Hello, friends. When I saw we had a day coming with a high temp in the 40's, it was time to get the flannel sheets down from the attic. While up there, I also sent Fall decorations and my winter clothes down to J. A little Fall decorating was done. A pan of GF bread ends were ground into crumbs, for future recipes. I was most excited this week about hiring a permaculture consultant, to help with our garden woes. It just felt like time to get some fresh ideas. I'm a follower of William's youtube channel, and it was a real pleasure to meet with him, and discuss strategies to address our various challenges. We'll be getting a written plan in a couple of weeks, along with several soil test results. He's such a force of positivity and knowledge, I'm excited again, to think about gardening here.
A batch of golden paste was made for Guinness. The last of the basil was turned into pesto. After I shopped at Food Lion on the 30th, I received an email notifying me of a $3 reward, expiring slightly over 24 hours from when I received it! Lately, I've been noticing they no longer carry over the rewards to the next month, which seems to be a sucky policy, especially when you receive them in the last few days of a month. I just so happened to be near a Food Lion on the 31st, so got a bottle of honey, so as not to lose the reward.
My sister and I met for lunch, to celebrate her job change. She'd been at her job for 28 years, but like much of the medical field these days, she felt the overwhelming stress they heaped on her was making her sick (due to chronic lack of staff & focus solely on the bottom line). So, even with plans to retire in 2 1/2 years, she took a leap of faith. I'm so proud of her for stepping outside her comfort zone, and looking after herself. It's very sad to see what conventional medicine in this country has become, since I began working in it, in the late 70's. Almost all the small practices, which were people focused, have gotten sucked up into merger upon merger, until they've all become an unrecognizable monster. I do have hopes for better days ahead in our healthcare, but sure wish it would come quickly.
I guess while I'm on the subject of the current state of medicine, I'll get back on my soapbox for a little bit. My current Medicare plan has been harassing me for several months, to the point of daily phone calls, plus several emails and "real" mail per week, imploring me to follow their idea of good health. I've done my research, am well informed, and nothing they can say will change my thoughts on that. Instead of using so many resources to harass their customers, which of course gets added to the cost of insurance, perhaps they could get behind things that would make a real difference in the state of health in this country, or at the very least, lower the cost. Happily, I had a phone call with my Medicare broker this week, who found a plan for me that will be zero or at most a few dollars out of pocket, depending on the Medicare hike, gives me $200 for OTC items a year, and also credit towards fitness items. I'm looking forward to switching.
We got around 1 3/4" of rain last week. Hallelujah! There's a chance we could get a little more tonight (Sunday). With the latest Windows update last week, my laptop developed the blue "screen of death". J worked on it, and somehow reset it. I'm so thankful for him. If it were up to me, and my tech knowledge, I'd be buying a new laptop. There was a big focus on firewood last week. J worked hard at it, and I helped as I could. We make a great team. When stacking it, we do something that looks like a bucket brigade, with me at the tractor bucket, handing off to him at the stack, making quick work of it. Here's to working together. Wishing you a beautiful week.
