Look Up Before You Dust (Wordless Wednesday) and Words for Wednesday

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Linking up with Wordless Wednesday, BeThere2Day, and Sandee at Comedy Plus.     

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Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and has become a moveable feast of word or picture or music prompts to encourage us to write stories, poems, or whatever strikes our fancy.    

This month, the prompts are being provided by Lissa.  

 This week's prompts are:

1 - missing

2 - pillow

3 - rattle

4 - flight

5 - beginning

6 - shabby

7 - time

Note:  Charlotte/Mother Owl has proposed a color of the month and would be thrilled if it were mentioned in the story.  This month's color is White.

I must admit it did RATTLE me a bit when i got the text from Mr. L last Tuesday saying Carl had tested positive for Covid.

Yes, i stayed away from the family, yes, i was masked, yes, i was careful.  It doesn't matter.  MISSING work can be a minor disaster for us, since i am self-employed with no sick leave or paid time off.  Getting sick means no pay, which can make a SHABBY mess out of our nice, neat budget.  We all know money can take FLIGHT as quickly as TIME when it wants to grow wings.

That's why i was very glad when Ms. G was willing to still allow me to come to her house last Wednesday.  Like all my clients, she's a friend first and a client second, and i am always wanting to be super cautious.

She's getting ready for knee surgery, and needs a few things done before next week.  We took every precaution (masks, etc.) and made sure we kept a distance from each other.

One of those was to get the bedside lavatory chair out of the attic.  She's had similar surgery before, and knows when she's in bed at night having a loo next to the bed is a lifesaver.

This means, of course, a trip into the attic.  

Not everyone wants to make a trip into the attic.  It isn't necessarily my favorite thing to do, especially in the summer which this isn't, but it doesn't bother me to go up there, and while up there she stood in the hall below to let me hand things down.

When i first turned the light on, she asked me to send her a picture so she could see what things were like since our last foray and decide if she needed anything else.

It turned out she didn't need anything else.  The emergency toilet paper and paper towels will continue to live up there with the cage covers for spay day, the Christmas decorations, and the PILLOW-cushioned green chair which has no place else in the house right now.

Meanwhile, the portable lavatory needed to be brought down.  I moved the toilet paper further back, moved the chair to where the toilet paper had been, then lifted the WHITE shower seat, which she doesn't believe she's going to need at this time, off of the potty chair.  That took some maneuvering, as it was wedged on, but i was finally able to pry them apart.

The potty chair was then balanced on the attic steps and lowered, and Ms. G grabbed it and stowed it in the spare room.

As she took charge of the necessary item, i moved the green chair back to where the portable potty had been, setting the shower chair on top of it.  This gave us more standing room up there, and i redistributed a few other things, too.

Altogether it was a successful proposition.

When we were done, Ms. G thanked me heartily, as she is physically no longer up to trips into the attic.  As i told her, i'd do it even if i wasn't her employee because,

The Cat Blogosphere

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Today is:

Air Force Day -- Nicaragua

Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery -- Mauritius

Be An Encourager Day/Inspire Your Employees to Excellence Day -- begun by ecard companies; send someone an encouraging word today

Candlemas Eve

Cross-Quarter Day of Imbolc/Sughnassad -- various celebrations through the 2nd 

Dignity Action Day -- UK (aiming to ensure people who use care services are treated as individuals and are given choice, control, and a sense of purpose in their daily lives)

Federal Territory Day -- Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, and Putrajaya, Malaysia

Festival of the North -- Ketchikan, AK (month long celebration of the arts in Alaska, including a wearable art show, ballet performances, and more)

Freedom Day -- US (anniversary of the approval of the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery)

G.I. Joe Day -- the action hero first went on sale this day in 1964

Heroes' Day -- Rwanda

Hula in The Coola Day -- sponsored by iparty.com; a day to laugh at winter doldrums and escape the cold for a bit -- warm up the house, put on your shorts and have a luau!

Independence Day -- Nauru

Kalends of February -- Ancient Roman Calendar; also

     Festival of Helernus (god of vegetables and the underworld)

National Baked Alaska Day

National Girls and Women in Sports Day -- US     

Robinson Crusoe Day -- anniversary of the 1709 rescue of Alexander Selkirk, whose story inspired the novel Robinson Crusoe; a day to be adventurous and self-reliant

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Day -- the Dominion Police and the North-West Mounted Police officially merged on this day in 1920 to form the "Mounties"

Solo Diners' Eat Out Week -- sooner or later, everyone faces the challenge of eating out alone, so go enjoy doing so, celebrating this lifestyle skill; sponsored by SoloDining.com

Spunky Old Broads' Day (also the start of Spunky Old Broads' Month) -- a day for women over 50 to resolve to live a regret free life

St. Brigid's Day (aka St. Bridget or Saint Brighid of Kildare; Patron of babies, blacksmiths, boatmen/mariners/sailors, cattle, chicken farmers, children of unwed parents, dairy workers, fugitives, midwives, nuns, poets, printing presses, scholars, travelers; Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Ivrea, Turin, Italy; Kildare, Ireland; Leinster, Ireland)

     formerly celebrated on Feb. 2 as the Imbolc quarter day of the Irish pagan calendar

Tuppence's Birthday -- Fairy Calendar

Tupperware Sculpting Day -- internet generated; take an old, worn piece of Tupperware, melt it, and sculpt something

Working Naked Day -- dedicated to those who work from home without the support system an outside work environment provideshttp://www.workingnaked.net/

Ya-Ya Matsuri -- Owase, Mie Prefecture, Japan (parades, street festivals, and boys diving into the sea for purification; through the 5th)

Birthdays Today:

Lauren Conrad, 1986

Michael C. Hall, 1971

Pauly Shore, 1970

Lisa Marie Presley, 1968

Pauly Shore, 1968

Sherilyn Fenn, 1965

Brandon Lee, 1965

Princess Stephanie of Monaco, 1965

Bill Mumy, 1954

Rick James, 1948

Bob Jamieson, 1943

Terry Jones, 1942

Sherman Helmsley, 1938

Don Everly, 1937

Garrett Morris, 1937

Boris Yeltsin, 1931

Stuart Whitman, 1929

S.J. Perelman, 1904

Langston Hughes, 1902

Clark Gable, 1901

John Ford, 1894

Louis Stephen St. Laurent, 1882

Hatty Wyatt Caraway, 1878

Victor Herbert, 1859

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Late Night with David Letterman"(TV), 1982

"Rich Man, Poor Man"(TV Miniseries), 1976

"The Secret Storm" (TV), 1954 (first TV soap opera)

"General Electric Theater"(TV), 1953

"You Are There"(TV), 1953

"La Boheme"(Puccini Opera), 1896

"The Corsair"(publication date), 1814

Today in History:

Teenaged Edward III is crowned King of England, but the country is ruled by his mother Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer, 1327

The Colony of Roanoke Island is established by the landing of Sir Walter Raleigh, 1587

Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, is rescued from the uninhabited archipelago of Juan Fernandez, 1709

The Ottoman sultan orders the capture of his unwelcome guest, King Charles XII, resulting in the Kalabalik i Bender (Tumult in Bender), 1713

The first US steamboat patent is issued, by Georgia, to Briggs & Longstreet, 1788

The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York, 1796

The American Insurance Company of Philadelphia opens, the first such company managed by blacks, 1810

Volcano Mayon on Luzon, Philippines erupts killing 1,200, 1814

Slavery is abolished in Mauritius, 1835

The first US dental school, the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, is incorporated, 1840

Auburn University is chartered as the East Alabama Male College, 1856

Morris Raphall of NYC becomes the first rabbi to open the House of Representatives, 1860

Julia Howe publishes the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," 1862

Jefferson Long of Georgia is the first black to make an official speech in the House of Representatives (opposing leniency to former Confederates), 1871

The first volume of A New English Dictionary, A to Ant,later called the Oxford English Dictionary, A-Ant, is published, 1888

Thomas Edison completes the world's first movie studio, in West Orange, N.J., 1893

The first auto insurance policy is issued, by The Travelers Insurace Co., 1898

China's empress Tzu-hsi forbids binding woman's feet, 1902

The first US federal penitentiary is completed, at Leavenworth, Kansas, 1906

Russia adopts the Gregorian Calendar, 1918

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police forms as Royal Northwest Mounted Police merge with Dominion Police, 1920 

The United States Army launches Explorer 1, 1958

Four black students stage the first of the Greensboro sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960

The Hamilton River in Labrador, Canada is renamed the Churchill River in honour of Winston Churchill, 1965

Canada's three military services, the Royal Canadian Navy, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Air Force, are unified into the Canadian Forces, 1968

Director Roman Polanski skips bail and flees the United States to France after pleading guilty to charges of engaging in sex with a 13-year-old girl, 1978

The Ayatollah Khomeini is welcomed back to Tehran, Iran after nearly 15 years of exile, 1979

Lillian E. Fishburne becomes the first female African American to be promoted to rear admiral, 1998

Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during reentry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard, 2003

Johanna Siguroardottir is elected as the first female Prime Minister of Iceland, 2009

Myanmar's first freely elected parliament in 50 years has its opening session in Nay Pyi Taw, 2016

Archaeologists announce that the discovery of thousands of previously undetected structures in Mayan lowland civilisation in Guatemala, using Lidar technology, which suggests there was a population of about 10 million, 2018

January 2019 was Australia's hottest month on record according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, 2019

Locusts swarm across East Africa, leading Somalia to declare their largest national emergency in 25 years, 2020

Wisdom the Albatross, age 70, becomes the world's oldest known bird to hatch a chick at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, 2021