My resolution for the new year is the same as last year: 600 x 450.
(That's the number of pixels I shrink photographs to when I put them on a Web page.)
Everybody else is eating corned beef and cabbage. We had left-over hamburger-and-tomato soup with hard rolls.
To start the year off right, I resolved to do three things today, and I did. (I can usually do only one thing a day.)
One thing I did today was to close up the eating table — I got the sewing project cut into pieces that fit on a card table. I took out only three of the four leaves I'd put in. We have gotten used to having space.
I gave Al tonight's Cosequin in a quarter can of Purrfect Bistro Duck Recipe, and he ate most of it, then came back for the rest after we rubbed thyroid medicine in his right ear. Probably helped that I'd poured some of the gravy in the can on the leftovers before we did the ear rub. He usually gets the Cosequin after the thyroid medicine, but he demanded food and I didn't want to make a scrawny cat wait.
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I was tempted to bring out a special edition of the Banner when I got December back and it said that I'd given Al 1.8 ml of Metacam. The syringe won't even measure that much! I settled for moving the decimal point on the Web copy.
three frogs, push the button
Sunday's entry was notes I took during the sermon, but I've forgotten what I wanted to say.
Yesterday, I took my first ride of the season, a Sprawlmart tour.
The roads were all clear, except for a couple of crosswalks on College Avenue and a streak on the boundary between the passing lane of US 30 and a crossover that I would have used if it had been clear, but all driveways and parking lots required great care even though I was using the bike as a cane. Combined with the late start, having to walk lots of places where I usually ride made me come home by civil twilight even though I cut the trip short after visiting Indiana Restaurant Equipment (kitchen shears), Dollar Tree (snack bags and canned beans), and R.P. Home & Harvest ("Amish" canned goods).
I picked up a scraper at R.P., literally. I saw a rusty putty knife lying in the parking lot, put it into a wire pannier to drip and dry while I was in R.P., and it turned out to be sharp on the edge and stiffer than a putty knife. Dave used it to take some spots off the linoleum, and plans to clean the rust off. He says that he likes it and expects it to be useful.
I made one more stop to get a foot-long sub for our supper. It was 5:12 when I came out of Subway, the sun sets at half past, and it's half an hour from Sprawl one to home. But it got *much* easier to see after the sun dropped behind the trees, so coming home by twilight wasn't any problem — save for the wear on Dave's nerves.
I got my sewing organized today, and brought the bra project to where it can't proceed until I buy some yellow sewing thread. Also found an almost-finished mending job that I'd forgotten about, and draped it over the sewing machine.
I *think* I'm ready to go to the laundromat tomorrow. Laundry in a king-size pillowcase, coins and a book in the car, and so forth.
Wanna bet that I get off late anyway?
Staying in bed until nearly ten isn't conducive to getting an early start. But I spent most of my time in bed asleep.
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No nap today. I spent only half an hour in the laundromat, but I stopped at Kroger on the way home.
I bought a bunch of cat food — and wasn't careful to keep it together when I put my stuff on the belt, so it was scattered all over the tape. Must have taken ten minutes to make sure I'd gotten it all under "pets" in Quicken. But now I can go to Petsmart when I feel like it, instead of having to leave the house two days in a row.
One major reason for stopping at Kroger was to get celery to make cajun mirapoix sauce for left-over dirty rice for supper tonight. There was only one bunch of celery in the store, and it was too rotten to throw to pigs. (I'm not sure that one could pick it up without a shovel.) I had a small, bland heart of the last bunch, and that had to do. I put in extra peppers and onion. Dave is going to Martin's tomorrow, so I put "celery" on his shopping list.
I thought that when fold-top sandwich bags came back to the shelf, I'd buy two boxes to have a back-up for next time, but there was only one box left. A hundred and fifty should hold me until they are available again.
Still no gingersnaps. Those are on Dave's list too, but I like the Kroger brand.
I did get red grapes. They are *very* sweet.
We are still eating Christmas goodies, partly because I put the chocolates in a basket in the garage and we forget that it's there.
(So I went out and brought in an envelope of hot chocolate and a caramel Lion of Belgium to have with breakfast.)
Dave's turn to go shopping. He brought home a fresh salmon steak. I had no idea what to do with a salmon steak, so I plopped it into a hot, heavily oiled skillet and turned it over once a minute until it looked cooked, and it was very good.
Al has been off his feed all day, but I got a significant amount of greasy salmon into him. I guess the key to putting weight on the cat is to eat fresh meat every day.
We are having pork loin tomorrow, but I doubt that he'll eat that. He's never been a fan of slow-cooked meat, and the loin is heavily seasoned. I plan to curl it into my second-smallest skillet, plug up the gaps with bite-size potatoes, and bake it at 250° all day.
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Al yelled at me for his eleven o'clock feeding at ten forty-five, and he appears to have every intention of eating it.
When the pork loin was good and hot, I turned the oven down to 200°. We didn't need a knife to serve it, we just pulled off pieces. It was very good: it was seasoned, but you could taste the pork. Dave says that he will buy another one sometime.
Al didn't consider the broth that had cooked out of the meat edible (I do!), but he ate a significant amount of fibers pulled out of the middle, away from the seasonings. He also ate all of his Cosequin at nine: I mixed it into a tiny bit of canned food, then pressed several pieces of Wilderness Cat Treats into it. That must have primed the pump, because he ate all of an unadorned second small helping, and demanded a third — but only messed that one up. I scraped it back together in case he gets hungry before his eleven o'clock feeding.
While the pork was cooking, I rode to Lowery's.
The morning was glorious, and I spent all of it getting ready to leave. It was cloudy in the afternoon, but not all that cold and windy. I bought a spool of cotton thread that matches the linen for my bras, a D-ring buckle to make the strap on my shoulder bag adjustable, four yards of yellow quilt fabric to make a summer jersey, and a spool of thread to match the quilt fabric. Also stopped at Carniceria San José and bought refried beans, tomato sauce, and in-the-shell peanuts.
Then I hurried home because freezing rain is predicted for tonight, and I didn't want to be out if it came early. Got home in time for lunch and a nap, and I woke soon enough that I could have made supper if it hadn't already been cooked.
Glorious discovery: several years ago I made a very nice jersey out of wool flannel, but it shrank a bit with every wash until I couldn't even wear it as a base layer. Today I saw it at the back of the closet, reflected that I've been losing weight, tried it on, and it fits!
I haven't been getting enough exercise, and I eat more than Dave does, so I don't know how I've been getting rid of fat. But it has been happening very slowly. Dr. Darr mentioned it on two annual exams before I noticed that my everyday jeans can no longer be adjusted tight enough.
Well! I bought lumps in gravy by mistake, didn't notice until I opened the can — and Al is eating it!
Headline: "Leesburg Approves Alley Vacation". I find the concept of an "Alley Vacation" intriguing, and have been trying to think up meanings for it. Perhaps a walking tour through alleys? Perhaps an alley made into a campground, as we have an alley off Buffalo made into a picnic area? The back end of a building converted into a tourist hotel?
I sewed a snap on the phone pocket of the old wool jersey today.
Tomorrow, I hope to go to the cat-food store by way of the drug store and the Winter Market. The bike's all ready except for water and tea, and my clothes are laid out. I'm taking my shopping list for Walmart, but I'll have to zoom for home at 4:30 because sunset is at half-past five, so I don't think I'll get to use it.
Weather underground says it will be dry, but cold and windy. Once I get onto Park Avenue, I'll be pretty much shielded from the wind. It also says I'll have snow showers for my trip to the laundromat on Monday. If I can see the lane markings, I won't mind. I *could* postpone until Tuesday, but that would be cutting it close.
The usual trip to the laundromat with a stop at Kroger on the way back.
Unpleasant weather. I bought crackers and hummus with the thought of having lunch in the car, having forgotten to take my emergency food bars along, but I scratched that in favor of getting home before conditions got worse.
And I hadn't even begun to hang the clothes on racks when I dripped yogurt dip on the shirt I was wearing. I rinsed out as much as I could and put the shirt into a bucket of water to deal with tomorrow.
Slept like a rock until it was already time to put supper on the table, but Dave was asleep in the Lazy Boy, so I got a newly-purchased noodle bowl out of the freezer and set it to thaw. I'd barely finished cutting up celery, carrots, and mini-sweets for the relish tray when he woke up.
And I'm still sleepy.
The dime drops: When I weighed myself this morning, the reading was less than a hundred and fifty pounds for the first time in decades. I've been losing weight very gradually for years, and wondering why — I still eat every time I see food, and I'm not getting as much exercise as I used to.
I flunked a thyroid test several years ago, and Dr. Darr started me taking pills in the middle of the night. (They are supposed to be taken first thing in the morning, but I frequently forget to take my morning pills, and taking one pill that has to be taken on an empty stomach and seven that have to be taken with food is more than I care to deal with before breakfast.)
Hypothyroid people get fat. With the hypo cured, the hypo fat very gradually goes away.
Meanwhile, all my waistbands are too loose.
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Two boys from Smith Appliances dropped in today, and now we have a working washing machine!
It was nothing but a broken spring that caused the alarming noises and made the washer dance around.
The first boy to look into the washing machine told the other one "the spring is broken". We asked how he knew, and he said the agitator wasn't quite centered.
Now I can stop shopping for something that doesn't exist. But I'll still keep looking, same as I tour every shoe store and shoe department I pass — I luck into sandals that are almost wide enough and not so long as to trip me often enough that I've never been entirely barefoot.
Snivel. Weather Underground says that tomorrow will be a perfect day for riding my bike, and I've got an appointment to have my picture taken. Perhaps I'll take the bike with me to the church, and go to Jimmy-John's to pick up supper on the way home.
Which I did, but I left the church grumpy because I hadn't asked the photographer whether I could buy a digital copy of my portrait.
But the Ultimate Porker was good. As usual, I bought a sixteen-inch sub so we could have it for lunch too.
On the 17th, I didn't mention that when I was in Kroger, a ladybug caught my eye, and lo and behold, it was a mechanical timer!
I rest much better at naptime if ticking tells me that "lie down for an hour" isn't over. Looking at the clock wakes me up.
This timer is a hemisphere rotating on a short cylinder, so I can't feel how much time is left, it goes "brrring!" instead of "ding" (not good for when it turns out that I need more than an hour), it keeps on ticking for a while after it brrrings, which makes me nervous, it doesn't tick loud enough, and the ticking is an anxious ticka-ticka instead of the soothing tick-tock of the one I wore out, but it does tick, and I had given up all hope of finding a wind-up timer.
My grumpy Friday was followed by a grumpy Saturday.
I needed to refill a prescription for a tube of ointment, but I've mislaid the box it came in and the prescription number isn't on the tube, so I couldn't order it on line. So I thought that if I took the tube to the pharmacy, they could find the prescription number in their records, and after some difficulty, they did. So I sat for a while and wandered around for a while, and when the prescription was filled, I tried to put the new tube into the pocket in which I'd carried the old tube.
(I had to carry it in an inside pocket because the weather was freezing — in fact, my water bottle valve froze and I had to take the lid off to drink. I know enough to take my bottle with me when I go inside, but this was the first time this winter that I've gone out when it was that cold.)
The old tube was not in that pocket, or any other pocket. I finally decided that I must have left it on the counter even though I vaguely remembered having a time getting it into a back pocket higher than my waist, with a heavy jersey hanging over it.
(I lost enough diameter to get into the shrunken jersey, but I didn't shrink up and down. I rather like having the pocket that high because it puts the weight of my wallet in the small of my back, but it's hard to get into when a jersey with a drawstring waist is worn over it.)
The pharmacist said that if I'd left it on the counter, it would still be there because they are trained not to touch such things, and came out to help me search, marveling that I had six pockets in my jerseys. I told her that maybe I'd find it when I undressed, and left, reflecting that I'd *really* feel bad when the box popped out of hiding to tell me that I could have avoided the whole incident.
I kept telling myself that the new tube was enough, but one *does* like to have a little margin for error. Also, this stuff is forty-one dollars a tube.
Thence to Kroger, where I found a better timer a couple of aisles over from where I found the ladybug. The pointer handle doesn't offer as good a grip as the one on the timer that wore out, and there is a lot of surplus plastic, but the package strongly hinted that it goes "ding" and not "brrrrrng!". Same price as the one I bought.
When I got home and undressed, the old tube fell to the floor when I took off my sweat pants. I presume that when feeling around for the pocket, I got under the underjersey, and an elastic waist feels the same as an elastic pocket top.
I rather wish that I could go back and tell the pharmacist.
I'm eating the cat's left-overs this evening. I baked a turkey just to get it out of the freezer — law laid down: No more whole turkeys, no matter how good the price; cooking a meal that has to be planned four days in advance is too much for someone who sleeps twelve hours a day.
I boiled the giblets to get broth to make dressing with — I dressed up a box of Stovetop and baked it — and it turns out that Al loves neck meat. Every time I give him some, I gnaw the neckbone that I broke off to get it.
I reflected that the "solution" the turkey was injected with probably had a lot of flavor in it, and saved as much as I could to boil the giblets in. I had to add only one cup of water to cover the giblets. Plus a big chunk of ice that I found in the cavity. Turned out to be a brilliant idea. The "solution" picked up some protein from the turkey, and this coagulated like egg white does, collected up all particles, and left the loveliest crystal-clear broth.
The curds have almost no flavor, so I'll use them like tofu — if Al doesn't eat them all. Seems likely that he won't; it's good, but a little bit is enough.
We had leftover turkey, left-over dressing, left-over cooked-out-of-the-turkey broth in lieu of gravy, left-over green beans, and zapped reconstituted potatoes for supper tonight.
I forgot to serve the fried frozen corn, so I dumped it into the mashed-potato dish to make corn cakes for breakfast.
After supper, I sliced the breast into sandwich bags and it's in the freezer. Then I was tired, so I put the rest into a gallon bag and a two-gallon bag and put it back into the fridge.
When we opened the tube of ointment yesterday evening, a duplicate of the sticker on the box was stapled to the bag it came in. I ripped it off and gave it to Dave *to put into the tax file*!
Having found the old tube, I feel stupid but not terribly upset.
I'm keeping track of the box, but I hope I won't need the rest of the ointment. I've just now, half an hour after supper, got the bed back together. I've been through this twice before, so this time we decided to treat both of us for mites even though Dave didn't appear to have any. I put the sheets and pillowcases into a plastic bag, to be taken to the laundromat at my leisure.
I could use Penric's Desdemona. (I hear that there is a new Penric and Desdemona book out; I hope I remember to look into that.) Whenever Desdemona has been doing too much uphill magic, she must kill some bugs to cool down. I'm sure mites would do nicely.
It was noon before I got off to Aldi, where I spent $184.16 despite buying hardly any meat or frozen meals. Took a while to sort it and pack it into bags and put it into the trunk, and it also took a bit of time to unpack it and put it away.
On the way, I stopped at Martin's to get Texas grapefruit, but I didn't see grapefruit of any breed. I did buy a bottle of Our Family vegetable cocktail and a can of Manwich. Since it had been a long time since I'd been to Martin's, I went up and down every aisle except frozen food and was probably in there an hour.
I've been buying gallon jugs of Kroger milk for twenty years.
This morning was the first time I noticed that one corner of the jug is marked off in quarts.
When I unpacked groceries on Friday, I set a ready-to-eat avocado on Evelyn's sewing machine, which we use as a sideboard, then forgot about it until today, when I took everything off so I could shake the towel.
There were a couple of edible nibbles.
It's good that I did a stock-up on Friday. The prediction says that we will get three to seventeen inches of snow before Saturday. It should still be fit to drive tomorrow morning, but I'm not going anywhere.
Supper was smoked salmon and cream cheese on Italian sourdough (Dave) and seedless rye (me). We had a little bit left, which should be eaten soon now that the seal is broken.
I looked out this morning, saw that this was a good day to hang out a king-size sheet, and put one of the sheets and all of the pillowcases in the first load. It proved impossible to balance the load, prompting much wailing of "I knew better!" and "I don't wanna haul a soggy mess to the laundromat." I'm still not sure I didn't damage the machine.
Eventually, I realized that I could hang out the soggy sheet, throw the rest of the laundry in with the partly-washed stuff, and start over.
Which I did. I had finished treating the stains on items that I'd sorted into a bucket before I realized the flaw in this plan. So I guess I'll set the bucket to soak this evening and run a small load in the morning.
I'm leaving the sheet draped over the washing machine and dryer overnight before I put it back into the laundry bag. And the next time I go to a big-box store, I'ma gonna buy some *percale* sheets.
The first entry in the December Banner whines about losing my bottle of tea in R.P. Home & Harvest.
I took a Sprawlmart tour on Saturday, rather glumly because of the many layers of clothing. At Shoe Sensations I found a cheap pair of sandals that fit perfectly and had much stiffer soles than the pair I was wearing. Alas, when I tried walking in them, I discovered that one doesn't need to loosen the buckles to take them off.
Next sprawl: Rural King still has no sign up, but what I can see through the window appears to be ready for business. The door opened as I walked past it — I was strongly tempted to go in and look around. Someone who had a right to be there walked in before I left, proving that the inner door was also turned on.
Sprawl Three: The label on my jute twine says that I bought it at Ace Hardware, so what remains will probably last months, but I've found it wise to start shopping well in advance —would you believe that I haven't found *matches* anywhere?— so I went into R.P. Home & Harvest. After cruising the full length of the store — Duh! There's a sign that says "Rope", which included not only twine, but string as well.
So I took a roll of twine to the checkout, and she reached under the counter, set the bottle of tea in front of me, and said "We found this and thought it might be yours."
I was so flabbergasted that I greatly fear that I didn't adequately convey my grattitude — and admiration.