I realized yesterday that my pajamas aren't fit to be seen; in fact, I've been thinking that I should cut the shirt up for skillet-cleaning rags.
Sunday's rye-bread pizza wasn't bad, but I over-oiled the griddle, and tomato paste diluted with vegetable cocktail isn't the best sauce in the world. Luckily, we like our pizza light on the sauce, so it wasn't a major component. Just after putting smoked salt in it, I realized that sushi sauce would have been better.
And the pepperoni should have gone on under the fresh mushrooms — hard to lay it out evenly over those lumps. Rings of jumbo banana pepper were good. I wonder whether Sweet Corn Charlie has more? I'll be out that way in the morning (I'm writing this just after midnight), to buy cat food, drop off stuff at Goodwill, and buy tomato sauce at Aldi.
The crust used up the last speck of my white-wheat flour and I had to piece it out with red wheat. The red-wheat cannister is nearly empty, and less than half a sack of buckwheat is all I've got that isn't in cannisters.
I hope they have corn flour this year — I like it much better than meal for making bread.
There's more than half a cannister of rye. I think. I'd better take inventory.
Isaac was gone when we woke up, and Dave pointed out that some stores close on Labor Day, so I'm washing clothes. Big R, where I plan to get the most-important item is open — but hang clothes while the sun shines.
Today I go to Big R. Hope I've written everything on the list.
When I brought in the laundry yesterday, I put some of the underwear into a suitcase, and this morning I put in some improvised pajamas and a spare pair of jeans.
Woke up to thunder in the distance, and the radar says we might get some rain. So not washing today was the right decision.
Morning wasn't pleasant for either of us. While I was shopping, Dave got a new crown installed, then I came home, distracted him with a tale of woe, and his chicken-noodle soup boiled over.
And it will be soup again for supper. The dentist said he could eat by then, but I'm out of ideas and there's a pot of left-over hamburger soup in the fridge.
I went to Goodwill, where I dumped the old purses and whatever else I'd dropped into the bag, and bought what may finally be a mold the right size for making fruit in gelatin.
Thence to Big R, where I bought a bag of dry cat food, one three-ounce can of cat food, and two twelve-packs of toilet paper.
Moved the car to Aldi's parking lot, checked to see which pocket my debit card was in — and it wasn't in any pocket, or anywhere else. Walked back to Big R; they hadn't seen it, I emptied all my pockets for the umptieth time, and realized that my shopping list was also missing. And that was the only place I had noted the size of the aluminum-foil loaf pan that I measured just before I threw it away. (It was exactly the right size for half a recipe of bread dough; foolishly, I thought I could buy another. Haven't tried the restaurant supply place yet.)
And I've been remiss about topping off my cash of late. So I went through Aldi with no list and only $45 to spend. Been a long time since I practiced the art of counting the dollars I was putting into my basket. I was so dispirited (not to mention that I'd bought some frozen things) that I skipped going to the bread store and the restaurant-supply place.
On the other hand, I've not yet remembered something vital that I didn't get because of having no list.
After Dave rescued his soup, I emptied my pockets and wallet, then found an old card in the little drawer and called the number on the back. There was some complication because, it turned out, when two people share an account, each gets his own number. (On the other hand, this means that my loss didn't mess up Dave's card — but he doesn't use that account anyway.) I was well pleased with Lake City Bank — once I got through the menus, I was connected to a courteous and efficient live human who cleared everything up in short order, and the charge is only five dollars. The new card should come in the mail in three or four days.
Which, I just realized, means I won't have it to pay my bill at Bright Morning Star. I'll have to re-check the Web site to see what other forms of
At that point I remembered that I'd been given a card that's good on Dave's account, and went to sort the two little drawers — eventually remembered that that card had been put someplace safe and was never seen again. Got a lot of obsolete cards cut up and put into the trash, though.
Then after supper and the washing up, I went to play a few computer games; after a while Dave said he was ready for bridge inspection and I jumped into shoes and a decent shirt; as we were walking out the driveway he remarked that he mustn't forget to take out the trash — IT'S TUESDAY AND I'M ALREADY FIFTEEN MINUTES LATE FOR THE COMMITTEE MEETING.
So I ran back inside, grabbed my car keys, wallet, little bag of stuff, and the attaché case, and drove to the church. After parking, I picked up the wallet to put it into the attaché case and spilled its contents all over the street and the floor of the car.
So I made sure I'd found my credit card and driver's license, piled the mess into the attaché case, and rushed into the meeting just in time to pick up two sheets of paper and leave.
When everyone left, I stayed behind to sort out my wallet. You know all those old purses I took to Goodwill this morning? Guess where I piled all the stuff I cleaned out of them, to be sorted later? Yes, in the attaché case.
I'm kinder glad this day is over. 'Course, I thought it was over when I sat down to play computer games.
Oh, yes, just before I remembered that I was missing a committee meeting, I tried to put on my lipstick and found the case empty. Not used-up empty, there's-a-blob-of-naked-lipstick-somewhere empty. The cap was firmly on; it clicked when I opened it, so this is another mystery. [I never found it, and hope that it fell onto the driveway when I opened the case.]
While I was at Goodwill, I bought a jello mold. I think I've finally found one the right size to mold a can of fruit, a can of condensed fruit juice, and two packets of plain gelatin. Perhaps I should make some gelatin tonight. (Or maybe I should wait for better stars.)
While getting supper on the table, I went outside to empty the coffee filter and heard Brent's grandchildren playing in their new half tube with their skateboards. It sounded exactly like the faint thunder I thought I heard this morning.
It hasn't precipitated any that I noticed, but it's been very humid.
They've dug a big hole in the gravel parking lot again. I can't tell from here who is doing it.
On the way to the bridge yesterday evening, I noticed that the hole had been filled in incompletely, and had a water-meter cover and similar hatches that I couldn't identify poking up. One of them was bigger than a meter and a little too small to call a manhole; I speculated that it was a clean-out port, but in retrospect that seems unlikely.
Living in the future: backhoes have gotten so cheap that instead of fencing off a hole, they fill it in and re-dig it.
There's more wood piled up near the bridge, but I couldn't figure out where they plan to put it. Perhaps the side walls are going to be higher. The wooden piles, it turned out, support the walls beside the bridge that taper the dirt abutments back toward the natural bank.
As if the bank of a ditch were "natural". I wonder whether the rocks in the creek are the remains of ancient rip-rap? I should walk upstream sometime when the creek is down and observe whether the rocks stop suddenly. And also observe downstream, where there has been obvious shifting of the course.
When I walked before supper, I stood on the new bridge, observed that the rocks tapered off only a few feet upstream, and concluded that the rip-rap had been only between the bridges. But after supper, I walked along the bank for a while and saw that there were no rocks in the stream because they were still protecting the bank, at least on the other side. Black with age, very muddy, and extending only a about a foot above the current water level — probably underwater most of the time — it's no surprise that I hadn't noticed before. Might be more rocks under the weeds where it's seldom flooded, but I didn't think to look with that in mind.
Should I walk along the bank again, when it tapers to nothing I'll turn around and go back instead of climbing straight up to the Greenway. Straight up was too close to straight up!
While walking along the Greenway, I looked at the stream every chance I got, and saw no further signs that the ditch had been riprapped. Water still low; at one wide point, I speculated that I could wade across without rolling up my pants.
Yesterday, I noticed that the rye bread I made from the left-over pizza dough would make good croutons without first being dried and toasted, so I had a chef salad for lunch. Had to open a can of chunk ham; we are completely out of lunch meat.
Whatever whoever was doing with the hole in the gravel parking, they are through doing it — it's been coated with fresh gravel and firmly tamped. Crushed rock rather, with a lot of rock dust in it — patches of it almost look paved.
Home again, home again. No jiggity-jog, but I did stroll to the teller machine and back, taking in a few stores and the new bridge along the way. Eagle Creek has morphed from a wine shop into a high-priced grocery store with a rack of wine on one side. I hope the tourists keep it in business until I need a half-gallon of milk or some fresh vegetables and don't want to go all the way to Owen's. They had one container of grated horseradish. Horseradish I'll pay "organic" prices for, if they have another jar of it when I next make devilled eggs.
Aside from not being connected to Chestnut Street and some work yet to be done on the upstream wing on the Columbia Street side, the new bridge appears to ready for business. The fill is about level with the deck; perhaps they do mean to put asphalt on it. There are straw mats on the places where the backhoe climbed up and down the banks, so I suppose that they are through doing that. The little backhoe that left the ruts was parked on the bridge deck.
I wanted to go into the grounds to check on the spring and see whether there were more bridge parts lying around, but there was smoke coming out of the stack of the crane and I was afraid it might move.
On the way back up Union Street, I observed the creek with 19th-Century rip-rap in mind, and saw places where there's still rip-rap under the grass, and places where it's plain that the rocks in the creek fell from the bank.
Saw a yellow pipe sticking up out of the ground near Park in the park. I presume that NIPSCO is getting ready for the gas pipe that's attached to the bridge to be demolished along with it. I don't imagine that demolition will proceed until that job is finished, and there's a lot of paving to be done at the Chestnut Street bridge so I don't expect the Park Avenue bridge to be taken down soon.
For us, the Park street bridge work is going to be much more inconvenient than the Chestnut Street bridge work. And for most; traffic is much heavier on Park Avenue than on Chestnut. They seem to be trying to get as much as possible done before the bridge is taken out of service.
Some more telephone poles were replaced while I was gone. I think that they are done with that job.
The girls' get-together was more fun to do than to talk about. We ate out, shopped, drove around, gossipped, etc. Nancy arrived at the Soda Shop totally spent, but looked pretty good when we split up this morning. Alice was thrilled at all the pretty horses — we saw a whole mile of road where NIPSCO hadn't bothered to install wires. Most of the homes had telephones, but out at the end of the drive where spammers can't interrupt your dinner.
Dave says that my new debit card arrived two hours after I left. I immediately went to the teller machine to validate it and replace the cash I'd spent.
And there's a safety pin closing the pocket it's in.
Washday. One load and two half loads. While picking up the laundry room, I found an un-opened ball of pink string. I bought another at Gohn Brothers, thinking that I'd bought blue on my last trip. I grabbed it on the way to the register with two pairs of socks, or I'd have remembered that it was blue I didn't have.
Wore one of the pairs of socks yesterday. Not good —only 50% wool, and not quite long enough to stay up so I have to fold them down twice— but less plasticky than Smartwool, and a lot cheaper.
Picked up my prescriptions yesterday, and a couple of panniers of groceries. Didn't think to look for meat, so we had canned soup for supper.
Two Comcast trucks, one of them a cherry picker, are parked by our telephone pole. I saw two other Comcast trucks a few minutes before they arrived.
Yesterday I heard big-thing noises that turned out to be a backhoe digging up the gas line again. The pipe I saw isn't yellow, but it's the right diameter and it was a NIPSCO truck that was parked beside it. They left the hole overnight.
At the Chestnut Street bridge, someone was digging a trench and putting a new storm drain in it. They worked overtime; it was still going on after supper. The bridge crew starts way early so that they can quit in the heat of the afternoon, but even if this crew started at nine, it was more than eight hours.
Chestnut Street Bridge opened for business yesterday. Rumor has it that work starts on the Park Avenue bridge Monday.
When I last went to Aldi, they had the huge bags of little sweet peppers again, and I bought one. I've found a way to alleviate the tedium of freezing the excess: each time I want to add peppers to my relish plate, I take one pepper of each color, cut off the tip and put it on the relish plate, cut the pepper into rings and arrange them on waxed paper in a baking pan, cut up the heel and add it to the relish plate, put the baking pan into the freezer, then transfer the frozen rings to a ziplock bag the next time I open the freezer.
I plan to use quite a lot of the little sweet peppers on a pizza tomorrow. Dave protested that we'd had pizza at Mad Anthony's on Friday (and a tour around First Friday, which was postponed to second Friday this month). I told him that he'd had good pizza on Friday and was going to have my pizza on Sunday.
On my way home from the Farmer's Market today, I went to the Y to sign up for the bike-riding class. The classes are, indeed, open to non-members. Not very important to the Y because the receptionist had a terrible time finding the information. [And on inspecting the web site, I think she signed me up for the wrong class.]
When I arrived at the Y, I parked beside the first door I saw, and found that the sign on the door said that they were open and the lock on the door said that they were closed. I prepared a snarky comment about how the signs were of a piece with their Web site, but on poking around I found that they'd merely forgotten to put up a "please use other door" sign.
Cain't blame them too much for the Web site because almost nobody knows how to create a decent Web site. "Web designers" just recycle code that was badly written for some other purpose.
I'm annoyed that cycling classes are held at a time and place such that I'm going to have to drive the car to get there — well I could go, but I wouldn't be able to come back, the sun having set halfway through the class. But the class is intended for people who can't be trusted on the roads yet.
I went to Aldi last Thursday — after keeping an appointment that is actually next Tuesday. Also stopped at Owen's on the way home from Dr. Darr's office. I considered going to Martin's for a trifecta, but wasn't that energetic.
I'm tired of my three summer dresses. I considered wearing the blouse and skirt I wore to the wedding to church today, but it isn't quite cool enough to wear the thick interlock underdress, and If I wear the blouse without an underdress, I have to wash it and it's a bear to iron.
I suppose I could have worn the jersey underdress (the brown stripes clash with plain red, but really, who's going to know) — but it has three-quarter sleeves, so I guess it's just as well that I didn't think of it.
Seems as though most of my writing is done on washday, when my time is chopped into distracting snippets.
When I last went to Big R, I saw honest 5.25% bleach in an honest gallon jug, and grabbed it. Then when I went to put it away, I saw that I had recently bought a three-quart jug of 2.75% bleach.
On the other hand, today's wash almost used up the opened jug of half-strength bleach and the remaining three quarts of weak bleach won't last long. I hope I remember to stop doubling the measurement when I start using the real stuff.
Got a little sewing done between loads of wash, but forgot to walk to Eagle Creek to see whether they have horseradish until after closing time.
If I don't forget, I'll buy horseradish and top off my cash today. (Making a fuss about it helps.)
When cleaning my toenails this morning, I thought I could get a little of the dead blood out from under the nail I dropped the boat seat on, and inadvertently lifted the whole plate, breaking it at the groove between the re-grown nail and the damaged part. I clipped it as short as possible and rounded the corner, to postpone the day when it catches on something and tears off. Protecting broken nails is easier with toes than with fingers!
Time to file my fingernails before they catch on something.
I made every single light on my way to Dr. Darr's office. To make up for it, I got stuck behind a truck waiting for a procession to finish leaving the funeral home on Argonne on my way back.
I remembered to stop for the horseradish. It was gone. I'd already gotten eggs at Owen's. Perhaps I'll use garlic chives or Frank's sauce.
Won't know how I'm doing until he gets the blood test results tomorrow. I've got a six-month follow-up appointment.
I spend a lot of time on maintenance, but I'm in pretty good shape without even adding "for my age". I can walk for miles any time I take a notion —though I don't take a notion as often as I ought to— and I can still manage to read with my good eye shut.
If I need magnifiers to read the ingredient list on packages, that's the print, not me. I just counted eleven lines in an inch of the ingredient list on my most-recent purchase — probably 12 without the leading, which is twice as many lines as in pica, which would make it six points. No way the rounding errors could make it as big as eight points, the official smallest type that can be read with the naked eye.
Not to mention that it's printed in brown ink on brown paper.
Got the lab results: everything is hunky-dory, keep on doing what I've been doing.
Not too many days ago, someone put signs up saying that the Park Street bridge wouldn't be closed before Monday. They appear to intend to close Park at Boys' City and at Evangel Hill. I'll probably use 9th Street when driving and Grace Lane on the bike; I expect Oak will be in range of the construction, and Columbia and Union will certainly be blocked.
This morning, they finally got around to taking down the "closed" signs and "detour" signs for Chestnut. Folks have been ignoring them.
It would be really cool if the bridge builders had a Twitter! I think DNR has forgotten that they have a Twitter. Or maybe it's been years since they sprayed for bugs. [Checked later on: the latest entry says that they are done for 2012.]
Yesterday I broke a tooth, just when I thought I was all done with maintenance for the year.
Appointment at 11:15. I hadn't unpacked my bag from the previous two, so it was quick to get ready. Hope I remember to buy cat food on the way home — Al got potted meat for his treat last night. He liked it, but judging by what I found in the litter box this morning, it disagreed with him.
At least this time I was gnawing a chicken bone — the hardest thing I broke a tooth on before was a sausage sandwich I bought at a festival.
But in retrospect, what I thought was a splinter of bone caught between my teeth was probably a splinter of tooth — seeing as how the bone I was gnawing didn't splinter. I didn't notice that the tooth was broken for a couple of hours, but it's been bugging me constantly ever since.
I went to the "Make your Baby Safe" bicycle class Tuesday night. When getting ready, I looked at my note and said "It's a good thing I checked! I thought it was at 7:30 and it's at 7:00." I got to the classroom ten or fifteen minutes early and wondered why the teacher wasn't setting up. After a while I also wondered why no other students had showed. Five minutes after class was supposed to start, I figured that I'd been the only one persistent enough to manage to register, that the registration made by a very confused clerk hadn't made it to the teacher, and class just quietly didn't happen.
So I went to Marsh and bought two bottles of Food Club vegetable cocktail and, by mistake, one bottle of Food Club tomato juice. I put two bottles in my cart, noticed that they were a dollar off if you showed your Marsh card — which was tethered to the little bag of tools I'd left in the car, so I left the cart and trotted to the car and back, grabbed one more bottle, and had paid for it before I noticed that it wasn't cocktail.
And on the way back from Marsh, about forty-five minutes after seven, I realized that I'd checked a note of what I was told by a very confused receptionist — perhaps I'd been right the first time! But I haven't been to the Web site to check, and see no point to doing so now.
Finished the front waistband on my new jeans yesterday, and did a neat job if I do say so myself. Tried them on and saw that I'm most definitely not going to wear these with any shirt but the tunic I'm making to go with them; I'm not a loud-floral-pants sort of girl.
Pity I'm not doing Handwork Circle on Tuesdays any more — I have four hooks to sew on and up to twenty eyes to embroider. I like the idea of making the front waistband extend beyond the tops of the slant pockets — it's much easier to make a tab neat than to make a smooth finish with all seams piled up together. And this means that the hooks can be further apart.
The sign said Park would be closed on or after Monday. Didn't say a word about blocked. They were fiddling with the storm drains all day yesterday and far into the night. Some of the smaller trucks were still out there this morning, but I can't see anything from the house now.
Did remember to stop at Marsh for cat food, and also bought a lot of frozen dinners, breakfasts, and snacks.
Couldn't sleep last night, so I got up and put the eggs out to get warm. Wondered what to put them in, since I didn't want the whole two-and-a-half dozen, and put them directly into the boiling pot. And ended up putting all thirty eggs in. But I picked two out to scramble for breakfast.
Then I played computer games and read Usenet for a while, went to bed at half-past four, but still woke at the usual time. But I fiddled around the whole morning writing a Usenet post instead of working out how to put pocket slits into my new tunic or repairing my back-up pair of riding knickers.
Had a frozen entree for lunch. With frozen corn stirred in and relish plate on the side.
I've taken to having chef salad for my ten-o'clock snack. The bag salad I bought the day before yesterday is already turning pink — it used to keep better than that.
Park Street was closed on schedule. Dave walked down this morning and reported that they had already taken off the side rails.
Facebook is being Facebook again. I checked in to accept a "friend" request (accidentally issuing one in the process, which probably puzzled the recipient, but he accepted) and decided to "acquaintance" some of the Neffers so that I can see news from local people, starting with David Speakman because he appears on my feed more often than anybody else. Turns out that you can't add a specific person; you can only choose from a list of people who haven't been cluttering up your newsfeed.
I have time to fiddle with Facebook because it's washday. Two loads and two half loads.
It didn't rain for the shoot-out, but I stayed in the house the whole time anyway, as did most of the other women. We heard shots seldom enough to startle us when we did, so I suspect that the guys were nattering too.
I did boil all twenty-eight eggs, intending to keep some out for cold boiled eggs, but when I got down to those, I was still going good so I peeled all of them. Two eggs broke in the boiling, and I messed up one peeling it, so I set those aside to make tuna salad. After filling up my devilled-egg carrier, I mixed some shredded parmesan cheese into the remaining yolk mixture and filled up a lunch-meat box to keep here. I was glad of that Sunday morning, as I woke up late and didn't have time to eat, but two devilled eggs and a fruit-and-grain bar make a pretty good breakfast.
Two half-eggs make a meal, but Heaven only knows how many I had as nibbles during the shoot out. Good thing we don't do that very often. But those didn't have as much cheese in them (innocent grin).
half-past noon
They are whacking the bridge with a wrecking ball — it hooks onto the shovel, and the shovel operator swings it back and forth and then down, as one would do it with one's hand. Well, it's all underhand swings, no swirling overhead!
The impact sets up waves in the creek bank. I went down to the creek for a better view and was thoroughly startled a second or so after the first time he whammed after I got there — thought I'd stood on something held up only by a cypress root and it was giving under my weight. My spine didn't have time to note that I was a long way from the cypress trees.
Drove to Owen's for milk after supper and got back after sunset. I learned four things: Chestnut isn't honestly capable of handling two-way traffic. There isn't any serious alternative. I don't know what our driveway looks like from the south. And I really, REALLY don't want to drive after dark until the bridge is back in service.
They cut the girders instead of bashing them out of the concrete, and the far side is so neat that you'd think that they meant to re-use the abutment. It's a bit bashed up on this side. I couldn't see whether the girders had been cut at both ends.
They've laid a girder across the creek, but I don't think I'll use it if it's still there next Sunday.
The two half loads were more like quarter loads. I washed both on "medium" anyway.
I cut bad spots out of the mini-pepper that I minced for my scrambled eggs this morning, but there are only two peppers left. I've got a sandwich bag of nice little frozen rings that I can put on Sunday's pizza, if I don't find something better at the Farmers' Market on Saturday.
Lunchtime — when you leave egg rolls in a smoking-hot iron skillet, they don't cool to eating temperature very fast.
Walked a point eight before lunch. Nothing going on at the bridge except two guys assembling a crane on the other side, so I took a close look. It's plain that the girders, though cut at one end, were wrenched out at the other. Some still have concrete stuck to them, and every last one is bent — including the one they put down for a foot bridge. I won't be using it, not because it's warped, but because the far end is bedded in a pile of loose sand.
The near abutment is much less neat — it's a heap of huge chunks of concrete.
Union Street is still open to cars — about have to be, since it's one-way and there are several houses on it.
Dave reports that the bridge kit has arrived. This surprised me; they have a lot of work to do before they can start assembling it.
I was puzzling that all the drains that empty into the creek are on the other side. Eventually realized that the ground is much higher there — this side is all old lake bottom. And the built-over area extends for miles, while this lobe of the town is only a couple of short blocks.
There is a drain on this side: the new one they put in when Park Avenue was rebuilt. But that one is nowhere near the bridges. I heard that the Chestnut Street bridge found an undocumented third drain when they started digging around.
Last time I did a bridge inspection, three boys, probably from the track team at Grace, crossed the girder. The pile of sand is wearing away to reveal a pile of rocks. I still don't want to cross, though I did step onto the girder. The bank slopes gently down on this side, and it's firm sod.
Trapped, trapped I tell you! They have sent for a hydraulic excavator to locate a sewer line that isn't where it's supposed to be, and they found round holes in the concrete they are digging out and now have to remove old piles.
There's another girder on the other side of the bridge — Dave says it's been there a day or two. This one is perfectly straight, and longer than the girders they took out of either bridge.
Every day I make one new backup file for Thunderbird —if I make a second one, it over-writes the first— and I delete two or three. The backup files accumulate. This does not compute.
Amazing how tired you can get lying in a chair. I slept until it was nearly too late to prepare supper: hamburger patties on the bread Dave bought at Martin's. I had onions and cheddar and a sprinkling of lettuce.
Turned out that the tooth was perfectly good under the loose crown, so he glued it back. He said it had been marked for observation for some time, but what had appeared on the x-rays to be the beginnings of decay had really been space under the crown.
I see that I didn't mention that I flossed a crown loose Friday night. Or that when he checked my cracked tooth, he also scheduled a filling for a cavity in another tooth. So I had three procedures done today. Dr. Hollar had to take a break halfway through.
Spent the whole morning fiddling with the computer. That wasn't much time, as I got up a little before eight, decided to lie down until the clock struck, and slept until nearly ten
Didn't sleep well at naptime for some reason ;-). While lying there, I thought about the couscous meatloaf I found in the Banner while hunting for the report of last spring's dental appointment. I do remember writing about riding there, but I can't remember enough key words to find the entry, and counting back six months didn't help.
The meatloaf entry remarked that I meant to use quinona next time. So when I got up, I rustled around in the freezer — no quinona, but I did have grain amaranth, and some steel-cut oats and golden flax seed I could piece it out with; didn't seem to be a lot of grain amaranth left in the bag.
Then I suited up and rode to Owen's for a pound of lean ground beef. Stockers were blocking access to the ground beef when I got to the meat department, so I went on thinking that by the time I'd selected a package of lunch meat they'd be out of my way, but there was a package exactly the right size in the Quick-Sale bin — 92% lean when I was looking for 85%, but one can always add a little olive oil. I didn't mix any oil into the meat, but I did use two eggs instead of one, and I greased the pan generously.
Put it all together after supper and it's in the fridge in a glass loaf pan ready to pop into the oven tomorrow. When I emptied the bag of amaranth into the mixing bowl it looked like too much rather than too little, so I put the oats and linseed back into the freezer. Man those teeny seeds are hard to mix in, and hard to get off your hands afterward.
I put in minimal seasoning, not even thymenoregano even though both are still producing. I did put in some garlic chives, and they aren't still producing, having gone to seed and gotten woody in the stem and limp in the leaf. But there's a patch in the apple-mint bed that I've been trying to pick to death, and they didn't go to seed. Tried to dig them out, but the roots are so entwined with the apple mint that all I could do was break them off at ground level and then step on the soil that I'd pried up.
Also a stalk of celery, a little chopped onion, and a heaping handful of frozen three-pepper blend. And some frozen green peas. Right chilly when I got to the stage of putting my hands right down into that mess. Then I covered it with vegetable cocktail instead of tomato juice.
Workmen were still at the bridge when I came back from Owen's, but packing up their tools. I shamelessly ran the "road closed" signs and used Columbia Street to get to Chestnut. Met a car in the twist before the alley that connects Chestnut street to Park, but that wasn't near the problem it was when I did the same while driving the car after dark, what with being narrow enough to share a lane, and being able to see.
Oops! When I planned that meatloaf, I forgot entirely that today was Dave's day to go to a model-airplane event in Muncie. Ordinarily, I would just hold the meatloaf and bake it tomorrow, but I got the hamburger from Manager's Special, and the label says Friday was the last day they could sell it, so I popped it into the oven when I got back from my bike ride. We like it better left over anyway.
I bought red tomatoes, a yellow tomato (which I sliced on my leftover-beef sandwich for lunch), a box of cherry tomatoes, and a red bell pepper — the season for interesting sweet peppers appears to be over. Packed those up very securely with the aid of a plethora of crumpled plastic grocery bags and took a tour of downtown, including the breakaway farmers' market and the indoor flea market.
Saw a milk-glass loaf pan with a domed clear-glass lid at the flea market and was strongly tempted. Rather regretted resisting when I unpacked my tomatoes and saw how many left-over crumpled grocery bags were in the empty pannier. But I never bake anything that requires a lid, and if I did, I could use one of my iron skillets.
AAAGH! That was my dish with a clear, lift-off lid that I've been hunting for my raw veggies. I'll have to go back next week and see whether they've sold it.
Felt funny coming home without visiting a grocery store, but I've been nearly every day this week, said I to me, and what could be left on the list.
Then while putting the cherry tomatoes on my relish plate, I remembered that we are out of carrots.
The moral to this tale is: when you put something down for a moment, put it in your pocket.
That rule was promulgated for valve caps, but it applies double to wallets!
Right after typing "carrots", I felt for my wallet for some reason. Hmm, I unloaded the panniers but I don't remember unloading my pockets. Looked in all the pocket-unloading places, no wallet. I didn't take it out anywhere on my tour . . . eventually I remembered that when I bought the tomatoes and pepper, I'd pulled out a ten to pay with, then when he said it was six dollars I paid with a five and a one. Other customers wanted the place where I was standing, so I carried the wallet in my hand, intending to put the ten away when I got back to the bike. Laid the wallet on the ground so I'd have both hands to put the vegetables down with, packed all very securely, which was complicated by having three items to dispose and keep separated, hopped on the bike and left.
So I ate the sandwich that had been lying on the cutting board waiting for the bread to thaw, put on my shoes, went back, and . . . saw something black lying beside the tree!
I really, really, hadn't been looking forward to having to report all my plastic at once, with no record of either the numbers I should call or the numbers on the cards.
All plastic intact, and the loose ten hadn't blown away.
Then I'm out, I've got money, might as well pick up some carrots before going home. I got a dozen eggs too, because we have been tearing through them of late.
And now it naptime. I need a good wash first; the weather is cool, but my face is salty.
Couldn't get to sleep, so I got up and logged into Facebook. Discovered how to "acquaintance" David Speakman, so now I can see the posts from Martha. Might actually start communicating through this forum someday, if they'll hold still long enough for me to learn a little something.
I don't put much effort into learning the interface because they keep changing it.
We had slices of meatloaf warmed up in a skillet for supper tonight — Sunday night; it's three in the morning. Dave thought it bland. I thought it was gritty. Also had one small, one very small, and one tiny potato — I dug up all but one of the planted hills to get them. I hope the two remaining volunteers, which are still green, do better.
I'm planning to do laundry tomorrow — uh, later today.