Dave found an error in the August Banner — I'd said "Evelyn" when I meant "Lois". Earlier, in speech, I'd referred to Lois when I meant Evelyn.
The August Banner *wasn't* posted when I sent it — for some time, uploading a file has zeroed out the file that was already there, and I didn't notice until Saturday or the day before. But Dave just got back from Peakey, and our storage will be increased to ten gig before the end of the day. But we are already using eight gig.
Now paying $15/month. I think it was ten dollars before.
My default sandals have been stretching, and this morning I moved the buckle to the smallest notch.
I regret not putting in more effort during sandal-buying season.
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The weather has taken Labor Day seriously — it's *cold* out there!
I needed three zip-locks to pick tomatoes today. There are very few entirely green ones, and I thought that there wouldn't be any fruit when Kathy comes back in October, then I noticed a sprig of blossoms. If they don't get frosted, they should produce for her.
We spent the whole day getting a bone biopsy. Dave was — and is — wroth because the first three were done in doctor's offices with hardly more fuss than a flu shot, and no drugs that make the patient need a driver.
I suspect that the hospital is mollifying the bureaucrats who know more about medicine than doctors do. Said bureaucrats, more likely than not, think the new rules save money.
I'm hoping to ride to Aldi tomorrow. One of the finds is a stick blender, and the motor on ours died. I'm not looking forward to crossing 30 twice.
But at least I *can* cross it. Plans are afoot to make it into a Controlled Access Roadway. But I'll be ninety when the plans mature.
I started to Aldi, kept feeling mist-size drops of rain, took a tour of the Trailhouse, un-chickened and started out again, but didn't make it past the Boathouse before I re-chickened and went home to change into driving clothes. (Pockets in pants instead of across my back.)
Things had been rained on thoroughly when I came out of Aldi with my second cartload of groceries. A couple of weeks ago, I'd have *liked* getting wet, but the weather changed sharply after Labor Day.
I make two trips at Aldi because having the stuff I want at the bottom of the trunk in the bottom of the cart is inconvenient.
I got not only the stick blender, but a two-pack of bras. They are uncomfortably tight, so I hope to drive back this afternoon and buy all of the size XL.
This morning, I widened the strip on the west edge of the garden that I can push the five-tine cultivator through, and added a lot of weeds to the mulch accumulating on the asparagus bed. All the while I muttered "I really miss my garden knife" and "I've got to find another garden knife" at intervals.
One can't just buy a pocket knife; one has to luck into them at a second-hand store. Perhaps I should buttonhole a clerk and *ask* at each store I enter; *somebody* has to sell them new.
But it's only a knife for my car-key ring that I'm looking for now — I plowed up my garden knife!
The metal parts are stainless steel, and the sun hadn't been shining on the plastic handle, so it is in perfect condition, but there was so much dirt in it that I couldn't close it and put it into my pocket.
When I quit weeding, I brought it in and used the sink sprayer to clean all the grit out, and still couldn't close it.
Eventually, I remembered that it has a safety catch.
I read somewhere that there are places where safety catches on pocket knives are illegal. I wonder what the legislators there are smoking?
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Aldi had *lots* of XL left, so I could be fussy about the color when I bought three two-packs. XL is still too small, but I'm planning to take all my other non-custom bras to Our Father's House after the new ones have been washed and worn once or twice.
I'm exceedingly annoyed that I laid my receipt on the counter intending to put it on top of groceries in the bag I was filling and forgot to pick it up again. The bank will tell us how much I spent, but none of the details.
But I think the bras were the only taxable items that I bought, and I know that they were $9.99.
I timed the excursion to pick up supper at Popeye's. Three fried chicken thighs and a biscuit. One of the thighs and a bite of the biscuit were left over.
Yesterday, I went to Goshen with Dave for his pre-op consultation, partly to practice for when I have to drive him home next Tuesday. Well, I drive *me* home, and come back, if all goes well, on Wednesday to pick him up.
Today I hemmed up the pants that were delivered yesterday. This involved extensive cleaning to gain access to the ironing board. I'm not at all sure what I did with the morning. It didn't include pulling any weeds.
Tomorrow, I plan to ride to Meijer. Dave plans to get his ears checked.
I realized, when adding Goodwill to my list of stops, that this is the "dump tour" I used to take. I can no longer leave magazines at the hospital emergency room, and I give my usable discards to Our Father's House instead of Goodwill now, but I still dump plastic bags at Kroger.
At eight in the morning and eight at night, Alexa reminds Dave to take his pills. In the morning, she used to say "pills am", so Dave put a space between the "a" and the "m". Now she says "pilza em".
I still haven't figured out how to trick her into saying "Pierceton".
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I got off on the dump tour later than I thought I would when I was half dressed — I didn't think to thumb-test my tires yesterday, and discovered, just as I was about to leave, that I had to pump them up. Also had to go back and put on sunscreen.
I can stop conserving pill pouches now: I finally found them at Meijer. Pill pouches are a very convenient size of zip-lock. I even put pills into one once.
Also got some Meijer "protein shake" while I was in the pharmacy, but I think that that was a bad buy. In the grocery, I got a six-pack of the cinnamon breakfast drink that Kroger is chronically out of. Also a bottle of Nestle-Carnation Cinnamilk to have with a packet of cookies for a second lunch, but that was disappointing. It was low-fat milk and had very little cinnamon flavor. I brought half of it home, and Dave said it was "okay".
The "kid's meal" at Panda Express is now a "cub's meal", and you get apple chips instead of a cookie. The mushy peeled-apple chunks that come with McDonald's Happy Meal are better; I brought the chips home, and half are still in the packet. But they gave me a cup that I could fill with tea instead of a bottle of juice.
I stopped at Jimmy-John's for an Utimate Porker on the way home, so we had an early supper.
Whenever it was quiet and the road was reasonably smooth, I could hear a chirp at the same cadence as the rotation of the wheels. This worried me a lot, because the last time this happened, it turned out to be a broken spoke and it was weeks before it was my bike's turn on the workstand. I frequently stopped to turn each wheel and look and listen, and I poked all the spokes more than once.
In the evening I laid the bike on its side and Dave and I hunted for the noise. It was immediately apparent that the noise was in the back wheel, but neither brake blocks nor fender stays were to blame. Eventually Dave noticed that the corner of the very end of the fender was brushing the tire. I had noticed that the fender was off center, so one eight-millimeter wrench later all was well.
I squeezed every pair of spokes before putting the bike away.
Saturday's ride also got off to a late start: I started rolling, and the fender was *singing*. The eight-millimeter wrench didn't get us anywhere, and finally I cut the offending corner off with tin snips, then bent it up with pliers.
Pretty soon I'm going to take the fender off entirely. I never go out in rainy weather, and if I get caught, the luggage rack will keep me from getting a stripe up my back.
The farmers markets tours went well otherwise. I stopped at a couple of garage sales on my way to the courthouse market.
As is now my custom, I went to the fairgrounds first, then to the ice rink, then dropped off my chard at home and went to the courthouse market. I meant to stop at the ice rink for lunch, but when I passed the ice rink, I'd lost my desire for the wrap I'd selected on the way home, and I reflected that with the huge crowd Safety Day was attracting, there had to be a food truck.
There wasn't, but there were lots of unoccupied picnic tables and I'd brought a bottle of milk and some food bars. I ate a fruit-and-grain and a chewy dipped.
It looked as though every ambulance in the county was there, and the place was crawling with cops.
I was surprised to find an array of tables set up in the Pavilion; I'd thought it wasn't quite finished yet. [I later read in the paper that this was a "soft opening".]
This evening, Steve and Danny came by to see how we are doing, and we visited for quite a while.
After they left, I was astonished to see that it was half-past five; I'd thought it was about three. Luckily, the shrimp rice I'd selected for supper takes only six minutes to fry.
It was pretty good, too. I must look for more Bibigo products.
While I was dressing, the Air Tractor flew overhead. Crop dusting must be safer now that fences have gone out of style.
But that makes the fences that are left more dangerous.
Been too busy to write the last few days. I hope I can remember what I meant to say.
Reading the previous post: oops, "busy" didn't include taking my fender off. I'm dumping the results of Dave cleaning out his half of the closet at Our Father's house today. The bike is piled high, and the closet is still crowded.
I tried to dump the stuff Monday, but the store was closed. Hand-lettered sign didn't say why, but it did say "today", so it's reasonable to hope it wasn't something they are still dealing with.
I've added two bras to the pile since then, one of them never unfolded.
I picked tomatoes this afternoon. Only one bag, and there were a lot of dead leaves and branches. There are lots of orange tomatoes, and some grass-green ones.
The farmers markets tour was somewhat abbreviated because I didn't see the point of hauling my library book to the fairgrounds and back, so I took it out of my pannier, then forgot to put it back in when I dropped off the kale I'd bought at the fairgrounds.
So I came home from the courthouse more-or-less straight. I did stop at Sherman and Lin's, and noticed that they now have a small cooler with cheeses and St. Anne's cheeseballs. My attention was drawn to it when I saw a woman take a Coke out of it, but there were no beverages for sale — I presume that the clerk had stashed a snack.
I extended Thursday's tour into a search for AREDS 2. Zales didn't have the right stuff, and Kroger didn't have any at all, but Walgreen's had 60-capsule bottles and two 120-capsule bottles — I bought both of the large bottles.
Reading what's already here to warm up for today's entry, I noticed that I intended to take my back fender off.
So I hit "save", went out to the garage, hung various objects on hooks instead of the bike, laid the bike on the concrete apron in front of the garage, and studied the situation, intending to go out to the shop for the ten-millimeter and eight-millimeter wrenches once I knew what I was doing..
Oops, it's the *other* end of the fender stays that has to be detached, and that takes an allen wrench.
I hadn't even thought that I didn't know whether it was a metric or American Customary allen wrench before I decided that I wanted to let a mechanic do this job. That bolt is also holding my rack. I'd steeled myself to mess with the brake bolt, but a heavy rack with two steel panniers semi-permanently attached was one straw too many.
So I spun the wheel, observed that the tire is clearing the fender comfortably, and put the bike back into its parking place.
There are ten swans and a cygnet in the lake, which is so flat that I counted the first swan twice before realizing that one was a reflection.
Supposed to be eight-mile-an-hour winds by the time I hang out the sheet that's in the washer.
It's past time to tell y'all what happened last Tuesday. The short answer is "nothing".
On the way there, I thought "please, don't anybody mention platelets". Nobody did, but Dr. Balduan mentioned every other ailment Dave has and said that he'd never had a patient die on the table and wasn't willing to risk having it happen now. This was rather hard to argue with, so the nurses unplugged the IV, Dave put his clothes back on, and we went home.
So instead of driving to Goshen to pick Dave up on Wednesday, I rode with him when he drove to Goshen to get his catheter changed. While changing the catheter, Kristen said that the biggie was platelets, because you can't put a pressure bandage on a prostate. Dying of anesthesia is probably right up there close to the platelets.
Dave is organizing his supplies and settling in for the long haul. I'm pretending that it's temporary.
I thought the cygnet was acting more like a great blue heron, so I went for the binoculars, but when I got to the window with them, the gray bird was gone.
I'm pretty sure it isn't the season for cygnets.
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I should start counting the spam calls we get. But we have four handsets in four rooms, so I can't just hang a tally sheet on the wall. [Dave pointed out that there is a fifth handset in the shop.]
Dave's at the point of ripping the landline out. I think that that must be the true purpose of spam calls, but can't think of who might be paying them to do it. It can't be that they think they can make money from suckers, or they wouldn't be at such pains to make it obvious that they are scammers.
Most of them are live people; that has to cost the spammer at least a bowl of rice a day.
We needed a good soaking rain, but I suspect that it's too late to be of any use to most field crops, and it might interfere with harvest. But most of the fields I see on the way to Goshen and back aren't quite ready to combine, and there will be a long dry spell after the rain stops.
The lawn mower came on Thursday last week. I thought I'd find out whether that was a glitch or a change of schedule today, but if he doesn't come today, it isn't necessarily a change of schedule. He doesn't mind mowing wet grass, but I doubt that getting drenched appeals to him. (It might have in August!)
Weather Underground says that he won't like tomorrow much better, but the rain will end in the afternoon.
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I've found a new way to eat my greens. I cut a chard leaf into bread-size squares, put three layers separated by a slice of cheese and a slice of ham into a sandwich, and skillet-toasted the sandwich. I cut up the midribs and toasted them in the two corners of the oval griddle.
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Dave is watching a show that pretends to be a modern silent movie. The only resemblance to a silent movie is that they have put in white flecks to simulate age damage to the film. The story is told entirely in the text boxes that alternate with more-or-less related illustrations.
It's a Big Little Book!
This morning, while folding up the last of the three boxes that my six new bras came in, I realized that the two black silhouettes on the back of the box are intended to be a front view and a back view.
Saturday, the farmers' markets tour, Sunday I walked to the teller machine after church and it had been hacked (I expected it because there is an area-wide problem), Monday I rode to the bank to withdraw small bills and then to Zale's to pick up a prescription, today I'm washing clothes and plan to get the Banner up to date.
I bundled up the cardboard yesterday, and I think I found four bra boxes. The one buried deepest would be the one that the bras I gave to Our Father's House came in.
Supposed to rain on Saturday, when I'd planned a three-loop ride to hit all the farmers' markets, the Legion pork-chop sale, and the Lions craft fair.
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