Stay-at-Home

It is really ruff to follow the stay at home orders when you live in NewMahket, where nuttin evah happens! I am going to try to demonstrate how ruff we really have it.

I don’t really know where to begin. We live at the end of a cul-de-sac on the shore of Great Bay at the mouth of the Lamprey River at the west end of the Moody Point community. The community has many social activities that we are now deprived of: Friday BYOB, Book Club, Stitch and Bitch and all normal social gatherings.

Late last summer we got a new puppy and he has gradually made the house his own and now monopolizes our time.

Benji is very interested in everything going on in his yard. He immediately lets us know if anything is intruding into his space.

It is important to the dog to keep his people safe from intruders in his yard.

Benji is not the only one keeping a close watch on our yard:

We have several bird feeding stations and the hawks try to poach the birds off the feeders. Occasionally they are successful.

We have starlings migrating through. They make quite a racket.

When the weather is nice, Benji and I will sit out on the three season porch and watch the tides go by. We take special care to keep the tides regular.

One unfortunate thing that happened was that the massage chair I sat in in the living room died. We tried multiple times to repair it, but I used it so much that it just broke again. I liked reclining in it and getting a heated massage as I napped. So we decided to get a new one. We went on a field trip to try out the new chairs and selected a Human Touch Gravis ZG. Benji says that choice was acceptable to him.

When I get motivated, I can go up to my office and work on a blog or browse the web. As you can tell from no recent posts, that it is hard to get motivated.

We also updated the exercise room in the basement. We used to have a treadmill and an elliptical trainer. Both were more than ten to fifteen years old and showing their age. So we replaced them with a new recumbent bike and a new elliptical trainer. The new equipment is keeping me in shape. Of course Benji is a big help.

My helpers have me so regimented, I feel like I am multitasking when I exercise:

To make exercise a little more palatable/enjoyable, we added a big screen TV to watch as we exercise. The big TV is easier on the eyes when bouncing on the machines.

We kept the old weight machine and free weights. There is something timeless about weight lifting….

We converted the small bedroom in the basement into and office for Meg and a VR Studio for Mark. Andrew has a VR set up and I found I enjoyed it so we set one up in the basement.

Shortly after we acquired the valve index, it ceased functioning. After careful detective work we discerned it was a damaged cable.

We ordered a new cable and got the system back online. We also restricted the dog’s access to the basement office. Then the puppy looked for attention by chewing Meg’s computer charging cable. We also replaced that cable. We need to soak the cables in vinegar or some other puppy repellent.

We have tried to maintain a sense of normalcy by having mini BYOBs in their usual time slot at five PM on Fridays. Here is the evidence….

Because we were so bored, we decided to cut firewood for next year.

This was just a quick attempt to show how ruff it is here.

NewMahket were there is ‘nuttin to do’ and ‘nuttin evah happens!’

Mark, Wink and Meg