Steve turned 69 on Monday, January 17th and Quinn turned 9 on January 18th. So, we had a joint birthday celebration on Sunday, January 16th. Steven and Elise drove over from Columbia, attended church with us at noon, and we had a yummy birthday dinner that evening at 5:00. Quinn wanted pancakes and we were all delighted with that choice. I fixed a hash brown/egg casserole and we cooked up bacon and sausage, too.
It turns out that the Southerland family were Covid positive during this visit, although no one knew it at the time. Only Emily had a weird feeling throat and she took a home-test that was negative. But, throughout this past week, everyone in their family started to display symptoms or to test positive. Ugh. Now, Steven had just gotten over Covid so no surprise that he didn't get sick. But, amazingly, neither Steve, Elise, nor I have shown any Covid symptoms all week (granted, we were not tested, either, so we might have just been asymptomatic) and now, the five days have passed and so hopefully we are out of the danger zone....But, just to be safe, we have worn masks all week just in case. That is, except for Monday when we didn't know anything. It was the MLKjr. holiday with kids out of school so my Columbia cello students came to St. Louis for lessons. Here are Sally and Linus bombarding Ethan Barner with puppy love. And just to assure you, Ethan loves it!
In other doggie news, a couple of weeks ago, I bought some Dollar Tree rawhide chews to see if Linus and Sally would like them. Linus seems to be ambivalent but Sally will occasionally pick one up and chew on it a bit... but mostly she just carries it around in her mouth like she is doing below. Weird little dog...
On Tuesday, we learned that we will get to be temple workers again and will serve Saturday mornings in the baptistry for the 8:00, 9:00, and 10:00 sessions. Not sure when we will start - maybe in February? - but I am happy with this assignment. Even though we are retired, we have a "work week" routine Monday through Friday with weekends open so working on Saturdays fits right in to our schedule. We will even try to head over to the Southerlands afterwards on every other week for piano lessons since we will already be close by.
It has been bitterly cold the last part of the week - with the "real feel" below zero. But, happily, thanks to no mountains and an ever-fluctuating jet stream, we will be back up in the 50's tomorrow! I am SO thankful we bit the bullet and paid for a new heater last fall when we installed our new air conditioner. 25 year old units were just disasters waiting to happen. A two year-old dishwasher, however, should NOT break down but that is what ours has done. Some kind of sensor stopped functioning - probably several months ago given the poor job of dishwashing it has been doing - and we finally got a repairman out to look at it on Wednesday. He has to order parts so we continue to do hand-washing. (happily, only two people do not generate a lot of dishes).
Speaking of not functioning, my knees are in that category. I can still walk just fine and most of the time they feel great but occasionally they feel weak and they hurt (riding bikes, going up and down stairs, etc) so I am resuming physical therapy for a few weeks to try to strengthen those muscles. I had my first visit Friday morning.
One of my 2022 Resolutions is to visit someplace new in Saint Louis each month. Beckie joined Steve and me Saturday morning to check out the second largest Catholic church in the city called Saint Frances de Sales Oratory. It was built in 1911 in what at the time was probably a middle class neighborhood. Sadly, it's magnificence now sits in a rather rough part of town. It is, however, still very well maintained and it is just gorgeous, rivaling the cathedrals of Europe. Amazing stained glass, a functioning pipe organ, just breathtaking!
After leaving the church, we drove a short ways to antique row on Cherokee Street and to SaxQuest.
I had been there before to rehearse that saxophone / string quartet number with Carondelet Strings and I had been wanting to bring Beckie and Steve there ever since. There is a museum upstairs with more saxophones of every shape and design you could ever imagine including an original set of instruments built by Adolph Sax himself. This is us standing in front of them in this magnificent antique display cabinet. The next photo is of a trio of tiny soprano-type saxophones.
Our third stop was to Ruler Foods - a small Kroger grocery store quite close to Beckie but she had never been inside. This store is our go-to ice cream shop with $1.99 cartons of delicious flavors. After dropping Beckie off, Steve and I picked up my re-haired cello bow before going home. I went to pottery Saturday afternoon and collected my glazed pieces and threw a bunch of new stuff. So fun!
We invited a couple from the ward for dinner last night and after they left, we watched the second of two movies we had checked out from the public library. Friday night, we saw "That Touch of Mink". It was quite entertaining and we watched it because of a reference to it in a book by Yogi Berra that Steve has. In the movie, there is a hilarious scene in the Yankee dugout with Roger Maris, Micky Mantel, and Yogi Berra and Cary Grant and Doris Day. Saturday we saw "The Red Pony" because we had recently listened to one of our CD's featuring movie music and Copland's soundtrack to the Red Pony was included. While Copland's music is timeless, the film sadly was not. It was just a strange story with tedious characters. Oh well, you win some and you lose some. Oh, we watched "Encanto" again. Loved it, of course!
No comments:
Post a Comment