We used to live in a house that rents out rooms.
Well that boat sailed so now the rooms are being used as drying racks for mask material.
We have to do laundry in the tub these days and the rooms are perfectly positioned. We got some great donations of fabric and elastic yesterday.
All that had to be scrubbed really well before and after we touched it. Olive is getting better and better at making masks. She is even getting better at making them with strings instead of elastic. I suck at sewing. Odd since I took 5 years of Home ec in school (to avoid jocks).
I just can't see very well and I'm not a very neat worker anyway.
Also I keep stabbing myself and complaining constantly. I do the laundry, clean her workspace, cut out fabric and most importantly my job is to lightly pet her hair while saying encouraging things.
The goal is to innovate so the masks take less than 30 min. each to build.
It would go much faster if we had microfiber to sew right in. Till then we are stuck having to make pockets for the masks to hold filters.
Olive includes a template to cut out the filter with. We suggest vacuum cleaner bag material but that is hard to get.
Right now Olive is rocking a coffee filter in her mask.
Every day people are showing up to pick up masks, also every day I hear someone telling Olive it isn't unethical for her to accept money for her work. They have a point, we did just get our income wiped out but still we approached this thing with the mindset of filling sandbags for the village to survive, not making money selling people something they need to avoid sickness and death. Good on ya Olive.
I was already good at social distancing. Yesterday it was tested when a couple of 30 somethings walked by having a heated argument.
I'm sure there is a lot of that right now. They didn't see me in my hiding place but I saw him shove her.
I was like "oh crap, I didn't want to put my hands on anyone today" I didn't have to.
Across the street some Latino-mericans were roofing.
I mention their ethnicity to clarify that until Mr.Shovesworth got handsy, they had been happily hammering and shouting/singing in Spanish.
Now they had all stopped and were looking at him and/or the ladder.
He realized it was decidedly unhealthy to pursue his course of actions so he promptly effed off.
Thanks Fellas!
We had a great week with a lady from Thailand who was in town doing a coffee lab. I didn't ask what that was but she delighted me by gifting a lot of coffee from her work.
We had dinner together after she made us an authentic curry. My mouth is still on fire.
She said everyone in her country are very quiet and it's fun for her to see Olive and I always singing to each other and dancing, making out and carrying on. The other room was a young couple from Utah.
They are technically Mormons but actually were here to get a break from those people. The first thing they asked was "Where is the legal weed?"
They bought some down the street and then commenced rolling giant joints. I didn't share with them as normal. We talked about people who leave their church but don't leave the church alone.
Interesting convos.
Now they are off, the rooms are closed and we are battening down the hatches to protect the owner of our house who is in the danger age range.
We only see her shadow as she quickly goes to the bathroom.
Other than that, it was like having someone in your house but never seeing them.
They only come out when you are gone.
That is cool with me. I'm very antisocial so good on her.
It was still odd for some reason.
We finally saw her after 4 days when she was leaving. I was like "Wow, I had no idea you were a black businesswoman from the South.
I thought you were a pair of Canadians on vacation.
So many people go thru I get them mixed up.
When the room got cleaned, it was clear why she sequestered herself for so long.
Her wastebasket was full of pot food wrappers.
30 of them.
Makes sense why she didn't want to interact with the clowns.
I wouldn't either.
This lady keeps asking Olive to walk her dog for $5 a day. That is $5 or aprox. 6 hours of Portland rent.
Not gonna happen.
Ironically she was rude to our teen son who has the time and thinks $5 is a fortune but unfortunately she burned that bridge the first day.
I don't think he is fashionable enough for the dog anyway.
In the email we got notice that a lady with a Chinese sounding name was coming.
In the comments she wrote "Don't worry I'm from Canada"
lol
We were issued our own hand sanitizer for our floor.
Now we smell like a rest stop. WooHoo!
They came for a weekend in a city that doesn't roll up the streets at dark. They were just as wide eyed as the folks visiting from other countries and middle America. The other night I was out front chomping on a doobie when the guy walked up an embraced me.
"I'm so glad to see you!"
I told him I was glad to see him too. I'm kind of a loner but I'm always happy to engage in some diplomacy. Then I found out why he was glad to see me.
"My wife is ashleep and I was logged out of the house." He was locked out and apparently just walked around to all the local bars pounding drinks. He was tore up!
So he vanishes into the house and I hear nothing from him again until late night.
"BBbbbbrrrrrrrraaaap!" He was going there. hurling his guts out in the bathroom.
Right across the hall is another room with a different couple. I hadn't met them so I had no clue what kind of night they were having. I can't imagine they could be sleeping through that calamitous noise. The drunk man's partner found me and asked for a garbage bag for the barf.
She didn't know I had seen him earlier so she said "My husband seems to have caught the bug I had last week" He puked on as I sat at the table researching boring stuff.
Then Olive came downstairs mostly asleep to go to the bathroom. She found a naked man she never met before clutching the commode for dear life and singing the dry heaving song.
"Ooops, sorry, didn't know anyone was in here , would you like the light back off?" "He said "yeah that would be great, thank you." He couldn't have picked a better bathroom to do that in. The bathroom and the two rooms get cleaned and pro-scrubbed every few days.
On top of that, my housemate chore is cleaning the toilette so I know it'a properly buffed and scrubbed surface for worshiping the porcelain god.
That was pretty entertaining. The next day I met the couple from across the hall. They were a (30 somethings) Chicano couple from L.A. I asked if they were kept up.
They said "Um yeah."
They hadn't been as amused as me. Then I gave them the details and that made them both crack up. The husband said "I'm not gonna say that ever happened to me, but I do know where that kid was coming from.
Hope he feels better."
Yeah!I loved that Tude.
