Ain't Life Grand?!

Alrighty folks, this house has gone to H*ll in a hand basket. As previously mentioned we're quarantined - grounded - stuck. Darrell has some kind of, as yet to be identified, virus or infection that is mimicking Swine H1N1 flu. Swine flu tests out negative but the Doctor grounded all of us anyway. Darrell went back to the Doctor this morning to have blood drawn to check for any identifiable virus and bacteria. He's actually starting to get better, his fever is retreating. He is on three antibiotics now so we doubt that anything is alive in him that would show up in the blood work. Oh well. If Marsha and I don't get sick, we're allowed out on Monday. This started Wednesday evening.

Soooo.... Marsha has moved into the craft room as "She ain't sleepin' with him!". We have a daybed in here, but the cats sleep on it at night. We knew there was no chance in #$%^& that they'd share with her so accommodations had to be made. We pulled out the trundle bed for them so she could have her own bed. The room is pretty much taken up with beds as there seems to be no reason to push the trundle back under the daybed since she's camping out in here again tonight.

See the rubber mallet on the end of the bed? That's what I use for softening hard polymer clay. Yo!Fred, the cat, covets it. It's his favorite toy. It's a strange household. The mallet is on the trundle bed to entice him to sleep there on his little blue towel which he also favors lately. That little blue towel is his new fetish. We're calling him the 'little blue tow'l boy'. He doesn't seem to mind the new name.

I just stepped on the nylon, or whatever it is they make it out of, dog bone that's under the bed. It's well chewed and spiny on the bare foot, but I'll survive. The huge fan is because Marsha is the master of hot flashes. Everybody knows it, so I'm allowed to write it here. I think she's rather proud of being such a good flasher.

Back to the dog... we heard her crunching on the other side of the trundle bed this morning. Didn't have a clue what she'd found. Didn't want to look, but figured we'd best investigate anyway. She'd managed to get the lid off our cookie container and was helping herself. I retrieved the container and the remaining cookies. They didn't look too slobbery so Marsha and I are now eating 'dog cookies' when we need a snack. We've also discovered that the dog has probably eaten the cat's food today. She's enjoying her quarantine, and she doesn't even have a Doctor's note. Let it hereby be know to anyone from work who is reading this, Marsha and I do have Doctor's notes! Darrell doesn't need one as anyone who takes one look at him quickly backs away.

The craft room is the command post of the house right now. It's as far away from Darrell as we can get. Marsha and I both have laptop computers so we've got them set up between the two beds in here. We're both playing the computer game "Return to Ravenhearst". It's a mystery game. It won the Game of 2008 award. Most of the game is a mystery to both of us and we're faking our way through it. We're taking copious notes as we try to find our way around the manor where it takes place.

Here's the daybed where we're camped out. It's covered with bits of papers with strange looking symbols, series of numbers, little drawings and reminders of what's in each room of the manor and how to get to the care-giver's cottage and where the fuel is to get the trolley car running if we could just find the funnel. You'd have to play the game to understand that. We also have a collection of phone numbers. The problem is we don't know which phone numbers are for the game (there's phones to dial in it and all the numbers are secret) and which ones are for Doctors and friends. We just sort of dial in the game and on the phone using the same lists and wait and see if anyone answers at either place. We have a variety of phones mixed into the mess of papers and cookies and computers. If something rings one of us scrounges under the papers trying to figure out which phone it is. We don't care who's it is anymore, we're just happy to talk to anyone.

Marsha just announced she needs a dog cookie.

I've been alternating playing Ravenhearst with writing up directions for making babies. I could just leave it at that and let those of you who are new to this blog wonder about it... or I could explain. There's pictures on down in the blog of little polymer clay fairies. I'm going to teach some ladies how to make them later in the month. I needed some basic diagrams for them to use as 'go bys'. I also took photos of each step of the process of making (clay) babies and they might get posted here. Or they might not. It depends, on what, I'm not sure.

Darrell just reported his temperature. It's on the way back up. Oh well. He just said he'd go away now. He's not allowed in here as this is the uncontaminated room, if you can believe that from the pictures!

Here's what the other side of the room looks like, simply because I want to record the mess.

This is where the cookie container was tossed last night to the dog's delight. This is also the path I have to travel to get to my clay play table. If I'm very careful, I can even sit in the chair. There's a little half baked fairy over there somewhere.

See the pretty box? That had one of Marsha's Mother's Day presents in it. Actually the box is in part of the present. An inflatable foot bath. She hasn't tried it yet. There's my shoes. If I wore them I wouldn't get stabbed by dog bones.

For supper, we scrounged. We had boiled potatoes with carrots. I pulled everything out of the freezer in search of protein to add to it. I was successful. We had a few frozen turkey (meat)balls. I also found two artichoke spinach patties. A search of the refrigerator turned up 4 onion rings. We had a jar of turkey gravy and we feasted... well sort of anyway and there's always dog cookies for dessert.

So that's how our day is going. And you know, it's all good. Marsha and I are not sick and have no signs of getting sick. Darrell is getting better. The dog is happy and well fed... and Marsha just yelled "Olive" at her computer game. I need to go feed the fishies. I wonder if they'd like cookies too?

And the Yo!cat just came in to check on his mallet. He's a happy little tow'l boy.

We are blessed!