It's a sun and clouds mix with temps in the upper 40s. It's windy again, but what else is new. Finally we get a break from the cold! If this keeps up I'll be able to move the outdoor plants out of the basement and put them outside.

The company who bought Joann's fabrics and crafts over the weekend is going to shut all the stores down by late May. They're going to empty out all the warehouses and have going out of business sales. That's awful. I'm going to try to get up there this week to buy some yarn and then plan to get back there again next month. I'm thinking about driving up there midweek.

I have most of the recycling sorted to go out to the curb soon. It's just me and the cat and our box turtle at home this week. My local sister is house sitting/pet sitting for friends who are away on vacation this week.

My sister in Virginia is back in the office full time now since Musk and Trump reneged on the previously agreed upon work from home contract for federal employees. She's been working for the government for over 20 years. My oldest niece's husband is an Army veteran who had a tour in Iraq during the war, and is now a civilian employee of the Army working in military intelligence, assigned to an Army base. He's been with the Army since right out of high school. Obviously with Musk taking a chain saw to the government my family is sitting on pins and needles. It's very stressful, and unnecessarily cruel to the employees and their families. My family has a multiple generations history of having family members who have served this country through military and/or civil service. Both my parents did this. Not only did my dad serve in the Navy during WW 2, he served on a civilian commission for the government for a while in addition to working at his regular private industry day job. My mom worked for a defence contractor doing office work for a time when she was younger. My niece's husband is the third generation of men serving as career military. The fact Trump and Musk are lying about people who are civil servants and career military, calling them lazy and corrupt is offensive. It's appalling. Trump is also very anti-military veterans and has no qualms about gutting the VA hospital system beginning with defunding them.