 Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans, cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of. Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net . . . . . . . . . .
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» Tuesday, December 31, 2019
My Favorite Dozen Things About 2019
1. James didn't have to go to the hospital all year! 2. After a false start, James' arthritis medicine worked. 3. Dark chocolate Oreos. 4. Lidl. 5. Finally resolved loveseat problem and moved my desk into craft room (loveseat is now a storage platform!), leaving room for toy chest in bedroom which is now blanket chest. 6. Bought all Lassie black-and-white episodes (uncut). 7. Finally found the baby monitor so I can use it when doing laundry. 8. Finally rid of that stupid Pixel phone. 9. Subscribed to PBS Passport. 10. Saw David Tennant at DragonCon. 11. Molly of Denali. 12. Pam-next-door's Christmas tree.* *I suppose I should explain. Pam moved next door in October. She's renting the downstairs of the house, and I guess she has kitchen privileges upstairs. She has a little Shih Tzu named Diesel who is having a territorial dispute with Tucker, who imagines he owns the neighborhood. Anyway, she had a Christmas tree downstairs in her "parlor," but right before Christmas she put a real one up upstairs in the dining room window. Since she doesn't spend most of the time upstairs, most of the time there was just a little light in the kitchen and the tree glowing in the window. Well, I spent so much time staring at that tree every time I walked Tucker at night that Pam must have thought I was nuts. But instead I was flashing back to childhood and going to my Papà's house for Christmas. I've written about this several places, including in an essay called "The Magic House." From that essay: ...to slowly make my way up the cellar steps to the back entry, and thus to the kitchen. As always it was dark, except for a nightlight, in a room that looked as if it hadn't changed since the 1940s. The newest appliance was the big white-and-chrome Roper stove with its two ovens, seated like a squat monarch overlooking a tiny kingdom. The table, looking like a dwarf compared with its big cousin downstairs, was covered with a red-checked cloth, and with the white-fronted kitchen cabinets and the homey little memorabilia on the walls and side tables, it looked like something out of a dream. Aunty never forgot the upstairs tables; cut glass dishes held ribbon candy and chocolates even here, and I'd be able to sneak a few more bites away from Mom's disapproving eye. But food was not the lure, but the light... There was a soft glow from the dining room coming through the glass-paned door; to open it led you in a room from another century, furnished with the heavy sideboards and dining room set, and lit, like some enchanted glade, simply by the light of the Christmas tree. This had electric lights, of course, not the more dangerous candles, but these were always the original, large bulb sets, supplemented for many years by a dwindling few of the fascinating bubble lights. In those bulbs the ornaments flashed and glittered and twinkled: old molded glass fruits side-by-side with the Woolworth's balls both old--including clear ones from World War II--and new, the branches hung with the heavy old-fashioned icicles in lieu of the newer mylar ones. They danced in the little bursts of air that crept nevertheless under the cold windows and collided with the warmer air from the cast-iron radiators. If I were truly alone, if one of the uncles had not crept upstairs to watch the big cabinet black-and-white TV and fall asleep--"I'm just resting my eyes!"--on the capacious sofa, I could curl up on the floor under the tree where brightly wrapped gifts and the manger set sat, to smooth the cotton footing under the various statues, to move sheep into their proper places, and wonder what it had truly been like in Bethlehem on that night. If you laid back on the cold floor just right and looked up, there was a faerie path between the tree branches lit by color and glitter--if you could only walk forward, you too could be a part of the Magic. There was the quiet to think, to dream, but still comforted by the sounds of the party below and the faint murmur of Christmas stories playing on the television. Of course Pam's tree's didn't have big bulbs or vintage ornaments and lead tinsel, but lit up there, glowing multi-color against the dim dining room, seen with a stage curtain frame of drapery pulled up in a scallop on either side, glimpsed through open shutters of Venetian blinds, well, somehow, if just for a moment, that magic door opened up again and comforted me and set up longing all at once. I miss Pam's tree. Labels: Christmas, decluttering, DragonCon, electronics, health, television  And So, It's New Year's Eve Again
It's a chilly day, starting out in the 30s, going up to the 50s, just the way I like it. When I took Tucker for his walk, the sky was a fierce, bright blue, the kind of color that hurts your eyes in its beauty. Birds were calling from the trees and a brisk wind swept in from the north; hard to believe two days ago it was 70°F—I much prefer the weather today, even if I could have used a heavier coat and stockings!
James is teleworking today. The swelling in his hand appears to be going down, and it hurts less, so we are crossing fingers that it was only a sprain he got when he probably slipped and caught himself (possibly when he thwacked his elbow and made it bleed on the sheets). We ice it three times a day and support it other times with an Ace bandage. I think having him not go into work yesterday, as the advice nurse suggested, was a good idea; he didn't have to risk losing his balance again or having to catch or push something with his bad hand, or lift his laptop case. Tucker is experiencing his usual anxiety about the popping noises outside. He desperately hates fireworks. We tried tranquilizer treats on him last year and they did not work, even though we took the Petco lady's advice and started them almost a week early. At night he huddles next to me on the sofa or James on the recliner and shivers. Nothing bothers Snowy—unless it's a loud noise close by or Mommy doing weird movements on her stepper. He's enjoyed the last few weeks with all the familiar Christmas stories and music playing away in the background. Raise the volume, he sings louder. He had a good time last night when I ran an old recording of the Boston Pops holiday concert, with Conan O'Brien reading "A Visit from St. Nicholas." We had a quiet Christmas, but it's hard to tell because it zipped by with the speed of light. One minute Thanksgiving was over and now it's New Year's Eve. I know I decorated, made cookies, replaced 150 light bulbs on two Christmas trees (I still haven't told that story yet), walked around downtown, went to the ARTC Christmas performance, and to the Butlers' for Christmas, but that all seems like it went by in seconds. Maybe the best thing about work turned out to be how the hours crawled by any time I was in the office. 😕 I can't say it's been a bad year because we had only one scare and that ended up as spending the night in the emergency room. James did have to have those two skin cancers removed, one from each side of his face. Glad that, after a false start, the Plaquinil Dr. Salazar prescribed for James did work and he's not in such terrible arthritis pain, that the new blood pressure meds helped as well, and that just by tweaking his work snacks we reduced his A1C numbers. I want to keep this positive vibe up, because most of this year I feel like I've been an emotional wreck. I am not over the car accident last year: I hate driving anywhere anymore, even if it's to Lidl to get some of their amazing "dinner rolls," and, as James will (somewhat irritatedly) tell you, I am hyper-nervous when we drive in traffic. I am so glad I do not commute anywhere any longer (especially since traffic on both of my previous routes to work grows worse every day, and each nightly news show is lit up with the horrible accidents every day). I don't seem to get any comfort out of my crafts or writing any longer; it's only when I can disappear into a book with that great soother of souls, instrumental Christmas music, in the background, that I feel any peace at all. I feel like a lot of times I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I spent Sunday prepping a new journal; sometimes it seems as it is the sole thing that keeps me sane. Yesterday I started writing out a "20 for 2020" goal (re Gretchen Rubin's "Happier" podcast) and ended up with only seventeen items. I also answered the questions in the back of this year's journal and my answers came out pretty sad. Today I slept nearly eight hours and already I'm in the mood for a nap! » Friday, December 27, 2019
St. John's Day
 It ended up being a quiet day because James is having some trouble with his left hand. It appears to be swollen, so when we went to Kaiser today to pick up my med refills, we tried to get in at the Express Clinic, but it was closed (so what's the use of having it and advertising it?). Our only alternative was going to Urgent Care, so we decided to try a cold pack instead.James said he was going to hurt whether he was out or at home, so we stopped in at Hobby Lobby, where I got a few discount items, one to make a gift. By then it was after two, so we went to Tin Drum and picked up something for lunch to bring home. Tucker, of course, immediately appeared. I decided to put a movie on: The Last Jedi, which we had, but still hadn't watched. (I thought about us going to Rise of Skywalker, but James basically can't get through a movie anymore, and even a bargain matinee would cost us both $30! Wow! I was thinking about seeing Greta Gerwig's Little Women, but even the cheap theatre is almost $8 for a matinee. I think I'll wait for it on Redbox or Netflix.) Well, it sure took its sweet time getting to the point! Great how they squeezed ninety minutes of plot into a two and a half hour film! I cannot for the life of me understand why the stupid fanboys hated Rose Pico so much that they harassed Kelly Marie Tran into getting off social media. For me, she was the best part of the film: the ordinary person just in a little awe of the heroic rebellion figures she'd heard about, thrown into the actual action. Also glad to see Poe got to do a lot more in this film, and BB8 turned out to be a downright miracle worker. » Thursday, December 26, 2019
Boxing Day
Thursday morning was a definite case of "F Troop back to normal, sir!" with the additional chore of laundry that had to be done since my laundry day is Wednesday. James was out of Tylenol and mandarin orange cups, so after breakfasting and dog walking, we were off to Costco. We also picked up sliced cheese and checked out the books and the new magazines—yes, Christmas is over: TurboTax is out front and center! From Costco we went to Publix to pick up the twofers, lunchmeat, yogurt, and the other usuals, and came home. We went out so late that by the time we put the groceries up, it was after two, but I wanted to go fill up my car and check after-Christmas sales, so I left James to his computer and went out for a couple of hours.I decided that I would choose whether I got the gasoline first or last if my low gas light came on before I got to the turn for Costco, and sure enough, it popped on as I turned on Greers Chapel Road. So it was gasoline first, then down to JoAnn, where I got three nice fat rolls of wrapping paper for $4. Stopped at Michaels, but nothing worth buying, and neither store had any bows. I could go to At Home (formerly Garden Ridge) or I could go to Barnes & Noble after that, and you can guess which I chose. Lucky I did, because they had all their featured books (the big double row of books they now keep in the front of the store) fifty percent off, and I was able to get Nathalia Holt's The Queens of Animation, about the women who worked at Disney. I loved her Rise of the Rocket Girls! It's on my list of favorite books of 2019. Was home by 4:30 and in a little while James made dinner with two of the pork chops we got for Christmas—his mom and sister sent us a box from Omaha Steaks: some great-tasting hamburgers we already ate three off, a half dozen steaks, a half dozen pork chops, some hot dogs, and even some little desserts. All yum and nothing to dust. An inspired gift. » Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Christmas After All
 During the afternoon I made a short jaunt to Lidl to pick up milk and bread, including a loaf for Christmas dinner. Afternoon dinner was a bit of a disappointment. We usually have macaroni and "gravy" on Christmas Eve, and I made some sauce yesterday, but the boneless pork ribs I used were very lean and hard, and it seemed overcooked. Something fun happened later in the day. A few days ago I was listening to a "Happier With Gretchen Rubin" podcast when she talked about something called a "chaffle," which is a waffle made with one egg and shredded cheese, the ultimate in low carb. I told James about it, and he was intrigued enough to order a small, one-waffle waffle iron from Amazon. It arrived and for supper he made "chaffles" with Swiss cheese and some with cheddar. I tried one of the Swiss. I really hate the taste of cooked eggs, so I poured on the maple syrup alà Addie Mills and found it bearable. Maybe I'll have some eggs once in a while via chaffles. I had Christmas specials on all day and we watched The Homecoming at night. James got so busy with the chaffles that we never did go out and see Christmas lights, and it had to be an early night due to his teleworking next day. I remember all those Christmas mornings I was up in the "wee smalls" because I just couldn't wait for Christmas morning! Since I couldn't get up my mom and dad early, I would gather up my stuffed animals instead and have Christmas with them (I would buy them new ribbons at Garr's Fabrics every year). But now I'm an adult, and the best gift is sleep! So James was at his post at seven, and I slept until after eight. Spent the morning prepping and then the afternoon cooking up the green bean casserole and the baked maple butter carrots I was taking to the Butlers. We had lunch about one and then opened gifts. James gave me three books, a Babylon 5 guide I didn't have, the Rivers of London novella The Furthest Station, and Tip of the Iceberg, a man who travels around Alaska. He also found a new Uno game for me, Uno Flip. This has a second side of differently colored cards that you play when you get a "Flip" card in the regular deck. I bought him a Jethro Tull performance DVD, a book on the sinking of the Bismarck, and one of the two new "1632" alternative history stories. "The fids" also "bought" us seasons 4-6 of Perry Mason so now we have the entire series (which even CBS All Access doesn't!). About three I gathered up the food and the gifts and drove to the Butlers' house for Christmas dinner. James would join us after he finished work. It was a lovely dinner, but Ron and Lin always have a lovely Christmas for all of our "family by choice." Each of the dishes was made with love by someone. Charles cooked a 27-pound turkey. Alex made a roast and Clair a pot roast with delicious gravy. The Butlers bought a Honeybaked ham and Ron made his killer mashed potatoes and Lin made pies. Then there was a big relish tray, corn pudding, the French bread I brought, and biscuits, and challah bread, and our carrots and beans. The green beans came particularly well even though I never did anything like this before. James walked me through it: saute some onions, then I made a mix of cream of celery soup, chopped up fresh celery into it along with slivered almonds, and then layered the onions and the frozen beans, pouring the mixture on top of them, and sprinkling the top with French's french fried onion rings, baking until it was hot. Clair particularly liked it with with the cream of celery soup. Then we talked awhile and had dessert, and talked more and did presents. I opened two and saved another two until James got there, which he did rather late. Almost everyone had left before he was able to arrive and eat some of the food I saved him, but mostly to talk with those who were left. Helped tidy up a bit and then left Ron and Lin to some post-Christmas peace and quiet. Luckily our usual Thursday-Saturday weekend was upon us and we could stay up a little while to digest our dinners. Labels: Christmas, Christmas music, food, friends, gifts, radio, shopping » Sunday, December 22, 2019
Christmas Comes Marching In
I still can never understand it.Look at it. It's almost Christmas. Summer went by like a constipated sloth wearing a body cast. The weather finally turned cool (and not until October 3, for God's sake!) and since then it's moved like the Indy 500, days just tumbling over days in their haste to go by: leaves turning, Hallowe'en, Veteran's Day skidding into Thanksgiving, with Christmas decorations already up everywhere, and suddenly it's less than ten days until the 25th. Which is why after popping into Publix on Thursday to do the weekly shopping we returned home, I obeyed the spinning clock, pulled the divider out of the oven, prepped the dining room table, and commenced to baking wine biscuits. This took all afternoon and filled the house with a pleasant odor. I managed to finish one bottle of hearty burgundy without having to start another. Then at suppertime James practiced his culinary alchemy and we had turkey wings done in the air fryer basted with maple teriyaki sauce. To say this was divine is wayyyyyyy underpraising it. Oh, goodness, that was delicious, and eating them did not make me ill the way eating baked ones usually do, probably because all the fat leached out into the air fryer, leaving just crispy skin and juicy meat behind. Thursday evening we also watched the new version of A Christmas Carol with Scrooge played by Guy Pearce, who is only in his fifties. This helped bring to life Dickens' description that Scrooge was aged by his miserliness rather than years. The producer of this is the guy who does the often bloody and violent Peaky Blinders series, and he commented that most versions make A Christmas Carol so cozy that you don't see what genuinely hard times Dickens was railing about. He wanted to make a Carol that more reflected the type of dreadful life the poor had in Victorian London. Well, the cast was excellent, it all looked good, and it did really bring home the horrors of poverty in that era. But in this version Scrooge isn't just a guy who decided money was more important than people (something that must have come from his father sending him to such cheap boarding schools), he's a sociopath made that way by a brutal father who basically traded Scrooge's innocence for free tuition. Scrooge isn't just greedy, he's damaged psychologically, and that shows in his character; what he does in this version of the Carol isn't just unfeeling, it's downright cruel (especially what he inflicts on Mrs. Cratchit). So when he does see the error of his ways at the end, it's not the happy reclamation of a soul. The end is a real downer instead, where it's implied that instead of other Scrooges that can be reclaimed, that there's just more of them and the spirits have more work to do, basically that it's an endless job that will never be finished. We aren't welcoming the one Prodigal Son back to the fold, we're instead emphasizing all the lost souls that will never be reclaimed. It's not hopeful, it's just more pessimistic. It's also been tarted up to give a couple of female characters more to do. Intriguing idea to make Scrooge's sister one of the ghosts, but she just pops up that she's always "been interested in science" in the dialog like that updates her somehow, but seems to be there for no reason for that choice but to note that women were actually intelligent back then but were not given a chance to show it. It's Mrs. Cratchit's role that's been expanded the most, but the fact that she is played by a woman of color and then has some special connection with the spirit world smacks of stereotypes of Caribbean women and voodoo. It's like the stereotypical convention that Native Americans all have some type of spirit guide who can save them in times of crisis, a clichè that even made it into Star Trek: Voyager. So: looked good, excellent cast, but very grim, no hope, very bloody at times (check out the decapitated pet mouse). Would love one that kept the reality of the time with the story of the book! Very surprised that I woke up on Friday morning with no nightmares after that one. (The intrusive and badly timed commercial breaks for no movie I would ever want to see except for Rise of Skywalker probably helped.) I had a good Hallmark coupon and wanted to add to a gift that was woefully inadequate. So James and I packed up the truck and headed for Amy's Hallmark at Town Center, where I found something quite nice, and also, with a second coupon, a gift to put away. We then went into the Publix next door (mostly to use the rest room, but also to pick up something we'd forgotten), and then stopped at Barnes & Noble to spend all of James' huge Christmas bonus, a $5 Starbuck's gift card, on a peppermint hot chocolate and a brownie. Saturday we had a busy but fun day. We went to Lidl for bread, milk, and juice in the morning, then once home did a few other chores. Cut it really close to the time we had to leave (didn't realize it was so late), but got on chat with Verizon and cancelled those stupid Hum devices for the car. They're costing us $30 month and James' has never worked with his truck. In fact, he ended up getting a new one, which they made him pay for, and it still didn't work, and I was incensed when I discovered they wanted to charge us a termination fee for the "new" account. We told them we didn't want a new account when we had to get a new unit; we wanted to put the new unit on the old number, but apparently they didn't do that. Anyway, I got the dude to waive the termination fee, and we got the 55+ Unlimited plan so James doesn't have to worry about using his Surface at work and eating up all the data. (Unfortunately this doesn't seem to make us eligible for the free Disney+. Ah, well, I already pay for three streaming services we almost never use.) We had supper at Fried Tomato Buffet and tanked up the truck at Costco up the hill, then set out on the freeway for the city of Tucker and specifically the Tucker Recreation Center, where the Atlanta Radio Theatre was putting on this year's version of An Atlanta Christmas. The rec center is an old school, and the show was in the auditorium, and we enjoyed this year's version with all of our old favorites, including "Are You Lonely Tonight," "Davy Crockett Christmas," and "USO Christmas." Stopped to talk to Clair and Daniel and Ron and Lin afterwards. On the way in I'd noticed there was a tiny little white building set in front of the rec center on brick pilings. As we came out, used the flashlight on my phone to see what it was. In front the rec center people had planted a butterfly garden, with signs letting you know what each thing was. Turned out the "little building," which James thought might be 15 feet by 20, was an old courthouse! The "Browning Courthouse," specifically, from Tucker, original structure built in 1860 (!) and used until 1977! Wow. They must have had to sit on each other's laps! We managed to beat the rain home and Tucker had his walk that did not turn into "a bath." And then "click!" and our weekend was over. Labels: autumn, baking, chores, Christmas, events, food, friends, gifts, holidays, movies, seasons, shopping, summer » Saturday, December 14, 2019
Anticlimactic Saturday
Today I didn't oversleep, but I was aggravated to discover that I hadn't taken my pills again last night. This is the second Friday night in a row. This means I not only didn't take my heart pill, but I didn't take my fenofibrate, which controls more than my cholesterol. Stupid.So I moved deliberately this morning. I continued wrapping gifts. James left to go to his meeting. I had a sandwich for lunch. Once I could step away from the bathroom for more than a half hour, I went to the annual Mable House Christmas craft fair. I was a bit disappointed. Either it was very small this year, only the big hall full, and then a back meeting room with auction items (oh, how I would have liked that book lectern!); last year the two other meeting rooms had vendors in them as well, so there were a lot fewer choices. Like Apple Annie, mostly jewelry. Some ceramic products. Homemade jams. Someone had homemade candy bars. I was in and out in fifteen minutes. Stopped at Aldi on the way home, but no nifty gadgets, and I was feeling rather limp, so I came home. Finished a gift, finished wrapping gifts, and cleaned up the spare room, but was exhausted and lay down on the futon instead of putting up the woodland tree now that I had the bureau cleared. James called on his way home and asked if I still wanted to go out. I did, but I didn't. He brought home Chinese food from Dragon instead, and we had chocolate M&M peppermint cookies for dessert while watching White Christmas, and then I watched Lassie Christmas episodes for the rest of the night. And, yes, I took my pills tonight! At seven o'clock, in fact. Labels: crafts, events, movies, shopping, sickness, television » Friday, December 13, 2019
Food and Friends and Food
Since we went out for fun yesterday we had to grocery shop today, and of all days I picked to oversleep! My alarm had gone off at eight, and I'd shut it off, sure I would wake up at nine or 9:30. But it was 10:30 before I'd awakened, and I had to skin into my clothes, walk the dog quickly, and then we were off to Publix in the car, since it was spoiling for rain. We had to do this doublequick as we had to be at lunch at 12:30. So we made it through Publix in record time, even with having a nice chat with the lady who helped us with our groceries, and even got home in time to put things away, and use the "facilities."West Cobb Diner was crowded on this chilly, damp, and gloomy day, but they managed to squeeze the seven of us in (the Spiveys, Aubrey, Juanita, Jessie, and us) and we had a nice dinner. Jessie has a 3D printer and brought in the model of Hogwarts castle and grounds she had done. The level of detail is phenomenal. She had started to print an R2-D2 but the printer came unbalanced on the second day (you read that correctly) of printing out the dome top and she had to stop it. We were talking about tiny houses and a new thing that they are trying in Mexico: 3D printing small houses of concrete (yes, the 3D printer extrudes concrete instead of plastic). Aubrey also got some additional hours on her church job, which is great. She'll get extra money and still have time to do manuscript editing freelance. On the way home, James and I stopped at two different Lowes because I am down to about 20 replacement bulbs and I wanted more. Well, the Lowes Christmas stuff is already on discount and all the replacement midget lights were gone! I did get some of the clear C7 incandescents for the candles downstairs and clear bulbs for the nightlights. Otherwise they are so expensive. We were heading for Costco, but it was so rainy and miserable we made a U-turn on the East-West Connector and went to Lidl instead. Picked up bread, milk, chocolate, proscuitto for a couple of lunches (on sale), juice. They were sold out of ground turkey again, so I got James ground beef instead. I went into the spare bedroom and wrapped James' gifts because I knew he had to wrap something for the Secret Santa game at his club party tomorrow, and I didn't want him to accidentally come upon them. After Hawaii Five-0 ended, he did his wrapping, including my gift, and I spent the rest of the night wrapping the gifts we need for the Lawsons' party on Sunday. Was very glad to crawl into bed when the time came! Labels: Christmas, events, food, friends, shopping, television » Thursday, December 12, 2019
Birthday Girl
My birthday (#64 on the Hit Parade) was actually yesterday, but since James was at work for ten hours, there wasn't exactly time for mutual celebrating. Besides, Wednesday is my laundry day, and that's inviolate except for emergencies. However, once I had the second load of clothes in the dryer, I did go out. I was going to stop at Barnes & Noble, then have lunch at Tin Drum.I did stop at the bookstore, but while checking out the store was musing that a couple of gifts that I had seemed a little skimpy, so instead of buying lunch I bought two small things to add to the gifts. I also bought a new journal for 2020, even though I ordered one from the publisher two weeks ago. I've never gotten any acknowledgment that it was mailed. If I get it, I'll save it for 2021, if not I'll dispute the charge with my credit card company. I'd rather go to Tin Drum next week when I have an extra protein anyway. That way I can make two meals of it. On the way home I stopped at a couple of Dollar Tree stores looking for small 6x6 calendars. The small calendars you see sold in stores are 7x7 and don't fit next to my computer; I use one to track James' payday and tax/insurance bills. I suppose I can use the one on my computer, but it seems to have lost all the birthdays I put on it, so I don't know if I want to. No dice. I didn't find one until the last days of December last year. By then I was hungry and headed home; as a treat watched four Christmas episodes of WSBK-TV38 (Boston)'s best show ever, the irrepressible Ask the Manager. Realized Cliff Allen's been gone for almost 21 years. 😥 I made macaroni "with the gravy" for supper and enjoyed every morsel, as I just had fruit and cheese when I got in. Today we had an enjoyable day together. We picked up James' missing meds at Kaiser, then drove into Buckhead with a Barnes & Noble 25 percent off coupon that popped up this morning. The Buckhead B&N is next to a Publix, so we were able to drop off our bag for Toys for Tots before perusing the store. I was looking for the new Bryant and May mystery, but even though it's available on Amazon, not a sign of it in B&N. I got Philip Pullman's book about writing instead. James found a new David Weber book and three aviation calendars which he'll use to dress up his cubicle at work. Then he took me out for a birthday lunch. There's a new place to eat downtown, the Marietta Square Market, basically a small version of Faneuil Hall in Boston, which is full of small restaurants. This has about ten different eating places, or maybe a dozen, including Cousins Maine Lobster. I was jonesing for a lobster roll, and they had one with butter instead of mayonnaise. Of course when I got there I noticed they carried another entry that was a lobster tail and tater tots. I have this tater tot thing. Alas, the lobster tail was tiny—I didn't know they could harvest lobsters that small! James had a huge portion of lamb curry and tandoori rice and some potatoes plus a spinach kind of mush, and most of it came home for a lunch. They also have a barbecue place, Cuban, burgers, pizza, sushi, Cajun, and more, plus a breakfast place/bakery. We got dessert from there when we were done. Got home just in time to miss the rain, did the usual: news, Young Sheldon, last night's Forged in Fire, and more news. Labels: birthday, books, food, shopping, television » Saturday, December 07, 2019
Friends and Food (and A Little Bit of Christmas, Right This Very Minute...)
We had Hair Day today; a very small crowd, only eight of us, and John Campbell, who popped in for a haircut and then headed out again. We had the sobering news that a friend has to have a cancer removed on Tuesday. It is outpatient surgery, but that doesn't make the diagnosis any better.For lunch we had sandwich fixings and a little salad that James made, and goodies from the relish tray Mel and Phyllis brought. For dessert Ron and Lin bought a birthday cake that ended up being just for Lin and I, the other December "babies" having not made it this month. "A good time was had by all," I think! We finished up early because Sheri was having people over for the LSU vs. Georgia game. Lunch perked me up, but I was feeling decidedly under the weather because like an idiot I forgot to take my pills last night, so I was not only stuffy, but my heart was hammering at the least movement because I'd missed my atenolol (and I can't take it in the morning because then I wouldn't be able to take it at night). I told James I'd take it easy for a couple of hours and see if we could go out to eat, but at suppertime my stomach was still dicey. Instead we had turkey soup for supper. We really screwed up with the turkey carcass Juanita gave us; we put too much water in. It basically tasted like poultry flavored water, with water predominating. We usually cook two packets of ramen noodles when we have them, but only use one packet of flavoring, so James tossed an oriental flavor packet in and made it just right, not too salty, not too bland. I had it with elbow noodles only and James added veg and canned chicken to his. In the afternoon I did finish decorating the living room, with James' help, and then brought the empty box downstairs and put all the empties back in the closet. Just have one more box to empty, the decorations for the library and the lower hallway. I cleared out in the library to have a clear palette, so to speak. Spent the evening watching The Bishop's Wife and then the Pearl Harbor episode of The Waltons. Labels: Christmas decorations, cleaning, food, friends, movies, sickness, television » Friday, December 06, 2019
Delights, Dessert, and When's Dinner?
Well, it was a busy but profitable and happy day.First, we did sleep well, which is always a good thing. James got up first and I came muzzily back to the world a little while later. With dressing, morning prep, breakfast, and dog walking behind me, we girded up our loins and headed out the door. As we drove to our first destination, I was busily slapping return address labels on the Christmas cards. James stopped for gas at Sam's Club, and I ran in to buy some Clorox2, which was on a good sale (saving $4.00), and as I trudged to the back of the store I passed bags of Halo mandarin oranges, also on sale. The oranges turned out to be providential, as you'll see! First we were headed for the Apple Annie Craft Show, held at the Catholic Church of St. Ann on Roswell Road. We had a really nice time going from classroom to classroom looking at all the artists and their work, although there was an overabundance of jewelry artisans. Not that any of the items were bad to look at: all of it was lovely, including some intricate bracelets of chain mail, many gemstone bracelets, and some pendants that looked like landscape scenes but were just really different minerals curved within the stones. There are always things I love but cannot afford, but I don't begrudge the artists what they charge for them; having done crafts I know these gorgeous items take so much time to work. I did buy some of the lavender spray from the Wolf Creek people which I use to scent the bedsheets; it's supposed to help with sleep, and it does smell sweet. And even with all the little carry bags I have, I bought something from the missions sale: a brightly multicolored bag with a llama on the front, made in Bolivia. It will fit a tablet or even two in it, and even has small pockets. James had his fun in the nursery school bake sale room: we got about six desserts, including mint chocolate cookies, peanut butter cups, pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, etc. Also bought some toffee candy and two squares of fudge from the mission bake sale. Of course we stopped in the church before leaving, to say a prayer. It was cool and dark in the sanctuary, and I prayed for everyone I knew and then some. I find such peace there. (We had also parked the truck in the handicapped parking spaces, right next to the church's Christmas tree lot. It smelled divine! Miss the spicy pine of a real tree, but they make me too sick to want to have one. So, with all the baked goods we would have been fixed for dessert for a week, but then we followed that up with a trip to Trader Joe's. We always go in December to stock up on their only-for-Christmas goodies like peppermint bark, peppermint puffs, and the piece de la resistance, the Candy Cane Jo-Jos. Jo-Jos are Trader Joe's version of an Oreo, and at Christmas the creamy interior is studded with candy cane pieces. They are wonderful, with the sharp chill sting of peppermint in every bite. We bought a box each of the items I mentioned, and then an extra set of the peppermint Jo-Jos and the peppermint bark to put away for darkest July and a taste of heaven when summer has gotten on our last nerve. We came home by way of Kaiser, where James needed to have bloodwork done for the nephrologist to make sure the blood pressure medication wasn't messing up any of his numbers*, and to pick up nearly $150 worth of prescriptions (and two were missing!). Oy! The oranges I grabbed at Sam's served us in good stead, because we never did get lunch! The moment we got in the door I started some chicken roasting (the thighs we got at Publix yesterday) which we had with chicken-flavored noodles. I also put some Christmas things on the hearth and on the media shelf, and put up the little "ethnic Christmas" display in our bedroom (the Scots and Italian Santas and ceramic trees and other little things). Chilled out for the rest of the afternoon with The Incredible Dr. Pol, the news (oh, well, you can't really chill out with the news, can you, not these days)?, the nightly game shows, and finally Hawaii Five-0. (*Well, hurrah, bloodwork looks to be okay! In fact, his A1C dropped from 9.7 to 7.6! I guess exchanging granola bars for snacks at work for nuts and hummus on crackers and snack portions of cheese did the trick.) Labels: Christmas, crafts, food, health, shopping, television » Thursday, December 05, 2019
We Need a Little Christmas
It has been a "kringly" week as I've been having a good go at prepping the house for Christmas. Sunday I put up the outside lights and the candoliers and inside door wreaths. On Monday I put finishing touches on the porch, put out the wooden reindeer, and put all the Thanksgiving and fall back into their boxes.Tuesday was crazy busy because I went hopscotching from Home Depot to Hobby Lobby to Lowes to Walmart in an effort to buy another timer and Christmas replacement lights. I found both, thankfully, because the project I started Monday night still needed completing on Tuesday and I'd almost run out of parts. (More about this in another post.) Once home, since I had the dining room cleared, I at least put up the ceppo. Wednesday I went full blast decorating the dining room and the kitchen, and putting up the Rudolph tree in the hallway and some Christmas items in the spare room (I couldn't put up the woodland tree because most of the spare room was scattered with gifts I needed to wrap). Along with all this I managed to clean house and do the laundry, and work around James on Wednesday because he had low blood sugar during the night and wasn't really safe to go into work. It was a good thing I was restless this morning, because I had things to do. Post breakfast and dog-walking, I wrapped and boxed gifts going to three different locations. Then, so not to wait till later when it got more crowded, we did the weekly shopping at Publix. There weren't many good BOGOs this week, but there were chicken thighs. After we brought everything home and put it up, I wrapped and stocked the final box and we headed to the Smyrna post office. We stopped for takeout at Hibachi Grill instead of messing with lunch, and I printed labels and prepped the Christmas cards to mail. The last thing I did was put up our 1940s wartime Christmas village. It always makes me smile when it's finally put together, and I wish I could pop into it to just experience the holidays in a different era. Been running through Christmas specials this week as well: "Merry Gentlemen" from All Creatures Great and Small, the Christmas episodes of The Good Life and To the Manor Born, Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Christmas Story. More to come when I've got a minute... Labels: Christmas, food, movies, shopping, television » Saturday, November 30, 2019
No-Rush Shopping and Second Thanksgiving
Friday was very, very weird, because, for years I have been getting up early to hit specials on Black Friday. Oh, my goodness, you may say, you actually get in line at o'dark thirty, or brave the crush at Walmart?Hon, I wouldn't go near Walmart on Black Friday with a twenty foot pole. Or near a mall or any of the big stores. My only daring feat has been going into Best Buy for the past eight or so years to get the latest season of The Big Bang Theory which is usually on sale for $8.99 or $9.99 on DVD. (It doesn't appear to have been sale priced this year, probably because it was the final season. Well, then they can wait on me to buy it, too.) I usually found myself at Michaels or JoAnn, or more often Office Max/Depot or Staples waiting on cool stuff like cheap thumb drives, printers, and once a paper shredder. Then I'd come home and fall asleep again. This year it was strange to sleep until eight, and also a good thing, too, because my mercurial digestive system had decided it didn't like something in yesterday's smorgasbord and had kept me up until 2 a.m., with only this year's new Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas book to keep me occupied. All I wanted to do is get some sleep after all that. We'd been trying to find out all week if Barnes & Noble was going to do its usual Black Friday thing of having all the magazines 30 percent off, but they wouldn't get a clue, so after breakfast and dog walk we went out there. Skunked. I did buy the magazines I wanted, but with the discount I usually get a few more issues of "Christmas porn" (all those exquisitely decorated homes that I don't understand how people afford). Not this time. I did use my coupons to get two paperbacks on discounts. It was the lamest Black Friday sale ever at B&N; usually they have a nice assortment of coffee table books half off, the Taaschen photo albums for $10 each, and some good sales on hardbacks. This year all we got was half price on the B&N classic editions (most of which are in the public domain) and a few assorted "bestsellers" and some political screeds. (James Patterson Book-of-the-Month Club, your December offering is here!) They didn't even have Christmas books on sale. We went to both the Akers Mill store and the Town Center store to see if there was anything different at the second place. Eh. I bought a gift to put away. We also went to Sam's Club to look at something for the house, but we didn't know which to get, so we just came home with milk, a discount pack of round steaks, and a multipack of reading glasses for James. We got six meals out of the steaks, and had one for supper. Have I mentioned how well James cooks? These were so good! Today Mr. Digestive System decided he was still in a snit about something and, although we made it to Publix to do the regular shopping, we had to head directly home. I was mostly sick until a little after two when things improved and we finally packed up to go to Alice's house for Second Thanksgiving. We are getting to be like hobbits in our old age. 😀 Alice actually hosted and made potatoes and the gravy; Juanita cooked the turkey, and folks brought sides and desserts. No owls tonight, just the people down the street from them having a party with a bouncy house and Christmas lights. We ate, conversed, watched the Alabama vs. Auburn game, talked about our pets, ate more. I just ate a little turkey and potatoes and left the ham, which may have been the earlier culprit; don't know, but we quit having ham because it's so salty and my tummy may not have liked it. Saw lots of Christmas lights up on the way home. Hoping I'm feeling well enough to put some up tomorrow. Dish has all their Christmas music channels on and we listened to Classical Holiday until it was time for the news. Christmas music is even lovelier when accompanied by budgie song. Labels: books, Christmas music, DVDs, food, friends, magazines, shopping » Thursday, November 28, 2019
A Thanksgiving Feast With a Side of Owl...
» Saturday, November 23, 2019
Just Another Rainy Saturday
So, we were pretty much confined to the house unless we wanted to go to a grocery store or somewhere like Walmart where they have electric carts. James made more breakfast burritos, I did a couple of small chores including cleaning out the bottom of the refrigerator and the two bins.Mostly messed with PBS Passport (which has the worst menu ever; it will only show you 100 things on your watchlist and I have many more than that, having gone through all the regional specials and cherry-picked stuff I wanted to see: a North Carolina show that focuses on history, Christmas specials, a couple of food history series, etc) and caught up with This Old House (I have them set to record on the DVR, but GPB and WPBA both mess up the programming by showing it as The This Old House Hour). I also watched what I thought would be a tour of the Penn Dutch are, but is more a show about where to stay when vacationing with kids. It was quite a pleasant little show, though, and I don't regret watching it. Also watched a special about Austrian Christmas markets. I have seen several of these, and this one was not my favorite. The host was a blonde young woman who narrated the show as if we were 10-year-olds having to be given a primer course in Austrian Christmas customs. ("So, in Austria the Christ Child brings the gifts? And they get them on Christmas Eve?" [eyeroll]) Really gorgeous items being sold, and tasty looking pastry, which of course she had to drool over, and there were shuddering reactions to Krampus. Anyway, wish there was some way, any way, to put these in order on Passport. Really, really bad interface. Netflix has had ordered interfaces for freaking years. Get yourself a better web programmer, guys. Really. James made chicken wings for supper, but we bought them by the pound rather than by the each and there weren't really enough. Spent the evening watching Father Brown, A Place in the Country, and the Britcoms. And, once more, weekend has gone "poof!" Labels: chores, food, television » Friday, November 22, 2019
A Friday of Varied Events
Encouraged by a weather report that predicted a cloudy but dry day, we slept until nine and then went through the usual morning routine, although I had to cut the dog walk short for a call of nature. However, this gave me enough time to write out some Thanksgiving cards and address and stamp them. These came with us as we left for lunch a little early so that we could swing past the Austell Road Cobb County complex so I could renew the registration on my car and get this year's tag. Even with this detour, we arrived at this week's lunch venue in plenty of time and had a nice long meal and convo with Alice, Ken, Aubrey, Mel, and Phyllis. We were eating at Okinawa and discovered that Aubrey's good friend from her school years, Kayla, was working there and had just been promoted to head server. Alice was keeping warm by the window, as she had come home from Conjuration with a cold. Nothing worse than good ol' fashioned con crud. We talked about everything from the weather to the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.Lunch broke up after two, and I had James swing by the Mableton post office to drop off the Thanksgiving cards. Instead of coming back up Floyd Road/Hurt Road to return to the East-West Connector, we did a slight variation on the directions being given to us by the GPS and drove a street called Fontaine Road. We're so used to being surrounded by suburbs that we are surprised when we find the small places in Cobb that are still country-like. The road leading to Fontaine was filled with small, older homes, but Fontaine itself paralleled an old railroad line and looked almost like the road we take up to Helen, GA, with widely-spaced homes, some with stables and acreage behind them, and many stands of trees, all in various stages of autumn color. The railroad tracks were out of sight in a little valley at the right side of the road. It was like a little five-minute vacation in the middle of our day. We were headed for Barnes & Noble to get the cocoa we got cheated out of last weekend when the Acworth Books-a-Million showed up missing in action. The doors were wide open and they had been doing some rearranging inside, with big upright shelves of the newest and recommended books right up front. Before we had our cocoa we wandered around both floors, checking out the magazines (but I'm not buying any this weekend, as they usually have the magazines on discount on Black Friday), and then the books. I did find a book that was discounted, so picked that up (a humorous memoir about a woman who is an introvert attempting to act as an extrovert) and a paperback involving a paranormal mystery. After surveying the reading material and getting ideas for the few gifts we have left to purchase, we sat and had peppermint cocoa and shared a chocolate chunk cookie. No dessert for us tonight! James wrapped up the power chair before we left the bookstore and a good thing, because we ran through a rainshower on the way home—say, what happened to that dry day we were supposed to have?—but luckily it was barely spitting when we pulled into the driveway. So we got the chair put up safely. Spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening watching some things on Netflix. First up was a British special narrated by Stephen Fry about the elaborate courting behavior of several types of tropical birds, including birds of paradise and bowerbirds. The narrative was very tongue-in-cheek and the birds beautiful to look at, but with the most extraordinary courtship rituals: dancing, decorating elaborate nests, even a type of bird where the male has a male "wing man" to help him court his lady friend. While James was cooking up some burritos for his breakfasts, I watched the documentary Harry and Snowman, the story of which is told in Elizabeth Letts' The Eighty Dollar Champion. Snowman, a former plow horse, was on his way to become dog food when a riding instructor named Harry DeLeyer bought him for eighty dollars. The horse turned out to be a natural jumper who won prestigious jumping contests in the late 1950s against younger, fitter horses. It wasn't the first time I had met Snowman. He appeared in a childhood book I still have, More Than Courage by Patrick Lawson, stories of real-life dogs and horses, where I also first read about "Sergeant" Stubby of WWI, Chips the war dog (whose real story was much better than the Disney telefilm), Roman war dogs, the famous Lipizzaners, police dogs, race horses, rescue dogs—and even a chapter on performing dogs and horses that talked about Lassie, Fury, and Rin Tin Tin. Later we watched a series of short Disney films, including little shorts based on Rapunzel and Frozen, the enchanting nearly black-and-white "Paperman," the Prep and Landing "Secret Santa" short, etc. Totally delightful! The Mickey Mouse cartoon made of half vintage animation and half CGI was very inventive. Labels: animals, books, Disney, friends, holidays, seasons, shopping, television, weather » Thursday, November 21, 2019
All Groceried Out
Had a nice sleep-in this morning which must have relieved James, who probably hasn't gotten six hours of sleep a night for the last four nights. We had a leisurely breakfast and I walked the dog before we headed off for Publix. The sky was so blue it hurt, but the temperatures had risen quickly. We just had flannel shirts over short sleeves, but we needed brimmed hats!Thanksgiving is still a week away—my goodness, that soon!—but Publix is bursting with Christmas, a whole island of baking goodies and red and green, and silver and gold trims. We did some stocking up for both holidays, BOGO flour for my baking, and veg for our Thanksgiving contributions at this year's "Friendsgiving." Bounced around the store from one end to the other to pick everything up. We put up the perishables and then headed to Sam's Club. We were planning to wait till next week, but James was out of cheese and he's going to binge-make burritos on Saturday when it rains, so it was today instead. Probably for the best since next Saturday everyone will be in a shopping frenzy. Even for a Thursday the place was crowded. We gaped over the newest televisions posed directly near the entrance. One Vizio was running a 3-D looking loop that showed off its picture to best advantage. It was quite lovely. Also checked out security systems and new Fitbit smartwatches before going on to what we needed (and could afford): coupon items (Reynolds Wrap, Mrs. Dash, Splenda packets) and not (bulk cheese slices, a bag of Halos). I was going to get milk, but it was more expensive than Lidl. It was around two by then and we stopped at Krystal to get a cheap lunch: two little cheeseburgers for James, two plain "pups" for me, and a little bag of tater tots. Just right! But since it was so late, we didn't bother going anywhere else except to Lidl for the usual: bread, milk, chocolate, elbow macaroni for a steal, a big bag of small Granny Smith apples, almond windmill cookies for a treat. The day had completely changed while we were out. From blue and sunny when we left this morning, white clouds then grey clouds crept in, until the sun was just a brighter grey sphere in the cloudy sky. I'd left my flannel shirt behind when we dropped the stuff from Sam's off, and it was almost a little too chilly by the time we got home. Found a surprise on the front porch: a new griddle that I'd ordered from Amazon Vine. We had nothing thawed for dinner, so we trickled cold water on two of the lamb steaks I'd gotten the other day at Nam Dae Mun. In the meantime, we "killed a frog" and finally cleaned off the top shelf in the fridge, which has been a collecting ground for a mixture of jellies, jams, and sauces. We dumped a couple of things like the congealed mint jelly, and then James scrubbed off the shelf (it's too tall for me to reach the back of) and then we wiped off the good jars and put them back, sauces to the right, jellies and jams to the left, with the Romano cheese in front. I've been cleaning out the fridge one shelf at a time all week and now the inside looks quite smart. James took a nearly empty jar of garlic jelly and another nearly empty jar of balsamic jelly with onion, and made a finishing sauce for the lamb, cooking it on the new griddle. So good! And the pieces were large enough to supply leftovers for a lunch. Mnnn. Lamb sandwich! Spent the rest of the evening playing games and watching the Holiday Baking Championship on Food Network. Labels: Christmas, cleaning, cooking, food, holidays, shopping, television, Thanksgiving, weather » Saturday, November 16, 2019
72 Hours of Time Flying
Seriously, will you tell me how a three-day weekend zips by with all the speed of an SST when a three-day workweek lasts about a month? (I know. Madeleine L'Engle explained it. It's the difference between Chronos and Kairos. But really...)The temps had taken a decided dip on Wednesday night and while Thursday was free of rain, it was a whole lot of cold. We bundled up in sweatshirts and jackets and hats and went off on the weekly "hunting" at Publix. Every week we say we are going to try to spend less, and every week the BOGOs are too useful to pass up. This week it was Tucker's favorite dog biscuits, and we got $18 worth of "cookies" for $9, so it is a good thing. But it adds up so fast! We made a brief detour by Kroger on the way home because we were completely out of mushrooms. James just sent me in with ten dollars and I got a dozen small cans of "no salt added" and some ramen noodles to make up the difference. Then we had to hustle home to put up the perishable groceries, because it was 12:30 by then and James had to be at the doctor by 1:30. We hope this will be the last appointment until January, although we will need to go back to Kaiser itself for prescription refills. Today we saw the nephrologist and he was very pleased that all of James' kidney functions were holding steady, with his creatitine at 2.4. However, he seemed a little bit more worried that James' BP had been high the last couple of months (we think it's stress from his work schedule and, frankly, money shortages). So the doctor put him on a low dose of BP meds, and said it should also clear up the protein he is seeing in the urine. James will need to come back at the beginning of December for followup bloodwork to check up on that. [November 17: looks like the BP med is already working.] By the time he did prescriptions it was time to head home. For evening enjoyment we had Young Sheldon and some Perry Mason. The rain came whirling in on Friday. I like chilly days, I like cloudy days, but chilly and cloudy with cold rain is just misery. James decided not to come with me to go to the small Smyrna Library Sale. This is usually held at the Fall Jonquil Festival at the end of October, but they decided not to risk it in the rain that weekend. I went there just for the heck of it, found one nice book that I thought I might have, but it was only a dollar, and then two other books for fifty cents: Simon Garfield's On the Map (go ahead! twist my arm! make me read about cartography! 😀 ) and a nice basic book of cross-stitch stitches in color with instructions. Turns out I did have the bigger book, and that went into the McKay's box. We left the house early for our lunch date and so we stopped briefly at Lidl for a bread/milk/ground turkey run. It was so cold outside (low 40s) and clammy that neither of us worried about leaving the turkey in the insulated bag when we went to O'Charley's for lunch. Most of the rest of the crowd was at Conjuration (Harry Potter/magic convention), so it was just Mel and Phyllis at the table with us. The conversation and lunch were nice—I had the same six-ounce steak, baked potato with butter, and salad with balsamic dressing as last time—but after we headed home I started feeling decidedly sick. Not sure if it was the salad dressing or the seasoning on the steak, but I was queasy and miserable all afternoon and finally fell asleep under a blanket on the sofa for a couple of hours. By Hawaii Five-0 time I was a bit better, but it wasn't the greatest of evenings. Later we watched an episode of Perry Mason with Bill Mumy as a young orphan who found a murder weapon. They edit these things so much: we found out the murderer but never told us what happened to him! Saturday dawned sunny and nice—we left the house in jackets and ditched them midafternoon, so we decided to drive up to Acworth for a hot chocolate at Books-a-Million. We wound through our favorite back route, which is mostly residential, checking out the mellowing trees with their darkening leaves, and saw our first Christmas decoration, a Santa Claus on a front door, and a Christmas tree heading home, and finally pulled into the handicapped parking space in front of the store. As I was prepping the power chair to come down, I looked up. The bookstore was empty. The sign was gone. Wow. In fact the store wasn't just empty, it had been completely cleared out inside down to the concrete flooring and walls. Well, dang, when did that happen? That Books-a-Million has been here over ten years, and I've been going there every couple of months for that long. We were just here in the summer for frozen hot chocolates, and it didn't look like it was going to close. 😞 Anyway, since both other BAM stores were an hour's drive away on this traffic-clogged Saturday afternoon, we just went to Petco to use the restrooms and buy Tucker some cookies and then came away. Instead we turned back toward home and stopped at Dallas Highway and checked out the Barnes & Noble, and then drove out to Austell to get something at Ollie's Discount Outlet—except, of course, that they didn't have it. I did find a couple of nice books for gifts, and James discovered some brown-sugar cinnamon PopTarts (without the dreadful frosting!) for me. That was quite a bit of driving for James, so we headed home. He made beef stir fry for supper, which was delicious, and we watched a couple of Father Brown episodes we hadn't seen as well as the Britcoms. Then, poof! Weekend over for us. Really bummed about Books-a-Million. The closest one is now at Arbor Place Mall, which is nowhere I want to be at this time of year. Maybe after Christmas. Labels: Christmas, disappointments, food, friends, health, shopping, television, weather, weekend » Wednesday, November 13, 2019
 FOR TODAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019 Outside my window... ...I am looking directly at the bird feeders and a big mockingbird is landing on the hanging suet cake and chasing off all the little birds. What a big bruiser he is compared to the usual crowd of titmice, chickadees, brown-headed and white-breasted nuthatches, house finches, sparrows, and downy woodpeckers. He's just a little smaller than the red-breasted woodpecker that comes by sometimes. I am thinking... ...how nice it is for it to have gotten cold, but it's almost too cold for my poor toes. Even in boot socks they are icy. It's such good walking weather, though; you don't perspire, or feel like you want to pass out from the heat. I would have walked longer this morning but was aware how cold the pavement must have been for Tucker's little paws. His feet were cold when we arrived home and I rubbed them all before letting him upstairs. I am thankful... ...for our Thanks Jar! It is sitting on the dining room table collecting squares of paper with things we're thankful for on them. No thanks is too small...I know I popped one that says "milk" in there. In the kitchen... ...we did an easy dinner today: we had leftovers from the Thai place last Thursday. Mine was yummy pad thai with (non-spicy) peanut sauce and James had leftover beef-flavored noodles with ground turkey and green beans. For dessert: three dark chocolate Oreos apiece. Now we need more. I am wearing... ...a burgundy sweatshirt, dark blue sweatpants, and red and navy blue striped grey boot socks. It was in the 20s this morning, so the socks were needed for Tucker's and my long walk. I am creating... ...at least one Thanksgiving card; I thought I had a bunch and I only have three. I need to make at least one other or flush one up from somewhere. I am going... ...a bit annoyed with this month. First the starter on James' truck gave up the ghost, and now one of the nose pieces on my glasses has broken off! It can't be soldered even if you could find one to do it, and I simply do not have the money for new glasses right now and don't need new lenses anyway. Is it possible they still have this frame at America's Best and I could just buy a frame? I am wondering... ...if I should go to the Mistletoe Market at the Civic Center this weekend. I used to enjoy going in the past, and they haven't had one in a while. On the other hand I blew off the last one they did have because it's run by the Junior League and all the items for the past few years have been decidedly upscale and very expensive as compared to the simpler crafts and products they had when I first began going. I do want to stop at the Smyrna Library book sale if I can. I am reading... ...depends on which medium! Physical book: E.B. White: Writings from the "New Yorker", 1920s-70s, which I'm glad I got from a book sale for $1 because while I'm still adoring White's "turn of phrase," these are just excerpts from his columns, not complete essays as in One Man's Meat and Essays of E.B. White, so it's intensely disappointing. E-book: Merry Midwinter, which I'm loving; a look at all midwinter celebrations by a woman who describes herself as "a Quaker, a Theophist, and a practicing Druid." (I would have thought Quakers and Druids would be diametrically opposed, but I guess not in her case!) Magazine: Just finished "Country Sampler"'s Autumn Decorating edition. E-magazine: the October issue of "Country Living UK." I love the UK edition much more than the American magazine, as there are actually stories about living and making a living in the country in it. Imagine that. I am hoping... ...James stays well. That's all I ever hope anymore. I don't even dream about going on vacation any longer. I am looking forward to... ...book sale maybe, this week's lunch (at O'Charley's), Thanksgiving coming up. Must enjoy this time with friends as James has (so far) neither Christmas nor New Year's off. This means no Christmas dinner at the Butlers and no going to Bill and Caran's party, and if he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. I am learning... ...or I need to learn not to look back at bad things so much. I still cry to myself about last year's car accident. Around the house... ...James is clicking away, teleworking since the truck was broken (we could only pick it up at lunchtime today, since the mechanic closes before James gets off). Tucker is asleep on one of the dining room chairs. Snowy is chirbling to the Christmas music I have on. I am pondering... ...these days I'm always pondering taking a nap! A favorite quote for today... "The maples perhaps undergo the most complete transformation of all the forest trees [in the autumn]. Their leaves fairly become luminous, as if they glowed with inward light. In October a maple-tree before your window lights up your room like a great lamp. Even on cloudy days its presence helps to dispel the gloom." . . . John Burroughs One of my favorite things... ...Christmas music done in brass! Listening to the Canadian Brass right now. A few plans for the rest of the week: James goes to the nephrologist tomorrow. Hoping no surprises as creatitine is holding steady at 2.4. Maybe book sale. Lunch on Friday. Winging the rest. A peek into my day... How about last Saturday instead? This wonderful orange tree in the JoAnn Fabrics & Craft parking lot at Kennesaw.  If you'd like to participate, check out The Simple Woman's Daybook. Labels: Simple Woman's Daybook » Saturday, November 09, 2019
It's Always Something
Well, it was an interesting weekend, and, yeah, part of that was in the Chinese sense.I went into the weekend feeling chuffed because I'd finally updated my Christmas web page completely (I'd done the donkey work already and was just tweaking) and did some minor corrections to the Thanksgiving page. I'd done the Autumn page earlier, so now the only other seasonal page to update is the Winter one. Thursday we made the usual supermarket run, and then had this week's lunch a day early at Curry Curry, a Thai restaurant near where James works. I had pad thai and got a huge bowl of noodles and meat; looking forward to the leftovers! Alice, Ken, and Mel also showed up and we had a nice chat before we headed off to Walmart. We needed more non-stick bandages and also picked up more melatonin. In the evening we had a small snack and watched Babylon 5. On Friday morning we drove out to Kaiser Glenlake for James' appointment with his cardiologist. This was easier said than done. The truck has been giving him a problem since early summer; sometimes when he tried to start it it would click. And after a few clicks it would start. Friday morning it didn't start at all. So I drove him out instead and had to shove James around in a manual wheelchair. I'd say the visit went fairly well: Dr. Shash said his readings and labs looked okay, and he thought James' slightly elevated blood pressure was caused by the pain from his arthritis. He said just to keep an eye on things and if it continued he'd raise the dosage of his meds a little. He doesn't want to do it now because it would make James more tired. (I didn't realize BP meds made you tired.) Then we had to go downstairs for his blood tests for Dr. Kongara next week, and then back upstairs to the pharmacy, and then only could we head home. Luckily we got out of there before they blocked off the roads near our house because both the President and the Vice President were in Atlanta today. Once we got home, James tried to start the truck again, but it was a no go. So I went upstairs to call AAA, only to realize we had never received our renewal notice in the mail. Instead I went online to pay the bill, then called them about the truck. First they sent over someone to try to jump it off just in case it was the battery, but that was a lost cause. Only then could the tow truck show up and the guy pulled the pickup out of the driveway as easily as the yolk comes out of a broken egg, and we followed him to the mechanic. They won't get to look at it until Monday. (James' blood tests came in later in the evening. Everything seems to be holding steady, creatitine at 2.4.) Since James couldn't drive himself to his meeting on Saturday, I took him up to Town Center and left him at Hobbytown while I bopped around a little. I had four good JoAnn coupons but not much money, so bought four more colors of DMC Etoile floss and enjoyed the browsing. Then I took the back way—because Barrett Parkway today looked like it was the week before Christmas—to get to the Hallmark store since I had a good coupon. I did end up with a gift for someone and two Thanksgiving cards. I also took a turn around Tuesday Morning, and dropped in at Publix to see if they had chicken and wild rice soup. I was strolling around Barnes & Noble when James called and said the meeting was over. I was an idiot and went through Barrett, and it took me twenty minutes to get about two miles. Did someone move up Black Friday when I wasn't looking? Incredible! So we headed home and spent a quiet evening watching Babylon 5 and the end of the Shadow War. Alas, if only they knew the hardest part was ahead of them. Labels: cars, crafts, food, friends, health, shopping, television » Saturday, November 02, 2019
Through Fair Day and Foggy....
Another cold front came marching upon us, but we had to endure the warmth before it. Thankfully it was just 70s instead of the dreadful 90s we had until October 2. The rain that came with it, having crept northward from the Gulf of Mexico (again!), started late Tuesday afternoon, proceeded through Wednesday, when it drizzled, poured, rained, misted, poured, dribbled, poured, and dribbled again—but stayed warm. On Thursday morning we lucked out and got a break in the rain, so we dashed to Sam's Club for a couple of things. We frankly had to dash inside the store, too, because there was only one electric cart free up front and it was rapidly running out of battery. So we picked up what we needed—including, ironically, batteries—and left posthaste, only to have the cart run out of juice inside the front door. Thankfully we only had a few things and we could just carry them to the car.On the way home we stopped for the twofers at Publix. Like Sam's, they were doing a booming business in giant bags of candy for trick or treating tonight, and many of the employees as well as the shoppers were in costume. (At Sam's we had seen someone in a keen 1950s outfit, complete with full poodle skirt!) Now, when we went into the store, the clouds were lowering and it was still quite warm, about 74℉. In fact, it seemed warmer than when we left Sam's minutes before. We emerged from Publix about 45 minutes later with the rain just starting, and as we turned to drive through downtown Smyrna, it started to pour. By the time we got to the house, it was down to 62. The temperature continued to fall throughout the day, so that it was in the 50s during the news, 40s as we were watching TV, and it went down to the 30s during the night. After the groceries were put up and lunch eaten, we went to tackle the last big thing before free electronics recycling day on Saturday: the clear plastic computer box in the garage. Back in "the old days," when it was cheaper, James used to build our computers instead of us buying them. We'd pick out a case, a motherboard, RAM, and the parts, and he'd put them together and we'd have a frankenmachine. Well, when these computers broke down we'd toss the broken parts and keep the working parts. These parts were all in the big plastic box in the closet in our garage. Some of the stuff was over ten years old. I pulled it out, James regarded it, and the junk went in a garbage bag. We pretty much threw out almost everything, especially all those phone cables (we had more phone cables than any two human beings should have). We kept a spare keyboard, a spare wired mouse, two power supplies (one never opened), one of each kind of cable, about three network cables of different lengths, and that was about it. James also cleaned out next to his computer and got rid of floppy disks (which I thought we had sacked long ago), games he bought and played briefly, games he bought and discovered he needed something expensive to play them, etc. We had two garbage bags full of junk just from that and a small cardboard box besides the dead fans, lamps, etc. in the garage boxes, and the two little netbooks that we had reformatted. (I did a Marie Kondo with the latter, and gave them a hug and told them how much joy they'd given us before I dumped them in the box.) I was wandering around YouTube later on, and found some shows I had marked to watch later. These were produced by the Rhode Island PBS station profiling various towns in the state. I watched one about Johnston and was happy to see that, besides the town landfill, which has always been kind of a joke, they had a lot of stories about historic areas (including a history museum that opened after I left the state) and organic farms. The final story was about something I saw flitting around Facebook for months: three wild turkeys who were wandering around Atwood Avenue (practically Johnston's Main Street) without a care in the world, stopping traffic. They caught two, but the third one was at large for months after this was filmed. Not sure if they caught it or not! We didn't do Hallowe'en, and as far as I can tell, maybe two houses on our street did. Usually you can hear kids outside, but I didn't see any when I looked out the window. We awoke to a cold but beautiful Friday, with bright blue skies overhead. From shirtsleeves on Thursday, we were in jackets with flannel shirts underneath and hats. Today we had an early lunch because of James' (and I think Ken's) doctors' appointments at Kaiser Glenlake. We went to Shane's barbecue with just Alice and Ken and missed a larger crowd, but had a good time chatting. It's a good thing we mellowed out because once we arrived at Kaiser, it seemed to take forever. We got there so early James took his time using the rest room and I refilled all our water bottles while he did, so we were hoping we might get in early and out before rush-hour traffic began. We didn't get to his appointment until a hour after our scheduled time, but there was good news: the bandages were taken off and everything was dry, so she didn't put more back on. But we were so late getting out that we just went directly home. That suited me, because I put away the autumn decorations and put up the Thanksgiving decorations on the porch (and also the mailbox cover). After last week's Hallowe'en Hawaii Five-0, this week's seemed kind of a letdown with those two idiot bloggers or whatever they were covering the team. Saturday we were up with the sun (literally, because it was the final day of daylight saving time—and good riddance!—and the sun isn't up until after seven) for breakfast and dog walking before we had to load up the truck and head for Jim Miller Park for recycling day. It was chilly but sunny when we loaded up the power chair, but we weren't even a couple of miles from home when we ran into a bank of fog that we wove in and out of all the way to the park. At times it formed a wall of grey in front of us, then shredded apart once we got in line to leave our junk behind. From there we were planning to go to Harbor Freight and, accordingly, went the shortest way, past downtown Marietta, but they were having, in addition to the usual Farmer's Market, a Heart Run, and some local performers. We could hear one of them singing as we came around Glover Park. James had to thread his way around that, leaving us to head to Kennesaw by way of US-41, where we continued in and out of the fog banks, slipping in and out of the grey curtains ahead of us. By the time we reached Harbor Freight, it was sunny again. We had a nice browse inside; I love hardware stores! I found some new gardening gloves at a very reasonable price, a few other things, and bought James an anniversary gift: he needed a new mototool. The store was in the same shopping center with a Publix, and we nipped inside to see if they had what we couldn't find in the Smyrna store on Thursday, paper towels (yes) and yogurt (no). By the time this was done, the fog was gone for good and the sky was a brilliant blue. Then it was time for a little fun, so we stopped at Barnes&Noble. I picked up the new "Just Cross Stitch," and also two Christmas magazines. James also picked up a couple of magazines, and we were in a mellow mood when we stopped for lunch at Panera. Our last chore for the day was stopping at Sam's Club to fill up the truck. And with this nice day our weekend ended. Labels: books, decluttering, decorations, food, Hallowe'en, health, holidays, magazines, shopping, weather » Wednesday, October 30, 2019
FOR TODAY, OCTOBER 30, 2019 Outside my window... ...it's grey, damp, and raining. After a horrible summer and 90°F plus temps that lasted until the second of October, it's finally down to a more manageable 60s and 70s, with blessedly cooler temps to come—the forecast for Thursday night is 38°! (Supposedly with cooler days to follow, but you never can tell with Georgia weather; we were in a drought and now we have a flood watch.) I am thinking... ...how I need to get out of the funk I am in lately. It's left over from when it was so broilingly hot. Maybe when it gets nicely cool instead of this off-and-on warm humidity. (On the other hand, one actual good thing about summer is that the laundry basket is lighter.) I am thankful... ...that last week the rain held off long enough for us to go to the Fall Jonquil Festival. We really needed that barbecue sauce! Too bad Meadowcroft Farms wasn't there, but they were participating in a big craft festival in Gatlinburg. In the kitchen... ...alas, all is dark for you foodies. Since we can stay up a little later tonight since today is James' Friday, we are eating supper tonight and not dinner today. James said with the dark and the rain it is a good soup and sandwich day. Apparently it is going to rain all through the night and all the way through tomorrow, making for a very soggy Hallowe'en. I am wearing... ...a dark blue Owly t-shirt and blue/grey/silver/white buffalo check lounging pants, white socks under brown scuffs. I am creating... ...or currently arranging "the lunch bunch" for the next few weeks. We've just been going out on Fridays with friends, but James has doctors' appointments the next three Fridays in a row, so we're having to work around it. I am going... ...to need to get working on repairing those Christmas tree lights soon! It's just that I have to spend some time downstairs doing it and it's kind of lonely, and I worry about Snowy getting lonely upstairs. Of course he manages fine with the television on when we go out, so part of this is all in my head. I always imagined myself going into the library to read when we moved into this house, a quiet time, but I feel lonely without Snowy and Tucker. I am wondering... ...when it will get cold and stay cold. (Not really cold! Aaron Lawson is attending university in Wyoming and it was -14°F there this morning. That's a bit much.) 50s and cloudy is what I want. Jacket weather. No headaches from the sun and I don't have to wear my hat. I am reading... ...Suburban Safari by Hannah Holmes, about a woman who is studying nature through what she can find in her back yard. She has a very small acreage with woods behind, and she isn't just observing trees, plants, insects, and animals like I do, she actually collects samples and looks at them under a microscope and talks to scientists about her little microcosm. And she has made friends with a chipmunk! It's pretty nifty. I am hoping... ...the holidays are nice. We don't have much money, but am looking forward to little things like the craft fairs and gatherings with friends. Because we missed going to the Apple Festival this year—::sniffle:: stupid rain—we think we may try going to Christmas at Lithia again. We haven't gone to their Christmas bazaar for years; indeed we didn't even know it was still running. I am looking forward to... ...Saturday! It's Free Electronics Recycling Day and I am looking forward to emptying all those boxes in the garage. Been going wholesale through gadgets that don't work anymore, things we no longer want, and even that big box of cables and computer parts in the garage, which has been sitting there accumulating for the last 13 years and we've never used a blessed thing in it. We'll keep some duplicate cables, a couple extra keyboards and wired mice, and toss the rest; the water heater closet can use the room. I am learning... ...bought a magazine that came with a beginner quilling kit. Maybe will learn that. Around the house... ...most of the windows are open, and the fans going; it's still moist and stuffy inside. James is teleworking due to the rain and industriously typing up his last call. Snowy is singing accompaniment to the instrumental Christmas cassette (Windham Hill's "The Carols of Christmas") I popped in awhile ago. I discovered that the old radio/cassette unit I used to use at work until 2013 is in perfect working order, and a good thing, because I still have 64 Christmas cassettes that have never appeared on CD or streaming (including three recorded in England) and a whole bunch of filk music tapes, and Hagood Hardy's Anne of Green Gables score all on cassette. And I can hear the gentle rattling of the laundry circling in the dryer through the baby monitor. I am pondering... ...people. I am not looking forward to next year's election year. So much conflict already. Everyone fighting. A favorite quote for today... "And the sun took a step back, the leaves lulled themselves to sleep, and Autumn was awakened." Raquel Franco One of my favorite things... ...these days, that baby monitor! We bought it when my mother was ill, in her final days, so I could monitor her when she slept. After that we had no more need of it, but lately even with the door to the laundry room open downstairs and the sound echoed in the foyer, I often miss the ding of the washer and/or the dryer as they finish their cycle. I had the baby monitor pegged to do this job and searched for it for literally several years before it turned up under the towels in the hall closet. Until I cleaned in there I never realized that's where I had stored them. A good cleaning is not only good for souls, it's good for finding things! A few plans for the rest of the week: Grocery shopping (booooooring), lunch at Shane's barbecue, maybe a visit to Barnes & Noble, and, alas, another doctor's appointment for James. A peek into my day... Since I haven't done one of these in a while, I'll give you two: It looks terribly scrawny now, but you didn't see how much these bushes out front had overgrown. You couldn't even see St. Francis and his funny cap for all the nandina fronds. Now the nandina has crew cuts, and the firecracker bush is nicely cropped to drape the net lights over.  And three cross stitch projects I did:  If you'd like to participate, check out The Simple Woman's Daybook. Labels: Simple Woman's Daybook » Saturday, October 26, 2019
Meat, Mobility, and Meeping...Uh, Neeping
Well, it was a diverse weekend, that's for sure.Thursday we decided to go to Patak's Meats. We were, we declared, not going to buy a lot, just some mortadella and more Italian sausage and maybe some stew beef. Well, James wanted pastrami, too, and the chicken wings looked good, and he bought some bulk breakfast sausage, too. Luckily this is dirt cheap (at least compared to the grocery stores) at Patak's. We also ran into someone we know: Christy, who used to be the daycare person who cared for our friends' sons Neil and Colin for so many years. I thought she looked familiar when she said hi, and then she said hi to James, who blinked and said hi back; she smiled and said, "Don't you know me?" It was too funny: we are so used to seeing her at Ron and Lin's house it took a minute to click! And we spent the time waiting gabbing about the new Cystic Fibrosis drug that could be such a blessing for Colin, and about how much we love Patak's. It's like a meat candy store. (Christy likes Lidl as well!) Oh, Pataks had all their Christmas goodies out already: stollen and liebkuchen [sp?] and big boxes of petit fours, candies, special sauces, condiments, jellies, jams... Almost wanted to start singing Christmas carols! We hit Publix for BOGOs on the way home, and then I had to busy myself: I'd found boneless pork ribs on sale at Kroger on Tuesday and they needed to be cooked up, so spent the afternoon monitoring a nice pot of gravy, which simmered sweetly and gave the house a lovely tomato scent, and we had one portion with macaroni for supper and put two other meals away, one in the refrigerator and one in the freezer. Thankfully all that was already put away when I had an intestinal annoyance and didn't think I would sleep much, but it let me get seven hours of sleep before cutting back in again about 7:30 a.m. So I was not feeling too "swuft" when morning came, and we blew off going to lunch. I wouldn't have gone out at all, but it was spoiling for rain and if it did rain James couldn't take the power chair to Kaiser, needing my assistance. And indeed it was raining when we emerged from the house about quarter to one. We just popped the handicapped parking sticker into the car and I drove out to Kaiser Glenlake, where he had an appointment with the wound clinic. Luckily we found a parking space outside the front door instead of in the garage; I could run into the vestibule and find a wheelchair so I could push him through the building. Alas, the blisters are healing, but not to the nurse practitioner's satisfaction. She put colloidial silver pads on the remnants of the two wounds, wrapped James' leg in compression bandages, told him not to get it wet, and he'll have to come back next Friday (and for two successive Fridays if it doesn't heal). Gah. We salvaged the day by coming home by Trader Joe's and stocking him up on pumpkin fruit bars until next year (they have them only in the fall), and also stopped by Walgreens to get him a plastic cast cover. (I also found a nifty long metal shoehorn—James has never been satisfied with other thin metal or plastic ones we've bought—that he figures would make a deadly weapon if you could sharpen it, the metal is that sturdy!) Today was rather fun. We had spent all of Friday afternoon and evening making chicken cacciatore thighs slow cooked in the Instant Pot for today's Hair Day, otherwise the Lin and Ron Butler Tonsorial Occasion/Lunch Club/Computer Tutorial Day. 😁 The latter is not a usual event. We arrived at the house to find Lin had invited a former co-worker to Hair Day, a sweet lady named Ruth who is 88 and who still works typing out "tickets" at David Gibson's law office. Ruth is very non-computer savvy, but someone had given her a laptop and she wanted to learn how to play movies on it; she had bought a portable DVD player to attach to it for that purpose. So while we were waiting for the chicken to get hot again, I popped open the laptop and had trouble getting the DVD player to work (it was plugged into a USB port it would not work with; it successfully worked on another USB port, so we labeled everything for her). Well, I thought initially the DVD player might not be working because it needed software, and opening File Manager found out the poor machine only had 63MB left on a [very small] 28GB hard drive. This meant I wouldn't even be able to install VLC on it for her to watch movies. So anyway, the chicken got warm enough, James made me a dish of chicken and elbow macaroni, and I managed to delete enough stuff off it, and then Alex took over, and we managed to get it up to 5GB free and that was it, which means she can't even do Windows updates! We were ruthless: removed all extra browsers, anything she wasn't going to use (besides seeing movies she wanted to search for recipes online and read the news, all doable in Microslop Edge) and Windows was still taking up 80 percent of the 28GB. Sigh. I did load VLC, and we did show her how to use the DVD drive and she took dutiful notes, so I hope we were helpful! In the meantime Juanita passed around little books for us to write notes in to send to Aaron Lawson in Wyoming and Colin up in Salem, MA (I bet he has fun this week!) to tell them we miss them. We left about two o'clock, brought the leftover chicken home (everyone liked it, but I think it would have been better done in the oven; it would have been more difficult to cook, but I think the flavor would have been richer), and then took the chance and went to the Fall Jonquil Festival. It was heavily overcast all day and rained occasionally, and we thought we'd had it for a few minutes as we rolled past the booths and it sprinkled madly on us, but the actual rain managed to hold off. Smack Yo Mama barbecue sauce was there, so we got three bottles; the arthritis in James' hands is so bad he threw in the towel and decided to try a small jar of ointment with CBD oil in it; he bought a jar of very delicious cherry jam; and I got a little jar of espresso honey (and, oh goodness, is it coffee flavored!). We skipped sampling the dips this time, and have so much blackberry honey in the cupboard that I didn't buy a fresh one this time. Of course the booths were mostly crafts: saw some very pretty gemstone jewelry, paintings, creations by The Button Girl, etc., and I was so tempted by a stained glass booth. They have all sorts of designs, but I was the most taken by a little window-shape of glass rectangles about 4x3 inches in a sort of Mondrian pattern—inexplicably it reminded me of Ste. Anne's Church in Fall River, MA. At the rear of the church they had tacked on rest rooms sometime mid-century (since when the church was originally built I'm sure there were still privies in the rear), and so there was still an outside stained glass window near the rest rooms, left there when they had bumped out that portion of the structure, at a level where you could touch the thick stained glass pieces leaded into patterns in the window. I used to love to run my fingers over the cold, smooth pieces of primary colored glass, bright ruby and emerald and gold, and these smaller squares of iridescence in the stained glass rectangle just brought that all back. Then, very tired, we came home, had a light supper, and wandered about on the television dial from Good Eats to Keeping Up Appearances. Labels: computers, food, friends, gatherings, health, shopping, sickness, television, weather |
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