same scene, different angle: http://davebeeson.home.comcast.net/~davebeeson/LETTERS/JPEGS/DSCF0267.JPG
Washday again. The only honest idiot lights on the machine are "lid locked" and "done". I remembered to put the bleachables in to soak last night, and they are fluttering on the line.
Fluttering a bit too much; I think I'll put the next two loads on racks in the garage.
On the tour d'Warsaw, I found three water bottles at a garage sale. Screw top, which I'm not fond of, but the price was right: free. Two have "National Guard" written on them, and one has an advertisement for Sheriff Goshert and used to have a motto that said something like "in the mood to be drug free"; I can't say exactly because I rubbed it off with Barkeeper's Friend. It seemed rather hypocritical to display such a motto when I take drugs by the handful. And the bottle is, at the moment, in the freezer with bitter tea in it, so I'm using it to dispense a cocktail of drugs. I was planning to add a caffeine drop when I fill it with water and put it on the bike, but Dave is out of them.
So I wanted to add "Smith Bros. Caf" to my shopping list, but what I had to do was to start a new one by writing it on a slip of blank paper. My list blew away while I was buying a cabbage at the farmers' market, and I couldn't find it. An expired coupon that had been in the notebook with it later fell out of my panniers, but no sign of the shopping list.
I bought three items that had been on the list at Owen's on my way home, and I have remembered five more.
The garlic chives — kow choi — are starting to bloom. I had some flower buds in my breakfast pancakes, and the rest of them on my sausage-on-a-bagel for lunch.
The pancakes had more chopped herbs than flour, and I ate them with one of Dave's tomatoes instead of syrup. Surprisingly little herb flavor to them.
The stems on my sandwich were flavorful and sweet, and very tender. (I run my hand down to the bottom of the stem, then move up until I find a place that snaps easily. On the youngest buds, this is right at the bottom and those stems are the sweetest.)
I think I hear silence in the laundry room.
Ordered new spectacles today. They should be ready sometime tomorrow. Went Sprawlmarting afterward; bought a marker at Dollar General and a pound of raw peanuts at Big R. Spot eats roasted peanuts on the spot, but runs off with peanuts in the shell, presumably intending to bury them.
When loading my groceries at Aldi, I found the missing shopping list in my pannier. Since I'd passed all the stores by then, I didn't read it until I got home. The only thing on it that I'd missed a chance to buy was a tape measure at Ace last week, and I suspect that Ace doesn't have the keychain type. [A later trip showed this suspicion to be correct.]
Also got two loaves of bread at Aunt Millies. Got them home without squishing them, too.
Then I took a long nap and gave Dave frozen entree for supper. Only one entree left in the freezer; I'd better stock up soon. I intend to buy bacon tomorrow, to go with the bread and tomatoes.
Picked up my new glasses this morning — exactly like the old glasses, but a slightly-different prescription and the frames aren't yellowed with UV exposure.
Got back in time to move the multipliers that had
been curing in the rosemary basket into winter
storage, and dig up the remaining white
onions. (I stepped on one of the leeks in
the process.)
same scene, different angle:
http://davebeeson.home.comcast.net/~davebeeson/LETTERS/JPEGS/DSCF0267.JPG
There were eleven multipliers — I had thought there were a dozen. Perhaps I counted the one that I left to winter over in the garden. Multipliers are winter hardy, but don't produce as well as when they are lifted and re-planted in the spring.
Before digging the onions, I gathered those that
I'd pulled a few at a time. Wondered where
to put the newspaper to keep the onions out of the
way; I've already got garlic under the desk in the
garage. Then I realized that the hanging
basket was empty, put in a fresh newspaper, and
dumped in the onions: out of the way, *and*
convenient when I want to cook one.
I'm writing this while waiting for 5:30, when Joe and Lois are coming to take us to the Boathouse for supper.
I'm wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and
pearls. I wonder whether I can fit
Grandmother's gold watch into this ensemble.
Did; I've worn it on a gold-filled necklace Dave got me, but this is the first time I've worn it on its pin. You have to force it onto the hook on the back, and then closing the pin leaves a bar across the hook — this pin is *very* secure. I'm surprised that the face isn't upside-down, as you could never take it off to read it.
Maybe the face *is* upside down. I wound the watch, but gave up trying to remember how to open the face so I could set it.
I ordered a pork chop that would have fed two amply, and ate all of it. Which left me somewhat unprepared when Joe drove us to their house afterward, where we found the clan and three cakes. We still have three slices of cake in the fridge, but they ain't nigh as big as they was a while ago. Martha's frosting is edible!
We had a very nice visit — best golden wedding I've ever attended.
Just looked "ain't" up in World Wide Words (I wasn't sure it has an apostrophe) and was cross referenced to "hill of beans", where I was shocked to learn that planting beans in hills is an alien concept to the compiler, who carefully explained "the original sense" with an 1858 quote. The British are supposed to be fanatical gardeners!
Saturday, I went to both farmers' markets and came back by way of Parks-Schramm and Crystal Lake Road. (Why does a road as short as Parks-Schramm have two names?) Google maps says the tour was fifteen miles.
I couldn't see any changes at the construction site — I should take the camera to help me remember what it was like last week. A "log cabin" had been added to the display of lawn furniture. Child-size bunks inside suggested that it was a playhouse. I was puzzled by a closet with some stuff on one wall that looked purposeful, as if maybe to unfold and reveal a window (but I knew that wasn't it even before I looked outside and saw that there was no window in that place). When I got home, I tried to look up a description of the product, but I hadn't written down the exact URL and "Everything Outdoors" turns up nothing but squatted domains and lots and lots of pages that say "I love everything outdoors."
Today, drying conditions were poor. But we got all the rain barrels filled. And a spading fork got rained on; when the sun had been on it a few hours, I gave the wooden handle a coat of linseed oil.
I moved the drying racks to the patio after the sun came out in the afternoon, but some of the clothes weren't quite dry when the wind made me bring them in again. There are still a few briefs on the rack in the walk-in closet. I think they are dry — they are near the air filter — but I don't feel like dealing with them.
I think I sit up later when I've skipped my nap than when I haven't. Perhaps because I was too stupid to go to bed. Forgot to brush my teeth first.
So yesterday I took my bitter tea out of the freezer for the first time — I used Sheriff Goshert's anti-drug bottle to dispense my stimulants. It turns purple at sub-freezing temperatures, then changes back to pink when it warms up. That led to interesting patterns as it thawed. I learned that when you put fresh-squeezed lemon juice into a water bottle, you need to strain it. I had poured it off the pulp, but enough fiber got in to foul the valve.
I went to Walmart by way of the hospital and the Goodwill store, and came back by way of Parks-Schram and Crystal Lake Road. Google says it was 21.9 miles, but that misses some zigs and zags on roads that aren't in Google's database. I passed by "The Farm" (a roadside stand), and bought a tomato and a banana pepper.
I bought a taco salad at Steak & Shake, and was pleasantly surprised.
I bought brass pins and a skein of embroidery floss at Walmart.
Goal for today: patch my herringbone pants.
Didn't make it, did re-hang all the patterns that had fallen off their nails, and sort out all my pants patterns in the process. After I got the clutter cleaned up and still hadn't found my patches, I noticed that I'd draped them over the sewing machine, where they still are.
I've lost my knife again. When I transferred my stuff from my pants pockets to the pockets in my dress, it was not there. I do know I put it into the pants pocket when I dressed after my shower yesterday, and I haven't used it since, so there's no way it could not be where it isn't.
Got ready for church with a good fifteen minutes to spare, then noticed that I hadn't spun out the jersey, scarf, and bra I put into a bucket yesterday.
⁂
When I emptied my pockets, I hoped that I'd transferred the knife and hadn't noticed; nope, everything out, no knife. Then when I pulled the dress off, something felt odd: my knife down at the bottom of the pocket.
Great relief; it took months to find a small one-blade knife.
I'm almost ready to eat lunch. A dash of tamari sauce is exactly what this hash needs — oops, I forgot to buy tamari sauce last Thursday, and I walked right by it on my way to buy three bags of carob-coated candy and a bag of dried cranberries. I used Worcestershire sauce instead. The hash is celery, a very small potato, pre-cooked sausage, fresh zucchini, and two home-grown onions.
And there goes the timer.
⁂
It was delicious.
Dave and I went outside to consult as to where to dump his left-over topsoil and noticed that there was hardly any wind, so I went in to fetch a match and a handful of greasy rags. I rubbed the match on the grit-strip, struck a spark so small I couldn't see it, and the match head burst into flames. I touched the match to a butter wrapper, the butter wrapper lit the greasy rags, and in less than five minutes a whole pile of rotten lumber was blazing away.
I hear that the same thing happens when one hasn't carefully piled up kindling. I was around when a defective rail-car wheel spit sparks that started a whole bunch of grass fires. I forget how many fire companies were called out to that fire, each in its own territory.
Yesterday the weather prediction postponed the rain from three o'clock to eleven. It never did get here. This evening, I carried buckets from the rain barrel to the raised flower beds, and later I saw Dave doing the same for his azaleas.
I had been thinking of going to the farmer's markets, then dashing home to ride to the Tomato Festival before it rained, but with the rain postponed, I could do the tour d'Warsaw (minus the Crystal Lake loop), come home, take a nap, and then take in the festival in the afternoon. It was open until four, I thought, so rolling out before two would get me there soon enough to take a lap around the park before they started closing up.
In the event, I turned around at 2:22, so I would have been on time even though once there I saw posters saying that the festival runs from ten until three. On August 23rd.
I'm not at all sure I have the heart to do this again next week.
Google Maps says I put in 21.1 miles. It took me fifty-six minutes to ride from the underpass on North Second Street in Pierceton to home. Since that is 7.4 miles, I traveled at just under eight miles per hour. It wasn't all that long ago that I allowed one hour per ten miles when planning trips — and that included rest stops and an allowance for getting lost.
The church has beautiful new porch furniture. I must take my knitting and sit on it before the weather turns cold. Perhaps next Thursday?
Shiny clean teeth, panoramic X-ray, no problems detected, come back in February. I used the "Joy Rack" for the first time. Hope the weather is fit to do it again next February, but I incautiously took an appointment for not-too-late morning.
On the way back I had lunch — fried dumplings — at the fast-Chinese place in Marsh Plaza, bought a bag of Smith Brothers caffeine drops at Marsh (still no Smith Brothers cough drops), bought tamari sauce at the health-food store, looked in vain for glycerin at Ace, found a bottle of the straight stuff at Zales. It was behind the pharmacy counter, but was supposed to be out front on the bottom shelf.
Laundry tomorrow.
And the laundry is on the line.
It was calm yesterday evening, so we burned the rest of the rotten lumber, which used the last of my greasy rags. The steel trash can has already accumulated enough to start another fire, if I lay out instead of just dumping.
⁂
After napping, I was lying in bed wondering whether I should get up when the KABS dispatcher said "Heads up! The storm is rolling in."
It's amazing how hard it is to get a nightgown off a hanger when you are in a hurry! But I got everything in just before the rain started even though I'd forgotten to go back for the stuff on hangers after putting away the dry stuff I'd brought in before lying down. Dave's pants had blown off the hangers, and I thought that his yellow and orange shirts had blown away entirely, but it turned out that he'd brought them in while I was asleep.
Man it's gloomy in here. I don't like a lot of light while typing, and put a dense shade on the light bulb when I sit down at the computer, but I'm going to have to turn the light on in broad daylight to be able to read my e-mail! It's so cloudy that I can't see to "ctrl -" when a post is blown up so big that the end of each line wraps.
I wonder why Yahoo does that, and how it decides which posts to do it to.
And what happened to the August drought? I guess the long walk today is cancelled. I think I'm going to have to drive to the bank to deposit my check. [Dave took care of it.]
Dave got bored with hauling his tomatoes around and set the pot with two plants in it beside the garden to take its chances with the deer. The deer didn't notice (knock wood), so yesterday I dug a hole in the garden and he planted one of the tomatoes. We intended to plant the other one today, but I don't want to go out in that — not to mention that it isn't wise to dig mud.
⁂
Oops. I forgot that this was root-beer float day.
I'm not sure I'd have set foot outside anyway. We got an inch and a half of rain.
I scanned a few more pages of "How to be Pretty though Plain", and basted a crease in the knickers I mean to shorten so that I can wash them first. Took the hem out, then realized that they were too dirty to work with.
Man, it is stuffy out there! I didn't notice it when I rode the Fuji to Owen's for mayonnaise so we could have bacon-and-tomato sandwiches for supper (and bought a steak we ate instead), but I sure notice it every time I step into the garage.
Did use the mayo after supper, when I made potato salad just for us for the very first time. Under-estimated how much potato just enough potatoes to cover the bottom of the pot (seven large) was, and had to add mayo, so it isn't as spicy as I'd planned. I also forgot to put the celery in. Pretty good anyway.
Saw some termites swarming out of the landscape timbers around the Joe Rickets strawberry bed. When I took Dave out to look, they were gone and a lighter-colored batch were swarming out of the other side.
Another sewing day consisting of starting to clear the ironing board and getting distracted. I did do a few minutes of mending.
If the weather holds, I think I'll go to both Warsaw and Pierceton tomorrow.
The last time I went to Aldi, I bought a jar of fig jam. I expected it to taste like the inside of a fig newton, but the more I eat it, the more it reminds me of the guava paste Mom bought in Florida.
Something reminded me of Nina, so I DuckDucked "Franklin Schales" and discovered that Franklin and Nina have two books on Amazon.
Closer Look: two editions of the same book.
The seven-day forecast says tomorrow will be a good drying day, so I put a load of rags, dishtowels, and pillowcases in the washer to soak overnight.
I did take in both the Tour d'Warsaw and the tomato festival yesterday. I forgot my hat, and found one that fits in a craft booth for only three dollars, which is about a fifth of what Ace wants for plain hats. I didn't notice until later that the embroidery on the hat was done by hand.
It was definitely not a day to go out without a hat, and very sweaty besides. I sweat-soaked three sets of underwear, and my shirt got so wet that I couldn't pull it off. I put it in a bucket of water when I finally got out of it.
There are not only no changes at the construction site, there are no tools and no supplies. When it first stalled, I thought they were waiting for a component; now I wonder whether they ran out of money.
Well, there was a full wheelie bin I hadn't seen before inside the new building. The kind we put out by the road, not a container for construction debris.
Oops! I wanted a different cycle than the one that had begun, so I pressed "cancel" — and instead of cancelling, it went to "drain and turn off" and nothing would cancel that cycle.
So now I know that when you want to cancel, you just turn to another cycle. In the meanwhile, I've wasted water, soap, and bleach.
Why wasn't this in the so-called "manual"?
⁂
Now I know that I don't *ever* want to press "cancel" — the thing has gone bananas. I set it for "drain and spin", and it filled up before it would consent to spin — and when it had spun, it filled up again and now claims to be on "rinse".
While I was climbing Chestnut Street on my first trip to Pierceton, I thought I'd put on a lot of muscle since my previous climb. Then I did a sprawlmart tour backwards, which entailed climbing Chestnet in walking shoes, and learned how much difference cleats make.
Climbing Chestnut the day before yesterday was harder than it was the previous Saturday — presumably because of the oppressive weather. Before I got home again, I wished that I'd taken bitter tea despite having had a half-hour nap between the tours.
The kow choi is still producing flower stems faster than I can eat them.
In fooling around with Google Maps, I see that there *is* a good way to get from Owen's to Aldi's on a bicycle without first going halfway home. (Route 30 is off limits because I got a flat tire from debris on each of my last two rides on US 30.)
I can go up McKinley and Parker to Martin's. Husky Trail is way too narrow for the amount of traffic on it, but if I recall correctly, there is little traffic on Patterson, which is what Husky Trail is called if you go south from Martin's. Patterson becomes E 75 N, which leads to N 225 E, which leads to a short jog on Old 30 to S 250 E. I could make a three-grocery tour!
I was thinking "not tomorrow, though," but I do need black duck tape (research has shown that "duct tape" is a hypercorrection) and one goes almost through Menards to get to Martin's. Menard's almost surely has duck tape!
But I'd rather get it from the helpful hardware man at Ace. (They were chickens to give up that slogan — there's no reason a woman can't be a hardware man.)
Though there was no progress at the construction site last Saturday, there are always changes at the lawn-furniture display next door. The log cabin I puzzled over is now supplied with fliers which inform me that the closet that puzzled me is a "framed-in bathroom". Putting a water closet in an unheatable building seems rather odd, and surely one would want to keep a composting toilet in a separate building. The stuff on the wall in the closet turned out to be the beginnings of a cabinet, deeper than a medicine cabinet, but not deep enough to be a linen closet. The designer went out of his way to end the left-side door above the bottom shelf, so that there is easy access to only the right half of that space. None of my theories on that hold water.
I've discovered that there's a simple explanation for my inability to find a Web site for "Everything Outdoors": they haven't got one. That's almost as remarkable as having no telephone these days. Perhaps the owners think that every Web site has to be as elaborate as Amazon's.
⁂
I cleaned my brake blocks with reconstituted pumice stone and scrubbed my rims, but it doesn't appear to have improved braking. I'm hoping that it's just that my rims were still wet, but I think I need to drop in at the Trailhouse and buy new brake blocks. Definitely need to drop in at Ace and buy a ten-millimeter wrench of my own.
I also had an eight-millimeter wrench in the tool kit that I lost, but I can't remember what it was for, so I won't replace it.
Time to put my shopping list on a new slip of paper. There is no space to write in "miniature knuckle buster".
Also no miniature knuckle buster at Ace. They had small adjustable wrenches, but none were quite small enough. They did have a Craftsman eight-millimeter combination wrench, and a huge roll of black duck tape. The helpful hardware man told me to keep it in a zip-lock bag to make it keep longer.
No manicure sticks at Zales that weren't in a bag with a bunch of other stuff, but when I paused at the Dollar General on my way back, I suddenly realized that it was right next door to Sally's Beauty Supply. They are calling them birch-wood sticks instead of orange-wood sticks nowadays. Birch looks a lot like orangewood did.
After leaving Zales and blundering around a little, I got on the boardwalk, but I hadn't thought to bring any old magazines, so I passed by the hospital and wended through parking lots to the funeral home, crossed the one-way street into the gas station, and went to Menards. Once in, I realized that I didn't want anything there, and that one has to go purt-near to the other end of the building to get out again. Menards is too big a place, and it hasn't any map. I did find the hand tools, but no crescent wrenches at all except those in tool kits. [Dave says I should have stopped at Sears.]
By the time I got to Martin's, I was hungry. I looked at all the deli stuff and the salad bar, but settled for the "protein" bar out of my emergency lunch. I believe that this was also the time that I got my frozen bottle of tea out and put it in the bottle cage. It was getting warm by the time I finished it off. A gallon of milk pretty thoroughly disarranged my "cooler" — the newspaper-lined pannier. It stuck up above the insulation, though a bag of crumpled bags on top — with a head of boston lettuce nestled inside — helped. Then I stopped at Aldi and wedged some cheese in too. Nearly at capacity, I didn't shop any more until I got to Dollar General, and that was a desultory look-around. Then I went next door, and put a packet of manicure sticks into my wallet. Next stop was Big Apple, where I bought a Big Apple Club that Dave and I split for supper. No space in the cooler, but I was pretty close to home by then. And I've learned that if you put both handles of a grocery bag through a hole in the rack, then tie off in a different hole, the contents of the bag will ride stable without being squashed by bungee cords.
I didn't notice the brakes, so I guess they are working all right. I'll have to go out and ride down Ninth Street to test them. I don't recall braking as I approached the underpass on McKinley, but I must have.
Tomorrow is Last Friday. Doesn't appear to be anything going on. Perhaps because anything that might be scheduled for along about now would be scheduled for next Monday.
I hit both farmers' markets, left magazines at the emergency room, and bought socks at the Trailhouse. How come expensive socks have knitted-in advertisements that you can't get off? And right around the ankle where you can't hide it. Not to mention that they *brag* about using merino instead of good sock wool. (I don't think anybody raises sock-wool sheep commercially. Wikipedia says that carpet wool is still available.)
I got confoozled and looked for the tamales on Center Street instead of Winona. I didn't go back because it was already an hour past the time it's reasonable to hope she's still there when I left the hospital. I went back over the boardwalk the way I had come — a very un-Loveless thing to do.
The rebuilding where Avilla burned down is still stalled, but the lawn-furniture display added two gazebos and three barns. Two were open back and front like free-standing carports, but a good deal bigger. It's possible that one of them wasn't finished. I took another look at the "framed-in bathroom", and realized that if you allow for the swing of the door and the doors on the cupboard, there is no place to put a toilet.
I took ice in case I had lunch at Penguin Point. I did, but ordered a Big Wally and ate all of it. Didn't buy anything that needed to be kept cool; I put the tomato I bought at the fairgrounds market in a bag hung from a twisted bungee cord in the other pannier. Despite a number of rough roads, it appears to have gotten home in perfect condition.
It looks as though there is a fireworks convention in Mentone — we can see the larger skyrockets from here.
There will be fireworks of another kind in a couple of hours — the storms have been following a straight line that runs north of us, but the one that's in Rensselaer appears likely to hit us square.
Just home from a labor-day party at Alice's house. Overate, as usual. Facebook says I missed an unusual event at church.
