I've hung a sheet out a few times this winter, but I believe that today is the first time this year that I've carried a basket of clothing out to the line. It was all my underwear, since I tumble-dried the towels and washrags, and all of Dave's clothes were in the second load.
I managed to work my nap in with the turkey baking and laundry. But I'm tired anyway, because two yahoos thought nap time was the perfect time to catch me confused enough to buy medical supplies from obvious scammers. I chewed out the first one, and clicked "pretend you have a do-not-call list" on the second. (One is *supposed* to lay the phone down gently and let them deliver the whole sales call, to cut into the time they have for harassing someone else.)
Phone spam is really depressing because the use of a phone line costs a little money. E-mail and Usenet spammers steal all their connections, so a million spams are as cheap as one, and a lot of those spammers are openly in it for the sheer joy of destruction, but if we weren't up to our necks in gullible people, phone spammers would give up and quit.
Took my exercise ride yesterday. Only sixteen miles instead of seventeen, because I packed a lunch and cut off the jog over to Subway to pick up a sandwich. Seventeen miles is a reasonable rehearsal for twenty; sixteen isn't.
I saw some yellow crocus in bloom on the return leg of the trip.
I hope to make progress on my new shirt today.
⁂
Not much progress, but some.
Turkey-salad sandwiches for supper tonight. First harvest of the garden in it: the kow choi/garlic chives are really good when they first come up.
Tonight, I'm planning to make gravy and reconstitute potatoes, and serve left-over turkey and dressing.
I also put a peeled, cored apple and a cup of frozen cranberries into a buttered skillet and slow-simmered it, and added some honey a while before serving. When I put the left-overs away, I gave it a squirt of maple syrup and it's such tasty jam that I plan to do it again.
I'm still out of places to go that are neither too close nor too far away. Today is glorious; in desperation, I intend to go to Aldi by way of Pierceton, and go to Pierceton by way of Hillcrest Graveyard.
And it was lovely. Over twenty miles, and I didn't in the least mind sprinting past the parked cars on Park Avenue when I came home.
Tomorrow is predicted to be increasingly dry and sunny, and I have a brand-new clothesline, so I've put a load of towels and rags in to soak. I plan to bleach it in the morning, then wash in hot water and dry in the sun.
A Taste of Ag is the following day; I was upset to read that in the paper because Tuesday is the only good day for another long ride this week, then I realized that I'm sure to get back before the fairgrounds open at five o'clock.
But I can't hop off the bike, unload it, then hop back on — there is no way to carry my walker on the bike, and I can't stand in long, long lines without it.
Actually, I got to the fairgrounds about ten minutes after the event began. I found a suitable fence near a picnic table with a fine view of the door-prize booth, locked up, and went to stand in the free-sample line. With practice, they've figured out how to keep the lines moving, so it didn't hurt my back. But one trick for moving the lines along was to give out fewer samples.
After seeing the exhibits, I went back to the entrance, where the line for the door prizes had evaporated, and got mine just before another clump of people arrived. This time I got only what everybody got. The previous trip, I also got a pie, and on my first trip I got a huge tote bag of frozen poultry. I'm planning to use the "Black Ice" that was in it when I shop for frozen food this Friday.
If the rain ends at the predicted time. Weather Underground is astonishingly accurate at saying what the weather is going to be, but sometimes they are a bit off in saying when it will get here.
The door prize was a box of microwave popcorn. I passed it into Dave's custody as soon as I got home.
I also gave him the spatter screen that I bought at Goodwill. He had been wanting one when boiling down his maple syrup.
I had a bunch of receipts to punch into Quicken; I must have bought some other stuff. I bought fifty feet of braided clothesline at Lowe's.
I checked the weather report last night and chickened out of today's ride.
This morning at nine I looked at the calendar and saw that I had an appointment at Grossnickel's at nine-thirty. I dressed in record time, tied my hair back instead of braiding it, and just barely made it. Whereupon the receptionist told me my appointment is on the twenty-ninth.
Since I was already there, I went down the road to Dr. Darr's office and had blood drawn for a Vitamin D count.
And the D count came back "you're doing fine, don't change a thing."
This morning, Dave asked me to get Al out of his room. Al was curled up on some papers on the desk, well out of reach. Before I could figure out how to get close enough to pick him up without scrambling the papers, he got up and walked onto the table, carefully stepping between the delicate components laid out for Dave's homework. I got my hands under him, lifted straight up, he came quietly, and I said "He knows the drill." Then I repeated those words with a different meaning when I carelessly passed close enough to the office chair for Al to latch firmly to the back. We managed to unbutton his paws, he called me a couple of untranslatable words, and is now curled up on the Oxford English Dictionary.
We've never had to be careful about leaving food out because, with a grudging exception for liverwurst, human food is *disgusting*.
Not too long ago Al suddenly discovered that some of the things humans eat are tasty, to the point that he sometimes sniffs around the floor to see whether we have dropped something.
I bought a roll of braunschweiger a while back, and a few days ago I opened it.
Whereupon I discovered that the liverwurst exception is no longer the least bit grudging.
Dave set the new clothesline post in concrete today. I dried the clothes on racks on the patio.
Lovely warm day. After supper, I rode to Owen's to buy celery because I want to make bean soup tomorrow. I wore *one* pair of tights and *one* short-sleeved cotton shirt!
And when I got back I shucked out of those sweaty polyester tights and put on fleece pants. I must try harder to find some wool tights. Right now, I'd settle for "merino".
Yay rah! There is going to be a dollar store where Aldi moved out. Only two years empty. Now when was it that Marsh died?
2017, according to last week's mayor's column.
I pushed the Culta-Eze around the garden today. This required rather a lot of debris-raking. I still need to use the shrub rake to get debris out of the winter onions and garlic, and I need to rake out the humps from potato digging, but I'll be able to plant onions and potatoes Real Soon Now. I already have the sets, which I bought at Open Air Nursery on my way home from my first trip to Leesburg.
The asparagus is up. Well, some of the asparagus is up.
The daffodils need dead-heading already.
The paving of Commerce Drive in Woodland Plaza is front-page news in today's paper.
Last fall, Dave drove me back from an eye appointment the day after my last pain shot, which hadn't taken effect yet, and we stopped for breakfast at Richard's, which meant coming home over Commerce Drive. Even though he drove slowly, it hurt a LOT, especially at the corner where I have to turn right and left at the same time when I come through there on a bicycle.
I'm planning to go out that way on my way to Oswego tomorrow just to check out that corner. I suspect that it won't be difficult at all now that it's flat. I may turn around and go back through it just to check!
It's a beautiful day out there. I plan to look at it through double-pane glass.
Almost May: I wonder whether I can find a group who want to tour Bonneyville Mill? It's a pleasant drive, but no fun alone. (Not to mention that I haven't tested my rotator cuff on anything longer than to Aldi by way of 250E, and that not recently.
It's washday today, because I had to get my eyes checked yesterday. The verdict was "doing fine, come back in a year."
Not quite two loads today.
Al seems to have developed a taste for napping on the Oxford English Dictionary.
The weeds are going to be knee high by the time it's dry long enough to work the garden. The sets I bought are sprouting.
⁂