What's Cooking

Phew! It does appear that Shauna's residence may escape the pandemic, for now at least. Here's hoping anyway. So far, the only positive test result has been that initial worker. She was very careful at work and also self-isolated when she only suspected that she had it (because her roommate tested positive). Also the most suspected resident has had a negative test, and I think they're caught up with testing for now.

I keep knocking on wood, but that leads to a headache since the easiest wood within reach is my noggin. I live in hope, but we shall see.

To lift your spirits, I present the All Abilities Choir in Australia's Got Talent. It is an odd crop, but it works well enough. Warning: this video may induce wet eyes.

Daily Selfie: do you notice how Sue always smiles but that I often ham it up?

Isolation Humour



COVID Assistance

Doing their best: we live in an imperfect country in an imperfect world, but our governments are trying to help people as quickly and efficiently as possible. Here is one person's experience with, CERB, the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

This compares to the huge (and unsafe) benefit lines that I saw taking place in Florida this morning. No, I 'm not trying to rub it in but showing how comparatively well Canada is doing. It could be worse.

Isolation Learning: Life Skills

The kids' step (not really but almost) mother is doing a marvellous job. For Sue's birthday, she had Danica bake a cake: just Danica with only verbal instructions. This week, Danica made pasta from scratch.



And Jonathan did homemade pizza and made the crust from scratch.

This is great and probably not something that neither their mother nor Sue and I could be bothered to do. I have made homemade pizza once, but I cheated and used a pre-made crust.

getting out for photos just a little bit

We are into a supermoon these days. Monday night when I met Sue in the bathroom at 4:30 (it happened) it was casting a bright light along with shadows. The problem is finding a good spot for a photo. I get fussy. I shouldn't really.

Last night, I did go out to shoot the moon. I made it to the driveway, looked up, saw only a faint yellow through the clouds, and turned right back into the house. I would have been a bit late for the actual rise anyway.

But, I have gone out the past 2 mornings to get a photo of those trees (or two trees) across the river. One morning, I was too late to get the best light; the next morning I was too early.

The first morning was a fake long exposure (I won't explain today) to smooth out the water.

The second morning was a genuine long exposure. That tree didn't come out as well, but other than that I like it somewhat. Not sure which I like better, however, although I do like the water better in the second one and I guess I like the tree in the first one.

Since someone mentioned the bw photo on the previous post, I am including one of the first photo, above, too. I generally find that it is better not to show the two versions concurrently because they have their own moods, but I often do it anyway.

Only two geese remain in the pond consistently now and usually no ducks. They were closer together than they are in the photo when I started setting up for this photo. Dratted birds.

The daily selfie: we have a lot on our minds, but I don't think Lacey is impressed.

A Tale of Two Aprils

Having just yesterday put up a photo of the flooded tree, I thought to compare it to last April.

This is the same photo as yesterday but converted to mono, just because I like doing this sometimes.

Here is the pond last April. Although they are not identical viewpoints, I think you can see how much greater the flooding was last year. I even saw people canoeing in this pond, or at least getting into their canoes here before launching onto the river.

You can see the difference in our nearby park too. The water was right up to the footbridge last April.

It is almost passable this year . . . but, of course, I do walk around it to get to the river beyond. I do that by skirting around to the right past the bridge.

Onto the almost daily selfie: the weather is beginning to warm and some days are getting brighter, so thumbs up and cool shades. Dude. And duchess too. 😊

Heroes and Reflections

Some things get me emotional, and I confess that this photo of Shauna and others preparing to deliver breakfast to the residents got to me.

As of Sunday, Shauna has worked for 7 straight days and doing overtime too while helping out in areas that are, like this, well beyond her job description. She expects this to be her new normal for the time being.

I imagine the outfits are to connect with Hawaii and palm trees on Palm Sunday. They do what they can to spread cheer even if it isn't in keeping with the religious connotations.

This morning, I checked her location on the Find Friends app; apparently, she stayed there overnight. I don't know if this was a one-off or if it will be the new norm.

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Speaking of Shauna and her residence (and residents). They were grateful to receive this from a local distiller that has reconfigured its production to meet COVID needs.

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Another example of Good People Going Above and Beyond: a friend of Sha's  who also is Sue's manicurist picked up a few items that WMart missed in our recent order.. We made arrangements for her to leave this single bag out on the porch for us to, in turn, pick up from her.

We now have eggs and cat food, and she will do a main shopping for us and others once per week. That along with online+pickup should keep us in good stead. We'll be fine.

While I do feel that I could move about safely to shop, Sha and her friend have gone to lengths to help us, so Sue says the least we can do is stay safe, so it is one less worry for our overburdened daughter.

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After picking up the groceries we drove to the river for just a few minutes, Since we don't stop for a coffee when we do this anymore, we don't stay long. It is not the same, and it also seems somewhat frivolous at this time when people are asked to stay home. In our case, we were out already for the pickup, so it didn't seem so wrong.

It was overcast but calm so there was a nice reflection in the pond between the parking lot and the river. The pond was considerably larger last spring. It will stay flooded for perhaps a few weeks before the area dries out until we do it all again next spring.

This was to be another reflection photo, but I ended up cropping away the reflection part on the lwoer half because I like the composition better this way.

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Finally, we don't have a funny selfie to share today, but I'm sure we will be back on the ball tomorrow. So here's a Lacey as a lagniappe.

Pizza Ears and Panos

Last we heard, things hadn't changed at the seniors residence. There is still only one verified case, and we hope that it will remain that way. There is a problem with workers quitting or not showing up, but we haven't heard the details. One understands their fear, but the place still has to function, and others must put in more hours. Our daughter informs us that she will have to go into work every single day for the time being.

But the weather was really nice here and felt like the first day of spring with temperatures rising to 14C/57F without the blasts of wind that are so typical of this time of year.

After dealing with out daily selfie, which featured pizza ears and cat whiskers the nice weather drew us out for our daily amble.

Somehow, the app decided that I only needed whiskers on one side.

A walkie selfie.

I decided to take some panos with my phone. I do like how easy it is using the phone.

This was almost directly across from our bench.

Looking back to the pond that was teeming with ducks and geese just a short while ago but they have moved on except for one pair that is not visible in this photo. The big pond looks small beyond the footbridge while the water in the smaller and nearer pond is mostly a result of recent rain. There is usually just a trickle there.

While I was taking panos, Sue was taking selfies.

As we left, Sue took a picture of the bench from the back. You can glimpse a bit of the river just beyond the bench, but the little pond in the foreground looks bigger than the river in this photo.

The Answer Key

The answer key to yesterdays challenge will be found at the bottom of the page.

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Oh dear! There is a confirmed COVID case in Shauna's retirement home. It is a worker who shares an apartment with a worker from the other infected home in Perth. She is/was extremely conscientious about washing and disinfecting, so they hope for the best.

Two of those who work closest to her, the worker, are being tested. The residents have been confined to their rooms. Shauna reported that the first meal delivery to three floors worked efficiently.

Understandably but unfortunately, this has caused several other employees to give notice, so daughter is working harder that ever. She put in 12 hours yesterday and will go in to work again today, Saturday.

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As of yesterday, at least 80 seniors residences in the province reported COVID cases. The residents at Sha's place tend to be in decent health and not as old as in many homes, so she has high hopes for minimal impact.

My goodness, I just saw that up to 900 seniors residences across the country are infected.

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Isolation Tidbits from a poll

• 76% of Canadians are isolating voluntarily
• 5% are in mandatory quarantine at home
• 14% are working
• 6% don't think it will work (and it won't if they don't)

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A response to the 6% in the above poll



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Speaking of Isolating, I had to give in just a little bit yesterday when I entered my third store in three weeks because it was necessary to get cat food. We called the order in; they had it ready by the counter with all but the entrance being barricaded to customers. I waved my card at the machine and was off quickly.

The other two previous store visits were similarly brief and as safe as possible.

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We are now into week 4 of isolation with many more to go, I am sure.

If isolation is working in general across the province and country, we may begin to see indications by the end of next week.

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Since we were out anyway, we took selfies at this sign by a friend's house. She is the wacky and wonderful town councillor and wild hat lady of whom I have posted before.

Town people posing here is becoming a town meme of sorts. Anything to keep the spirits up. But I do shock myself when I see the old man in the photos. I know I'm of an age, but I forget how obvious it is.

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Another recent selfie of the bizarre kind. Perhaps do not share with impressionable children. 😈

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I looked out the window and saw two neighbours conversing while maintaining the ultimate in social distancing (red circles).

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Last evening I picked up our first order from WMart. It went smoothly and quickly, and we scored on 17 of the 22 items that we requested. That's not bad.

For things we missed, Shauna's former neighbour, who is also Sue's manicurist,  has volunteered to pick up items for us because she is off work, and Shauna is extremely busy at work.

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As promised, here are the answers if you tried to play the Figures of Speech game in yesterdays post. I would probably not have bothered playing it on my own, but it was kind of an event playing it online in a family chat group. If you haven't yet played the game and want to, please stop scrolling now, and click here to find the game (puzzle). (I am putting it down a little way to assist you with this aversion if that is what you choose to do.)

Figures of Speech

Let's keep it light today, shall we? No more kvetching about bad charts. lol

(Please read to the bottom if you want try a challenging activity that our extended family played together online.)

Things aren't so light in this first section, but an armoured truck somehow combusted in our downtown on Wednesday evening. It was just across from a gas station. It could have been worse. I think it had been moved by the time when the photo was taken but had been farther away from the gas station, across the street, during the conflagration.

No waterfowl at the pond the last few days, but there was this rock nearby. It was part of a project for kids, to paint rocks and leave them along path by the park.

There was also a redwing blackbird. It was way up in a tree, so please forgive the poor photo.

And . . . we also had a third, non-fowl sighting. Houses back onto the park (lucky devils) and look what I saw. Crocuses, I do believe. Yay!

Sha picked up a few groceries and supplies for us. She leaves them on the floor in their bags. Sue cleans them and puts them on the wiped table. They stay there for several days before we bring them in. The coffee cream will be fine as it is still like a fridge in the garage. It is a light shopping as I am due to pick up an online order from WMart this evening. We shall see how successful it is as they are experiencing low stock in many items.

The Daily Selfie: I don't know why my face got foggy.

This was our in-the-park selfie.

Our devices started going mad from action in our family message group. There were up to 7 of us trying to guess the answers. It was quite a wild time with guesses coming from all over the province, and even the country.

There are 27 figures of speech referenced in the drawing. How many can you guess? If you want to play, I will post answers tomorrow.

Before I knew what was going on, I was miffed at all of the beeps on my phone. We were watching tv, and the streaming device for my hearing aids, cut out for a few seconds after every beep. I shut my phone off completely, but somehow, the beeps on Sue's phone continued to cause interference, even though my bluetooth device is not hooked up to hers. It was a British program with very strong accents, so I was struggling anyway.