Pity I didn't look at the new fern before clicking "send" on the previous issue. Its distance from the fence is closer to half a foot than to a yard.
Cleaned receipts out of my wallet this morning; while Quickening them, I noticed that the Martin's receipt is divided into categories: all the pet foot together, the dairy foods together, etc. Makes it much easier to Quicken. And there is only information on the tape, you don't have to hunt for it among rubbish.
When I turned to the Marsh tape, I also realized: Martin's uses bold type and a fresh ribbon. Since the Martin's registers are brand new, I presume that they are using inkjet or laser. Ribbon isn't quite that dark unless it's carbon ribbon or is printing its very first page.
I happened to walk through the village during business hours a few days ago and checked out the new "Olive Branch", which sells olive oil and basalmic vinegar. Turns out that they also have a few envelopes of seasoning powders.
I just naturally expected that it would sell a variety of basalmic vinegars, and oils from a variety of different olives. Turns out that they sell two varieties of basalmic vinegar ("white" and "traditional"), but you can have thirty different flavorings in one or the other.
Though the olive oils are in similar case, they come from a variety of places — none specified any finer than "California", and two specify only the continent. There are none that I'm confident are pure olive, but Athenolia sounds like the name of an oil, rather than a flavoring.
Wikipedia being handy, I looked up "barnea" and discovered that it's a shellfish. So I tried DuckDuckGo and found a list of olive oils, and sweet barnea is a variety of olive, grown only in Australia, and the oil has no discernible olive flavor. Athenolia is a "monovarietal made from Koroneiki olives."
Both lists being alphabetic, let's run down: Frantoio is real, as is Koroneiki. I could DuckDuck Leccino, Nocellara Del Belice, Manzanillo, Picuda HojiBlanco, and Picual but I don't think I'll bother.
I suspect that Almond, Avocado, Butter, Grapeseed, sesame seed, and walnut aren't olive at all.
The rest of the thirty are like those that I noticed in the store: chipotle, basil, lemon, etc.
The trouble with writing a rant is that when you go documenting stuff, you often weaken your case. But I confirmed my opinion with respect to the vinegars. On the other hand, I might buy a bottle of their only real basalmic vinegar, because I've never tasted the real thing.
Not at all sure what I'd do with it, since I don't eat salads.
Just checked Wikipedia: Olive Branch's basalmic vinegar is, at best, condimento grade. A serving of the real thing is one drop, and it's sold only in 100 ml bottles. At a price that suggests that they ought to allow it to be sold in teeny phials of the sort used for essential oils.
I guess the stickum on the socks is only good for one wearing — my sock not only slid down, I could feel it sliding down.
Got two nice big tomatoes today, and four smaller ones. Nothing of interest in the Center Street market. The herb vendor hasn't shown up at either market — perhaps half a market isn't enough to make it worth her while to come. I saw no evidence that anyone but me attends both. It would be awkward to do so in a car.
Stopped at CVS and read the ingredients on their calcium tablets. They sounded a great deal like the Walgreen's ingredients, so I didn't buy any. There was an expensive brand I might want to buy a sample-size bottle of when I've reduced the number of bottles in the pantry.
Dave finished cleaning off the gazebo pad Saturday. Now he's wondering what a gazebo pad is good for. I don't think we'll put a gazebo on it. Could be a good place to put lawn chairs, come the Fourth in June.
Evening: I just asked Dave whether he was still trying to delete his humongous file, and he said he was.
A while back he accidentally set one of his cameras to upload a picture to Comcast every two seconds, and the file was . . . fairly large . . . before he noticed days later. Ever since, he's been attempting to delete it and muttering that when he wants to delete a directory from TIS, he clicks "delete" and it's gone. After many failed efforts, he discovered that he can delete tiny nibbles of it, if he leaves the computer to work on it for five minutes per nibble.
I get the impression that Comcast would rather you didn't use the webspace they are always bragging about.
We took our first boat ride today, and Dave took some pictures for his Web site. He's hoping to boat more this summer than he did last year.
Washday. I took a shirt off Dave, and forgot to check the pocket — the dollar bills came out fine, but a card ended up as fine flakes on everything. Shook off, mostly.
Filezilla is doing the trick! It still deletes only a bit at a time, and smaller bits, but it immediately deletes another bit without Dave having to highlight a screenfull of filespecs and click "delete", and it's deleting the bits much faster. Dave thinks it will be done by midnight. (Checks) At 11:19, there are less than two thousand files still to delete.
I don't know whether it got the job done before midnight, but it had finished when I went to bed at half past.
Dave said he had tried Filezilla earlier, but it kept crashing, and he speculated that the file had been too big to handle before he nibbled at it.
Monday night the back fell off my typing chair; Dave poked around and found a broken bolt. Tuesday, Dave went to Ace and bought a replacement knob-headed bolt; now the chair works better than it did when new. Back always wobbled a bit; now it doesn't.
Washed Monday, rode to Aunt Millie's Tuesday. Not much else done.
On Sunday, I came back from church through the art festival, and bought an elephant ear for my lunch. I'd eaten about a year's ration of sugar before I realized that I could tip the ear and pour some of it off. The second half was much less gritty!
Elephant ears aren't quite the same thing as fried dough; when they stretch the dough, they make it the shape of a real elephant ear, and fan it in the grease before dropping it in so that it stays flat and doesn't bubble as much as fried dough.
It's a bigger serving, too. The customers ahead of me intended to split one. For some reason, they chose not to have it cut in half.
I took an extra cinnamon capsule when I got home.
I should have stuck by my original plan to go bike riding today — my back doesn't want me to stand or walk, and there isn't a lot I can do sitting or lying.
And my back always loosens up when I ride, because I keep the muscles moving without putting any strain on them.
I had to step out to keep up with Dave on our walk yesterday. When I commented on it, he said that he also stopped getting headaches and nausea when he quit using the hamburger cream. He's complaining about how slow his nose is to heal, but it's already gone from raw and bleeding to new skin with red blotches. "Still hurts."
Chickened out of riding to Aldi yesterday because I wanted to sew, but I didn't get much sewing done because I can't find the flatbed plate to the sewing machine. That isn't the sort of thing that can hide! After supper, I was thinking that my list was so long that I should use the car when I go to Aldi in the morning, when I realized that by car I could go right then. So I went, and spent over a hundred dollars, and still have most of a page of shopping list. The little sweet peppers appear to have had their season, so I bought a package of the big ones. Also got two packages of breakfast burritos, which pleased Dave very much. Breakfast burritos are oddly hard to find.
Got a pair of sleeves cut out today. The table is still open. May cut out pants tomorrow.
My back is much better (though I think I should still be careful) and Dave says his nose finally feels as though it were healing.
"Twar odd: walking around felt much better with the walker — just wheeling it for feedback, not leaning on it — but I was fine and dandy without it when carrying something heavy. You'd think something heavy in one hand would throw off balance, not stabilize it.
I considered getting a walker with big wheels that could be used outdoors, and they are cheap enough to buy ahead of need, but I realized after a while that big wheels would be really heavy when I go over curbs. The old-fashioned kind with no wheels would be better for walking on ice: just carry it until I get to a slippery spot. I wonder whether they make them with retractable spikes.
By the time I got dressed, I was feeling so good that I forgot to carry my cane. Just as well; steps and curbs weren't a bit of trouble, and a cane would have been worse than useless for getting out of the pew after I stiffened up during the service.
Steve, Martha, Dan, and Emilee dropped in to look over the back yard this afternoon. The wedding is the eleventh of August.
Not only feeling pretty good today, but I didn't have a bit of trouble getting out of bed. Still a mistake to sit at the computer too long, though.
For a few days now, the walker has served only as a support while I'm working the kinks out from forgetting to get up and walk around while using the computer. It's really good for that.
Got some sewing done — I'm nearly done cutting out the salwarish kameezish that I started a couple of years ago. Should have it finished in time to wear it to church this fall.
The extra-stiff interfacing I ordered for the pocket slits and belt is listed as out for delivery, but hadn't come yet at suppertime.
The prediction for today was chance of rain, tomorrow is breezy for sure. I chose to wash today. When I took out the quarter-load of blacks, the patio was wet, so I put them on a rack in the parlor. But it wasn't raining, so I left the lights out until time for my nap. Only the thinnest items were dry; the rest went onto the rack with the blacks.
Oops! After ten, I logged back into the UPS web site to see what was going on — and noticed that it wasn't UPS — it was USPS.
So I went out to the mailbox, and there it was. Dave hadn't brought in the mail today because he saw the mailman walk past without leaving anything. Packages are delivered in a separate stop, but I'd told him it was UPS . . .
So now I have to figure out where to file my assortment of interfacings. In the footlocker, I guess, since I already have a piece of iron-on interfacing in there.
Gone be a major sewing-room re-arrangement Real Soon Now — I bought another shelf so that I'd have a place to lay works-in-progress flat. But I got a short shelf and now realize that I want the longer one, so I'm going to have to go back. I can use the shorter shelf too.
We've been picking out either the largest or the smallest each time we've eaten one of Darryl's eggs, and what's left are pretty uniform in size.
No more wee little eggs to make half a batch of pancakes. But a teaspoon of granulated lecithin works.
When checking the weather Sunday night, Tuesday looked good for a long bike ride, but come Tuesday morning, I've got nowhere to go. Downtown is right out; while riding is good for my back, walking beside the bike is terrible. My back doesn't hurt this morning, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Did go riding: in the afternoon, I rode to Owen's for bacon, salad, and milk.
Installed the shelf, but need to go back for another — I bought the short one by mistake. So I need one more board and two more brackets.
We moved the fern a few days ago. It hasn't noticed. Not growing as fast as the others; presumably there was less root left. And I think I got it all, so there may not be another.
I dumped the stinkier rain barrel in anticipation of Monday's rain, which didn't happen. (I dumped it on the herb bed; I'm no profligate.)
The remaining barrel is almost empty, but after watering the potatoes last time, I realized that it's just as close to haul water out of the creek. A little more awkward to get close enough to dip my bucket, though. So I gave the potatoes and onions a second bucket.
Garden looks healthy. The onions are a little brown on the tips, but I think it's time for them to start doing that. The garlic is ripening, so I don't water it.
We've gone from "we could use a little rain" to "we need a little rain" and the seven-day forecast is all sunny days with mostly-clear nights. Some near-by areas got rain Monday; I heard thunder to the east of us, and Dave saw a storm go north of us on the radar. And we did get that shower that wet the patio without dampening the laundry or all of the concrete in front of the house. (I didn't go around to look at the parking pad in front of the shop.)
Dave is still chortling over his not-sore nose. It's still pink, but not red. Doctor said it would be pink for weeks.
I'm still stiffening up whenever I sit too long. No longer stiff in the mornings, though.
The finger I tried to cut off on Mother's Day looks normal, but still has a sensitive patch on the side of the tip. I put tea-tree oil on it this morning. But oil doesn't stay long on a fingertip. Perhaps I'll just continue to ignore it; catches me by surprise only when I'm trying to un-knot the plastic bags I tie to my panniers to make sure they don't fall out — or to keep small items from slipping between the wires.
I have discovered that ginger candied in apple juice is great when crunched up with a roasted almond.
Served, in desperation, spaghetti and meatballs for supper tonight, then got on my bike and went to Owen's in search of something I wasn't sick of for tomorrow. Bought pork "ribs", as they call strips of haunch meat, showed it to Dave, and he reminded me that tomorrow is Thursday — when he's going to Muncie.
So I put the ribs in the freezer and plan to eat out tomorrow night. I needed the exercise anyway.
Found a motorbike parked next to my bike when I came out with the groceries. He left me plenty of room to turn the bike around and get it out. He came back just as I came out after returning my cart, and when I left was still putting his groceries into a container under his seat — the whole seat lifted up, like the lid of a window seat.
Once upon a time I found a mulberry in my pocket when I undressed. Ah, I passed under a tree hanging low over the sidewalk on my way home, that must be it — but on my next trip, I made a point of looking at that tree and it most definitely wasn't a mulberry. That was years ago, and I've been looking at that tree in puzzlement ever since.
A few days ago I was walking past the tall hedge that runs along the walk just before I pass under the not-a-mulberry, happened to look up, and saw a mulberry branch reaching out over the walk from a tree behind the hedge.
I was reminded of this when I found a piece of tortilla chip in my pocket when I was throwing my slopping-around shirt into the wash.
Also two pigtail holders, but I'm pretty sure I put those into my pockets on purpose.
Huh! There's a squirrel out there with a cat's tail. It would be a fluffy cat, but it's not as fluffy as a squirrel tail — and it's ringed.
Nothing else unusual about the critter.
Evening: clicked on Google News while waiting for a new filter to filter, and was surprised that Stacy Page is still around — I thought she had run into a chicken-and-egg problem: she didn't have enough money to create a site that people would pay to read. But the first page I tried to read wasn't divided into paragraphs, so I clicked on "no style" and it still wasn't, so I viewed the source — my edition of Firefox still has "view source"; they've just taken it out of the view menu and hidden it in the right-click menu — and discovered that for some strange reason the story had been divided into divs instead of paragraphs. So I gave up and read another story, which is divided into paragraphs, but it was mostly press release.
The story I gave up on was about the triathlon. I'm pretty sure I could do our triathlon, but I'll never enter because I'd still be in the water when the last runner came back, and the guys in the boats would haul me out and make me go home long before that happened.
I don't think the officials would be happy about my time in the run, either. Fifteen minutes per mile is about my top speed, and I'd take a three-and-a-half mile walk a trifle less energetically.
Every year I consider following the race to Pierceton — it's a pleasant bike ride — but then decide that I'd rather buy fresh tomatoes. No reason I couldn't do both, but when I stopped by the house to drop off the tomatoes, my bod would say "over so soon?" and shift into "take a shower" mode.
Just checked the Winona Lake home page, and the fireworks are still scheduled for June 30. Since the unreliable newspaper has been saying June 30, I keep checking.
And I did go out again after buying tomatoes, but it was quite a struggle, even though I only wanted to take my automatic prescription renewal form to Owen's.
I asked whether my prescriptions could be co-ordinated so that I'd only get one notification a month; she checked and said that since I renewed all of them at once last time, they were already synchronized. Picked up some bananas and oranges while I was there.
Got a pleasant surprise on the way back from the fairgrounds. For some time Smith street has been cluttered with machinery, and the surface was deliberately roughened so the finish coat would stick — not too bad in a car, but the bumps are exactly the right size to be Extremely Unpleasant on inch-and-a-quarter tires, so I've been going part of the way on Winona. This morning: yea, rah, the job is finished! So I turned at the usual spot, went to the fairground on nice smooth pavement, bought my tomatoes, and as I was coming back — this road doesn't pose the slightest risk to my tomatoes! All the lumps, bumps, rough spots, and pits that I have much practice in negotiating are GONE.
I've half a notion to write a "thanks, we needed that" letter to the paper.
Dave said that he had a wonderful time in Muncie — the soaring club he'd gone to see was nowhere to be found, but he accidentally found a wonderful model-airplane air show. The model planes were huge. (I suspect that the air field was deserted because everyone had gone to the show.)
But the heat got to him and he came home early today.
We got a little rain this afternoon and the bottoms of the rain barrels are wet, but when I brought in a scarf I'd hung on the line after spinning out my riding clothes when I got up from my nap, it wasn't even damp enough to iron.
The radar says that we might get some more. Looked as though the showers extended down Alice's way.
I needed an umbrella on the way to church, and there was actually water running over the pavement on my way up Sunday Lane, but it was dry again when the service was over. Nine-hundredths of an inch, I think Dave said. Not enough to water anything, but there was significant accumulation in the rain barrels.
I made pizza for supper. Not enough yeast — and I put as much in two-and-a-half cups of flour as I would have put into five. It was hard to cut, but it's hard to go wrong when you put in that much pepperoni and cheese. I also put in an entire orange pepper from my latest three-pepper package.
After supper, I planted the parsley and ornamental pepper that I bought at the Farmer's Market in the Joe Rickets strawberry bed. The hole I dug for the parsley was quite dry. Apparently I'd been missing that corner when I poured buckets of water in.
I think we've got gremlins. The flat-bed plate to my sewing machine has been missing for days, my clothes-pin bag vanished while I was hanging up clothes yesterday, and when I put clothes away this morning, I found only two of my three yellow bras.
The clothespin bag and the bra turned up as soon as I'd complained about it, but the flat-bed plate is still AWOL.
Rode to Owen's for milk and eggs — only two of Darryl's eggs left now. The milk was on the top shelf and the folks in the back room hadn't pushed the bottles to the front, so shopping was somewhat adventurous. Groceries should litter step stools around the way libraries do.
Chef salad for lunch, with bits of the "ribs" we had for supper last night. Dave had a sandwich; he was making it when I got back from the store, and greeted me with the answer to the question I'd asked just before leaving: "lunch meat".
We're not quite out, and I've stashed away assorted canned goods for just such a situation.
Grumble. I was so pleased with the smooth new pavement on Smith Street, and I've just read on Stacy Page that they painted bike lanes on it.
Ah, well, I'd been expecting them to mess up Market Street, so I guess that it's good news. Traffic on Smith is light enough that one can pretty much ignore the integral sidewalks.
The picture makes the "lanes" look like paved shoulders, which will work great until they install slippery, bumpy "bike lane" icons, and the part of Smith I use has a real sidewalk, so I guess I won't find pedestrians blocking the road.
Perhaps there is someone on the Greenway committee who is subverting The L.A.B's "bikes don't belong" campaign.
On the way to the fellowship meeting yesterday evening, I noticed that my nails needed clipping — all ten of them! And I've still got nails this morning. Feels really weird when I scratch.
I'm using up the last of the old tube of Age Shield by cutting off the bottom and closing it with a tube squeezer. After the first couple of times of dipping it out, I added a dash of the foundation I use to cover my age spot on Sundays. Terrific improvement: much easier to spread out smoothly, and I can put it on a lot thicker without making chalk marks on my face. But the grease in the foundation makes me aware that I have something smeared on my face, and rubbing my face with a wet rag doesn't get it off at night.
This morning Dave noticed that I wasn't spreading it out evenly on the left side of my face — I've been thinking about Sherlock Holmes every morning — and we discussed ways to improve the light in the shower room. Simplest would be to move the stuff to the mirror above my chest of drawers. On the other hand, the light there isn't good unless I open the curtains, and I like to put on my sunscreen before I put on my clothes.
Dave forgot to take sunscreen to Muncie and had to buy more at the Walgreen's next to his motel. I e-mailed him the label and they didn't have it — but the clerk showed him "Sport Face" sunscreen, which appears to be Age Shield Face in a package guys will buy. The dispenser isn't as good as the new Age Shield, but not as bad as the old Age Shield.
Ferns are still flourishing, which reminds me that I forgot to haul water to them yesterday evening and ought to do so this morning. The spice bush could use a couple of buckets too.
I was halfway down Evangel Hill yesterday evening when I remembered that I'd meant to come by way of Sweet Dreams and buy a lemon-custard ice-cream cone. So I intended to go there and back for this evening's walk, but the shady point eight was more appealing.
Watering the plants was the only useful thing I did today. Played computer card games a lot.
I've been noticing that my garlic chives are of poor quality. A few days ago I realized, well duh, I hadn't been watering them. I've got ten days to get them into shape for the Fourth of July. I think I'll go give them another bucket. Emptied one rain barrel on them this morning; I'll have to use the hose to water the spice bush tomorrow. A slow drip will be better than dumping a bucket anyway.
Off to Aldi. I'll fill the bottles at the outside faucet; that way the water I run out to get it fresh will do some good. Also, it's more convenient than going back inside.
Yesterday I forgot to go; today I've forgotten why. Not much on my list, but we are completely out of shredded cheese and have only two meatballs. Plenty of spaghetti. Now where was it I planned to stop on the way?
The good news: clothing waiting to be ironed has been blocking me from using the walker as an exercise frame for days and I hadn't noticed. The bad news: clothing that needs to be ironed has been hanging around for days. Including two long dresses that are a chore to iron.
Passed by Staples, remembering that I wanted something there, but not remembering what. A couple of sprawls later I looked at my list: oh, yes, I wanted to see whether any of their poster paper was a tolerable substitute for oaktag.
I walked all around Big R, but I still don't remember what I wanted there.
Saw a couple of nightstands that might do for a keyboard stand at K-mart. Had my measuring tape, but didn't think of measuring them and writing it down.
The last time I went to Aldi I couldn't find potato chips and bought sweet-potato chips. This time I couldn't find sweet-potato chips and bought potato chips. The sweet-potato chips are simply fried slices of sweet potato, and quite good. I hope they have some when I go in to buy stuff for the fireworks party.
Usually I roam the whole town for weeks collecting different chips. This time I plan to go to Aldi the day before and buy whatever is on hand.
I overhead two other customers: "Wow, that's cheap!" "Now you know why I wanted to wait until we came here."
Grumbly gripe. I thought I could drop in at field day and ask when and where the ham-club meetings were, but there was no sign of any activity at the fairgrounds, and the ARRL Field Day Locater doesn't list Warsaw, so if they've gone to Lucerne Park or something there's no way for me to find out about it.
I'm beginning to think that the Web space was pre-paid and the club that paid for it is no longer around. If they were around, some of the egregious errors in the site would have been repaired by now. (Such as, for example, giving the wrong time and place for the meetings.)
They've painted a second fog line on Smith Street, which makes riding west on a bicycle very complicated. When it was unlined, I could simply ride near the edge and expect overtaking cars to go around me, but now that there are two lines, I have to ride inside the inner line, listen for overtakers, and dramatically dive for the edge when one is close enough to have a clear view of me.
When I stopped at the dollar store to buy paper plates for the party, it was the wrong dollar store and they didn't have small plates.
I've still got a week, and the printed plates from Big R will do if I can't buy solid-color plates.
I was too late to buy tomatoes, but I got two zucchiini and a yellow squash, all small and tender. And we didn't eat all the tomatoes I bought last week.
Stopped at Owen's for my prescriptions, and bought celery and carrots while I was there.
I didn't bother with the other farmer's market even though I came pretty close to downtown when I diverted to Lowery's. Coming back from there is how I happened to be at the dollar store on Market.
Also went into the indoor flea market next door to the dollar store — it has more empty space every time I go; I fear it may not survive. It's mostly looking merchandise rather than buying merchandise, which is probably why the merchants aren't making enough to keep paying rent.
Only two half-loads of wash today. Have we been awful clean or awful dirty?
Partly due to travelling by bike, which means that my shirt has been sweaty enough to rinse out immediately when I take it off, so it doesn't turn up in the wash.
Went by car this afternoon, to stock up on all Dave's sodas. The bag boy asked three times whether I wanted him to come to the car with me! But fitting it all in was decisions, rather than heavy lifting, which he couldn't help with.
Bought bagged salad and had chef salad for supper. Didn't remember until a couple of hours later that I have a ripe avocado I could have put in it. All we had was colby cheese, bacon bits, and a pickled egg.
The avocado isn't all that ripe.
Moving all this furniture around keeps exposing things that haven't been cleaned in ten years.
This morning, we put the marble-topped dresser in the parlor — five trips, and thank goodness it comes apart! After supper tonight we'll close up the eating table so we can drag the sofa into the kitchen, and after breakfast tomorrow we'll drag in the Lazy Boy. That leaves only the bed and some small stuff that can be heaved into the closet. And a computer to shove from one side of the symbolic partition to the other; Since it's on a UPS, he might not even have to shut it down. Probably a good idea to do so anyway.
Yesterday I boiled six eggs, put them into a Corningware casserole, and dumped a jar of pickled beets on them. Seven or eight would have filled the bottom of the casserole better.
There are potatoes on my vines — I wash the dirt off some every time I haul two buckets of water from the creek, and I cover them up again with "composted cow manure". I leave the bag out in the garden and don't even fold the top over — it's not going to get rained on.
No hauling of furniture tonight, and I'm going shopping tomorrow: the carpet cleaners can't make it until Monday.
My first thought was "Ack! It will take two days to gain access to the guest room! And then put it all back!" but on inspection, there is no obstacle to pulling the sofabed out, and there's plenty of room for it in the living room even though we haven't dragged the sofa out yet.
Woke up at 6:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to have breakfast.
Absent-mindedly took my calcium two hours early, but I took the levothyroxine an hour early, so that works out.
So now it's really time to get up and I'm feeling sleepy.
It's so hot out there that it hurts!
My trip through Aldi was made extremely unpleasant by a man who continually shouted "Don't shop, just go!!" at his wife. At one point he ordered her to buy sweet-potato chips, and when she started to look for them resumed shouting "Don't shop, just go!!" — it's wonder they ever got out of the store. At one point he went into the next aisle, grabbing random stuff to bring back to the cart, and confided — loudly — to another customer that he expected his wife to hit him.
When I told Dave about it, I told him that if he ever pulled such a stunt I'd hand him the shopping list and tell him to pick me up at McDonald's. But in real life, I'd call an ambulance, because it would be a sure sign that he was having a stroke.
McDonald's is the nearest air-conditioned place to Aldi — waiting in the car isn't a realistic option on a day like this.
Went to bed early and slept until 4:30. Then served TV dinner for supper. And forgot to make a relish plate; there is nothing on it but a tomato and a half. I'll make a nice big one on a dinner plate tomorrow, in case we have guests the next day.
Provided I can use the kitchen. The truck that broke down was repaired soon enough that the carpet cleaners can come tomorrow. We hauled the sofa into the kitchen after supper. Now I have to move a chair and a table to get at Al's dishes; he was slightly perturbed at our messing with them.
I bought an oregano plant for twenty-five cents at Big R. They had shelf after shelf of sweet marjoram; perhaps I should have gotten one of those too.
I planted it right at the end of the hose I use for rinsing the coffee filter after I empty it. Then watered the garlic chives and the marjoram.
For a snack, I fished some squash out of the eternal soup.
I made hamburger soup a few days ago. When I served it again, it needed more liquid — I couldn't decide between a can of beef broth and a glop of vegetable cocktail, so I put in both. Then the beans were rather far apart — went to the cupboard and we were unexpectedly out of black beans so I added a can of chili beans. Both of us agreed that chili beans were good, so I bought another can at Aldi today. (And four cans of black beans.)
All of that added up to more soup than we had eaten the first time, so I called it "eternal soup". The third time I served it, though, all I added was a few cloves of freshly-dug garlic, a small sliced zucchini, and a mini sweet pepper. Kroger has some bagged peppers almost as tasty as those I got at Aldi, but a tad harder to clean.
The carpet cleaners are an hour overdue. I hope their truck didn't break down again.
I feel like going back to bed, but the bed is in four places.
Dropped my jewel box while moving furniture, and spilled out the contents.
Why do I have two sweater guards when I have never, ever, worn a sweater guard, and can't imagine wanting to? The one with "Washington D.C." on the pendant looks old enough to be a souvenir of my Junior-Senior Trip, but doesn't look like the kind of souvenir I'd have picked up. The other looks like something I might have inherited from Mom.
The carpet cleaning got rather adventurous. Well, the aftermath thereof; the boy that Terry sent did a good job fast and went away again. Then I wanted my nap — but my pajamas were in a closet separated from me by a stretch of wet carpet, and we threw all the bedding in there too.
But I could nap in my shirt and briefs, I'd thrown one of the sheets into the laundry bag, and there were an afghan and two bed pillows on the sofa, so pretty soon I was comfortable in the kitchen. Just as I started to relax, the weather radio went off. After a while I figured out how to shut it up so I could talk to Joe, who had called to invite me to a picnic next Wednesday.
Then I was so wound up that I decided to play a round of Yukon before going back to bed, which was a good thing because I was looking at the screen when the UPS announced that it was time for an orderly shut-down. The wind rose about that time, and later on the canoe knocked at the bedroom window. I shut down Dave's computer and my two, and later remembered that I could get at his other computer by pushing a monitor switch, and remembered to turn off the monitors, but I couldn't find power switches on any of the other peripherals — in those few cases where I could find the peripheral.
Then the UPSs started making very well-designed "do not ignore me and go to sleep" noises; turned out that there was a very good reason for that: if you do not push the flush black button on the black case in the very dim light, the UPS will run down its battery. But I didn't know the button was there to be hunted for, let alone that it was safe to push it.
When I gave up on getting any rest, I walked around the point eight and observed damage — after picking up some of the stuff that had blown away; we never did find the plastic runner that belongs under the cat box. We put the box springs and the mattress into the garage before Dave left, but left out things that rain wouldn't hurt. We weren't planning on a derecho!
I forgot that when we moved the bed outside Friday morning I had washed and hung out a blanket, and wondered what the yellow thing in the peony bed was. I hung it up to dry again, and it's in the laundry room waiting for Monday.
When I went into the "do not enter" end of Park Avenue, I followed a pick-up truck that kept stopping to talk to people in their yards. Then we came to a wire-tangled pile of green in the road and he could go no further. As I passed him, I said "There's a lot of work to be done here!" or words to that effect, and he said "sure is" with the air of someone who was going to have to do it. Only a few yards beyond that there was a worse one, and even a pedestrian couldn't get through — at least not a pedestrian unwilling to bet her life that none of those wires were live. I walked around through a yard.
Dave got back while I was gone and after the UPSs had given up and gone dead . He said that all the traffic lights were out except the one at Argonne & Winona. And that was out both of the times I went out on Saturday — all the lights I saw were replaced by four-way stops. Made Center easy to cross, but I was glad I had no reason to drive along it. I was surprised to see no more traffic than usual on Market, since nearly all of the stop signs there are two-way, Market favored.
Saturday morning, I came straight back from the Farmer's Market instead of going to Owen's because I wanted a bag of ice, but Dave fetched one before I got around to going; when I was about to get ready to drive the pick-up to Owen's, I realized that everything else I wanted would fit into my panniers, and I was still wearing my knickers, so I put my jersey back on and had my second bike ride of the day. Sometimes I ride all day, but I practically never ride twice.
We got less than a third of an inch of rain out of the derecho, but it rained again that night. How much I'm not sure. I am sure that we need more. There have been a few scattered drops today. No so much that you'd be sure to notice even if you were standing out in it.
I took my nap early on Saturday, and felt good all evening, but when the guests were gone I about fell into bed at midnight and slept until eight. And so did Dave. I didn't do anything strenuous; it must have been the excitement.
Darryl and Alice were able to come up for the fireworks, and we had a very nice visit, but I forgot to give Alice Donny's spoon, and Dave forgot to give Darryl his power supply. We went to the Great Wall for supper, and ate like pigs.
Probably won't see them again until the shoot-out.
On the way home from church this morning, I found ginko leaves on the steps of Ninth Street. I looked all around and didn't see anything that might be a ginko. With those winds, they could have come from Warsaw.
Except for the marble-topped dresser, all the furniture is back where it belongs — so why is the parlor still a cluttered mess?
Dave found the cat-box runner in a flower bed. I washed it yesterday and draped it over a patio-chair frame this morning.
When I looked for the old lawn chair I use for a laundry-basket stand, I thought that I should have let Dave rivet the slats to the arms, but they hadn't gone very far.
Now that I know that it's called a "luggage rack", I may be able to buy an attractive laundry-basket stand. But I don't want one that I have to bring inside when it's not in use.
If I hadn't washed the blanket, there would have been hardly any laundry today. I washed the whites and lights together, and still didn't have a full load. I just chickened out of doing the sheet and some pillowcases, as the National Weather service predicts showers after five.