Monday

Every day last week, I swam from 5:30 to 6:30 and except for one day, I was the only person in the pool for most of the hour. On that one day, there was one other swimmer. This morning, there were two people in the pool when I got there at 5:30 and two more came in with me. (The pool is 3 lanes and comfortably fits 6 swimmers at a time.) I had not seen any of the swimmers before (but, 3 of them were young white women in black suits and swimcaps and those are a dime a dozen and indistinguishable from one another.

Also I noticed that the front desk person was someone I'd never seen before and ditto with the woman doing the cleaning. Maybe we're finally getting some management at that gym.

My brother gets here tomorrow at 2. So today is making sure the sewing room is now a guest room and I have everything done and ready for the visit. It's mostly all done so I'll probably sew today and finish up tomorrow morning.

It has really turned warm-ish here and looks to continue all week. My brother, on the other hand, is packing warm clothes since it will be so cold. Mind over matter. But, also, the last time I was in Texas at his house I nearly froze my butt off so whatever...

Just saw a tweet from the wife of a Mariner catcher that she's packing up for the move to Sprint Training in 3 weeks. Nice. I'm ready.

Looking everywhere vs. grid search

A few years ago I had an amazing cat named Betty. She was beautiful and as sweet as pie. One day she disappeared. She was nowhere to be found. I was working across the street and I started looking for her at lunch. I came home and called her name all over this house. I looked in every room. I really only have 3 rooms. It's a loft. Not that many places to hide. No finding her anywhere. After work I did it all again. No Betty.

My friends, Lee and Sherry, who live on the 2nd floor once had a cat leap the balcony and hit the neighborhood for a prowl. So I called them to see if they had any ideas. Lee came up and suggested a grid search. We started at the front door and lifted everything to look under it, opened every drawer and lifted stuff, etc. We moved on through the house and got to the bedroom and when we opened the second drawer of the dresser, Betty crawled out from under the sweaters looking very annoyed at the enormous fuss we were making.

That is a very long way to describe the cleaning I did today in one room. Holy shit. I am a very tidy person and every two weeks I do a special tidy so the house cleaner can clean.

But holy hell was the sewing room a mess. I started by washing the pillow cases and then the quilt on the bed and then I started picking up the 'permanent' stuff to put hide it for the duration. There was a convention of dust bunnies under every single thing. I found 2 extension cords snaked around behind the sewing machine that were not plugged into anything at all. Nothing! I have a bag of small scraps of felt. By the time I picked up all the felt on the floor under the machine and hiding in other places, I'd doubled my felt stash.

And today is the day that I started my latest plan to wean myself off my last inhaler... I thought about putting on a dust mast but didn't and, turns out I didn't need it.

Another 5 minutes after I finish sewing tomorrow, it will be spic/span and ready for company.

About 4 and a half years ago I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). I was given 1 inhaler to use twice a day, another to use once a day and a third to use as needed or every 4 hours. And I couldn't breathe all that well. But I got better at it. And I started swimming. And breathing went back to an unconscious action.

The inhalers are expensive. And I kind of resented depending on them so last January I asked my lung doctor about weaning myself off of them. He suggested I start with one and after a month try the other one. The twice a day one was also the most expensive one so I started with that one. It worked fine. I hit a little bit of a snag with the other one and regular doctor said to abandon the plan. So did.

But, now I think it's time to try again. I can save $40 a month if it works. My plan is to use it every other day until my current stash runs out. I know Dr. Lung will be ok. And I don't see Dr. Regular again until May by which time I will have proven I can live without it... or not.

I generally don't do well in dust. But, today was no problem at all. I'm really encouraged.

So... good day here. And I got enough dolls made that I think this month's delivery - even with taking nearly a whole week off - will be respectable after all.