I'm a homebody now

It's official – my disability claim has been approved. It's with a private insurance company through my employer, which means it is probably more secure these days than SSDI. Nobody knows what the new regime in the White House will do to the Social Security system. Scary, since so many folks who paid into it really rely on their small checks every month.

This is all new and scary for me, anyway, since I've been working forever, and now I just can't. So I'm feeling damn lucky.

We're keeping dry, though the roof continues to drip around the storm drain near our classroom/home.  The floor drain is still open (though it froze up a couple of nights ago and the water came perilously close to flowing into the bathroom. We thawed the hose and put the sump pump to work, and got the drain open again. Got to keep on top of that.) We're having day temps in the 40s, but snow is still up to the tops of the 3-foot-tall hoop-house hoops in the garden. What's up with that?

C.'s little onion seedlings are coming up, so I suspended grow lights over them. Our deep windowsills are perfect for little plants – they get sunlight plus the fluorescents. Last year I installed some shelf brackets and steel bars in two of them, so in plant-starting season I just have to hang the lights. Beats the heck out of some of my earlier improvisations – one year all our flats of tiny plants went flying as one of the supporting chains came loose from a joist in the ceiling. It was pathetic. See, I can learn! If I have to.

Walter the pug is doing well. He turned out to have a badly infected mouth, and the vet grafted bits of his cheeks onto his gums, and did other gross procedures. He's lost a few teeth, and it was pretty scary for his people. He's our granddog and was staying with us for a few months. We cook for our dogs, so he ate soft food, and that contributed to the problem. I guess pugs tend to have mouth and tooth problems, but I'm going to make some hard dog cookies for everybody. (See, I can learn!)

Four eggs today.