I'm a poet and don't know it!
This morning Dave said "no Christmas music" and I immediately croaked:
Sliding o'er the ice
In a beat-up Chevrolet
Oh, go out and have some fun
It's an icy New Year's Day
Today was predicted to be the only dry day this week, so yesterday I darned my silk tights and this morning I put them on and spent five or ten minutes putting on three pairs of socks, and combed my hair outside to make sure I had enough layers on.
And then when it was time to go, I said "I'm *not* going out into that gloom" and went back to sewing.
I chopped the left-over chicken and added it to the ham salad. It nearly filled the container, so all I added was a few minced celery leaves, salt and pepper, and some ranch dressing. I put some on a cracker and fed it to Dave, and he said that it's perfect.
I put the bones back into the storage dish; I think I'll warm them in chicken broth for my bedtime snack. [I did]
I'm thrilled with the mandoline Linda bought for me at Aldi. Very simple, and though it advertises three thicknesses of slices, there are four positions for the regulator button: thick, medium, thin, and slightly negative, which the instructions call "locked". You can still cut yourself on the blade, but you have to work at it.
I've laid out hamburger patties to thaw so I can slice an onion with it tonight. I may use it for slicing part of a vegetable regularly, since it doesn't come apart into six pieces for cleaning.
And the finger protector looks as though it will actually work.
The finger protector does work, but only when the vegetable is thin enough that it actually does some good. The "protector" of my old one stops working when the vegetable gets thin.
But it does require that the top of the vegetable be flat, so that enough of the little bumps engage to keep it from slipping. [At lunch time, I tried turning the heel of the onion I sliced for the hamburgers upside down, and the finger guard let me cut it into paper-thin slices perfectly and completely — though the slice stuck on the guard was a tad thicker than the others.]
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Near the end of the year Dave bought a fleece "comforter" for the bed. When it arrived, we got two surprises: The description said only "navy" but it's reversible; I put it on the bed with the white side up. And when we unfolded it, we found two fleece pillow cases. I presume that they are shams, for hiding the pillows in the daytime. Though we almost certainly have pillows to fit them, I don't consider shams all that decorative.
But it turns out that the cat adores the pillowcases. Yesterday I found him asleep on the white comforter and laid a pillow case navy side up beside him, and he got up and moved onto it.
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Tradition lives on! On my way to church, I saw three little boys and a sled on Ma Sunday's steps.
The latest improvement to Facebook predictably crashes my computer, so I guess I won't be checking in very often.
Even though there was only one load of wash yesterday, it took the whole day.
In the evening, I ran four dust-mop heads through a rinse-and-spin cycle, then put soap on them and let them soak all night, then this morning I let the rinse cycle finish and rinsed them with a wash-and-rinse cycle, then fluffed them in the dryer and laid them out to dry. Came out looking pretty good. I was sure I had a canvas mop head, but all of these were plastic. Yellow plastic, but the soap appears to have taken the dye out — they are now white. [When I affixed the heads to the handles, I found that one of them was *woven* plastic — bright-yellow woven plastic.]
I checked the broom closet: The mop that we decided to keep has a canvas head.
Now all I need to do is to figure out a way to attach two mop handles to my bike so I can take the mops and the spare heads to Our Father's House.
Dave had his other eye worked on yesterday. At the follow-up exam today, the doctor said all was well, but he can't have new glasses for three weeks.
With any luck at all, I'll have forgotten everything I learned about waiting in the parking lot before I need to do it again.
I made progress on retrofitting an old dress with a higher neckline this morning. I hope to wear it to church this Sunday.
Over jeans; I'm still hiding out in the fellowship hall.
I should wear my extremely-loud suit once in a while before I go back to letting people see me.
Dave came back from his annual check-up with orders to call 211 and get an appointment for a Covid-19 shot. Today is the first day that eighty-year-olds are in line, so I expect a certain amount of flailing around.
I hope that this means that all the people in nursing homes have got theirs.
When Dave got back from the check-up, I was halfway through pinning the new neckband for its final stitching.
Before I finished writing this, Dave reported that his turn to make an appointment would be in about an hour.
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Dave thought the web site was weird at first, but on reflection, it is quite clever. Instead of going to the web site directly, you go to a very simple countdown page that tells you when it will be your turn to use the web site. This stops the site from crashing, and it would be difficult to overwhelm the countdown page — so it probably renders the site immune to DOS attacks as well.
His appointment is Wednesday the thirteenth at one thirty.
He worried that he could get a shot and I couldn't, but I pointed out that his shot protects me as well.
But even after it's my turn, I plan to continue hiding out until *everybody* has had a shot.
If only because I've enjoyed not having colds and flu for a year.
At first glance the dinosaur sculpture doesn't appear to have suffered sun damage, but its eyes are bulging. Not too much more thawing and they will fall out.
I took some pictures a few days ago.
I got rid of one of the two dustmops I had wrapped up for Our Father's House by taking it to church today. Someone is moving into an unfurnished apartment and needs everything. I gather that she had been sheltering with a friend; what she had been sheltering from, I shouldn't speculate.
A few days ago I took three slices of Hillbilly bread out of the freezer and put them into a semi-disposable box to get stale, then this morning I hurried to make them into croutons for the meat loaf that Dave wants to make.
When Dave brought home the order, there was no ground beef. Ah, well, croutons keep and we did get the beef I want to bake.
I was much astounded that they would be out of ground beef, but when I went to Martin's site to put it back on the shopping list, I found out what was wrong. The ground beef had somehow been marked "No Substitution".
So I changed it to "best comparable". They have *lots* of two-to-three pound packages of 80% ground beef, all apparently identical.
Sending off the to-go order always feels a bit like crossing the Rubicon. If I've forgotten something, I have to do without it for three weeks.
The first load of wash is all on hangers and racks, and Dave's socks are dry and ready to fold.
I'll wash the blacks and the red half-blanket after my nap.
I now have a pair of gray-pink socks.
I mistook a half-tablespoon measure for a teaspoon measure, and the bread definitely over-rose.
I was trying an experiment, based on the recipe for "yeast biscuits" in Mother's file box and a web site about running a pizza parlor, which suggested chilling dough to "retard" it, so that one mixing could provide fresh dough all day.
Yesterday evening, I put two cups of flour, one cup of gluten, half a tablespoon of yeast, a teaspoon of lecithin, a quarter teaspoon of ascorbic acid, a tablespoon of salt, a squirt of honey, and two cups of water into the big mixing bowl, expecting a thick batter that it would be easy to stir an egg into this morning. Instead, I got a sticky dough that I had to knead and knead with the back of the spoon to get the flour all mixed in. I left it in the garage all night.
Two teaspoons of salt are enough, but Dave is hyponatremic, and everything must be oversalted to taste good to him.
Getting the egg to combine was a real bear this morning. Then I kneaded the dough while sprinkling in flour. I stopped adding flour when a few tablespoons remained in the two-cup measure. I figured that if I could knuckle the dough without getting my fingers glommed up, the flour was enough.
And now it's time to form the loaf.
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Another mistake: I pre-heated the oven to 400° instead of 450° and the bread didn't brown. But it's hard to mess up bread and it will do.
But the timing was off; it was time to put it into the oven just when it was time for my nap.
At three o'clock, I put a piece of bottom round beef and some vegetables into the oven, in a skillet with a lid on it, and took the lid off and added shallots and an unmolested clove of giant garlic at five, and served it at five thirty.
Superb, but next time I'll cook it three hours instead of two and a half. I pre-heated the oven to 450°, then turned it to 250° one minute after putting the meat in. The potatoes, carrots, celery, and peppers were all good.
And I'll remember to salt the meat *before* putting it into the oven. I remembered at five, but the salt all just sat on top, except for what fell into the broth.
One of Dave's new toys neatened up the kitchen. For years, I've been putting knives and tools on the magnets where-ever there was space, so they were pretty random, except that the measuring spoons were usually on the bottom left. When Dave's new knife sharpener arrived, he sharpened all the knives, including an antique that was just there for decoration, and put them back in logical order.
I think that will hold for a while, because the place where there is a space is the place where I got the knife.
I'm planning to use the antique to chop croutons for the meat loaf, if we get hamburger with our next order. I shall check twice that "no substitution" isn't checked.
The bread isn't as good as the previous loaf.
I got to go someplace today! Dave discarded a power supply that had to go to the recycling center, and I also toured all the construction sites in town and looked at the house where some yahoo decided to park in the living room. The paper, when I came home and read it, said that the perp tried to run away, but the neighbors said "there are fifteen of us, you are not going anywhere".
Search for the elevator shaft in the new old-folks home over: When I rode into town, a workman was troweling a connection between the newly-poured concrete floor around the elevator shaft and the floor of the existing building; the new stuff they are building is going to be a wing of the building that's already three stories high. I must look at the east end to see whether there are doorways at the ends of the halls when I next go.
I still don't know where the stairwells are going to be, but they were putting up balcony floors beside the mysterious protrusions between apartments. They looked like small elevator shafts when I first saw them, but were divided both horizontally and vertically, and had doors on both sides. I think maybe they are intended to allow access to the balconies from the hallways.
The good news: they are vaccinating everyone over seventy. The bad news: all appointments are taken.
I figure that will clear up in a week.
Stock + Field is closing all its stores. The gratuitous name change in 2019 was a bad omen — stores do things like that when they are hurting.
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I'm catching up on Facebook tonight. It didn't crash my computer until I clicked "view image" on a cartoon.
I hope resetting didn't lose my place in the notifications.
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This time Facebook didn't crash until I tried to log out.
Landmark: this morning I clipped seven nails, not because they were broken, but because they were too long.
Of course, my reason for considering them too long was that they were likely to break.
Dave made the meatloaf yesterday, and didn't chop the croutons. I had made them small enough.
I checked the recipe after, and we hadn't strayed all that far from the specified ingredients — mini-sweet pepper for bell pepper and jalapeño for cayenne was about as far off as it got. Of course, he hadn't bought a chunk of beef and ground it in a food processor.
We got rid of our food processor many years ago, when I noticed that it was too small for any job that was worth getting it dirty. And I like my vegetables cut clean.
Three loads of wash. The first one was one sheet, a pillowcase, five handkerchiefs, and Dave's socks.
It's now possible to buy sheeting, but I bought a whole bolt of heavy muslin, and that will last the rest of my life — a muslin sheet takes at least ten years to wear out, and there's enough muslin left to make four more sets. (Wild guess; I'm not going to unfold and measure it.)
This morning's News Now says that the sheriff's department is asking people to refrain from hanging up when they dial dispatch by mistake.
I've often wondered why there are no public-service announcements to teach people how to behave when calling Emergency. Most of the unhelpful responses happen not because of panic, but because the caller has never done this before.
One important rule that should be promulgated is "Never hang up until the dispatcher tells you to hang up.". You can say "should I hang up now?".
I wonder why I always double the wrong letter in "sheriff"?
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Back from Columbia City. My follow-up shot is on February 17, which means that I can go into a grocery on St. Patrick's Day.
Assuming that other people get their shots, and that they don't conclude that the crisis is over and it's polite to go around coughing on people. After my immune system has had a year off, my first cold is going to be a doozy.
I asked whether I could get my second shot in Warsaw, and she said that I could, but it would mess up their bookkeeping, and I'd risk not getting an appointment on the right day. It only takes about an hour to drive to Columbia City and back, and now I know the way.
Pity I can't go shopping while I'm there.
Leafing through the Times-Union e-Edition, looking for interesting ads before I lie down for a nap, I noticed the headline on a letter: "Recession Coming?"
Nope, no way is it *coming*. The subject line should read "Will the recession get worse?"
I'll read the letter later.
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Whoosh! Estimated total $321.54. But we are stocking up on canned soup and canned meat, and it's four weeks since our previous order.
Dave will pick it up at eleven tomorrow.
They left out the slip saying what had been left out and what had been substituted. So as I put away, I say "hey, where's my sesame oil?" and "we didn't get the Spam".
Must be a lot that I haven't missed yet, because the total is $243.65. I wasn't expecting to get the flat buns.
Dave found a list on the Web site that includes omissions and substitutions at the top. It explains why I got a huge can of beef chunks — they didn't have a little one.
Now I'm putting missed items and every-time items on next month's list, and wishing there were a way to delete items from the "buy it again" list.
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We bought so much canned goods that I took everything off the meat, soup, and beans shelf and scrubbed it before putting the cans away. Now the canned meat takes up less space than it did before we bought all that stuff.
While I was napping, Dave discovered that his right hearing aid was missing, and he has no idea when or where it fell out. We are hoping that Roomba turns it up, but it might be on the parking lot at Martin's.
Dave went out to the garage intending to do a thorough search of the car, backed out the lawn mower to make it easier to look into the car and, once outside, saw his hearing aid lying on the concrete beside the big door.
And it hadn't been damaged in the slightest.
Large relief. He thinks maybe it fell out while he was unloading groceries.
Dave made a meatloaf today. I peeled an onion and chopped up two pieces of frozen jalapeño.
This was more like the recipe he was following, because he remembered that the stick blender that he bought when he was making soap has a food-processor attachment. But we still have no intention of buying a roast, cutting it into stew meat, and grinding it in the food processor.
This was a better loaf than the first one, but there was more left over. We tried to be restrained.
I noticed tonight that my vaccination site is still sore. There is also a warm spot on my arm. I don't think I've felt ill.
Checking this morning, I find a sore spot — on the other arm. I wonder what I did?
The pork ribs are ready to pop into the oven at three, and shallots, apples, and mini-sweet peppers are ready to add at five . Now all I have to do is wake up by two-thirty to pre-heat the oven.
I put two potatoes, two stalks of celery, a chunk of sweet potato, and four carrot slices in the roaster. And I remembered to salt the ribs on all sides.
Al is curled up on the treadle sewing machine with his paw over his eyes, so I closed the curtains.
I think he has a good idea there, but I'm about to put on my boots and wade through the snow to church. Services have been cancelled, but I have a key.
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I spent quite a while in the church, but I forgot to put my little notebook in my pocket, so I don't know how long. I didn't go stairclimbing because I was wearing boots. I did figure out that you can go down steps without bending your ankles if you turn sideways.
On my way up, I passed a family building a snowman on Sunday Lane. Lots of people were shovelling out cars when I came back.