2 August 2007 Lethargy must be in the air. It was 10:22 before I got out of bed this morning. Yesterday, after Dave and I discussed how worried we were because Al had been sleeping so much, I threw a toy into the kitchen -- and Al leaped a yard into the air trying to field it. 8 August 2007 We celebrated our anniversary with lunch at the Crossroads, and a long drive through the country, including a look at the new soybean plant being built in Claypool. A while back, Al threw up on the carpet sample I was using as a mat under his food dish, so I threw it out onto the patio. A day or two later I noticed that I had stepped in something, and threw out the carpet sample under my feet, meaning to see later whether it was contributing to the stench. I forgot both mats, and they got rained on, so I hung them on the clothesline to drain. Sunday night they got washed very clean in a goosedrowner, and after I brought in the laundry Monday evening, I brought the mats in and, thinking that they might not be quite dry, put them on the kitchen floor -- where they still are, having migrated to the sink and stove. Not too long after I put the mats down, we found Al appliquéd to one of them, sniffing ecstatically. They seem to have lost the delightful odor very quickly, however. Which reminds me, for some reason, that I haven't picked him any catnip lately. He's still sleeping too much, but being perfectly normal when awake. Perhaps he's estivating. We put flea goop on his back this evening. I hung out two dirty mats from the garage, but they haven't gotten rained on yet. Monday I thought I heard a concrete truck at the construction site while I was hanging clothes; on today's walk, we noted that the forms had been taken off the footings. The heat was less insufferable than it has been. Oddly, I notice the heat more as a reluctance to move quickly than as a desire to cool off. When I first glimpsed the new "artwork" on Union Street, I thought it was a miniature windmill tower, but it looks more like the stump of a radio tower. Up close, it's a rocking chair with normal-sized rockers, long, long legs, and a teeny-tiny seat. The posts of the back of the chair -- a continuation of the legs -- branch in a way that suggests that the artist was thinking of a throne. It's pretty when viewed closely, because it looks like stainless steel, and it sparkles with scratches, as if it had been ground all over. I suspect that this finish won't weather very well even if it really is stainless steel. The work badly needs a caption. Good art is supposed to make you think and wonder, but it isn't supposed to make you wonder what the artist thought he was doing. And I suspect that we paid away too much. 9 August 2007 I've known for some time that I was short of T-shirts, but it wasn't until I wanted to pack a couple of shirts that wouldn't wrinkle that I realized that I haven't got one short-sleeved T-shirt without a conspicuous mend, except for two factory-made shirts that don't fit properly. And one of those faded in the wash, and the other has no pockets. 13 August 2007 As an all-day exercise, today's ride was something of a bust -- I got back in plenty of time for lunch, and I'm starting this report while my bread thaws. I didn't think to write down the time at Chinworth Bridge, but it took two hours and three minutes to get to the dollar store, where I spent sixteen minutes, and nineteen minutes after that, I was in our driveway. Two hours and thirty-eight minutes for the round trip, if I can do clock arithmetic in my head. I collected a spot of sin on my soul: I went to Roy Street by way of the Blackway, looked both ways, and turned the corner without tapping my foot on the pavement. Then I looked back and saw that a small child on a sidewalk bike was approaching the intersection, and must have seen the whole turn -- but there's no way he could have seen the looking both ways bit. If he runs a stop sign and gets hit, it will be my fault. By the time I figured out that I should go back and apologize, it was too late to do so. I seriously considered writing a letter to the newspaper! Backtracking to the beginning of this story: I washed one of my shirts on Wednesday, and threw in everything I could find. I washed two of Dave's shirts on Saturday, and threw in everything I could find. It seemed rather silly to hold a major washday on Monday just for one king-sized sheet. So I wanted to go riding today, but I'm a bit bored with Pierceton, and Sydney is a tad too far; eventually I remembered that I've been wanting to look at the new "bike trail" on the other side of town. So I headed down Boy's City Drive, and much map-reading and blundering about later, I found myself on CR 200S, under the impression that it was 300S -- despite having deliberately selected 200S -- which caused me some puzzlement when I got to Ferguson Road. I followed Ferguson to Crystal Lake Road, which I remembered from a previous trip as being well suited to cycling and not too far from Old Thirty. Crystal Lake seemed to go a long, long way without a chance to turn right, but the map says that I had gone less than two miles before I started wondering whether I'd have to go all the way to Atwood to get over to Old 30. Which isn't all that far, but I don't want to do any riding at all on Old 30 -- it's rough, and narrow, and heavily traveled. So when I saw Parks-Schram Road, I swerved onto it with glee. Which quickly changed into panic as I discovered that a deep hole at the turn had been filled with pea gravel that perfectly matched the pavement. I somehow got stopped without falling off and breaking something, looked up, and saw that the road appeared to dead-end at somebody's driveway. At that moment, I could have used a more-colorful array of invective than lies at my disposal. But on checking the map to see where the next crossing was, I discovered that Parks-Schram not only goes, it comes out right at the Chinworth Bridge. And it's a twisty road running along a creek, a delightful place to ride. As I reached Chinworth, I saw two people on bikes headed toward Parks-Schram. Since I'd come to see the recreationway, I left Chinworth by way of the walkway even though it would have been easier, safer, and more polite to use the county road. It would have meant a right turn onto the recreationway instead of crossing the road, for example. There was no traffic, but I couldn't help remembering that a man was recently killed at just such an intersection -- *all* responsibility lies with the person on the recreationway, since the drivers on the road don't expect an intersection. Crossing a road on a recreationway is equivalent to popping out from between parked cars. Little of interest along the recreationway, of course. It ran alongside Old Thirty most of the way. Once it crossed a bridge that appeared to have been salvaged for its historical interest, but there was no sign to say what that interest was. Then it turned south -- along Zimmer Road if I recall correctly -- and after a bit it intersected with a driveway and failed to come out the other side. There was a milepost near -- 1.9, I think -- but no "end Greenway" sign. I looked about in bewilderment for a while, went down a driveway along the railroad until I saw that it went nowhere but into parking lots, made a U turn in one of the lots, and went on down Zimmer to Crystal Lake Road, which is already Winona Avenue at this point. I crossed under the viaduct on Hand street in order to come back by way of Market street; seeing the full length, it isn't quite as bad a choice as it appeared when I'd inspected only the stretch where they will have to cut down all the shade trees on the south side of the road. And some of that can be avoided if people will sacrifice most of their dinky little lawns, and are willing to step out their doors onto a right-of-way. Blackway designers consider swerving back and forth a definite plus, and put curves in at random intervals, so the path around the trees not being straight won't be any problem. I forgot to stop at Owen's West, and Owen's East was out of my way, but non-fish cat food was the only urgent thing on my list, so I got two cans of Fancy Feast at Dollar General. Also had a little oops: I turned down Harrison from force of habit, and had to circle back on Cleveland to continue my inspection of Market Street. Then down McKinley, through the Interurban viaduct, and home. For supper, I had Nancy's zucchini, cut up with ham and some other vegetables, steam-fried in a small skillet. Which wasn't enough, so I had a small sandwich of sour cream and five slices of pepperoni, which came close to killing the kettle-baked bread I'd thawed for lunch. 14 August 2007 Grump, grump, grumpity grump. I decided that the time had finally come to order fabric for my new summer pants, got down the pattern, laid it out on the living-room floor (with considerable help from Al), decided that three yards of russia drill would do the job, and was reaching to plug in the data cable when I remembered that I don't have a one-time credit-card number. Dave showed me how to get one once, but that was a long time ago, and all I remember is that the route through the Mastercard web site was far from obvious. Perhaps I should see whether Wm. Booth, Draper has the option of paying by check -- all their stuff is re-orderable, so it won't sell to someone else while the order is in the mail. I also noticed that the new plush carpet means that I can't lay out for cutting in the living room -- but now I can lay out in the kitchen. (The old kitchen floor covering was dark and had dirt-holding grooves.) Yes, I still remember saying "I'll tell you all about that in the Banner" when I was out with the girls. But I don't remember what I was going to tell you about. I see that some of the previous entries don't make sense if you don't know that I was out with my sisters on August ninth through eleventh, and Dave is now out with his lodge brothers from the day before yesterday through next Monday. (It would have been much less symmetrical to say that he has gone to Albany to visit old friends, and the fire department *was* a lodge, for all practical purposes.) 16 August 2007 Poor little Al is trying to lure me to the television -- he's suffering a severe lap deficit. I got my exercise in early today. I planned an uneventful day of washing clothes and baking pizza, but Dave called just after I put the first load in and said that he'd forgotten a bottle of pills. So I jumped into my clothes, strode briskly to the post office, got there fifteen minutes early, started to walk to the entrance, but chickened out in front of the hotel -- the settling pond doesn't look quite so pointless now that it's grown up in weeds; if some seeds from a nearby patch of cattails float in, it will look fairly decent. So I turned back and strode around the post office until I saw signs of life, then went in and mouseholed the clerk until she was ready for business, and mailed the pills "overnight". She gave me a tracking number, but the USPS web site says only that they have been accepted into the system and that the page won't be updated until after Dave has picked them up. Then I strode home at the same brisk pace, which made the fronts of my shins sore; I thought I'd been doing more walking than that. I guess I've done only strolling. I'd better stick to strolling tomorrow, though, even if I don't feel sore any more. I did stroll out after supper to look at the construction. The forms are all in place at the new house; they don't look any higher than would be reasonable for foundations, but they are much higher than is currently fashionable for foundations. When Joe and Lois picked me up Wednesday, we drove by the moved house; I was startled to see scaffolding, but remembered that they were working on the roof. Didn't remember that they'd been working on the roof without scaffolds. Today a new porch is in progress. The pile of pea gravel is a lot smaller, and sheets of black plastic strongly suggest that they have poured a concrete driveway. I think I had seen concrete floor inside the garage earlier. We had a thunderstorm in the night -- the tornado alarm woke me up three times -- and a little after eight o'clock this evening (I'd meant to do it at seven, but forgot) I dumped 0.56 inches out of Dave's rain gauge. I'm not 100% certain it was empty before the storm, so I'm not reporting it to cocorahs. Not that I know *how* to report it to CoCoRahs. Or even how to spell it. I brought one of the mats in -- I thought the other one could use another rainstorm -- and threw it on the kitchen floor. No feline ecstasy. Scorched my pizza. Which made it necessary to get it out of the kettle before it was firm enough; it made a *delicious* mess. I had hot pizza for lunch and chilled pizza for supper. And I'm tempted to go back for another slice now. 17 August 2007 When eating the hot pizza, I kept breaking off pieces of crust and saying "Yum! This bread tastes as though it had butter in it -- but I didn't put in any butter, and hardly any olive oil." Well, duh: It was topped with half a pound of cheese! I'm grumpy again. I woke up about five this morning, and finished reading _The Family Trade_ -- and a good thing too; my books are due tomorrow. On turning over the last page I realized that even though the cover bills it as the first novel in a series, it's really the set-up chapters from a long novel that the publisher arbitrarily chopped into three volumes. So I dashed to the computer to call up the library's catalog and see whether they have the rest of it. Firefox couldn't find the server. I read the on-line funnies; it wasn't my connection. So, thinking it might be only the entry page that was down I Googled hoping to find a page that was working, and learned that WCPL has a new URL -- but all of the links I clicked on still point to pages that are no longer around, except for one link that isn't there at all. The old site was working yesterday, so I hope that I caught them halfway through moving it. It was back up later in the day -- at the old address. ?? On the other hand, the review of the third book in the series brags that it, too, ends on a cliffhanger. I'm not at all sure I want to go on with this. If I find a review of the fourth book in the trilogy that says it has a conclusion, maybe -- I do like looong stories, but I want to be assured that when I get to the end, I'll have read a story. At nine O'Clock Friday, there was no rain in the gauge. Al's wheaties are looking ragged, so I planted a fresh pot. The bag of seed is older than Al; I'm pretty sure that it was also older than Fred. Still sprouts promptly. I've already eaten all the pizza I baked yesterday. Haven't eaten much else! Planning to ride to the farmer's market tomorrow, then return my library books, and come back by way of Owens for pills and groceries. 19 August 2007 Got to the Farmer's Market early enough to buy two tomatoes, two peppers, and two sweet banana peppers. The library wasn't open yet, but the book drop is operational again. Forgot to buy eggs, and almost forgot to pick up my pills. I opened the bag of hard white-wheat flour yesterday, and laid out the ingredients for a big round loaf of kettle-baked bread. Stirred in a pint of water before going to church, and kneaded in three more cups of flour before my nap, but come baking time I didn't feel like going out to start a fire -- at 7:01, there was 1.15 inches of rain in the gage. Backing up a bit, I once made four hamburger buns from a single recipe of dough, but they were too big. So I tried again, making eight buns from a recipe and a half, and they were still too big. I resolved to make eight buns from a single recipe next time, but I don't like to bake square things in my round kettle, so the experiment was postponed. So when I saw that I was going to have to bake indoors, I split the double recipe into a small loaf and eight buns -- and the buns came out too small. But I think the loaf looks a tad larger than when I last baked in loaf pans, so I think I divided the dough unevenly, and will try a single recipe of buns the next time I oven-bake. Perhaps I'll make the dough softer so that it will spread out to fill the cake pans. The buns may be small, but they are yummy -- I've already eaten four of them, one in the form of a pepperoni and tomato sandwich. Tried walking briskly on the way to church, but my shins are still sore. I blame the long spell of hot weather for making me so soft. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange