Beeson Banner for October, 2018
1 October 2018
As I was bringing in a basket of laundry, I noticed how good the air smelled. It didn't smell *of* anything, just warm fresh air.
And then I realized that today had been perfect for hanging out laundry: dry, sunny, warm but not too warm, and practically no wind.
Tomorrow, thunderstorms are predicted. And that's nice too, if you're not a sensitive-eared cat hiding in the closet. We have big, well-insulated windows on the weather side of the house, and I didn't want to go anywhere anyway.
The next day, not so good. I want to ride to Goodwill, and the prediction says it will be sixty-eight degrees when I leave and eighty-one when I get there. I used to have clothing suitable for such weather, but Grace Jones is dead, Marthe Hess is missing, and I sew very slowly.
But it will be dry and — urk — the wind will be five miles an hour when I'm riding with it, and fifteen when I turn around to ride into it.
2 October 2018
Tomorrow will be the last day that I need drops in my right eye twice a day, and can switch to morning only.
It will also be the first day that I need drops in the left eye.
I swear: today is the day I clear off the ironing board and press the pockets on the shirt I plan to wear Thursday, iron two of the shirts that I washed yesterday, and press the fabric for my next sewing project.
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All done, and I also found that I have enough thin cardboard to copy the pattern. That will make "lay out everything before you cut anything" much easier — I need to trace around the pattern with a wash-out marker half a dozen times.
But right now, it's time for a nap.
3 October 2018
I noticed this morning that the milkweed pods are a paler green than the leaves and stems — perhaps they plan to ripen!
Last summer the milkweed bloomed — the flowers have a lovely scent, by the way — pods formed, swelled up to the size of cucumbers, and then froze at that stage, reminding me of what Mother called "persian pickles" and Wikipedia calls buta or something like that. Now at last there is a change.
6 October 2018
I have orders not to wear my old glasses except for reading. I'd be street legal in safety glasses, but I haven't any. So when I went to the farmers' markets today, I wore the shades they put on me after the operation — unlike Dave's shades, they do fit under my helmet, but by the time I got to the fairgrounds market, the pain was getting pretty sharp — not just where they get pushed down, but also where my helmet strap pushes them into my ear. Fortunately, it wasn't very far from there to the dollar store, and a six-dollar pair of sunglasses will protect from bug splats just fine.
I was amazed, when looking up safety glasses yesterday, to find that some are expected to protect you from a 22 bullet.
I got lucky. I have 3.5 needle-threading glasses all over the house: one by each sewing machine, one in the arm of the futon with my hand-sewing supplies, and so forth. But for some reason there was also a 1.5 pair with the dictionary-reading magnifiers.
Yesterday I wanted magnifying glasses to read a Web page that neither ctl+ nor Virtual Magnifying Glass made easy, took that pair, and found it perfect for using the computer and walking around the house. Anything beyond arm's length is blurred, but if I want more than enough data to avoid bumping into it, I can lift the glasses.
Oh, yes, the second cataract operation appears to be successful. Dave looked up the lens Dr. Ryser installed, and found that it is very cleverly designed to minimize the size of the incision.
7 October 2018
It wasn't raining when church was over, but it wasn't pleasant either, so I came straight home.
8 October 2018
Cleaning magnifying glasses has already stopped feeling weird. Perhaps it will feel weird to clean concave lenses after I get prescription glasses.
The fog is thinner than it was when I started the washing machine. Perhaps I'll hang the wash out after all.
Only one load of whites and half a load of blacks this week.
9 October 2018
I had a boustrophedonic tour of eastern Warsaw planned for today, but I found what I was looking for at Sherman & Lyn's, and turned back.
That led to me passing the Dairy Queen at precisely noon, and I reflected that it was time to eat and I'd never set foot in the place.
Then I remembered that the reason I've never set foot in the place is that I don't like their food, so I came home and ate a bowl of chocolate granola with a handful of pecans in it.
11 October 2018
The leaves have fallen off the milkweeds, and the pods still aren't ripe. The stems are still green.
When I walked out into the cold wind, I thought my "dump tour" to Goodwill would be terrible, but it didn't get any colder when I got on the bike. I think that I was riding a little bit with the wind, since it was a little bit from the south and I was going north.
It stopped feeling cold after a while — in fact, I didn't notice that I hadn't put my fuzzy gloves back on when I left Owen's until I found them in my pocket after arriving at home. Nonetheless, riding out into the country didn't sound like fun, so I went back mostly the way I came.
I'd gone out on Park Avenue because I had no magazines to leave at the hospital, but I turned off Park onto Arthur on the way back. I crossed the boardwalk with extreme care because there are leaves on it. Not enough leaves to hide a slick slimy layer, but it's better to start watching for it before it gets here. And one can slip on dry leaves.
I turned left at the fork to admire the gabions, which appear to be finished. Each tier is just high enough to sit on, and topped with warm wooden boards. There are steps at the south end. I can imagine a tour group stopping here to rest while the leader stands in the trail to deliver a lecture.
It's a pity I didn't remember that my phone has a camera in it.
I stopped at Owen's to buy shrimp sushi so that I wouldn't have to make supper for Dave. I warmed up three frozen taquitos for myself.
I've put beans and seeds to soak so I can make bean soup tomorrow.
12 October 2018
The beans are developing nicely. I hadn't realized I had that much smoked neckbone in the freezer. I saw the package last summer, when hot soup wasn't at all appealing, and stashed it and a pound of great northerns for future reference.
Now that they are thawed, the "neckbones" look more like ribs.
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There were some spine bones in there too.
Both the soup and the cornbread were delicious — you can't beat a good smoked pork neck.
I made the corn bread from the first recipe at http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/COOKBOOK/BREAD.HTM, except that I used red wheat flour instead of white wheat (which made the color rather un-corny), and it was ready to turn over after fifteen minutes.
13 October 2018
Dave charged the battery in the old floppy-drive camera his clean-up project unearthed a while back, and it works! And there is a picture of Fred in it.
I had cheese and left-over cornbread for lunch. It was good cornbread, and good cheese. I had a bit of the cheese ball I'd bought at the craft show in Baker Youth Center, a few slices off a small chunk of bar swiss, and some goat cheese from the courthouse farmers' market.
17 October 2018
I'm planning bean soup and cornbread for the third time tonight — and we haven't quite eaten all the cornbread from the second time.
18 October 2018
Oops. I set the oven for 300F instead of 400F; not only was dinner late, the cornbread wasn't browned.
Tonight, Dave had my left-over lunch and some macaroni salad. I ate this, that, and the other, including macaroni salad and half a "bagel thin" with smoked-salmon cream cheese. When I bought the cream cheese, I thought Dave would get all of it, but all one can taste is the "smoked".
I yielded to the temptation to buy a reuben at McAllisters. I got a very good corned beef on rye with suitable dressings, but a reuben is, by definition, *grilled*. And half a pound is too much beef to put into one sandwich. When I saw it, I wasn't sure half would fit into a sandwich bag. But it did, and I had some ice. Dave didn't eat quite all of the half I brought home.
Today was a perfect day for a ride, and I found a suitable pair of safety glasses that cost only four seventy-nine in the farm department of Big R. Never did find the safety glasses supposed to be in the sporting-goods department. But I did see a BB pistol that came packaged with a pair of glasses.
I stopped to photograph the gabions, but discovered that I can't aim my phone's camera while standing in bright sunlight. Shading the screen with my hand didn't help. I need one of those black cloths photographers used to use — but the lens of my camera wouldn't poke out from under.
I noticed that what I'd taken for boards on top is wood-grained plastic. I also noticed several catnip plants with ripe seeds and stole some for Fred's grave. Since there were a lot of them, I also took a small sprig for Al. He was moderate, and ate only half.
19 October 2018
I uploaded the shot and discovered that I'd managed to capture part of what I was aiming at:
20 October 2018
I weighed my wallet this morning. 28.3 ounces. That's a pound and eight tenths!
No wonder my jerseys pull back on my neck.
24 October 2018
Tomorrow is predicted to be a perfect day for a bike ride — except for having to peel off layers as the temperature rises along a nearly vertical line. I haven't sorted out anything to take to Goodwill yet.
Dave took a fluorescent fixture he'd replaced with LEDs to the recycle center, thinking that they'd put it in the free-stuff room, since it still works. And it did go there — on the ceiling over the paint. Dave told the boy he'd bring an eight-foot fixture tomorrow, and he said he had a place for that too.
26 October 2018
Al is asleep with his head in my bag of glasses. The green bag has been on the floor for weeks, but it's been only the last few days that he has been interested in it.
I'll have to disturb him in half an hour — the glasses I want to wear to dinner and the case for the glasses I have on now are in the bag.
I recited the menu for supper tonight: left-over chili, left-over turkey loaf, pre-cooked brats, or, just for a joke, "you can take me to the China Palace".
Dave chose option four.
And it was delicious.
Yesterday Dave took the other light fixture to the recycle center — we were just barely able to get it into the car. I thought that I'd go to the center tomorrow and look around for it, then I remembered that they are closed on Saturdays.
I took a vase or maybe it was a really-awkward drinking glass to Goodwill and came back by way of Tractor Supply to make a seventeen-mile trip out of it.
I dropped off one measly magazine at KCH, then crossed the newly-planted grass to get onto the Beyer Farm Trail, wishing that they still had a spot of gravel and reflecting that at least I'd never do it twice in the same place and once wouldn't hurt the grass. Then I got closer to the yellow ribbons blocking the place where I used to cross and saw a sort of deck or ground-level pier under construction. The boards match those topping the gabions, so I presume it's part of the same project.
And when I got to the rise just south of the fork in the trail,
The catnip was still there, so I snitched another stem of seeds for Fred and another green sprig for Al. The previous sprig got rather squished in transit, but I put this one inside the vase I was taking to goodwill, and found a sheltered spot in the insulated pannier for it after I dumped the vase, so it was in perfect condition until Al got hold of it.
I'd sworn off McAllister's Deli because none of their dishes are suitable for one not-so-little old lady who has to exercise afterward. A cup of their broccoli-cheddar soup would have been just right with a hard roll, but there is nothing on the menu remotely resembling a hard roll.
But about the tenth time I perused the take-home menu, I discovered that you could have the soup served in a bread bowl.
Yesterday I learned that a bread bowl is not a substitute for a hard roll. It didn't help that a "cup" of soup is about half a cup more than will fit into a bread bowl, so it arrived sitting in a puddle. Thank goodness I didn't order a "bowl" of soup in a bread bowl! (A "bowl" is half again what you get in a "cup", according to the calorie counts on the menu.)
On the plus side: you get the lid of the bowl cut into quarters and served in the corners of the plate. On the minus side: the bread isn't all that great, about one notch above Wonder Bread, and it gets that notch only by having crust.
I put the corners of the lid into a sandwich bag, after biting spilled soup off two of them, and put pieces of the bowl into another bag, which brought the carb level down to ample. I got hungry a few hours later, but did not consider eating the bread in my pannier. I did have some with left-over bean soup for supper.
And tonight I made the remainder of the corners into bupli soup for my bedtime snack. Bupli soup is nothing but hot bread-and-milk with a little browned butter in it. One thing the recipe didn't mention and the story didn't emphasize is that the Amish use home-baked bread to make the soup, and bake it days ahead of time. It's also cubed hours ahead of time, and allowed to dry a little.
27 October 2018
I passed by the gabions again today, but didn't snitch any catnip. There are two deckwalks now, and both are open for service. I used the second one when I saw a truck blocking the trail at the bend. A machine was loading rolls of straw-stuffed erosion stopper into the truck after men coiled them up. The truck was already piled up; I didn't think there was that much of the stuff around! When I was crossing the grass to get back onto the trail, one of the men trotted over to apologize for blocking my way. I asked him how they got rid of the used stopper, and he said that after taking trees down, they have a weenie roast.
I crossed where erosion had taken out most of the grass seed. I wondered whether they would leave that stopper there; it was darker and thinner than the others, as if it had been there longer. But after dallying for a while, I decided that I'd see whether it was still there the next time I use the trail.
28 October 2018
Dave offered to drive me to my appointment tomorrow, and I took him up on it. The appointment is for the time that I normally get out of bed.
Today, since it was raining and I can't hold an umbrella while riding a bike, I walked to church for the first time since I started doctoring for leg pain. It didn't hurt a bit! Nor did walking home, but I was a bit tired because only three of us stayed after lunch to wash dishes and clean up the kitchen.
I ate one more bowl of soup than I should have, but that wasn't a lot of overeating because I wanted to sample as many soups as possible and took small servings. The first was the best: rice and kidney beans with a bunch of seasonings and hardly any broth.
I should try putting black beans into spanish rice.
29 October 2018
I now have a prescription for glasses, but the optician is closed on Mondays. Ah, well, what's one more day?
Dave put dimmer switches in his room and the sewing room today. He had previously switched his bulb ceiling light for a dimmable LED fixture.
I think I'm going to like my dimmer very much. For years I've been struggling with "if the light is bright enough for sewing, it's too bright for typing". And the dimmed light is redder, just what I want in the evenings.
I haven't scattered Fred's catnip seeds yet. Which is one reason I didn't snitch any on Saturday.
Dave struggled and struggled getting the dimmer switches out of the packages. Later in the day, he put the last AA cell in a package into the flashlight the mailman had just brought. When throwing away the box, I was delighted to see that it had a seal saying "Certified frustration-free packaging". He had needed only to cut one tape to gain access, and there was a dotted line showing where to cut.
30 October 2018
UPS just brought another dome light to replace the bare bulbs in the kitchen.
The Lily Center for Lakes and Streams Open House and Interpretive Hike is this coming Saturday. Weather Underground says that they will have a good day for it.
I picked a handful of seed pods off the marigolds and scattered them in the fern bed. The fern bed seems to be hostile to marigolds, but one of the plants that I transplanted last spring survived long enough to bloom.
31 October 2018
My new glasses will arrive sometime next week.
I've been giving my recipe for cornbread a workout this month. It's quick and easy and it serves two.
The last freeze got the milkweed pods, but I think that there are ripe seeds inside. If I think of it, I'll tear some open the next dry and very windy day.