The current version is usually posted at http://wlweather.net/LETTERS
An uneventful Labor Day Weekend, and no appointments this week except getting the house cleaned today.
We were running out of caffeinated soda, so I drove to Meijer and loaded up the trunk. I wanted lemon pie, but they didn't have any. They did have little pies, and I bought one each of pecan and blueberry. We ate half the blueberry pie with strawberry-cheesecake ice cream after supper, and may have the other half for breakfast.
Dave warmed up a roast-beef slider left over from my lunch, and I zapped a chunk of parsnip and ate it with butter.
It took over twice as long to cook the parsnip as I expected.
Since I bought sour cream, I put a frozen chub of ground beef into the fridge so I can make taco meat tomorrow night. We are down to one can of refried beans. I must go to Carniceria San Jose soon.
I bought a small bag of really-yummy plantain chips. And a package of Oreo Thins; we have been eating a lot of those.
Dave is fixed for lunches for a long time — I bought one of every flavor of Hormel Compleats except for Dinty Moore (we already had one). Takes up a lot of space on the canned-meat shelf.
On the way back from the farmers' markets tour on Saturday, I stopped at Kroger for a few things and found a mini lemon pie. It wasn't very good, but Dave ate all of it except for what I sampled.
On the way out, I bought six ears of corn at the ice-rink market and brought them home before continuing. This morning I scraped two of them to make corncakes for breakfast. That leaves two.
While I was touring, Steve took Dave phone shopping. Yesterday I would have written "He is still playing with his new iPhone." Today, he appears to be still trying to get it sort of borderline functional. E-mails he sent from it never arrived. But he did print out a list of questions to ask his oncologist.
By sending it in an e-mail to himself, then opening the sent folder on his desktop.
The pickleball tournament that was taking place when I walked home from church yesterday took over the basketball court, but not the tennis courts. I think that that would have pleased Joe. Cleverly, they lined up picnic tables along the west edge of the pickleball courts to make bleachers.
I thought about buying lunch at the food truck, but seven people were standing in line, and they weren't serving very fast, so I paused only to read the specials.
I got two calls from the home-improvement scam while I was walking to the fridge to verify that two ears of corn are left. Almost forgot what I'd gotten up for.
When I carried out the corn cobs and eggshells, I had to take a few steps into the garden to pull weeds to cover them with.
When I got home from the follow-up eye appointment, Brenda had just blown the leaves out of my parking space. (I lean the bike against the sawhorses Dave left on the porch while I'm unloading it.)
Good news: not a trace of fluid, so he's switching me from every six weeks to every seven. And there's a good chance the follow-up after these three shots will allow a change to eight weeks, which is currently the max for this medication. There's another medication that might allow longer intervals, but this one is working, and neither of us wants to meddle.
Getting the weeds out of the garden is revealing that I missed a *lot* of bulbils. This is a golden opportunity for anyone who wants a start of winter onions: dig up twice as many plants as you want scallions, plant them three or four inches apart, eat every other one in late February and March.
When winter onions go to seed, you can eat the scapes. When the scapes get tough, you can chop up the bulbils; when the bulbils get tough you can cut them in half and pop them out of the shells. This is a bit tedious if you want more than enough for a sandwich, but about then — late July — the plants start having bulbs at the base. Most of the bulbs are sprouting now (early September) but are still good. And when they wither, I'll peel them off to reveal scallions inside. These can be harvested whenever you can stick a trowel into the earth to dig them up. I was eating scallions on New Year's Day this year. (And then the ground froze.)
Grumbly-gripe. Windows 11 updated itself during the night, erased all the reminders Count-Down Timer had put up while I was asleep (at least I know what they were, and am sufficiently annoyed {I think} not to forget), and wanted me to spend half an hour playing with the new features. (And, of course, didn't offer any way to do it at a convenient time, so the new features might as well not exist.)
By the time I managed to shut it up and gain access to my weight record, I'd forgotten what I weighed.
I woke up all in a sweat. When I dashed off to get to my eye appointment in time, Dave was still using the extra blanket I'd put over him, and by the time I got back, I'd forgotten about it. When Brenda found two blankets on the bed, she just naturally put both of them over both of us when she made the bed after changing the sheets.
One new feature was that I had to uninstall Copilot again.
Dave noticed that it was seven when we left for the emergency room, and it was 11:02 when we rolled out of their portico. Neither of us brushed teeth before going to bed.
The cable guy hooked us up to Surf Internet, but it may be weeks before the cable is buried. He *said* that the car rolling over it won't hurt it. I'd have told him to route it around the back of the house if I'd understood what he meant by it.
(I thought the cable was coming in from the street, but it crosses the road near the Wildman's house.)
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Dave's new phone is in the next room. Every few minutes, it receives a spam call. Releasing the new number to all spammers was an unexpected feature, but at least it labels the malicious calls as "spam risk".
The internet is down again. I haven't waked Dave to tell him. He fell asleep watching the news. Right now would be a very good time to watch classic cartoons instead; it's all the same few remarks over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and . . . .
Uneventful weekend. We went to the emergency room Thursday night, but the pain went away while we were waiting our turn. Friday, we had to call Gothier to tell him we'd had an incident, Princess to tell her she didn't have to change the catheter next week after all, and some people I've forgotten.
Saturday's Markets tour was rained out — I knew it was going to rain, but like an idiot, I left my rain jacket in the closet. I rode to the ice rink first, bought six ears of corn, and brought them home. It started raining just before I got back, but cleared up while I was putting the corn away, so I thought I could buy tomatoes at the fairgrounds, take in the last minutes of Safety Day at Central Park, buy cookies at the courthouse, and pick up some potatoes and celery at Kroger if there wasn't any at any of the markets. Lacking a rain jacket, I had to turn around at Lakeview Plaza.
Sunday, church in the morning and washing cleaning rags in the afternoon. To my surprise, the old T-shirt I keep under the laundry hamper to kick over spills came out almost unstained.
Today I picked up rosuvastatin at Zales in the morning. When I came back, I forgot about the cable and ran over it with my bike. The guy said cars wouldn't hurt it, but inch-and-a-quarter ninety-pound tires are *sharp*. I have left tracks in asphalt. (But not in the last quarter century.) I hope that that isn't why a page in Wikipedia suddenly wouldn't turn while I was reading Usenet tonight.
I made significant progress on my new bras in the afternoon, then cut up, floured, and fried a chicken thigh and some small bits, then simmered it in canned Alfredo sauce and served it over hot biscuits. Kroger sells frozen raw biscuits, and I baked two in the toaster oven. They have to be turned over halfway through, because our toaster is hotter on the bottom than on the top.
For my bedtime snack, I had a tostada with taco filling warmed up in the toaster oven. I think I'll have another for lunch tomorrow.
It was breakfast. I had the last pizza stick for lunch. Supper was pounded and floured chicken thigh on half a flat bun, with half an ear of corn. I meant for unleavened hush puppies to be a bedtime snack, but I've already eaten half of them.
The internet is still down. Our old service has stopped, and Dave can't figure out how to connect to the new one. Some, but not all, of the Alexas are working. In particular, the one he uses to turn out the lights after going to bed can't find the switch.
2:49 PM 9/16/2025
It was time to bundle the recycle papers when Dave went into the hospital, it had become intimidating by the time he got out, and now I can't get into that corner of the garage to put the new Box of Rags (paper towels) on the reserve shelf. Today I put "nag" on Brenda's list of things to do, and now two bundles are under cartons of soda, getting flat to tie up tomorrow. Two more Tuesdays, and I should be able to see the box the unsorted papers belong in.
This is an excellent use of the time when I'm too tired to think, but can't have my nap until Brenda leaves at three.
We got deliveries from Fed Ex, Prime, and USPS today.
A six pack of hand sanitizer came a few days ago, and three were still sitting out. I fetched the library stool to put them away, then asked "did you know that there was a six-pack of sanitizer on your top shelf when you ordered these?" Oops. Well, we use a lot of sanitizer, and there is room on the shelf.
I broke off writing to get yesterday's mail; on the way back, I noticed a circle of straw on the ground, wondered what it was about — the cable has been buried!
I've been having caffeine instead of a nap every day since Saturday, when I did it without caffeine. It will be at least a week after Dave gets back before I should sign any legal papers.
I jotted some notes in my weight record:
10:27 PM 9/20/2025
That was an exciting bike ride, but I'm too tired
to write about it tonight
8:07 AM 9/21/2025 -- 137.2
8:17 AM 9/22/2025 -- 137.6
10:19 PM 9/22/2025
Heard a bing-bong, looked out to see a deer with
its head disturbingly close to the rose bush, so I
unlocked the door, which caused the deer to
evaporate.
8:41 AM 9/23/2025 138.2
I haven't mislaid the notes taken during the "exciting bike ride" yet, and will transcribe them story style despite having already given spoilers.
When I called Dave this morning, we were interrupted by a therapy team who came to get him up and moving around so that he'd be ready to go home. How long they have to get him ready isn't certain.
Firefly called. Brenda is sick, so cleaning has been postponed to Thursday.
Dave went to the emergency room Saturday. He needed a three-way catheter and they had neither a coudé catheter nor a urologist who could insert a straight catheter, so they shipped him to Parkview Regional late that night. Steve has been driving me there every afternoon even though Martha is waiting for a hip replacement — also in Fort Wayne. He is going to get very familiar with SR 30 and the interstates.
I just picked all the furosimide out of Dave's evening pills, which gets everything clean.
Like an idiot, I packed his evening pills before reading his discharge papers. And some of the morning pills had been packed before Saturday; I'd intended to pack the evening pills Saturday afternoon.
His potassium is a white capsule, as are two medications that he is still taking. Yesterday, after establishing that the other two were also over-the-counter supplements, I dumped all three and replaced two.
Brenda was sick on Tuesday, but appeared fully recovered today. She doesn't know what was the matter.
It was really hot in the house, so Brenda opened the front door. I looked at the storm and thought that we really ought to have a screen for that door — eventually I remembered that we *do* — there's a handle at the top of the window; pull on it and the window slides down pulling a screen behind it.
There was another learning moment when I closed it. I had to turn a light on and look at it before I knew how to latch it.
Writing interrupted to add one of the new pills to the evening pill stick. To my delight, it's a pale blue-green unlike any other pill he's taking.
Dave came home yesterday and is already feeling much better. He might drive me to my eye appointment tomorrow afternoon.
It's late in the evening and I'm out of thinkum.
While I was napping, Dave did something that made the wifi signal reach this computer. It may have had something to do with the hour-long conversation he says he had with a very patient person who is going to show up here at eight tomorrow.
Miranda is coming at nine.
I roll out for the farmers markets tour at ten. I'll be dressed by then, for a change.
The improvement in the wifi signal didn't add any brain cells to the self-styled Web designers fiddling with the Go Comics site. I skipped some comics, and gave up on the comments entirely, except for Breaking Cat News, which has a continuing fanfic in the comment section. I think that it was on the sixth bookmark click that the comments appeared. (Opening in a new tab seems to work better than clicking the reload icon.)
This afternoon, I got the first in the current set of three injections. Dave, though much improved, didn't feel up to driving me, and I reflected that I'd have one perfectly-good eye, and I've had a *lot* of recent experience in driving with ability impaired. Turned out that I didn't mind driving with one eye shut at all — but no part of the route required me to judge how far away something was. Driving after dark, however, is quite out of the question. On the other hand, when I do drive after dark, I usually have the streets all to myself.
I made potato soup for supper tonight, adding kielbasa, parsnip, carrot, ham bouillon powder, butter, flour, and cheese. I plan to try again with no dairy products and not thickening the broth.
Last Saturday's notes are still in my notebook.
I've got a terryaki tenderloin in the oven for supper, with potato, parsnip, carrot, celery, and four or five corn-kernel size onion bulbs.
Another busy Saturday: we had appointments at eight and nine, the cable guy and Miranda. I thought that I'd get off on the farmers markets tour on time for a change, but at the last minute I remembered that I'd forgotten to put on sunscreen.
The cable guy said that the people who installed the cable were sloppy, and showed me how the door of the outside cabinet almost nicked the dangling wires. (I'd gone outside to dump salt water on the asparagus while he had cabinet open.) I'm not clear on what fault brought him out, but Dave says that we're getting proper speed now.
Miranda blocked the cable guy in, but they left about the same time.
Giving Dave a B-12 shot is off the books — First Call doesn't do nursing care, so she does it after clocking out. She's licensed, so it's legal. She came to take his vitals and check on how he's doing.
Dave had a fever in the evening and didn't know what to do, so he called Miranda. She calmed us down, we went to bed, and he woke up normal. I woke up about one and took his temperature, and it was normal before he woke up.
I was amused that he took two tylenol and saw her in the morning. (Aspirin is incompatible with his other meds — which include aspirin.)
05:00 28 September 2025
I left a little after ten intending to buy corn at the ice-rink market, a tomato at the fairgrounds, cookies at the courthouse, B-12 at Zale, and milk at Kroger.
I stopped a little beyond the bridge to check out a funny noise, then walked to the Trailhouse and left the bike to get a new derailleur and have the front derailleur fiddled with. I said I might as well have it overhauled, since it will be a week before I get my turn on the repair stand, but he looked up his records and said that I'd had that done in July.
So I walked home, changed into driving clothes, skipped the ice rink and the fairgrounds, and parked at the library about the time the fairgrounds market closed. Got my cookies, but the only tomatoes I saw were at the far end of the courthouse market and I didn't feel like walking back. I bought two Romas at Kroger, but they (or at least the one I served with the tenderloin) have a bad case of shipped green.
Upon returning to the library, I noticed that they no longer close at noon on Saturday, went in, and bought three David Drake books at the Friends of the Library sale. Then I picked up three cyanocobalamine shots and did a major shopping at Kroger.
So far, it's been a bog-standard Sunday, praise the Lord.
I thought Ice Cream Social had closed for the winter, so on the way home I climbed the steps and read the sign: Open Tuesday through Saturday, three to nine. (I'm not sure of the hours.)
I served the other roma with tonight's leftover-tenderloin sandwiches. It rolled off the table, crashed to the floor, and didn't suffer the least damage, but is good on a sandwich as long as you aren't expecting tomato.
Dave's pretty much got all our remote-control lights switched over to the new system. He replaced switches, then figured out how to make the old switches work, so there are a lot left and I expect something improbable to get put on Alexa now and again.
I must confess that it's convenient to turn off all the bedroom lights without getting out of bed.
8:21 AM 9/28/2025 Dave discovered that Brenda had cleaned his waterpick. It had been filthy with dust and is now sparkling clean.
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I went to the Remento page, and the prompt was "what is your earliest memory".
I can't remember it, but I remember remembering that I was leaning on a screen door — I couldn't stand up without support — watching Mother walk away. I'm pretty sure it was a concrete walkway, so this must have been in Anderson.
I have no memories of Anderson, save that Grandmother Loveless was living with us and taught me how to tear a strip of newspaper and wind it into a straw for lighting fires. (Much, much later I learned that this straw was called a "spill".)
I remember remembering that there was a doghouse dormer in Nancy and Alice's room and they sometimes let me sit in it.
Mother told a story of hearing sniveling and tracking it down to me reading Black Beauty in my crib. I must have forgotten the book completely; I remember reading it sometime in my grade-school years. Without sniveling.
I remember seeing the staircase in the Scircleville place for the first time, from a viewpoint just inside the living-room door, and wondering whether it held secrets like the staircases in stories. I wonder what year that was. I couldn't have been older than six, because I went to first grade in Sugar Creek School.
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Tonight I got the aluminum-handle butcher knife out to cut a melon, and Dave said "I think I remember acquiring these aluminum-handle knives." The set was a wedding gift, and we cut the cake with it.
&&
12:41 PM 9/29/2025
It's not just being unable to ride it. I'm staying home washing clothes today. I just took my white linen do-rag out of the washing machine, straightened it out, and . . . I can't hang it on my brake cable to dry.
I put it on the rear-view mirror of the flatfoot.
I can't believe that I turned left onto 15 out of Chevy Way. Usually we turn right and go over to Husky Trail.
Dave made an appointment for an oil change, and I kept it. They rotated the tires and checked the brakes too. I was surprised that the trip back was worse than the trip out — possibly because I was driving south about noon.
At the moment, Brenda is mopping the kitchen, so I'll have to wait a bit to put the soda can I just emptied into the bin.
Or walk around the outside of the house.
A plumber came this morning to give estimates on replacing the water heater, repairing the old toilet, and buying a higher toilet. Then, when I was halfway through putting stew into the rice cooker and still deciding what to have for breakfast, we dashed off to Parkview to get blood drawn, and stopped at Zales for my antibiotic on the way back. Dave drove for the first time since he got home, and walked from the parking space to the door instead of having me park the car.
Once home, I started the soup cooking — I had changed my mind and put in a can of chicken broth — made a fried cheese and tenderloin sandwich for lunch, and took my morning pills and the antibiotic.
So now it's naptime and I still haven't had time to make a story out of my weird bicycle ride, so I'll summarize the last two weeks:
On Saturday the twentieth, just as I was approaching Zales to pick up a prescription, Dave called to say he needed to go to the emergency room. I set a record riding home, and the prescription got lost in the shuffle — neither of us can remember what I meant to pick up.
Dave needed a urologist and Warsaw doesn't have one. I think we must have an immune reaction to urologists; two have vanished without notice. So at 9:45 p.m. an ambulance took him to Fort Wayne and I went home.
Leaving out all the important details, Steve drove me to Fort Wayne on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and David drove me to pick him up on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Brenda had called in sick on Tuesday and postponed until Thursday, so after five days without a nap, which accounts for some of the chaos in the Banner, I didn't get much of a nap. Friday I drove myself to get my eye injection. I think that I lay down for a while before the three o'clock appointment, but didn't sleep.
Saturday Miranda came for Dave's monthly check-up. Having gotten up early to meet her, I got off for the farmer's market on time for a change — except for having to go back and put on sunscreen. Then I discovered that the previous Saturday's bungee-in-the-spokes incident had done more damage than previously thought, left the bike at the Trailhouse (It will be ready Real Soon Now.), walked home, moved my stuff from jersey pockets to pants pockets, and drove to the courthouse market. When Quickening my expenses, I tried for a long time to remember what I'd bought at the fairgrounds market before remembering that I hadn't gone there.
Sunday was blessedly boring. I washed clothes on Monday (how traditional!) but must have been doing something else as well, as I left some of the folding to Brenda. Perhaps that was when I was forthing and backing in search of the mysteriously-missing Farxiga. The pharmacy finally decided to repack it. Perhaps that was the prescription that I was supposed to pick up on Weird Saturday.
I took the Equinox to Lakeside Chevrolet for an oil change and tire rotation on Tuesday. I got home before noon, but left "nag me to sort papers" off Brenda's chore list.
Wednesday was my semi-annual checkup with Dr. Darr. The night before, my temperature had been ninety-nine; I mentioned that, he said it was a urinary-tract infection, and added a urine test to the paper I took across the street. This morning the results were in, hence the stop at Zales on the way back from the blood draw.
I'd noticed feeling draggy, but thought that was normal under the circumstances.
Tomorrow he has an appointment to get labs done in preparation for a check-up with his oncologist the following Friday — and there's nothing on the calendar in between!
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I'm trying out a recipe for bagels that calls for one cup of all-purpose flour and one cup of cottage cheese. Even though I used hard-wheat flour instead, the dough was much too soft and sticky to form into rolls, so I greased my hands and patted it into a sort of pizza shape. I think it will be edible, but the author of the recipe never bit into a bagel. I don't understand why the bread is salty — half a teaspoon in two cups of dough isn't all that much.
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The squirrels aren't going to get any of the bread, but I might not use the recipe again.
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Centurylink sent me an e-mail saying that they'd pause my account if I didn't go to their web site and give them more information before September 3. The link in the e-mail didn't work, I put it off until I had time to fiddle-faddle around trying to make it work, then things got hectic and I forgot about it. I tried another link to the same page, and that got me a button to connect to my account — which vanished when clicked, leaving a completely unresponsive Web page. (Lots of buttons, all purely decorative.)
Since everyone who has my Centurylink address is on this mailing list, I'll wait until Dave is done fiddling with the printer that is supposed to be delivered before eight tonight (It's now seven forty-two.) to ask him whether he can get in from his end of the account.
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Delivery time was changed to nine, but seeing as it's nine twenty seven and the printer is in Avon, I don't think it's going to make it.
🚲
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