I didn't pull very many weeds in the garden today, either.
After supper, I mixed some chopped garlic chives into yogurt to infuse overnight. The dip probably won't be as good as usual; the chives were kind of peakéd. It may be time to thin them.
I also fried the seasonings for the cheese dip in two tablespoons of butter, ready to add flour, milk, and cheese at the last minute. I may have overdone the jalapeño.
Having guests is good for you!
For weeks, I have been shopping with increasing despair for six-inch paper plates. You'd think one could buy them at any dollar store, but not Dollar Tree or Dollar General or any grocery.
This afternoon I climbed up on the stepladder to get the party cups down and discovered two sleeves of six-inch plates, one unopened and the other about three-fourths full. This should last a couple of years.
Before that, I got down on my knees to haul the candle warmer out of storage, and discovered a feeding bowl that should be taken to the animal shelter.
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The cheese dip wasn't very good to begin with, and when I put stuff away, I found that the candle had blown out and it was cold. I don't think anybody wanted any anyway. Only two cans of soda were taken.
Lovely fireworks, and we visited a while afterward. I don't think I'd seen all-gold skyrockets overlapping to make patterns before.
I have found out why the dip wasn't as good as usual. When frying the seasonings, I was thinking white sauce: I was going to use two tablespoons of flour, so I used two tablespoons of butter.
In previous years, I used half a stick.
I noticed a low butter-to-seasonings ratio while I was stirring it, but thought I used too much onion etc. rather than too little butter.
If I'm going to go on the Tour d' Lakes, I need to take a long ride this week. I want to wash towels on Friday, and it's going to rain on Wednesday and Thursday, so that means tomorrow.
But I've nowhere to go.
I went to Walmart to buy pants hangers. They didn't have any. Oh, well, I think I got them at Meijer. Meijer didn't have any. Perhaps pants hangers are one of the products with a broken supply line.
I suggested, when adding "fake milk" to my shopping list, that Dave might like a non-dairy weight-loss shake and he said he'd like to try one. I hunted and hunted in Walmart's grocery department and couldn't find the diet food. The same drill in Meijer.
As I was packing my purchases on the bike, and planning to squat under a tree to eat my left-over lunch for supper (because the first patch of shade I found was a loooong way from the entrance), Dave texted that he wanted an item I'd mentioned in a text while in the store, so I took my pizza to one of the benches in the air-conditioned vestibule. Then, as I entered the store proper, I noticed the pharmacy to my right and looped through it, and there was the diet food: as far as possible from the other food.
Phone spammers decided that I didn't need a nap today. I was rude to the third one. I regret that, but I was a more-practiced rude to the fourth.
Dave opened one of the diet shakes today. As a meal replacement, it is almost as satisfying as a sip of water. As a "shake", it needs enough chocolate syrup to hide the taste. Plus as much evaporated milk as you have diluted syrup.
Since dry weather and partial sunlight is predicted for today, I'm running the elaborate make-it-absorbent process on a load of towels: Soak overnight in detergent, add bleach, soak half an hour more, spin out, soak in hot water and a cup of vinegar for half an hour, spin out, soak in hot water and half a cup of baking soda (washing soda appears to be extinct) for half an hour, spin out, rinse. All accompanied by jumping up every five minutes to agitate for a minute.
Way back before the word "arcology" was coined, or at least before I heard of it, I world-built (but never wrote) a not-as-deserted-as-it-looks planet, and for the ancient history of the empty towers, I designed a computer-controlled washing machine. One told the machine exactly what one wanted done with one's clothes, and it told the customer how long it would take and how many coins to put in.
Now I have a computer-controlled washing machine, and it says "Push one of these buttons. What happens next is none of your business."
Grumble, gripe. It's raining, so I have to wear shoes to church, and shoes aggravate my corns.
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No puddles to walk around or streams to cross, and I barely needed the umbrella — it wasn't raining much, and stopped before I'd gone very far.
Had the wash done by lunchtime except for the socks, which still need to be folded and put away.
After my nap, I cultivated the garden because Alexa said it would rain from 2:15 to 2:15 (not a typo), and the soil was just barely dry enough to cultivate. (It's 2:25; I must have blinked and missed the rain.)
After cultivating, I dug the potatoes. The healthier hill produced six tiny potatoes that added up to about half of the sprouted potato that I planted. The hill that I thought had died produced one fine fat potato (which I speared with the spading fork) and a small one.
I blasted the wound with the hose and put the fat potato into the crisper drawer; the others went into the garage with the store-bought potatoes.
Now it's time to pull the multipliers. It looks as though I'll have bulbs to share this year.
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3:22 — When I started back to the garden it was raining, so I started some urgent ironing instead. When that was interrupted by a spam call, I unplugged the iron in case it was a real call and I got distracted, so when I saw that the rain had stopped, I went out and pulled the multipliers — then put away the spading fork that I'd left out in the rain.
I used the dandelion digger to pop the bulbs up.
The southern part of the row didn't produce as well as the part next to the compost heap, so I can't give away enough to plant for harvest next spring, but there are plenty to give someone enough to grow seed for the following year, plus a taste or two.
Multipliers reach the scallion stage about when the winter onions start going to seed, and I also like to cook ripe ones whole.
They are quite convenient: if you like fat bulbs, you eat the fat bulbs and save the small ones to plant. Small bulbs split only once or not at all and make fat bulbs. If you like small bulbs, you eat those and the fat bulbs will split two or three times and make small bulbs.
I ate hardly any, because the winter onions are still making fat bulbils. I harvested enough bulbils that broke off while I was cultivating that I had to get a bigger container to keep them in. (Bulbils stop developing if I put them in the fridge.)
Dave was sad to hear that Weather Underground says that Wednesday will be a good day to go on a training ride. He's frowned on my participation in the Tour des Lakes ever since he had to come hunting for me after I came down with heat prostration. But, since I was lying in the shade with plenty of water, I'd brisked up by the time he found me.
This year I will spend at least half an hour in the Pizza King no matter what, and I plan to come straight home after checking out at checkpoint two.
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Checked Google Maps: if I come straight home from Checkpoint One, it's only thirty miles, which I can handle. And straight home passes fairly near to Pizza King. But closer to another pizza parlor.
We had the full-size potato for supper today. I cut it in half by sticking a knife into the puncture, zapped it, and kept it warm in a skillet of split winter-onion bulbils. Also had canned peas and a package of Bremmer salisbury steak, of which we ate about a third.
Last night I finally got around to validating the June Banner. The validator found a place where I'd commented out the dateline on an entry, so I should have validated before e-mailing.
This morning, I picked up the onions I pulled yesterday, and laid them on newspaper in the wagon. When the dirt on them has dried some, I'll move them onto newspapers in a tray cut off the bottom of a Chewy box.
I had been very afraid I'd forget to do that and let them sprout in the rain.
Weather Underground says that on Thursday morning, I might be able to run the five-tine cultivator over the row to pop up missed bulbs. The prediction for Saturday has gone back to isolated thunderstorms.
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Last year I buried three rotten onions in the raised flower beds and two of them lived. Today I got tired of waiting for the two stalks on the onion in the herb bed to ripen, grabbed them, and pulled very gently and slowly. Up came two fine, fat little bulbs, and the hole revealed a third that hadn't tried to flower.
I hosed them off and they are in the crisper. Perhaps I'll chop one for the hot dogs in chili sauce tonight — but I have a shallot that's been around for a while, and Kroger shallots don't keep.
And there is also that box of winter-onion bulbils.
Turned out that neither of us wanted chopped onion.
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I didn't come back from my all-day ride very tired — I'd have sprinted through the village if the car ahead of me hadn't had to stop for some pedestrians, and I did come close to getting back up to speed.
I did refrain from sprinting on Sunset — a long stretch with no intersections, but I think I could have if I hadn't been afraid of using up my endurance.
I think that many stops to sit and rest helped. At the TippeRiver Downs gazebo, I did a few repeats of my evening exercises.
Google Maps predicted twenty-two miles. I think that when I plug in the way I actually went, it will be a tad more.
Pleasant day, but I desperately need a shower. My do-rag, jersey, and bra are soaking in a bucket.
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I packed four bags of ice yesterday and put them into the freezer. When loading the bike this morning, I reflected that there was a long stretch of the route where I couldn't hope to refill my bottles, and I was taking only two, so I might want to melt some of those ice cubes. In the event, I did put some into my tea when it got too strong — and too warm. But two bottles lasted from CCAC to Walmart, with water left over. But I did dump 9.25 ounces of orange-pineapple juice into the bottle of tea and, later on, several ice cubes.
I got my picture in the Ink Free News
I've been planning and training for the Tour des Lakes for months — and when the morning dawned, I didn't wanna go. Went, and had a pleasant time after the sun came out.
It would appear that someone complained about arrows stuck to the pavement, I can't think why else they would stick them to yard signs instead. This made them hard to see — at one intersection, I went straight through, then stopped and looked and looked, and didn't find the sign until a group behind me turned left. Worse, putting up yard signs is more trouble than putting a piece of tape on the pavement, so they stuck them *only* at corners, not the set of three specified for Dan Henry marks, and I saw only one confirmation arrow in a long stretch where there might have been turns.
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Looking into the mirror, I'm glad I kept my hat on all during the service. I washed my hair yesterday and can't do a thing with it.
I ate way too much at the picnic after the service, which didn't go well with the tenderloin I ate at Barbee on the way back from Syracuse yesterday. The fries alone were more than twice what I should have eaten, and I didn't leave so much as a piece of chopped onion on my plate. I did put three-fourths of the meat into a plastic bag that I carry for just such an emergency, and put it on the ice in my pannier. I'm planning to have tenderloin melt for breakfast. (I nibbled the tenderloin square at various snack times.)
I had a good long nap this afternoon, and still felt tired all evening. It took less than an hour of rest stop to get over the tenderloin.
Tuesday, sweet Tuesday, . . .
With nothing do-it-yesterday urgent on my schedule. I don't know what to do with myself.
Dave is roomba-ing the south end of the house, having done the north end yesterday.
Yesterday was a good day for drying clothes on the line. After my nap, I went to Kroger, and got back after time to put supper on the table. The fried chicken took less time to bake than it said on the package, but we still ate very late.
Dave had requested refrigerated fried chicken. I hunted and hunted and finally gave up and bought frozen fried chicken — then saw a package of refrigerated chicken in the cart ahead of mine in the check-out line. I very briefly considered going back to ask a worker at the deli counter for directions, but I was too tired and hungry to brook more delay by then.
Yesterday was glorious weather, and I spent it sitting at the computer and reading _Penric's Progress_. But I did do some of the reading sitting on the porch.
Yesterday pretty much brought the garden up to date, save that the asparagus bed needs weeding. Today I dug a wheelbarrow of dirt from the old compost heap, repaired holes in the herb bed, planted offcuts of italian oregano in part of the trench left when I took the edging out, and dumped the rest of the dirt on a low spot in the garden.
While digging, I piled so many weeds on the newer compost heap that it looks like a bush.
I also cut the bulbs off the garlics that I dug up and hung on the line a few days ago. Next time I'll hose them off before I hang them to dry. Rain doesn't do the job.
Tonight, egg noodles boiled in left-over store-bought beef broth, seasoned with left-over canned soup.
Oops, that wasn't left-over stew, it was left-over "salisbury steak" (meatloaf) in brown gravy. It was edible. I added some winter-onion bulbils and a few strips of peeled carrot.
This morning, I got about a quarter of the way around the garden, hedge-clipping the grass the mower can't reach. The rolling garden stool is a big help.
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For supper tonight, frozen pizza. It was square and the corners hung over the griddle I usually bake pizza on. The cookie sheet was too narrow, so, for possibly the first time, I put a pizza on the pizza pan I use for a lid for my twelve-quart mixing bowl.
It doesn't work at all well for the purpose. The pan got cool enough to handle almost instantly, and the pizza was close behind. Once I got it cut, I put it on the stovetop, which was still giving off a lot of heat, but it was still only warm when we ate it.
I ate five of the sixteen slices anyway. I really shouldn't have eaten that fifth slice. That didn't stop me from having canned peaches for dessert.
Farmer's Markets, with stops at Our Father's house and the library on the way out and Kroger on the way back. Had to dump my ice and throw away the sandwich bags to get everything into my panniers; somehow, I didn't bruise the white tomatoes I got at the courthouse market, and we had one of them on hamburgers for supper tonight.
I had to walk halfway across the parking lot to find grass to dump the ice on. But a trash can was convenient to where I'd parked the bike.
On the way up Sunday Lane, I saw sycamore bark all over the street, and reflected that sycamores must shake themselves in unison. Then I looked around and couldn't find any sycamore tree. A sycamore big enough to flake would be pretty hard to miss.
Being almost out of cash, I walked to the teller machine after church. When I passed Kelainey's on the way back, I called Dave and he hadn't eaten, so I bought a buffalo-chicken melt. It wasn't very buffalo, but we had a tub of buffalo sauce left over from my last Happy Meal.
I spilled tomato sauce on my white dirty-work shirt, so I put it in with the towels. The stains stood fast through rubbing with bar soap, an overnight soak in detergent, a half-hour soak in bleach, followed by two hot-water cycles and a rinse — but they vanished utterly while the shirt was drying outside.
I have noticed before that tomato-juice stains on plastic cookware can't be removed by any means, but go away on their own.
Yesterday was devoted to exposing the floor of the sewing room so Dave could mop it. Today will be devoted to covering it up again. I'm going to iron some things before I bring everything back, and hope to sort some of the piles of paper.
Monday afternoon I spent six dollars at Sherman & Lin's closing-out sale, which filled up my panniers, then went to Kroger for cat food (which I could slip among the larger cans). I got home not much before suppertime, so I left my cycling clothes on and went to Kelainy's to buy a sandwich. As I left, I said "If I don't like the special, I'll get a reuben." Turned out the special *was* a reuben.
After sampling the coconut water, I decided to go back on Tuesday (their last day) and clean them out of the matchka flavor, which, on reading the ingredient list (coconut water, matchka) and consulting Wikipedia, I concluded would have more caffeine than my bitter tea, but I started later (so I could stop at Jimmy-Johns on the way back) and they had closed when I got there.
The weather radio was yelling "Thunderstorms" all night, but we didn't hear anything from outside. In the morning there were a few green cottonwood leaves on the lawn, and a rain barrel that I emptied into the herb bed a few days ago is about a third full, so we must have gotten a light breeze and a sprinkle.
Last Saturday, I learned that the plague got only half of "The Farm"; it was two families, and the one that ran the vegetable stand on 200 N dropped out, but the one that takes vegetables to the farmers' market is still going.
While packing my pills this morning, I discovered that I have until this coming Tuesday to go to Aldi and buy more fish oil. I thought I had a back-up bottle, but it appears that this *is* the back-up bottle.
I struck a chore off my list of urgent chores today, and immediately wrote another one in.
Dr. Hickman says that my eyes are stable and I don't have to come back for a year, unless I notice something.
A jersey isn't comfortable in a chair, so I wore cycling tights with a shirt and put all the stuff that belongs in the jersey pockets into my attaché case, except for the phone — there's a zipper pocket in the center back of the tights I selected.
When I came home, I couldn't quite reach the door-opening switch. Instead of being in my left back pocket, my reading glasses were at the bottom of a bag at the bottom of the attaché case. I'd only thought of threading needles, not of using the hard case for a stick.
After puzzling a bit, I opened the door with a container of shredded gruyère.
I had some of the gruyère with my lunch. Dave had left some of the potatoes in his breakfast bowl; I added a chopped sausage link, a minced mini-sweet pepper, some chopped leek leaves, a big hunk of butter, shredded cheese, and a raw egg, and cooked it in the microwave. You *can* make decent scrambled eggs in a microwave.
It would have been better if I'd salted it before cooking.
The dime has dropped. This morning, after struggling and struggling to get sunscreen out of the squeeze bottle (and why would sunscreen be packaged in a bottle? Even tubes aren't all that easy.), I fetched one of my two-ounce re-usable containers and squeezed sunscreen into it.
I made another discovery several days ago: Al will eat if I serve him in bed. It would appear that walking across the parlor and through the kitchen into the living room is enough effort to spoil his appetite, but if I let him rest a bit, then put the left-overs a few inches from his head, he will get up and eat them.
Which has changed him from less than one can a day to more than one can a day, so yesterday I went to PetSmart and bought one can of every flavor of paté.
While there, I went into every store in Kohl's strip mall, and found a pair of off-white polyester knee socks at Shoe Sensation. (But the receipt says "Dollar General".) They are a vast improvement over the rayon crew socks I used to wear under my hose to keep my toenails from shining through.
I heard Al yelling at a squirrel this morning. When he saw that I was up, he switched to yelling at me. I gave him a quarter can of Royal Canin Mother and Baby Cat, and a while later he yelled for seconds. I gave him the remaining quarter can, and he ate all of that too.
Feeding him on the footlocker in the parlor instead of on his feeding table in the living room has made a dramatic improvement in his appetite.
I found a hand-crocheted dishrag in the dishtowel drawer, and am using it for a tablecloth. Al is a messy eater, and I don't want to wear the paint off the footlocker mopping up spills.
Last week I hauled stuff from the sewing room into the parlor so Dave could sweep and mop in here. When I put stuff back, Al was on the footlocker, so I left it, and he is still on it. He doesn't even sleep on Dave when he is watching television any more.
Rolling the footlocker over to the window to get it out of the walking path probably made it more attractive.
We think the living room must smell icky to a cat — he refuses to drink from the water bowl in the living room, and always treks to the one at the end of the hallway. But he ate a good bit of the dry food in the living room last night.
We are taking him to Plymouth next week to find out whether his tumor is removable.
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Every evening I'm too tired to slice up pickles, so tomorrow I'll slice vegetables in the morning, let them sit overday, and pickle in the evening.
Hope I don't sleep too late.
I came pretty close to digging out the old compost heap today, and will rake the top of the new one onto the site Real Soon Now and start digging dirt from the west side.
Dave swept up some of the hay he cut a few days ago, and I mulched the rhubarb with it. Still need a few loads more to cover the entire herb bed. I'm not too concerned about smothering mint, and I kept it off the chives.
I'm making giardiniera today. I put in an entire ginger root; I suspect that I'll regret that.
I got three pints of giardiniera, one of them very loosely packed.
We signed the papers and drove our new Rogue home this morning. Dave is still studying it; all I need to know about the radio is where the off switch is. I like that putting the Rogue into reverse splits the screen, half is the view from the rear camera, and half shows all four cameras surrounding a static picture of a Rogue taken from directly overhead. And you can cycle through other views.
It's a three-year lease same as the Corolla, but with Nissan instead of Toyota. As we drove past Toyota, Dave reminded me: if you have to come and get me, don't turn in here, turn down there.
The walker fills up the entire trunk, but goes in without putting the back seats down.
Missions Sunday, dinner afterward; I stayed to help clean up. Slept like a rock at nap time and woke up tired, but downing a can of seltzer while reading on the porch fixed me right up.
We had left-over pasta for supper.
It looks as though we aren't going to do anything at all for our fifty-seventh anniversary.
Dave is off to our new insurance agent about our new car.
I need a new slip of paper for my "do yesterday" list.
A storm front arrived shortly before five. I was awake enough to hear the rain, and must have awakened Dave. (If I was awake, he must have been nearly awake, since people who share a bed tend to synchronize their sleep cycles — which is why it used to be the custom for mother and baby to share a bed.)
We were up until half-past five looking out various windows, and I fed the cat.
At the height of the storm, I could hear thunder, but most of the time it was soundless lightning flashes, as if we had a strobe light on the roof. Dave speculated that an inversion reflected the sound of cloud-to-cloud lightning.
Not long after the front passed on and we had gone back to bed, heavy rain began. Whether brief or prolonged, I don't know.
Brent's kayak is hung up on our clothesline pole — this is the second time it's jumped the fence — but Kathy's Dave's kayak is precisely where he left it — even the cleaning rag lying on the pier section was still in place.
There are a lot of twigs and leaves on the ground, but nearly all of the leaves are brown, so I'm not sure they weren't already there at sunset. I don't pay much attention to how thick the leaves get between mowings.
I don't think Al noticed the storm, except for it getting us out of bed and therefore fair game to meow at.
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The July Banner validated the very first time!
But then I ran the validator on it after clipping off the shopping list etc. yesterday or the day before, and found several mistakes.