Ouch

Audi Quattro's pack a whollup.

This is my first non-animal related car accident - ever.

By her own confession, the other driver was looking at her map display, not where she was driving.

Hopefully this can be repaired;

due to the age of the car it will probably be a struggle with her insurance company.  Her bumper was barely dinged.  But I do wonder which repair will be more expensive, hers or mine?

Her bumper has cameras, sensors, and who knows what else;

mine doesn't.  I am still not convinced that all the gadgets inside newer cars are all that helpful.  In this case, the heads-up map actually caused an accident by distracting the driver.

I told dad rather jokingly today that he jinxed us when he gave us his and his lady-love's Prius after they bought a new vehicle.

If the WI Department of Transportation can actually send us the new license plates sooner rather than later, that would be great.  The DMV is still mostly closed due to Covid-19.  I have already seen two cars operating on the road without any license plates.  Who knows how many people are driving with expired licenses.  The scary thing is the state is just giving licenses to new drivers without them completing a road driving test!

In case you're wondering the animal accident was several years ago, when a very large raccoon crossing the highway to get from one corn field to another tried to hide inside the air conditioning scoop of our previous Civic; too bad the speed differential between him and the civic was 65 mph.  Splat.

This Year

is the year of the Dandelion.

Unless you live in a very hot, arid climate you don't need a picture to know what they look like.

We've had some clear and dry days.  Only some of those days were spent doing gardening and the long-term summer job of reglazing windows.  The front gardens are tilled and planted.  I removed the chain link from the kennel that I had parked over the back garden last summer.  I found that birds landed on the chain link and tended to eat or just peck the blossoms from the climbing beans.  It seriously reduced yields.  At the end of the season it was also a tedious and colossal pain to remove the vines from the chain link.  Chalk that one up as a failed experiment.  The steel frame also lost a bunch of weight so that it is easier to move aside to re-till the garden.  I finished that today before it started raining again.  The neighbor lady offered me the use of her garden this summer, which is good.  Due to Covid-19, dad's adventures will be limited to day-trips this summer, so he will be taking care of his house, lawn, and garden.  As he has final say about his yard, he'll be planting different things than I would have done.  I could use the extra space, and the neighbor lady's garden could use a good going over.  Her husband, who was the main gardener, is now in assisted living.  Even if the majority of the garden gets replanted in grass, the ground still needs tilling and raking to get rid of the weeds and lumps so that the neighbor lady can walk out to pick rhubarb without tripping or twisting her ankles. 

The rest of this week was spent dealing with mom's assisted living, her doctor's office, and two - yes two separate home health care companies that wanted to give her speech therapy because she has been having difficulty swallowing.  Apparently issues with the human throat fall under the specialty of a speech therapist, go figure.  But mom needed a referral from her doctor first, and the doctor's office would not give one without an in-person appointment - no video conference allowed.  It didn't help that the doctor's office said Medicare would not "chart" a tele-visit and the speech therapy company said they would.  I still don't know which one was lying.  I did get to see mom in person; of course we were both wearing those fairly useless paper masks and gloves.  Her doctor adjusted her meds and ordered that she have a swallow study by the speech therapist.  Mom and I took a short detour to a home health care supply store where they repaired the brakes on her wheelchair; then I returned her to the assisted living.  I thought things were all set.  It turns out the speech therapist could not do a  swallow study; those can only be done at a hospital.  So I requested the referral contact information for the hospital to do a swallow study, figuring that mom's assisted living let her out once to visit her doctor so twice wouldn't be too problematic.  Then the doctor changed her mind and the orders, without telling me first.  She wrote a referral to the visiting nurses association connected with mom's PPO network to do a much simpler assessment of mom instead.  So you guessed it, here is where I had two separate companies wanting to visit mom and give her speech therapy.  Now the ball goes back to the assisted living, when I asked them if mom's preferred provider visiting nurses association could send their speech therapist.  They conferred and told me NO.  They are limiting visiting access to only two medical companies, and mom's is not on the list.  Oh, but don't worry it is fully covered by her insurance.  Sure it is, but without her PPO discount, which will add into her total coverage expense.  Follow the money folks.  They were all basically jostling over who gets paid for taking care of my mom.  They are all worshipping the sacred cow of Medicare, which is spending imaginary money.  The irony is thick.

Rain, Rain, Rain

There is a big green and yellow blob of rain appearing on the weather radar covering the entire state of WI, Lake Michigan, and parts of Michigan.  The rain barrels should both be full now.  I set them up yesterday.  Even Ember went outside, peed, and walked up the sidewalk in the direction of her usual morning walk.  Then she turned and gave me a mournful look that meant "I really don't have to poop that badly".  She then did a 180 and headed back to the house.

Since Lake Michigan is pretty full already and winds are out of the northeast, Green Bay and pretty much anybody along the lakeshore are in for some trouble.

Flood Warnings

I'm pretty sure those folks would rather have more Covid-19 news coverage than having their homes flooded.

Local Adjustments

A number of local communities have extended the stay at home thing.  Brown County back pedaled a bit.  Curious, none of them have dared to extend the safer at home order past Memorial Day Weekend.  I guess they're still hoping for some tourism income.  But if you do travel, you might want to look up the local community restrictions before you head out.

Local Adjustments

Of course, there will still be a seriously limited number of things to go see, because cancelations for summer events are being announced more and more.

EAA
Iola Car Show and Swap Meet
  (They are doing a drive by version though.)
I haven't heard about Country USA yet
Life Fest (rescheduled to a later date)
Various Fourth of July Celebrations
  (The companies that sponsor them probably can't afford it this year.)

Update!
Very interesting, between yesterday and today several cities and counties have backpedalled even more and removed their extensions to the safer at home business restrictions.  Overnight, the news story was seriously edited A LOT.

Communist Squirrels and Big Onions

It is always interesting to see what plants appear in the yard in spring.  There is the usual assortment of way too many dandelions, thistles, burdock, and other weeds.  Sometimes there are pleasant surprises when a tulip grows and blooms where I never planted one.  See, our neighborhood is not unique in that the squirrels are ditsy communists.  They steal tulip bulbs from one yard and plant (store them for later) them in another.  That is a perfectly good model for planting Oak, Hickory, and black walnuts, but very unwelcome to people who plant beautiful landscaping only to have it eaten and stolen by communist squirrels.

 What I find interesting is that the squirrels don't seem to come back and dig up the bulbs from their new locations.

Big Onions!

The wandering onions are growing slowly this spring.

That gives me a little more time to harvest some before they bloom and get tough.

The only trouble is they are so tall,

that they don't fit in the bags or the fridge very well.

That's a two gallon bag.

Surprise, Surprise

The state Supreme Court actually managed to make a decision before Gov. Evers' extended lockdown reached its end on May 26th.

Wow, Government Working Less Slowly

More has been added to the "news" story.  Is this a waltz, one step forward - two steps back?  Now we get to see which local government officials are into severe restrictions and which aren't.  Brown County is having "fun" now with local restrictions very similar to the original decree, but they have been a hot spot for Covid-19.  So that isn't terribly surprising.

It is entirely too political that Gov. Evers had a chance to plan a bipartisan strategy with the Republicans before the court ruling, but he refused to play nice.  "Respectfully declining discussions" after the ruling is also not a way to get the job done.

Park the politics and come up with a solution that works without making lots of people in the state unemployed permanently.  Summer is short, winter will come back.  Living indoors, eating regular meals, and being able to pay for those things is rather important in a cold climate.

The Mothers' Day

that isn't all that motherly this year.

Mom's assisted living is under lockdown;

no visitors are allowed.

So she won't get any freshly picked flowers and sugar free chocolate.  The assisted living assures me she and stepfather are fine.  I could send her a letter, but I seriously doubt that the assisted living has been cleaning her glasses properly.  She probably wouldn't be able to see clearly enough to read it.  They have the option of video conferencing, but five minutes after the video chat was done would mom even remember it?

Generalized dementia, grr!

Anyway, Happy Mothers' Day to all the moms out there!

Hopefully, you are still able to see your family in person.

(Although if you are the mom of a teething toddler or a rowdy brood, you are probably wishing for some peace and quiet.)

Wishing you a peaceful and healthy Mothers' Day!

Spring is Trying

just not very hard.

 Peonies are sprouting

 A tulip on the south side of the house next to the sidewalk

has a bit of a head start.

 Rhubarb is coming up nicely.

Mutant violets, they are white instead of purple.

Chives are coming along nicely.

The serviceberry bushes are "thinking" about blooming.

The forecast for tonight calls for a rain and snow mix.

Other years we have been scrambling to install the air conditioners by this time.  Overnight this time the pellet stove will be running.