—1—
After the funeral, we stayed for one more day to be with family before flying home.
I learned to play a dice game called Farkle, and at the same time I also learned never to take up gambling because I'd be terrible at it.
As we played games and visited, the last of the Olympic events were playing on TV in the background. I thought it was nice to see that Caesar Flickerman from The Hunger Games had found work again.
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| Came straight from The Capitol to commentate on pairs figure skating. |
I'm currently working through a head cold that probably came from talking to and hugging so many people at the funeral in the middle of February, but it's not too bad.
—2—
Our flight home was at 5 in the morning. Which sounds early, but it felt even earlier because that meant we had to get up at 2:30, leave the house at 3, and be at the airport at 4 AM.
At least there was no line at security.
We had one connection and by the time we landed and drove home, it was only noon but it felt like bedtime. It took a full day of recovery, even for the kids.
—3—
Luckily, the kids had a snow day on Monday and a delayed start on Tuesday due to a snowstorm, so they got to ease back in to the week. Somehow, there was just as much complaining as on a regular 5-day school week, though.
—4—
I've never had this happen before when checking luggage, but I almost didn't recognize our suitcases when we saw them on the baggage claim because they'd gotten super-dirty. One had white streaks of some kind of powder on it and two others looked like they were smeared with grease, and they hadn't been that way when we checked them.
They looked good enough after a little scrubbing when we got home, but I can tell you from experience now that washing suitcases by hand is not my favorite thing to do after a long trip.
On the other hand, the bathrooms at the airport were amazing (marble everything, real doors on the stalls, and motion-activated automatic toilet seat covers.) So, silver linings.
—5—
I like putting flowers on our front and back porches in the spring and summer, but I don't like paying for them at the store. Last year I experimented with growing a few pots of annuals from seeds I bought at the dollar store, and had an 80% success rate, so this year I decided to expand the operation.
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| It doesn't look like as many planters in a picture, but it felt like I was starting a plant nursery as I was filling all of these with dirt. |
I was going to do it at the beginning of February, but then my dad passed away and we ended up being out of town for the funeral, but they should still be ready-ish in time to go out when the weather turns nice.
—6—
The electric company has been trimming the trees along the edge of our yard near the power lines, and this time they were really aggressive. I wouldn't call it "trimming" so much as "lopping off most of the branches they could reach," and now our pine trees look like truffula trees.
With our permission, they also completely removed two very large, mature, and unsafe white pines. Having the power company do it for free sounded great to us, since last fall an arborist quoted us several thousand dollars to cut them down, but I guess you get what you pay for.
Because they also sheared off branches from any neighboring trees that happened to be in their way, which doesn't look very nice when all is said and done. In the spring, I'm getting an arborist in here to tell us what to plant in their place, because making this yard look nice is definitely outside of my skill set.
—7—
Whenever I relist an old listing on a Friday, those items often get snapped up that very day. Even if they've already been on Marketplace for months.
I don't know if this is the same everywhere, or maybe the vibe is more Tuesdays on the West Coast and Thursdays in the South, but FYI if you sell things on Facebook Marketplace: Friday is the day everyone is looking to hand over their paychecks for crap you don't want in your house anymore.
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