September 14 through September 26

Monday, September 14

I continue to be on a mission to restore order and cleanliness to my house.  Today, I cleaned the litter boxes, gathered up garbage throughout the house, and took the garbage and bags of “scoopings” out to the garbage bins outside the house.  I gathered all the recyclables from the house and put them in the recycling bin.  After putting away the dishes in the dish drainer, I did the dishes and washed Peaches’ food trays and water dish.  The stove top was greasy and had a lot of crumbles on it, so I scrubbed that off too.  It looks much better. 

I sliced up one of my fresh tomatoes and had tomato on toast for lunch and baked the two New York Strip steaks with mushrooms and cream of mushroom soup.  I ate one for supper and saved the other for another day.  I wanted to make a couple of potatoes and use the gravy formed by the mushroom soup to top them,  but I was too lazy to peel any potatoes.  I ate some of the black diamond watermelon that I had cleaned earlier.  There is no better tasting watermelon in the world.  It was so juicy that I almost killed myself choking when a big drop ran down my throat and went down the wrong way.  Obviously, I survived.  Ha.

 

Tuesday, September 15

I had some laundry left in the dryer, so I folded that and dragged it into the bedroom.  The bathroom rugs were badly in need of a good washing, so I did that, and then I did some cleaning and organizing of all the stuff that had piled up around my recliner in the living room.

For lunch, I made myself a big lettuce salad.  I have been craving lettuce lately—I make the salad with a variety of vegetables, like tomatoes and cucumbers, and add roasted peanuts for protein and croutons for crunchiness.

A while back, I bought some tiny crocheted Barbie baby dresses and biboveralls from an Etsy seller.  They were very cheap, and I think I bought about 6 of them.  I had not done anything with them yet, so today I put them on a couple of my Barbie tiny baby dolls.  It was hard to get the little overalls on because the legs do not move at all.  But they looked absolutely adorable in them.  I have a lot of crochet thread myself, so at some point I am going to try to use those to figure out a pattern to make more of them myself.  It really should not be too hard.

 

Wednesday, September 16

Waking up this morning was hard.  I wanted to stay in bed all day, but I got up.  I didn’t accomplish much.  Lily brought my mail and some plastic bags that she wanted me to bring to Joni for her farmers’ market days.  I sorted through the mail and paid the bills that came.  I got two dolls I had ordered from Facebook Market Place.  One was a Magic Attic doll, the other was one of the taller Best Friends Club dolls.  Both are cute, but not the size I thought they would be.  The Battat horse I had bought for one of my new LeeAnn dolls also arrived today.  It is absolutely adorable, but it is actually quite a bit too big for her, scale-wise.  It is a perfect size for my Kish Chrysalis doll.  I wish it fit Josie.  She looks like a little horse loving girl. 

 

Thursday, September 17

My cousin Jerry Butler called me this morning.  He and I have been arguing pretty viciously over politics on FaceBook, but we had a very pleasant, civil conversation on the phone.  We did a lot of reminiscing about our childhood adventures.  His family and mine spent a lot of time together, and he and his siblings often stayed at our house because his dad was an abusive drunk who beat the shit out of his mom and the kids regularly.  One time, his dad lined up all the kids in order of their birth and told his mother that he was going to shoot all the kids from the oldest to the youngest and kill her last.  He was drunk and was armed with a hand gun. 

After that, she farmed the kids out to a bunch of relatives to keep them safe for a while. 

At one point, she did call the cops, but the cops were no help.  One of them asked her, “What did you do to set him off?”  Fuckers.  Things haven’t changed that much since those days.

Eventually she did leave him—then let him come back—then left him again.  This happened several times till the four boys got old enough to fight back.  The dad was beating up their mother, and the oldest who is my age (my cousin Jim who has done so much work at my house) knocked his dad down.  The other boys (Jerry, John, and Joel) piled on, and they beat their dad so bad that he couldn’t stand up.  They left him unconscious in the driveway and took their mom and sister to their Mom’s parents’ house.  That was the end of that relationship.  Later, I don’t know how much later, their dad was sitting in the bar bitching to everyone about his wife and kids being pieces of shit.  It happened that their Mom’s brother was in the bar and heard him—he slapped the shit out of him and advised him never to attempt to return to their home. 

It was a zoo.

All those kids turned out to be good people.  No drunks in the bunch and no meanness in them either.  Sadly, they did all turn out to be rabid Republicans.  Sigh.

Jerry was a little shit when he was young—our nickname for him was Cheetah—like Tarzan’s monkey.  He was scrawny and wiry in our youth.  Now he is a huge, portly man like his grandfather was.  He even sounds like his grandpa when he talks. 

He told me a few stories about his youth that I had not heard before.  He lived with his grandparents for a while.  He hated going to school and one day announced he was going to quit school.  His grandma (who was my grandma’s sister) cried and carried on, saying that he absolutely COULD NOT quit school.  His grandpa said that he could quit—that it was pointless to send him to school to raise hell and learn nothing—that it was a waste of his time and the teachers’ time.

So the next morning, he got up and turned on the TV, thinking he’d spend a lovely day watching television and enjoying himself.  HA!!!  His grandpa was a wily man.  He pulled the plug out of the wall and ordered Jerry out to the barn where they spent the entire day shoveling shit out of calf pens and cattle gutters.  They worked till lunch, ate lunch, and went right back out again where they worked till supper time.  Jerry said he was too tired even to eat supper.  He collapsed in his bed and slept through till morning—at which time, he got up and got on the school bus and went to school.  Which, of course, was his grandfather’s plan the whole time.

He graduated near the bottom of his class, but he did graduate. 

We talked two and a half hours on the phone.

Anyhow, Mom has been telling me for at least two months that she is so hungry for pizza, so today I called in an order for Godfather’s Pizza.  They are in a new building with a drive-up window.  Their old building has been turned into a disgusting tRUMP merchandise store.  Ugh.  Oh, for a flame thrower and a bazooka!  Anyhow, I picked her up and we went to pick up our pizzas and drop off the heavy duty boxes we had from our grocery deliveries along with Lily’s plastic bags at Joni’s house.  I had a big ziplock bag full of kibble that Peaches will not eat and mom had the remains of a roast beef that had gotten old in the fridge for her barn kitties.

Joni wasn’t home, so we put the food and bags inside the cardboard boxes and left them up against her garage.  We ate the monkey bread on the way home.  The pizza tasted just wonderful.  I don’t remember the last time I ate pizza, but it has been months and months. 

When I got home, I called in my grocery order from Lerberg's, ordered stuff from Schwan’s for myself and Lily on line, and ordered cat food, some snacks, and some other stuff from Amazon. 

It was a very lovely day—I noticed today that the leaves have begun to turn, and the air is a bit chilly as fall is definitely coming closer.

 

Friday, September 18

I took more garbage and recycling out to the bins, cleaned out the fridge, and did the dishes.  The Schwan’s man came early, and Lily came right over to get her stuff.  When she got here, I had another big bag of garbage and some broken down cardboard boxes which she took out and threw into the bins for me.  She is always so sweet and helpful.

When Ross delivered my groceries, I immediately wiped them down with my bleach wipes.  They are saying that is unnecessary now, but I am still doing it.  I got most everything put away.  I filled my pop fridge with my green iced tea.  I love that green citrus iced tea!

I cleaned the bathroom within an inch of its life.  It really needed a good cleaning.  When I  got done, I put the freshly washed rugs down, and it looked and smelled so clean and fresh.  I sorted and started washing my laundry. It felt good to get stuff done today.

 

Saturday, September 19

Lily came over and took my garbage out to the curb.  She hauled a bag of garbage and a bag of recycling out first.  I had bought two pork steaks from Lerberg’s yesterday, so I baked them with sweet yellow onions, mushrooms, and mushroom soup.  That steak was delicious.  Very tender.  It was pretty greasy, but I was able to drain most of the grease off of it.  I unloaded the dish drainer and washed what dirty dishes I had.  I didn’t do much else today.

 

Sunday, September 20 

Every Sunday, I start the day by filling my pill caddy.  Now that I am retired and living in lockdown, my pill caddy helps me remember what day it is.  I stripped off my bedding and washed that today.  Making a bed is very hard for me still, but it is a lot easier than it was before.  I am slowly getting stronger and more able to take care of things.  It feels good to be able  to take care of my own house.

I worked on my laundry and swept my kitchen and living room today.  I ate the other pork steak with boiled potatoes and the mushroom gravy.  It was very windy today and a lot of the yellow leaves were blowing off the trees.

 

Monday, September 21

I took Mom to the post office this morning as she thought she had a package.  It turned out to be a new phone book.  I recycle my phone books immediately as it is much easier to look up any numbers I need on line.  We made a spur of the moment decision to take more boxes to Joni along with my leftover roast beef that I had made but never ate a couple weeks ago.  Her barn kitties will appreciate it. 

When we got there, Joni brought out the three new kittens she had picked up for free at a livestock auction.  There was a box of 9 kittens there that sad “FREE,” so she took two and then went back and took one more.  It almost broke my heart to see then as they were colored just like Peaches, Tyger Lily, and Stewie when they were babies.  Peaches was such a pale and scrawny little thing when she was a baby, and the little buff colored kitten looks so much like my Peach did when she was a baby.  I was very tempted by them as Joni says she would give them to someone else if they could be house cats.  She has to make them be barn cats as she already has several cats in the house. 

We went to Culvers to get fish dinners and turtle sundaes.  We ate the sundaes at the park by the river.  I took my fish home.  I got coleslaw and onion rings with the fish.  Everything was good.

 

Tuesday, September 22

Lily brought my mail and a container of her homemade minestrone soup.  I thought I hated minestrone soup, but her homemade soup was delicious.  I was very tired today and did very little.  Mostly I watched and deleted stuff off the DVR.

 

Wednesday, September 23

I was a little bit more productive today than I was yesterday.  I baked the two ribeye steaks, did the dishes, and scrubbed the kitchen floor.  I worked on my laundry, unboxed a bunch of packages, bagged up a bunch of garbage and recycling, and broke down tons of cardboard boxes that have been piling up.  I cleaned the litterboxes and watered my two plants.  Lily stopped by to bring me another small container of the minestrone soup.  There were a couple of packages on my step, so she brought them in for me.  When she left, she took the bag of litterbox scoopings out and threw them in the garbage bin.

 

Thursday, September 24

I tidied up the area around my recliner again—that area just seems to attract messiness.  I watched and deleted a bunch of stuff off the DVR.  I got a few small packages again today.  One of them was a three pound bag of cinnamon bears.  I love cinnamon bears.  I ate quite a few of them. 

I didn’t need much in the grocery line, but I placed a small order from Lerberg’s.  It was about $44 worth of groceries.  We had a brief but enthusiastic rain storm in the afternoon.  I fell asleep in bright sunshine and woke up to purple skies and rain pounding hard against my window.

 

Friday, September 25

I made my bed with all fresh bedding, including my freshly laundered comforter.  I had been sleeping on the mattress pad with an afghan since I stripped the bed.  It was much easier for me to make the bed from scratch than it has been since before the surgery and health issues.  It only took about 15 minutes.  The first time I made my bed after all my issues, it took almost 45 minutes and I had to stop and rest three times.  I put away my clean clothes, gathered up some recycling, and wiped down the cat mat in the bedroom.  Ross brought my groceries in, and it did not take long to wipe them down and put them away as there were not very many this time.

 

Saturday, September 26

I unpacked my two big boxes of stuff from Amazon.  It was mostly cat  food for me and some for Lily.  Mary Groth had sent over two cinnamon rolls for me, and they were delicious.  Lily also brought me two pieces of cake that she had baked for a dinner party she had with two of her friends.  The cake was okay—nothing to jump up an down about.  It was a yellow cake mix with coconut added and a cool whip frosting that was mixed up with crushed pineapple.  I really do not care for cool whip.  I consider it to be pseudo food.

I cleaned the cat boxes again and broke down the big card board boxes.  I ate my leftover ribeye with a baked potato.  Kim had come to Mom’s this weekend and went through more of her stuff.  Mom said they had a very nice visit. 

 

September 27 through October 3

 Sunday, September 27

I washed two afghans today.  Then I broke down a whole bunch of small cardboard boxes—they were cereal boxes and Kleenex boxes and cat food cartons—small things like that.  I did this while chatting with my aunt Lily on the phone.  She is so worried about her cat.  She is almost out of insulin and syringes for the cat and they are very expensive.  I looked them up on Chewy.com and discovered that they can be ordered from there cheaper than what she gets them for at the vet.  So, I ordered them for her.  Now she is fretting about the insulin staying cold during the shipment.  There is an online chat feature at Chewy, and I talked to a representative who said they ship it with dry ice.  So it should be fine.  However, she will worry and fret about it until it arrives because she is a worrier and a fretter.

Lily is going grocery shopping tomorrow and offered to pick me up a couple of things since she now owes me a little over a hundred dollars for the cat supplies.  I don’t need much, but I would like a loaf of French bread.  When I went through the mail, I discovered that my ballot had arrived.  I will be filling it out and returning it next week. 

 

Monday, September 28

I dragged two bags of garbage out to the bin outside and cleaned a bunch of old food out of the fridge and to the bin outside.  I emptied the dish drainer and washed all the dirty dishes, including the cat dishes.  I gave Peaches fresh, clean dishes and fresh water. 

Lily dropped off the groceries she picked up for me.  The French bread was fresh and delicious—I ate three slices of it with butter for lunch.  I enjoyed it so much.  It was really fresh.  I spent the afternoon dozing in my chair, messing around on the internet, and watching and deleting stuff off the DVR.  I watched that old Diane Keaton movie Baby Boom.  I don’t know why I love that movie, but I do.  I couldn’t delete it—I left it on the DVR and will probably watch it again one of these days.

In the evening, my brother Jack came over and dragged my recycling to the curb.  It was so full that I could not have squeezed a single bottle cap in to save my life.  He brought me a big bag of McIntosh apples from his tree.  They smell fabulous.  I will probably make some of them into an apple dumpling at some point.  There are now over 200 inmates with Covid in his prison.  One of his coworkers had been to the motorcycle super spreader event in Sturgis, and some dipshit prison in Oklahoma sent them 22 prisoners infected with Covid WITHOUT TELLING THEM they were getting infected prisoners.  They dosed them all with Tylenol to lower their fevers and sent them on.  Of course this shit rampaged through the prison at record speed.  I am very worried that he will get it, and he is not in good health after his brush with sepsis from that bad tooth.  He is decked out in full hazmat gear when he works directly with the inmates, but it takes one small slip to get infected.  He says the inmates, all females, are terrified. Poor things.

 

Tuesday, September 29

Some asshole on Facebook was bullying my former student, Miranda Bushman.  She is a very tender hearted girl with low self-esteem.  Rather than eviscerate the prick who was bullying her, I messaged her mother and asked for her address and some information about her favorite treats.  Then I sent her a small case of Kraft Macoroni and Cheese, three bags of Oreo Double Stuff Cookies, and a box of Microwaveable Unicorn Shaped Kraft Mac and Cheese as well as a bag of treats for her cat and a bag of treats for her dog.  I hate bullies—especially when they bully a fragile, gentle girl like Miranda.

Sending her a care package won’t heal the bruises of bullies, but at least it will let her know someone cares about her.

Waylon, the mailman brought me a large envelope that contained my mini-book titled Hogwarts from Amazon.  It is the perfect size for my LeeAnn dolls and is a readable book.  It will be great when I make a bedroom for some of the dolls.  I wish I had woodworking skills.

Mom wanted me to look on Amazon to see if I could get her a window washing squeegee and the new Christmas CD for one of her favorite singers.  They had both, so I ordered those for her.  She owes me quite a bit of money now too, for all the stuff that I have ordered for her.  LOL.  I am not worried about it—both her and Lily always pay me back.

Eventually.

I watched the shit show which was the presidential debate.  My God. tRUMP is the foulest, most evil, obnoxious, wretched piece of excrement that ever walked the planet.  If they have any more debates, they need to put a shock collar on that motherfucker.

 

Wednesday, September 30

Lily, Rhonda, and Loren stopped by on their way home from the cemetery where they had collected Lily’s pots of flowers from the graves.  She has been worrying about them, so I am glad she got them home.  They stopped at my mail box and got a huge armload of mail that had been stuffed into it.  Most of it was catalogs which I immediately recycled.  There were a couple of packages from Amazon that I had actually forgotten I had ordered. One was four small plastic bags of “Christmas spice” gum drops, and another was two small bags of pecans dipped in amaretto flavored chocolate. 

Loren dragged my recycling bin back up to the house, which was a good thing as not all of my recycling fit in there to go on Tuesday.  I have a whole bag of recycling in the living room and that box full of small, broken down boxes. 

When they left, I went through the mail and recycled most of it.  So many catalogs!  And a whole mess of political mail ads.   I also called in my grocery order to Lerberg’s.  Mostly, I just got produce, milk, and bread.  I also got a couple boxes of pizza crust mix. I may attempt to make a homemade pizza from scratch.  I have plenty of mozzarella cheese, and I don’t really care for meat on my pizza.  I have lots of mushrooms and black olives, which are my favorite toppings for pizza anyhow.

Lily called me at about 10:30 pm to tell me they were waiting on the ambulance to come and take Mary Groth to the hospital as she couldn’t breathe.  Lily had hosted their dinner party this week, and Mary did not feel well all day.  She got worse and worse, and finally Julie, who is an RN insisted that they call the ambulance as Mary was in such distress.  Mary is the one whose doctor told her “not to worry” about CV19—to “just go on out and enjoy yourself.”  Fucker.  If she got the covid, then Lily and everyone else at that party has been exposed to it.

 

Thursday, October 1

I got up early as I had to take Mom to Owatonna today to get her hair cut.  I wanted to fill out my ballot so I could send it in from Owatonna.  I had such a lot of crap that I need to go through piled up by my recliner, that I wanted to go through it before I took mom to Owatonna.  But she called me and talked and talked and talked.  I did manage to dig out my ballot, but she wanted me to get her early so she could go and pick up her mail on the way to Owatonna.  Anyhow, I hustled to get the boxes I wanted to drop off at Joni’s house in the car, grabbed my purse, made sure my embroidery project and phone was in it, and headed out.  I got her to the post office and to the salon in plenty of time.  When she went into the salon, I called Costas to get some of that delicious expensive chocolate—only to discover that I had never thrown my wallet into my purse!  It was on my side table next to the recliner as I had been paying bills a couple days ago—so NO DEBIT CARD!!  Fortunately, Mom’s purse was in my car, so I called her in the salon and asked if I could use her Debit Card.  She said yes, since she owes me money anyhow.  So, I got some chocolate covered toffee and some turtles for myself and some caramels and turtles for her. 

Then I filled out my ballot and carefully followed every direction so the fucking republicans had no excuse to throw it out.  I never had a chance to work on my embroidery project as I had to look up a couple of candidates for judges on my phone as I had never heard of them.  When she came out, we each had a piece of candy and drove to Joni’s to drop off the boxes.  We chatted with Joni briefly, then we went to the Asian Kitchen to get Chinese take out.  We both got shrimp egg fu yung.  She got egg drop soup, and I got steamed dumplings too.  Then we went home. 

The Chinese food was delicious. 

Later I called Lily to see if she had heard anything about Mary G.  All she knew was that Mary was still in the hospital and probably had pneumonia.  She tested negative for the virus.  They said she would be in the hospital for a few more days. 

In the afternoon, I continued working on the pile of stuff around my car.  I even pulled out the chair and the table and vacuumed all around it.  There were so many crumbs and little bits of crap all around the chair.  It looks so much better.  I watched some stuff on the DVR and deleted it afterwards.

I ordered some stuff from the Schwan’s man online for mom and Lily.  I ordered a bag of mixed veggies and shell macaroni for myself. 

 

Friday, October 2

The Schwan’s man and Ross from Lerberg’s were both supposed to deliver to me today, so I went into the breezeway to open the door so they could just walk in and holler when they arrived.  As long as I was out there, I cleaned the litterboxes and took out the box of broken down cardboard and a bag of cans and bottles.  I cleaned out the fridge really well and then took the bag of garbage and the cat box scoopings to the garbage bin outside.  I have thrown away so much garbage that the bin is almost full already!  It will have to go to the curb on Sunday night.  I did the dishes after cleaning out the fridge.

I ate the leftover Chinese for lunch and then fell asleep briefly in the recliner.  I was awakened by Ross delivering the groceries, so I wiped them down and put them away.  I ate a few of the fresh strawberries which tasted extra delicious.  I worked on my laundry this afternoon and basically just had a peaceful day. 

At dark I shut the breezeway door.  The Schwan’s man never did show up.  Don’t know what happened there.  There was no text message or email.  I hope he didn’t get in an accident or something.  Maybe he will show up tomorrow.

 

Saturday, October 3, 2020

I slept till almost 10 am.  It felt good, but I had frustrating dreams.  I dreamt I was teaching junior high.  I had a whole classroom full of kids, but nothing was ready.  I had no materials ready and I couldn’t find my laptop to print off my spelling/vocabulary lesson.  When I taught junior high, I had about a five page spelling/vocabulary lesson that I did every Monday.  None of my materials were in my file cabinet.  Everything was a mess.  The kids were looking at me like, “So what are we doing?”  It was one of those very frustrating dreams.  I just wanted to be done with the day so I could line stuff up for the rest of the week.

It’s hard to believe that it has been ten years or more since I actually had a classroom.  I miss it.

I started working on my laundry first thing this morning after getting up, testing my blood, reading my devotional book, and taking my pills.  Lily called and said she was on her way to the store to get some white beans to make white chili.  She asked if there was something she was supposed to do for me.  I told her no but that I did have some apples for her from Jack and a bunch of plastic storage containers that she had used to bring food for me recently.  I said she could stop and pick that stuff up if she wanted. 

So I opened the front door so she could get in.  She stopped and picked up my mail since she was coming over anyhow.  More catalogues and junk mail.  Just a couple of bills.  We visited briefly, and Peaches just went nuts over her, rubbing against her legs and mewing at her and head butting her.  LOL.  Lily LOVED it.  It made her feel special that Peaches makes over her so much.

Lily told me that Mary G had been transferred to Rochester.  It turns out that she does not have pneumonia at all--she has a badly infected gall bladder.  They are trying to get the infection under control so they do not have to do surgery, but they are not having much luck.  This was the tactic they tried with me when my appendix burst.  The wanted to kill the infection, then send me home and do the surgery in six month--well, they could not get the infection under control so they had to remove the appendix.  I suspect that is what they are going to have to end up doing with Mary too.  She is in her 80s, so I don't think they should fuck around very much with her.  She is quite ill and lethargic.  I am worried about her.

I spent a good share of the day catching up with my DreamWidth entries.  It was ridiculous that I fell so far behind.  Thank goodness I keep good notes.  My problem has been that I have been in a dark place—primarily due to the tRUMPian bullshit.  I have so many trumpanzee relatives who spend all their time waxing poetic about “God’s chosen leader for our country—our precious president!”  I seriously want to just pick up a shovel and beat them with it.  I do not have quarantine exhaustion.  I have stupid asshole trump lover exhaustion. 

Anyhow, as of the end of this sentence, I will be caught up with my DW journal.  Thank God!