Put away yesterday's wash, did a little mending, made gravy to serve with left-over turkey.
I melted a cube of butter, stirred in a coffee measure of Bonneyville Mill flour, added enough of the jelly that cooked out of the bird to make it thin enough. Got a few shreds of meat with the jelly.
Bike is ready for a dump tour tomorrow. I'm not sure about the rider. The weather is predicted to be perfect.
A bit chilly at first, but I took my mittens off for the last leg of the trip, and my sweat rag was damp when I undressed for my nap.
I detoured to Lowery's on the way back from Panda Express because I had only two inches of baby elastic left. I also bought four yards of muslin to make four pillow cases.
I definitely need to put "mend mittens" higher on my to-do list. The reflective patches on the back are working loose, and one is loose enough to catch on my brake cable, which tears it looser.
People everywhere I went were worried I was cold. Even after watching me peel off three scarves, three pairs of gloves, and a heavy jacket when I sat down to eat.
Yesterday's front page was full of good news for seventy-six-year-old bike riders. (For those counting on your fingers, I'll be seventy-six before they take effect.)
The top story was that the gas station on Argonne Road is expanding into a convenient store. To get room to expand, they have taken an option on the thrift store next door. The thrift-store has already rented larger quarters in Lakeview Shopping Center. I pass Lakeview nearly every time I come back from Warsaw.
I like to shop at Our Father's House, but almost never go there because Argonne is too steep for me to climb, and it might as well be in a tunnel because there isn't a way in the world to get out of the roadway. When I go up McKinley, everything on Argonne is out of my way.
And down at the bottom of the article, it says that the roundabout at the entrance is still in the pipeline. I no longer yell "come on, roundabout!" every time I leave town, because I'm too busy watching for belated vehicles coming out of Argonne while I'm making that tricky left turn.
The second above-the fold story says that Meijer is going to make part of the driveway from Anchorage two-way, to accommodate a restaurant that wants to build next to it. That will shorten the walk I take to avoid having to cross 30 twice.
I have frequently fantasized about putting a return-flow bike lane on that drive as far as the place where one can cross the street into the trailer park's parking lot, but when 99% of our bike riders don't even know that there is something to learn, no signage or pavement marks will suffice to inform them that they must not continue to the end and suddenly appear on the wrong side of a busy road.
Dave is putting the mail box back on its post. He brought it in yesterday, cleaned it up, and replaced the missing letters in our address.
When putting yesterday's paper away, I noticed that the biggest story on the front of the Leisure section is about Ken Stenstrom's new book.
I have parts of last Saturday's paper still to read, so it will be a while before I get around to finishing yesterday's.
⁂
When it was time to go to First Friday, Dave was asleep in front of the television. Neither of us had been all that enthusiastic, so I zapped a couple of mini-potatoes and warmed up some left-overs. Dave had stewed beef and a salad, I had turkey and gravy.
We made up for First Friday by going to the Great Wall tonight.
I rode to Sprawlmart to buy cabbage and saltines. I was sure that I'd seen whole-wheat saltines at Aldi, but I couldn't find them today. They did have a brand of white-flour saltines that I hadn't seen before.
I meant to buy a bag of corn chips, but got distracted by the chocolate, and forgot about it by the time I got to that end of the chip display. It's probably just as well.
I was wondering how such a short trip could wear me out — until I got home and remembered that it was nap time.
I was groggy the rest of the day, but now that it's bedtime, I'm perking up.
I walked to Martha's open studio, and came back by way of the Hillside. It was colder walking south, and I put up the hood of my coat.
The lake was frozen over when we woke up. I think there might have been a streak of open water where a raft of coots were moving back and forth. They were huddled up so close together that at first glance we took them for a floating pier section.
Al was in the bed when I got up, and never shifted while I was getting dressed, save to issue an occasional complaint about the noise. When I came home, he was in the exact spot and position. Do cats hibernate?
There's a long, wide streak of open water out where the coots were yesterday. Occasional flashes of white suggest that a few geese are swimming in it.
I wonder whether what I wrote yesterday makes sense.
Some of the open water skimmed over in the night.
Sometimes I regret wearing eight-pocket jeans. There's a pair in the wash today, and I have to brush lint out of the pockets.
⁂
Oops! I missed an undershirt and two pairs of socks.
An inch and a quarter of rain is quite enough.
It was a rather puny thunderstorm; we didn't get a rise out of the windsock until it was over, and it's only halfway up now.
Half past one, and high time I took a nap.
Roomba day in the sewing room. I decided to remove my footlocker from the room entirely instead of dragging it back and forth, and learned that World War II doughboys were real he-men: there is no provision whatsoever for using both hands to pick it up.
And there's hardly anything in the lower compartment; I'm sure it was packed densely in the barracks.
A lot of the stuff is back now — it's nap time, and I had put things on the bed so that I wouldn't have to bend over to pick them up.
I'm going to sew one more hem before I lie down. That's usually a mistake.
⁂
But this time it wasn't, and I now have four new pillow cases.
In the kitchen, listening to the scanner, I heard someone request EMS for a roll-over, two patients out of the vehicle, but they weren't sure they could get the third out. A while later, I heard someone say "I want you to work on the roof on the passenger side", by which I concluded that they had given up on removing the patient from the vehicle and were removing the vehicle from the patient.
That's probably all I'll ever know; auto smashes are so common that few make the news.
When we woke up, there were thin speckles of snow on the ground; snow resumed later, and now (4:57) it's coming down fast enough to look slightly misty out, and the speckles are spots where it melted as it hit. Those holes seem to be closing in.
Our paper boy, after a complaint from Dave, has resumed delivering the paper, but she is still going out of her way to put it by the front door instead of in the paper box.
It was lying on the concrete again today, but this time at the side of the house, not too far from the paper box. I guess that that is progress.
I made turkey salad this morning, and tonight we ate all the left-over creamed turkey. There is still a big chunk of breast meat in the fridge.
Gasp! The weekend paper was in the box this morning.
I'd like to say "she's got it, she's finally got it!", but I suspect that our paperboy is two people who take turns.
The chunk of turkey breast is smaller than it was before we had Fusia stir-fry vegetables for supper last night.
Now I've got leftover stir-fry to dispose of.
I went by Lakeview and Our Father's House on my way to Aldi yesterday. Our Father's House is closed until further notice, but I saw no sign of anyone moving in at Lakeview. Except maybe a bottle of detergent in the big store at the east end; the adjacent store in the main strip is also available, and big enough for a dining room. I thought the string of stores across the west end would be more suitable because one of them is already plumbed for a kitchen, but I think the dining room would go better at the other end, and one of the stores in the middle isn't quite empty.
The alley that Freedom Oil wants vacated is, for all practical purposes, vacated already. There is a board fence across it. I saw a padlock, so I presume that it can be opened like a pair of gates. It's a grungy-looking fence, but better than the derelict building that you would be able to see through the alley if the fence weren't there.
I just took pity on the cat and closed the bedroom curtains. There was a full moon last night and he stayed up late watching squirrelevision.
⁂
I got most of the dead tops out of the asparagus bed, and most of the autumn leaves, and I raked the mulch out more-or-less even. There are still a lot of weeds to pull.
I hope I get at it before they wake up and dig in. But right now, it's nap time.
And I think my back has done enough for one day. I'm not feeling it yet, and that's a good time to quit.
⁂
The "salty pepper" sunflower-seed bites that I bought at Aldi yesterday are disappearing almost as fast as salted peanuts.
Canned tamales for supper. Dave tried desperately to order pizza, but Marco isn't interested in on-line orders. I wonder why they put up the Web site, and why they advertise it on their menus, and then don't make it work.
First he couldn't get to the ordering page, then he had a stroke of genius and I got the anchovies back out of the freezer, and then it refused to allow him to check out.
Next time we want pizza, I'll drive to Little Caesar. Marco's is better, but if they can't be bothered to sell it to me, I can't be bothered to buy it.
Today Dave was outside when the paperboy came, and she apologized for failing to see the paper box sooner.
Dave's "pomodoro" program just dinged, so I stood up for a moment. I don't know what it's doing for him, but I don't get stiff from sitting at the keyboard any more.
I had noticed that sitting in a pew doesn't stiffen me as much as sitting in a typing chair. I thought it was the way I sat, leaning back instead of forward, but it's probably because the congregation doesn't go very long without standing up for a while.
I am being informed that it's only nine minutes before cat-feeding time.
I bought whole-wheat saltines at Meijer today. It's lucky that I did, because I changed my mind about coming home by way of Owen's, and bought my milk at Aldi.
While at Aldi I also bought more salty-pepper sunflower-seed bites, and sea-salt sunflower-seed bites and chocolate-chip granola bites.
The granola bites are nearly gone. They are particularly good with cream-cheese spread.
We set up both card tables in the parlor and took everything off the shelves in the laundry room. I suspect that the last person to do this was Evelyn.
We had both forgotten that we have a car vac.
I was surprised at how much dying supplies I have: there are two quarts and two half-gallons of onion skins; I could dye enough yarn to knit a sweater. I wonder what the two jars of blue crystals are? The labels were affixed with rubber bands that have dried up and fallen away. One was a copper scrubby in vinegar. The other, I haven't a clue. The copperas was a tin-can lid, now entirely dissolved.
I threw out the half gallon of rain water.
When I started that big clean-up yesterday, I'd forgotten that I had an appointment to have my teeth cleaned today.
The electronic sign at Lakeview now has Our Father's House in the rotation, but there is still no indication of where they will move in. On my way back from the appointment, I noticed two vehicles parked in front of the empty stores on the west end.
I stopped at Marsh for milk and cottage cheese, and bought a ginger root. Rushing the season a bit: I like to grind ginger root in the water I use to make "switchel" in hot weather.
Also found the two-gallon zipper bags I've been hunting for some time, but there is still no sign of two-gallon bags with ties.
⁂
I bought cottage cheese so Dave could have the left-over half-patty of fresh hamburger for breakfast, but when I got home, he had eaten the hamburger for lunch. That's better than coming home to find that *he'd* bought cottage cheese!
Dave tried Mario's pizza again. He found that you need to log in with Windows. O.K., we've got a copy of Windows. And you need to log in with Explorer. O.K., if you have Windows, you've got Explorer. So you can select your pizza and check out — but only if you give them your credit-card number. Not O.K.
Domino's was the same deal, but Papa John let us pay the driver, the pizza arrived precisely when they said it would arrive, and it was delicious. Cold enough that I could take my slice out of the box with my bare hands, but delicious.
No wonder I find pickled peppers and tubs of garlic dipping sauce in the right-hand fridge after every pizza party at the church.
We ate half the dipping sauce — some of it on celery sticks — but didn't touch the pickled pepper. I added it to a jar of pickled banana-pepper slices
I found a notebook slip from last June on my desk. It noted that I was delighted to discover that Marsh sold single-serve cups of potato salad, less delighted to discover that the salad was long on sugar and short on flavor.
Today Dave decided to look at Warsaw Airport's web cam. It's his.
I've got a card table emptied and the top shelf of the laundry room filled. Everything is in logical order; I don't know how long that will last.
I put the two ammo boxes I bought to step on on the top shelf, since I use the KikStep now. It was rather clever to use them to make the rolls of wallpaper stack neatly one on top of another. Then I thought: put the step stools on a shelf I need a step stool to reach? Not clever. But those stools aren't high enough to reach that shelf; somehow that makes it all right.
The paint on the lower shelf is dry, but I plan to let it set overnight before I put stuff on it. The upper shelf was in pretty good shape, requiring only a wipe with Barkeeper's Friend, but there were several places on the lower shelf where something had eaten through the paint and fluffed up the particle board.
I always wipe the bleach bottle before I put it back, but I'm not so careful with the other chemicals.
There were very few items that belonged elsewhere, but there's a lot more space on the shelves now. But stacking the wallpaper alone made enough space to put up the two bottles I've been keeping on the floor. On the other hand, I put two ammo boxes into that space.
I looked at the table this morning and there's hardly anything on it. I'll put the stuff back into the laundry room after I get back from the Crazy Egg.
Tonight, one dirty sock will smell of plumeria and one will smell of Gold Bond medicated lotion. I've finally used up the over-perfumed body lotion. I'm planning to put some sodium laurel sulfate into the unwashed bottle to make plumeria hand soap.
I noticed, on my way back from dumping garbage onto the heap, that the dead leaves of the parsley are still covering the Italian oregano. I hope that this means that the oregano didn't winterkill, but I don't want to disturb the protection to peek.
I raked the dead leaves out of the herb bed yesterday, and moved some of the dead leaves in the garden to the compost heap. Some from the other end are piled on the lawn, and some remain in the garden. I'm planning to stop at Open Air Nursery to buy onion sets and potato sets today, if they have them in; it looks as though I'll be able, for the first time, to plant them on St. Patrick's day.
I may plant the excess multipliers sooner than that.
When I went out to the compost heap, I was wearing only my fancy Spaulding tights and a cheap long-sleeved T-shirt. The T-shirt was much warmer.
I spent some time on the Web: it's possible to buy wool tights, but they don't tell you what size they are, and $75 - $150 is a bit above my "Oh, well, I can give it to Goodwill if it doesn't fit" range.
But one of the sites complained that their former space provider had erased all their files, and they hadn't had the wit to keep a copy on their own computers. Probably didn't know how; a lot of so-called providers want you to do everything online with their software, and make it difficult or impossible to download the entire site.
Anyhow, the character of the proprietor is such that I expect the site to be more informative once it's back up.
While he was dressing this morning, Dave said "That's a funny-looking dime" and carried it over to the window. It's a 1937 Equadorian ten-centavo piece.
He found it on his dresser, so presumes that he got it in change. On the other hand we have been disturbing things that haven't been disturbed in years, so it might have been in the house somewhere.
Yesterday he turned up a hand-soap bottle of body wash, which I put where I'd been planning to put the plumeria bottle, so I set that bottle behind the carpet spot cleaners for future reference.
Bad news and good news from the Crazy Egg.
Bad news: the back door from 100 N doesn't work when there is a train parked on the siding. I walked around the train, but next time I'll ride eight-tenths of a mile east, then cross the Chinworth bridge and ride eight-tenths of a mile west.
Good news: the Saturday menu has lots of old-lady size dishes. None of the dishes they offer would be edible after being put into a plastic bag and chilled, so it's important that my meal be small enough to eat in one sitting. (I find it very difficult to look at something yummy and say "throw it into the trash".)
There were no sets at Open Air, but the signs were out, ready to put up when they get here. The proprietor was off in the greenhouses somewhere and I didn't feel like hunting him down to ask when. Stuff in the public greenhouses was boring, except for house plants. Some benches had been cleared off; most still had dead stuff that hadn't sold last year.
I hung pillowcases, towels, and other flat things out on the line today. I must get around to repairing the high line soon. It looks as though the hardest part of the job will be finding the correct wrench for the clamps.
I hope I can find an all-synthetic clothesline before spring; I'm sure it was the wire that caused the premature failure of this one — the wire pulled out of the casing. A thinner casing over a fatter rope would hold up longer.
I planted sixteen onion bulbs today. Also hoed some at the dirt I piled up when I dug the potatoes.
When I put away the seed multipliers last fall, there was a handful left over, which I set aside for eating. Between being tedious to peel and being extra special, not many of them got cooked, and I was beginning to worry about how they would keep lying in the open on a newspaper, so when a good planting day appeared, I took it. Since I *could* have planted them last fall, I'm not a bit worried about it being too early. But it may be awkward to weed them with nothing showing except a stake at one end and the winter onions at the other.
Every bulb was fat and sound and appeared to have been perfectly happy with its storage conditions. I'm planning to eat them as spring onions, but I put them far enough apart that I can let them ripen.
I plan to plant potatoes on the east side of the garden this year; the row of garlic is a bit close, but the garlic will be pulled about the time the potatoes start spreading out.
I went out barefoot to bring in the clothespins I left on the line yesterday, and was perfectly comfortable walking on the grass and the concrete walk, but then I decided it was time to repair the part of the line that fell down and went into the shop to get a 5/16" wrench — boy, is that concrete floor *cold*!
Later on, I was outside burning financial papers when a water skier went by. It was twilight; Dave says that he saw the boat, but not the skier.
The lid to the Unimat case now closes and latches, and the small stuff inside is organized. I should follow Dave's example and bring some order to the sewing room.
I had a sore throat yesterday, and took a zinc tablet. My throat is no longer sore, but I definitely have a cold. It's a lovely day out, and I'm not going anywhere. Except maybe out to the compost heap with a plate of garbage.
Right now I'm going to take the KikStep to the kitchen and fetch down another box of paper handkerchiefs.
The rhubarb leaf that I uncovered when I raked leaves off the herb bed appears to be growing. So far, not so fast as to be worrying.
The daffodils are getting rather rash, and I see lots of tulip leaves, and a rosette of lily-type leaves that I think are hyacinth.
And I don't think that the brown buds topping the fern stumps were as big last week.
I could have had kow choi (garlic chives) in the rice cakes I made for lunch, if I'd thought of it. And the chives are up enough that I could cut some off to garnish something.
The winter savory is looking faded and dull. All winter it's been a lovely dark green with purple points, and for the first time I see why it's *winter* savory rather than "perennial savory".
It has made a small offshoot, and the main plant is getting too big for the bed. so I plan to transplant it into the fern bed, next to the foundation, when the weather has settled warm.
But there is no sign of the small plants of winter savory that I moved there last summer.
So I grabbed a magnifying glass, went out, and go down on my knees. I found some dead stems, but even with the glass, I couldn't see any green specks. But some of the stems are attached to roots.
Grump. I'm planning to stop at Marsh for milk and a pound of free bananas after the Winter Market this Saturday. I have a bagfull of stuff to take to the Recycling Depot, and I can pass by there on my way from the Winter Market to Marsh, but their Web site says that they are open only one Saturday a month — and that is only from April through November. Not to mention that they are open on the second Saturday and the 25th is the fourth Saturday. I don't foresee taking a Tour d'Warsaw on a weekday.
I've finished reading _Clouds of Witnesses_, so I'll go to the market by way of the library.
Or maybe I won't go at all. It's cold and windy today. When I made a beat-the-showers ride to Marsh yesterday, I thought that today I'd drive to the library, then walk through the park to the Pavilion, where the market is held. But when I got up this morning and looked at the ruffles on the lake, I decided to stay home and sew.
I appear to have spent the whole day playing with my computers instead.
I did make wax pepper con carne for supper tonight. I can't taste the hot peppers in it, but it's delicious, so I won't mess with it. One teaspoon of cumin proved to be about right. I haven't been putting cumin in my "hamburger soup" because I didn't want to overwhelm the other flavors, but one *can* use cumin subtly.
There's rather a lot of carne. When I went to Marsh, I bought two and a fraction pounds of ground beef planning hamburger and cottage cheese for breakfast, hamburgers tonight, and meatloaf tomorrow. But when we had hamburger for lunch, Dave said that it had deteriorated noticeably since breakfast, so I fried it up at once, and a while ago I took it out of the fridge and added a bunch of seasonings, including some "three-pepper and onion blend" from the freezer, and three pieces of the hungarian wax peppers I bought from the dented-produce shelf hoping that they were banana peppers. I cut them up, discarded the seeds and membranes, and froze them in a quart bag and a sandwich bag. Then I had to wash the dishes to get the capsaicin off my fingers.
Leftover carne sin chili for supper tonight. The package of beef gave us one breakfast, two lunches, and two dinners. And a few snacks.
Dave got fed up with the clogged condition of his side of the closet and sorted out a bedfull of shirts he no longer wears. It's amazing that you can take out that much stuff and still have a full closet! But now it won't take strength to put his clothes into the closet on wash day.
I found it even more amazing that I was able to pack all that stuff into two Amazon boxes — including the dress I wore to church this morning. I do dote on heavy spun silk, but I just don't have the figure to carry off a close-fitting jersey knit, and the fit wasn't comfortable.
The boxes are now bungeed to the rack of my bike — using all the bungees we've got. The boxes were identical, so I was able to attach them as a unit. Loading both of them amazed Dave, who thought it would make the bike top-heavy.
[I didn't notice the boxes at all on the way to Goodwill.]
I hastily changed the itinerary for tomorrow's exercise from "Aldi by way of Pierceton" to "Aldi by way of Goodwill". I'm seriously considering a stop at Wong's. I'm not fond of waiting to be waited on, and the food is too heavy, but it would be a change of pace, and Wong's food can be put into a plastic bag and kept for later.
I've learned not to ask for food to be wrapped, because it's usually put into a foam box that doesn't fit well in my pannier.
Hot dogs tonight. I was rather late getting back, so I put them into a skillet before I finished unpacking my panniers. They didn't taste the least bit like chicken, but were good. And we have two more for another meal.
I didn't feel adventurous, so I had the usual "kid's meal" at Panda Express. This time they gave me my cookie in a bag of toys: two crayons, a coloring page with puzzles on the back, and some "Wiki Stix" to press along the outline of a panda connect-the-dots. I misread it as "Wick Stix" at first, because they look like dipped-once candle wicks.
I'd noticed this morning that both my pairs of sweat pants have worn thin, so when I went into Meijer to buy a box of snack bags, I looked through the clearance items hoping that there were some sweatpants left. To my surprise, there were.
I looked at some that were sixteen dollars, but doubted that they would fit, and I didn't want to take off all my layers to try them on. Later on, when I found a shelf of sweat pants for $6.40, I suddenly remembered that all I have to take off is my sweat pants. There was one black pair, a size Men's Large, and I bought it. There is elastic in the ankles — rather odd; it doesn't draw them in enough to matter. Nor does it make them poof out to catch in the chain, but I'll take it out anyway because it makes the hem very thick. I always fasten my safety pins well above the hem, but I don't like lumpy hems.
I should have gone back to the sixteen-dollar shelf; if they were pure polyester, I'd have taken a pair of those too.
Took me a while to get into a fitting room. There's a box on the floor with a door on each end. The door on the side I approached first was marked "handicapped", so I went around to the other side, opened the door, and saw two sorta bra-like objects on the bench. I thought that whoever had left them there might come back for them before I was done, so I went back to the handicapped door, and found it locked. So I went back to the second fitting room and hung the bra-like objects on a cart that happened to be parked outside the door. Both the cart and the abandoned garments were gone when I came out.
Ever since we came here, I've been buying a dozen pencils and putting them into a kitchen drawer every few months. I figured that the house would eventually get so saturated with pencils that I'd find about as many as were mislaid, but that never happened.
Dave's been spring cleaning the last few weeks. He turned up two mugs crammed with pencils. Now the pencil drawer overfloweth.
Heaven knows what will be found if I ever get around to cleaning up the sewing room.
I used to be able to get away with skipping my nap once, but I feel washed out today. On the other hand, it will be nap time in a couple of hours.
The first time I went to Meijer after writing about the proposed two-waying of their driveway, I noticed that there is the stub of a side drive exactly where I'd have wanted a crosswalk. I do hope the wishes-to-remain-anonymous restaurant gets permission to put it into service.