Had my Medicare checkup this morning. Mostly things like can I remember an address after reciting the months of the year backward.
I didn't like getting up at seven, but I got home in time to start cutting a quilt into dog and cat blankets. The quilt was too dirty to use, too big to wash, and too cheap to dry clean. I didn't realize *how* cheap until I started cutting into it. The animal shelter is going to have to pile up three or four to keep the critters off the cold concrete.
I did wash it in the bathtub once, but we no longer have a bathtub, and it wasn't an experience I want to repeat.
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I don't think last night's snowstorm damaged the daffodils.
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Starting a long time before Dick Tracy ran the Mr. Bribery story, my typing chair has been parodying Mr. Bribery's tilted head because the back was held on with only one bolt. We tried and tried to screw the other bolt in, but it just wouldn't reach. Finally I dropped it into the tool drawer under the Necchi, intending to take it to Ace and buy a longer bolt with the same thread.
Then we both forgot about it. Last Monday, Dave's attention was called to the chair, and he asked me for the bolt because he meant to go to Ace. Before leaving, he tried the bolt in its hole — and it screwed right in.
I propose to continue grabbing the metal and not the back when I want to move it.
Thursday is Roomba day in the bedroom, which means that I look under the bed. One of the legs of the bed has been leaning for weeks, but I always forget about it before I get a chance to tell Dave. This morning the lean had become alarming, and Dave was standing right there.
So he struggled down onto his hands and knees and had a look. He agreed that this was not natural, and we were both thinking "awk scrickle we need a new bed". But Dave decided to pull the mattresses back for a better look, saying that it might only need a bolt.
Turned out that it didn't even need a bolt — it had come unbuttoned. So we pulled the mattress and springs back a bit more, Dave straightened the leg, stuck the buttons back in the keyholes, fetched a mallet, whapped the buttons to the small ends of the keyholes, and we are back in business.
After sliding the mattresses back into place, which wasn't as easy as pulling them out. We ended up with the bed a bit farther from the wall than before, which will make it easier to change the sheets. I couldn't quite get a leg into the space before.
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It's never too late to learn the meaning of the word "opsimath".
The bump is off. The incision stings a little, but what bugs me is that I feel the dressing on my forehead and think I need to adjust a hat I'm not wearing.
I stopped at Owen's East on the way back and bought eggs and milk. Also found a marbled steak for supper.
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And all the time I was frying the steak, I wanted to take my hat off, which I couldn't do because I wasn't wearing one.
The steak was delicious, by the way. We had a tiny potatoes zapped and toasted, lima beans, and some vegetable sticks with it.
Good grief, I think that's snow flakes drifting past my window.
The daffodil buds are turning yellow, but are keeping their wrappers on.
My wound has been over-dressed today. Now that the pressure dressing is off, I'm supposed to leave it exposed with nothing but a layer of Bacitraycin over it — unless I need to keep dirt out or protect it from my clothes.
So at bedtime last night, I put a huge bandaid on it to keep the ointment off the bedding. I was glad of its protection at least once during the night, but it looked quite new and fresh when I peeled it off before washing my face this morning.
Before leaving for church, I put on another dressing to allow me to wear a warm fuzzy hat. This time I used a regular band-aid, after cutting a strip of gauze dressing a hair narrower than the band-aid and somewhat longer than the dressing it already had. I smeared it with Bacitraycin to be sure it wouldn't stick, but there was a trace of blood on it when I took it off — probably irritation from sweat; I felt it stinging after the service.
I should have peeled it off with the hat when I got to church, but it was easier to wear it through the service than to carry my cleaning supplies. In hindsight, all I would have needed was another band-aid and the tube of Bacitraycin.
On arriving home, I started to peel it off, then remembered that I was going to go to bed as soon as I'd eaten a little ham and two tablespoon-size baked potatoes. So I left it on until nearly four O'clock.
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"Look over summer clothes" is on my List of Things to Do in April, forwarded from the List of Things to Do in March. I wish I felt some urgency about it! I wore my warmest dress to church today. But I didn't wear anything over it but a hat, a scarf, and a pair of gloves, and I took the gloves off half-way home.
Maybe I *should* feel some urgency about preparing for hot weather.
I learned how to turn my phone off today. I think I already knew, but forgot because it's always plugged in when I'm not using it. I must remember that it beeps loudly three times when being turned off — the most-likely reason to turn it off is that I want it to be quiet.
I opened the curtains this morning, saw a sheet of white that had fallen in the night, and said "It's a beautiful day out there — from in here."
All the snow melted while it was still falling.
Well, there was some left on the wood in the outdoor fireplace when I carried out the garbage.
Dubois & Provident
I was too tired to write yesterday. I had to renew my driver's license — and take a folder of papers along, two of which came out of the lockbox, so that my new license could be an all-purpose answer to "papers, please".
I don't want to wear my rear-view mirror until the stitches come out, so I drove. The wait was short, and the clerk was competent and courteous. Quite a shock to a New Yorker.
Since I had the car, I continued to Sprawl Three and bought a bag of cat food at Big R, then drove to Aldi and spent $94.49. (And this morning I discovered that I'm getting low on fish oil, which I noticed and rejected as "we've got that" while shopping.)
I took US 30 from 250 E to Parker, but that wasn't long enough to check whether my rotator cuff has healed yet. I've really got to get around to riding the flatfoot a substantial distance. ("Substantial" on the flatfoot is less than a tenth of "substantial" on the road bike.)
As usual after shopping at Aldi, I crossed 30 on Parker intending to follow Dubois to Harrison. As I was bearing right off Parker onto Dubois, I noticed an ambulance with lights and siren on Parker, reflected that it was almost certainly headed for the emergency room, and prepared to stop and let him pass me in the don't-use-it lane. (The one-way portion of Dubois used to be a two-way street.)
He did, indeed turn onto Dubois, but stopped in the intersection with Provident. I couldn't see signs of the incident, but there was a police car with flashing lights on the other side of it, so after thinking for a while — and being inspired by another driver in the same situation — I turned into the Pillbox parking lot and drove very slowly (so as not to compound the rudeness) to their back door and came home on Parker.
A pickup truck that I couldn't see the front of was parked rather oddly, and not too long after I got home and put away my groceries, Ink Free News said that a car and a pickup collided and the pickup was damaged only in front, so I did see part of the incident. The car rolled down a slope onto someone's lawn, and I was looking only at the right-of-way.
Nope. The truck I noticed was white, and Ink Free says both vehicles were red. Must have been, as I thought at the time, part of the response.
Then, after my nap, I went to Taste of Ag for supper. I couldn't have done it without my walker. One can't allow embarrassment to lock one into the house, but I wonder what people thought when I picked it up and carried it past an obstacle.
The crowding was horrific. The line waiting to check in stretched clear out of sight, and it was a wide line because families stood side-by-side, so I decided to see the show first and check in on my way out. A wise decision, since I saw many people with a plate in one hand and a door prize in the other — and I did win a door prize: a peach pie. Can you imagine touring exhibits while trying to protect a pie?
The exhibit barn wasn't crowded — the woman at the Creighton exhibit kept handing me day-old chicks to pet for want of anyone else to hand them to — so it didn't take long. The barn was very drafty — the three hens on display had been crammed into a cage meant for one, but weren't doing a great job of keeping each other warm despite the plastic sheet behind it.
When I came out, the line at the entrance still stretched out of sight. "Out of sight" wasn't as far as it had been when I'd been up level with it, but I went straight to the food booth.
That line wasn't long, but it moved very slowly. Once at the food, I spent a long time blocking access to the boiled eggs, for example, but couldn't move on because the previous visitor was in my way, and he couldn't move on because another visitor was in *his* way. Got to the end of the table and saw that the hold-up was two cross-wise tables where the attendants couldn't keep up with the demand. The organizers should have put in something that had to be walked around, so that the people waiting for those two tables wouldn't be in the way of people wanting to leave the long table. I suppose they didn't have any of the maze-ropes used at airports and the like.
At any rate, the floor was concrete, so I could sit in my walker and pull myself forward a few inches with my feet every few minutes, so my back didn't take any harm. There had been chairs to wait in at the BMV, and the lines at Aldi always move quickly, so I wasn't pre-strained.
I had to put the backs of the back seat down to get the walker into the car. I distinctly remember putting it into the trunk on the day I bought it. I also remember thinking "I couldn't possibly do this if I actually needed the walker", but the problem was that there simply wasn't room.
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The buds on the southern clump of daffodils are so yellow that I think they are starting to unfold, and there are flower buds on the hyacinth next to it.
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I wonder what I did with today? I wasn't finding mistakes in my Web pages. I did wash dishes and make duck soup for supper.
And it *was* easy. I simmered tiny little zapped potatoes and some raw vegetables in the broth that cooked out of the game hen and what I drained off the confit, then stirred the left-over confit in at the last minute. We ate every drop.
I think I'll wait a while before thawing another two pounds. This Friday's duck special is unseasoned leg meat, which could be eaten more often, but the meat compartment of the freezer is crowded — the confits are in the vegetable compartment — and I have an appointment to get my stitches out.
At least some of them. The picture I took this morning shows the incision invisible between the stitches on the ends, but the middle stitches may stay.
I printed out the pictures this morning. The ones I took are unreadable, the ones Dave took look pretty good. Unfortunately, his were all taken after the incision stopped changing visibly.
I turned over at least half a dozen sods in the proposed asparagus bed. Then Dave raked all the sods to one end of the bed and ran the Culta-Eze, but neither of us feels like loading the sods into the wheelbarrow and dumping them on the compost heap.
In getting my attaché case ready for tomorrow's appointment, I organized my go bags: books in the Trafalger carry-on, needlework in the bull-denim tote bag. In the process I found some black Persian wool that I'd thought lost.
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In the evening, I mentioned to Dave that I could move the railroad tie sideways but not lengthways. He hitched up the lawn mower and dragged it into place, then dug some more. This thing is starting to look like an asparagus bed.
I raked the leaves out of the herb bed, and pulled some of the grass up by the roots. The rhubarb is up and looking good.
The daffodils are in bloom and some of the hyacinth buds have opened.
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Everyone is quite pleased with how the incision is coming, but I should have washed my hair before the stitches came out. Exposure to soap or prolonged soaking might make the steri-strips that replaced the sutures come off prematurely. They should hold for a week, then peel off on their own.
The orangy-brown stains are the glue that holds the steristrips on.
I wonder whether it's Crazy glue with iodine.
Wikipedia strongly suggests that skin glue is primarily cyanoacrilate, but does not say it flat out. I was rather surprised to be taken directly to "Dermal adhesive" rather than "Hide glue".
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I'm reading the PDF of Thursday's paper. A headline on the food page says "Roasting Radishes Mellows Them Into The Perfect Side Dish".
Ye cats! How can you "mellow" something that has no trace of flavor of any sort? Instead of telling us how to take the zing out of radishes, Mellissa D'Arabian should have told us where to buy radishes that have zing. I'd eat them raw with salt.
The recipe for green goddess dressing sounds worth keeping: 1/2 cup [whole-milk] greek yogurt, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, one teaspoon olive oil [I think that was a misprint for "one tablespoon olive oil], 1/4 cup chopped green onions, 1/4 teaspoon fresh garlic (about 1/2 a clove) [garlic leaves are in season right now, but I haven't picked any yet], 1/4 cup roughly-chopped fresh parsley, 1 tablespoon fresh dill (or one teaspoon dried), 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt.
I picked a spring of parsley to put into my breakfast cake this morning. It will be a while before the plant can spare another. This is last summer's plant; I must buy another before it bolts.
We went to Hop Lore for supper, and split a "cuban" — pulled pork and ham on a pretzel roll, with fresh potato chips and a condiment tub of cole slaw. The food was excellent, the service was inept.
On the way there, Dave noticed a soft-tire warning, so we turned onto Dubois, came back by Harrison, and took the truck. When we got home, the left front tire on the Versa was quite flat. Dave plans to take it off tomorrow and take it to the Tire Barn to be repaired.
We had another reason to be glad we drove the truck: from near the end of Husky Trail to Armstrong Road, the road conditions were terrible. We came back on 15.
Snitched from somebody's Usenet signature:
"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling." -- Paula Poundstone
An unexpected side effect of the incision: at night I brush my teeth by the light of a red Christmas-tree bulb, to avoid waking myself up. After precisely placing Bacitraycin on my forehead was added to my ablutions, I switched to using the white light.
Whereupon I discovered that my tooth powder is mint green. Literally: I ground rather a lot of dried peppermint with the salt.
So now I know how a very pastel green came to be called "mint" when the plant is a dark, intense green.
The steristrips are still sticking.
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After supper, I grabbed a rake and went to the garden. I didn't do any detectable work before getting chilled back into the house, but it's good that I went: when I went into the shop for the rake, a bird was trying very hard to fly out through a closed window. I left the door open, but when I brought the rake back, he was trying to get out through a different closed window, so I chased him out through the door. When last seen, he was headed in the general direction of the willow tree at top speed.
When I was getting ready to hose off the plastic we keep under the cat box, I reflected "At last it's safe to leave the hose screwed on!"
Then I went to lay the plastic out to dry and found ice on the picnic table.
I left the hose screwed on. It's the Y connector that's at risk of trapping water inside the faucet; the first foot of the hose runs straight down.
Well, it's safe as long as the faucet doesn't drip.
We have brought the lawn chairs down from the barn attic. After hosing the litter box, I took the plastic off the picnic table and draped it over a chair frame so the wind could dry both sides.
I didn't notice when that strip peeled off. I'm pretty sure it was there when I put Bacitraycin on it at bedtime. I put a dressing over the strips for fear that the loose bits at the bottom would snag on the bedclothes, and I inspected the dressing before I threw it away in the morning, but later in the morning, when I wanted a closer look than I could get in the mirror, it was gone.
I wonder why it is so hard to keep stray hairs out of these pictures?
I thought that the remaining strips would peel off when I switched from Bacitraycin to vitamin E oil last night, but the oil glued down the loose edges instead.
If they haven't fallen off in the morning, I'll wash them with soap.
Yesterday morning I went to Big R for cat litter, then went to Aldi for fish oil and assorted groceries. I thought about making a side trip to Martin, which is across the street from Aldi, to see whether they have shredded wheat in old-style biscuits that have to be crumbled into your bowl. It's good that I didn't; I was late for lunch the way it was, slept until I just barely had time to shred lettuce and set out leftovers for do-it-yourself taco salad, and I was groggy the whole evening. And I'm not all that alert this morning.
At 10:29, I was trotting through the narthex to get a drink of water before the service started, and met Pastor Doug going the other way. It reminded me of the time I landed on one side of an airport, my connecting flight was on the other, and I didn't have time to figure out the bus system so I ran the whole way. As I was running up the gangplank, someone behind me said, "Slow down. This plane isn't going anywhere without me." It was the pilot.
After the service, Abby told me that there will be a planning meeting on Wednesday for the going-away party on May 6.
This church goes through pastors as if they were Kleenex.
The remaining two strips fell off this morning. I think they'd just been stuck in the oil yesterday. The scar is already hard to see, even in this extreme close-up.
I'm not taking pictures as often, now that I've discovered that I can use a hand-held magnifying glass with a hand-held mirror to see how I'm doing.
Bed-changing day. One day while making the bed I remembered the king-size bed in the garage apartment we stayed in while waiting for the previous tenants to get out of the house we had rented, and how I walked for *miles* while making it. Then I watched myself for a while and realized that I haven't learned how to make a king-size bed without walking for miles — I've stopped minding it.
Our year in Hawaii was the only time I've made a habit of sleeping under an electric blanket. I'd turn it on an hour before bedtime to warm up the bed, then turn it off before getting in.
We ran out of eggs yesterday, so this morning I drove to Owen's and bought bread, milk, eggs, and everything we were low on. Then we had lunch and opened our last stick of butter.
I bought what I thought was a tub of jam from the Reduced for Quick Sale shelf. Opened it intending to have some on a cracker, and it turned out to be beet baby food. For very hungry babies; it tasted like applesauce made from apples with rotten spots.
I notice the sore spot on my forehead more often now than I did when I was very careful not to touch it.
I had a fellowship committee meeting tonight, and I was limping a little, so I took the walker. While climbing Sunday Lane on smooth new pavement, walking so fast that I got out of breath, I was thinking "Wow! This is great!"
I was probably walking faster than I would have with two good legs: when I'm not pushing a walker, I slow down when I get out of breath.
But I don't like to walk *down* Sunday lane at any time, so I came home by College and Chestnut. Pushing the walker over streets made of pebbles glued together, and using frequently-interrupted sidewalks with cracks every three feet soon had me wishing that I'd ridden the flatfoot instead.
Planning for the farewell party reminded me that when I was attending New Hope church, we sort of didn't have a pastor. A seminary student came out to preach, went on to preach at Pleasant Hill, then went back to school. The members of the church took care of running it. I think; I was a teen-ager at the time. I suppose they took advice from the student, perhaps causing him to look something up and report back next Sunday.
Now that WLFMC is down to forty members, perhaps we ought to try having half a pastor. Having guest speakers would beat changing pastors as often as diapers. At least we'd know where we were at.
[Forty is the number we expect to stay for parties; I don't know the total attendance.]
Yesterday we measured the asparagus bed and dug up some more sod. Today we picked off the sods, shook the dirt out of them, and piled them on the compost heap. As soon as we run the Culta-Eze through the bed, we can start planting. Can't do all the planting in one day, because it will involve hauling dirt. Though I suppose we could throw dirt over from the nearest part of the garden and haul dirt later.
I raked debris off the garden, but didn't want to push the Culta-Eze wearing sandals. I also got a good start at raking the leaves out of the azalea bed. We need a narrow leaf broom.
Told Dave — Amazon says he should ask for a shrub rake when he goes to Ace.
I harvested a winter onion that had come up in the compost heap — after brushing off the dry leaves I had buried it in — and got two scallions.
I should buy potato sets and onion sets soon. I won't want to go as far as Open Air Greenhouse the first day I'm allowed back on the bike, but perhaps on the second.
I always say that the best way for a crippled-up old lady to get around is on a bike, but I didn't know how much freedom it gave me until I had to do without it. There are places you just can't go in a car. There's *always* a place to park a bike.
And I can stop on the bridge to look at the dam.
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Dave bought a shrub rake while I was napping, and we cleaned out the azalea bed. We also planted the asparagus — the instructions said to put the crowns six inches below the soil surface, so I decided to plant them level, then haul dirt in as they grow.
I ran the Culta-Eze around the garden; it's clean enough that I'll use the slicing hoe next time — probably as soon as the soil drains after tomorrow's rain — or just before the rain, depending on when I wake up. I paused cultivation to harvest three misplaced garlic scallions.
I dashed out to Culta-Eze before the rain, then checked Weather Underground, which now says that I had until sunset. It also says that Monday will be a perfect day for hanging out wash.
I'd hoped that the exposed sprout would start turning green, but there's been no change in the asparagus bed. Except that I found a sprig of overlooked sod.
I plan to spend the morning sewing, and dig up a clump of winter onions and make meatloaf in the afternoon.
And I did. There are three cat blankets in tomorrow's wash, and half a meatloaf in the fridge.
I had to take my sandals off to put my long-johns on, and when putting the sandals back on, I noticed a blob of dried-up tomato sauce. This causes me some concern, because I can't remember when I last ate tomato sauce while wearing Sunday-morning sandals — the blob may have been there for months!
When last in Big R, I noticed: Hey! Half-gallon canning jars are back! It's quite possible that they never were illegal in Indiana, but I haven't seen them for sale in decades. Then I noticed that they were all wide-mouthed. ?? The reason half gallons were illegalized is that they are only for juice; home-canning equipment can't get a half-gallon jar hot enough at the core if what's in it can't convect.
This morning, I remembered that people no longer buy canning jars for canning. Those were cute retro canisters.
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I accidentally planned a very pleasant trip home from church. Wednesday's experience convinced me that the walker is for indoor use, and the cane doesn't keep me from limping — it does quite the opposite, and makes my arm sore as well. I've been walking with nothing quite well, but thinking about every step. So I hitched up my skirts and rode the flatfoot.
The service let out early, it was a lovely day, and riding instead of walking cheated me of my Sunday exercise, so I turned right instead of left onto Chestnut, proceeding with no clear idea of where I was going. I'm rather bored with the Hotel loop, and it doesn't work as well for a bicycle-shaped object as for a pedestrian.
When I saw the place where Chestnut starts downhill, I turned onto Eighth Street, because the flatfoot doesn't climb at all: going downhill means walking back up. Which wouldn't have been difficult — my bad leg is keeping its opinions to itself today, and were it not, the flatfoot makes an excellent cane — but it wouldn't have been fun.
At the end of Eighth Street I saw Grace College and reflected that a branch of the Heritage Trail hooks in behind the farthest dormitory. The connection was much easier to find than it was the last time I went that way. They have paved the route to it, and put up labeled gates at the beginning. There are similar gates where the Trail crosses Pierceton Road.
And the pavement hasn't deteriorated a bit; it must have been built well in the first place. (Adequate construction is rather uncommon in "bicycle trails".)
Today was predicted to be a perfect drying day, so I put a load of dishtowels and cleaning rags in to soak yesterday evening.
That load occupied almost all of the lines, but some thin things had dried by the time the white load came out, and three whites went onto hangers, so only my briefs had to dry on a rack on the patio. The third load was colored, so except for two pairs of pants that I put on two hangers each and hung on the chain between two cottonwood trees, I dried all of that load inside.
Since it was sunny, and everything in the first load could stand bleaching, I left it on the line until nearly sunset. I was surprised, after getting towels and washrags down, that all there was for cleaning rags was four diapers and two washcloths. We've been awful clean, awful dirty — or using a lot of disposables.
A late issue: I didn't feel like spell-checking and so forth yesterday.
I picked an asparagus yesterday, and expect to get more this evening, since it's to be a warm day.
I should be dressing for my first bike ride — just three miles, to buy butter at Owen's — but I'm not in the mood. Also, I'm not quite sure I remember how it's done!
Last Sunday, I felt that the last hymn was very appropriate. The theme of the sermon was "when you lose your leader, keep on keeping on." (My summary, not the speaker's. His was "Encourage one Another!".) Ordinarily, the accompaniment to the hymns is so amplified that I feel that I'm sitting in the audience, singing along quietly so as not to disturb the performance. This time all we had was one piano that was just loud enough to remind you of the tune, and we all sang quite loudly.
The cottonwood stickypods started falling yesterday, but these flower-bud covers aren't as sticky as the leaf covers that will fall later. Two of the cottonwoods are covered with long red-brown catkins and the third is covered with what at first glance appear to be young leaves, but the binoculars show that it's short catkins. I hope I remember to check whether that tree is the only one to shed cotton. We get so much cotton that it's got to be all of them and a few that teleport in.
The other trunk of the third cottonwood, which was mostly behind the green-flower cottonwood from where I was sitting, has red-brown catkins like the first two.
Then I walked out to check the buds on the maple tree. Definitely flowers: each bud now has a pair of tiny wings sticking out of it.
Dave's hop vine has been doing poorly out by the lake. It was getting plenty of sun, but hops hate wet feet — not to mention that it frequently got wet above the hat, to paraphrase Sir Patrick Spens. Today he planted it in the fern bed, and dug up a hyacinth doing it. I re-planted the hyacinth in a gap in the row of spring flowers, and shook a young fern out of the ball of dirt, so I planted that out by the corner of the house, hoping that I wasn't too near a fern that hasn't come up yet. They seem to be sprouting from north to south.
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Back in the saddle again! After supper, I rode to Owen's to buy stuff to make chocolate cake tomorrow. I should have bought two packets of black walnuts instead of one. I also bought some "vividly vanilla" ice cream.