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

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 1:20:00 PM

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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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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:07:00 PM

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We had a broken-up weekend this week. James' dermatologist isn't in the office on Thursdays or Fridays, so he had to go for his quarterly inspection (since the two basal-cell skin cancer procedures he had in the spring) on Wednesday. So he was off Wednesday and worked Thursday.

His appointment wasn't until afternoon, so I did half the laundry in the morning and also cleaned up some in the dining room; we had two food gifts from Christmas in baskets that were still sitting on top of Tucker's box, so I put the items in the pantry closet and will recycle the baskets. We saw the doctor (all clear, but she is glad James is going to the wound clinic next week), then came home by Publix to do the majority of the shopping. We were cheered by the chatty bagger who helped us out with our groceries and returned the electric cart for us, and recommended Patak's to her for meat. (We were having sausage for dinner, so will need to go back there at some point. Besides, I want more mortadella.)

So James went off to work on Thursday and I was fairly busy with going to Hobby Lobby for a sewing item I needed (also found a cute toy for Toys for Tots) and then picking up some groceries at Lidl. I had filled up one trash bag for Friday morning pickup and had collected the rest of the house trash; was spoiling to find something else to get rid of. I found it on top of the refrigerator after preparing some snack bags of nuts for James when he goes to work (we keep the food scale up there). I discovered a bunch of bottles we don't use anymore there, on their sides, and tossed them all out. All I kept was the one carton holder because they don't make those things anymore (we actually have four now, up in that useless cupboard that's over the fridge; I can only get them out using the "grabby thing"). We rarely buy anything liquid in a carton, but should we want orange juice or eggnog we have them up there. Now all that's up there is a filtered pitcher, the scale, a gravy separator, the big spool of string, and, on a lazy Susan, the unopened jars of finishing sauces. I put the wooden pumpkin that used to be on my desk at work in the fall up there as a decoration.

The trash bag still wasn't full, so I went into the garage and tossed out empty containers, old items we aren't going to use anymore, bags, etc. until it was stuffed to the gills. I was lucky and found some empty cassette cases. I have Christmas cassettes with broken cases, so this will help!

Friday we were back to the usual schedule; this weekend we had to go to Costco, as James needed mandarin orange cups for his morning drink and "plastic cheese" (the Kraft kind) for sandwiches; we also got toilet paper. Discovered Costco is just as crowded on Friday at eleven as it is on Saturday morning! We got back just in time to head out to West Cobb Diner for lunch with Alice and Ken. Following that, we visited the Barnes & Noble at Dallas Highway (a book I wanted was on sale, so James bought it for me for my birthday; I found two more nice things from the clearance table for Toys for Tots, too), and then stopped at Kroger for the BOGO pork chops and sale sugar-free cookies. On the way home we had a real treat: ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. Hadn't had one of those for months!

Normally we would have been in bed early last night to get up at 6:30 so we could make it to Ellijay and the Georgia Apple Festival by nine when they opened. Instead some stinky tropical storm formed in the Gulf of Mexico a few days back, spreading a band of rain so far that even 324 miles from the Pensacola landfall we were still going to get rain and so was Ellijay. Never mind that James isn't supposed to take the power chair out in the rain, the close parking for the Apple Festival is in a big grassy field that turns into a big grassy swamp when it's wet. We have been there in previous years where it rained the day before and vehicles still got stuck in the mud. But rain and the chair made this insurmountable: even if James covered up the controller with a plastic bag we still remember the last time we went there the day after it rained; we had to keep getting help from strong people because his power chair got bogged down four or five times in soft grass and mud. (So even if we were able to go tomorrow getting around would be problematic.) We haven't missed an apple festival in years, only once because we were on vacation, and we were hoping Smack Yo Mama barbecue and Meadowcroft Farms would be there, because we missed them at Yellow Daisy. (Just looked at the vendor list; we apparently did miss the former, but the latter isn't on the list. Maybe Smack Yo Mama will be at the Jonquil Festival next weekend.) And I was so looking forward to the apples we would buy afterward—we always crunch on a nice big sour one on the way home! (Of course James says we can just go up there some day next week or the week after and stop at Panorama Orchards as always for fresh apples and jam and pot pie noodles.)

So it looked like it was going to be a gray, bleak, and boring day, except Dish (of all people) offered us a diversion. A few days ago we got an e-mail saying they were sending us one of their newfangled voice remotes free. We got it on Friday and I set it up and of course started to play with it, just naming series for the Google Assistant to find. One of the best things I found was that the last six episodes of this season of Elementary, the last few episodes of the very final season, the ones that I missed because of Dish's stupid dust-up with CBS, were just about to air on WGN, so I was able to set them up to record. I also found out that one of our favorite series, Flying Wild Alaska, was still available on Discovery on Demand (except for one episode; don't know why), so we've been watching it all afternoon.

This, of course, as always with us and electronics, was not without its hiccups. We successfully found and started episode 1. Ten minutes in, the video faltered, dropped out, and the Dish Hopper said it no longer had internet access. Well, it didn't—the router had gone off. When it came back up, it had so little signal that it wouldn't reconnect. So I rebooted the router, it came back up, dropped out, then came back up again. When I measured the speed on Speakeasy, it said we had a great signal, but SpeedOfMe said we didn't. Odd because they usually agree. Then I had to reconnect the Hopper with the router. The Hopper didn't even see any wifi signals! I had to reboot it, then set up the wifi again, and finally we could sit and watch. I'd forgotten how cute Ariel Tweto was. Always loved in the first episode how she admitted she didn't like the cold and was "the world's worst Eskimo." I also remember how I loved the Native American music they played in the background and that we heard on the radio station. Some of it is traditional music, and some of it is rock or pop sung in the local language.

James made pork chops for dinner, and we continued watching Flying Wild Alaska until it was time for the ten o'clock news.This batch of episodes included my favorite, where Jim goes off to deliver supplies to a hunting camp. He usually checks in with the base when he gets there and before he leaves, so they know he's okay and where to look if they don't hear from him. This time he starts chatting with the hunters and forgets. When he gets in, Ferno [his wife] strides out there and asks "Is your radio out?" He lamely tries to explain that he got busy and forgot, and then had to figure out how to take off again because of the way the water covered the landing strip, etc, but Ferno stares him down and says, "No call, no hugs, no dinner," and walks back inside. I love it! Guys don't understand. They're just bullshitting with the other guys, but we think they're dead in a ditch somewhere if they don't show up on time!

Labels: books, cleaning, crafts, decluttering, electronics, events, food, friends, health, shopping

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

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Well, at least we had no unpleasant surprises this weekend. The old blister on James' leg is still healing, the new blister is healing pretty well, and the doxycycline seems to be working on the new infection.

Thursday was our errand day: we drove to the local government office to pay the house tax (great relief this year as I applied for the age 62 exemption and now the tax bill is less than half of what it was; once I'm 65 we can get another exemption that will cut it down a little more), then went on to Kaiser to fetch James' medications. His doctor always writes the scrips for 90 days, but somehow between his checkups it gets cut down to 30 on two or three of them, which means we either have to mail order them every three weeks or go pick them up every three weeks. I hate the bottles they have to ship them in; they take up too much room on the two pill shelves, so we usually pick them up.

Then we were able to have a little fun at Barnes & Noble. There was a coupon this weekend, so I picked up the new Ideals Christmas, and I also found a couple of items on the clearance table that I can donate for Toys for Tots.

Finally, on the way home, we stopped at Publix and did the weekly shopping.

Friday I was up early for the Friends of the Library book sale (see here), and then we had lunch (alas, on our own this week as everyone else had appointments) at Chow King, the Chinese buffet on Cobb Parkway. It's been open some time but we've avoided it because it's between the Best Buy and Scalini's Italian restaurant, and frankly just getting into the parking lot is a pain in the neck, not to mention the parking. Generally we were pleased with the food, and most of it was not overly salted. Hibachi Grill's teriyaki chicken is better, but Chow King has sesame chicken (not bad) and their honey chicken is sweeter. They do have potstickers, and I could have made a whole meal on them alone (nice dipping sauce, too). I thought the wonton soup was a bit watery (James disagreed) but the wontons are stuffed full! Didn't have a egg roll, so I can't comment. Big dessert bar, though, and their cream puffs don't have raspberry ick inside them like at Hibachi.

We needed more nonstick pads for my nursing ablutions, so we went to Walmart (after trying not to scream at the prices at Walgreens—less than half the price at Wally World; got paper tape as well), and stopped at Lidl for those small necessities like milk and chocolate on the way home.

Saturday was James' meeting, so he left home at 10:30. I was curious to see the new remodeled Love Street shop. It's been finished for a while, but it's been too hot for me to even consider going there. Actually, it's a new Love Street location. The original Love Street store was in a tiny five room house on the corner of Concord Road and Love Street. Later the owners expanded and bought the old house next door (a little bit bigger, but tiny compared to today's homes) and opened a women's clothing and accessory store called Heart and Soul. First they remodeled Love Street to shift the front door to the other side of the porch. We figured this was it, but then last year both stores completely closed for a bigger remodel. What they eventually did was put Love Street in the bigger house and now Heart and Soul is at the original Love Street. So I wandered around the new Love Street for about a half hour, but the gifts are pretty expensive (especially the branded items) and I left without anything, and besides it was time for me to head up to Mellow Mushroom at Town Center, where Jessie Elder's 26th birthday party was taking place.

James wanted to go to the party, too, so he split the difference: he went to lunch with the guys, and then came to the party. It was cool enough that we could sit on the patio, and we had a great time.

Labels: books, errands, food, friends, health, parties

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:32:00 PM

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Some parts of this weekend have been very, very good.

Thursday was not included in that equation.

James had an appointment with the doctor as a followup from two weeks ago. Unfortunately his regular doctor was out of the office; fortunately he got an appointment with Dr. Julian, who saw the blister on his leg that day. He had finished his antibiotic and Nurse Linda was fairly happy with how the blister was healing up. I thought James might leave it unbandaged in the daytime if it were covered with long pants to let it start drying out.

The doctor was pleased with how it looked, too, and said I'd done a good job.

Except now there was another huge blister on the opposite side of his leg when he pulled his stocking down, and it was dreadful and red and raw because it had stuck to the material, which pulled the loose skin off it. I looked at the back of his legs on Wednesday night! There was no blister then, and his leg wasn't as red as it looked in the doctor's office. So there is another dose of doxycyline, and the doctor wants James to go to the wound clinic, and in the meantime Nurse Linda is back on duty.

We were so disappointed.

It was still hotter than blazes on Thursday; we have set records almost from the first of the month for hottest days ever in October. I would have preferred, and I think what James might have preferred, was to go straight home, stay cool, and metaphorically lick our wounds. But we were driving by there anyway, so we stopped by Publix for the twofers and other necessities, like low-salt ham and yogurt. God sent us an angel and a nice Publix employee took our cart back into the store for us.

We did lay low for the rest of the afternoon.

Friday dawned hot and breathless. Since we hadn't had any success finding more socks for James at the Powder Springs Road Walmart, we tried the one closer to us, at the East-West Connector. We had to search because they are moving the store around, but we did find him more of the Dr. Scholl's stockings. Picked up a few other things, and then just wandered around the store killing time, since it was almost time for lunch. We found a set of Perry Mason DVDs, seasons 7-9, and James bought it for me for our anniversary.

This week's lunch was at O'Charley's. It was so hot that when I tried to open the door to the restaurant, the metal door handle burnt my hand! Luckily an employee opened it from the inside. John Bouler, the Boroses, the Spiveys, and Aubrey were there with us. Alice returned Joe Straczynski's book, which she read twice; she said it didn't make her sad, like it did me—it made her mad. (I was mad, too, that such abuse of kids can still happen in this day and age. His whole family situation was Dickensian, the worst kind of Dickensian, and Dickens would be appalled that in 2019 we still allow such things to happen.) Had a great steak, savory and tender, with a salad and a baked potato. James had a chopped steak (he likes the crispy onions; I don't blame him). Aubrey had a new toy, perfect for her artistic talents: a ReMarkable. I am so drooling!

Once again we went home and holed up. I have lots of magazines to read.

And then it happened: the front came through. We woke up Saturday morning (early, because we wanted to go to the October Hallmark ornament premiere) to find it cool (low 60s), with a nice soft breeze. I can't tell you how wonderful this felt! We drove all the way up to Town Center with the truck windows down. It was better than the ornament premiere, which we nevertheless enjoyed. I had $12 of credit and actually bought a Hallowe'en ornament: the black cat. It will look nice hung up somewhere; I think it's a little large for the Hallowe'en tree. Played with the "Monster Mash" ornaments (monsters playing the song) and the Star Trek transporter, but the only other thing that caught my eye was a Jim Shore fox Christmas figure. Too expensive, though.

I "drove" the power chair across the parking lot to the Barnes & Noble while James got the truck up there (easier than loading it up and lowering it again). We had just a few minutes in the store because we had another lunch engagement; I bought the Christmas issue of "Country Sampler" and the 2019 cross-stitch Christmas ornament magazine. James got a "Cooks Illustrated."

When we got home I got the ladder out to install the new LED floodlights we bought at Walmart. James has to leave for work in the morning when it's dark, so he usually turns the floods in the driveway on so he can see to load the power chair on the truck. Unfortunately my stupid right arm still will not stretch out enough, with this stupid rotator cuff nonsense, to remove the bulb. So James had to get on the ladder while I spotted him. I hated to do it because the arthritis has been giving him such pain. Plus we realize now, with the reappearance of another blister, that the new medication (which he stopped taking because we thought it caused the original blister) probably did not cause the blister as we thought. He is going to get back to the rheumatologist and see if he can try taking the new medication again.

We had a surprise message from my sister-in-law Candy yesterday; they were going to be in Morrow today and she and Mom wondered if they could drive the rest of the way up and join us somewhere for lunch. So we took them to Uncle Maddio's Pizza. I wondered what they were doing in Morrow and it turned out they had to go all the way there—an hour away from us!—just to get the October Hallmark ornaments since there is no Hallmark store anywhere near Warner Robins any longer: not even at Macon Mall or in Macon period! What a fat pain in the neck! So we had a nice chat and a nice meal, and then they headed back south.

After they left we went to Lidl (for milk, bread, juice, cucumbers, and chocolate) and Kroger (I ran in to get no-salt mushrooms), and then came home.

Then it was Saturday night at the Britcoms while James made himself breakfast for Sunday. Also watched a special called I Hate Jane Austen, about a noted British writer who really didn't like reading Austen (this was probably because it was required reading in schools). In the special he talked to Jane Austen fans and other writers and literary critics trying to determine what was so good about her books. At the end he has a new appreciation for all of them, including Mansfield Park.

Labels: books, Christmas, family, food, friends, health, magazines, shopping, sickness, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:55:00 PM

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