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Today is washday, since I spent yesterday shopping. I missed a pair of socks when I washed the black clothes yesterday evening — I'd taken them off in the sewing room Sunday night, and didn't look in there for dirty clothes.
The card still isn't here, so after my nap I grabbed the clothes off the line, piled them higgledy-piggledy on the bed, and walked to the bank to cancel it and order a new one. I've marked November 7th on the calendar as the day to start worrying.
Got the clothes folded and put away while the oven was heating for the pot pie we are going to have for supper.
Oops. Except for Dave's socks, which I piled higgledy-piggledy on the dresser. And the sheet, which needs to be put back on the bed. I'm sure to get *that* done before bedtime!
Yesterday I planned that I could get in five miles of exercise today if I went to Aldi by way of Aunt Millie's Outlet and came back by way of Owen's. I can buy bread at Aunt Millie, paper plates at Aldi, and ground beef for making meatloaf at Owen.
Aldi and Sprawlmart figure largely in my exercise routine.
A little after midnight I heard something that was either a bird I'd never heard before or a maniac laughing. (Now, at 1:04, some idiot is setting off firecrackers.) In New York, I heard a strange sound in the night, rolled over, and the next morning found a fresh gash in our oak tree and pickup parts all over the lawn, so I got up to look out through all the windows, then decided to read the Ink-Free News before going back to bed.
Second screen down: Aldi has decided to move to Husky Trail. This is more annoying than Walmart's decision to move to North Detroit. The old building was taken over by Big R, which I'd rather have handy than Walmart anyway, but there is no substitute for Aldi.
Ah, well, this will make it practical to visit Martin, Aldi, and Owen all in one trip. Even if it does involve crossing 30 twice.
We had hamburger soup for supper. I dug a clump of winter onion to chop up into it, and harvested thyme, oregano, and a pinch of basil. Also put in a bay leaf and half a head of garlic bulbils.
The winter onions are getting a little ratty, but still taste good after I peel off the battered leaves.
Good news! After typing the above, I clicked on "Winona Lake News" and the latest entry was a list of Labor Day closings. But we don't have a railroad for people to drive into.
There was altogether too much news in the newspaper today. But none of it from Winona Lake!
I zig-zagged a bit, and my ride turned out between nine and ten miles.
If I'm going to make a habit of hitting three stores in one trip, I'm going to have to get a trailer for the bike. I passed up a stop at Big R because I had no place to put a bag of cat chow.
My last meat loaf lasted only one meal, so I wanted to get two pounds of beef this time. I found a display of the quality I wanted, ground directly into the trays in random weights. But the biggest package I could find was a tad under a pound and a half. Okay, I'll get two small packages instead of one big one. Small packages were also thin on the ground. I finally found two that weren't much over a pound.
I plan to devote tomorrow to cooking — and then go out for dinner. It's First Friday.
I've got a bag of limes I want to make into marmalade, an avocado I want to make into guacamole —probably incorporating one of the limes— and ground beef to make into meat loaf.
I'm planning to use chopped vegetables instead of bread. Low carb, and Dave likes it better. Which is one reason there wasn't enough for another meal left of the previous meat loaf.
I grated about half a carrot into my last meatloaf. This made it sweet, which Dave likes, and puts attractive flecks of orange into the loaf.
I put two eggs in instead of one, to make up for the binding qualities of the bread. Since I'm using half again as much meat, I'd better put three into this one.
But I'll still use only one tub of Knorr jellied beef stock.
On the first, the plug on the lake was pulled and the Warsaw Flying Club took their Cub back to the airport. It took Dave a few days to stop looking to see whether the Cub was gone every time a plane flew over.
This morning, I think the lake is all the way down. I can see the whole sandbar, and some geese that I thought were swimming in the mouth of the creek turned out to be walking. With rather a lot of leg exposed.
My book is due, which determines the first leg of today's ride. I'm making the second stop Walmart even though I can't think of a reason to go there.
I'm in desperate need of destinations ten or fifteen miles away.
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I think this is the first time I've left Walmart headed east on 350 N. It's a pretty nice road. I followed it to 350 E, then went straight to the K-mart crossing (aside from a wrong turn onto Prosperity Drive), and made very few stops in Sprawlmart because curfew is dreadfully early these days. And it will be an hour earlier tomorrow!
I bought thin wheat crackers and horseradish-apple cream cheese spread at Aldi. These went very well with the lime marmalade I made yesterday.
I didn't make guacamole because both avocados were hard, and I didn't make meatloaf because I was tired after making the marmalade.
Instead of making guacamole yesterday, I picked up some prescriptions at Owen's, and went on to The Pill Box because Dave brought in the mail while I was suiting up and the mail included a paper that needed to be signed and returned. I'm glad that the Pill Box is dealing with Medicare on my behalf.
And instead of buying an avocado at Aldi today, I bought a package of guacamole.
Thought for a while that I'd try out my new walker today, but my back loosened up when I'd been moving around for a while. I ought to take it to the church anyway, to find out where the barriers are on a day when I can deal with them, but I'd rather do that on a weekday when there aren't so many people to explain to.
The temperature chart on Weather Underground says that if I'm comfortable when I step out, I'll sweat on the way home.
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I didn't take the walker, but I looked. Sunday Lane is good until I get to Chestnut Street, then there is no way to cross Chestnut without going all the way to Ninth Street. But I thought about it later, and I'd want to do that anyway — on the Ninth Street side, there's a sidewalk directly to the ramp on College; on the near side of the church, one would have to walk through the parking lot and Tenth Street.
The walk between Sunday and Chestnut is shoveled only when someone feels like doing a good deed, and the walks on Chestnut are usually blocked when there's snow on the ground, but Sunday Lane goes all the way to Ninth, and there's sidewalk from Sunday to Chestnut.
This evening Dave was trying out the walker, and discovered that if you lock the brakes, you can lift the front of the walker. That will be useful when I want to get over a low ridge. I've half a mind to practice getting over the threshold of the door into the garage.
It works! The brakes prevent one from pushing the walker over the barrier after lifting the front, but I can release one brake, pivot around the locked wheel, and get one front wheel over the barrier at a time.
Then the back wheels go with no fuss, which I notice every washday, when I push the laundry hamper into the hallway: the front castors stop dead at the edge of the carpet, the back castors don't notice. I wonder whether someone has made a study to explain that.
When undressing for my nap yesterday, I suddenly realized that I was using the walker for a clothes rack — the traditional fate of exercise equipment. Long may this situation obtain!
Well, just until I get around to cleaning out the hall closet to make space for it. But we are still playing with it.
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This morning, Dave dropped a tube of medication. I got down on my hands and knees and said "it didn't roll under the bed". Dave said "did it roll under the dresser?" "Whoosh! We've got to get skids on this thing — it's *filthy* under there!"
So now the drawers are on a card table, the marble top is on the bed, the mirror is in the hallway, and the dresser is upside-down on the dolly.
The varnish he intends to use has to dry overnight, so I set up the other card table to move the marble to — we'd probably strain our backs if we tried to lean it against a wall and pick it up again.
We found the medication in one of the drawers.
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The guacamole has too much jalapeño in it. Perhaps I should have taken "spicy" instead of "medium".
When Dave told me who won, I said, "I guess a spoiled brat is better than Madame Pompadour." Then I saw Trump's smirking, little-boy-about-to-be-naughty face on my newsfeed, and thought "Ew, gross! I didn't appreciate O'Bama *near* enough."
I guess we'll survive. We always have.
But seldom in as good a shape as we might have managed.
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I went to Aldi today, by way of Sprawlmart, and stepped into Aunt Millie's Outlet on the way home. I was wanting bagels, but didn't feel like getting down on my knees to see what they had, so I left Aunt Millie without buying anything — the very first time I've done that.
I picked up two pounds of ground beef and a bunch of celery to make a meatloaf for tomorrow. The previous beef got postponed so many times that I had to break it up and brown it.
So before supper tonight I went into the garden to pick green peppers, winter onions, and mustard leaves so I can start chopping and grating first thing in the morning.
And the meat loaf is in the fridge, with two small potatoes that I plan to zap and bury in it. I found one in the fridge and dug up the other, together with a normal-size potato. I put in half a handful of cranberries, chopped, and over half of two small carrots, grated, three eggs, and a teaspoon of yellow corn grits. (Gotta be *some* carbs in a meatloaf.)
And I picked a bunch of thyme, one sprig of oregano, some parsley, and a ragged terminal bud of basil. I forgot that I have some less-spicy but more-vigorous oregano and a bush of marjoram that could have made up for the dormancy of the Italian oregano.
Brief turn there: the zeros in this font are slashed; glancing at the date out of the corner of my eye made it read "18 November" — when I have an appointment to have blood drawn at ten in the morning.
That's my only appointment for the rest of November, save for two after-church dinners, only one of which is a pitch-in.
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I stopped at the teller machine on the way to Sprawlmart and activated my new debit card, which had come in the mail on the day before. In the evening, I returned Dave's debit card — we both have cards on both accounts, so I'd been using his while mine was inactive.
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When I looked for my card on his account, we remembered that he has a card on my account, but I don't have a card on his.
The meatloaf is delicious, and there is enough left for another meal.
It was a short chore cascade, but exhausting. When it was time to feed the cat, the plate I'd left over the pilot light to get warm was stone cold. When I lifted the top of the stove to re-light the light — ew, gross! We both cleaned until we were tired, but there is a lot of work still to be done.
Dave stuck a pin into the faulty pilot light and the flame is ten times as big, so it should stop going out.
We had our first freeze last night. I'll need to pick all the green peppers off the volunteers when I get back from Pierceton — it's fridge-cold out, so I think it's all right to leave them hanging. The mustard greens and the winter onions appear to be unharmed, but I'd better make a point of enjoying them; the next freeze will be harder.
And of course the potatoes will be fine until the ground freezes. I've opened the second of the three hills, and was forethoughty enough to put some of the dirt back after I'd found enough potatoes.
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When I got back, it was time to change clothes and go to the Great Wall for dinner. And the sun set while we were eating. Not to mention that by then I'd forgotten the peppers.
Never got warm enough to ride without my windbreaker. Despite having neither a nap nor tea, I didn't get tired at all.
Until about half-way through our sa-cha beef and orange chicken.
There was frost on the Chestnut Street bridge over Cherry Creek. I shouldn't have left the peppers out overnight! I think one of them is sound, but I don't have long to get around to using the other two.
I bought tostadas at Aldi. I don't remember them being so greasy. After pawing around for broken tostadas tonight, I had to wash my hands before touching anything else.
I'm planning microwaved tostada with cheese and left-over hamburger soup on it for my bedtime snack.
The chili cook-off was today. I left early. I must think of what to bring for the pitch-in next Sunday. Devilled eggs always go over well. [Didn't prepare, took frozen blueberries and a can of chunk pineapple.]
Roomba is cleaning the kitchen — and it sees the virtual walls!
After weeks of effort, Dave discovered that a ground connector was defective, and ran a wire to a place that *was* grounded.
The wash is washing — a load and a half today. Looks like a lovely day for the wash to dry, but I'm going to have to wear a coat while I hang it up.
On Saturday, before going to Aldi, I stopped at Big R to buy a replacement for the timer I dropped. Got it home and discovered that it was an exact duplicate of the one we bought the dropped timer to replace. But I carry it in a pocket near my ear now, so it doesn't matter that the beep isn't very loud, and I can use two timers when I'm cooking and washing at the same time.
I dismantled the dropped timer to see why the numbers became a pile of dust in the corner of the display, but couldn't see that part. The circuit board wasn't very informative.
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It turned out that the old sweatshirt with three-quarter sleeves that hangs in the garage over the garden sandals was quite enough. Plus a hat and garden sandals.
Dave is off to Elkhart. All the doctor wants to do is to check his scars to make sure they are healing properly, so he shouldn't be gone the entire day. But he's planning to eat lunch at Wings.
I've nothing on my to-do list that has to be done today, except for making more tooth powder. But I really should run Roomba before Dave gets back so that he won't have to.
He finally figured out that the sensor wasn't grounded, and ran a wire from the non-functioning grounding wire to a spot that *was* grounded, so we are using virtual walls again. But so far, it's been rather hit-and-miss about docking. Literally at first: the dock was loose, Roomba would hit it, knock it out of line, and wander off searching again. Then it worked the next time after Dave figured that out, but didn't work the time after that. I believe that it did work the last time it was docked yesterday. If Dave can't find the intermittent fault, we may have to move the dock out from under the futon again.
At least I can back it out with the remote.
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No I can't, because I don't know which button to push. I thought one simply pushed the back of the control button to make it move backward, but everything I pushed made it spin around in place, so I let it wander randomly until it came out far enough that I could grab it.
Then afterward, it couldn't find the dock because all that spinning around had knocked the dock sideways. So I got a yardstick and straightened it up, but by then Roomba was hunting for the dock by rotating the Lazy Boy, so I turned it off, aimed it at the dock, pressed "dock", and tweedly-twoo!
It's nap time. So far, I haven't even got around to scoping out any of the chores on my list, but I did get down the marble mortar I use to make tooth powder.
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Tooth powder made.
Yesterday, I noticed that the cranberries left over from the meatloaf were starting to show signs of having been kept in the fridge too long, so I put them into a saucepan with a quart of water and boiled them up for tea. It's quite good, and not very tart.
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Sorting out the pattern trunk in search of the pattern for my blue hat, I found an envelope dated 1992 with a scrap from my red-flowered skirt pinned to it. I'd had no idea the skirt was *that* old.
The basil and marigolds are dead, but the perennial herbs and the parsley are thriving, and the mustard is gorgeous. I'm planning to have a sandwich for lunch so that I can put a mustard leaf on it.
I'm planning what to wear for my blood draw tomorrow. There's a conflict between not freezing on the way over and being able to expose an arm when I get there. I think I'll wear a T-shirt as an innermost layer, strip down to it in the waiting room, and stuff my jersey and turtlenecks into a grocery bag.
I have a zip-front jersey, but it's not cold enough to wear wool jacketing.
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Three of our computers are on little yellow custom-made carts. With the aid of two eye screws and a piece of twine, Dave made one of them into a pull toy. I'm not sure what that's in aid of, but it means that he doesn't have to bend over when he wants to move it.
JOYXP is on one of the carts, but I hardly ever move it; the cart is to keep it off the floor.
We put it on a cart to protect it from dust, but I just realized that it also protects it from Roomba.
JOY98 sits behind its monitor on an old TV stand. The other TV stand is a chairside table in the living room. I don't remember why we bought two; one was for the microwave (we now keep the microwave on the antique commode I keep my cookbooks in). Perhaps the other one was for a television?
(Snicker) I saw a really-weird bug flying at the window in Dave's room. It turned out to be a leaf caught in a spider web.
The storm that blew over tonight looked impressive as it approached, but didn't amount to much when it got here, and it didn't stay long. It rained hard for a while after it passed.
It sprinkled ever so slightly during the last half mile of my ride, which made me fear that the rain predicted for four o'clock might arrive early, but there wasn't any rain until after sunset.
According to my notes, it took only an hour and a half to ride from Oswego to the Holiday Inn Express on US 30. (They have a bench out front, so I stopped for a while.) I have yet to calculate my average speed, but I think it's going to be a bit better than my average speed while riding through Warsaw.
Shucks. No wonder it seemed so easy — it's only 8.3 miles. But that is a *bit* faster than five miles per hour. And I was using my lowest gear on the last few hills.
I got up in the night, looked at Weather Underground's chart and saw a pink patch in the prediction for the first time this season.
Pity I can't think of a word for "season" that starts with "P". The probability was only fifty percent, but when we got up there were large flakes in the air, flying in all directions.
Well, I was going to say that it's still snowing, but not hard enough to blur the houses across the lake, but when I looked out just now (10:27), I couldn't see the other side of the lake at all.
At thirty-four degrees, I'm pretty sure it won't stick. I'm wishing that I'd picked a bundle of those lovely mustard leaves and put them in the crisper yesterday, but they might survive this.
Dave's new shoes came in the mail yesterday. He put them on this morning, wanted to put his old shoes into the closet, and ended up cleaning his shelf before breakfast. He found four empty boxes, a pair of shoes that don't fit, and steel-toed shoes he'll never wear again. I put the shoes in grocery bags and put them on the shelf next to the bike, and plan to do a dump tour the next time I need exercise.
All this reminded him to check his bowling-ball bag in case there was something personal in it, and found a pair of bowling shoes. He's planning to give shoes, ball, and bag to Goodwill, but it won't fit on my bike and it will be a while before I go out that way by car. If you want a bowling ball, speak up.
I'd probably time we ditched our skis, too. We have two pairs of skis and two pairs of poles, but only one pair of boots. Mine were plastic and disintegrated. I doubt that one can buy boots to fit those bindings nowadays. Not to mention that I'm pretty sure Dunham's doesn't sell ski wax.
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I'm planning to cut out a new hat today, of unbleached "russia drill". It's a soft, loosely-woven fabric entirely unsuited to the jeans I bought it for, but the scraps should make a lovely hat. And this will about use them up — I must have cut those two pairs of pants very economically. Or perhaps they required patches early and often.
Paging down through Facebook, I came across a clickbait called "20 Celebrities You Didn't Know Had A Twin".
I'm pretty sure that if I clicked, I'd find that I had never heard of any of the "celebrities", so it's not a surprise that I didn't know they had twins.
Being twins does give people an early start on an acting career, though. There are strict laws on how long a baby can work in one day; you need at least two to get enough shooting time.
I wore a coat to church for the first time this season. Walking back was colder than walking up; I wasn't tempted to take a roundabout route.
Lovely dinner, and there was just enough left to show that we had enough.
I sneaked out of the decorating, but did stay long enough to help wash the serving spoons. And to tell the girls decorating a tree in the Fellowship Hall that the kitchen has a stepladder.
The folks I passed on my way out seemed to be having fun.
The ice bin is empty; I hope I remember to drop in on a weekday this week.
I boiled some eggs and dropped them into pickled beets this morning. They are already bright, deep red — I hope I didn't start them too soon. Flavor improves as the pickle migrates into the egg, but the color fades.
Dave bought two half-gallons of frozen mashed potatoes.
All the wash was back inside before nap time, and all but one partly-filled rack was put away or drying on hangers. Some of the clothes were still damp when I took them off the line, and I added them to the rack; I was afraid the wind would whip them into rags if I left them out while I slept.
I forgot to change the pillowcases before putting the white clothes in.
In the afternoon, I cut out a hat I'd marked out on Saturday, and made a good start on sewing it together. I didn't like that soft, feeble "russia drill" at all for pants, but I think it's going to make a very nice hat.
Yesterday only one leaf on the rhubarb remained erect; last night got that one, and the parsley is leaning. I haven't been out to check on the mustard. And just when I've finally figured out how to cook mustard greens: make wilted lettuce and substitute basalmic vinegar for the sweet-pickle juice.
Dave found that the wheels on the secretary were punching holes in the skids, and is in the middle of a major project to unload the secretary so that he can turn it upside down and take them off. I plan to tell him to put the wheels in one of the drawers in case the person who inherits it has a hard floor.
This is Grandmother Bailey's secretary. If you want to take custody of it, tell me to paste your name to the back so our heirs will know who gets it.
I spent the whole morning washing dishes. Since we eat on paper plates and disposable flatware, the chore doesn't get urgent until we need the counter space.
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The mustard is lying down, but more as though it hunched down to avoid the cold than as though it fell over. I got a good handful of greens to fry up for lunch, with a minced Spam slice instead of bacon.
I laid out a dozen eggs to get warm so that I can devil them in the morning.
I hope the cream cheese is still good.
The cream cheese is good, but the sour cream had gone off, so I had to put a spoonful of Miracle Whip in.
For TV Tropes fans, here's a "crowning moment of stupid":
We've known for at least fifteen years that neither of us will ever take a shower in the bathtub; if both of us want to shower, we'll take turns so that there is only one clean-up. For as long as we've lived here, the shower curtain has been getting in my way when I use the curtain rod to dry sheets.
Not until this morning did Dave say "Do we need this shower curtain?"
Now the curtain is on a shelf in the shop, in case we need a tarp, and the hooks are in a zipper sandwich bag on the pile of stuff to be taken to Goodwill.
When I cut Dave's hair yesterday, I did the whole job on the setting that I had been using to shave his neck. He says nobody noticed his new 'do.
Wikipedia has an unduly-loose definition of "buzz cut". Crew cuts resemble buzz cuts, but are more elaborate, and including the Ivy League is purely wrong.
I weigh six pounds more than I did the last time I weighed myself.
Lunch today was a piece of turkey back and some sweet potatoes. I hope Sara Lee took notes while making the sweet potatoes.
I washed a sheet, four pillowcases, and some towels and washrags this morning.
I finally looked up "meralgia" in the Merriam-Webster. "Mer" means "thigh" and "algia" means pain. (I already knew "algia".)
"Paresthetica" isn't in there, but "paresthesia" is a variant of "paraethesia", which is "para" plus "aethesia", and means an abnormal sensation such as tingling.
Now it should be easier to remember how to spell "meralgia paresthetica".
We still haven't figured out where to store the walker. It's in the way, but we can't put it in the attic because I wouldn't be able to go up there if I needed a walker.
It will fit into the trunk of the car, if we take everything else out, but I feel stress in the back when I load it, so I don't think I could if I needed it.
Perhaps the stuff in the lower half of the closet in the sewing room could go into the attic. I suspect that some of it could go to Goodwill or the trash; I haven't sorted that pile in *years*.
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The walker did go into the closet, and most of the boxes I took out are manuscripts, which *can* go into the attic.
As soon as I sort out and organize fifty years of writing.
Among the rare books that got piled up on the piano when we up-ended the secretary was Salenda Bailey's scrapbook. I think that she was Grandfather's mother. Mother told me once that she collected quilt patterns, but always used the same one, which was made up of teeny-tiny pieces. (Bear in mind that I've got chronic amnesia.) I'm pretty sure that I never saw one of Great-grandmother Bailey's quilts.
I opened the scrapbook in two random places, but rejected pages that were all grayscale — which were the majority. The book is in amazingly good condition considering that it's from the nineteenth century and most of the clippings are from newspapers.
Is time to pass the scrapbook on to a new custodian. Janet?
I wonder how I came to have Blanche Lane's cane-bottom chair, and what the story behind it is. I'm reasonably sure that it was part of a dining set that got divided up among siblings. Beyond that, I don't even know how Cousin Blanche fits into the family tree, but I'm pretty sure the Lanes are on the Bailey side.
But they could be on the Lackey side.
Blanche was definitely Mother's cousin, not Dad's.
I think.
Spent the morning bundling paper and putting it into our enormous recycling bin. I'd neglected the papers so long that it was a big job — the pile had gotten very untidy, so that piling them was almost like sorting.
The town has given us an equally enormous "cart" for the trash. Took a while to get it into the garage, and it's still obtrusive. And the flier with it said that people who have more trash than will fit into it can buy special blue bags for the overflow. Must be some very large families in town; unlike the recyclables, they are going to continue picking up trash every week.
We could comfortably go to once a month with a bin that size. At any rate, there will be no need to take it out if we don't like the weather.
Hamburger soup for supper. The garden yielded thyme, oregano, parsley, green onions, and mustard greens, and I still have some heads of garlic bulbils, though they are starting to wither.
The green onions were also from storage. I have two left, and don't plan to dig any more until spring.
_The Hoosier Schoolmaster_ has "Mary Loveless" written on the flyleaf. I'm pretty sure this Mary is not my sister. My first thought was that it was a shame I hadn't noticed that while Dad was still alive, then I remembered that I had read it when I was a little girl, so he must have known that it survived the fire.
If I recall the stories correctly, Dad and Mom were still living in the Loveless home place when it burned down. Mom told a story once of the cousins writing a list of names — I think in the dust on a vehicle — when Nancy was born.
I burned my lunch because my timer got switched off in my pocket. I think I'd better move "sew shoulder pockets onto winter slopping-around shirts" to the top of my chore list. The hardest part of the job is taking the suitable scraps off the top shelf in the closet, so it shouldn't take long.
"Shorten flowered skirt" is high on the to-do list. I've shortened so many skirts that I've been worrying about a shrinking spine, but at least half of the raised hemlines hang from the waist, and legs don't shrink. It's probably because I no longer wear shoes. (Fifty years of hunting for a size that isn't made is *quite* enough!)
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Nope, the hardest part is putting all the stuff on the card table back into the secretary so that I'll have a place to work.