5 August 2006 I got to the farmer's market just a few minutes late -- when I rolled in, a man was walking out with two bags of corn, and he'd got the last of it. The vendor says she'll be back on Monday. Yesterday, I took another new-patient form to Snyder's office; the first time I'd specified a doctor who wasn't taking new patients. Which annoyed me because the only reason I'd circled a name was that the form told me to. This time I wrote in "no preference" and the receptionist told me that since Dave is a patient, I'm automatically a patient, and gave me an appointment for next Tuesday. I'm not at all sure what for. I suppose that, like Al, I'll get some shots. 11 August 2006 Got a lot of cycling in this week. Went to the farmer's market on Monday, where I did get some corn -- we had the last of it in fritters for breakfast this morning. Then I rode to Snider's on Tuesday. I prefer the bike when going to the hospital complex, because it's a lot easier to navigate the place if you can step over the boundaries between parking lots. After the exam, he told me to come back for blood tests and an X-ray, which I did on Wednesday. I think I stayed home yesterday. Today I walked to a garage sale on Boy's City Drive, and bought two books and five bits of old linen to clean my glasses with. Monday it's back to the hospital for a mammogram, then on Thursday Alice will pick me up for a trip to Bonneyville Mills and on the following Tuesday it's back to the hospital campus to see Dr. Jensen about scheduling my last test. Tell a doctor you haven't seen one in ten years and he gets carried away. Between all these appointments, a NetFlix copy of "A Night at the Races", and my regular Tuesday night hour of needlework, I've got two pairs of freshly-darned socks in the drawer and I'm almost done with the socks I've been knitting. I finished the toe of the second sock the Tuesday before last, but the first sock was too pointy, so I frogged the toe and now I'm about halfway through re-knitting it. 12 August 2006 Got tomatoes and corn in the morning, peppers and eggs in the afternoon. And some frozen tamales much better than the kind that come in cans. Steamed them together with two ears of corn. 13 August 2006 I totally dig today's "Pickles" comic strip. Opal got a cell phone so that she could find her purse. Yesterday we each had two tamales and an ear of corn for supper. Tonight we had two ears of corn and a tamale. If Aldi is still selling those the next time I go there, I'll buy some more. 16 August 2006 Got my mammogram results back before I got around to writing about the visit, which was Monday. That fits the theme. I'd been advised to turn up half an hour before my appointment, so I took my sock-in-progress out of my bag, because it's only a tiny bit of knitting left to do, it's attached to a huge ball of yarn, and it's got to the place where I have to *think* about it. Not to mention that during the Sewing Circle on Tuesday, I took my shoe off twice to check the fit. I went through the basket of darning -- it's one of the baskets Sherry made -- and picked out all the socks that can be darned with white yarn, then I noted that the skein of white Medici in my purse was half used up, so I hunted around until I remembered where I'd put the big skein and broke off another little skein. This took a bit, because it had somehow gotten tangled into the next little skein. Then I went to the cupboard to get a snack bag to put it in, and found nothing but sandwich bags in the box labeled "snack bags". Appeared to be packed the way the factory puts them in, too. But though the old skein shares a snack bag, the back-up skein filled a sandwich bag, so I guess that was all right. After that, I reflected that conditions don't always permit needlework, so I put my copy of _Sue Ellen's Heyday_ in the bag. This is a thin little book; really a novella, so I also stuck in a paperback mystery. [The books were still in my purse on the 29th, and Dave got halfway through _Sue Ellen's Heyday_ while I was having my innards photographed.] So I showed up half an hour early, waited about twenty seconds for the information clerk to deal with another patient, she handed me a folder and pointed to a sign that said "Women's Imaging"; the clerk there gave me a form to fill out; when I'd done that, she directed me to the dressing room, I took off my shirt and tried to figure out how to put on the gown so it would cover something without being clutched*, sat down and reached for a magazine, the mammogrammist came back to call me to the imaging room, and there was no check-out afterward so all the time I had with my book was a couple of minutes while she developed the films and made sure they were good. And my watch said that I was out of there a minute before my appointment, but it's three or four minutes slow. So the moral of the story is, show up for doctor's appointments *thoroughly* prepared to wait! I had plenty of time to go to the farmer's market, but I blew that by getting sucked into a copy of _Deerskin_ when I stopped at the library to return _The Misted Cliffs_, and barely made it home in time to warm up supper. That may have been when we had the "egg rolls". They were actually burritos, but quite good, and I'll buy more of them if Aldi still has some. [They did and I did. And I got the other flavor too.] *I had learned, earlier in this adventure, that the secret to keeping a hospital gown closed is to cross the ties and wrap them around the neck, but the ties on the mammogram gowns were too short to do that. 22 August 2006 I'm doing all my cycling on Harrison Street -- took ten minutes to get from here to Dr. Jensen's office today. And now I have an appointment for a week from today for the test itself, and a follow-up appointment the Tuesday after Labor Day. When Dave told me they'd expect me to bring someone to drive me home after the test, I thought I'd ride in and have him come for me in the truck, so he could throw the bike in the back and pour me into the passenger seat. Despite being so high -- or maybe because it's so high -- the truck is easier to get in and out of than the Buick. There are two flaws with that idea: one, there isn't any safe place to leave a bike at the hospital. Two, they want me to come in at 7:00 A.M. 23 August 2006 I twisted my back getting off the bike at Jensen's office, perhaps as a result of having sifted cat litter in the morning -- when I tried to do a little more before putting the tools away in the evening, it hurt. Yesterday I thought it was a slight injury that would quickly go away if I was careful not to aggravate it, but I'm stiff this morning. On the third hand, I'm not quite so stiff as when I first got up. (My back became resigned to the upright position while I was typing this entry.) I've started moving the compost heap -- a chore I left *much* too long; it's all full of tree roots, which makes it difficult to lift a forkful of compost, and the roots snatch the compost off the fork once I manage to lift a chunk. But after turning it into a grooved pile, with a narrow wall of moved compost on one side of the groove, I realized that there was a *lot* of sand in the compost, which was autumn leaves that had washed up on the beach in the spring. So now I scrape up a pile of sand with the hoe, which easily breaks the roots, shovel the sand onto the screen with the edging spade, scrape back and forth with the flat-ended spade to make the sand fall into the Rubbermaid tub we keep cat litter in, then scrape the compost into a pile and pat it onto the wall. Even though I'm careful not to widen the wall, the groove isn't getting any wider -- but I've getting the litter tubs filled up. And sifting sand out of compost is easier than breaking up lumps of spaded-up garden dirt. ------------------- The church was locked up when I showed up to lead the Sewing Circle yesterday evening. After trying every door, I sat outside the door to the ramp room working on the toe of my sock until after 6:30, then tried the main door again and went home. The next time we have a Fellowship Committee meeting, I must bring up the topic of *keys*. I made a side trip to look at both sides of the Chestnut House, and the newly-rebuilt little house beside it is almost certainly part of the bed and breakfast: there are dining tables on both porches, and there's a path leading from the back porch of the Chestnut House to the back porch of the little house. I thought perhaps the Chestnut House didn't charge so much as to make it unreasonable to use it for a spare bedroom, but all the lodging lists -- including the Kosciusko County Chamber of Commerce, which ought to know better -- still list the B&B that used to be where the ice-cream shop has been through two changes of owners. And if the Chestnut House has its own web page, my Google-Fu is inadequate to find it -- chestnuthouse.com is a place in Minnesota. Or some place that's definitely not here. ------------------- During our trip to Bonneyville Mills, someone said that Amish houses have lavish displays of flowers because flowers are the only bright color permitted to them. Something struck me as wrong about that statement at the time, but it wasn't until much later that I remembered tourist photographs of homes in Germany -- the Amish displays are toned way down from what's in the culture they came from. 25 August 2006 My back bothered me sitting on a picnic bench at the Back to the Days of Koscuiszko meeting yesterday, but I wasn't stiff when I got up this morning. My devilled eggs were well received at the preceding carry-in dinner. I've been thinking of making handkerchiefs from my blue plaid shirting, so when my blue plaid shirt developed a big hole in front, I thought I could get a nice, soft, much-washed furoshiki from the back. But when I went to cut it out, I discovered that the shirt had done a creditable imitation of the one-hoss shay. I did get two 12" spectacle rags, drawing threads and zig-zagging around them with two-ply basting thread. 28 August 2006 We had two volunteer muskmelon vines -- which I discovered when I wondered why our two muskmelons didn't match; I'd cultivated one sprout that came up, but when I traced the vines back, there were two side-by-side. I suppose the second one came up after the first had leaves. A deer, I judge by the tooth marks, broke the ribbed muskmelon off the vine trying, in vain, to bite into it, so I scrubbed it up and put it into the fridge. Yesterday evening Dave cut it open -- there was half an inch of bright-green melon around the rind, but what was in the middle was *delicious*. I was careful to dump the seeds in the garden. I gorged on it, because I'm not to eat at all today -- and fruits and vegetables are particularly forbidden, along with whole wheat and everything else that's good for you. I'm having a boullion cube and a packet of gelatin for breakfast,but after that it's all sugar water in the form of apple juice. Lemonade was also suggested, but all the lemonade at Kroger's had added pulp. Grumbly gripe -- when I boiled up the boullion, there were bits of herbs in it; the diet list had expected me to use a cheaper brand. So I poured it into a refrigerator dish; it will be something dainty for me to eat when I come home from the hospital tomorrow. I started another packet of gelatin soaking, to be hot tea with apple juice. The nastiest part of this test is going to be getting up before six o'clock in order to get there on time. I spent Saturday at the Smelzer's, making drawstring skirts and T-tunic bedgowns for the Back to the Days Festival. When I accepted the invitation to do a "seamstress" act the day before the festival, I thought I'd borrow from the costumes we were working on Saturday, but I'm going to supply my own. My broadfall skirts are made like petticoats, save that the pockets are sewn in -- which the Gentle Guests can't see -- and the fabrics are no more hopeless than the fabrics we were using. I didn't see any "bedgowns" that wouldn't clash horribly with my skirts, I adamantly refuse to wear a late-nineteenth/early twentieth mobcap, and I already have a nice linen scarf. By good luck, one of the members of 18th-Century Woman posted a very simple pattern for a cap: "This one is a 5" x 21" band, and a 10" square, with 2 corners curved, then the curve gathered, til the band fits around it." But I'll have to wing a pattern for a bedgown, since there isn't time to send off for a pattern. 4:00 -- yuckers. "Phospho-Soda" tastes like saccharine. And, like saccharine, it doesn't rinse out. 30 August 2006 Read the label later: it tasted like saccharine because it *was* saccharine. (I didn't know saccharine was laxative!) They didn't find anything alarming in my innards, but I have to take a purple pill every day for a while. 60 in the bottle, and the label says "one refill"; I'll know more after my follow-up consultation on Tuesday. Got the cap cut out and made on Monday; it came out cute and I'm going to wear it even though a cap is supposed to be made of fine linen, not unbleached muslin. Looks rather Dutch, but that's better than a style that won't come in until very late in the nineteenth century. Alas, it also gave me an idea for a better cap. I'm going to try to keep my mind on the clothes I actually *need* for a while. My summer dress has just gone onto the back burner, and I've cut out a winter slip. Then I need some T-shirts; I have some more fabric like the T-shirt I just wore out. The black T=shirt I made a while ago came out underwear. I'm not going to buy any more knits that stretchy. But my black "interlock" (I suspect it of being one-on-one ribbing) will make a lovely winter slip. 1 September 2006 Time to wrap up August and send it on its way. Meta: I miss PC-Write's automatic entry dater -- but not enough to copy and paste the Banner. Come to think of it, I copy it anyway -- to get it into PC-write so I can edit it into hardcopy format and then import it into Writer to print the paper version. But Thunderbird will save into a file as easily as into a draft, but won't open a file. At least I haven't stumbled upon that feature yet. Another olde-tyme last-century obsoleteness that programs have dispensed with is providing a *manual*. Time to start packing for our trip to Michigan on Sunday. It's Jim and Nancy's Golden Wedding party. We were tempted to take the anniversary clock we bought for Dave's parents, but reflected that we'd probably get it back eight years from now. And Evelyn found a fairly inconspicuous place to keep it. Sewed the darts in my new slip yesterday. I hope to get the major pieces attached today. We finished the muskmelon yesterday, and Dave picked the other one. Haven't cut it yet. Last Monday, I was surprised at how little not eating bothered me, and I didn't quite finish the second pitcher of apple juice -- I'd thought four cans a skimpy supply. Killed two or three bottles of seltzer, though, and I couldn't sleep at nap time -- my bod was saying "get up and forage!". -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.