If you are wandering around our house and see something you like, ask me to put a sticker on the back so our executor will know how to get rid of it.
This does carry a risk that I'll insist that you take it at once.
With any luck at all, a lot will happen between now and the time our heirs have to clean out the house, so I'll date the stickers — oldest request gets first refusal.
8:04 PM 9/1/2022
Newspaper story about thousand-dollar steak says that it feeds four. Also says that it weighs fifty-five ounces; I'd say that it feeds eleven. Fifty-five divided by four is almost a pound each!
It costs another thousand if you want dessert. Who could eat dessert after downing a pound of steak?
5:54 PM 9/2/2022
I said it was lucky that I'd watched Grandmother washing dishes, but I haven't got the hang of using a water bucket. I keep wanting to run my fingers under the faucet before touching the ladle in the clean water.
Dave and Brent are on their knees trying to deal with the leak.
6:39 PM 9/2/2022
They cut the leaking outside faucet off from the rest of the pipes, and now we have water in the house.
Grumbly gripe. I sat down to mark cans of food X and O for "Does not have juice for Metacam" and "can be used to give Metacam", and found that I'd bought five cans of "This is not food". And only expensive foods are on Al's "not food" list.
Ah, well, some critter in the animal shelter will love it. But the Animal Welfare League could get more food, better suited, if I'd given them the money. They get a bulk discount and have a tax-exempt number.
Last month I mentioned that the apprentice who replaced our front outdoor faucet had failed to anchor it, and had to come back and fix it into its place.
Dave kept hearing funny noises coming out of the wall, and then water puddled out. The apprentice had also failed to make a firm connection between the faucet and the water supply.
It was also coming through my side of the wall, but I didn't notice because I'd stacked my boxes of manuscripts against the wall. The bottom boxes on both stacks were wet, but a fortunate placement of manuscripts in plastic bags meant there was very little damage to the manuscripts in one of the boxes.
"The First Arrangement", however, was sopping all through. This was the only story I was sufficiently pleased with to make a serious effort at marketing, and an important scene I distinctly remember writing is missing from the version on my Web site. I'd been planning, someday when I run out of urgent chores that have to be finished last year, to hunt through the various versions and put the scene back. I split the box into individual manuscripts and a fan has been blowing on them for days, but I haven't found time to inspect the results and select a new box to pack them in.
At least the manuscripts are on cheap paper, so the pages aren't glued together.
In the meanwhile, it's hard to get any sewing done with papers all over the sewing-room floor.
I washed clothes today, so very little sewing would have been done today anyway.
A call from the plumber woke us this morning, and now the outside faucet is working again.
The two guys who repaired it did not include the apprentice. (I don't know what his actual status is, but "apprentice" rather overstates his expertise.)
I did do some sewing: re-stitching an inch of popped seam.
16:06
In the afternoon, I cleaned the fridge. Um, *am cleaning* the fridge. With one more shelf to go, I decided I needed a little sit-down.
I found a bottle of tea and an eight-ounce bottle of soda that we didn't drink because we didn't know they were in there, and moved them to the garage fridge. I threw out all the bottles I was saving to carry switchel concentrate during hot weather. Sniveled a bit at not having used them.
I didn't find anything spoiled, but one of the shelves was yukky. I suspect that the same is true of the remaining shelf, which is the one on the bottom.
I wonder how long it will take to get everything back onto the shelf we look for it on?
6:31 PM 9/7/2022
Hey, the black van just went by and the house didn't shake.
Come to think of it, I think the van I saw was more of a charcoal gray. [The "black" van *is* charcoal gray.]
While clearing a space on the floor, I picked up a notebook marked "DADDY" that had not been in the "First Arrangement" box, but with another notebook labeled "PLANETARY NOTES/ANJELA UNIVERSE", glanced inside to identify it, and there was the scene that I had meant to search the First-Arrangement box for.
No more distractions! Get back to sewing.
1:31 PM 9/12/2022
I decided to have a beef-and-bean burrito for breakfast, then picked and minced garlic-chive flowers, basil leaves, and parsley to make salsa to go with it. I was halfway through chopping up one of Kathy & Dave's tomatoes when I realized that I should start the burrito thawing.
We don't have any beef-and-bean burritos. I'm sure there were at least two left the last time I got one.
I had salsa on a sausage-and-egg burrito.
I also planned to do a major shop at Aldi tomorrow, forgetting that our annual financial review is tomorrow.
Washing clothes takes very little of my time, but I didn't get anything else done this morning. And I forgot to put my pillow cases in.
While putting the kitchen to rights after Roomba, Dave noticed that he had Al's scale in his hands and Al on the floor in front of him, so he set the scale down and I lifted Al onto it. After we got a reading (nine point six pounds, so I put another treat in his food dish) he stood there looking puzzled for a while (Dave: "*Now* you stand still!"), then lay down on it and went back to sleep.
He went back to it after getting up to eat, and is still there now (18:04). I've been wondering whether we can put the scale where we want the cat.
When Dave came back from rehab, he said that you can now tell that they are building a roundabout.
Later, when thinking about the Toyota's appointment at Global Auto next Wednesday, he wondered what Fastcab now charges to come to Winona. We plan to go around the south end of the lake, him in the Taco, me in the Rogue.
I haven't heard KABS drivers saying anything about the roundabout on the scanner. Probably because completely blocked doesn't change much.
19:02 — A change! Al's tail is sticking off the other end of the scale.
Reading the entry for the ninth reminded me that I forgot to put a very dirty hat into today's wash. The wash wasn't quite due yet, but I looked at the calendar, saw "FLUSH" on tomorrow, and decided that I'd better make sure I have six days of clothes. Much, much later I realized that "FLUSH" didn't mark the first day of mains flushing, but the last. (I should have made that arrow bigger!)
But I got away with it. We haven't had any discolored water — but tomorrow might be our day.
For salad tonight, Dave had a cold tomato soup. I peeled two pieces of tomato that had been in the fridge, left over from slicing onto sandwiches. Then he cut them up and added Miracle Whip, sugar, and salt.
He loved it, I thought it disgusting — in my view tomatoes should not be anywhere near sugar — but was sufficiently intrigued to cut into another tomato and put ranch dressing on a slice. It was good, but not nearly as good as plain tomato with a little salt.
***
I got my teeth cleaned on Friday, and tried to make a ten-mile ride out of it. I was determined to eat at the Asian Cajun, and got there rather late because it was noon when I left the dentist's office and I stopped at two garage sales along the way. Only to discover that they were having new gas lines installed in the kitchen. So I shopped at the market behind the grocery, which I hadn't noticed when zipping past on SR 15, and went to Peking for a carry-out lunch.
At least I worked out how to get to Asian Cajun from either the east or the west (I came in from the east, left by the west), so I can try again the next time I'm out that way.
I meant to get a small bowl of hot-and-sour soup, but roast pork lo mein caught my eye and I succumbed. I over-ate without making much of a dent in it, brought it home (between two bags of ice) and it fed two for supper (though the formerly-delicious roast pork didn't warm over at all well), and still had couscous to scramble into an egg for breakfast this morning. (Couscous with Chinese food?)
1:44 PM 9/20/2022
Moving the scale so that it was half under the table ruined it completely, but shifting it close to a dining chair was quite acceptable.
The white scale makes it easier to avoid stepping on the cat at night.
8:53 AM 9/24/2022
The charm has worn off. When I got up this morning, Al was sleeping on the floor. He did leave room to open the fridge, and to walk on both sides.
So I moved the scale to a spot in front of the commode we keep it under.
11:14 PM 9/24/2022
I spent a lot of time reading the classifieds, collecting garage sales between Winona Lake and Pierceton, and organizing them into an itinerary.
Then I did way too much on the farmers'-market loop of the figure-eight tour, and by the time I got home I didn't have a prayer of getting to a garage sale before it closed.
None of the sales closed earlier than three, but by the time I'd put away the vegetables and frozen food and eaten a fried cheese Spamwich, it was three, so I took a nap. I figured I'd go to Sprawlmart or something after the nap to get my exercise in, but I slept for two hours and didn't have much time to put food on the table.
I had bought a Hungry Man Dinner and a 48-oz. half gallon of Vividly Vanilla ice cream at Kroger. When I got to the part of the Hungry Man instructions that said "set the brownie aside", I said "Let's eat dessert first", so we had hot brownie with Vividly Vanilla and chopped pecans, and Dave put chocolate syrup on his.
Then I gave the Hungry Man Backyard Barbecue its final thirty-second zap and that was pretty good too.
For my bedtime snack, I had Vividly Vanilla and pecan pieces on one of the peanut-butter cookies I'd bought at the courthouse market.
It's a beautiful sunny day, and I have some porch-sitting type sewing to do, but the wind is so cold and so strong that I didn't want to stay out in it long enough to hang out the clothes. I did hang out a bathing suit that I plan to take to Our Father's House and some handkerchiefs that could do with a spell in the sun.
And brought them in before I finished writing. Things dry fast in a strong wind.
13:42
After his new dermatological nurse practitioner frostbit him deeper than the old one did, Dave searched his dresser for his do rags (all three were dusty and needed washing), and found a stack of six-inch muslin squares that appear to have been torn out of an old pillowcase. Or more than one pillowcase; there are a lot of them. There must have been a reason to make them, but neither of us has a clue as to what they were for. I think I'll put them into the next hot-with-bleach load and use them to wipe the grease out of skillets.
I sat on the porch to embroider an inventory mark on my new bra, but when I came in for a crochet hook to tie off the thread, I pulled the rocking chair over by the window.
Somehow it's gotten to be lunch time and I haven't done anything.
1:00 PM 9/28/2022
The good news: it took me only one day to use up the next-to-last Coseqin capsule that I opened, and more than half of it went into the cat.
The bad news: He threw up his Metacam this morning.
And refused to eat his breakfast.
11:34 AM 9/30/2022
Al ate his Metacam and kept it down, then ignored a Cosequin-laced second helping. But after I returned to the living room after fetching quarter-inch elastic for the repair job I'm doing in front of the glass doors, the second helping was gone and Al demanded a third.
I took the cans of expensive cat food to the animal shelter on Saturday. I wandered around a little, but did not go into the kitten room even though a kitten put its paws on the glass door and invited me in.
I was on my way to a farmers-market event at tractor supply, but found no evidence except for two signs (one in the parking lot, and one edgewise to traffic in the air lock) that gave the date, but no time.
It was after three by then, because I'd gone to the fairgrounds market and the courthouse market, spent three-fourths of an hour buying milk and coffee (and determining that they *still* don't have crispbread in stock) at Kroger, then spent about an hour at home putting stuff away, eating lunch, and having a five-minute lie-down. So I asked an employee when the market had ended. He thought I was talking about the courthouse market at first, and was astounded when I showed him the sign in the airlock. He said that he would have loved for such an event to take place.
I meant to have supper at Culver, but after telling Dave I meant to do that, I reflected that service at Culver is very slow and sunset isn't as late as it used to be, so I told him that I'd buy a yogurt or something at Aldi.
I bought a cup of whole-milk coconut greek yogurt planning to eat it with a fruit-and-grain bar from my emergency kit — I carry a disposable spoon wrapped in a paper towel for just such a situation — but when it was time to eat it, there was no place to sit down, I had a bunch of frozen food in my pannier, and it's less than half an hour from Aldi to home, so I ate the fruit-and-grain bar and went home for supper. Which, I believe, was coconut yogurt with vanilla ice cream and a graham cracker. Or maybe that was my bedtime snack.
Today, the librarian and I discussed the new house on the hill while she was closing up the library, so I went past it after finishing my stair climbs. It looks ready for occupancy, and there's a sign on each door (it's a duplex) saying "New floors. Make sure your shoes are *clean*."
Then I went home by way of Ninth Street, and didn't remember that I intended to stop at Kathy's house until I got to Sweet Dreams. I was very ready for lunch by then, so I didn't go back.
⁂