July 29 through August 1

Wednesday, July 29

My prescription and test strips for the glucose monitor were delivered today.  I was fortunate to see the FED EX truck park, so I was able to get to the front door and call the delivery lady to bring the package to that door so I did not have to go down the step to the breezeway to get the package.  Stupid foot is still hurting.

My aunt Lily came to bring me the four six-packs of Diet Coke and two packages of sunflower seeds she picked up for me at the grocery store.  She also dragged my garbage can back up to the house and brought me my mail.  After she left, I went through the mail, recycled the junk mail, and paid the two bills that were in it.  David Lassahn, Becky's son, mowed my yard this afternoon, and I was able to catch his attention and pay him for the month of August's mowing.  We chatted a little bit.  He said Tyrone and Lonnie were doing well, which I was glad to hear.  He is a health and PE teacher in Blooming Prairie, so we chatted a little bit about school reopening.  He said they are working hard to have a safe reopening.  I personally don't see how that is even possible, but more power to them.  

I think we will be looking at a mass extinction event nationally if they force all these children back to school prematurely.

It was a lovely, sunny day today.  I didn't leave the house, but I enjoyed looking at the day through my huge picture window.  I ate more of the left over roast beef with potatoes, carrots, and onions.  The potatoes are red potatoes, and they are unusually delicious.  The carrots also were very tasty.  

I amused myself by working on a photo inventory of my LeeAnn dolls and their wardrobe (most of which I personally sewed for them).  I have been placed in Facebook jail for "bullying" some asshole.  What actually happened was that this guy was bullying a woman who had commented on a dog toy that was in the shape of a cat described as "full of fluff and fear."  She thought it was in extremely bad taste to make a representation of a cat for a dog to savage.  In her post, she made NO MENTION of her sexual preference.  He, however, commented something to the effect of her being "hyper sensitive like all LGBTQ people are" and that she was "mentally ill."  

This really pissed me off as he either assumed her gender preference status or crept on her Facebook pages to find out more about her for the purpose of attacking her.  I confronted him on it, stating that he had "shown his true colors" and that perhaps HE was the "mentally ill" person, due to his "homophobia and superiority complex."  Now, I have seen FAR WORSE than this on Facebook, but somehow, I was deemed a "bully" and told that I was prohibited from posting for 7 days.  

There was no way for me to dispute my penalty or plead my case.  So, I am still fuming over  this bullshit.  Facebook is basically a time eater and waster anyhow, but it is the only way I can keep up with some of my former students.  I can still read, but I cannot comment.  Very annoying.

Especially when I feel like I am being punished for standing up to a bully.

Lily called me later in the day and told me that her eye doctor determined that the issues she was having with her new glasses are a result of the prescription being totally wrong.  So they are reordering her lenses so her glasses will have the correct prescription.  Seriously, the medical profession is out of whack.

Thursday, July 30

This was a fundamentally wasted day.  

I took more pictures of my LeeAnn dolls in their outfits and searched futilely for Pixie Lee  who has mysteriously vanished. 

It was another bright, sunny day.

I talked to Mom and Lily on the phone and mindlessly watched television.  

That's it.

Friday, July 31

I did not sleep well last night.  My phone charger cord was not functioning properly as it appears to be bent so that the wire inside does not connect properly.  I had to be awake early so I could take Mom to Albert Lea for her doctor's appointment.  I was worried that my phone would die in the night and I would not wake up without the alarm.  Also, my foot was hurting terribly in the night.  It was throbbing and aching and the pain was traveling up the sciatic nerve in the back of my leg.  

When I did fall asleep, I had odd and restless dreams that woke me frequently.  I don't have a clear memory of them, but one was about ghosts, I think.  Something creepy and disturbing.  

I woke up over an hour before I had to, and fussed around my house a while and plugged my phone into the charger in my living room before leaving to pick up my mother.  It was a really pleasant day--not hot at all!  My foot hurt a lot the whole time I waited in the car for my mother, but it was tolerable.  I worked on my Christmas table runner and listened to some stuff from YouTube on my phone.  Fortunately, my car charger works fabulously.  

My table runner is getting very close to being done, but I really only work on it when I am waiting for my mother when she is at an appointment.  

My mother had a great report from her doctor.  Her A1C is 7.0 which is great, and she had lost seven pounds when she was afraid she had gained a lot due  to lack of activity while being in quarantine  lockdown.  

Mom offered to fill my car with gas, but every pump at the local Casey's station was full, and I was really tired due to inadequate sleep last night.  I told her we could fill it next time.   She had forgotten to order a head of lettuce and asked if I would call Lerberg's and add it to her grocery order.  Because I don't need much, I did not put in an order for more groceries this week.  I am low on onions, so she told me to go ahead and add onions to her order.  So I did.  

Getting out of and back into my house was very difficult and painful with my foot being messed up, but I was able to do it.  I napped a little in my recliner when I got home.  In the afternoon, I got a phone call from my sister Joni.  She wanted to know where Mom was as she had brought a bag of produce for her, and she was not answering her phone.

I knew she had to be home as Jack and his family were in Winona, moving some of Caleb's stuff into the apartment he is moving into for this school year.  I told her that Mom probably was on the phone with Kim, whom she does not hang up on to take another call.   Joni said that they were almost to my house and had a bag of goodies for me too.  

In the bag were two ears of sweet corn, four summer squash, a small zucchini, two tomatoes, and a small bag of cherry tomatoes.  They also  gave me a freshly canned jar of pickles that need to work for a while before they are ready to eat.  

I immediately husked the sweet corn and put the two ears in a ziplock bag in the fridge.  I scrubbed, sliced, and steamed the summer squash and zucchini and ate half of them for supper and saved the other half for tomorrow.  I had one tomato sliced on toast for supper too.  All that fresh food was SO DELICIOUS.  I love vegetables, especially freshly picked ones.

During this time, I tried to call Mom three times as I knew she had to be in her house--probably on the phone, but she is 86.  Anything could happen at any time.  Finally she called me back--and she was pissed when I told her there was a bag of fresh produce and some boards for Kim outside of her garage.  She was angry that Joni and Jeff did not knock on the door.  I said, "Well, they tried to call a few times, and there was no answer so they didn't think you were home."  

So, she was pouting.  Oh, well.  At least she wasn't laying at the bottom of the basement stairs unconscious.

I took the maximum amount of Tylenol today, trying to get the foot pain under control.  It helped, but it still hurt.  I headed to bed early as I was in sleep deficit.  

Saturday, August 1

Today was a bit more productive.  Beginning the day with a lovely, relaxing shower, I then sorted, washed, and dried two loads of laundry.  I also swept the living room, hallway, and kitchen and did the dishes.  

I ate  the leftover summer squash and zucchini and another tomato on toast for lunch.  Still as delicious as it was yesterday.  I am saving the sweet corn for another day.  

I was disappointed because we were supposed to have thunderstorms starting around 4 pm and going through midnight, but, though the sky got dark and gloomy, we never got a single drop of rain.  There is no indication of rain again till next Thursday.  So, now it is my turn to pout.  I love a good thunderstorm--the more noisy and wild, the better.  

Lily came over in the afternoon and brought me two cinnamon rolls from Mary Groth and my mail.  I had a lot of mail!  Including in it were three packages.  One was a vintage doll clothes pattern for the "My Friend" dolls, one was a set of "Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots" made by a "Littlest Toys" company.  They were sold in Target--ordered them on line--and are the right size for toys for my smaller dolls.  The other package was several pairs of doll tights made for the Chatty Cathy dolls.  I got two pairs each of red, black, white, pink, and blue.  I am slowly building a wardrobe for my Chatty Cathy dolls.  I am expecting two more brunette Cathies, two blonde baby brothers, and a brunette Chatty Baby Girl.  They were super cheap because they are dirty and mute, but I am looking forward to making them clean and lovely again.  I am dreaming of getting a set of African American Chatties too.  They are hard to find, rare, and expensive, but now that I have no more debt (except the house), I can afford to buy myself some treasures from time to time.

I found something else on line that I would love to have, but it was pretty expensive.  It is the very same ranch set I had as a child--there was a tin "ranch house" like the old tin doll houses from the 1950s, but this was a ranch!  It came with cowboys, long horn cattle, fencing, and other accessories like "wood piles" and stuff like that.  There are still a lot of random pieces of my old ranch set at mom's house in the toy box.  I have long planned to dig them out and take them back to my own house.  I loved that ranch set.  The tin ranch house I had is long gone, as are a lot of the pieces and the fences.  The whole set, including the box, is available in Albert Lea through a Buy-n-Sell site for $275.  That's a bit much for what is there, but I want it so bad!  It looks like a lot of the cows and cowboys are missing, but if I supplemented that with the old left overs from my childhood set, I'd have practically a complete set.  

I did correspond with the seller, but I did not make an offer.

When I talked to Mom on the phone, she told me Casey's station was shut down for two weeks.  A kid who works there--a boy in Cora's class--has the CV19 virus.  Apparently he is a bit of an ass and has done nothing to follow the protective protocol.  As a result, the entire place has to be shut down.  All the employees have to go into two weeks of quarantine, and the entire place has to be scrubbed down and sanitized.  

I was really glad when I heard this that I had NOT filled up my gas tank.  

I just do not know how they think they can open schools up in this situation--this will be a common thing, especially in the high school!  Kids will do whatever they feel like doing because of course they all feel like  they are immortal anyway.  Add to that the fact that many of them will be the spawn of tRUMP cultists who feel that wearing a mask is a libtard plot to turn them all into gay socialists.  ARG. 

I read this article by a superintendent of a school in Arizona with tears running down my face.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/01/schools-reopening-coronavirus-arizona-superintendent/?arc404=true

I miss teaching.  I miss my kids, my curriculum, my feeling of having a purpose in this world--but I am so happy that I do not have to return to the classroom this fall.  SO HAPPY that I do not have to risk my life or watch my colleagues or students sicken and die!  

I had an unpleasant conversation with my aunt Lily about tRUMP last night.  She had been talking to her tRUMPian kids and friends and they all claimed that this virus was basically a hoax that would vanish as soon as the election was over.  I responded that, if it was a hoax, 155,000 people would not be dead.  Then she said they claimed that these numbers were not real and that a lot of the deaths were from something other than CV19.  

It's so frustrating to deal with this misinformation because OF COURSE this is what people WANT to believe.  I'd love to believe it was all a hoax and will all be over in November too!  But sadly, I have a brain and it functions.  I told her that the only thing I could say was "Wait and See."  I also told her that I believed that tRUMP would lose in a landslide (she had said that he was probably going to win since everyone she knows is voting for him) and that it wouldn't surprise me to see him going to prison for treason.

She, of course, doesn't think that will happen, and that everything people are saying about him is a lie.  ("Fake news.")  Again, I said, "Wait and see."  

Seriously, if tRUMP wins again, I will be seeking sanctuary in another country.  I cannot live with this shit any longer.