@ Raven @ Paddy Sorry for a bit of a late reply. Been on an overnight trip to my uncles summerhouse. Along with mum and grandma. :) Was really nice but I am zombie Lene right now. lol

Raven: Sounds tirering for sure, we can be zombies together. xD

Paddy: Its def. not just her! It can be quite stressful, so I try to do just one weekly shop for everything I need so that I dont have to deal with more than I have to. :)

It does sound like its worth a visit. :D Here we have a more historical museum, childrens, archelogy, an oil museum, the canning museum and some more. :)

Today was an absolute disaster. The freezer is not actually having problems with heat but dying. we've had for like 15 or 16 years. So we spent like 3 hours looking for a new freezer online. What we've discovered is that Covid strikes again. Apparently freezers are extremely hard to find because of the pandemic and people hording. It took forever, I never got lunch but we finally had a solution... even if it took ages and lots of arguing. I tried to explain that 2-3 weeks or more of putting ice in coolers wasn't practical. I suggested a small freezer to use until the bigger one could arrive---in the middle of August.( trust me most of the dates were in Sep or October.) I literally had to look at ever single freezer at best buy, walmart, lowes and homedepot. It was a nightmare. FINALLY they listened to me. We bought a mini freezer that's designed to go in a garage. that one can be delivered on Monday. I also got a dolly so we can move it inside since I doubt walmart will put it up but if they do--yay. Then I got a big freezer coming 12 August. After that rather expensive issue was fixed it was near 4 or something. I took an extremely brief nap and cooked the rice for dinner. After which dad and I drove out to get my knitting needles as I've lost one of them and can't find it anywhere. OF course the only place that had them was like 30 mins away. Back home around 8, I tried to make a sewing project. It was an epic fail. The zipper fell off, the fabric came off the zipper tape after it was done-- I tried to repair it but sew the zipper shut on accident so it's almost completely useless. it's now like 1am and I've had little down time all day. grrr.

paddy: Oh that sounds awesome. I always wondered if those things worked :) Also your ha is so cute.

Pinkpather oh that sounds way better than my day lol.

Man, that does sound like a pain in the rear. I am sorry! Glad you were able to find a freezer that will tie you guys over until the big one arrives. I would be lost without one, I am always freezing stuff that I buy on sale to eat later, freezer leftovers and whatnot. Sorry about the sewing project too! You might be able to find a solution for it. Fingers crossed. Relaxed day for me.. just doing some laundry and stuff. :)

Pretty HA btw! <3

me too. It's a weight of our shoulders. Yeah, we have a small freezer with our fridge but not big enough to store things like hams or turkeys and so on. Nope. Mum says she'll use the bag. At least one part is functional. Glad you had a good day.

Today was a bit of annoying day too. First i woke to Maya trying to get under the bath mats. I pulled one up and saw nothing. Then i pulled the second one up and found a little 2 inch lizard.

I have no idea how little one got in, but i pushed Maya away and caught him. He bit me but it didnt break skin. He was terrified. I let him go.

I went to go to my doc apt and my car wouldnt start. Drove to doctor and waited an hour to find the nurse didnt want to do the othro scan today. Why the hell didnt he say that when i came? Or when the lady asked him yesterday? I the drive to home depot to pick up our hand cart only to find for some strange reason it was sent to atlanta. So kind of a meh day. I did wash my bathroom however.

aww thank you :)

That is what I have.. just a small freezer with my fridge. It can be a bit of a pain, but I dont have room for a large one. :P Sounds like an adventerous morning for sure. lol I find the tiny lizards kinda cute at least. Glad he didnt bite you too badly!

So you went into the doc office and waitedf or nothing? o_O That would get me really annoyed! As well as them shipping your stuff to the wrong place. Yikes. Hope today is a bit better. :)

No big plans here.. might go for a little walk in a bit. I have grocery shopping, but might do that tomorrow instead. Will see. :)

ooo that sounds like a great trip! :D

Yeah, Mum does one main grocery shop, then Dad does a little extra one later in the week for anything you can't get at the other supermarket (and to get some things for Gran & Grandad as well). Mum's not looking forward to tomorrow, as masks are compulsory in shops and she still can't handle the feeling of the mask over her nose - I'm hoping next week will be a little less busy so she can have a bit of a practise!

Those sound awesome! Although I can imagine that the locals feel a bit like we do with our museums, that they're there mainly for tourists :P

That definitely makes more sense to get the small freezer - I wouldn't want to rely on ice in coolers for any longer than a road trip would take! But that's awesome that you've been able to find the mini one (and that it's designed to be in the garage) and also being able to get the 'proper' one ordered too! :D

That's definitely frustrating on the sewing :( Can you unpick where you stitched the zipper shut?

Thanks :d I was going to change the outfit today, but today was a little busier than anticipated. I starting out thinking "I'll clean off my inside window sill" (that's where my plants live, so there's always shed leaves and little bits of soil that end up on there) which turned into dusting my room, cleaning the window sill, then cleaning inside and outside of my windows and taking the net curtains down to be washed! Other than stopping to eat and having a couple of mugs of tea, that's all I've done all day so I'm utterly shattered now

Mask are not mandatory here, I can imagine it takes a bit of getting used to. :) Hopefully the shops wont be too busy then when she goes next time. :)

Hehe.. mum and I decided to play tourists in our own town one summer, so we hit most of the museums. I think at least my dialect gives me away tho. :P Mums not as much as she is from another city originally. :)

Sorry, pinged Raven instead of you! :blushes:

Finally got my car started. The battery took the charge. Now to see if it stays or need to buy a new one. It's been a hectic several days.

LEne, you pinged me instead of PAddy I love little lizards. Yeah a complete waste of time. I'm still pissed. Why didn't they tell me this when I was called the day before? I told them I didn't want hydrotherapy and was just doing the foot scan. THey even knew the doc wasn't in. hope the shopping went well.

PAddy: right? in this heat? I was like how can we keep anything frozen that long, especially with just ice! But they didn't want to hear me for the longest time o.0 It was like eh she doesn't know what she's talking about.

I don't know. THere was lining falling off--it was a total mess. Nice going on the summer cleaning! Weds proved even a more "fun" day than I thought. First i woke to Maya trying to get under the bath mats. I pulled one up and saw nothing. Then i pulled the second one up and found a little 2 inch lizard.

I have no idea how little one got in, but i pushed Maya away and caught him. He bit me but it didnt break skin. He was terrified. I let him go.

I went to go to my doc apt and my car wouldnt start. Drove to doctor and waited an hour to find the nurse didnt want to do the othro scan today. Why the hell didnt he say that when i came? Or when the lady asked him yesterday? I the drive to home depot to pick up our hand cart only to find for some strange reason it was sent to atlanta. So kind of a meh day. I did wash my bathroom however.

Today I got my car started again as mentioned above.

Hopefully your car will run fine, and you wont need a new one. :fingers crossed:

That totally sounds like me, pinging the wrong person, I fixed that now. Thanks. lol

One would thnk they let you know beforehand for sure. Sometimes mistakes happen I guess, but annoying none the less. :) I get to have fun cleaning my bathroom today. lol Other than that no plans. Probably will play some Zelda. Still working on Links awakening. :) Done quite a few dungeons already. Seeing my mum tomorrow. :)

Mum & Dad went to the garden centre today, so that was good practise for them both to be wearing masks before they do the grocery shop on Monday ;) I've been playing with the mask sewing pattern to try and make it a better shape to fit my face (the pattern I started out with, came 3cm too far down my neck for it to be comfortable). I just need to figure out the top part now so it doesn't make my glasses steam up!

That's what my Mum wants to do one year :D I don't know how well she'd do at pretending to be a tourist though, especially when she's lived in the same city all her life! ;)

ooo I like the beachy HA-less outfit today :d :D Hopefully the battery just needed a little boosting and it'll hold the charge ok - mine got to the point where it needed charging every couple of months before the battery died completely. According to the chap from the tow truck company that came to replace the battery for me, the car needs to go for 20 minutes each time it's started, in order to replenish the battery (so the kind of short journeys my car was doing to the supermarket, wasn't helping the battery!).

With the freezer I wonder if they didn't feel they could handle anything else, and that was just their way of trying to make it work without adding in extras.... although you were definitely right to convince them otherwise!

My window isn't as good as I thought it was - looks like I got some of the cleaning solution on the outside of the window accidentally (I used water for the outside, and the solution on the inside), because there's a really large white splodge on the window. So once my arm has recovered (bruises from trying to reach the base of the window (that bit of the window doesn't open), then a reaction to the medical tape I used to stick something on my arm to cover the bruises yesterday) I'll have to redo that bit of the window before I can get the net curtains back up, and change the proper curtains. So much for thinking it'd be finished today! :K

Were lizards something you got a lot of in the old place, or is that a new thing for where you've moved to now? At least you were able to catch it rather than Maya, but I bet that was unexpected to be bitten by it.

That sounds like a pretty grotty day - you'd think that someone could've told you that the scan wasn't going to be done today - have they agreed on an appointment when that can actually get done? And sod's law on the hand cart being delivered to the wrong place :K Are they sending it to the right store now?

I would think its one of those things that gets better as you get used to it more. :) At least it allows you to feel a bit more protected. :) Sadly I dont know how to make one, so I would have to buy one from the pharmacy, disposable ones, which cost a fortune. :P

It can be fun. :D Especially if you manage to find stuff to do that you havent done before. :D And its usually affordable too which is a plus. :)

nods she seemed to get on better wearing it today (it helped that she could move it off her nose when she was outside in the garden centre), so I'm hoping that by Monday she'll be comfortable wearing it in shops!

There's some instructions on this site (link) for how to make a washable one - the pleated one should be possible to sew by hand if your stitches are small enough ;) I gave up reworking my pattern for the day - I messed up one part, then the thread ran out just before I finished the seams so I figured that was a wise place to stop!

There's a few museums in town that I've never been to (and a couple I'd never heard of until a couple of years ago!) so that's definitely something I want to do at some point ;)

That is good that she is getting on better with the face mask. :D

I am not the best at sewing by hand either, so I am not sure how successful I would be. lol I will check out the link tho, thanks. :D

It can be a fun activity. :D Being a local you can go at odd times tho, and avoid the crowds usually. :D

You can't be worse than me at hand sewing - after all, you managed to sew together all those crochet blanket squares! ;)

That's a very good point - we would definitely have the advantage over the tourists in knowing the best times to go :D and we'd be less likely to get caught out in the rain too (Mum always says you can spot the locals in town as we're the ones wearing coats in the summer as we know it's likely to rain ;))

I hope not but if we do at least a battery isn't as expensive as a new car.
Yeah. She actually put me on hold to ask him so that's why I'm still miffed. I've got half a mind to tell the doctor tomorrow.
Ooh awesome :D have fun!!

why thank you :) I like Niamh's social distancing shopping ha :D

that's a good rule to go by. I honestly don't think it had even been running for 20 mins when I drove it to the doctors last time. I'll have to remember to give it a more proper drive.

Well I think mum was just trying to make it cheaper. But looking at the cost of 4 or 5 large coolers which were $30 and then all the amount of ice we'd need--plus the inevitable losses i think she finally realise the cost would be rather high and if we got a little freezer at least we could keep it. What would we do with $120 worth of coolers? Adding the price of a month's worth of ice in the hopes it could actually keep it cool that's half way to the new little freezer. Plus we can't get the size freezer we wanted (20 cubic feet) the two combined actually give us 23 cubic feet. But it took a LOT to get them to see it.

OH man that sucks that you've to to redo it :( hope your arm can recoup and you don't get another bruise cleaning it again.

We've only ever had a lizard that was intentionally brought in the house, so this was rather new to us lol. When I was about 13-15 we lived on the military base about 12 minutes from where we live now and never had a lizard inside then either. Not overly surprised the little guy bit me. But he was so small trying to get him without Maya getting him was difficult so I had to put my finger near his mouth. He was a little baby too. I googled and discovered he is a 5 lined Juvenal skink. Their blue tail goes away when they are adults.

THat's why i'm still miffed. They called the day before and I told her I only wanted the scan done. She put me on hold knowing the doctor had to travel to Atlanta the following day. She asked the nurse and he said that he'd do it. But then I waited over 30 minutes to get called back to the nurse. Then he said he had to calibrate the machine (yet he was fooling around with another nurse for 14 minutes prior when he could have calibrated it then) and when he returns he says he still needs another 12 minutes. When he FINALLY came back in, he said he wanted to wait because otherwise they'll charge even if the doctor decides to make an edit. I'm like... and in all this time you couldn't have told me?!

I had to have them cancel it and resubmit it to the correct location. Dad picked it up on Friday.

:nods: At least a battery is managable. Cars really can be big money-sinks.

I would be so tempted to let them know what I thought about the whole thing. lol Knowing me I probably wouldnt tho. :P

But I crocheted those granny squares together tho, I didnt sow them together. Was easier for me. :)

These days you can usually spot them trying to look up directions on google maps too. ;) We spent far too much time doing that when we were in London. ;)

I couldn't resist sending Niamh shopping :P

nods the 20 minutes thing is something you never get told from anywhere (not in lessons, nor when you get the battery from the car dealership), so I was surprised there was something that simple to keep it ticking over! I think the battery that's in my car now, actually has a little gauge on it that shows if there's sufficient charge left in it or not ;)

ooo now that's even better to get more capacity from the two freezers than the one you wanted originally! :D

Thankfully Mum took pity on me and offered to redo that bit of the window (and get the net curtains up), so I don't have to worry with that :D

ooo those lizards look really pretty :d The only lizards I've ever seen round here, are slow-worms (legless lizards) in the compost bin on the allotment :P

That seems a ridiculous amount of faffing around to get nowhere! I hope they're more sorted when that scan actually gets done!

well that makes sense ;) :P I wish I'd thought of that on the blanket I'd made before laughs That's a good point! Dad always jokes that I look "non-threatening" as tourists usually ask me for directions to various places. If they mention a shop, I can usually work it out, but when they ask for a street name my mind just goes blank 😊

battery didn't hold the charge so we'll have to buy another one from somewhere.

I plan on it. I'm still miffed but moved the apt to Weds since the mini freezer was coming today.

hehe, it's really cute. I'll have to remember that. I know an hour drive will help recharge the battery but I didn't know the 20 min thing helps keep it running. We'll have to buy another one though since the battery didn't hold the charge unfortunately. the gauge would be very helpful!

yes :D it's a nice, cute freezer this mini one.
aww that was nice of her. exactly! I'm going to talk to doctor about it, still miffed lol.

I have zero patience with sewing, so there was no question about which method I wanted to use for joining them. lol Much prefer crocheting. lol

I reckon that is a good think. Means you look friendly and approcable. :) I try to help with stuff like that when I can, but even as a local you are not gonna remember every hotel, streetname etc. :)

Time to look around for the best deal I guess then. :) Hope the appointment tomorrow goes well. :hugs:

yeah, it's weird but so far at least it seems to have worked with this battery.... and Dad's been taking his car for a longer run now when he does the grocery shop, but I think that might just be an excuse to go for a bit more of a drive :P Sod's law on your battery not holding the charge, but hopefully you can get a replacement that isn't too pricey!

I bet you're still miffed! Any news on when they're actually meant to be doing that scan now?

hehe I think crocheting them together actually makes it a stronger seam, and looks more natural seeing as the rest of the blanket is crocheted anyway ;)

hehe that's true ;) It gets a bit irritating when you get asked multiple times in one walk though :P I've got a photographic memory when it comes to places (I can still do directions around a few of the places we stayed back in 2004), so I'm usually ok with buildings and shops. The hardest thing is when they ask for a street name and don't pronounce it in the way I expect (some of our street names have really odd spellings), so I'm standing there trying to figure out what street they actually need! One tourist actually avoided asking me for the place name and just pointed at the location on her map and asked ow to get there laughs