OK, now what?

I came down with a cold at the beginning of the week and have been hacking unsteadily ever since.  It's forcing me to slow down, take naps, get more rest.  PG began to show the same symptoms this morning, and she was in bed tonight before it got totally dark.  

But with just a half-day of work tomorrow, I'm looking forward to feeling closer to normal for the coming weekend.  With PG under the weather, I'll pick up some of her chores.

Here was this day:  not much appetite, so small meals.  Besides the usual chores like scooping cat boxes, I pulled some weeds and whacked some others.  PG and I transplanted some flowers into one planter box; it already contained oregano in one corner, mini daffodils in the opposite corner, and an Indian blanket we found in the front yard in 2021 now filling in the corner between them.  

Still leaves one corner, which is where PG wanted to place an orange geramium she bought a couple of days ago at Walmart.  Then between the oregano corner and the geranium corner, we finally transplanted some white phlox that PG bought late last summer.  She actually bought two of the phlox that day at the farm market west of here, and the second one was buried in the space between the new marigold and the existing mini daffodils.  Got all that?   There's more.

Some intentional white flowers had spread so that there was a small patch right on the edge of the driveway.  We decided I should dig them out whole and put them in the middle of the planter box, the one remaining area.  Not only were they on the edge of a hard asphalt surface, but on either side of the root bulbs were metal pieces that held the border together.  More work loosening the dirt so the flowers could be lifted out, roots and all.  But I did it.

So that's complete.  We also have two planters hanging off the deck rail in which I scattered marigold seeds last Monday, and some sprouts are beginning to appear.  What else?  Whacked weeds coming up through the crack across the driveway, and followed up by pouring cleaning vinegar in it.  The hope is to put some sticky black stuff in the crack to get us through one more year, then having the whole driveway re-done in 2025.

Pulled some weeds near the dying cherry tree out back in preparation to cover a piece of the ground with a thick tarp.  A few weeks and everything under it should have died, at which time I'll lay down fresh fabric and cover that with brown mulch.

Back inside, I worked on my monthly assignment for TP, involving spending time with kittens and talking to people who are fostering kittens.  I forget who said it, but they advised seniors to have not only something to retire from, but also something to retire to, and Kitten Fund letters fit the bill.  Piecing together notes from the foster humans and choosing photos they've provided, plus evaluating kitten videos and deciding how to put them into one quick but entertaining YouTube video.  That's about the hardest part, because I'm now learning OpenShot for the video production; Inkscape for static title production, and today I downloaded Blender to create moving titles.  This is a perfect example of my natural impulse to stress over making stuff perfect instead of settling for good-enough.

Finally, I came up here at 8:00 and fiddled around with practice, not stressing about the slow progress I'm making but instead appreciating that this exercise is intended to be difficult.  By now I know that Repetition and Patience will get me through it in the end.  After 90 minutes of that, I set aside the sheet music and got into Blogger to get it down in writing before I forget (to coin a phrase).

In Google Keep I put together a list of several tasks I began and which are still unfinished because the person who can help hasn't returned my call or my text.  The landscaper was supposed to re-seed the front yard, where his heavy machinery had worn away the grass -- non responsive.  The rollover from my 401(k) to the existing brokerage account -- the 401(k) side says "Rollover Mailed to Institution", while the message on the brokerage website reads "Awaiting Arrival of Rollover."  They've read that way since late March.  So I followed up with the 401(k) team, and after 20 minutes on hold yesterday, I left my number and am awaiting their callback.  

Then, there was the guy who phoned out of the blue about something personal to me.  I emailed him back and asked him to put it in writing, but two weeks later, there's been no response.  If only I could get rid of the spammers who insist on regularly leaving messages for me to call them back at once.  Star-60 blocks the number they claim to have called from, but I know and they know that's not going to stop them for long, if at all.