In last month's issue, I carried on about the extreme difficulty of getting into boxes piled five high on the top shelf. When I cleared the board to iron two shirts this morning, I noticed a large stack of "too small to bother dropping boxes on my head"s, and held a major box-moving, pausing halfway through to rustle through Dave's bolt collection and repair my grocer's tongs. (I did find the bolt that had fallen off later.)
In the process, I emptied one box, nested two other empty boxes, sorted a considerable amount of pants-weight linen out of the general-linen box (which made room for all the bra-weight scraps on the ironing board), and noticed that I have grandmother's collection of handkerchiefs — some of them with hand-made lace — in a corrugated cardboard box, which is a terrible way to store them.
If you're cringing at that last clause, e-mail me and I'll arrange to transfer custody.
And as I was glancing around to take satisfaction in the decrease in entropy, I noticed another deposit of stuff that belongs in boxes on the top shelf.
Which reminds me that some of the order is fake. For example, a few days ago I found a box that perfectly fits legal paper folded in half, and stacked everything in that format in it without regard for date or topic.
I'm going to have to find someone to take my collection of pinfeed paper off my hands. Perhaps I'll Freecycle it.
I think I have more boxes than I had kinds of paper; I'd better dig out those that I can't get at and peek inside. The one under the UPS is plainly marked "Envelopes", probably 9 x 12. I can't even see the box under the 9 x 6 envelopes, but something is holding it up.
I bought some "Hereford" corned beef just to see what sort of beef came in a Spam-shaped can. Today I opened it for lunch, and it's speef — Spam made outa beef. And quite good, actually.
I'm planning another asparagus casserole for supper tonight.
I just planted the marigolds I bought at Owen's yesterday. Earlier in the day, I found some parsley seeds in the freezer and planted them in the Joe Rickets bed — thanks to our deer, there is plenty of room. Also found some globe basil seeds, but have no idea where to plant them — they are wee fine and vulnerable when they first come up.
In other garden news, the two plants I thought were potatoes developed into fake oregano and I pulled them up, but an unquestioned potato sprout is near the site. Today I found two more volunteer potatoes near the multipliers — but not too close; they won't interfere. I got pruning shears and made stakes out of some of the firewood to put a hedge around them. (And later made more stakes for the parsley.)
The planted potatoes still show no inclination to grow, but some of the sprouts they had when I bought them are a bit greenish. Intervals of sun and rain are predicted.
Yesterday or the day before, Dave found another fern by the fence and we dug it up and moved it to the fern bed. I cut off some roots getting it out, so I expect another fern to appear after a while. The fern doesn't appear to know it's been moved; today I hauled it another bucket of water and shared it around among all the ferns, including the volunteer that we aren't quite sure is a fern. Yesterday I found a new leaf on it that was a little bit curled like a new frond, so just now I ran out to check again: It has a teeny-tiny fiddlehead hidden among the frond bases. The fronds on the volunteer fern seem to do most of their growing after fully unrolling. It has smaller fronds that are less upright than the planted ferns. Shorter fronds, but about the same width.
Some duds are nicer than other duds.
Yesterday Michelle called to report that my sonogram showed nothing, but I should be careful not to stress my kidneys on account of they are seventy years old. I inquired about the call saying the sonogram showed early kidney disease & that was some sort of misunderstanding. Perhaps it was a repeat of the blood report that used the word "sonogram" somewhere; pity I don't record my phone calls. So the report that I've got early kidney disease is null and void.
On the other hand, I worked myself up to go to a ham-club meeting yesterday evening; I even found my Extra-class license and my diploma from the safety course and put them into my bag. Then I drove to the library, parked, and walked to the jail. Went in through the main jail entrance, found a small lobby with a lot of unmarked doors that I presumed to be locked — I wasn't just about to go rattle the knobs! — and a window for somebody to speak to visitors, but apparently he'd gone home at five. I think I could have gotten some attention if I'd yelled and carried on, but this isn't the sort of place where one wants that sort of attention.
So I circumnavigated the Justice building. There were a lot of unmarked doors and doors with signs that said "don't rattle knob" to me, such as "employees only" and "emergency exit only". The doors on the court side were locked, and what I could see through such glass doors as I passed suggested that everybody but inmates and their minders had gone home for the day. The intake doors weren't far past the loading dock. (Now there's a knob I'm really not going to rattle!) One was an ordinary door that I didn't see until after noticing the other: a ramp leading to a garage door, suggesting that they sometimes want the squad car inside when they unload it.
It's been over a year since the Hoosier Hams web site was updated — it still has a link to the description of the course I took the winter before last, but the link text claims that it's a link to a picture of the new radio room. I conclude that they no longer meet on Thursday or no longer meet at the Justice Building. Or, perhaps, they no longer need any new members.
I did try some doors on the church building where they used to meet.
Whoosh, I just dreamed a whole novel in which discrepancies in my kidney reports uncovered a worldwide conspiracy, with the help of talking cats. I think it came of reading Schlock Mercenary at bedtime.
I woke up just as we rescued the critical witness, so I didn't find out what was going on. (I guess that makes it not a whole novel.)
There was also some stuff about running and a car on a deserted freshly-black Interstate-type road that disturbed me, but not near as much as it should have. I did notice that something wasn't kosher about one of the scene shifts, but didn't recognize dream logic.
scene shift: reality
I got home from the cleaning party before the Farmer's Market ended, but didn't go. I didn't know one could get out of breath cleaning a kitchen.
I said, "You'll want this old label off before you stick on that new one you're making," and the label left stickum, so I fetched a wet rag — the stickum wiped right off, uncharacteristically — and I ended up washing the face of every cabinet in the kitchen. It's a small room — the kitchens in old farmhouses are bigger — but it has no windows, and it has cabinets nearly to the ceiling on every otherwise-unoccupied wall. When I got to the last two, I wiped only what I could reach from the floor and didn't climb up on my chair.
So there's a pitch-in dinner today to get the kitchen messed up again.
I got up in the night and wrote Banner for a while, but woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed a little after eight, and had plenty of time to get dressed for church. Lost the race to the powder, though, and had to wash the shaking jar. Put on my make-up before I thought about medicine.
On the other hand, I remembered "shave first, then sunscreen" — I usually remember to shave when I put sunscreen on my chin, and have to waste some of the expensive "Age Shield". On Sundays, "make up" does include foundation and powder — I put Cover Girl on the big age spot under my left eye. But it's mainly sunscreen that keeps it inconspicuous.
I used to carry my dancing slippers in a shoulder bag when I had to wear clod-hoppers for the long walk, then I found folding slippers that I could carry in my pocket, then I discovered that I could wear my winter sandals over the folding slippers — and now, more often than not, I forget to take the sandals off when I get there. Even when, as this morning, I look into the full-length mirror and reflect that huge shoes really bring out the Olive Oyl aspects of my outfit.
We threw away one of my printers when we moved, and the other one wore out a while back, so I really ought to post the double printer stand on Freecycle. But after we take it out, where do I stick my magnetic timer when I'm doing wash?
At least I no longer need to lean on it when bending over to fiddle with the cables — we put the tower on the monitor stand when I switched to flatscreen, and when my second computer was slotted into the space the first computer had vacated, we put it in with the back in front.
I was wondering how to make JOY98's monitor usable, and said that I should go to O's and buy a monitor with the proportions that were popular when 98 was, and Dave remembered that the monitor on Living Room used to be on JOY98 — so we swapped them, and now all is well. He had a lot of adjusting to do, some of it undoing adjustment to my eyes (which hate staring into a light bulb), and some of it undoing attempts to make it sorta work, but about all I had to do was to turn the glare down and move the vertical position up a few pixels so the "y"s in the last line don't look like "u"s. I wonder whether Living Room positions differently, or just didn't do anything that made anybody notice that a few pixels were running off the bottom — I didn't notice until typing this entry in the Banner.
Did I mention that I rotated the monitor we moved from JOY98 to JOYXP ninety degrees? (Minus ninety, according to convention.) I simply adore the longer format for reading text and it's still plenty wide for Web sites. I'd have to twist it back to use DosBox, but twisting it isn't that big a deal — once you learn that you have to tilt it first so that the corners don't hit the base. And I don't think I can make DosBox work anyway. I would have to wrestle it into submission if JOY98 died, but that doesn't seem imminent.
When I came by the third porch last Sunday, they appeared to have floors on both levels, and the railing around the balcony looked complete — I can see why they'd do that one first! There are unfinished steps to the porch level, and parts of a railing around it — looks as though you could actually go into the house from the front now.
In less than ten years, they tore down a house on Park Avenue and built a new one, then added a porch to the new house, then ripped off the porch and put in a different one, then a storm took down a tree big enough to smash the porch, dent the roof, and do minor damage to the house next door.
Took a long time to repair the damaged front, and they have been taking their time replacing the porch. Which hasn't got a roof this time, but does have a balcony. Glass doors instead of a window upstairs was part of the front repair. I don't know whether the place is occupied; the news story about the treefall said that it was a summer home. (This side is just for show; you get into the house from Grace Lane, which I seldom walk down, so I wouldn't see any signs of occupancy.)
Drat! I forgot to pick fresh herbs for my baconbit-and-cheese pancakes this morning; I thought they tasted a little flat. I did put in onion and a jalapeño-shaped sweet pepper I bought at Aldi yesterday.
Bought three hand towels on the way to Aldi. In the process of shopping for them, I checked Carson's, Penny's, and one of the shoe stores for opaque hose. Found a shorter version of the rayon hose that I saw at Penny's last time, at the shoe store that's nearer Penny's. Didn't see any display remotely resembling the one I'd shopped at Penny's on my previous trip; was I somewhere else, or have they re-arranged?
Even sheer hose are getting somewhat scarce.
Saw a Grace College student at church, wearing what appeared to be old shabby jeans torn to short-short length. After a double take, I saw that she was wearing her Sunday best.
So I'm wearing old shabby jeans and a pretty shirt to the polling place today. Faded indigo echoes the aqua in the print.
Pointless votes cast.
This morning I thought I'd haul all those boxes of paper out of here, forgetting that I'm using three of them for a monitor stand. When I put them back, I replaced the three tall boxes with two tall boxes and a flat one, and I think I like the height better.
One of the flat boxes is plain yellow paper and the other is white 3-hole paper. There's as much plain white paper as would fit into a flat box — perhaps one that already has notebook paper in it. I have an untouched box of four-part paper — with a shipping tag saying that I spent $89 for it — and an almost-empty box of four-part paper.
And I'm shifting a bundle of ledger-size paper around that has never been unwrapped from our move eleven years ago. I guess I don't do printed newsletters much any more!
After attempted nap — two spam calls guaranteed no sleep — I made a batch of muffin bars. Took a recipe for a dozen apple muffins, substituted half a bag of blueberries and a cup of walnuts for the apple, baked it in my 9 x 12 pan — I like it better than muffins. And I don't have to grease all those cups!
Once I sort the papers into boxes — the printer stand can hold quite a lot of boxes. Perhaps I don't want to get rid of it just yet.
The fabric.com deal of the day had the bad luck to be downloaded while I was in the midst of finding lengths of cloth I can get rid of, so it was deleted unread. I'm bagging up all the seersucker I can find; I don't think I'll ever again make anything out of seersucker. Two of the three I've found so far are coarse puckers in garish colors, but one is a very nice piece of unbleached cotton seersucker. I may chicken out and keep that one.
Found my canton flannel. It was on the top shelf between the blue seersucker and a rather large piece of red-checked tablecloth fabric. Also a seed-corn sack in the pile.
I wonder why I bought so much of the red check? There are two red-check tablecloths hanging in the closet, and the piece looks big enough to make at least two more. I gave up putting cloths on the table when Dave refinished it, so my tablecloth collection is a dead weight.
I think I'll open out said table and try to remember what I was doing with my linen salwarish kameesish tunic and slacks. And I'd better get a disposable credit-card number and buy some Super Crisp interfacing for the pocket slits.
It's bright and sunny out there, but the National Weather Bureau still insists that we are going to have showers and gusts of wind, so I'm postponing the whites until tomorrow even though we are completely out of pillow cases.
Whites soaking — mostly pillowcases; I hadn't realized we have so many. But they will make a smaller pile when neatly folded.
Snivel. I just checked my e-mail before toddling off to bed — and "Water Stop" had come to the top of Ellery Queen's slush pile.
It's really not an Alfred Hitchcock sort of story, so I don't have an elsewhere to send it.
I did open the table and unfold my salwarish kameezish, and drafted a new watch-pocket pattern. But mostly I blinked at it in confusion. Can't remember where I put the pattern for the waistband. Doesn't seem to be on any of the nails. Time I drafted a new one to allow for my expanded middle anyway.
I've discovered that I don't need to turn on a light when typing at night. Just turn the monitor of JOYXP toward JOY98's keyboard and touch XP's mouse. It also lights up the room across the hall well enough to walk around.
Oh, snort and snicker. While dealing with the messages I downloaded at bedtime, I noticed that today's Deal of the Day is seersucker!
I deleted the notice unread.
The pillowcases have been soaked in bleach and are now soaking in hot water and vinegar. (Hot because there are some dish towels in the load.)
We have nine white pillowcases. On the one hand, I noticed that some of them are well worn and one may not make it to washday, on the other hand, we now have only one pillow that takes a white case, on the first hand again, I really ought to change that pillowcase every day and sometimes I do remember to do it. The worn-out cotton sheet may not make it into the rag bag. (I prefer used fabric for pillowcases because it's softer.)
Which reminded me that this is going to be a good drying day, so I popped the sheet and two pillowcases and a few rags into the washer and set it for "hot". Should be a better day than yesterday — the trees are moving, but not whipping.
Um . . . make that ten pillowcases; when I got up to change the pillow I was talking about, I found that a another pillow was wearing a white case because we'd run out of floral. I had washed a floral yesterday, but absent-mindedly used a white one when I changed it. Dave can tell them apart by feel anyway. Both the cases I took off are in the washer with the cotton sheet.
This is another morning when I not only remembered to put on sunscreen, I remembered to shave first. Now that it's spring, I'm putting #15 on my arms and chest in addition to the high-octane stuff on my face. Still wearing long pants, so I don't screen my legs.
I adore the new dispenser the #70 comes in. The old tube had a complicated cap that had to be cleaned out with an orange-wood stick at intervals. This one doesn't leave a trace of sunscreen outside the tube.
I bought Dave white hand towels because his face is bleeding. Now he doesn't want to get blood on his nice new towels.
So I'm hanging old dish towels in the bathroom. I've got the one he bloodied this morning in the washer with the sheet. Soaked in bleach and hot water for half an hour, and now it's spinning out. (Took the blood out with cold water first, of course.)
He called the doctor this morning, who said he can take two days off and then apply the hamburger cream less often.
Went to Owen's for milk and salad after supper, and also got some "ribs" — strips of haunch meat — for supper tomorrow. Meant to buy fizzwater, since I have a coupon and I was in the car, but they were all out of plain.
I must remember not to buy any more Tyson chicken gizzards. I've more-or-less gotten used to "fresh" meat being half frozen — when I buy frozen meat, I prefer to thaw it myself, but that appears to no longer be an option. But Tyson not only didn't remove the bitter linings from some of the gizzards, one of the gizzards hadn't even been cut open! It will be a nasty surprise for the first dog to dig up my compost pile.
I thought my finger might not like hitting keys, but the real problem is that with a band-aid on the finger that's supposed to feel for the little dot, it's difficult to get my fingers on the correct keys.
And now that I've done it, I find that the finger hurts a tad too. I expect that will wear off overnight, and I'm too sleepy to write now.
So today, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, we woke up at eight.
Friday evening, I noted that the weather service said the weather on Saturday was going to be perfect for a long bike ride, and I need exercise — but I have nowhere to go. Ah, tomorrow is the day I finally get around to riding around Pike Lake and having lunch at the Wong place, even though the idea isn't as appealing as it was before they built Menard's.
So we slept until ten, and it was after eleven before I got suited up.
Oh, well, I discovered while scrounging for breakfast today that we had been even lower on bread than I thought — in sorting through the bag of partial bags, I found that the only sliced bread in there was a couple of heels of white — so it's just as well that I went to Aunt Millie's instead of Wong's. (Of course I could have stopped by Aunt Millie's on the way home from Pike Lake, but I probably wouldn't have thought of it.)
I went to Aunt Millie's the long way around — and finally found some stockings at the Payless store. Now if I could find wool socks — I'm going to be obliged to buy Smartwool socks soon, and it gravels me to pay $15 for cheap imitation wool when I could get the real thing for $18 in Goshen — if I knew where in Goshen. (Smartwool is to wool as fruit drink is to fruit juice.)
Must remember to try what "DuckDuckGo" knows about it. That's a new search engine that is much better than Google because they haven't had time to make it so "helpful" that it refuses to search on what you typed in. DuckDuckGo has the cleanest interface I've ever seen.
It seemed exceedingly queer to ride the Sprawlmart loop and not stop at Aldi, but I'd been there by car on Monday, and I'd hit Owen's more than once in between, so the Aldi part of my shopping list is fairly clean. But when I wanted shredded cheese on my egg this morning, I couldn't find it. Did I just look at the shredded cheese and not buy any? <checks receipt> Bought it, put it in the lunch-meat basket by mistake.
As you may have noticed, I've been typing pretty comfortably.
Yesterday I pushed a little harder on the carving knife, thinking that I was cutting tough skin, but I was trying to cut through a bone and the knife slipped off and hit my finger rather hard. For a time, I wondered whether I'd need to have it stitched, like the near-by scar from a similar accident while canning green pears.
(I passed out on the football field from that one — well, lay down so that I wouldn't pass out. Dr. Casey was supervising a football game at the time, at the school next door to our house in New York, so I walked over to consult him. Probably not the queerest football injury he'd seen.) (I strongly disapprove of allowing children to play any game that has to stop if the ambulance leaves.)
Anyhow, Alice put on a pressure band-aid and that stopped the bleeding. Since the wound was quite clean by then, I'm going to leave it on until tomorrow, so that peeling it off won't open things up again.
One thing about a Mother's-Day celebration is that there are plenty of experienced mothers around.
Also noticed that two of the people present carry bandaids in their pockets. Sara Lee provided the one Alice installed.
Got the band-aid wet and had to change it in the afternoon. By the looks of the skin under it, it had been wet for some time. I cut through the dressing with "straight operating scissors", but it turned out that the adhesive was stuck to my blood, not to my skin. (And I suspect that it had been soaking for some time.) I'd best change the bandage again after I wash my face in the morning.
I'm surprised that the blood hadn't turned into scab; the dried blood reconstituted beautifully — and got on the towel, which is what made me notice that the bandage was wet; fun washing the stain out while keeping a finger dry. Dave wasn't around, so I didn't tell him I'd taken over his job.
Oops, my new bandage is harder to type in. Took the old one off before washing my face and put the new one on after letting the peroxide dry. Forgot Triple Antibiotic, but it looked clean.
This time I had managed to keep it dry. Some of the blood had clotted before drying up, and I had to rub it with an orange-wood stick to get it off — after which the wound looked much smaller.
I've been doing a pretty good job of not aggravating it. No blood on the dressing since I got all the old blood cleaned off, and I don't think any of what came off before was fresh.
Clean, the cut looks a lot smaller. I'm starting to accumulate band-aid stickum, though.
The ride was a lot shorter than I expected, and I got to Wong's before I was hungry. I made up for that by ordering more food than Dave and I both would eat if I served it at home, and then missing the turn onto Husky Trail and not noticing until the shortest way home was through Sprawlmart. Sorry, no fifty50 syrup for Dave, since I didn't pass by Martin's.
There were small children all over the boardwalk. I was tempted to hang around and listen to the lectures.
Just found a scrape on my shin. Wonder when I did that?
Nine-thirty and the second load is in the washer. Only a pile of blacks left.
That's the wash safely un-forgotten; now I have to remember to change Al's box and weed the lily-of-the-valley.
When I came home there were grass clippings on the driveway and there was a pile of thistles in Dave's new garden cart, so I knew he'd been busy while I was gone. He came home before I'd gotten out of my sweaty clothes — we keep doing that; I get up from my nap and hear the driveway patrol more often than not. I know that we've been married for nearly fifty years, but there's no way to synchronize with no clues when you don't even want to. (It isn't as though I nap at the same time every day!)
He also mowed off the weediest part of the lily-of-the-valley bed, so now we can get at what's left — hence "pull weeds" on my to-do list today. I doubt that I can pull many before starting to worry about my finger, but I hope to get all of the sweet clover pulled off.
Noticed at least two more tiger lilies — how did they get there? They don't make seeds, and bulbs don't walk. I don't think bulbils would make it through a bird's intestinal tract. I gave brief thought to the possibility that bulbils had stuck to the mower, but all of the tiger lilies are on the street side of the bed, where he doesn't mow. I plan to dig them out after they've gone dormant.
The tiger lilies I've been trying to start around the other telephone pole are finally taking hold. I think some of them may bloom this year.
The lilies in the tiger-lily bed are drowning the iris that was some distance from them when I planted it. I suppose I'd better dig the iris out and put it elsewhere.
Conditioned reflex: the microwave beeped to tell me my lunch was ready, and I dashed to the laundry room and looked at the washing machine.
Got the cat box and the laundry done; haven't looked at the lily-of-the-valley.
I started to take the sheet down intending to put it on the bed, and discovered a splop of bird poop. Rubbed it under running water in the sink, the stain didn't budge, rubbed it with bar soap, no change, plopped it into the washer, poured undiluted ammonia on the stain, and put it through another rinse cycle. Hope I can put it on the bed after my nap!
Hope I remember to put it in with the bleachables the next time I wash it.
I'd better look to see whether the mulberries are ripe. The Big R strawberries are turning red. Probably be some to eat tomorrow.
There were no berries to eat. All those that were turning red have disappeared.
Um . . . I didn't weed the lily of the valley because I was afraid of irritating my cut. Yeah, that's it!
Actually, it's coming along very well, and if it wasn't on a fingertip where I'm afraid of re-injuring it, I'd have given up the band-aid a while back. Changing bandaids is getting old, especially when I get careless about washing my hands in the middle of the night.
After supper yesterday, I put some undiluted bleach in a shot glass and soaked the wound until the bleach had penetrated deep enough to sting, then (because I was only sitting around) let it air for an hour or so before putting on another band-aid. The wound was quite clean before this treatment, but the bleach did get the dried blood out from under the fingernail.
My medical history shows up in the Banner more than it does in real life — I think about it whenever I start feeling for the F key through a band-aid.
On the other hand, practically all of it is in skin thickened by much pounding on the F key, offset just enough that more pounding doesn't hurt.
This morning I remembered to change the case on Dave's pillow. That's mostly because I'm taking off the bottom sheet, though. The thin linen sheet dried quickly, but I'm just now getting around to putting it on the bed. Or, at least, tearing the bed up enough that I have to finish the job by nap time. Taking time out to make a new under-case for Dave's pillow. And write it up for 2012SEW.
Dropping a boat-seat on my toe complicated the medication dance: aspirin must be taken on a full stomach, thyroxene on an empty stomach, and calcium must be taken with food not less than four hours before or after thyroxene.
But I got enough aspirin in that I slept like a rock — and didn't wake up for the thyroxene until half-past five, so I made supper before eating breakfast.
We're having yellow split-pea soup for supper, and I had no idea how long "until peas are tender" was — turned out to be about half an hour — so I cooked it and turned off the fire, and will re-heat it at supper time. I had left the turkey neck under broth in the rice cooker on "keep warm" overnight, but it doesn't seem to have tenderized any.
Put a band-aid on my finger and went out to pull weeds in the lily-of-the-valley bed. Gloves aren't much use for thistles, so I didn't take them; I pulled a wad of creeping charlie/ground mint/gill-over-the-ground/ground ivy/alehoof/field balm/run-away-robin/catsfoot/tunhoof/%*&#@ and used it as a potholder to pull a thistle. When I got tired of that, I cut off the clump of sweet clover and pulled off the seed heads on most of the bluegrass the folks who rebuilt the road thoughtfully planted in our flower bed. Got a few roots doing that. And discovered more clumps of sweet clover; I'll tackle those some other day.
I'm using up the band-aids in a forgotten first-aid kit so old that I wasn't sure that the dime taped inside the lid wasn't silver. Showed it to Dave's sharper eyes, and he said it was a '66 and silver ended in '63, so I dropped it into my wallet.
Some of the bandaids were "sheer strips" much more conspicuous than today's standard-thickness bandaids.
The ammonia ampoule and the two iodine swabs seem to be perfectly functional — but where did I get an ammonia ampoule, and why would I put one in my first-aid kit? Ammonia is contra-indicated in case of injury, since it makes the head jerk and that might sever a previously-repairable spinal cord. And all you have to do for psychogenic shock is to lay the patient flat and let him rest for a minute. Ammonia is a sure cure for hiccups, but there are lots of other ways to reboot a respiratory system.
Switching to white sandals a week early, but it's hot out there.
I'm wearing my new hose — they're much too dark for my skin tone, but opaque enough to hide my ugly toenails. One of them is pale blue now, which I didn't notice until I was doing the nailbrush-and-pumice-stone bit before putting on shoes for yesterday's ride. Didn't notice the toe until I was nearly back, then did something or the other awkwardly and made it yelp.
Picked up a passenger, probably in Lakeside Plaza — when I was coming through the village, I noticed a spider trying to weave a web on my right-hand brake cable; sometimes the wind caught him and he made a complete turn around the cable. I stopped, he took that opportunity to start spinning a thread, I caught it with a twig and left him at the base of a tree.
Lost my back-up pocket knife sometime during the ride — at least it wasn't in my pocket when I undressed — but I found the old one when I was looking for a substitute this morning. Either that or the back-up never made it into my pocket. I stopped at the pawn shop, but didn't see any more of the disposable pocket knives. Wasn't looking turrible hard, but I'm interested in knife displays.
I didn't feel uncomfortably hot, coming home from church, but I wanted to walk very, very slow. Got home exhausted and slept nearly to suppertime. (Hamburgers again, in honor of the tomatoes I bought at the farmer's market.) Dave elected to skip walking down to see the criteriums.
Yesterday, I went downtown by way of the fairgrounds. Found the farmer's market where it has always been, bought tomatoes, and headed for the new site muttering "vaporware" — but they had a row of vendors on each side of a blocked-off block of Center Street. Didn't see anything I wanted. Didn't look too close at any stall, though.
Forgot to put a band-aid on before leaving, and tore my cut open while attempting to feed the plastic bag between two twisted bungees to make a suspension for the tomatoes. (The suspension worked very well, and I got home with perfect tomatoes despite rough roads and extra distance.)
I pressed it back and put on the band-aid from my wallet.
The cut has reached the awkward stage where it's healed enough that the dead skin can dry up, but not healed enough that it can do without it. I've been putting Eucerine, A&D, and (during the church service) lip balm on it.
One of the extra stops was at CVS; between Dave's nose and my finger, we were all out of medium size bandaids. I bought a box each of 3/4" and 1", and put one of each in my wallet when I got home. I should sort the first-aid kit in my bike-tool bag; it hasn't been opened since I cut my finger on a chicken-salad can several years ago.
Seems to be raining. It's been dry long enough that we can use it. I watered the raised flower beds and the fern bed today.
Wet, but not much accumulation. The rainbarrels are full.
Somehow I spent the whole morning editing my Firefox bookmarks, occasionally uploading a fresh back-up to my Web site.
Wondering exactly how much accumulation (0.16 inches) I clicked on Dave's TIS home page — and got it! I wonder how long that will last?
He's seriously thinking of cancelling TIS; there's a great deal he can't do with Comcast, but it doesn't disappear mysteriously very often, I don't recall losing any file I stashed there, and it doesn't cost a thousand dollars for six years.
Then Dave came in to say he'd just got his web site working again, and had decided to keep TIS service, partly because the new contract entitles him to hassle the owner when things don't go right.
Washday. One small load of lights, teeny loads of whites and blacks. As I was putting stuff on hangars, I remembered the chain Dave strung between two trees, and those things are already dry and in the house. The five things pinned to the line are probably dry too, but I wasn't worried about them blowing in the wind, so I didn't check. The whites are on final wring, the blacks await.
Looked at my finger with magnifying glasses, and the nail is pretty close to being grown out enough that I can cut off the sliver and quit worrying about snagging it.
I'd like to have folding magnifiers to carry in my pocket, but not enough to make a special trip or pay a lot, and the folders in groceries etc. are weak glasses intended to compensate for aging eyes, not strong glasses for reading six-point purple type on a navy background.
Perhaps I have maligned them. Whips out fine ruler, grabs cat-food can, which happens to be an expensive brand printed black on white. Seventeen lines in three-fourths of an inch, ignoring spaces between paragraphs, so they get credit for being a hint taller than they are. There are 72 points in an inch. 3/4(72)=3(18)=54; one seventeenth of that <urk, hunts for calculator> 3.17 points.
According to my how-to-edit studies, the smallest type you can expect someone to make out with the naked eye is eight points.
I've been picking around the wasabi peas in the Wasabi Wild trail mix ever since I got back from Aldi's. Late in the evening, I bravely tried one — and they are less wasabi than the raisins.
For a change, I got hungry while I was still in the same sprawl with Big Apple Bagels, so I took that opportunity to order a sandwich with meat in it. The Roma Italian I ordered had entirely too much meat in it, but I ate it all anyway. When I order bagel and cream cheese to go, I usually eat only half. Fortunately, it was convenient to spend the next half hour walking around and riding very slowly.
Bought a pair of rayon socks at K-Mart. I've been wanting to see whether rayon is less uncomfortable than cotton, and I've been wanting white socks to wear with my cycling shoes. Two birds with one stone! There's a significant amount of polyester in them, so I'm not optimistic. Dave was shocked to see that I'd paid three dollars for one pair of socks. Didn't tell him that that is cheap in women's hosiery.
Hamburgers for supper again, which killed the tomatoes. After supper, in several stages, I moved the pile of sticks onto the outdoor fireplace and raked out the sand I'd dumped onto the site of the old hearth so Dave could mow. After he'd mowed, I raked the sticks that were too small to sort out of the dead leaves onto the hearth and burned them. Looks much nicer out there now. I think I need to haul another wheelbarrow of sand to smooth out the place where the pile of sticks was.
As I was heading for the computer games during one of my breaks, the flap of dead skin on my finger called itself to my attention once too often and I gnawed it off. Yesterday or the day before, I clipped the shard of nail with a bit more ceremony.
Aldi did have some more of those Jalapeño-size sweet peppers, so I bought a package to put into the potato salad.
I'm going to have to set the screen saver on XP for a longer delay. My light keeps going out.
Yesterday, I ran the Culta-eze around the garden and pulled a thistle out of the lily-of-the-valley. I'm not sure what I did with the rest of the day.
So I sat up late after discovering that there are more Old Nathan stories and they are in the Baen Free Library, and after an hour in bed I can't sleep.
I baked bread on Wednesday, hence the implemented hearth. Had to set the kettle down three times before I didn't put one of the feet into the crack between the two pavers, and one of the pavers exploded — that is, a chip spalled off and boy did it spall! I guess I should turn them over again so the pre-spalled side is up. Or make the whole thing out of brick.
Discovered a shortcut to asparagus casserole: add cheddar cheese and canned ham to creamed asparagus, serve on zapped potato.
I've been trying to replace the tuna-fish sized can of ham, but apparently I didn't get it at either Kroger or Aldi. Didn't think to add it to Dave's shopping list for Martin's, but that probably would have been pushing it anyway.
He didn't get brats for the party — he got brats and italian sausage.
I spent most of the day reading. I think I owe David Drake five bucks.
Also read some from a collection named _Infinity Four_.
My feet have neat dark patches exactly like those depicted by the "dirty-foot" painters. I guess I can stop laughing at them for thinking they were being realistic.
On the other hand, the dark patches were all that distinguished them from the more-romantic depictors of naked people in the woods.
I wonder why that genre was so popular? Naked people never go out of style among those with little to think about, but why always in a grassy clearing in the woods?
Al thinks human food is disgusting, but makes a grudging exception for liverwurst. This morning I discovered that he makes an enthusiastic exception for the broth in which kippered herring are canned.
Tried my new socks yesterday. Remember that I speculated that people who can keep mid-calf socks up used spirit gum? I was close: the inside of the elastic is sticky. And it works; my socks were only a little bit wrinkled around the ankle after being ignored (and actively used) all the day. But the elastic left a very distinct impression of its fancy design on my leg, which I ought to avoid doing to seventy-year-old skin.
They come up way too high to be cycling socks, but would be excellent trouser hose if I find them in the right color.
Spilled blueberries on my freshly-laundered slacks at the previous barbecue, washed 'em, wore them again for the first time yesterday, spilled Dr. Pepper on the way down. But it mopped off with a wet paper towel, and I didn't spill food on them during the party. But I did find baked beans on my shirt.
The usual good time was had by all, but not nigh as many as there was a while ago.
Sort of wash day: half a load of lights, half a load of darks. Lights were dry and put away before I hung out the darks.
And, thinking on why they dried so fast, I stopped typing and went out to check the blacks. A bit damp under some of the clothespins, but better to bring them in out of the wind before I lie down for a nap.
We are going to have italian sausage with peppers and onions for supper tonight. I'll fry them in a skillet, and save grilling for tomorrow.
I wish Aldi hadn't stopped selling calcium with D. I liked those plain chalk pills! When my last bottle from Aldi was almost out, I picked up a bottle from Dollar General, and the tablets had a nasty pink coating with sharp edges. So I got the next bottle from Walgreen's, and the tablets are smooth and uncoated, but contain lauryl sulfate. I know that they put that in to disperse the tablet so you don't have to crush it, but I'd rather chew chalk than swallow soap. So when I was at Marsh on my way home from the farmers' markets on Saturday, I picked up a bottle of "calcium from oyster shell" — opened them today, just to look (I still have half a bottle of soap tablets) — and they have a nasty green coating with sharp edges.
There's still CVS, Kroger, Martin's, K-Mart, Walmart, and the Pill Box.
Dave spotted a "dirty swan" this morning. We never do see cygnets while there is anything other than color to distinguish them from adults, but we didn't see any goslings until they were half grown, and we haven't seen ducklings at all.
I blame the proliferation of the neighbor's grandchildren and their dogs.
Drove to Martin's after supper yesterday. Forgot to look at the calcium pills. Also forgot to look for plums and had to go back — which the way Martin's is laid out is quite a trip, since produce is at the entrance and they have a one-way traffic flow. But there's a shortcut from the entrance to the check-out, so I didn't have to go all the way around a third time.
And they didn't have plums. I bought grapes.
I did remember to look for fifty50 syrup. They don't have it, but do have some other fifty50 products.
There was a story on Drudge about a great scandal: someone stole and scrambled a couple of swan's eggs, which are, the story said, worth two or three hundred dollars each. What are they on about? Is this something that somebody found in archives compiled before swans escaped from swan ponds and became a dang nuisance? The story made it clear that it was the domestic "mute swan" that was being discussed, not some endangered species such as the trumpeter — which is endangered partly because the domestic swan is pushing it out of its habitat.
Just ran a search for broken hy- phens in this file, and I think I'll start referring to lily-of-the-valley as muguet.
Organ recital: the finger now shows its injury only by lack of callus and an oddly-trimmed nail. It was only a couple of days ago that it lost the thin raw streak where the cut was shallowest. I suppose it healed slower because it was less protected.
The toe I dropped a boat seat on is still sore if I pay close attention, and complains if I walk a long distance on pavement. When it was still complaining about shoes, I tried to take a walk barefoot, and discovered that the sidewalk on Boy's City Drive is weathered enough to feel like gravel — and in spots it is gravel splashed over from the verge. So I moved to the smooth asphalt, which was very hot that day. I didn't walk far.
The pretty teal color has expanded and changed to ugly dark blue. It's going to be at least a year growing out — the more so because new bruise seems to be growing out from under the cuticle. The whole half-moon is azure, while the original bruise occupies only half the width of the nail.
We're watching a third fern that came up near the fence where we dug out two and moved them to the fern bed. One more week to build up its roots, we figured a day or two ago. May dig it on Saturday, if it rains tonight and Friday as predicted.
This one is a yard or so from where the first two came up — far enough into the lawn to be in danger of getting mowed, so Dave drove two stakes beside it. I wonder how many we can get before the root gives up.
All the ferns are flourishing, which is more than I can say for the marigolds I planted in the fern bed. One of the six is a bitten-off stump, and four of the remaining aren't in much better shape — looks like caterpillar damage, though I haven't seen any. The one that has some unchewed leaves has a tiny flower bud.
I tried Alice's method of cutting the stem end off the little sweet jalapeños, and it works much better than splitting them lengthwise.