From Chocolate to Sonia Dog

                                                 
Luckily, your girl bought out Walgreen's stock of leftover chocolate bunnies a couple of weeks after Easter because it looks like they are going to have to be a major part of her diet before her real food arrives this Saturday evening.
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Delivered orders are quite expensive. Fiorella now pays about $400 a month for what used to cost her about $100. On the other hand, she never drives anywhere now, so she's saved on gas.
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 Changing the subject, Fio is now up to 50,000 words in Lolly's story, and there's a lot more to tell. Fio is really excited about writing again because (1) she doesn't like to leave projects unfinished, (2), she enjoys the characters and the story line,  (3) she hopes it will give her another source of income.
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                  Torpedoed
Grab a board and hold on tight--
Your ship is going down
But if you've played your cards just right --
You'll take the bastards with you as you drown
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 SONIA'S CORNER 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶
I don't understand. Mommy is always frantically pushing buttons on her computer thing, but when I try to do the same, she goes ballistic and starts yelling at me 😒          

 

From Jerusha to Coronavirus

Fiorella is proud to announce that she has opened up a new computer page under the name Jerusha Bolton in which she'll talk mostly about writing and being a writer. Look for JerushaBolton.com.
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Your girl has really been making progress on her long-awaited Lolly story, but it will probably be a month or two before she is satisfied with it. Then comes the hard part--learning how to self-publish.
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Fio tends to divide her day into two parts: in the morning, she catches up on the news, the bill-paying, and the housekeeping, and in the afternoon, she throws herself into writing and packing for the move. But then, there are days in which anything that can go wrong does go wrong. Been there?
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Red, Fio's resident cardinal, has disappeared. No longer does she hear his unrelenting attacks on the dining room window all morning and late afternoon. Maybe his beak finally fell off or maybe a coyote got him, or maybe he and his lady just moved on--Fiorella checked, and the ragged nest in the pyrocantha no longer exists.
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Fio never realized there were so many suicidal people around until they started rebelling against sheltering, masks, and social distancing. Sure, they may luck out, but....they may not.

Darkness, Solitary, Dog Cap, Grooming, Gardening

Most of the short stories Fiorella has written are dark because those are the kind of stories that were in her schoolbooks--and also in the books she later taught from. However, when it came to writing full-fledged books, Fio chose romance, the genre that guarantees happy endings. There's enough pain and sorrow in the world already so why should she add to it?
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Fiorella had a lot of time to think things out when she was a kid because, while she always had a good friend or two, she was never part of a group.
     How well she remembers her misguided junior high attempt to fit in. She sat down to eat lunch with a gang of girls in her classes, and when she left the table for a few minutes, they stuck a pickle in her milk carton, then laughed at her because she hadn't tasted the sourness. From then on, Fio walked three blocks home for lunch each day.
     When it came to high school, Fiorella never even tried to join a lunch-time group, preferring to go to the study room and finish her homework. Come to think of it, she wasn't part of a crowd in college either--and even now is uncomfortable in a group of more than three--unless she's holding the gavel.
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Whoopie! Fio just drove the Mercedes down to the gas station and filled it up without the kindness of strangers, something she's never been able to do until neighbor Michael added a dog bone handle to the gas cap.
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Can't find Sonia Dog's grooming comb and brush. Where has she hidden them?
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DANG! Your girl thought she'd be able to order some iron plants and jasmine on the phone, then make use of Home Depot's curbside pick-up, but the store doesn't have any iron plants, and Fio would have to go into the store to buy the jasmine.  FOILED AGAIN!

    

Patchwork Day

Your girl spent at least an hour on the the phone yesterday with friend Cheryl, who not only writes, but knows everything there is to know about computers, runs a publishing business, and designs book covers--just the sort of person Fiorella needs to know now that she's in the romance writing game again.😀
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Did Fio ever told you that for about three years, she had a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis? Then, one day, her doctor looked at new x-rays and said she didn't have it--which mattered not because Fiorella had already decided she would move forward as best she could.
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Now that she's telling all, Fio has to confess that in her first year behind the desk, she was probably the worst teacher in the world--and her student evaluations proved it. Luckily, two wonderful friends guided her through her second year and her student evaluations improved.
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Hmm....Fiorella is wondering if she can persuade a home and garden store to deliver twenty Asian jasmines to her doorstep so she can get them planted in front of the house.  And if that works out, she'll put flagstones and fill dirt on her list.
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Fio found six chapters of Sigrid's story and has run them off, but where are the rest of them hiding?

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Lost and Found, Found, Found

After a long night of worrying, Fiorella finally discovered where the missing order of supplies from Target had been deposited--beside the trash can about eight feet down from the road, which meant W-A-Y down from the house. The three boxes were too heavy for Fio to carry so she walked a dolly up the drive to wheel them back to the house one-by-one. But after but that first box, she knew she couldn't handle the other two by herself.      
     Nothing to do but leap into the street when the next car came by, wave her arms, and yell HELP!
     Which she did.
    Thankfully, a pickup carrying three masked occupants stopped and rolled down a window. After Fio explained her situation, the driver loaded the remaining two boxes into his car and delivered them to Fiorella's front porch, receiving Fio's profuse thanks all along the way.
     The boxes contained dog foods of various types so nothing had spoiled during their overnight stay in the woods which means your girl can file the whole episode away as an adventure. But what if the order had been for people food? Fish, milk, and veggies do not fare well in overnight stays in the woods by the side of the road.
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Fiorella's own food order should be arriving with Bastrop son on Mother's Day. She only has two gallons of milk left and needs to beef up her refrigerator's fish tank.
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Dang--Fio's lost her strip of postage stamps and she doesn't want to have to stand in line at the Post Office or H-E-B. Anyone got suggestions?

     
    

Emoji Day

Ever since Fio inherited Husband's Mercedes, she has relied on the kindness of strangers to fill up her gas tank because she doesn't have the hand strength to open it up. Then Michael, her wonderful neighbor, entered the scene. He not only carved out a tank handle for her, but made it in the shape of a dog bone🐕
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Have finally realized that not only did "I let my golden chances pass me by," but that sometimes I kicked them out the door😕
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Fiorella was quite proud of making Jello last night with a packages that had been in the pantry forever,  but after she tasted a spoonful of it this morning, she threw the mess in the garbage disposal. Apparently Jello doesn't age well. 😝
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Fio had a robo-call yesterday morning saying a certain amount of $$ had been removed from her bank account for virus insurance. It was a scam, or course, but how was it supposed to work? Fiorella is still a little nervous about it. 😟
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Sonia Dog adds her two cents worth:
It's too bad Mommy just has two legs because sometimes she's a little wobbly when she wakes up in the morning. On the other hand, if she had four legs like me, she wouldn't be able to reach the shelf  that the doggie treats are on. 🐶

As Fiorella Blunders her Way through Life....

Living alone in the house during the time of the Coronavirus has reawakened Fiorella's memory of gazing at Husband's dead eyes and gaping jaw and thinking it's all up to me now.
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The Coronavirus plague has driven Fio and her neighbor to the north, back to their school days. Fiorella confided to Carol that since she can't visit her hairdresser for a trim, she's using bobbie pins to hold back her errant tresses, and Neighbor said she's doing the same thing.
     Next come the pony tails.
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Fiorella hopes that when their time comes, there will be a special throne in Heaven for her neighbors to the south. From the very beginning, Michael and Kathy have been angels in disguise, and yesterday, Michael came over and spent two hours working on Fio's car and sketching out plans for your girl's backyard wrap-around-the-house sidewalk.
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Another advance in Fiorella's culinary skills. She found some old Jello boxes in the pantry and followed the instructions to make herself a tasty dessert. Wow--the sheltering is making a chef out of your girl!
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Somehow, even though she can't leave the house, Fio has too many irons in the fire. She's just finished talking to Pastor Karl, who was checking up on her, and before that, she talked to fried Ellen in California, tried to send a pic of Sonia Dog's favorite treat to Daughter, and tried to talk to friend Cheryl about the new blog (which hasn't materialized yet). Oh, and while she was trying, trying , trying, friends Michael and Kathy showed up with Fio's new gas cap opener (which Michael had made).
    While they were here, Kathy pointed out that Fiorella has GRAPEVINES in the trees to the north. WOW!