There are two pics this week. Here are several observations and happenings. You decide whether each is profound, banal, or just silly.
Historic Ellicott City is still closed. Home owners were given the opportunity to be escorted in with 10 minutes to collect a small quantity of personal items on Wednesday — until the found two buildings were about to collapse and couldn’t be shored up. They finally got their opportunity on Friday. Today, residents and business owners will get the opportunity to be escorted in to participate in a cleanup half-day. Once the dumpsters are full, they’re done. Nobody is saying when Main Street might be open for traffic.
All of my toughest rides involve riding through Historic Ellicott City. I’m taking easier rides, and slowly turning into a marshmallow.
Ever popular senior shoe, teal with forest green accents over a white base
But I’m doing better than Danita. Thursday at 8 AM, we were at the USDA in Greenbelt to apply for our PIV (ID) card. We will need this card to use computers and get into the building at Pipe Spring. Coming out of the building, Danita missed the curb and fell. She scraped her left knee and hurt her right foot. She decided to wait and see how her foot responded to some rest before seeing the doctor. It was late afternoon by the time we learned that she broke a bone in her foot. She is sporting a special shoe and keeping off her feet as much as possible. We’ll see the orthopedics doc tomorrow.
A rather expensive pile of Hardie Board
“Nature abhors a vacuum”. The French renaissance humorist François Rabelais said that. It applies in areas he never imagined. I wrote earlier that the houses in our community have a construction defect that is letting water inside the back wall.Engineers did some exploratory work and ended up with was a large pile of left-over, rather expensive, Hardie Board. We will certainly use this when repairs are made. In the mean time, it has to be stored out of the weather. Having sold a car and not having acquired a compensating quantity of junk quickly enough, we had a rather large space available in our garage. It’s nice to know we’ll have something solid to help hold the garage floor down while we’re in Pipe Spring.
Danita’s accident brings up an unusual coincidence. Our go-to special event restaurant was Baldwin Station. It’s a bit of a drive, but a very nice place without being ridiculously expensive. When Danita retired, she received a very generous gift card for Baldwin Station. We went to dinner shortly after her retirement party. The flowers I ordered weren’t there. We got the flowers the next day, but it did put a dent in the festivities. With plenty still left on the card and looking to have a good time, we scheduled a repeat trip close to her formal retirement date of June 30. That was when Rick died. Emotions were running high. We’re old enough to know when we can’t force ourselves to have a good time, and we cancelled that trip. We rescheduled the dinner for last Thursday, to celebrate Danita’s birthday. We cancelled that trip when we found out Danita’s foot was broken. We’re beginning to wonder whether it might be unwise to schedule any more visits to Baldwin Station.
Our parish is going from two priests to one. One of the changes is that they will stop holding the 7:30 AM Sunday Mass, starting in September. We should be on the way to Pipe Spring by then. We’ll decide what to do about the new Mass schedule when we get back. We sure do enjoy attending 7:30 Mass, followed by a big breakfast on Sundays.
I usually clean our garage, deck, porch, and other areas twice a year. I won’t be home for the fall cleaning, so I did the cleaning early this year. I’m a half hour away from being done. (Some paint has to dry before I finish up.) We have more to do before going to Pipe Spring, but we’re waiting to hear what the doc says about Danita’s foot before deciding how we’ll get the last chores done. So it’s a quiet day for us today. And very quiet for poor Danita, who is bored out her mind.
I hope this finds everybody doing well.