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The plebotomist got Dave's blood with one needle. But it took her a while to find a spot that wasn't bruised by previous draws.
He spent the rest of the day wrestling with the new printer. The printer won.
I mostly goofed off, but after my nap I went to Kroger for milk and lunch meat. Spent ninety-three dollars and six cents without even stocking up on frozen dinners -- it was past time to go home before I got to the frozen food. I did buy one Hormel Compleat of every flavor.
Some time after we got back and left the car parked outside, I took advantage of the empty garage to pull down the disappearing staircase and look for the big fan. As the door opened, I realized with glee that we had never looked in the attic, and beside the hole, next to the box of bagasse desert dishes, was a logical spot for a box of packages of disposable washrags.
This isn't that good a story -- there was an empty box in that spot, but the bath wipes were nowhere to be found.
But a while after closing the staircase, I happend to look at the north wall of the garage, and there on the floor, between the shelves and the pegs, was a carton of extra-large alcohol-free adult wipes.
It's a perfect spot: out of the way, but easy to get at.
The printer is working with Dave's computer, but mine doesn't recognize its existance. At least I can get a copy by sneakernetting to Dave's computer.
That was a really-greasy frozen pizza we had for supper; I had to scour the griddle I use for a pizza stone. It was roasted mushrooms with truffle oil, lots of cheese, no sauce. Good change of pace, but we don't want it again soon. We also had steamed corn (lots of butter) and a slice of the last-of-the-season tomato I bought at the ice-rink market.
My bike is still at the Trailhouse; I hope it's done Monday, before I go to Zale's for levothyroxin. I rode the flatfoot to the ice rink, but skipped all the rest. I'd done a major shopping at Kroger on Friday, so none of the places I would have gone were worth driving the car.
I got a few surprises when moving all the stuff that had accumulated in front of the flatfoot, and I had to pump up its tires. Took a while to find the pressure, which was molded black-on-black in small letters. At first I thought it was 00 (???), but when I made out "2 bar" I realized that it was 30 pounds. I'd thought it was forty pounds, so it's good that I kept hunting until I found it.
While meditating on "everyone likes pizza, but some people are picky about which kind", I had an idea for that recipe for cottage-cheese bread. I could divide the dough into six drop biscuits, flatten them into pizza crusts, and put on six different toppings. Cinnamon sugar on apple slices would be one.
The Remento-inspired entry in the September issue ended in a double ampersand to indicate that the anecdote isn't finished. I was annoyed when I learned that ampersand is a reserved character, and must be "escaped" or replaced by &. No other mark would work as well. But after a while, I realized that it's a feature: when I try to validate a file, every unfinished item will be marked as a mistake.
Some of my sewing pages have *lots* of double ampersands.
And now I've used up the energy I meant to use to complete the anecdote.
While I was in church, Dave got my computer talking to the printer. But Libre Office won't send proper boundary lines of tables to the printer. At least it shows a preview, so that I can see that it's wrong without wasting paper and toner.
The only place I have a table is my calendar, and I don't print out a new calendar page often enough to make it a bother to export to a PDF, print, and delete the PDF.
I passed Steve and Martha's house on my way home from church. For the Loveless side of the mailing list: Steve and Martha live in the house where Dave grew up.
Daisy was outside, and though she showed only mild interest in me, I spoke to her as I passed, saying that we'd been introduced and she had nothing to worry about. Steve heard me and came out, so I went in and visited a bit. Then Martha put lunch preparations on hold and led me down the steps to her garden, where she picked some leaves that I've already forgotten the name of. Green ones to wrap around food, like lettuce, and purple ones for making tea. I tried a green one with a slice of pinwheel for lunch, but haven't made tea yet.
On the steps, she said that having a bad hip made her understand why Claude and Evelyn were eager to build the house where Dave and I live. She gets on surprisingly well.
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Meanwhile, back at the anecdote: I don't remember who gave us any of the neat things that we still have. Which would make me suggest to younger brides: "don't throw out the tags after you write the thank-you notes", were it not that wedding presents have gone out of style now that couples marry so late that they are merging two households instead of setting up a new one. (And if you are wondering what we did before gift registries, everybody told the bride's mother what they were bringing.)
So I don't know who gave us the aluminum-handled knives and forks: a paring knife that is always at my place at the table, a three-tined fork that is my favorite for scrambling eggs, a carving fork, and a butcher knife. The larger implements have been less useful, but the butcher knife played a role in the ceremony.
Both these stories are hearsay; I wasn't there at the time. When the basement was being set up for the reception, they realized that they'd forgotten a knife to cut the cake. Aunt Doris found the butcher knife among the presents and stuck a bow from another present on it.
Since I carried a boquet, I might have been there when they opened the florist box and realized that we'd forgotten a corsage for Grandmother. But the florist had sent two extra buttonhole carnations, Aunt Doris, more ribbon, and a lovely corsage.
Aunt Doris -- Mother's brother's wife -- was a resourceful person. Another story told of her was that she was in a car pulling a trailer (Man, I wish I knew the details!) and they inadvertently did something illegal that left them in a mess that they couldn't back out of because of the trailer. It was repeated as a moral lesson that when a policeman came to berate them, the first words out of Aunt Doris's mouth were "You have the authority".
So at her request, he used that authority to stop traffic and get them out of the mess.
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There are acorn caps and broken acorn shells on the concrete in front of the house, but very few acorns. Yesterday, the driveway alarm bing-bonged in the night, and I peeked out to see a deer eating acorns off the parking patio.
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The rains is supposed to quit at two, and the clock struck two just as I sat back down. Writing was interrupted by a phone call: my bike is now in the garage. I got only slightly damp; I don't think we got as much rain as we need. I didn't notice any wind, but there are green oak leaves on the lawn.
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Notes taken yesterday:
11:36 AM 10/6/2025 -- Once again, I took my clothes off before remembering that I need to comb my hair before washing it. [Since I shed like a cat, I comb my hair outside.]
4:01 PM 10/6/2025 -- When I ran my fingers through my hair after washing it, it squeaked.
I didn't notice that the stew recipe called for a green pepper, so I opened a package of three- pepper-and-onion, and picked out most of the green bits.
Another change: I thought I was buying a turnip, but the receipt says "rutabaga". Tastes like a turnip to me, and it has white flesh and a purple top. [The turnip was bitter and not very good. I'm glad that I put in only half.]
8:59 AM 10/7/2025 -- Just now noticed that ten provinces and three territories add up to thirteen states.
1:33 PM 10/9/2025
Dave's weather station is officially off the air. He says that taking that computer out freed up a lot of wires.
While he was doing that, I was stocking up at Aldi. Being down to my last twenty, I stopped at an ATM on the way and got a hundred and fifty dollars. I spent two hundred twenty-three dollars and fifty-three cents, from the same account.
Since Aldi is on the other side of 30, I bought months of everything I don't buy elsewhere. Including five bags of chips.
6:03 PM 10/9/2025
Kerr's wide-mouth half-pint jars make good serving dishes, but it's annoying that I can't see which nuts are in a jar on the table without picking it up, so I ran a search for "transparent canning-jar lids", and discovered that glass lids for clamp-type jars are still being made.
7:01 PM 10/9/2025
Went into Dave's room to Quicken my receipts, and found his chair wrapped in loose wires.
3:59 PM 10/10/2025
Centurylink won't give me access to my webmail -- same old unresponsive buttons, and I finally had to close Edge without logging out. But it did allow me to update my "action required", and I just now downloaded sixty-six messages, ten of them in the inbox and, therefore, potentially important. (I have set filters to sort mailing lists into boxes.)
Now to re-activate roughsewing@centurylink.net, but there's no hurry; nobody comments on my webbed book.
Saturday, 11 October 2025 8:31 PM 10/11/2025
Today I folded the sheet that Brenda washed and left to air dry on Tuesday. Sometimes I think how silly it is for someone as healthy as I am to have a housekeeper, but when would I have changed the sheets and washed the bedding, if it took this long to fold the sheet?
Today was the farmers' markets tour. I got a tomato and six ears of corn at the Yoder's booth in the ice-rink. The corn was marked "last of the season". Since it has been cold, and is predicted to stay cold, I doubt that there will be any more good tomatoes. I got a green pepper at the fairgrounds, so I can try the stew recipe again. Perhaps Monday; I doubt that I will feel up to anything more time-consuming than frozen hamburger patties on Sunday, and we do have a fresh tomato.
The courthouse market vanished without leaving a forwarding address, but since this also happened last year, I found them at the Pete Thorne Center, and bought half a dozen oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies. (The sign on Main Street points the wrong way.)
For a change, I didn't come home by way of Kroger. I did stop at Dollar General, having read a rumor that they sell Spic 'n Span floor cleaner. That store doesn't, but I did find a miniature composition book that has been on my shopping list for weeks.
I also took a lap around the new liquor store in Lakeview Plaza. They sell dill pickles canned in "moonshine"! Also bright-red cherries in alcohol, which actually makes sense. The "moonshine" wasn't red; are there cherries that are naturally Red #40?
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Sliced the tomato tonight. No better than a shipped-in tomato.
9:53 PM 10/13/2025 -- We had a short panic when Dave thought we'd lost his pet rock, but it turned up on the porch under a leafy twig.
This afternoon, I made Betty Crocker's beef stew again, this time from a flank steak, since the previous stew was the last "ranch steak" in the older Good Chop shipment. When I cook the other flank steak, I'll leave it whole.
I washed clothes in the morning, and remembered to put in the shirt I had on -- my only short-sleeved three-pocket shirt -- but forgot the pants I had on, and one of Dave's two spectacle-cleaning cloths.
[Brenda washed my pants yesterday, and I washed the spectacle cloth with the cleaning rags on Wednesday.
I should have checked Weather Underground before putting a load of dish towels and cleaning rags in the washer. (Also should have gotten the towel and dishrag from the kitchen.)
Ah, well, we do have a dryer.
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And such a pile of white lint in the filter.
I dithered over taking such a small amount of trash to the road, decided that it might be raining or something next week, wondered why I didn't see any other trash cans, remembered that it was Columbus Day and brought it back in.
Ah, well, it reminded me to collect the mail
Dave ran a load of clothes when the rags came out of the washer, and in the afternoon, I made a little progress on two of the bras that I cut out in March. (The third has been in service for months, alternating with a survivor of the batch before the batch that wore out last winter.)
I also pressed my white-collar T-shirt, and repaired a pattern that had torn off its nail.
We had a T-bone steak, our last potato, and an ear of corn for supper.
11:50 AM 10/17/2025
Today, I folded the rags that I washed on Wednesday.
Well, the sweat rags are still an untidy heap. I tear hemless handkerchiefs, which I sometimes call brakerchiefs, from old pillowcases. (The hems of handkerchiefs make marks when stuffed into a bra.) A few years ago, I ran short when I was out of worn-out pillow cases, and tore up some new muslin. Those developed a fringe an inch wide, but never got soft despite being washed in hot water and bleach after every use. On Tuesday, the dime dropped, I soaked them in a bucket of diluted vinegar overnight, and they are much improved.
10:29 AM 10/20/2025
There's a higher percentage of white swans on the lake than there were when I got up. I can't see the shadows of the trees on the lake, presumably because I see the water mostly by sky light, so the swans seem sharply white or sharply black.
10:06 PM 10/20/2025
Well, when he takes nineteen pills in the morning and fourteen at night, I shouldn't be surprised that after fetching pills, I come home, pack pills, and send in another order.
The number of medications is fewer than the number of pills. Several are both morning and evening, and he takes four magnesium pills. On the other hand, there are three medications that aren't packed into the pill sticks.
Got a bit sweaty indoors on Saturday, which made me chilly when I went back out. I went to all three farmers' markets, then Lowery for white embroidery floss, then El Padrino, where I bought a bag of peanuts in the shell. I was tired and it was lunchtime, so I skipped Carniceria San Jos&eacte;, Lakeview Plaza, and Kroger.
Which meant I had to go out again today, because we were nearly out of milk, and clear out of yogurt. And I needed parsnips, a turnip, and potatoes to cook with a hunk of beef tomorrow. We have found a really-good way to cook tough beef in the Betty Crocker book we got for a wedding present. Modified a bit. I put the vegetables in an hour before serving instead of half an hour, because I cut them into larger pieces. And I mix the juice that thaws out of the meat with the seasoned flour to make myoglobin riffles, which thickens the sauce.
The Metaprolole could have waited a few more days.
5:46 PM 10/21/2025
I put two pieces of carrot into the pot, but there are three in the stew. Perhaps I was distracted and threw in the piece I meant to make into carrot sticks for the relish plate. I did get a couple of spam calls while I was working on the stew.
As usual, Brenda left the house clean and neat, and I started messing it up before she left.
Yesterday, I put the lampshade that we had Brenda wash last week back up in the hallway. It's well designed, and took only a few minutes to install.
One of the fridge bins looked a bit grungy, so I added it to the pile of dirty dishes. Brinda discovered that a leaking extract bottle had stained and rumpled the plastic. I immediately moved the extracts from the bin I'd moved them to to the main part of the fridge, sitting on something replaceable.
6:23 PM 10/21/2025
The riffles didn't thicken the broth at all, and I had to sprinkle a teaspoon of flour on it. But they were tasty at the bottom of the pot. Next time I make riffles, I've got to be less thorough about sifting them out of the surplus flour.
After browning the meat, I stir the riffles into the hot fat before pouring in the quart of boiling water.
The beef is delicious, and there's enough left for another meal.
2:08 AM 10/24/2025
Yesterday, when we checked in at the emergency room the second time, I commented that collecting three sets of discharge papers in one day was a new record for us. But we didn't get the papers until after midnight.
11:39 AM 10/24/2025
The shadows moved, and while I was combing my hair the dark-gray swans turned light gray. The swans farther from the shore were a sparkling white.
In the spirit of James Nicoll's "USA delenda est", it's thirty or forty years past time for DNR to issue "kill all you can eat" licenses to anybody who can prove that he can tell a feral swan from a wild swan.
Our trips to the emergency room were tied to meals. When Steve brought us back from Fort Wayne, it was just time for lunch and we had bologna sandwiches, on a slice of Hillbilly bread with "singles" swiss for Dave, and on a flatbun with provolone for me. After my after-nap alarm had gone off, but before I got up, Dave discovered that there was a blood clot in his new catheter. It jarred loose on the way to the emergency room, and they scanned his bladder and sent us home with instructions to call if the bleeding persisted or got worse.
We got home in time for a belated supper. By good luck, I'd already planned to patty and fry a left- over half pound of hamburger, put it on a flatbun, cut it in half, and serve it with the left-over half of a big juicy tomato.
Unsurprisingly, I was a bit late with the tooth- brushing and so forth. Just when I was about to change into night clothes, Dave realized that the condition had persisted.
It was after three before we got to bed -- part of that time was spent waiting for cultures that told the doctor to tell me to go to Zales for antibiotics this morning, so I'd better finish dressing.
12:25 PM 10/24/2025
When we left the second time, I didn't go back for my hat because it was certain that there wouldn't be any sun in my eyes -- but on the walk back to the car (which wasn't far, as the spot nearest the door had been vacant), I wanted something on my head in the cold wind. I *had* remembered to bring my raw-silk jacket.
And, I now realize that I had a scarf in my bag for just such a situation.
Dave texted me "I'm awake" this morning, and when I called back and said that Dave L. and I were going to stop at Aldi to buy the heated fleece throw he'd been wanting, he said "Oh, it's Wednesday!" A doctor had asked whether he knew what day it was, and he had said "no". He'd been pretty much out of it since about three o'clock Monday morning. It was close this time, and I'd been wondering how I'd cope with the funeral, and regretting that I hadn't nagged him to drink on Sunday. It feels pretty good to have him him again.
They had him sitting up when we got there, but put him back to bed pretty soon. He's been cleared to move to a regular room, but they are in no hurry — it will be done when the ICU has too many patients or the regular rooms have too few.
I'm back on a normal schedule. I took a nap after supper, but woke up in time to melt some cheese onto half a flatbun before my eight-thirty snack.
I figured that I'd get a start on unscrambling notes that I took here and there, but it's my regular schedule to go to bed pretty soon, and I'm feeling it.
I just got up from a belated nap and ate my 8:30 snack.
Summary:
Dave got up in the neighborhood of three o'clock Monday morning. At six or seven (maybe; I may have written the time on one of the notes tucked into _Ethics for Nurses_.) he tried to go back to bed and couldn't.
So we called 911 for lift assist. (I managed to dial a wrong number the first time; I think it was 991).
The ambulance guys talked to him for a while, then loaded him onto a gurney instead of putting him back in the bed. They used our transport chair to get him around the corners into the parlor, where the gurney was. I didn't see much, doing the headless-chicken bit.
I mopped up, put clothes on, packed a set of Dave's clothes into a patient-belongings bag, remembering that the Velcro shoes are the only pair that he can get on over his swollen feet, and drove to Parkview Warsaw.
The folks there decided to send him to Parkview Regional in Fort Wayne. It would be a while before the ambulance could take him, so I went home and brought back his glasses and his phone.
After the ambulance left, I went home and went to bed for a belated nap. A doctor in Fort Wayne called for some information, and made me think that I'd better go see him then, instead of waiting until Tuesday. Since Steve had just brought Martha home from Fort Wayne, I figured he wouldn't want to go back, and called the younger Dave, and caught him just as he and Jeanie were leaving Parkview Warsaw after her heart rehab. (It's open season on Winona Lake's Beesons.)
Tuesday Steve picked me up just as Brenda arrived to clean the house. It was really nice to find everything clean and neat when I got home that night.
On Wednesday we stopped at Aldi to buy a heated throw I'd promised Dave before all this began, and drove out Old 30 instead of Pierceton Road to get around the construction on 30.
Jeanie got so tired on Monday that she had to stay home on Tuesday, and she had another rehab on Wednesday, but she came with us today, and I think she did Dave a lot of good.
And now it's time for bed.
Slept normally. Dave woke me a little after six, having a panic attack. I think I'd have freaked out days ago, after all he's been through. I called the nurse's station (I'd been given the number when they gave me his room number while we were waiting for the ambulance), and one of the nurses talked him down. One of the things she told him is that he isn't really in the ICU, he's been parked there because there isn't a regular room available. That probably means that we could all three come back to his room, but only Dave and I are going today; Jeanie has another rehab.
Dave can come home as soon as he's strong enough to get out of bed by himself. Then he needs some rehab to recover from a week in bed.
Now I have half an hour to work on the Banner. I've composed an e-mail saying that it's going to be late, and plan to send it tonight when I have the latest news.