Sheesh. Last week I couldn't wait to get rid of the rain and now I'm checking the radar map every fifteen minutes like a worried mother who has a kid late from the prom and grumbling, "Where is that frappin' line of thunderstorms heading this way?" Well, the first volley is in Hartford at the moment with the actual line back on the New York border. C'mon, get a move on, willya?

I slept horribly last night and the heat is making me stupid and sleepy and giving me a headache. I keep throwing water over me and then going back for more ten minutes later.

We went out earlier to bring James' suit to the cleaner (or the "cleanser," as it is known in Rhode Island), and also went in search of ice cube trays because the two Mom had do not fill his iced tea pitcher. Had I been thinking we'd have gone to Benny's—it's the closest "they'll have it!" place since Woolworth's bit the dust—but instead we went in search of an elusive dollar store, with a stop at Linens'n'Things to buy fans for the other three rooms. All are going now, plus the big box fan in the hall.

And then of course the dollar store didn't have ice trays. We found 'em in Stop and Shop, though.

The dollar store was up where the Christmas Tree Shop and A.C. Moore, the craft shop, are. We stopped at both places yesterday after our abortive trip earlier. I like Moore's—it carries different things than both Michael's and JoAnn and I picked up a gift for a friend there. I need to go back: they have much better fall garlands than either Michael's or JoAnn—those two are opting for these horrible autumn leaves that are just a chenille-looking material in which a leaf shape has been cut out of rather than trying to make the darn leaves look like actual maple leaves. Moore's has leaves like that, and also floral candle rings, which I can't find in either of the other two stores. I use the floral candle rings as small wreaths for the glass doors (I have to replace them every few years as the house faces south and the wreaths eventually fade and rot away from the sun). I went crazy last year looking for them and had to settle for small twig garlands instead. They also have a bunch of small wooden Thanksgiving motifs. It is very hard finding Thankgiving-oriented things in Georgia. Someone at work told me once that Thanksgiving was a "Yankee" holiday, which may explain it, but certainly all my friends all know and remember the holiday!

The Christmas Tree Store was rather a bust: all they have now is summer junk, in bright pastel colors. Ugh. I did get a nutcracker; I keep buying the silver ones they sell in the supermarket and they don't make the corrugated edges which crack the nuts with sharp edges any more (I guess it is "dangerous" or might "hurt children" or such nonsense); they are rounded and when you try to crack a nut, it slips right out of the nutcracker. What use is that?

And we had Del's Frozen Lemonade on the way home. It helps, if just for a while.

James and I have been slowly cleaning out things; it's too hot to do more. We did Mom's top drawers, which were where all the bills and things were kept, and found some change and the money she had put aside for church, which I took. (I'm a bit ticked off at her church for what happened when she was sick: I called to ask that she receive Communion and in three weeks the priest came just once and stayed five minutes! David, the nice lay person the Hospice sent, came once a week religiously [no pun intended] and prayed with her for around a half hour. What happened to sick calls and support from your parish? Sheesh. She's been going to that church for 50 years and that's all the spiritual support she gets!)

Among all the old papers and assorted detrius of life we found a book from 1951 (maybe from when they bought the house) 1003 Household Hints and Work Savers which includes advice like making sure you clean the ashes out of the furnace and using "the wire on top of milk bottles" to make hair curlers, and a copy of the original issue of Reminisce magazine, which I've been getting for years.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 6:01:00 PM

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