Make do

Outside of the house

Went out once to a grocery store over the weekend, turned around and left without touching anything. The small-store shoppers were finally taking things seriously and walking in unnerving 6-foot bubbles through picked-over shelves with masked employees. You could almost hear everyone holding their breath as they passed each other. Feels different out there, I’m going to stay home until we’re down to rice and MREs.

On Monday Mike’s office-mate’s sister was sent home for showing symptoms and was tested for the virus. Mike still hasn’t been approved to work from home.

In the middle of the night on Tuesday, someone set fire to our town’s welfare office. I’m guessing case processing hasn’t been going well over there.

Inside the house 

In the spirit of austerity, I pulled out all my yarn and fabric for inventory. I’m not a stash collector, so it’s mostly scraps and garbage yarn people passed off to me, but there were a few nice skeins and a pristine package of flannel I bought at Purl Soho when I was in New York 10 years ago. Zenny and I sewed it into a simple quilt top. We don’t have batting, but we have heavy backing, and we’re working on our running stitch. It’ll do.

I went downstairs to look for eggs (the neighborhood chickens like my basement)  and found a dying hen. For the rest of the day, I soaked her and coaxed her and consulted the internet for advice, but there isn’t much to be done. They die of it quickly. We tried, though. I deleted the post about this; I don’t want a cry for help with a dying chicken sitting in my archives to run across later. Poor thing.

Got mad at the big painting and put it in time out. Back to small bites.

Almost out of milk. We have a 10lb bag of goat milk powder from the feed store that was being used as kitten formula. Pretty sure feed store kid milk is safe for humans, if it’s safe for kittens. We will find out.

The winds from the volcano shifted and I’ve picked up a dry cough. I don’t like that.