To Clean or Not To Clean

Hello, Is dusting the furniture important? Cleaning used to be done on a regular basis once a week. No longer. Once a month seems to be closer to the schedule. It used to give a sense of satisfaction when the job is done. Now one or maybe two rooms get finished and then it seems that a break is needed. A break that lasts so long the rest of the apartment does not get done. I remember one of my children telling someone that I enjoyed cleaning. Seems that is a thing of the past. Should I hire cleaning help? Would I have to clean before they came? Mostly I do not see the dust until the light is just right for a good view of it. Then I am appalled. How could it be that bad already? Even if it is a month since I have dusted that surface. I can handle more dust than clutter. It bothers me a lot when things are out of place. Leroy does not have that problem. He thinks close is good enough. Perhaps There are too many things sitting around that I have to move and put back. We finished more delivery of the neighborhood newsletter. It was great to be out in the warm weather. Now there is only a small section yet to go. We should be able to finish that tomorrow. I like an excuse to go out and get some steps. Leroy walked to church this morning so he has his total, but I did not walk so far. Another walk helped me to get the total. Paula

Home Chores

Hello, Leroy and I will mostly do things around the house. I hung our two loads of clothes while he swept and washed the kitchen and bathroom floors. Nice to have them clean. We had a frost this morning, but it did not feel too bad by the time I went out. There was almost no wind so that adds to comfort, but not to drying clothes. The temperature has gone up quite a bit now so they should dry. I was thinking we would not do much outside the house, but we do have newsletters to deliver in the neighborhood. We do abut 140. We will work hard at getting that done before we leave. It takes about four trips. We could more at a time, but it is nice to have a break. Leroy is not so speedy at walking the hills. Our route is up the hill. Leroy also has four doctor/dentist appointments in the week. I have two studies at church that I like to go to. Then there is a “senior” luncheon one day as well as we will help unload the items once more before we go. I also go to three classes of exercises in the course of the week. There will be some sitting around, but not so much. We also have to get packed. It is a question of how warm our choices should be. I am planning to take my packable down coat and layers of warm to wear under that. Paula

When Friday feels like Saturday

Hello, We did a load of clothes this morning. Even though it was cool, in the 40’s, I hung them out. With the welcome sunshine and dryer air they dried well. We went to church to help unload the items which keep the meals going out of our church. It was not such a large load today. But it still took two trips to get all cart loads in the building. Grateful for the invention of the elevator which makes getting it downstairs quite simple. I put milk in the refrigerator as I can get down low more comfortably than others. While at church we, along with two other people, made sandwiches in an almost assembly line, for the Sunday morning meal at the homeless shelter. They will be heated before delivery. Four people made that move along quickly. After that Leory and I packaged plastic cutlery. It is purchased in boxes of 600. We divide it into groups of twenty-five. That makes it easy to grab a smaller amount as the meals are delivered. We deal with spoons and forks. I can say the spoons are much easier to get in the bag as they nest more readily. On the way home from church, we stopped at the community garden. We picked tomatoes, green beans, and broccoli. There were quite a few tomatoes. We did not pick all. We shared a bag of them on the way home and gave our downstairs friends all but two of them. The beans will maybe make a meal with the ones we have in the frig. The broccoli should have been picked much sooner. Much of it had gone to seed. I guess one of us will get a taste of it. For some reason I now feel ready for church tomorrow, but realize that it is just Friday. Paula

Drizzle Day

Hello, This morning when I was out and about, there was a mist in the air that became a light rain. In about a mile or maybe less it disappeared and the pavement was dry. This afternoon, I made a trip to a grocery store in the opposite direction. It was a bit misty outside. When I came out there was definitely more rain in the air. I got the groceries loaded in spite of the speed bump in the way. I was not speeding with the cart, but I needed to go to front of the cart and lift it a bit to get it over this narrow obstacle. Maybe it was just hiding cords as there were cord under it. Then I noticed the rain some more, as I had to return the cart over the same object. Good thing I am a strong woman? Leroy stayed home as he did not need to go, but I wished he had come just to get out of the house. We could have carried all the groceries between the two of us. At home there was almost no rain. Leroy and I swept out the garage this morning. He vacuumed his car so he could change the floor mats to the winter type which keeps the crude off the flooring. He also put up some of the summer shovels, etc. and took down the snow shovels and scrapers. My plan for the afternoon was to go to the garden. There were still some beans to pick, but they are still on the plants. There is also some broccoli that I intend to pick. I am happy to stay home. Tomorrow is another day. Paula

Some Things Are Straight

Hello, We have been dealing with tax issues since mid-summer. We are now told that it will be settled. Leory, who likes to have everything in order, was finding it very hard to cope. We are fortunate that our daughter helped us deal with some of that. She, as an account, calmed him quite a lot. We are going on a river cruise soon. Leory got an email with the schedule, etc. There was a note that we should check on a visa if needed. The person we usually talk with had told us she would be gone. When we called the cruise company and talked to a travel person, they told us to check with the UK website as sometimes USA citizens need one in the UK. We are landing in London and leaving for the continent in the same airport. We could not learn if we needed one or not. The advice was to check with the airline. The airline person stated that we should check with our travel agent. So, we called the cruise company back at a different number. There we finally got an answer. We do not need. That took quite a bit of time to get that all straight. Anxiety on my part. For some reason Leroy was calmer on this issue. Travel is not for the unassertive, excitable, or anxious. This time we are not traveling with friends. I am a bit concerned. But I guess we can go alone with an entire ship of other people we have not met yet. I stopped at the community garden and picked one green bean. I did not look at all the plants. I might get that done tomorrow. It is to be colder so they are not producing much anymore. It seems that there are a number of tomatoes still there as well. Someone else will get those as we are leaving so soon, I do not want those that are not yet ripe. Paula

Reading

Hello, I finished Theo of Golden. It was an uplifting book. It helps the reader believe that there are good people in the world who care about others more than themselves and the money they could make. Theo means “God’s gift”. Now if I can just live up to that ideal. Each day presents some ways this can be done. It is easy to be so busy or unaware that they are missed. I also just read Louise Penny’s latest book. She writes mysteries. That kept me interested and turning pages. I almost read the afterward by the author, but she recommended that the reader avoid it if they do not want any spoilers to the story. I then flipped back to the story and was happy that I did that. One of our children recommended a movie that Leroy and I both might like. He likes adventure/action and I like comedy. We watched, “True Lies” and we did both like it. It was a bit over the top in action and I am ready to take a break from some killing. But we laughed in more than one place. Not sure what it means, but donations are down at the place I volunteer on Monday. Some of those donations come from individuals and some come from businesses. We were wondering if the downturn in the economy affects what will be donated. Makes for a bad cycle. I had to change an eye dr. appointment. I called once and just got it for the day we come back from a trip. I called back and asked for the next week as one never knows about plane travel being on time. since it is electronic, it seemed not to be a problem for the office to make that switch. I feel much more comfortable about it now. I figure it was amazing for this non-phone user to make two calls in a row. Paula

A Week with Help for the Old People

October 28, 2026 Hello, Daughter Sarah came to visit and “help the old people”. At least that is what she told someone why she was here. We did use her help quite a bit. We have a password keeper program. She organized it into folders as well as checking each entry and making sure it was correct. We had been a bit sloppy about filling out the forms. Nice to have someone who has the patience to check them all and get it in good shape. She also helped with some other computer and financial issues. We went through some of our paper file folders. They are a bit lighter now as unnecessary papers are out. I am always a bit hesitant to get rid of some things. But she has a better idea of what is important and what is not. It will be less stuff to look through when we need things. We also took a little trip one day to see the trolls in Clinton. There are three trolls that were done by Thomas Dambo and plenty of local volunteers. It was great that we met, at the first troll we visited, a volunteer who could talk about the skills required to complete that project.

We were not the only troll hunters even though it was in the middle of the work week. The last troll is done by a local artist Apparently, people have been coming from all of the country and the world to see them. There might even be trolls near you as there are many of these interesting creatures around the world. Paula