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

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:07:00 PM

Comments: Post a Comment