Our weather has been mild and cool, just the sort of day to finish up the split pea soup I made on Sunday. I hope those of you who left comments on my last post will see my responses at the end of the comments section, Blogger sometimes makes it difficult but I will make more of an effort at responding. Thank you to my readers, longtime and new.
I've decided on a very low spend month here. That means eating down some of the unused hurricane supplies, making more from the pantry and using my small freezer contents as the source of meals rather than shopping every week. I will also lower the overall amount spent on fresh veg and fruit, eating all I have on hand before buying more. Food and other things have gone up so much since the start of the pandemic and while I am more fortunate than a lot of folks, the revision to the budget will help in the future.
Among the things noted during the last week is the frequency of orders for household essentials and personal care items, most of which come from a major online retailer. My first order of the year apart from groceries, is a small batch of KN 95 masks suggested by a friend employed at the county health department here. She found some online that she did not think were fakes, sent the link and they came promptly. She uses medical grade N 95 masks in her work routinely. Those are expensive and fitted to the face then tested using a spray with an odor. If the masked person smells the odor, the mask is not fitted properly.
KN 95 masks offer protection against 95 percent of particulates, can be fitted around the nose by the person using it and though the fit is a bit looser than their medical counterparts, they conform to the sides and front of the face rather than simply covering the nose and mouth. I plan to do more research about these in an effort to discover more about the fake versions being sold. The package I have mentions a shelf life of two years from the date of manufacture. I'll include any updates in future posts.
Another area in which I've gone a bit overboard is in the purchase of e-books. I can hear a collective sigh from fellow readers. However, of the 75 e-books purchased in the last year, most were under ten dollars, the majority far less, but that still adds up. I've read almost 36 which is three per month over the course of the last year. At that rate, I have enough to read for the new year without additional purchases. Because I have a wandering eye and can't seem to resist looking for books that seem interesting, I've installed an app to Libby, the platform for electronic and audiobooks from my library system and already have six items on my list to be read.
Additionally, I've resumed sorting through files, papers and photos and had quite a clean out. mostly by simply going through one of two desks. My tax file is readily accessible as is my new sling when I am ready to put that on this chair. Research into new chairs is ongoing.
Thanks to Steve Reed for the title of this post...
Cheers!
