I slept at least two hours at nap time.
Dave's "red" long-sleeved T-shirt came. It's more of a dirty maroon, but he's wearing it anyway.
I saw the birds that hang out under the salt at Kroger again today.
It was Children's Day, and I forgot to wear my red skirt.
10:24 PM 12/5/2023 Two observations:
If you want a close look at an eye, you have to use that eye to look at it, so I don't know how my eye looked when it was all blurred up from the drops and gels.
I've always thought my eyes were brown, but they are green.
Grumbly gripe. I asked about strenuous activity, meaning the partial sit-ups I do for my sciatica, but didn't mention cycling specifically. (Not that cycling is strenuous the way I do it.) Tomorrow would be a good day to take a ride, but riding in cold weather irritates my eyes so much that tears run out my nose, so I don't think I should go as long as the ban on swimming is in effect.
When I read "no swimming for three days", I looked out the window and said "Check!"
The actual injection was over before I knew that it had begun, but there were a *lot* of preliminaries.
When I was making the appointment, there was a lot of reassurance that I would be numb and there would be no pain, but what I was worried about was freaking out. But the doctor was very matter-of-fact — and I never did see the needle.
I think there is less distortion in my vision already, and the gray spot might be paler.
I can't see the redness in the corner of my eye without holding the mirror so that I roll the eye far to the left. And I think my eyes are a sort of brownish green.
I don't think I mentioned the context of all this. Last Wednesday, I went to Dr. Hickman to complain of bent telephone poles, and he said there was a drop of fluid in my retina and I would need three injections in the eyeball to dry it up. Yesterday, I got the first one.
In the dark last night, I pointed at the ceiling clock, then closed first one eye, then the other. I'm still right eyed!
Or right-eyed again; dominance was very confused for a long time after I was blind in that eye for a week. (While I was blind, I kept putting telescopes etc. to that eye and doing a double take.) When I was at Becoming an Outdoorswoman, the shooting instructor had me shoot pistols right handed and rifles left handed. It's hard for a right-handed person to pick up a rifle left handed even when she has never fired rifles and hasn't any habits to undo.
I learned just enough from that course to know that safely owning a firearm calls for more practice than I want to spare time for.
I guess I'm still confused. I just pointed at a telephone pole, and it was exactly halfway between the two copies of my finger.
So upon reading the last line of yesterday's entry, I pointed at the maple tree — and the finger I saw with my left eye was spang on.
I had no after-effects from the jab, once the numbing, dilating, etc. wore off. The soothing eye drops were pro-forma, and there was no pain. If I concentrate, I can feel a slight itching in the corner that's red. (Some contortions with the magnifying mirror showed that it is still red this morning.)
Lovely day out there, but the swimming ban is still in effect, so I don't think I should do something that makes tears run out my nose.
Stopped writing to bring in the trash cans. Upon sitting down to resume, I pointed at the maple again — and this time I'm definitely right eyed.
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Dave took the new knobs for the pantry-cupboard out of the mailbox on our way back with the recycling bin. (The landfill trash hadn't gone.) They are smaller than I expected, but they don't wobble! And if they ever do, one Phillips screwdriver will suffice to tighten them.
On Friday, Dave Roomba'd the kitchen and parlor. I went to my writing page to get a URL and ended up reading _The Dying Demon_ from beginning to end.
I'm my own best fan.
This morning I took a note:
6:45 AM 12/9/2023
Woke up about seven for the second morning in a row, but this time it was a calf cramp and I'm going to do my exercises and go back to bed.
And another note:
8:47 AM 12/9/2023 Forgot to plug in cell phone on Tuesday -- Flat on Friday.
/notes
That second note was a major aggravation. The cell phone that I wore out would go a week between charges.
We'd been up for some time on Friday morning, but it was about seven when we rolled out. I found out that the cell phone was dead when I tried to check the time. So when I realized that we wouldn't get back before Linda came for her knitting lesson, I had Dave text her. I'd forgotten that she didn't have Dave on her caller ID, but she figured out that it had to be us.
She's doing quite well, by the way, and is already purling and binding off. Which reminds me that somewhere in the pile of stuff that I laid out to dry after the flood and haven't put away yet, there is an article on binding off called "How to Stop Knitting" that I wrote for a House of White Birches magazine. It was never printed because my editor said that technical articles made her readers' eyes glaze over.
This was yet another trip to the Goshen hospital emergency room. I have memorized the way out of the maze of treatment rooms. This time it was just one nurse, Vanessa. Various other people were in and out.
I forgot to put boiled eggs into the potato salad I made for tomorrow's church luncheon. It's good, but boiled eggs would have made it excellent.
I over-salted it a bit, which should make Dave like it very much. I think I'll garnish it with oregano instead of parsley.
My salad isn't good — it's utterly blah. I put in a teaspoon of celery seed and two teaspoons of mustard seed ground in two teaspoons of salt, fresh thyme, fresh oregano, garlic leaves, parsley, onion, celery, two mini-sweets, rather a lot of carrot, and half a jalapeño, and all you can taste is the salt and potato.
I brought Dave a serving of good salad someone else made. Also pie and cake and dinner rolls, and when Bill was wondering what to do with the pork, I emptied one of my ice containers into the other and filled that up.
On the way home, a bath towel I was using for insulation got pork broth on it. My Snapware containers are marvelous, but the lids are not water tight. I rubbed the stains with soap, and they ignored it.
I was the last man out. I hope I was supposed to lock the ramp-room door. And I hope that someone else took care of the lights upstairs; I never even thought about making an inspection tour on the way out. But Bill will come in tomorrow to put away the water jugs we left in the drainers, and the very large pan I was washing when he and his wife left. I got water all over the floor rinsing it, and had to make two trips to the boiler room for a mop.
There are two containers of pie on the counter between the kitchen and the fellowship hall.
I fiddled around until it was nearly four — spent half an hour of that playing Mahjong solitaire — before lying down, and slept until nearly seven. Dave had dined on left-overs.
Oh, big news! For many years, I've wanted the church kitchen to have a pull-down faucet, and I had long since checked out what was available (which came in handy when our kitchen faucet had to be replaced), but I'd never quite gotten around to finding out who to talk to about contributing one to the church. Well, while we were cleaning up, one of the brothers came to talk to Bill about the counter tops he is going to install in the church, and I realized: this is the guy!
So we discussed it, and Bill suggested replacing the faucet between the double sinks, obviously much better than the one I had in mind, and — I really should have asked Bill who the brother was, because his face has already faded into the jumbled mess my brain uses for a memory; I can write names down.
Anyway, he said that his company would contribute the hardware, so I've got my faucet without lifting a finger or spending a penny.
And I really, really could have used it while rinsing that pot!
A quick ride to Kroger was the highlight of the day. I bought a Totally Tuna at Jimmy-John's on the way back, but Dave had already eaten, so we had it for supper.
I washed clothes this morning, and had a telephone Medicare assessment in the afternoon.
I passed the memory test with flying colors. I was tempted to tell her it was misleading — but they are looking for senile decay, not congenital conditions.
This afternoon I got the results of the blood tests taken after my semi-annual checkup on Wednesday. Another pill has been added to my list.
We got *three* legitimate calls today, and only one scam.
The stains on the towel didn't all come out, but the broth didn't soak through to the pretty side.
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A black Sunday skirt doesn't get washed very often. I noted when hanging it up to dry that the creases from shortening it three times had washed out.
I was almost thrilled to see that it didn't need to be ironed — I didn't know pure cotton could do that! An ankle-length pleated skirt made from two full breadths, with six pockets, takes a while to iron.
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Make that *four* legitimate calls. Dr. Ilada's office says that I'm due for a check-up. I'm pretty sure that I've never seen Dr. Ilada. [Eventually, it turned out to be Dr. Otoo, who is in the same office. I'll be called sometime in the first week of January to set up an appointment.]
I'll call Monday. Preferably before our appointment in Goshen at four in the afternoon. I don't have anything to do with Dave's morning appointment; I think it's only a blood draw. [I may postpone calling Ilada until after Christmas. See below.]
Today I cleaned the sewing machine that we are using for a sideboard, and put the pork-broth towel on it.
I rode to the Artisan's Market at Pete Thorne Center, but Jody's Cookies wasn't there. There were some beef empanadas that looked as though they would be very good for lunch, but they would have been cold before I got them home and I don't think they would have been good warmed over.
I hope that other people buy a lot of them so that he will come back to the next market.
On the way back, I stopped at Zales to pick up my new prescription. Now I'm taking nine pills. To my relief, the new one doesn't have to be taken on an empty stomach.
I have made a wonderful discovery. I'd no sooner heard of chipotles than I began wishing that someone would smoke sweet peppers. I was pretty sure that I'd like chipotle if only I could taste it under the searing capsaicin.
For some time I've been noticing large bags of dry chipotle at Carniceria San José. Never paid 'em much mind; if I can't eat up one of those teeny-tiny cans before it spoils, what am I going to do with a couple of dry quarts?
But a while back, I reflected that dried peppers will keep for months in the pantry, and should keep forever in the freezer, and bought a bag.
Which caused a serious overflow in my bag of frozen spices.
Much to my surprise, smoke is the only flavor; once boiled, I can eat one all by itself. They swell up to be bigger than jalapeños. I suspect a combination of milder pepper and browning them all the way through; one pepper tasted burnt.
At five o'clock in the morning, there is zero traffic on US 30.
I did see a car on the shoulder with its flashers on.
Met someone coming into Argonne when I was entering the roundabout.
Heard a noise while eating breakfast. Looked up and a blizzard was hitting the window. It has blown over now, and didn't leave any more snow than should be off US 30 by now. [It came back.]
I opened the front door to throw out a dead bug I'd found, and saw what I'm pretty sure was a hen turkey strolling past. She was walking toward another turkey hidden behind the oak tree. I presumed that it would be a tom, but it had no more wattle than the first one. [about four, I looked up "wild turkey" in Wikipedia, and the pictures of hens looked like what I saw.]
There's been a lot happened this weekend, but I hope that when I get the house picked up, I'll be too busy bringing Dave back from Fort Wayne to tell you about it.
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Hadn't finished picking up the house before he called!
I called Steve, Steve took me to Parkview Regional, home safe and sound about half past two, Dave is cancelling his appointment for this afternoon.
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Turned out that the hospital cancelled it yesterday.
Saturday evening Dave's urine was very red, so we spent most of the night in Parkview's emergency room. After the ambulance carried Dave off to Fort Wayne, I went home, got a couple of hours of sleep, then called Martha, she and Steve took me to Fort Wayne, and we sat with Dave until early afternoon. When the nurse said Dave was allowed to eat, Steve took Martha and me to Culver's for lunch.
Upon return, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the call button work the TV. Turned out that the TV remote is wireless, so we couldn't trace a cable to it, and it had hidden in the bedclothes. Finally asked a nurse, and she knew that it existed, what it looked like, and about where it would hide.
When we left, we told Dave that we wouldn't do anything until called. Which he did today — about noon, I think. I pretty much slept from not long after getting home until eight this morning.
Dave told me that a nurse at Parkview spent about four hours snipping blood clots into bits that would fit through his catheter.
And now I'm due for a nap. Dave had Ritz crackers, devilled ham, peanut butter, and marmalade for lunch. I ate crispbread with chili and pickles and swiss cheese. And samples of Dave's lunch.
Hamburger and cottage cheese for supper, with fruit cocktail for dessert. We ate it so late that I had only a ginger snap for bedtime snack.
Which cookie I used to scoop up as much Vividly Vanilla ice cream as would fit on it. My weight is below a hundred and forty pounds for the second morning in a row despite the ice cream. [Not *much* below!]
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It was nearly half-past eleven when we finished breakfast. I have a feeling that supper will be late again tonight.
I'm out of ideas, but I'll think of something delicious this afternoon.
The sun is so bright that when I got up, I thought I'd forgotten to close the sewing-room curtains. The snow is almost thick enough to hide the grass, and Boy's City Drive is clean. The predicted high for tomorrow is 43°F, alas, and it will be above freezing from ten o'clock until sunset, but the snow should stick today.
And on Thursday it will be above freezing from sunrise on, so tomorrow's melting shouldn't leave ice on the roads. Driving should be good when he goes to his infusion, and we plan to stay home on Friday.
⁂
The sheets are on the line. Good day for hanging out: not much wind while I was hanging (rose a bit soon after), and below freezing was all to the good because it kept my feet from getting wet.
I think I'll eat a crispbread and a cookie for lunch and go to bed.
⁂
I had devilled ham and cream cheese on my crispbread.
There was a definite capsaicin zing in the mustard green and chipotle soup I had for supper, but not enough to conceal the chipotle flavor. I presume the pungency varies from pepper to pepper.
I wanted to say chiliete; "pungent" doesn't mean "hot". But I can't spell the word I want and "chiliete" is a place name.
Dave had a hot pocket. We had a very late lunch and he wasn't hungry.
I'm sorting out the paper bin because the recycling is to be put out tomorrow. The newspapers are already under a stack of weights getting flat, but the other side of the bin won't bundle unless I sort it into letter size, "The Paper" size, and other.
Time to get back to work. I'm more than halfway down the pile.
While at Kroger, I saw a box of carpet deodorizer and picked it up. The active ingredients were sodium bicarbonate and perfume, so I put it back and dusted the carpet with baking soda.
Tomorrow is trash day, so we hauled out the recycling bin.
I bought chicken livers and a box of fresh mushrooms, but got down for my nap late and didn't feel like cooking in a rush, so I zapped and baked a potato, made some of the mushrooms into gravy (lotsa butter, white whole-wheat flour, ham bouillon for salt, a cup of milk, and a wee thin slice of extra-sharp cheddar.), and re-heated the left-over pork roast. Dave said "This is a feast!".
Meat, potatoes, and gravy.
He did have mixed canned and frozen fruit for dessert.
The roast was better than I remember it from the first time.
I should have shaken the eighth-cup measure of flour one more time; the gravy is very thick.
Is one stick of butter enough for a pound and a quarter of chicken liver? I think I'll use a stick and a half; mushrooms slurp up butter, and I still have rather a lot of them.
I'm also planning to slice in an entire onion.
One stick of butter would have been enough.
It was quite tasty despite my flailing around — it's been *years* since I fried chicken liver.
I bet chicken livers would be good fried in bacon grease.
Somebody carried our recycling bin to the house for us.
I had a minor scare that I was too busy to write about at the time. When Steve was driving me to Fort Wayne, I fiddled with my phone (trying to text Dave) and somehow pushed a code into the outside buttons that turned the outside screen permanently on. That screen lights up the entire walk-in closet, so you know that it's drawing a lot of current, and the phone will go completely flat in three days when it isn't doing anything at all, so this isn't something I can ignore.
I looked and looked in the settings, and found some interesting legal stuff, but I got a call when I was halfway through reading it. I turned it off thinking that I could re-open it, but I never found it again.
The PDF manual gave no clue.
But the next day or the day after, when it had been on the charger for several hours, I found it reset to normal.
The nearest thing I'd found to a cure in the settings was a factory reset, followed by hand-punching all my phone numbers without having any idea as to what they are.
Somewhere in there, there must be a way to upload a back-up copy of one's phone book.
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My weight has been below a hundred and forty for five days. Assuming that it was below a hundred and forty on Wednesday, when I didn't weigh myself.
There is a spot in the hallway where the air currents accumulate every scent that is generated anywhere in the house. One morning a few days ago, that quite literally saved my bacon.
I'm frying bacon again this morning, but I've got a timer on it.
This time last week, Steve, Martha, and I were in Fort Wayne with Dave. I'm holding my breath that there will be no more incidents before surgery on Friday.
I'm thawing a game hen to bake tomorrow. We have three boxes of stuffing in the freezer.
I should have cut the pastry I brought home for Dave in half and left half for others. I compensated by eating some of it myself, with a mug of milk and a few cashews, instead of lunch.
I've decided to quit the "abundance of caution" with respect to cashews — that really wasn't an allergy-type rash in the first place. But I'll never again eat cashews as my entire meal!
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This afternoon, Steve and Martha brought us a bag of home-made yummies. Dave said that he intends to have granola for breakfast — "if there's any left".
He also remarked that turtles were his mother's favorite candy.
It was cloudy-bright all day, and warm enough that we could have had a cook-out. Yesterday was twilight all day — but real twilight was much brighter than usual. I suppose that the same clouds that blocked the sun all day scattered some of it down after sunset.
Just up and getting dressed. I thought I'd wear a nice shirt — but none of my nice shirts have timer pockets, and I plan to cook up a storm.
The day before yesterday, while getting dressed for a dash to the pharmacy, I thought I didn't need to transfer the little bag of coins from the pants on the hook to the pants I was wearing because I was taking my wallet. (I take the go-bag everywhere, and the wallet, with plastic and paper removed to pockets, lives in the go bag.)
When the prescription turned out to cost $ 0.87, my wallet was in the car.
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I just finished lunch and more than half of the loaf cake is gone already. We have also made inroads into the other goodies.
But it's a feast day.
⁂
Boy, am I stuffed. I thought I was stuffed into a stupor until I checked the meat thermometer: Keeping a poorly-insulated oven on all afternoon had brought the kitchen temperature up to 81.5°F. When I told Dave, he said "No wonder I'm not cold!"
Dave washed dishes when I was going to leave everything but the three antique plates for tomorrow, so the mess is already cleaned up except for three iron skillets — one each of the three smallest sizes. I baked chicken and dressing in the largest, vegetables in the smallest, and made gravy in the middle skillet.
I also baked the mashed potatoes.
When I asked whether to get out a tangerine for dessert or cut up an apple, Dave said "Snowball!"
I'm saving mine for bedtime snack.
When I told Dave I was getting the antique dishes down for the feast, he said "All our dishes are antiques." He's pretty close to right.
When I bought my Blue Denmark dishes, the salesman said "This pattern has been in production for three hundred years; you will always be able to buy replacements."
In a sense he was right: If one pays a dish-finder enough, one *can* buy replacements. But the quality of the dishes dropped like a rock while Mutual China was still operating. And the dishes I bought aren't as good as those I inherited from Mother.
Just tried to download a form to renew my ham license. Instead, I got a message that all renewals must be done online now, so I decided to let it lapse.
After all, I became aware that I didn't have much time to renew because I wanted to sign my call letters to a letter trying to get rid of our hand-held transceivers, and looked at my license to make sure I know what they are. (KC9TQX)
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We put the carpet back into the car's trunk today.
A few weeks ago the bag boy called my attention to a large hole in one of my re-usable bags. My first impulse was to declaim histrionically "They're only thirty years old!" And they've been in hard use all that time.
But inspection showed brown brittle spots on all the bags.
When a paper bag of prescriptions got dark-brown goo on the bottom, which didn't dry up when I stored it on a heat register, but did make the paper fall apart, I began to suspect the carpet in the trunk. (A sealed battery on its way to the recycling center had been in the trunk for a long time. It showed no sign of leaking, but there are no other suspects.) When I found the missing whisk broom in the trunk and it had a brown spot on one bristle, that settled it and we took the carpet out and I hosed it thoroughly, hosed it again, laid it over the picnic table to drip, hosed it some more, poured a bucket of water with a little ammonia in it over the carpet, and hosed that off.
A day or so later I brought it in out of the rain and draped it over the lawn mower, a day or so after that Dave brought it in and draped it over the exercise bike, later I draped it over the air filter, and yesterday evening I set out to throw it over the seats into the trunk, and settled for laying it on the back seat.
I may have no alternative to patching the bags that are repairable. None of the "reusable" bags in the grocery are washable. Anything that you have to throw away when it gets dirty is *disposable*, not "reusable".
But so far I've only been to Kroger. Just tried the Aldi site, but there is no search function, and none of the product categories include shopping bags.
[Pause] So I DuckDucked for "Aldi bags" and got a review that explained three options, paper, plastic, and "eco-friendly". Five cents, ten cents, and two dollars, respectively.
⁂
It wasn't until nap time that I realized that today would have been a good day to dry dish towels in the sun. When I got up, I dug up four scallions just to say I'd done some work outside.
Dave ate one when I brought them in. I *told* him they were strong!
Clothes laid out, go-bag, cane, and coat near the door.
Dave and Jeanie are going to pick us up at ten.
The table Dave bought to put his phone charger on arrived today, and he spent a few hours putting it together. It was planned out very neatly; there was very little air in the box. But they had to ship each leg in two pieces to do it.
It looks pretty good, and Dave's phone is on it. I left my charger on the extension cord even though its cord will reach from my pants pocket to the table.
Ready to roll with an hour to spare. I wonder whether I should take that hardback book out of my bag?
⁂
Didn't. Shoulda.
The good news: Dave came through the operation fine, eat anything that tastes good today, resume normal activities tomorrow.
The bad news: the results of the cytoscope are disappointing, and there is no point to reducing the size of his prostate.
Dave and Jeanie drove us to the hospital and back, and sat with us while waiting. Jeanie knitted two trivets. I darned a black sock.
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My library book — the above-mentioned hardback — is due on Tuesday. (Final renewal.) Weather Underground says Tuesday will be a good day to resume riding my bicycle. Wind is predicted to be ten miles an hour, but it will be a head wind going out and a tail wind coming back, and the library is a very short ride from here.
Looking through the pantry cupboard for something yummy and easy for supper, I observed that we had taco seasoning and a can of ground beef, but no tostadas. Dave reminded me that I'd bought a bag of sopes — corn-dough miniature soup plates — on my latest trip to Kroger.
We also have lettuce, sour cream, an open can of tomato sauce, part of a peeled onion, and a bar of cheddar cheese. Canned peaches for dessert.
Pretty good, but both of us prefer tostadas. I think the left-overs will be better: I'll fill a cold sope with cold taco meat and zap them together, which will steam the dough.
A few slices of sope boiled with my greens were pretty good. They got less brittle without getting mushy.
Pill-packing day. I have to be more careful than I was before Lisinopril was prescribed. It comes in the same bottle as Levothyroxin and is the same size and shape. The only visual difference is that the Lisinopril is slightly pink, which doesn't show through the yellow plastic of the bottle.
I'm planning a sope for breakfast, just to see whether it's better when warmed filled. And on a ceramic plate, to keep the steam in.
⁂
The sope was pretty good steamed and lost in the filling, but I'm not going to go out of my way to buy more.
I completely emptied my go-bag, blew it out with the air compressor, removed overlooked items, and blew it out again. It weighs 1.14 pounds empty.
The baby scales were filthy; we hadn't used them since Al died. Perhaps I should find someone who wants them, but I'd forgotten they were under the microwave table, and I *did* find a use for them today.
I'll comment out the details of filling the bag up again.
Somebody across the lake is setting off skyrockets. Not a lot of noise, but it woke Dave up.
⁂
Before preparing a sope for breakfast, I looked up sopes on the manufacturer's Web site, and learned that one is supposed to deep fry, pan fry, or bake them. I steamed it in the microwave.
There's one left. Dave had toasted focaccia bread, an egg, and sausage, and said it was very good.
The film of snow that was on the ground at midnight is gone. I got snowed on while walking home from church.
Typing which reminded me to get up and put away the shawl, scarf, and hat I left draped over the Lazyboy and loveseat.
Dave has become sufficiently comfortable with the lift chair that we may get rid of the Lazyboy. I don't know who would take a cat-clawed recliner. It does have arm covers that could be used to patch the clawed places, but there are few people who can and want to do that sort of repair.
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Afternoon: the Internet is out. I was intending to send this as soon as I finished spell checking and so forth.
Dave is sufficiently annoyed to talk about going back to Comcast. I'd want an iron-clad guarantee that this is not a not-even-death-shall-us-part contract before I'd sign up with Comcast.
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