I want spring too. It is very cold here. But, sunny, so that's something. Too cold to go out though, low teens.

I am slow going today. Still not sure if we are doing the road trip appointment or not, but need to decide in the next 20 minutes or so.

I made some French toast and had a leisurely breakfast. On my task list, I sorted the meds/pill bottles, threw out some empty ones, consolidated and locked them back up. I have a bag with some old/unused pills to put in the prescription disposal bin.

Working on the kitchen a little bit. Made calls.

I sure wish this coffee would give me energy!

Lila, I am glad your son is helping you. I hope things worked out with teen.

CM, I think it is lovely that you are able to pass part of the quilts on! Anything that looks like quick success sounds like a good thing.

My school is weird at the best of times, but usually it is a good weird. Since covid it just feels like things have shifted so much. Some of it is that I have just come to see how the sausage is made more. Some of it is my recent increase in understanding in how my own brain works, some of it is just change. I do not know that the uncertainty and chaos have increased, but my experience of them has. Relationships are very hard for me to begin with. If you are anything but honest with me, even if you are trying to be kind, it makes it harder.

Dd, dsil, and Bean are on their way home. They got almost halfway to my parents and started getting texts that many of the people they were at a party with on Sunday night now have Covid (first symptoms as early as Tuesday)

I don't know what my weekend looks like.

But they know about my dad now. So I told Dh. He is still at work. He has another work meeting at 8 a.m. tomorrow. He is also exhausted.

We did go and I am glad. It was a good trip. I had a nice time with Teen. Five and a half hours later we are home and I am tired. But while we were out, our live-in company got most of their things moved to their new apartment! Not all, but maybe 75%. There is more space now, but their rooms still have some things in them and so does my family room. I am glad that is done, and it will be nice when they have completed their move and I can really reclaim the spaces.

Now I am just resting, and thinking about having some nice hot tea. I bought 5 kinds of citrus fruits at the store on the way home, which makes me happy. I love to try different varieties of citrus in winter.

Dd and dsil are both negative, but on Wednesday dsil was at the zoo with one of the people who tested positive. So he won't be sure until Monday.

I feel like I lifted a car. I have been storing so much stress in my muscles, I ache from the base of my skull down my back and ribs and the sides of my rear. Also across my shoulders and into my upper arms. I slept until 9 and still haven't done chores.

I took my vitamins. My biggest goal today is to be kind to myself. Healthy food choices, shower, maybe a bath no specific goals. Right now I am sitting in the sun.

I ran across a quote once that said You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. I need to remember that my body is a biological creature, and like every other creature on this farm, it will react positively to care and compassion and negatively to abuse and neglect.

Chickens don't decide to lay eggs. If you take good care of them and they get enough light, they lay eggs. And if you stress them out or starve them, they stop laying eggs.

I just remembered I need to pick up feed before noon!

Carry on!

Thank you SubC for that. Caring for yourself is a worthy task. Let that stress go so it doesn't make you sick. I have found that being stressed does literally cause physical degradation in some form - whether illness, disease, headache, tiredness... so I will heed your wisdom and also care for myself today. Too stressed.

I had a barking neighbor dog who was also howling, keep me up most of the night. I did message the owner who was gone for the weekend. The poor dog is so sad and lonely he goes outside in the 15 degree freezing cold and barks and howls, hoping to call his family home. He has a dog door but kept going outside to bark and howl in his misery. I felt bad for him and Son is going over to visit him this morning, and we will ask neighbor how we might help next time they are gone for days.

I had decaf coffee and egg salad on bread. I feel like nibbling more. I am lagging, so will make myself some real coffee and take my vitamins to perk me up.

I do need to get some work done around the house, and have not significantly added to my Daily Tally in some time, so will try to do that as well.

accountability post.

- sorted the vitamin/supplement cabinet in the kitchen, and found 3 old items to dispose of. Added them to the Daily Tally.

- cleaned my dog's ears and trimmed his nails.

- took probiotics and vitamins.

Wow, the inertia is real. I don't want to do anything. I will let myself sit here and relax with coffee and then will work on my room and the terrible, piled-up, layered-in-dust bar/counter.

Lila, good job giving your body the nutrients it needs!

I got the feed. I unloaded three of the bags directly into the feed bins, saving myself more work later with some work now.

I made a dozen clay patties- laymanexplanation - emergency drip catchers for the kiln. They are semi-consumable and I was out - they are another thing that saves you more work later.

I labelled some more things in the studio to avoid hassle later.

I fed the sourdough starter.

And now I am going to go do some barn work because it is still sunny and is the warmest part of the day.

Happy Saturday, SubC. Good you are being productive while caring for yourself.

I went into my room and sat on the bed and tried to picture how I want it to be, without the clutter. I can't imagine it. I don't compute how it would look or feel. Sigh.

But I just decided to work from the bed out, and try to get the piles of papers off the floors. I went through most of the piles, threw out anything I don't need, put one document into the safe, and stacked the rest on the other side of the room with other papers that should be filed eventually.

Plus I threw out an old medication and donated 3 items. So it's progress.

I do wish I had a picture in my head of how I want it. But sparseness makes me anxious.

Hi Lila!

Progress is good!

It doesn't have to be sparse, it just has to be orderly and cleanable and only have things you want in there.

Keep moving out from the bed and clearing the floor. If the area around your bed starts to feel too empty, think about what you could put there - a chair? A rack to hang clothes on that you are going to wear again, or maybe a robe? A screen of some kind to make a smaller defined space around your bed?

I am cleaning out the chicken coop. In the process of moving the bedding out to the garden - I found the rhubarb! I have not harvested any rhubarb for three years, because the whole area around it was overgrown. But now, I can see where it is, and if I keep it weeded and feed it, maybe I will get a pie this year!

Ideally I would move at least one clump to a new fresh spot with lots of good compost this fall. But one thing at a time - first I will try to weed it.

But for now, my water break is over, so back to the coop!

A processing post. Feel free to skip unless you too are sorting out the whys and hows of hoarding behaviors and fixing them.

I look around my bedroom at all the piles, boxes, and plastic tubs and I wonder what happened to me. I KNOW it wasn't like this when I was a kid. I had a normal home and bedroom. I know it wasn't like this in my dorm in college. When I got married at 20, I know it wasn't anything like this even though we lived in the same house for about 7 years and had several kids. It never occurred to me it could get like this, back then.

As a young wife and mother, I kept the house clean and "lived in" but organized. The only disorganized space was the end tables in the living room, which had doors on them and I would toss magazines and papers in there when company was coming. But they never got full and I always sorted and got rid of that stuff. I don't remember having any extra junk or stuff. We had some boxes in the storage shed but nothing unusual, not a lot of stuff.

Then we moved to the house I am in now. It was fine. It was clean and organized. Then I got divorced. That's when I started hoarding. I knew we were going to get divorced so I started buying extra things: paper towels, toilet paper, maxi pads, toiletries, food. I hid it in closets. I shuck it in boxes in the garage. When we did split up I was so poor I had nothing. But I had the stuff I had hidden. It let us get by.

Finances have been tight most of the time since then. Ten plus years ago my new husband who made plenty of money told me he didn't love me anymore and was divorcing me. I was in a panic. I started saving everything, buying extras of everything. But then he never divorced me. So for a decade I kept saving and hoarding because I knew he would someday.

That's part of it. Another part is just not having money. So when I get rid of anything, even a soccer ball that's been in the garage for 15 years, there is a fear. "I will want a soccer ball to play with my grandkids in a few years and I won't be able to afford one." That is actually realistic. But it turned into sooo many things.

I have brand new sets of dishes, glasses, pots and pans and knives in my garage for when I need new ones, because I won't be able to afford them then.

I have so many blankets. Lots of new ones, old ones, thick and thin ones, because I know someday I will need blankets and won't have the money for them.

I have so much stuff but nothing really nice is out.

My home looks like I am broke. My dining room table looks awful, with unstable, mismatched chairs. All my furniture is second hand. I have no art on the walls, no photos on the walls, but plenty in frames in boxes. If I hang them Teen will throw them.

I have clothing in every size from 10 to 3x because I know as I lose weight I will need clothes and not be able to afford them.

I wonder if I had plenty of money, if my hoarding would disappear. I kind of think it would. But who knows.

SubC, thank you for the encouragement and suggestions. I feel like this whole thing is as much mental/emotional work as anything else. I'm glad you found your rhubarb! Strawberry rhubarb pie is so yummy.

My friend who lived here is back to get the rest of her things, right now. I am feeling anxious in the pit of my stomach about all of this. I will miss her, we had fun together. Yet glad to reclaim my spaces. And nervous about the people she is about to bring inside to help her.

...

And like that, it's all gone, and a lot of clear space is back. I can see the floor in the family room, and the hallway is clear. The 2 bedrooms are back to being available for me to use. Although the room that was for my grandchildren and was Teen's before that, is in complete disarray. The teenager who I said could 'sleep' in there went through my closet, took brand new blankets (3) out of their packaging and used them even though I gave them 2 warm blankets to use plus they brought their own. And they dug through the closet. And they took everything I had arranged on the shelves and put them into boxes and baskets and put them on shelves. Yet did not use the shelf they cleared. I am hoping none of those special childhood items of Teen's were broken or ruined by them doing this. I am NEVER letting anyone come to live with me again. I will have guests who come to visit stay in a guest room, but this is the final live-in person. I have done this a few times when friends were in crisis and it always ends up being much longer than anticipated and I have to put everything back together in the end. But at least now I can do it.

Now I will take anything that is anywhere else in the house that belongs to my ex and put it in his rented room. I only want my own things in the rest of the house from now on.

I am so stressed that I can't even think.

Oh, Road, I'm so very sorry about your brother, and everything else besides.

And Lila, yes, stress such as you went through causes all sorts of hormones like cortisol and adrenaline to rush through one's body, kicking it into overdrive as a survival mechanism, using lots of energy and resources then when the crisis is past you crash.

Both of you going through so much: Try to eat and drink good things and take any vitamins that help if you have them, and nothing wrong with resting. You need it to rebuild at the cellular level and to replenish.

SubC, I'm glad you finally found out about the ducks.

I had a busy day yesterday with Ash Wednesday Mass at 8:00 a.m. (discovered I could make it there without too much craziness, something I wasn't sure of because I haven't gotten out and about much earlier than 9:00-10:00 for ages except for my uncle's funeral). I quilted and then had my 1:00-2:00 holy hour. Back home I kind of lost my momentum a bit. There was a cold front that rolled in.

Today I pulled out my unfinished quilt, tried measuring it for a border. It was slightly off, even though I had tried so hard to keep my seams consistent. Not bad, but I wasn't sure how to compensate for the discrepancy, and without a good working space for large projects, I decided to call one of our experienced and efficient quilters who has a sewing room. She was happy to help, I will give her the quilt and the border fabric on Tuesday. Since the quilt goes into the lineup at church, it won't be coming back here so that counts as half a cubic foot of stuff gone.

And it also frees me up to do quilts a new way, just making sets of blocks and passing them along to those who, like her, have the facilities, time, and know how to assemble them. I don't know if this change in my quiltmaking MO will be temporary or permanent. I don't have to decide that right now. All I know is, I was so stressed I had ground to a halt and wasn't even sure I liked quiltmaking anymore. Now I can take off the pressure and perfectionism and just see how it goes.

Take care, everyone. Poco a Poco. Vamos a Llegar.

Road!! How terrible! I am so sorry for your loss, and also for your son being so sick. I am so sad for you.

All updates were read and I am glad people are posting. SubC I am glad your ducks did not ship and get stuck somewhere. What a relief.

I worked and worked and finally have my day off tomorrow and although I have to take a road trip for an appointment with Teen, I still am glad to have the day off to sleep in and recover a bit. I honestly have too much work, too much on my plate. Lesson learned and if I can just get through the next 2 weeks of so much work, it should calm down a little and I can be less stressed out.

Good morning.

I cleaned out a crate at school yesterday and threw some things out. I also took my barn trash to the dumpster and my kiln over fired slightly and I threw out the mug I had put in. It was a disaster. I have to deal with the rest of the kiln today.

I was stressed out and tired yesterday and I made a long series of bad choices - beginning with food and moving through the internet and staying up so late I got lass than 6 hours of sleep.

Not surprisingly - I don't feel good today. AND the only lesson plans I have ready center around ducks...

Dd and dsil leave to take Bean to visit my parents today. My dad has a heart procedure on Monday. My mom will not let me tell Dd because she and dad don't want them to change their plans and not come. Which means I can't tell Dh because he might decided Dd should be told. Which means I have to be stressed about it all by myself. Which apparently means pizza, sugary baked goods, crappy movies, and no sleep.

One of my coworkers made a decision to have students engage in what was clearly risky behavior that had no educational value other than perhaps a lesson about thinking for yourself, making intelligent choices, and not blindly trusting authority figures.
One of our kids is now in a cervical collar for at least three weeks with fractured vertebrae. I looked up the law - the parents have two years to sue for negligence. The kid has two years after turning 18 or being diagnosed with a health issue or disability stemming from the injury. (The kid graduates in may) Students videoed the whole thing and were sharing the video yesterday. I am the killjoy saying: guys, none of this is funny.

Coffee kicking in gotta do chores.

Good morning, day off, supposed to be going on road trip appointment with Teen but they texted me at 6am saying they did not sleep and can't go. I hate not knowing what my day entails (especially if it is a matter of being home for 4-5 hours of being gone for 4-5 hours) but I am letting them sleep until closer to time we would need to leave, and then will gently encourage.

SubC it is hard to cope sometimes. I too eat my emotions and watch too much online stuff. Hopefully today will be better and you can u-turn it.

I am relaxing and having coffee. I just watched the trash truck come. I must be pretty odd, as one of the things I don't want to miss is watching the trash truck. I hear it coming and jump up and stand at the window with my coffee, watching it dump my bins, and it makes me happy. I really love feeling like "all that stuff I put in there is gone!" Seeing it go is part of my decluttering reward.

I have so many things to attend to today, but can do it quietly and in my own time. I need to sort meds, clip the dog's nails, clean up the kitchen etc. My dear Son washed all the dishes and ran the dishwasher AND cleaned the dirty stovetop the other day for me while I was asleep, without being asked. What a wonderful young man he is. So I am motivated to keep it clean for him, so he feels like what he did mattered.

Will post later and hope to hear from others on what you are doing today.

Miscellaneous...

SubC, sounds like the vibe at your school has been a bit weird lately? I hope it gets better. As you may have guessed, I struggled a lot on jobs, hence I am on disability now. Jobs are hard - the work not so much, but all the people and other things (sensory, time pressures, memory tasks, etc.) that go with being in a workplace. Wondering if at some point when I really will need to be making more money I can find a remote job. If I can avoid the scams.

My roommate got sick with a minor tummy thing today. We were supposed to go this afternoon to the senior center to do crafts. I'm thinking I may skip it too; this will be the second time, unfortunately. This has been disappointing - I'd hoped more for a place where it was set up for people to do crafts on more of a casual, drop-in basis than have to schedule it, and that being only once a month. Well, I'll have to investigate - perhaps the larger center would be more able to do something open ended. This thing today is at the one that's closer by but has little space.

Wondering if my time would be better spent really working hard at decluttering the home workspace after all... I was just thinking that going someplace else to do stuff would kickstart the stash busting. But may need to rethink that. In any case, there are certainly some decluttering things I can spot around here that would be quick successes, so maybe I'll just start there.

Still feeling really good about having made the decision to have the other lady help finish that one quilt top so I can move forward.

It's still cold and dreary here. Bleah. I want SPRING!

Lila what a lovely post. I like this a lot. My BF is Catholic. I grew up in congregational churches. I really love the peace you are bringing to your life. Recognizing that a pile of stuff could be replaced with peace is powerful.

For me, for today, I am going to the UPS store to return my brothers modem. I switched his internet a week or so ago and I must return this.

Big day for me yesterday, having two different girlfriends over. I am trying to skip apostrophes so pardon the poor grammar and stilted language.

Today I want to make more donation bags. I do not believe that goodwill is open and I have a car full of donations to make. This must be my priority for Monday.

Tonight is trash night. I have my recycling ready to go out.

So, maybe take this with a grain of salt as I was raised in a Protestant church and left the faith (I find the more time I spend in churches, the farther I feel from god. Ymmv)

My understanding of lent is not so much that it’s about self improvement in a temporal sense, or suffering or sacrifice or self discipline, but that it’s about giving up those things that separate us from god, removing distractions and recentering and refocusing on what is really important. It’s supposed to be a time of prayer and reflection.

So, in that sense, lent could be a great time to declutter your life. Looking at the time and energy you are spending on things that could better be spent serving god - whoosh! Seriously, instead of �does this spark joy?� It’s �how does having this help me live the life god wants me to live?�

On a less spiritual note - Bean and I added the daddy giraffe to the animal collection today. He was very pleased. (I didn’t buy him any card or treat for valentines, so that’s our February thing.

Good thoughts, SubC. I have left two churches in the past that I was in for years, so I know how that is. The one I go to now is more compassionate and kind. I never knew about Lent and thought it was just giving things up - and my new pastor has explained it the way you did. It's not about self improvement in a "world" sense but in a spiritual sense of getting closer to God, or more like the ideal of Jesus. It's about removing something that is in between you and God, or just something you don't need, and giving that time towards God. So like if you give up watching TV for two hours that is not really about Lent, but it is if you use those hours to pray, read the Bible, serve others.

So for me I used to be a binge eater and food became something I spent a lot of time on, for my own pleasure. I think by fasting I am trying to change that and when I get hungry while fasting I use that as a trigger to pray or read or turn to God in some way. Or fix something that I think keeps me from God (maybe gluttony if you go with a Bible term?) Clutter is the same way. It keeps me from trusting him.

So when I do not eat for a stretch of time, but pray instead, it helps me focus on what's important.

And when I give away things that may have value, it is me trusting God that He will provide what I need in the future.

I read a really cool book by a monk a couple years ago. I wish I could remember it. But it explained why they give up pretty much everything. Yeah, that may be extreme, but I think there is something to be learned about valuing the spiritual over the flesh, no matter what one believes, right?

Tasks done so far:
- cleaned up half the dog yard (poo)
- listed some overabundance of produce online and gave it away
- opened a box that was in my room that is for a colon cancer study, completed the steps and scheduled a fedex pickup for today (one box gone from my room!)
- working on clearing the area next to my bed. Mainly I am putting things where they go instead of on the floor and have not tossed anything there yet.

Well, I'll chime in on the general themes floating around here - I've made a simple list of spiritual practices for Lent which feel like they will help me grow closer to God, a variety of practices and sacrifices and just trying to cultivate that trusting attitude like you said, Lila.

I'm fat; I don't want weight loss to be for my sake during Lent, but if I can try not to be a glutton that's a good goal, for sure. Or sloth - laziness - that may be more why I've gained. I let my fears and stress become huge obstacles to getting to the gym or anywhere else to exercise. That trend needs to reverse. I need to dig way back in my memory and recapture the time last summer when it was actually relaxing and positive. I got stressed out, the gym changed their locker locks in a way that I got all worried about (how to remember what to do with the new ones - but I've written a little cheat sheet now and printed it out, so I can do this).

Letting go of material possessions is the ongoing thing - back in 2015 when I joined this board, I was wanting to be a minimalist and part of the impetus was my beliefs, and the rest was just being fed up with being a hoarder. Nearly 8 years later (gulp) so much has happened including the pandemic - feels like a tornado went through in my head about it all. But I'm ready to start just doing what I can where I am, for now. Hoping momentum will gradually pick up with each success.

SubC, I think I was so computer and data backing-up preoccupied, I didn't catch that you were the one who suggested to Lila to put the cameras in tubs. So now that I know that, I think your reasoning was good as well. I guess now she can weigh the pros and cons and pick whichever strategy ends up working best. It's good that we all have the chance to pick each other's brains.

My computer's been mostly behaving itself today. I am hoping I'll be able to track down anything problematic and deal with it. I don't feel as intimidated, provided I am diligent about backing up files - that is one time when Justin Case proved his worth, lol.

So yesterday I took Bean to school so his parents could pick him up there (close to home) and I could fire a load in the kiln.

All I tossed out was diapers.

I am really struggling with sleep and my weight and organization.

Someone was fired at work and I know part of the backstory and an email was sent out which Dh says was very appropriate from a company standpoint and made it sound like the person had to quit suddenly for personal reasons and I feel totally gaslit by the email. Dh says quote: you don’t know, they could have offered them the chance to quit instead of being fired and they may have mental health issues going on that contributed to the behavior that made it not possible for them to keep working there. and that just feels like more gaslighting, and the part that is hard for me is that I am already wary of parts of my administration, and this just makes it impossible for me to trust any communication from them.

Also, I am stressed about the ducks.

I cleaned off the couch and put a few papers in the recycling.

I am going to shower and brush my teeth and pack up some things that need to go with me today for the class I am taking tonight, and then go to school.

I don't know what is wrong with me. Is it a thing that if you have a very stressful traumatic experience and then another one a day later that it does something to your brain that takes a long time to recover from? The thing with Teen was really awful but it has been almost 2 weeks and I still feel like I can barely cope with anything. Not sleeping well, etc. I am doing better in that I actually did go to work today and did fine for about 5 hours and then suddenly I felt like I was completely wiped out and had to come home, where I am sitting here staring into space non functional.

Better than last week, when my work limit was about an hour and a half and then I would be a bsket case.

Anyway I got work done, and now am home zoning out. I would like to declutter but I have zero energy. I want to go to bed.

I read your posts but my brain is offline.

Good morning.

Lila, I think when something traumatic happens, it knocks us back - we have less resiliency. So if another bad thing happens before we get a chance to recover, it hits us harder than it would have and we get knocked back a lot more.

Like grass - thick, tall healthy grass has deep roots and can stand some time without rain. Cut it short and the roots actually die back. Then if it doesn’t rain, it goes brown quickly.

Also, sometimes if you have too much to handle, your body will store it and hand it out later when you can process it.

Be gentle with yourself.

Sometimes going to bed is the best option.

Got off to a good start this morning but have not managed my evening well.

Took a plastic grocery bag of trash to the gas station when I got gas today - mostly packaging I am letting go of recycling because it requires too complex a process.

Brought home the giant clay mixer from school (which belongs to me personally) to use in my studio. I do not really have a spot for it, but I have a spot where I can put it, and I am hoping it will help me get some of this clay processed - which should make more room.

Ran one load - wash/dry of laundry and one of dishes.

Tired.

Still no ducks.

Guys! Ugh!! I just want to Check in. Had/having one of the worst times of my life. My son was in hosp for almost three weeks with complications from pneumonia. Had to have a chest tube and so many scans and X-rays and sedations and blood work. We came home and we got the flu and now my son has it. But the worst thing was in the middle of it all my brother died. Suddenly/unexpectedly. We don’t know if it was a post Covid thing or heart attack or stroke but he didn’t respond to the usual texts one day, didn’t show at the hospital. I called police and they found him dead in his home. His dog friends were kind enough to take on his dogs after a few days and we had to go through a lot in his house to find documents etc. Very challenging to deal with my dad under these circumstances because he was disgusted by the house and just wanted to complain about the state of affairs and now that he’s planning the memorial my sister feels he is only concerned about appearances. We still haven’t told my son. The funeral for our next door neighbor is tomorrow (died day after my bro) but now I don’t think we can go to that either due to my son being sick. My bro’s memorial won’t be til April or May now I guess. I am not sure how much I can check in just wanted you all to know what’s been going on. I hope all of you are doing ok. Sending ð?'"ð?'"ð?'"ð?™?ð??¼

Oh road, I am so sorry! I know this is a huge loss for you and so much harder having to figure out how and when to tell your son.

I really hope that the flu passes quickly. Poor kid needs a break!

The hatchery just called.

Even though the computer sent me an email saying that my ducks had shipped, my ducks did not ship. They had a hatch failure and no ducks were shipped.

My ducks are not dead in a box somewhere. They will ship in April.

What a busy weekend for all of us, sounds like.

SubC, I don't know, it may be that my roommate and I have sort of turned into sisters, lol. We do sometimes refer to ourselves as sisters in Christ, anyway. She is a few years older than me, and was one of the older sibs of her family, and we tend to fall a bit into a big sister-little sister dynamic. Or else we butt heads if I feel like she is being bossy (which she really isn't intending to be). Sometimes my inner control freak comes out because of being so used to living on my own and having my own routines, and I get a little obnoxious and petty. I'm working on that.

I toy with the idea of intermittent fasting, because it might be a better method for weight loss being as I'm a picky eater who mostly shuns vegetables. And there was is gal from my parish who had great success with it; she is an inspiration to be sure. But I think I'm needing more structure in general before adding any subroutines to my life, if you see what I mean.

Lila, that was a good idea to reuse the food bag for a trash bag so that you wouldn't be tempted to keep it. We do that with bunny hay and litter bags, and dog and cat food bags, etc. They are good both in the large wastebasket or during gardening season they can hold weeds.

Bunny club had its fun event today where the bunnies get to hop around in a big room and the bunny "parents" get to watch their antics, and welcome new members, talk about upcoming events, etc. It was quiet and lowkey, yet people seemed happy and engaged. Not hectic or overstimulating for me as such events can sometimes be. It just seemed to pace itself out nicely. We'll have a board meeting next weekend and an event to plan for at the end of March.

I'm thankful it was so mellow, because yesterday certainly was not, after the coffee shop. It got really windy and was messing with my roommate's screened porch, which was upsetting for her.

And then my computer decided to freak out - all of a sudden I'd try to type something in Google and nothing would happen, the little circle would spin fruitlessly. The fan was running continuously. I checked the readout and saw that the CPU was running at 80-90 percent. This is a gaming laptop with speed and plenty of RAM, and I wasn't doing gaming or anything memory intensive.

So I shut it down, and restarted - and that's when things really got "interesting." When it restarted, it appeared that Windows 11 had reinstalled itself, none of my personalization colors and home screen picture were there, my Start panel was in the center instead of the left, etc. and the Windows 11 graphic that looks like bright blue strips of petals or buttercream frosting or something was there.

With mounting trepidation, I went to look in my file directory. I saw that my username wasn't there but some temporary user profile was. And my files? GONE. By this time I'm pretty much hysterical, but trying to hang onto some scrap of rationality so that I can troubleshoot the thing.

Well, long story short, I thought at least I have been backing up, so my data is not truly lost. Somewhere in there I think I shut down the computer again, and then upon restarting it, lo and behold, there was everything the way it had been before! I quickly got my second backup drive and made a duplicate backup just in case. But it appears that things are okay.

But what caused all that? I've been Googling, and I hope I can ask some people who know about these things. One possibility that can produce such symptoms is that someone was doing cryptojacking? Using my computing power, and my roommate's electricity, to run their calculations. I don't understand all about how cryptocurrency works, nor do I really care to, but obviously I just want to get rid of and/or prevent any sort of malware or whatever might've caused the problem.

So it was a relief to have things back - and I hope and pray the worst drama is over. I have no idea whether Windows "reinstalled" itself, if that's indeed what it did, to thwart an attack, or if it just thought I told it to do so, or what. The whole thing was weird.

Lila, I wish I could help you with data recovery, because with this computer of mine, which I do believe is still basically fine, I could probably do quite a bit fairly rapidly, at least with the devices/storage that can still be accessed. I agree with Tatoulia that the cameras are probably not going to be wanted much by anyone else - technology has left them in the dust, if they are the point and shoot types. Even older DSLRs may be obsolete. And of course everybody uses phones nowadays anyway. Or if they're serious they may use DSLRs - I think. Haven't totally kept up.

However, do remove any old batteries from them, that is a good idea, and if there are SD card storage chips unmount those - they can be read by your computer easily enough provided the data is not corrupted. If your computer doesn't have a card slot it's easy enough to purchase a USB card reader in a store or from Amazon. If the only way to get the data is from the camera's internal memory with a cord (e.g., if it has no working SD card) perhaps there are universal cords for those? It's been awhile.

With the laptops, it depends on what type of data storage each uses - CD ROMs? USB? Or old floppies (harder to deal with). The larger the gap between the old tech and the new, the more time consuming a task it will be, if it's even possible.

I think you will need to decide (hope I'm not being bossy) to go ahead and try and set aside time to make a big push to recover the data fairly soon, or if you are still drawn more to procrastinate realize that that in itself may be a decision, because the data is going to be more likely to corrupt in storage and become unrecoverable - and your own energy and time will diminish to get it done. This is what I am finding out about a lot of things as I realize how I'm getting older and so on. It's not pretty, but we can't avoid reckoning with the reality of it. I guess what I'm saying is try to be courageous and honest and deliberate, and don't kick the problem too much further down the road.

Sometimes, too, comes the sad realization that it's not possible to retrieve everything, and sometimes we just have to grieve it and move on. I have an old cell phone that may contain a late photo of my mom a year or so before she died. I had purchased some software that was supposed to be able to read the data from the phone but it didn't work. (I still have the phone and the software, and I should probably practice what I preach with them...)

If you can get yourself to deal with some of them, there are usually places that the components can be taken for recycling though. I have a couple of old computers I need to take myself. Hmmmm... do we need to start a Recycling Computers Tally? Just kidding - the Daily Tally should suffice - but if we do get one gone, we definitely need to celebrate and pat ourselves on the back. Good luck! I know how hard it is.

CM, oh, when the computers do weird things and it's not like it used to be it stresses me out so badly!! I'm glad it went back to normal for you. I do not like change!

Thank you for the encouragement and possible ways to handle these things. I know it would be a huge weight off my mind to just get all the files off these computers and photos off the cameras and get rid of them!! I have thought about just calling the computer stores around here and asking how much it costs to get all the files off a computer. If it isn't too much, it might be worth it to just pay them to have it done. Now, to me "too much" is $50 so maybe I am way off. But I would pay $25/each to have someone else get my files off, and just GIVE them the computers for any parts they could use! I think I will call around. That would free up a huge amount of physical AND mental space.

I just cleaned out the litter box which I hate doing, especially when Teen has let it go for too long and is refusing to do it. I had to take it outside and wash it. So gross. I like the cat ok but it is not MY cat. However it is like a therapy cat for Teen so I can't rehome him. He is a nice cat, actually. I just would prefer Teen do the litter box, which they do about 75% of the time.

I want to chime in that I was not voting to keep the cameras, I was just voting to move them to an available space (minus batteries to avoid a disaster) if they were too much to handle right now so that Lila can finish her room.

I feel like anything that speeds up the room is a good choice, but yes, now is better than later if you can do it.

Dd surprised my by turning up at 12:30 with Bean while I was still throwing pots. He did not take a nap today, but she made lunch and they baked some muffins while I set up the duck pen. Then Dd left.

So I did not cut brambles, bake any bread (Bean and I will bake it tomorrow) or do any lesson plans.

Bean has had his dinner and his bath and stories and gone to bed, and Dh is resting in the house after a long day of golf. He can be in charge of Bean, so I need to go back out and do a little more work on those pots. I just threw a cover over them and came in at lunch time.

I did get a load of laundry put away and a load of dishes run. And I put one thing from the barn in the garbage when I was working on the duck pen. Better than nothing.