December 1 through 7

 Tuesday, December 1

The hellish year of 2020 is nearing an end.  Will 2021 be any better?  I do think we have some hope with the coming of the vaccine.  It would be lovely to be able to return to a normal way of life again.  I am really craving a movie theater with a big screen and popcorn.

Considering that we are living in the apocalypse, today was a beautiful sunny day.  Amazing weather for December in Minnesota.  I have not been highly motivated to do much today, but I did gather and haul my laundry into the laundry room.  Three packages were delivered from Amazon by UPS today as well as my prescription refills via Fed Ex. 

My brother Jack reported to Rochester to have his torn meniscus repaired at 7:30 this morning.  They sent him home again around 10:30 am.  The surgery went well, and he gets two solid weeks off work to recover.  The last I heard, all of the 400 Covid cases at his prison have recovered, and it is currently Covid free.  Still, I am glad he is able to be home for two weeks.  I wish he could just stay home till after the New Year.  I wish he could retire and be done working there altogether.

The beef roast I made for Thanksgiving last week provided enough meat for a sandwich for my lunch today.  That roast was delicious.  I wish I had three more just like it in the freezer.

My aunt Lily stopped by to deliver my mail.  She wanted my Shopper as, for some reason, she doesn’t get it at the post office.  I never look at the Shopper, so I am more than happy to give it to her. We chatted a bit, and when she left, I went through the mail, tossed all the junk mail and catalogs into the recycling, and set the bills aside to pay later.

I caught up with my DW journal entries again while watching and deleting a bunch of stuff off the DVR. 

 

Wednesday, December 2

Today, I sorted and washed my laundry, washed my dishes, and cleaned a lot of old stuff out of the refrigerator.  Peaches gifted me with THREE piles of cat puke, which I cleaned up unenthusiastically.  However, if I don’t clean it up, no one else will.  Sigh.  I love cats, but I always get the pukers. 

I heard from my mother that Jack is doing well after his knee surgery.  Also, Cora, who had her last wisdom tooth removed on Friday, is recovering well.  Apparently, Walmart is being pissy with her because she did not report to work on Black Friday immediately after having the tooth extracted.  She had told them well in advance that she was having a wisdom tooth surgically removed and would not be able to work.  Those fuckwads scheduled her anyway.  Sigh. The world is full of idiots.

 

Thursday, December 3

I finally got around to opening all my packages and sorting through the stuff.  A lot of it was stuff I had ordered for my mother and Lily.  I separated their things into two bags and put them in my car so I could deliver them today.  Mom had an appointment with her eye doctor for her regular shot in the eye ball. Every six weeks, she has to get that shot to slow the progression of her macular degeneration.  Usually her appointment takes about an hour, but today, it was over two hours. 

Thank goodness the weather was pleasant and sunny.  I always sit in the car and wait as walking around in the Clinic is difficult with my knees having no cartilage left.  I usually bring a book or some project to keep my hands and mind occupied.  Today, I worked on my Christmas table runner.  It is very close to done.  I am working on the red border around the two Christmas trees which are completely embroidered.  Once I finish the red border, all I have left to embroider are the two tree top stars.  Then the only thing left is to sew the red glass beads in the center of each of the lazy daisies that the trees are made up of.  It will be pretty when it is done.  There are audio stories on YouTube that I listened to on my cell phone while I worked on my embroidery project.  I enjoy them, even though I am pretty sure there is no truth to them at all, even though they are supposedly “true.”

When she was finally done, we drove home, and I took her to the post office to get her mail.  We drove by my mail box to get my mail as well then to Lily’s house to drop off her Amazon stuff.  Lily had hosted four of her friends for a supper party last night, and she had made a “care package” of leftovers for each of us consisting of a container of potato soup with ham, a fluffy cranberry salad, two homemade dinner rolls, and a piece of chocolate cake with a peanut butter frosting.  She is a very good cook, and I was hungry.  I was able to make two meals of it, one of which I ate as soon as I got home.

I called in my grocery order to Lerbergs.  I got the stuff to make Puff Corn Caramel Corn, the Ritz cracker peanut butter sandwiches that are dipped in chocolate almond bark, and Peanut Butter Blossom cookies.  I want to do some Christmas baking this year.  I never got anything done last year.

My family has already decided that we are not getting together for Christmas.  My mother and I will probably spend Christmas together like we did Thanksgiving since neither of us goes anywhere.  Lily will be alone, which makes me sad.  But my mother refuses to allow her to come to her house with us for Christmas because she does run her legs off, exposing herself to a lot of people who could be infected with Covid as they also run their legs off.  Sigh.  I won’t go to Lily’s house because of all the people she has over, but I do let her in my house—I just stay ten feet or more away from her, and she never stays long.

 

Saturday, December 5

The Methodist church that Lily attends had a thing going on today where they distributed free breakfasts to anyone who signed up for them.  It was to celebrate the Advent season by reaching out to the community.  Lily has not been attending church since all this pandemic shit hit the fan, but she did sign up for three breakfasts and delivered one to me and one to Mom this morning.  The Styrofoam pods were distributed to people in their cars in the parking lot.  Each pod contained a slice of egg bake, a huge and delicious cinnamon roll, 4 grapes and 2 slices of orange.  The egg bake could have used more cheese and some salsa, but it was adequate and filling.  I was a bit hesitant to eat food prepared by who knows whom, but I ate it.  We’ll see if I die of covid in the next two weeks or so.  

This morning I opened the package I got from my sister Tammy for my birthday.  She had texted me early this morning to ask if I had received it.  I got it yesterday but just didn’t feel like opening it.  I told her to give me a few minutes to get dressed and I would call her and talk to her while I opened it.  She sent me a very cute baseball type hat that had a cat face and cat ears on it and a white mug that had a cat face and cat ears on it too.  Very cute.

This is the first conversation we have had since all the pre-election drama where she took massive offence at everything I said about tRUMP.  It was civil and pleasant, so I hope she has chilled.  I am still aghast that she was so vicious in her response to my political views.  I think tRUMP is the spiritual child of Satan and Hitler, but I still love my sister—though I am shocked and horrified that she can support such an evil piece of shit as tRUMP. 

Tammy and her doctor are pretty sure she has CV19, even though she tested negative.  The doctor wants her to come back to be retested in a few days as he thinks she came in so early that it hadn’t been detectable yet.  She says she feels okay in the morning, but by afternoon she is miserable.  I feared she would get this crap because she, like Lily, cannot stand to be “bored” and “stuck at home,” so she has been out and about every day—shopping, meeting people for lunch in restaurants or bars, hanging out at the horse stables, and going to see various friends.  It’s very frustrating to me to see my loved ones acting like this shit is not going to affect them and refusing to alter their behavior.  I haven’t left my house except to take my mother to her appointments or to get her mail and to go to my mother’s house TWICE since February.  *I* am sick of being “stuck at home,” but I prefer being “stuck at home” to being on a fucking respirator in a hospital!

I spent the rest of the day poking around on the internet, watching and deleting stuff from the DVR, and folding my laundry.  Peaches was especially snuggly today, so she spent a lot of time sprawled across my chest purring and enjoying the belly rubs I provided for her.

 

Sunday, December 6

This morning I took a shower and filled my pill caddy.  I had to order another refill of atorvastatin.  I will soon have to order refills of my glucose test strips and the little plastic things with the sharp that go into the small tool that stabs my finger to draw blood for my daily blood tests.  As usual, Peaches tried her best to “help” with this task by laying across my work space and attempting to paw the pills out of their little cubicles in the pill caddy. 

I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I just don’t feel like making food.  Today I had some “Hot Tamales” candy, some Ruffles potato chips, and a “Lunchable” which consists of five little round crackers, five slices of cheese, and five little round pieces of ham and two very unsatisfying chocolate chip cookies.  It isn’t that I don’t get hungry.  It’s just that I do not feel like cooking anything decent.  There is really no excuse for it as I have tons of food in this house.  You’d think I’d be losing weight like crazy, but I think all I have succeeded in doing is slowing my metabolism down to a crawl.

In fact, I didn’t feel like doing much of anything today, so I didn’t.  I watched and deleted more stuff off the DVR.  You’d think I’d run out of things soon, but it is still really full. 

 

Monday, December 7

“A day that will live in infamy.”

Possibly my total lack of motivation yesterday led to me making better use of today.  As soon as my feet hit the floor (after getting dressed and brushing my teeth), I set about breaking down all the cardboard boxes that have been cluttering my house and gathering all of the other recyclables in the house.  Tomorrow the recycling truck comes, so I want to get all of this stuff out of my house. 

Lily had called earlier and asked if I needed it dragged to the curb today.  I said I did, but needed to break down the cardboard first.  She was on her way to an appointment with her eye doctor in Albert Lea, so I told her I would have it ready by the time she got home.  It took me about two hours to break all that stuff down, and I had a big black garbage bag full of other recycling.  I was just taking it all out the door to put it in the bin when she pulled into my driveway.  We talked very briefly and from a distance as she had hosted two of her grandchildren and their children at her house yesterday and she was concerned they might have been contaminated since both work and the kids go to school. 

She is so sweet to take those bins to the curb for me.  With the walker, it is just impossible for me to drag the bin.  We talked at length about her going to Texas.  I really do not want her to go.  I am so afraid that it will be a repeat of last year.  Or worse.  That she will get infected and be down there without anyone to help her and there will be no room in the hospital for her.  Or that she will be denied treatment due to her age and other health issues—just last night I heard that doctors are choosing who is most likely to survive and who are not likely to.  Anyone with a brain knows that means the elderly and sickly are going to be sent home to die.  Or pushed into a parking garage or back hallway to die. 

Her response is always, “I hate the cold weather” and “I get so lonely and bored here.”  Well, it will be just as boring and lonely in that fucking trailer when the whole state of Texas closes down as it almost certainly will.  There will be no gatherings at the club house to play cards and games.  She’s better off here where she has her little weekly dinner club where she plays games with her 4-6 regular supper club pals.  I keep telling her that we are SO CLOSE to the resolution to this thing.  Don’t take stupid chances now! You can hold out till spring! 

It’s so frustrating.

Anyhow.

I cleaned Peaches’ litterboxes, washed the dishes, and made buttermilk pancakes for lunch.  They were delicious.  They are so simple to make and always turn out.  Here is the recipe:

 

Buttermilk Pancakes

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup flour

1 tbsp sugar

The directions are simple—beat the egg, add the buttermilk, mix well.  Add the dry ingredients.  Mix them up.  Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the pancakes in it. Total bliss.

 

I had a nice chat with Godiva via text as we watched Rachel Maddow in horror and disgust at the antics of tRUMP and his KKKult of morons.  Peaches demanded extended bouts of cuddling, preventing me from accomplishing much.

It was another lovely day for December. Tomorrow is supposed to be even more gorgeous.  Not bad for December.

Oh, I talked to my mother on the phone.  She had called my cousin Kari to see how her brother, sister in law, and brother in law were doing.  She had been to the fund raiser for the local bar owner in Ellendale who needs a double lung transplant.  She rubbed elbows with everyone and discovered that there are many, many people in Ellendale who are infected with Covid. There are between 700-800 people in Ellendale, and she knew at least 15 who have it, including my mailman who just personally handed me a package last week.  Who knows how many more are infected?  I called Lily and told her about it, and her response was maybe she should go to Texas right away. 

I almost screamed.

Texas is far worse than here.  The current outbreak here just goes to show that this shit is spreading fast and everyone needs to get serious about safety protocol.  Not plan fun-filled trips to other states!

I know there is nothing I can do to stop people from being stupid, but I feel compelled to try.  Sometimes I just want to scream and cry.  I get so frustrated.