Back to the Grind - April 18, 2022

It's back to work for me today.  The Boss will ask, "How was your trip?" and I will reply, "Meh," and then we'll spend an hour talking about what went on around town while I was gone.  

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Yesterday, we went to visit The Granddaughters.  The Little Rotten Baby was sitting on an ottoman, batting away bubbles that Granddaughter #1 was blowing for her.  She looked like she'd been crying.  It turned out that her red eyes and runny nose resulted from a combination of seasonal allergies and the fit she'd pitched when her mama got tired of blowing bubbles and quit.  She'd kept saying, "BWOW!" until Granddaughter #1 relented and took over the job.  

When even the LRB got tired of the bubble game, her mama fixed her some food and told her to come eat.  She ran to her mama for a bite, then moved across the room to play with a toy.  Mama would say, "Bite!" and the baby would briefly run by for another mouthful.  As the LRB got full, when Mama would say, "Bite!" the baby would open her mouth wherever she was in the room, expecting Mama to bring it to her (which did not happen).  

The kid is rotten, I'm telling you.

But, dang, she's cute!  ;)

What Day Is It? - April 16, 2022

Having been off from work for a week, I have lost track of time.  Since The Husband and I were both at home yesterday, it seemed like Saturday.  I woke up this morning thinking today was Sunday and only realized the truth when CBS Sunday Morning did not come on TV.  How in the world am I going to keep up with the day of the week when I retire?  Marking off the days on a calendar won't work; I'll never remember to do it.

After breakfast yesterday, we un-wrapped the back porch, folded all the panels, and stored them away.  I was amazed at how many ladybugs, stinkbugs, and other insects had snuggled themselves (permanently!) under the sticky velcro tape that we'd used to install the panels.  It was plumb creepy.

It's nice to have the panels off the porch, to be able to see the birds checking out nesting places in the birdhouses we've scattered around the yard.  There's a birdhouse suction-cupped to the living room window, right next to my workspace on the porch, and for the past two days I've watched a yellow/gray bird (a warbler, I think) check out the accommodations.  Ever since we've had that birdhouse stuck to the window, wrens have nested in it.  They'd better hurry if they're going to get their old digs, else the yellow birds might beat them to it.

I ordered tomato seeds yesterday.  These are called "Hossinators," and they are hawked as the most disease-resistant tomatoes on the planet.  This may be a little late to start tomatoes.  Even though I have several packages of tomato seeds in the freezer (ordered them at the end of the season last year), I was planning on buying greenhouse tomato plants and not starting any from seeds.  But I could not resist the disease-resistance claim.  

Travels - April 15, 2022

The Husband attended a seminar in South Carolina this week.  I went along for the ride.  

We usually avoid interstate highways but the map program said using them would cut two hours off of the drive, so we bit the bullet and took the interstates.  The original plan was to drive halfway and stop somewhere for the night.  We left home mid-morning and ended up driving for 8 or 9 hours without stopping except for bathroom breaks.  By that time, we were only an hour from our eventual destination and considered driving on, but our hotel wouldn't give us a room a day early.  We were hungry and our butts had had enough of the truck seat.  We pulled off at the next exit that promised lodging and a margarita.  I can't even tell you where we stopped.  Didn't care at the time.  Food was okay.  Margaritas were pitiful.  

We arrived at our eventual destination around noon Sunday.  We stayed at a downtown hotel, with a "quaint" main street full of tourists and city-dwellers walking their dogs.  There were a lot of restaurants nearby, all of which required a fairly long wait to get a table.  

While The Husband was attending the seminar, I took the truck and did some sight-seeing on the outskirts of town.  Nothing exciting to report there.

We started home fairly early yesterday (Thursday) morning.  Having driven the interstates and gotten caught in major traffic jams, we decided to take the backroads home.  Outside of Decatur, Alabama, we got stuck in yet another traffic jam.  So much for the backroads, eh?

It was almost 9 p.m. when we rolled into our driveway last night.  After nearly 12 hours in the truck, it sure was good to be home.

Lots to do - April 8, 2022

So far, this has been a rather busy week, and the trend will likely continue for the coming week.  The Husband has a seminar to attend in South Carolina next week, and I am going along for the ride.  We will be driving there and intend to leave this weekend to have a leisurely trip.  Since I have accompanied him to many of his past seminars, I know what the week will be like, so I am considering having him drop me off at my BFF's house in Georgia while he does the seminar.  Probably I should call her before I just show up at her door, eh?

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Part of my busy week involved the grandchildren.  The Grandson spent last weekend with us and showed me his cell phone.  The screen was shattered enough that the phone was unusable.  One day this week, I took it to a repair shop.  Since the repair shop is near The Granddaughters' house, I stopped by to see them.  The Little Rotten Baby was in rare form.  She was trailing her 7-year-old sister through the house, begging for a lick of her sister's sucker, which her sister was kind enough to allow.  When her sister went outside with the sucker, the LRB "fell out" crying on the tile floor, bumping her nose in the process.  I scooped her up to comfort her, but I was secretly laughing inside.  What a drama queen!  

Yesterday was a busy day at work; I actually had to work until 5 p.m.  Shortly before 5, when it appeared that I would be working even later, I texted The Husband and asked him to stop at a fast-food place on his way home to get us some gyros for supper.  I had planned to make a meat loaf, but time was running short.  The reply text said, "Ok.  Did you want that tonight?"  

I thought, WTF?  But I answered, "Whatever.  We can eat peanut butter for all I care."

As it turned out, just minutes after I sent the text, The Boss said, "Let's go home."  I called The Husband to tell him that I could get us something for supper since I was about to leave work.  While we were talking, he conferenced in my BFF, who had actually been the recipient of my original text message.  She had realized that I'd texted her by mistake, and she'd called The Husband to work out a plan to mess with me.  The heifer.

If I go to visit her, I may show up with a gyro in hand.

Dilemma - April 6, 2002

I wish I had just kept my mouth shut and let somebody else handle the problem.

You may have read the saga about cleaning out a deceased aunt's apartment after her death.  She had some collections that nobody knew what to do with.  After some deliberation, I volunteered to try to sell the stuff and rented a booth in a "vintage" mall and divide the proceeds among her sisters.  The rent was $125 per month.  At the beginning of March, I hauled the stuff to the booth and set it up.  Very little of it has sold, not even enough to cover the rent.  I gave notice to the mall owners yesterday that I will be pulling out of the booth at the end of April.  Before this week is up, I am going to put a "50% OFF!" sign in the booth to try to move some of it.

What am I going to do with this stuff?  I dread the thought of packing it all up, and then what will I do with it?  

IT IS NOT COMING TO MY HOUSE.  

To be continued . . . . 

Oh, my aching everything! April 3, 2022

OMG...somebody come help me up!

Those new rakes have nearly done me in.

Friday morning, shortly after my last post, as I was contemplating how I was going to spend my day off (time with the rakes wasn't even in the running), a daughter-in-law came in.  She was scheduled to work from home, but her internet is crappy, and she needed to work from our home where the service is more reliable.  She set up her laptop computer in our office, and then plugged a telephone directly into our router.  I don't know a lot about internet/router stuff, but I figured it was probably best that I not spend much time online to keep from sucking up the bandwidth (if that's even a thing).  It was a lovely, sunny day, so I decided to break out the rakes and get busy in the yard.  Around 9 a.m., I put on my gardening gloves and went outside.  

Now, I haven't done much hard physical labor in several months.  My knee problem started acting up in November, then I came down with bronchitis that lasted for weeks, then the weather turned cold and icy, so I've been rather sedentary for a while.  My muscles have turned into jelly.

Friday morning, though sunny, was a bit chilly.  After about an hour of raking, my hands were cold and my nose was running to beat the band.  I came inside, blew my nose, had another cup of coffee, rested a bit, went back outside.  It was still cold, so all morning I'd work a bit, come in to warm up, then go back out.  Finally, about 2 p.m., it was warm enough to work without needing to come inside to thaw.  By the time The Husband came home at 6 p.m., I'd raked and burned about 30 piles of leaves/gumballs/sticks.  My knee was throbbing, and every muscle in my body was screaming, "WTF?!"  Around 7 p.m., I propped the rakes on the front porch and called it a day.  I took a shower and a big dose of Tylenol and was in bed by 9.

Saturday was the day The Husband called in the troops to cut up the tree that had fallen in Nanny's yard.  Grandsons arrived around 10.  Son #1 still hadn't made it to our house with the chainsaw, so The Husband sent the grandsons down to Nanny's to rake pine needles in Nanny's yard until the chainsaw got here.  

I was moving remarkably well after a night's rest, so I put on my gloves and went outside to resume my raking.  The rakes were gone; the boys had taken them to Nanny's.  I ripped off a few curse words, then went out to our shed to get our old rake.  While in the shed, I found the leaf-blower and dragged it out, plugged it up, and started trying to corral the leaves/sticks/gumballs into a pile that I could burn.  It was like herding cats.  As I was working, The Husband came out and said that Son #1 had called with the news that the chainsaw needed a new chain, so he went to the hardware store to buy one.  He came home with yet another yard rake.  I put the leaf blower aside and started raking while The Husband went down to Nanny's to get on the tractor and haul away the pine needles that the boys had raked up.

Around 2:30, The Husband came home to tell me that Nanny had fixed lunch for everybody.  By this time, I'd finished raking the yard on the north side of the house.  I laid my rake down and went to Nanny's to eat.  After lunch, the menfolk tackled the tree that had fallen across the garden.  As soon as they cleared the limbs off the garden, I went out and started pulling up the fence posts that we'd used for supports for the tomatoes and running beans.  It was nearly 7 p.m. by the time the guys finished with the tree.  I still had not pulled the posts from the tomato rows - they were wired to hog-wire fencing, and I didn't have any wire cutters on me - but I said Screw this, and we all went home.  

It took TWO doses of Tylenol to ease my aching everything.

Today, I question the wisdom of resuming the raking job, but there's still a lot of yard left to do.  

A Day Off - April 1, 2022

The Best Boss gave me today off.  She must have felt sorry for me yesterday because of all my sneezing and snorting.  Allergies, I reckon.

As I was on my way home, contemplating how I would spend this free day and the upcoming weekend, it occurred to me that, allergies be damned, I really should work in the yard.  It'll soon be time to mow.  Recent storms littered the ground with limbs and sticks and sweet gum balls that'll have to be picked up and raked up before we can mow.   But our big plastic yard rake has about 3 teeth left in it, so I stopped at the hardware store and bought two more rakes - one plastic, one metal.  One for me, one for The Husband.

But The Husband may not be using his rake this weekend.  There's a big old tree laying squarely across the garden.  It fell earlier this month when we had several days of rain followed by an ice storm followed by more rain.  We can't do anything in the garden until the tree is removed.  And it's driving Nanny crazy to see it every morning through her kitchen window.  The Husband has called Son #1 to come over with his chainsaw and The Grandson tomorrow.  I expect they'll be sawing and tractoring most of the day.  

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I had a break-through yesterday.

Well, really the break-through happened the day before.

I think I told you that I bought a bread machine, and that my first loaf - a whole wheat loaf - had flopped.  Collapsed.  Even though I followed the recipe to the letter, or so I thought.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN ABLE TO MAKE A DECENT LOAF OF WHOLE WHEAT BREAD.

Over the next few days, I made a couple of loaves of regular white bread.  Those loaves came out fine, so the night before last I decided to try the wheat bread again.  It collapsed.  WTF?

As I was cleaning up the measuring cups and spoons, it hit me what went wrong.  The recipe called for two eggs plus some water to equal 1-1/4 cups of liquid.  I had been using 1-1/4 cups of liquid PLUS the two eggs.  

Yesterday, as soon as I got home from work, I started another loaf of whole wheat bread, measuring the liquid correctly.  AND IT WORKED!  The bread rose and did not collapse during baking!  I took it out of the pan, let it cool, and sliced it.  I ate the crusty, butter-slavered butt, right away.  It was delicious.

Yay!

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