If you read the July issue, jump down to the new stuff, which begins after a row of angle brackets like this one:
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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 corrected several mistakes.
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Denise came over and handed Dave a quart-size ziplock. She not only gave us peaches off her tree, she cut out the pits and bad spots.
And already more than half of them have been eaten.
We spent the morning Roomba-ing, and the afternoon driving Al to Plymouth. He has to stay overnight. I took along a sandwich bag of dry food, but I forgot to tell her that he doesn't like hard lumps in wet food — I hope that she doesn't think that dry food is all he eats.
Dave says he probably won't eat anyway. Since the test requires anesthesia, they'll almost certainly take his food away at some point. It takes two hours just for recovering from the anesthesia, and he may not be first in line in the morning, so she had no idea when they will call us to come and get him.
And he'll get his poor little belly shaved.
A thunderstorm rolled through this morning. Lots of wind and rain and thunder, and the lights flickered so I shut my computers down. Dave has more faith in his UPSs. When the weather radio warned of penny-size hail, I suggested putting the new car into the garage. Dave said that it was easier than he expected. Perhaps the front-bumper camera helped.
Then a large limb landed right where the car had been. Dave said that it was moving sideways as it fell, and when I looked at it before he dragged it out to the road, it was covered with cottonwood leaves. All the cottonwoods are on the *west* side of the house! Leafy twigs in the front lawn are impressive enough, but a sapling-size limb?
As far as we know, all kayaks, canoes, and johnboats are where they were left.
I asked: "Oh, yeah!", the cameras were a help, particularly the view from the top.
The drive to Plymouth was weird: no sign that a storm has been through, no sign, no sign, a large tree broken halfway up, a mile or so of no sign, then a tree blown over, or a very large limb blown off. I did see lots of small stuff down when we came back on Old Thirty. But Dave's phone directed us back onto 30 at Inwood, and the intersection was confusing enough that he followed instructions by mistake. 30 was as thumpty as Old Thirty, but a good bit wider and straighter.
Al was too stoned to mind the trip home.
Bad news: the tumor is on his liver, which pretty much rules out surgery on an eighteen-year-old cat. If it had been an intestine or spleen, that would have been simpler.
He was staggering when we let him out of the cage, but after resting beside his water bowl for a while, he leaped up onto the footlocker. The footlocker is on a dolly, so that's a pretty good jump.
I gave him a quarter of a fresh new can, and he ate most of it.
We had a pretty good storm in the night; it woke Dave up, but I slept right through it. Kathy's Dave's kayak finally budged, but is lying beside the pier section. And the little trailer my Dave picks up sticks with rolled about ten feet. The wheelbarrow is now leaning on the rake instead of standing on its nose behind it, but the rake, despite the leaf-catcher standing up like a sail, is unmoved.
I heard a chainsaw when we got home from Plymouth, but I think it was doing premeditated pruning. Dave said the tree beside Park Avenue that broke in yesterday's storm had pretty much been cleaned up, but I looked too late to see.
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An article on page 2 of today's paper starts "Heat and humidity broiled parts of Indiana, . . ."
Nope, nope, nope. Broiling is *dry*; we're getting *steamed*.
Went to the store for milk and fake milk this morning, and had trouble finding plain fake milk. Also, there was a clearance on the jugs of Blue Diamond fake milk; all that was left was unsweetened vanilla. I almost took a jug before noticing the "vanilla".
Pity the jugs didn't go over; I like jugs better than retro cartons with the opening on the side of the roof, as was done before folks realized that one could make a carton into a pitcher by opening it at the gable.
In the afternoon, I ironed two Sunday dresses. I sure hope I don't have to wash the one with the tightly-gathered sleeves again very soon. They shade my arms and don't touch them, but are a royal pain to iron.
I got up early this morning so that I could take in the sidewalk sale at the Village at Winona, but never found any sign that anything unusual went on downtown today, and now I can't find the announcement. Still, it was nice to get to the markets before they had sold everything.
I stopped at Chimp's comics on the way to the courthouse market, but they weren't open yet.
I brought my vegetables home, then mounted up again and headed for Meijer. I passed Chimp's again, and went in to see how Free Comics Day was going. I not only got close enough to see what they were giving away, one of them was an Asterix comic, and I took it. By good luck I recently started to carry a folder tucked between the plastic bag and the wires of my insulated pannier, so I had a safe place to carry it.
The folder is primarily to keep the sun off the brown plastic bag.
Next stop was Lutheran EMS, having read that the ham club was holding an exercise there today. The exercise started at eight and it was well after noon when I got there, but the building was what I really wanted to see. I *didn't* want to take three laps around it while waiting for a train to pass.
I found a pair of black 98%-cotton knickers at Goodwill, and think that I can wear them on the bike. Both pairs of hand-made knickers have developed astonishing holes, so this is a very lucky find.
I spent a couple of hours and about thirty dollars at Meijer, and went home the way I came, save for staying on Park Avenue until it ended on Market Street.
My whole week is clear! While checking, I found out where I got the idea that there was an event at the Village the day before yesterday: a list of events clipped from a brochure and clothespinned to the calendar. The event must have stirred up less enthusiasm than expected.
This morning I counted the money in my wallet, then went to Quicken to enter the loss of the coins that were in my coin purse when it vanished. Quicken says that I have fourteen cents *less* than what I found in my wallet. I must have forgotten to record topping off my coins from Dave's cash sometime; I can't think of any other way to get unrecorded income. Well, mis-recorded "fast fifties" have caused a lot of trouble in the past, but there can't have been more than four or five dollars in the coin purse.
Yesterday or the day before, Al finally let me see his belly. It wasn't a very big spot, and is already fuzzy.
This morning, I finally finished cleaning my multiplier sets, then put them away for the winter.
I have a pint box about half full of sets that are surplus to needs. You plant them in the spring, then eat them as scallions or let them ripen to make sets for next year. If you have a great deal of patience, you can peel ripe bulbs and cook them whole. Mom soaked them in hot water before peeling, and her hands were stained dark brown when she finished.
You need a cool dry place to store them, preferably dark, but I used to hang strings of them in the cellar of the Albany place and pick them off all winter. Now I put them in papier-mâché berry boxes lined and covered with paper towels, put the boxes into a paper lunch bag, and put the bag against the back wall of a cupboard in the garage that is hung on an interior wall, so the temperature doesn't vary *too* much, and they get ventilation but not too much ventilation.
I've been writing things on my shopping list all week because I planned to go to Aldi today, and yesterday evening, I compared the list to the check list at the bottom of this file to be quite certain that I hadn't forgotten anything.
Today I rode to the animal shelter by way of Sprawlmart, where I didn't find anything in 7½ A/D at the shoe store, had a very nice Happy Meal at McDonalds (*and* found a grandmother to take the toy off my hands), and gave Dollar Tree a miss because I wanted to arrive at Aldi with empty panniers. Which was wise, because it took ingenuity to get everything packed.
At the animal shelter I dropped of an unwanted water dish, gave a cat in the tower room a scritchel, and told two cages of kittens "You're cute, guys, but your life expectancy is greater than mine."
Then across US 30 to Tractor Supply, where I bought a wrench and some ham-and-cheese snack sticks.
Except for a short stretch of Old 30, the route from Tractor Supply to Aldi is quite pleasant. It's always fun to see that great long hill on 300 E a moment before I see that I'm going to turn onto 100 N before I get to it.
At Aldi, I got my cart, went inside, parked the cart and went back for my mask, returned to the cart, took my wallet out of my back pocket — and searched all its pockets in consternation.
I had left the shopping list on the mouse pad.
I got everything on it but slivered almonds and butter, and neither is urgent. I also didn't get almond-milk yogurt, but I looked and looked for that. I must have read last week's ad.
I'm not sure what I did with today. I didn't dig any dirt or iron any clothing. I did spend rather a lot of time making tartar sauce: minced herbs in a dab of ranch dressing, with cider vinegar, powdered mustard, capers, caper liquor, and a squirt of Kikkoman horseradish sauce, which they dye green and call wasabi sauce.
And a dash of the vinegar off some pickled tabasco peppers.
Dave didn't get any; he prefers a commercial sauce that appears to be mayo slightly contaminated with sweet pickle relish.
I didn't like the "beer-battered perch" very much. By the time I served the filets, I'd forgotten the "beer-battered" part, and wondered why the breading tasted funny.
There are six filets left. I'll add more chopped garlic-chive stems to the tartar sauce when I bake those.
The corn was delicious, even though it's been in the house for days. We split one ear between us, so a half dozen lasts for a while.
Yesterday's Fusia "pot stickers" were a winner. Quick, easy, and tasty. I'm definitely going to buy more of those. The "dipping sauce" that came with them was flavorless, but we have plenty of sauces. And they don't really *need* a sauce.
I did thumb-test my tires, organize my shopping list (*and* put it into the little notebook I never forget because my pockets are a check list), and fill four sandwich bags with ice in preparation for tomorrow's farmers' markets tour.
Google Maps said there was a discount grocery on Hand Street. Goody! It might be a replacement for Sherman & Lin's! I went there after visiting the farmers' markets — they closed a year ago.
So I will never know what sort of store it was.
The building where I once bought canned beef is still on Hand, and might, for all I know, still sell canned meat. I got the impression, when I was last inside, that they had acquired the meat more-or-less accidentally, and were selling it to get it out of the office.
Another lame poll in the Ink-Free News: "How worried are you that the pandemic will persist into winter?" None of the options were "About as worried as I am that the weather will get cold."
The latest prediction says that the showers will stop just before the tomato festival, and resume immediately after.
I went to the dentist yesterday, and got a clean bill of health — and a prescription for fuzzy toothpicks.
In the evening, I cut up vegetables to pickle today.
I got three pints of sour giardiniera, plus about a third of a pint for immediate use. Only a dab of vinegar in the fourth jar; I'll use a whole quart next time. Which is exactly as much cider vinegar as I have left.
For supper this evening, I baked the pork roast I bought on the way back from the dentist, about five hours at 250F. Came out pretty good.
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Hey! I scored nine at Hexavirus!
I lost count: was it four or five phone-spammers who decided that little old ladies don't need naps? Since I also didn't sleep well last night, this has left me rather grumpy.
Nonetheless, I finished converting a pair of thrift-shop capris into knickers suitable for wearing to the tomato festival the day after tomorrow. I had to pick out and sew up a slit before I could run elastic through the hems.
The advertisement says that the tomato festival ends at four in the afternoon, which shoots down the plan of going to the farmers' markets in the morning, taking a nap, and then going to the tomato festival. I'm pretty sure that they used to run until sunset.
But I think that I can hit all three events tomorrow: go to the markets, come straight back, take in the canal festival on my way home to dump vegetables and pick up ice and strong tea, go out Wooster Road to Pierceton.
And the easiest way home goes through Sprawlmart, so I might get in some shopping.
I managed to enjoy all three events today, and wasn't tired when I got home — though I was in dire need of a shower.
There was no apple dumpling; I was careful to tour the entire festival before buying something to eat, but either that church isn't doing that any more, or they were at the previous festival. I had a plate of fried green tomatoes, followed by half a pint of blueberry cobbler topped with half a pint of freshly-churned vanilla ice cream.
I came back through Sprawlmart, making a side trip to Indiana Restaurant Supply. Much to my surprise, the sign said "open". I was very little surprised to find the door locked and nobody inside. They must have forgotten to turn the sign off when closing up yesterday. (Since most of their customers are businesses, they are open only during regular business hours.)
Aunt Millie's Outlet was closed for good. The sign said that they aren't getting as many returns as they used to, so they have no product to get rid of. The outlet in Fort Wayne is still open.
I do hope that something interesting moves in.
I went through Dollar Tree and Stock and Field, and bought something at each. Little to see at Sprawls Two and One — I gave Dollar General a miss. I'd intended to have a kid's meal at Burger King, but because of a staffing shortage, only the drive-through was open, and I wasn't honestly hungry. It was nearly three when I ate a platefull of fried tomatoes and all that sweet stuff, and it was only half-past six when I got to Burger King.
By the time I got out of the shower, it was nearly time for my bedtime snack, so I skipped supper entirely, if you don't count three salty-meat sticks I ate along the way. All that water was beginning to disagree with me. Which is why I carry salty-meat sticks.
I'm going to have to buy a couple of combs. My dressing comb wasn't in the drawer of my dresser this morning. I was in a hurry, so instead of wasting time looking for it, I went for the back-up comb I keep in a drawer in the shower room. That, too, was AWOL. Luckily, one of my pocket combs proved to be up to the job.
To comb long wet hair, nothing short of a dressing comb will do, but I was sure that now that I wasn't in a hurry, I'd be able to find one comb or the other before I got into the shower.
I couldn't. Luckily, at that point I remembered that I keep a dressing comb in my go bag.
After my shower, I put the comb straight back into the go bag.
This morning, I wished that the little white caps that were all the rage in the eighteenth century were still in style. My hair has a bad case of "I just washed it and can't do a thing with it."
I walked to the teller machine after church, then stopped at Sweet Dreams to buy a pulled-pork sandwich to share with Dave. It took twelve minutes to walk from Sweet Dreams to home.
For supper, we plan to have half an ear of corn each.
When I was getting ready to go to Kroger this evening, the missing comb re-appeared as mysteriously as it vanished, in the drawer of my dresser, precisely where it belongs.
I think that this is the first time I've driven the car to go someplace. I didn't know how to turn down the air conditioner, so I turned it off and opened a window.
The cameras were a great help in getting centered in the parking space and pulled fully in.
Then I learned that although the car-is-locked beep isn't the jump-up-and-grab-the-chandelier "BLAAAT!!!" of a few cars back, it isn't a genteel "bip" either. I may get into the habit of locking the car before I close the door.
After buying groceries, I had to remember that the car is silver. After loading the trunk, I went back to return the cart and use the restroom, and when I returned, I couldn't get into the car. After a bit, I realized that *this* silver car didn't have a handicap plate. (But it *was* parked in the space I usually use.)
We were running out of civil twilight by the time I started home, but the back-up camera showed the parking lot as bright as day, and showed my exact position relative to all that stuff.
About halfway home, I realized, umm . . . I don't know how to turn the lights on. I knew that Dave had left them on auto, but I checked several times to verify that they were on. That isn't easy to do with so many pole lights around.
After the groceries were put away, Dave said "We're out of eggs."
Luckily, he meant that he had just emptied the last carton into the egg bin.
When I made my rice bags, I made it easy to open them, dump the filler into a large tea strainer, and wash the case.
It would appear that I never did so.
Dave got blood on one of them today, so I opened it up and dumped the popcorn into my half-gallon tea strainer. Some of the kernels had popped; I later took them out by pouring the fill through a french-fry basket.
He'd brought the stain to me instantly, so the blood came out easily under running water. Then I rubbed a bar of soap on it and it sudsed up black.
So I rubbed it all over on both sides with a vegetable brush, rinsed it under the faucet, and lathered it up again. And again the water ran black.
The third lathering was light gray, so I declared victory, rinsed it, and threw it in with the dishtowels and cleaning rags in the washing machine for the last two fill-agitate-and-spin cycles.
It looked much better when I took it off the line.
In the evening, I re-filled it, sewed it closed, and put it back into the freezer.
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My garlic chives are getting flimsy, and it's hard to find the flower buds among the tangled leaves. I should dig out half of them.
I hate to burn them, but starts of a noxious weed are hard to give away. I dare not put it out by the road marked "free"!
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So far, nobody has told Al that he is dying. His appetite is good, he still tries to escape into the flea-infested outdoors to eat grass and throw it up, and he frequently makes a pest of himself.
Yesterday Dave complained that Al was napping on the lamp table and knocking the lamp off. Today he reported that he'd taken the lamp off the table.