Stilt Sandpiper

Yesterday, we drove home. We got a late start leaving Ann Arbor, but still made good time and with the time change working in our favor, got home at six. A bit of rain greeted us as we crossed the Mississippi. Its only real effect was to pump up the humidity though. Welcome back to Sweat Louis! The lawn didn’t look as bad as I had feared, so no rush there. As Joanie reported, the city had removed our last Silver maple on the parking strip. I’m sure the squirrels who inhabited it thought, “What about the foreclosure moratorium?” The stump still remains and I can see that the squirrels had hollowed the heartwood down to the ground. The city should be back eventually to grind the stump away, like it did the first two.

Last night, was a dark and stormy night. Thunder and lighting were out all night long and have extended their display into today. Moments after the first rain began, I could hear the sirens wind up their wails at the nearby fire station. This occurs every time it rains. Nobody drives carefully on the highway until it’s too late. Is it just me? But the first few fat raindrops sounded like squirrel scratching when they hit the back porch. Anyway, I kept being awakened with each new round of storms.  We were rewarded in the morning with flash flood warning boxes blanketing the city. Our sump pump even got into the act.

Joanie takes in our mail while we are gone and there were a few surprises. My absentee ballot for last week’s election had eventually arrived. I had to go to the election commission to cast my ballot, because it had not shown. Surprisingly, a second ballot arrived for Anne. When I asked her, what about the other 9,998? She said that she had had China handle all of those. Our bill for the Toyota never arrived, so I’ll have to go online and try to fix that, along with straightening out many of our other bills. Most of them are already online and normally, I have no problem paying them remotely, but unfortunately I really need the laptop to do that. The bank’s iPhone app doesn’t really distinguish between the multiple accounts that we have with the same payee and I’m not about to put a ton of money down, thinking I’m paying off a credit card, when what I’m really doing is paying thirty years of rent on the safety deposit box. I’ve already done that.

My final must accomplish chore for today is to restock the larder. To that end, I placed and received grocery orders through both Instacart and Shipt. I used Shipt to backfill some of the items that Instacart couldn’t fulfill. Now our once empty icebox is reasonably filled again. There is still laundry, cooking and cleaning and it might even clear off enough for a walk. Oh and don’t forget the blog either.