Friday night we had to race out of the house as soon as James quit work for the evening; he had to get a blood test in prep for his nephrologist appointment next Friday.* Then we'd gone to Uncle Maddio's pizza joint for supper and finally, did the shopping at Publix. One of the things I'd picked up there was a 16-ounce container of chicken and wild rice soup, mostly of the content (rice, chicken, onions, carrots) rather than the soup because their soup is so salty.

Saturday morning was lazy: we slept in as much as we could, Tucker had a nice walk, and about one o'clock James decanted the soup and thinned it with no-sodium broth and we each had a small serving (James sprinkled crushed crackers on his and I had mine with the last of a Lidl baguette), and, since I couldn't find an appropriate retirement card last night, I made one up this afternoon.

Yes, we were off to another retirement party; this time it was Ron Butler's turn; he'd formally left work on Thursday. His wife Lin retires at the end of this month. We met at O'Charley's and discovered to our delight that Terica and Ben had driven up from Warner Robins. We had a nice crowd which was of a size to have appeared to overwhelm the wait staff: we arrived at three and some folks didn't get served until way after four. But...whatever. We sat with Ben and T, and Juanita kept making circuits of the room talking about how much fun she was having camping, and then I visited Caran and we chatted how she and Shannon were now the only two left in the once formidable group of us that worked at CDC (me, Juanita, Alice, Clair, and T formerly, plus Keith and Jerry were both contract employees there at one time), and how much we were enjoying The Orville.

After cards, gifts, and cake, we were on our own again and decided to go to Sam's Club. James needed "plastic cheese" and I needed milk and slivered almonds for my oatmeal. We got a rotisserie chicken as well. And then we headed home for a quiet evening. We really chilled; I even got tired of the television yammering and put on the Family Life Christmas channel (apparently they have orders to do replays on "Tennessee Christmas"...I heard it three times) which is all quiet mostly-instrumentals We chilled so much we didn't get into bed and shut the lights until 2 a.m.

We had wanted to finish the shopping by Saturday night because today it was supposed to rain all day, or at least all afternoon.  But when we got up around nine I had a wild hair. Barnes & Noble had something like 400 books on sale half price. I was interested in seeing if any were suitable Christmas gifts. James also admitted he needed mushrooms; we had only two cans left. (For James this is practically famine; he loves his veg and fungus.) So we skipped breakfast—James had a Belvita bar instead, but I couldn't stand the thought of something that sweet early in the morning—and slid out of the house about ten o'clock after I'd walked Tucker. I did a flying stop by Lidl to get fresh bread: two buns (one which I had for breakfast), a baguette, two chocolate chunk cookies for dessert, and Lidl's "dark chocolate" bar (that's its name, "Dark Chocolate"), and then we drove to Dallas Highway, where the Avenue at West Cobb has a Barnes & Noble. Across the street was a Kroger, and once again I just ran in—we had Butch and no power chair—and got some mushrooms and also scoped out the Easter candy: last year only Kroger had the Lindt dark chocolate Easter bunnies. And there they are again! So that's noted and logged.

We came to this Barnes & Noble because it's small enough for James to limp around, and it has a café with enough seats that he can drop into one when his hips and knees really start to hurt.

I am incorrigible. I left with five books, only one which was for a gift, including one I'd wanted for a while: Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. I also found this year's "Country Sampler" Home Tours edition, which I get each year. It's time for a new "Bella Grace," but I shall skip this one and the summer issue. All I ever do in the spring issue is scribble in the exercises how much I love the spring blossoms and hate my spring allergies, and as for the summer issue, all I do is rant against it. James got lucky: one of the half-price books was the new David Weber novel.

We made it home just as the first drops of rain were beating upon the car windshield. This was followed by several hours of rain, during which I washed and dried the towels, sorted this week's prescription drugs, started gluing a project, and farkled around the computer, and watched the live stream of today's "Tech Guy," which totally delighted Snowy. We turned on the television to find the national news was talking about a tornado in Warner Robins, GA. James gave his mother and sister a call to make certain they were okay.

We had the rotisserie chicken for supper along with the potatoes James made in the air fryer. They were quite good. The evening's entertainment was America's Funniest Home Videos, an episode of Perry Mason, and the season finale of Victoria.



*  James was rather reluctant to look at his tests results, as he's had certain problems of late. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that most of the results were good, and his creatitine score is down to 2.0. His BUN is still high, but one third of the score that it was when he was at his worst. We are crossing fingers that we are doing everything right and can continue to do so. He will see the urologist on Wednesday and the nephrologist on Friday. Next week he has to have a small skin cancer removed from his forehead. We are hoping for the best on this.

Labels: books, Easter, food, friends, health, magazines, retirement, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:11:00 PM

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