11 October 2007 I've missed a lot of entries. Monday I finally got around to making an appointment to have the spot on my nose looked at; appointment was Tuesday; went back Wednesday to have blood drawn; Thursday got a call that I'd flunked the blood test & got put on Zocor. I haven't picked it up yet. He also said that my prescription for Nexium is permanent, and that I should take fish-oil capsules. The rest of the week is looking brighter: Oueni roast on Sunday. I was supposed to get a call to set up an appointment with a dermatologist, but that hasn't happened yet. I think I'll call them on Monday. (It would help if I could remember which dermatologist he said he was setting me up with. All I remember is that the office is in the same building, and he comes here from Fort Wayne two days a week.) The new house appeared to be being ignored for quite a while after getting black paper on its roofs. That's roofs plural -- the house has enough roof-seams to make The Castle look sensible. But the obligatory row of three pointy dormers is on the side that doesn't show much; we can hope that that part of the fad is petering out. Wish I knew what terms to feed into Google to find out what the current fad in construction is called. It's pervasive -- my new shoes have two points on each heel! Reminds me of a sketch of a gentleman's overcoat that was drawn during the bell-skirt era. I think "greek revival" was the fad in architecture at the time -- but the following fad in clothing was the columnar look! Anyhow, I heard noises from the construction site Monday and Tuesday, but didn't get around to walking down there until Wednesday. It looked the same as before, save that there didn't used to be blacker streaks down the creases. Got closer: a layer of less-black roofing paper had been added. And on the way back, I noticed two wheelbarrow ramps leading into the interior. No change in the two "artworks" started on the part of the Heritage Trail that cuts through the mountain-bike trails. The foundation nearer the entrance is hollow, as if they meant to make a wishing well. The one inside the curve I thought had been intended to make room for a picnic table is a square pillar -- lined up with the middle of the road on both sides of the curve, but not dangerously so on the way back. Serves nicely to remind bike riders that the Greenway is not a bikeway, it's a walkway on which bikes are permitted. Now if someone would tell the reporters who write it up in the newspaper to stop calling it a bikeway . . . 17 October 2007 Googled flaxseed after putting a cupful on to soak for tomorrow's bread. Learned that eating flaxseed will decrease recovery time from strenuous exercise, relieve arthritic and inflammatory pain, and make my hoofs strong. A quarter cup once or twice a week is a hefty dose for a full-grown horse: I *thought*, when I saw the seed in the mixing bowl, that maybe putting a whole cup in the bread was overdoing it. The pint of water I put on it is already gelled. Dave said that the pumpernickel bun I was eating looked like a chocolate cookie. Now I'm getting naughty thoughts involving cocoa, molasses, and sunflower seed in cinnamon- raisin bread. The new house was wrapped in Tyvek Monday. I'd been hearing noises like a machine nail gun, and suppose it was a stapler. Hammering goes "Rat tat tat tat!", a nail gun just goes "tat!"; the noises I heard were "tatatatat!" Heard hammering yesterday, but walked to the church for handwork circle instead of going to look, and today it was raining at walk time. Tomorrow is supposed to be stormy. My old pill-counter wouldn't hold more than one fish-oil capsule, so I bought a new one with morning and evening compartments when I picked up my prescriptions. Dave liked it so much that he bought one for himself the next time he went past Owen's -- then I discovered that my fish oil capsules would go into the pill counter, but they wouldn't come out. So now I've got my Nexium and fish oil in the pill counter that Dave discarded when he bought the morning/evening one. And the Zocor in my old pill counter, which is next to my toothbrush. I was aghast at first that it's supposed to be taken in the evening, since "when I get out of bed" is the only time I can remember consistently to take a pill, but finally remembered that I brush my teeth at night, so I put the pills where I'd see them when I reach for my toothbrush. Why evening, nobody says. A site in Britain says that you make cholesterol at night, therefore evening is the best time to take anti-cholesterol medicine. Why couldn't the vast sheet that came with the pills mention that? 18 October 2007 When I mixed up the dough, it became apparent that one tablespoon of flaxseed in a two-loaf recipe would have been *worlds*. I don't have enough cookie sheets to make that many flax-seed crackers, but eventually it came to me that I could freeze part of the dough and make it up later. So now I have a tiny dab of flaxseed dough rising in my twelve-quart bowl, and a double recipe of plain red-wheat sponge rising in my four-quart bowl. When I add flour just before naptime, I'll switch them. The flax-seed "batter" is stiff enough to tip out onto the cutting board while I dump the red-wheat batter into the larger bowl. They are still predicting thunderstorms for today, but it looks as though it will be some time before they get here. Perhaps I should take a walk before naptime, as yesterday's walk got rained out. 19 October 2007 Did, heard the noise again, but couldn't quite see what the guy attaching Tyvek had in his hand. We both slept until after ten this morning. The first thing I heard on the scanner after we got up was someone saying "There's nothing there." That would have had an entirely different meaning to me if I hadn't known that a tornado had touched down last night. Dave got on line and found that they've counted three million dollars of damage so far, just in this county -- mostly farm buildings. There were a lot of sticks on the lawn yesterday morning, but don't appear to be more today, so it must not have been much of a storm here. I didn't hear any wind, but I didn't hear any the night the sticks came down. And the leaves are thick enough that I can't swear there aren't more sticks. 21 October 2007 Had to wear my old shoes to church today, as I wanted to wear a dress, and my new shoes don't fit when I wear hose. Old ones look better anyway, when newly polished -- but at their age, "newly polished" lasts about long enough to put them on. Reflected that I've been going downhill, appearance-wise. My really-old shoes, that I keep in case I need to walk in mud, look like grandmother shoes. The old shoes look like a man's shoes. The new ones look like jogging shoes. Slept until ten Saturday, but there were a few booths still open when I got there and I bought six "lemon peppers": small, wrinkled hot peppers the color of lemons, and, perhaps, a faint scent of lemon. I put one in Dave's salad tonight, and I still haven't got the capsaicin off my fingers. No sign of the vaporware market, of course. I mentioned it while buying "Everyday Clothing of Rural America" at the bookstore across the street from where it's supposed to be, and the proprietor said he'd never seen any activity there. Bought a pint jar of Mayonesa at a Mexican grocery on the way out, and on the way back stopped at Warsaw Health foods for liquid lecithin, granulated lecithin, and a product now forgotten. Checked for ascorbic acid, but didn't see a form of it I could use in bread. On my last trip to Owen's, I learned that Fruit Fresh has a New! Improved! formula that substitutes citric acid for an unspecified portion of the ascorbic acid. Even if I knew what proportion of the product was ascorbic acid, I'm not sure I want citric acid in my bread. Also window shopped at Sherman and Lin's and the pawn shop and the new thrift shop in Lakeside Plaza. The thrift shop has little of interest yet. I had a more interesting time at Goodwill the previous Wednesday, but all I got was rid of some old clothes. 22 October 2007 I'm going to have a busy Halloween. Mrs. Near asked me to help supervise the craft tables at Trunk or Treat, and I said yes before I realized that I was going to miss my nap to see the dermatologist that day. Guess I'll be careful not to overdo the day before, and drink lots of tea. 25 October 2005 Finally made some soup in my cast-iron dutch oven last Monday. Harder than I expected because I couldn't use the grill to suspend the kettle over the fire. Dave later took the empty, cold kettle out and showed me how the legs would slip neatly between the bars of the grate, but a hot, heavy kettle that I'm afraid of spilling -- and did spill several times -- is a whole 'nother story. The kettle had a tendency to pick up the grate, and the grate was never balanced, so the kettle would tip. It wasn't until after I'd browned the soup that I thought of keeping it warm with coals on the lid. I'd better put "great northerns" on my shopping list, because I want to try again. And I'll need more ham hocks. Monday 29 October 2007 For ten or twenty years, I've had just barely enough suit hangers to dry my laundry on. So whenever I saw cheap suit hangers for sale, I'd buy a package of two or three, and come next laundry day, I'd once again be dashing around the house to assemble enough hangers to dry the wash. It's been at least two weeks since I bought two packages of five hangers at Owen's [pauses to check Quicken: Oct. 10th.], and the rubber band is still around one of them. I think I've finally got it! And there aren't many dry-on-hangers garments in today's wash. The new house had bundles of shingles balanced on its ridges a week ago today, but we haven't seen anything being done with them. Windows and doors appeared in most of the openings Friday and Saturday. (Or was that Thursday and Friday?) Surprised by a hot-air balloon yesterday afternoon, when I looked to see why Dalton Foundary was making such a funny noise. (It was *louder* than the foundary; there goes my desire to sail in peaceful silence far above the Earth.) I thought it was in trouble from the lack of wind for a while, but they had been hovering low to look at the lake, not in danger of falling into it. Saw it high up sailing east later, and later still heard a lawman's status report mention a hot-air balloon. Don't know what status he was reporting, because the startling item was last & I hadn't been listening. The square-pillar artwork foundation on the hill has acquired a yellow lollipop made of crossed shapes of sheet steel. From a distance, I thought it was depicted cellophane wrapper and all, but on closer inspection the sparkle was an inset band of glass tablets, stacked with the flat sides horizontal. I'm beginning to think that the "wishing well" foundation *is* the artwork. Dave says there's another new one in the park, this one a large hand holding a small hand. -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)