Tell Us a Positive Story
During a time of social distancing and unease, we're collecting positive stories from the community—whether it be a milestone reached, a project finished, a relationship established, etc.—to remind ourselves that not all is doom and gloom. So tell us your story!
To brighten up the newsletter, we'd like to post one story every week (so keep that in mind when sharing). The segment shall be dubbed "Good News." Let's support and cheer each other on from the comforts of our own homes!I have spent part of the time working in my garage, restoring a mosaic patio table.
Here it is...
and the benches...
Marie, thanks. I finished it last week and here is the final product.
rainbows and crows from my window...
lucky Tegan, bird watching is free and fun. And seeing a rainbow is always exciting.
wow lucky u to live at the beach my dream but i have a river front and it has lots of birds and a boathouse. love to watch the paddleboats when the season is on
I usually join a voluntary service group that constructs structures in remote areas when I have time. This period was able to provide the much needed time, but unfortunately our works were also shutdown as a safety precaution.
This has given us more time to create a better roadmap with regards to how many structures we intend to construct after the shutdown.How I envy you! As long as you can afford to keep the farm and stay on it, do it. I wish our country place wasn't so citified. We live on a hill that is so steep that one of our neighbors rolled down her back yard about 10 years ago and broke both her legs so badly that she nearly lost them. However, our neighbors are all packed in so close together and they actually hire landscapers here in the country. What I wouldn't do to trade my place for yours.
Like everyone else, I'm sure, we have spent a lot of family time together during our "lockdown." It has been good playing board games, cooking together, having 'dinner and a movie' nights. It is infinitely easier to stay at home every day when you enjoy the company of those you are with. Also, we try to plan things out the day before so we don't fall into a groundhog day routine.
Yesterday, whatever plans we might have had were quickly (and pleasantly) disrupted when our son said, "Oh, hello," as he looked out our living room window into the front yard. There, walking across the driveway right in front of my pickup, was a huge moose. It kept us quite entertained all through the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, really. I took iPhone pictures of it (some shared here) from the couch in our living room, from my driveway (with my truck positioned between me and Mr(s). Moose), and from the deck out back. As the sun started to wane yesterday, I even got a shot of the moose laying down for the night.
Finally, when I got up this morning and opened the blinds, I could see the moose having breakfast across the road at the neighbor's house. (S)he is still there as I write this post.
I hope this brings a smile to some number of you. It certainly brightened our last couple of days. Even Jesse, our dog, who never saw the moose but certainly could smell it, seemed to enjoy the break away from the every day.
Be well and be safe.
I have returned to art and writing. This is one of my mosaics piecesDuring this lockdown, I was very busy working on my favorite HP laptop. But due to the water spill, the keyboard was damaged and I was unable to use my laptop.
Though I replaced the keyboard, I learned a lesson to always have a back-up for any plan. Hence I found this as an opportunity to buy a new laptop immediately. I am happy that during this lockdown time I could purchase a new laptop- bringing new hopes for a better future.
All my new projects are now executed through my new laptopI have a good news to report. Just last week, I received a call from my step mom who is 92 years old. She is living alone in an apartment in Queens NY. She has been living under the quarantine for the past 10 weeks. She had macro degeneration in both eyes and was slowly going blind. She was unable to watch TV, or read a paper, or paint...her hobby of a lifetime. She is deeply religious and prays to God for some relief.
Last week, her prayers was answered. Her eyesight got better all of a sudden. It was a miracle. I don't know how else to explain it. She did not do anything different. She did not change her diet or anything. In either case, I am very happy for her and want to share this story. Miracles large and small happens everyday. Her faith in God saved her. She was in a state of despair and now she can paint again. She even sent me her latest artwork to proof her improved eyesight. Here is the proof.
I've decided to try the A to Z Blog challenge again, but this year, I'll submit 2 blog posts per day. One will be in my Discovering Mom blog (nostalgia about my mother) and one will be my Then and Now blog (Martin/McGhee family history). These should keep me busy through the month of April. Wish me luck.
Loving all the stories and news on this thread
We had to give our big boy, Dante, a home trim as no groomers open - never done it before so here he is in all his scraggy glory, with his two equally scraggy little sisters. They like to use him as a convenient mattress. I will learn how to use the clippers, I will
It's not all doom and gloom out there. The first week of shutdowns cancelled a marathon I had been training to run for months, followed by an ultra 6 hour run with friends. Then my truck broke down, the lawn mower broke, the weed eater mysteriously stopped working, my aging parents were afraid to leave the house and cancelled in-house therapy and doctor's appointments to cut their risk of infection . It seemed all signs pointed to an unpleasant longterm experience and then spring came.
Peas just planted popped out of the ground and seemed to grow six inches overnight, the first butterfly flew into view, the skies were a brilliant blue and birds could not contain their singing.
It is hard if not impossible to see the negatives when so many positives are right there waiting.
Sure, a pandemic is serious and we should be concerned, but we have coped with worse - wars, famine, disease, natural disasters - and yet we not only survived, we improved.
We put so much faith in things - good and services instead of doing good and serving the needs of others and things like a killer virus are really small in comparison to all the good that comes from encouraging and helping others and appreciating how precious life really is.
Think of it this way. We were so tired of all the politicians telling us the world would end if we did not elect them over someone else and we wished we could find peace from all the bickering and maybe, all of this will make us realize how much we are the same rather than focusing on our differences. Instead of fighting one another and name-calling, maybe we can see we are all sisters and brothers working toward the same goals.
I've put chicken eggs in the incubator to hatch and am working on a container garden and spending more time on improvement projects while looking forward to being able to hug and hang with friends again. It's all a work in progress but there is hope and life is good despite the challenges.
I've been doing some gardening as well. What fruits are you growing?
Here are some pea sprouts that just appeared last week!
I've never grown onions before, last year I tried garlic in the same pot it was a failure. Hoping it is better with the onion. I have only grown peas once and it was besides other plants so they used that as support. It's interesting to know that they don't necessarily need it. Good luck with the garden
Well, lambing season has started here. Sofar 5 ewes gave birth to 8 lambs in 4 days and three more ewes to go. They're all around the house and you know what? I didn't see a single birth happening. One minute you look and nothing is going on and a few hours later they're there. That's the way nature does it with this old native breed of mine.
Your sheep look so SHEEP. My sheep have to live in the tropics, so look more like goats. We also do not have a lambing season, and most of my ewes end up dropping when I am looking somewhere else. A few weeks ago one of my ewes decided to give birth during the day, in the pasture right in front of my house, so I was able to get pictures.
I took this photo and was so happy I was finally going to get some photos of one of my ewes giving birth. Then the phone rang.
FAIL.I'd call those goats if I saw them you should have cut off that call
Goats have little triangular tails. They would do well here but they climb on fences, climb up fruit trees and eat the leaves, and are generally just destructive. (Kind of like us humans!)
Are you still working on your PhD? Sabrina is getting her degree in chemistry but all of our universities have shut down. She is in her last year.
Haha. Yes it's good to get carded when a person is over the age of whatever. The last time I was carded for alcohol, I was 35. I was at a Parents Without Partners campout, and a young man and I were sent into town to by some liquor for a party that evening. He was 19, I think, but he looked older. When we walked in the door the woman behind the counter said that we were going to have to produce IDs or she wouldn't sell to "you kids".
I looked at her and said, "Lady, I could kiss you."
She gave me a strange look like I were the crazy one, and took my ID. When she saw my real age, she replied, "Now I see why." She didn't even ask the teenager for his ID, she immediately sold me the booze.
These days me and my teen age daughter starts Vlogs about cooking and post it in our YouTube channel..as we are enjoying alot and made her effort in it to make it more attractive... evev my youngest son loves cooking he is also part of our activity ... as he always said ("I'm a born chef")
I am glad to hear you are doing okay. Stay safe! Post a picture of your new puppies on here.
This is me and one of my neighbors during the lockdown. No one has told her about social distancing yet so she thinks it is okay to just jump on my lap.
Puppies first day out at 3.5 weeks.
They did not really like the wide world. Who can blame them?Awww! That sounds adorable. Our co-housing community has a combined flock of hens. No roosters as per agreement with neighbors, though I wonder if that should matter because neighbors farther away than we are keep roosters and everyone can hear them. But anyway, to keep the peace, we give away our roosters if any are discovered with a flock we're raising, also from chicks. Fun!
The picture shows white hens, and we've had RI reds, but now we have mostly black hens. Forgot the name of the breed.
GOOD NEWS: I threw my hubby a 60th birthday party on ZOOM this past week! It was the best party ever with friends and family. I asked everyone to show up at 7:30p with a glass of something in hand to give a toast. Twenty plus people showed up, including his best man and childhood friend. Stevie Wonder's rendition of "Happy Birthday" blasted as we sang our hearts out in celebration. I found two purple balloons in the attic for decoration. Thanks to technology, I was able to make my hubby's milestone birthday memorable and very special.
We are working on gardening prep and starting saplings from tree cuttings. Nothing too fun or exciting as mother nature has given us an unseasonable cold spell. Dipping down into the low 20's the past few nights. Normally we would already have plants set out in the garden at this time of year.
Happy to report that my tree cuttings have sprouted roots and are growing like crazy. Hopefully the weather will take the correct turn towards warm temperatures to get them planted soon. It has been an exciting experience watching them grow for my 6-year-old. He may even love gardening more than I do.
Hi all,
I've been trying to use our stay at home orders to work on some long-shelved craft projects. I've had this idea about weaving on paper plates for a while, but hadn't had time to put my idea into practice. As rainbows have become a symbol of hope and brighter days, I thought that a great children's project would be to weave a rainbow on a paper plate using scrap yarn. I've posted a tutorial here on Hubpages at https://feltmagnet.com/crafts/DIY-Child … -With-Yarn and included a photo below. I hope sharing this projects brightens everyone's day!
It is very cool! I love that someone pitched the virus ball to the guy and he knocked hell out of it, exploded it all over the ground. What a fantastic idea, and congrats for having it air nationwide. It is not "just cool," it's very cool!
