It's so August. Now of course I was tired of summer back when June started, but by August I have about had it. The worst part is having to roust myself out of bed at 7:30 because I have to hotfoot it outside to walk the dog and get my exercise. The later I wait, the higher the sun is. I find myself postponing breakfast and plotting the walk so Tucker and I will be in the most shade. This morning we got lucky. There were patchy mackerel clouds which hid the sun, so we were not being scorched on our walk. Not that it was exactly cool, but skin didn't sizzle, and nature is starting to fight with the sun about what season it is. By the flora and fauna, summer is closing. Crickets only are chirping, there were no cicadas screaming, and near those unkempt thickets across the street are showing yellowing leaves, berries and scuppernong grapes are ripening on the vine, and with the fruit and dwindling foliage, it smells almost like fall, that faint grap-y scent I remember from Zia Maria's grapevine arbor in her back yard next door. It's welcome yet maddening in the heat, making me long for autumn.

Once the dog was walked and breakfast eaten, we went to Patak's. This is a butcher shop we discovered several years ago through friends raving about it. They're open only weekdays and the first Saturday of every month, so we haven't been there much. But with our new weekends we can go. Today we wanted to get more sweet Italian sausage—theirs is remarkably low in salt!—and stew beef (which James actually stir fries). Well, we got those. And more mortadella. And pastrami. And stew pork. And breakfast sausage. Plus we found peppermint Ritter bars. (Should have left those. They are cheaper at Nam Dae Mun.)

We'd brought one of those freezer chill blocks, so we could, even in the stifling heat, stop at Kroger and Lidl. Just got a few things at Lidl: bread, mostly, and some chocolate. Kroger had milk on sale, so we went in for that, and no-salt mushrooms, and, even though we had bought all that meat, we found some bargain beef in the manager's special slot.

And then we came home to chill (literally) for the remainder of the day.

One of the jobs I had today was a bit grotty. The plastic strip at the bottom of the shower door (also called a "T sweep" because that's the shape it is) is disintegrating again. We replaced the current one several years ago from a generic shower maintenance kit we got at Lowes, so we went back to get another a few weeks ago. Surprise! They don't carry them anymore, and they only had two other kinds of "sweep." Both looked too large. I bought the smaller one, and when I pulled the current one out I realized it was still too big, and the top "T" was too wide. This had three potential "T's" at the top, and I had to cut the two bigger T-slides on the top off to put the T-slide that looked the correct size at the top—but I either cut away too much, or it's a teeny bit too small and falls out of the groove the "T" portion goes into. Spent some time afterward at the computer searching on line for one like the one we had and can't find one anywhere. Now what do we do???

Spent the evening watching Perry Mason and reading.

Labels: autumn, chores, fall, food, home improvement, shopping, summer, television, weather

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:50:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment