Liralen's Adventures Through Life

One of those things that struck me today, while John and I were walking, was that the flags were at half mast. It was for Pearl Harbor, but it struck me again that there really hasn't been a period of mourning for the quarter million people who have died of COVID in the US, yet. Due, in large part, to Trump wanting to deny that any of this has happened, I think, but it's been a thing that's bothered me badly. Back in 2013, when the flood happened here, it physically affected a relatively small portion of the city, but everyone in Longmont went into a sort of mourning over the losses. Not just the temporary losses of the usage of parts of the city, including a very large section of green space, or that so many people had damage to their houses, or even the homes completely lost. Luckily, no lives were lost in Longmont, though other communities were not quite as lucky.  Grief takes effort and energy. For someone close, it's a lot of energy and time. But the overwhelming n...

I've been making masks. A whole lot of masks. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was actually buying a shirt from High Seas Trading Company and John gets so many shirts from them, that the owner asked me if I'd be willing to volunteer for their Mask Relief efforts to get LA front line health care workers some masks when all the PPE had dried up for everyone. So I said that I'd be happy to do two 25 mask kits. A few of my friends did them as well, and they were very fiddly, specific masks, that had four pleats, a pocket opening that was centered in the back of the mask, and a nose wire. I think I was doing them in my sleep, with all the pleats. But I learned how to pleat with a pair of tweezers to hold the pleat in place, and after breaking three needles, finally figured out how to get through all that cloth.  After that nearly all the other designs were simple. These were defined by health care workers and retail dress makers, and I have noticed, since, that nearly everyon...