I no longer remember enough to untangle the half week of chaotic entries that begin on Sunday the nineteenth, so I'll say up here, before you read them, that the bleeding has stopped and things are back to normal.
I think Steve drove me to Goshen three days in a row: On Monday to visit Dave, on Tuesday to pick up Dave, and on Wednesday both of us to a follow-up exam.
Since this issue is overdue, I don't plan to do much in the way of removing redundant or boring remarks.
Yet another event for Saturday: today's paper says it will be Free Comic Book Day at Chimp's. That one runs all day, so I could go back in the afternoon. I think the latest of the other events is the Grace College craft fair, which ends at three.
I'm making a whole cake instead of half a recipe this year, and that will use up the last grain of a four-pound bag of sugar. It's Our Family sugar, so we must have bought it at Martin's when we were shut in for Covid in 2020.
The Eastern Star event at the fairgrounds also ends at three. I could take in Chimp's on the way back from that — and then go to Kroger and buy sugar.
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Cool! While cleaning up after putting the cake into the oven, two previously-unacquainted neurons connected and I tried my one-egg griddle on my newly-acquired onion-sauce skillet. It's a perfect lid.
7:45
There are at least nine buzzards on the beach. This makes me wildly curious, but I don't want to scare them off.
Dave has another appointment tomorrow.
Weather Underground still says that Saturday will be a good day for a ride. It also says that it will be my last chance for at least a week. I'd better climb all the stairs in the church next Sunday.
The cake is delicious. I put it into sandwich bags and froze it while my breakfast potatoes were frying. Then I put half a pint of crumbs into a jar on the table.
I've been complaining about the lack of a grocery on the west side of town, so I got all excited when I read in the paper that a grocery at 400 S. Buffalo had been granted a liquor license.
So I looked it up on Google Maps. It's the Marathon station.
I saw buzzards down by the lake every time I looked out today.
The flower pods and the leaf pods have stopped falling — but this morning I rubbed both feet with a wet washrag, rubbed one foot with palm oil and put a sock on it — and found a cottonwood pod on the other foot.
Dave said "They're everywhere!"
At least it was dried up enough to come off with a wet rag.
I went to Warsaw twice and Corridor Drive once on Saturday. I haven't added up the miles yet. Probably *not* twenty-five.
I went to see the anniversary party at the Habitat for Humanity thrift shop, then rode to the end of Corridor because I won't be back that way. There was construction going on, so there might be something to see next year.
I came back soaked in sweat, and had to wash everything I wore.
We are in for three days of rain, so I'm taking the bike in for service today. I hope there aren't too many bikes in line ahead of mine.
There are still buzzards on the beach. One morning I was quite certain that they had spent the night in our willow tree.
Before leaving the bike at the Trailhouse, I went to the library, where I returned my books and freshened my library card.
There was a cute little battery-powered motorcycle parked in front of the Trailhouse. It had pedals, but I'd really hate to have to pedal something that heavy. I think that the pedals on "e-bikes" are actually speed controls. And being able to move the feet around would keep sitting still from touching off one's sciatica. It was gone when I left.
Inside, there was a tricycle that put me in mind of a semi-trailer. It had tires as wide as the motorcycle's. I think, in retrospect. The comparison didn't occur to me at the time. The captain's chair completely concealed the stoker's standard saddle when I first caught sight of it, so the extra length of a tandem contributed to the big-truck impression. The captain's pedals were so wide and long that at first glance I thought they were treadles.
Just DuckDucked "FreedomConcepts". As I'd suspected, the tandem is for a cripple and an able-bodied escort.
Ah! I was wondering where the predicted rain was. It's here.
The bikes may be designed for cripples, but the Web site isn't. Spidery-thin small white letters on a glowing medium-blue ground. Thank goodness for ctl-+
And enlarging the type reveals that they claim to design for visual impairment.
I must see what that is. The usual adaptation for visual impairment is for the blind person to stoke a standard tandem.
The ET2611 is stoker-steered. Also has a mirror to allow the stoker to monitor the captain. It looks lighter than the truck I saw in the show room, and lacks the integral luggage basket. On reading further, I see that it's a parent-and-child bike.
The Web site has no search function, and "tandem" isn't on the menu.
On the walk home from the bike shop, I had to explain my mirror to a small boy. I hope the questions I answered were the ones he asked! With the imprecise speech of the very young, me being twice as tall, and, I suspect, the loss of higher frequencies in my ears, I wasn't always sure of what he'd said.
I found out why I couldn't find the Grace College Craft Fair. It was the Grace Village Craft Fair.
Didn't have enough time to go anyway. I left the Eastern Star show at two-twenty, and it closed at three.
Dave is re-boxing the sea shells, and we are going to put them back up in the attic.
I started work on the garden today.
Dave cleaned the garage.
The winter onions are going to seed, and I haven't thinned even one clump of the row. I'll thin them in August, when they have bulbs at the base. I throw away a *lot* of plant to get a shallot-size bulb, but they are good.
There are still scallions in places where onions shouldn't be, and I'd be picking multiplier scallions by now if I had planted them on time. I've already started using the winter-onion seed — I cut off the flower-bud looking things and chop up the green vines inside. (And also those that have escaped to the outside.)
The last time I chopped up the contents of seed buds, there were tiny bulbils, which I also chopped.
I've been making dip of yogurt, winter onion, mini-sweet pepper, garlic leaves, salt, and shredded parmesan.
Dr. Crevecoeur had thought today would be our last trip to Fort Wayne, but we haven't been exposing the donor site enough, so we're going back in three weeks.
I took the bike to the shop last Monday; it will be done tomorrow or the next day.
Last Saturday, I drove to the fairgrounds market, then to the library parking lot and walked to the courthouse market. The Mexican restaurant west of the library is gone. The shoe-repair shop is still there.
Then I went into the library and spent rather too much time at the book sale. When I got home, I rode the flatfoot to the ice rink to buy empanadas for lunch, but the empanada bakers didn't show or maybe had sold out and gone home, so I bought a breakfast-meat burrito at the Indian place.
I got eggs and radishes at the fairgrounds, but nothing at the courthouse.
I got home just in time. During supper, I went into the garage for a slice of bread and saw that it was raining vigorously. (I forgot that I'd left my bike outside, but it was under the eave and Dave brought it in before the rain got at it.)
I was sweaty enough during the ride — my clothes are in the wash — that I wouldn't have noticed a light sprinkle, and I did, indeed, ignore two *very* light sprinkles, but rain hard enough to mess up my glasses is another kettle of fish entirely. On the other hand, I'm far-sighted now, and bikes don't have dashboards; I could have simply put them in my pocket.
This morning, Linda dropped in to invite us to help celebrate Matthew's graduation the Sunday after next.
I got my welfare checked yesterday. While I was sitting at the picnic table at the Silveus Crossing Family Express, a police car pulled up. Mildly interesting, I thought, but he came straight to me. It seems that someone had seen me and thought I might be lost. Of course, he knew I wasn't as soon as he saw me sitting there with a slice of pizza in my hand, but he had to ask all the "is she oriented" questions anyway.
I was about to express puzzlement as to how someone knew I was old when too far away to see the wrinkles (my helmet and cap completely conceal my hair), then I remembered that I'd stood around for a while at the top of McElroy hill writing notes in my notebook and texting Dave. I probably looked lost while I was doing that.
It's lucky that I didn't eat my pizza at one of the tables inside. The bike leaning against the north side of a kiosk would have been very hard to see. I suspect that he also found the yellow jersey convenient.
I'm wondering what to wear to the historical tour tomorrow. I don't want to wear my yellow jersey when I'm on the flatfoot, and I don't want to take time to change out of my pocketless tights.
I got up to look at my bag inventory, noticed the garage sale across the street, and made a dry run with a comparatively-small shoulder bag (all our belt bags are huge) tied on as a fanny pack. It works.
At the garage sale, I bought a canvas tote that might replace one of my lamented canvas grocery bags. It's a tad small, but plausible.
On yesterday's tour I bought duck fat, ghee, and a NY Strip Steak, all packed on the ice in my insulated pannier. The ghee is stable at room temperature, but I didn't want to put it among the trash in my starboard pannier.
And on that trash hangs a tale. Until I was almost home, I didn't drink anything but a can of V-8 Energy Drink, and tea that I bought along the way. Once southbound — I don't think I'd gotten to 175 E yet — the tea started sitting uneasy, and I realized that I'd been drinking it on an empty stomach.
It had been too soon after the pizza when I was in Leesburg, and the cafe in Oswego doesn't open before suppertime on Thursdays. The cabinet where Mini-Mart used to keep sandwiches before they added the cafe had two pies that I could read the label on, and the items that were too high to see the top looked like sour-cream dip or cream-cheese spread. I didn't want to handle food that I had no intention of buying, so I refilled my bottle at the tea dispenser, paid, and left. Since I was exercising, I didn't feel hungry.
(None of the groceries in the Mini-Mart looked more appealing than my emergency bars.)
So I started looking around and in a quarter mile or two I spotted a utility pole that wasn't knee deep in weeds and pulled over so I could get into my insulated pannier.
Piled all around the pole were Coors cans and a beer bottle. Eh, I'm already stopped and there's nothing in one wire pannier, so *after* getting my food out and re-closing the pannier, I picked up the trash.
Thereafter, every single time I stopped, there was an aluminum can right there, and I think there was one on each side when I turned around after making a wrong turn. All were Coors except one Budweiser and a can that had been run over many times, which made me wonder whether one yahoo had done most of the trashing.
I also threw in the food-bar wrapper and a couple of behind-me-now maps. All recycle-binned soon after I got home. Well, the candy wrapper is in the landfill bin.
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I've been reading yesterday's paper, which I was too tired to read yesterday. The mini-mart ad says that the kitchen is open from six am to six pm on Thursday through Saturday, and not open after six pm on any day of the week. ??
High of eighty one! I may change out of my tights after all.
20 May 2024
I did change after lunch. I think I took the history tour in black linen-cotton pedal pushers and a flowered T-shirt. Memory not clear, but I didn't need the bag. The flatfoot was more convenient than the Fuji for hopping on and off and proceeding slowly. I learned something I hadn't known before: The Byer brothers duplex had a shared kitchen. That may be one of the reasons it's a single-family home now.
I wandered around the festival a bit after the tour, but did not attend any other event, and the festival was no inconvenience on my farmers-market tour, except for cars parked in the street.
As usual, I went first to the fairgrounds, where I bought a bunch of radishes, to the courthouse, where I bought nothing, and to the ice rink, where I bought two chicken empanadas and brought them home for lunch.
Went to church wearing black jeans, a black short-sleeve T-shirt, and a straw hat. Tipped out of the service early, and took an early nap.
Got to bed for my nap a little after three, slept until about five, rolled over and slept until six twenty-two. I'd have rolled over again, but I didn't want to wake up at bedtime.
Doing nothing can be quite a strain.
19:42
I had ghee on breaded tomatoes for supper.
Dave texted that he could eat only half of the beef-and-cheese sandwich he had for supper.
He ate most of the fried-chicken sandwich he had for lunch, but it was small.
I went to bed before ten and slept until half-past seven.
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I think the cottonwoods have finally run out of cotton, but it could be because there isn't any wind.
I swept a lot of cotton out of the parlor, kitchen, and garage, that being something I could do while out of breath and anxious.
Just before ten, I deemed myself alert enough to put the car into the garage. I got it too far to the left, but not so far that it will be awkward to back out. I thought it unwise to try again.
And now the phone might ring any minute; it chimed ten after I sat down;, and the nurse said that there was no way Dave would know anything before ten.
So let's see if I can write a coherent account of what happened.
Sunday morning, about six, I think, Dave said that we might have to go to the emergency room. I got ready to go, but the bleeding seemed to be clearing up — when you have a catheter, bleeding is almost normal — so I swapped my loud jeans for black jeans and about half-past nine I walked to church, and got the fridges and freezer wiped before the service for a change. But I tipped out after announcements and prayer, and walked home through the festival. I'd thought of buying lunch to take home, but most of the food trucks that had been all over the parking lot on Saturday had gone home and those that were left didn't appeal to me.
It must have been after nine, because I'd started brushing my teeth, when the bleeding increased alarmingly and we went to the Parkview E.R. for the second time.
Whoosh, our first trip has completely escaped my mind. I think it was right after lunch. We came home thinking that it had been something of a false alarm.
10:36
Dave texted that there will be no news before four, so I'll try to get some cleaning done.
15:13
The weather has switched from being too cold to work outside to being too hot to work outside.
I don't stand up to heat as well as I used to. It helps that I can use each tool for only a few minutes before I have to come inside for a different one. I get a long drink of water each time.
Now if I could remember, when I go out, where I put my hat when I came in.
I came in for a hoe; in a few minutes I'll come back for onion sets.
15:30
When I came back from using the hoe in a different hat, I saw that the missing hat had been behind me while I was typing.
15:51
Onions planted, but not covered. I'm done with being where I can't hear the landline for the day — I hope — so covering them will have to wait for tomorrow.
The doctor isn't going to appear precisely at four, and it's going to take him a while to evaluate the situation, then he'll talk to Dave for a while before Dave can call.
Retrospective will have to wait for a calmer time. Note: steak at half-past five helps me to remember the order of things.
Midnight — just back from Parkview. False alarm this time — clog cleared itself on the way.
Further note for retrospective: At 5:30 I sent a text saying we were passing through Milford on our way to Goshen.
Steve is picking us up at ten tomorrow — later today — to take us to a follow-up with a urologist. Dave thinks he can drive himself, but he must be much more stressed and tired than I am, and I'm not all that great.
And I have an annual check-up on Thursday.
Cottonwood is still coming down but it isn't blizzarding.
I have lost a pound, but I don't think it will stay off.
9:35 — Steve will pick us up at ten. My bag is on the bench, together with Dave's sweatshirt and a carry-cup of water.
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Home again at almost one. With any luck at all, no more trips to Goshen for four weeks. One of us will have to go to the drugstore tomorrow.
I hope to do a little poking around on my bike after my appointment for my annual skin exam tomorrow. Perhaps I'll stop at Martin's and buy another strip steak. I do have to go in, come to think of it, because I'm out of AREDS2.
I went to the drugstore and back before going to my appointment at Forefront Dermatology, and still got there way early. When it was time for my appointment to begin, I was done and untangling my bike from the cherry tree, and I had spent substantial time putting on sunscreen after putting my clothes back on. Lindsay found just one spot, and froze it.
I reflected that it would be easier to untangle my bike next spring when the tree will be bigger, but I'm not coming back next spring.
I drove to Fort Wayne when Dr. Gilbert carved up my nose, and did just fine (he did a beautiful job, by the way), but I'm no longer capable of short trips on long-distance roadways. Not the tangle around Fort Wayne, anyway. So I'm going to sign on with Dave's dermatologist. If he's taking new patients.
I wish one of the bus companies would organize Fort Wayne shopping tours.
I did poke around, but the hospital is about all there is to look at. I went into the YMCA, and would have gone into the cinema, but I didn't care to walk on their lawn or go back onto Husky Trail.
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One day while making our king-size bed, I remembered how I'd walked myself into a frazzle taking lap after lap around the king-size bed in the apartment we stayed in while waiting for the previous tenants to move out of our rented house in Hawaii. I smugly reflected that in the decades since, I'd learned how to make a king-size bed.
Then I realized that I hadn't learned not to need to walk lap after lap after lap, I'd stopped minding.
I wonder when I'll stop minding having to *crawl* around our queen-size bed.
And how I'll get on when I can no longer get up off the floor.
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Discussed dermatology with Dave, and he pointed out that Lindsay can refer me to Dr. Moore as easily as to Gilbert. Since I've got a whole year, I think I'll go to the office instead of calling.
On the other hand, if I call Monday morning, I can scratch it off my list of things to do.
Make that Tuesday; I forgot that it's Memorial Day.
On Saturday, I woke up feeling that I'd finally had enough sleep, but I feel that it would be unwise to skip my nap before at least a week has passed.
That will make it very hard to increase my mileage — I can't ride thirty miles before lunch, and it's very difficult, to put it mildly, to nap along the road. It's hard enough to take a five-minute break without attracting rescuers.
The missing pound is back.
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I didn't comb my hair at all yesterday, yet it wasn't particularly hard to comb today. I didn't even have to come in out of the wind.
Which reminds me of a story. Back when we were doing the Punkintown Fair, I wore my hair in a braid. One year I was so busy I didn't have time to comb it, let alone braid it, so I brushed over the surface and twisted it into a french knot. At the clean-up party, someone commented: "Joy is so elegant! She pinned her hair up every day."
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Dave's donor site is looking really good. I'm sure we'll be released when Dr. Crevecouer looks at it next Monday.
Scared myself — Typing that made me think it was this Thursday, and I've set my heart on a Sprawlmart tour that day. Weather Underground says it will be sunny, warm, dry, and very little wind. I want to go to the license bureau and ask for an extra handicap card for my go bag.
139.6 pounds this morning. Maybe the missing pound is staying gone.
My mission for today is to wrap up my collection of needlework magazines and put them back into the attic. I wish I could pass them on to someone who would appreciate them.
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Did a box of Bikeabouts first. This included the traumatic month that I quit editing. One of the members said that they'd have voted the other way if they'd known that I felt so strongly about it — which is why I didn't tell them until after the vote.
(Changing the name wasn't the trigger — it was changing the name because women are delicate sub-human creatures in dire need of protection.)
(Nothing has changed in the intervening thirty years.)
138.8 — maybe I've actually resumed the slow weight loss. I'd certainly be more comfortable ten pounds lighter
On the other hand, last night was restless and it was well after nine when I woke up.
Weather Underground still says that tomorrow will be perfect for cycling, and an appointment that I'd thought was next week is tomorrow.
But it's an afternoon appointment, so I can finally wash the muslin sheets and dry them outside. Or one of the two; my smart-alec washer won't run in more than half a load of water.
Never buy a computer that doesn't have places to plug in a keyboard and a monitor.
I have thawed a pound of ground beef and plan to make meatloaf today.
We went to Fort Wayne today, where Dr. Crevecouer pronounced Dave no longer in need of his services.
He has another Mohs next week, but this one isn't expected to require a plastic surgeon.
There's half a serving of meatloaf left.
A few days ago I checked that I can put the bike into the car all by myself. Dave wondered why the backs of the back seats are down. I also left the moving blanket in the trunk, but did fold it. Even in the summer, putting a bike in the trunk isn't the only reason that a blanket might come in handy.
At the license bureau, I learned that the handicap card is in Dave's name, and she gave me a form for him to sign and me to bring back.
When Dave started to sign the form, we discovered that to get a second card, you have to swear under penalty of perjury that the first one was destroyed or stolen.
Then we realized that the smart thing to do is to get a card in my name, and I'm seeing Darr next week for my annual, so I can get a note from him then.
It would be really cool if the city council would pass an ordinance that all motorized vehicles other than emergency vehicles and wheelchairs must display a handicap card when operating on recreationways. In addition to letting cripples drive golf carts, it would end the puzzlement over where e-bikes end and motorcycles begin.
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