We had a treat yesterday morning.

We usually just go to the Winter Market and come home, but we wanted to go to the Corner Shop, which doesn't open until eleven. So we wandered the marketplace, enjoying the scents of bacon and shea butter and other savory food. There is a vendor who sells nursery items, and today they had lilacs. The vendor told me these are southern lilacs, which will do well in this climate. Most lilacs have to have certain days of frost to grow properly, and our climate does not provide for it, but these have been bred specially for the South. I would like to have one of those some day. I remember the lilac bush at the back of our yard, growing insistently through the fence from Charley's yard, in May thick with fragrant pale violet blossoms. I would bury my nose in them (and pay, courtesy my stinky allergy, later) and drink in the sweet scent with delight.

Shillings has breakfast specials, so after picking up some homemade dog biscuits, we crossed the street. There in front was a big sign saying the Saturday breakfast began at 9 a.m., and the door was wide open; however, when we walked in there at a quarter to ten, a rather disheveled looking man told us they wouldn't be "open" for 20 more minutes. Fine. We walked past Glover Park and went to the Australian Bakery instead. It took a while to get served, but we just busied ourselves with an Australian food catalog and our Nooks, and had a delicious breakfast. James had something with egg, ham, and potatoes, and I had a bowl of yummy oatmeal and a bagel with cream cheese.

Just at eleven we strolled over to the Corner Shop and wandered among the British Easter candy. James got some sale orange and mint creams for desserts, picked up a couple of pasties for lunch and some bangers for us to have for supper, and I picked up a few of the heavenly Fry's orange cream bars. We split a bar once we got back to the truck; these are exquisite, with a very orange-tasting filling with plenty of zest so you have an aftertaste of dark chocolate and sharp orange in your mouth for some minutes afterwards.

We came home to put the bangers in the freezer and the rest up, then went to the mall to price eyeglasses. James had his eyes examined on Wednesday and found, though he has no damage to his eyes from diabetes, his prescription has changed radically again. He used to be very nearsighted, then a few years ago it developed that only one of his eyes was very nearsighted, and the other was near normal. That was four years ago. Now presbiopia has done its work. His very nearsighted eye is now only slightly nearsighted, and the formerly slightly nearsighted eye is now farsighted!

(James was a bit worried about a visual problem he had occasionally: a "sparkly" circle effect in one of his eyes which he explained in detail. The opthamologist asked him when this happened and was told it was chiefly at work; the doctor told him these were a visual migraines, probably caused by stress!)

First we went to Lenscrafters where we were helped very efficiently by a young woman. He found some frames on sale that would do, and got a quote for those. Then we went downstairs to VisionWorks. Well, they had a twofer deal, and frames that he just loved, and ended up ordering them. They didn't cost any more than the last two pair I bought, so I thought it was a good deal as well. I need to go have a checkup myself, but in looking at the same brand of glasses he had, the ones I liked best were pinky-purple. Yuck! I have so much trouble finding glass frames. I hate the little narrow metal "John Lennon" glasses or plastic "David Tennant" glasses everyone seems to be wearing now, and I especially don't want plastic. My complexion is still greasy enough that I'd have the same problem I had in school, my glasses always being slimy and sliding down my nose.

From there we decided to go to Micro Center. I'd had an idea to do something, but it wasn't going to work out. However, we did talk with one of techs and decided that we did need a new router, as the computers are having dropouts from the wireless connection. We found a Linksys on sale, which was at definite advantage to our budget.

Spent some time at the hobby shop; I mostly read The Grand Mirage while James shot the breeze with the guys. Then we drove home via Dragon to pick up some supper for ourselves.

Ah, but before that could be happily eaten, there was one more chore to get through. We had a very grubby dog, and, having found a surprise on the doorstep when we arrived home, it was time to do something about it. So first I stripped the old recliner cover off the recliner and happily threw it out. We've had the old one for years and it's a bit threadbare. The problem was remembering where we bought the first one, especially as it showed up for a year or so at the As Seen on TV Store, but was now gone again. I knew it was either at Lillian Vernon or Harriet Carter, and last week I was successful in finding it on an internet search and bought a new one, which arrived in Saturday's mail.

Next I vacuumed the recliner...and vacuumed...and vacuumed...well, all the dog hair never will come out, but I got the worst of it, and also collected any crumbs. Then I gave it a spray with Febreeze and some Lysol and left it to rest. James later used a towel to sit on it as we ate supper and the arm covers and headrest that went with the chair were washing and drying.

And then I drowned the dog.

Well, that's the way she sees it. I gave her a bath and she whined her way through it, but she came out looking fluffy and a shade lighter. Not soon afterward we were able to put the new recliner cover on. Later I got on chat and had fun talking with Jen, Emma, and Mike.

This morning we were awakened by barking, but it was only a few minutes before the alarm. Breakfast was accompanied by Rinty and Rusty: "The Legacy of Sean O'Hara" and "The Barber of Seville." Next was a trip to Kroger for the usual weekly items.

Once these goodies were put away, we gathered our two coupon books and headed out to BJs. We had some good coupons for fruit/vegetables/nuts/toothbrushes/soap, etc. which could be stored away.

On Wednesday I had, on the way home from work, begun listening to a Rick Steves program about Scotland and Wales. I was enjoying it so much that I never finished listening to it and instead played it as we drove up to Woodstock. Rick talked to a woman from Scotland and a man from Wales about tourist traps [cough...Loch Ness], natural beauty, the difference between Welsh Gaelic and Scots Gaelic, and all sorts of delightful subjects. The BJs trip was a nice stroll around the store; I even picked up a 16GB thumb drive on sale.

On the way home we stopped at a little bookstore in a strip shopping center less than a quarter of a mile down the road from BJs, the Book Browser, mostly used books and a few new ones. Found a lovely book called Our Mothers' War, about women during World War II and also picked up a "Dear America" about a frontier schoolteacher. And then I found something I'd wanted since I was a kid but my folks couldn't afford it, the Walt Disney's Story Land book. This is a book of stories based on Disney's animated features and shorts. The stories based on films are either just an excerpt from the movie (Alice in Wonderland is just the tea party, for instance, and So Dear to My Heart has just an animated sequence with Danny the lamb at the fair) or the whole story (Dumbo is the longest, telling the whole story in detail, but there are more abridged versions of Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians among others). It even has the full text of the Scamp Little Golden Book. The other stories are based on cartoon shorts, from Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to stories from the compilation films ("Once Upon a Wintertime" and "Johnny Appleseed") and even "Ben and Me."

We finished Rick Steves on the way home and then listened to the end of an A Way With Words that I wasn't able to finish because of telephone calls I needed to make on Thursday.

And then we had a nice late afternoon reading the paper. I got a few things off the DVR and James cooked some pork chops for dinner. There was enough left for me to have a pork sandwich and have leftovers for a lunch as well. Watched the new Frozen Planet and the season premiere of Mythbusters (Adam and Jamie surviving with only duct tape), with an intermission of going outside to see a stellar show: Venus, Jupiter, and a tiny gondola of a crescent moon hanging in the western sky. Even with the streetlight it was beautiful. I tried to snap a few photos, but they were totally inadequate to what was seen.

As a nice capper to the evening I found out the newest Bryant and May book is on its way to me; I've had it pre-ordered for a while. It was bad enough they published it last October in Great Britain and I've had to wait all this time for the American edition!

Labels: books, Disney, dogs, food, radio, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:19:00 PM

Comments:

Oh, I know "Walt Disney's Storybook Land" well! I think my mom still has our copy from when we were kids. I loved reading all of the short stories in that. :)

# posted by  Emma : 8:34:00 PM

 

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