go about my life as usual until I am sure I can get the entire vaccine and not worry about it.

We are hearing about more and more of our friends and family coming down with the chinaflu.  It gets closer and more prevalent each day.  My Mother was exposed the week before last from her hair dresser.  I just shake my head.  You would have to know my mother to understand that.  I don't think she should be going to a hair dresser every week but she doesn't care about what I think so I say nothing.  She has always been high maintenance.  All I can do is pray for her safety.

I was visiting with our IRA manager the other day and he had been on a conference call.  One of the things they discussed was COVID.  There are over 100 strains now despite what we are hearing about that one new strain.  That is pretty typical of any virus so I don't doubt it.  I don't doubt it despite there being no widespread news about it.

I don't mean to be a downer but....

Happy Trails

Fun Times

As I came on to work on a new post I noticed the video I posted last week was not available.  I have no idea if that was just today or it has been that way from the beginning.  Please let me know if you saw it or it was never there in the first place.  I have never had that happen before so I don't know what the problem might be.

I just got off the phone with my mail order pharmacy, what a disaster they have become.  They have usually been pretty good.  Now not so much.  I don't know if they have moved on to using a contract call in service that can only read from a chart or they are just totally oblivious to the person talking to them.  They ask you a question, you begin to answer and once they get the answer apparently read the response even though you had already gone through all that information previously.  It's one answer fits all as long as it's on the answer sheet they can read.  There is no cognitive thinking or taking into consideration the things you already said to avoid just this scenario.  And then they have absolutely no issue interrupting you at any point and talking over you when you are asking them a question.  Maybe English isn't their first language or their culture has no issue with interrupting constantly.  I'm trying to be kind and not sound like a bigot.  I finally hung up on the last person I spoke to(#4) when she threatened to hang up on me as I was getting upset at her constant interruptions, while interrupting me during the explanation she asked for.  To say the least, I was pretty tight in the jaws by that time.  This is the very short version.

We took the new pup to our vet for the first time to get checked out and get his heartworm vaccination.  Yes, they have a vaccination now instead of the pills etc.  He was also short one vaccination, lepto-something that is very prevalent with all the wild animals we have in our yard.  Evidently he had had that shot before as he had an allergic reaction there in the office.  Vomiting, squirts and finally just collapsed.  We had to stay a little longer as they dealt with that but he is good to go.  

We also just got a call from the vet that results of the fecal test for the new pup came back positive for Giardia.  So we have to get a round of meds and do a lot of things to prevent cross contamination to us.  Multiple baths a week, washing bedding, COVID like sanitation and picking up poop.  Not sure of all the details, hopefully we can get it written down when we pick up the meds.  I guess the pup giving us kisses is a bad thing(if it's not too late) and sleeping in the bed (not my idea) with us wasn't a good thing.  Who knows if he had it already or not.  At least he's healthy.  

Fun Day, Happy Trails

Usual Monday Post on Tuesday

I completely forgot about posting yesterday.  Got busy early and it just slipped my mind.  The main reason was that the Grandson was coming over to work.  He has his eye on something that he really wanted.  

It all started when he visited a friend and he had a new electronic device, a VR thing.  His friend told him that he had wanted one but his Dad told him if he wanted it he would have to earn the money himself.  This so impressed my Grandson he came straight home and told his Dad that he wanted to work really hard to earn some money.  This without any prompting from anyone.  He didn't ask for it for Christmas or for his parents to buy it for him.  He wanted to work.  Consequently he got set up for work at his other Grandparents house a couple weeks ago and earned 80$.  When I heard about this I tried to figure out what work I might have for him.  They have several acres so there is always something a kid can do.  I had to figure this out for a bit

I had been thinking about this flower bed/water diverter I had by the driveway that was built with landscape timbers that were looking pretty bad.  I had some limestone blocks I could use to replace them.  He came over and gave me an estimate at Christmas.  I really wasn't sure he could complete it as those blocks are plenty heavy, 40-50 lbs.  The video below shows him finishing up with some pavers we used for a curb.  He put in about 3 hours on this.  His going rate is about 8/hr.  His estimate was a little higher.

He never complained, never said he can't do it, accepted direction willingly.  I am pretty proud of this kid.  He is about to turn 11 in a couple months and is a little small for his age but he kicked butt and with what he earned he met his goal.  Of course he got a little more than what his estimate was.  Granddads are allowed to do that.

Happy Trails