June 30 through July 3

Wednesday, June 30

On this last day of June, I am a bit aghast that this year is now half over.  I am disappointed that I haven’t accomplished as much as I wanted to in the first half of the year and am feeling like I really need to buckle down and do better for the second half. 

My biggest accomplishments today have been making a grocery list, calling it in to Lerbergs, catching up with my DW journal, and working on my laundry.   It took most of the afternoon to catch up with the DW entries.  Now I am behind again, but not as far as I was before!  Progress…sort of.

I had Welsh rarebit for lunch—Swiss cheese.  Very tasty.  I made eggs, toast, four small pork sausages, and fried potatoes for supper.  The fried potatoes were left over from some boiled potatoes I made a few days ago. I just sliced them up and fried them in vegetable oil till they were nice and crispy. I talked to a lot of people on the phone.  Everyone is having some sort of trauma or drama.  Joni is very sick again.  The medical people around here suck.  If it isn’t immediately clear what is going on, they just send people home.  If they are still alive in the morning, they can call back only to be sent home again.  Assholes.  After my shitty experiences at Methodist Hospital, I have lost ALL faith in these people.

Not much else is new.  I am so happy that Little G saved Freyja from being put down.  She is just a beautiful dog.  I know Diana will be a great “big sister” and mentor for her. 

 

Thursday, July 1

I started the day with a lovely shower.  Some days the showers are just more satisfying than others.  I called Lerbergs to add a box of Rice Krispies, a quart of Half and Half, and 5 lbs of potatoes to my grocery order.  I knew there was one other thing I needed but could not think of it.  It was eggs.  I am low on eggs.  But I have 6 left in the carton.  That will get me through to next week at least.  Eggs is always my go-to meal when I do not feel like cooking.  They are fast and easy to make, and they always taste good and provide me with protein.

I called Culligan as the new driver left three huge jugs of water on my breezeway steps.  I asked them to please make a notation that I cannot lift those giant jugs into my house and carry them to the kitchen, so if I do not answer the door, just do not leave any water for me. 

I had to clean up two piles of Peaches’ puke first thing this morning.  Yuck.  I did a little sorting and bagging up of recycling and broke down a few more cardboard boxes that have been piling up.  I spent a lot of time on the computer falling down a bunch of random interesting rabbit holes.  I also watched a few of the shows I had recorded on the DVR.  I really can’t remember anything specific that I watched. 

I ate some Fritos at lunch time and had a bowl of chicken noodle soup (out of a can) with crackers for supper. 

 

Friday, July 2

Today is my niece Sadie Lou Nielsen’s birthday.  I sent her a text wishing her a happy birthday and made a post of Facebook doing the same.  She responded, thanking me for the well wishes and telling me she loves me.  Neither of Kim’s spawn acknowledged my well wishes for their birthdays—but THEY are the abused ones.  *insert eye roll here*

I bagged up more recycling.  I seem to have a lot lately—but I am going through a lot of paper crap and emptying out cardboard boxes which then need to be recycled.  I took that stuff out to the recycling bin, cleaned out the litter boxes, took the litter box scoopings out to the garbage bin along with a small bag of garbage from the bedroom, bathroom, and living room, cleaned a bunch of old food out of the refrigerator, and washed the dirty dishes.  While I worked in the kitchen, I listened to an audio book on YouTube (on my phone).  It was a pretty lame and unlikely romance story called “Lone Wolf.”  I was not impressed, but it was something to listen to while I worked.  When I listen to this stuff, I always think Why am I not writing this stuff?  I could write something much more interesting than this lame schlock.  But, I never make the time to actually do it.  Sigh.

Ross from Lerbergs delivered my groceries in the afternoon while I was washing dishes.  I had an abnormally large order today as I got a lot of produce—including a watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, peaches, plums, avocados, tomatoes, sweet corn, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, celery, strawberries, and raspberries.  I love fresh foods.  Ross had a young helper with him today to help carry things in.  In addition to the two large boxes of groceries, I had three 6-packs of diet soda, a 12-pack of cans of root beer, and a very large jug of laundry detergent.  

After I wiped down and put away the groceries, I husked the six ears of sweet corn.  It was disappointing to have to throw away two ears because they looked like they had been partially frozen and rotted.  I don’t think I will be buying any more sweet corn there as I ended up throwing away most of the ears I bought there last time I got groceries.  It wasn’t that expensive, but still.  I don’t like to pay for stuff that is no good.  I also cleaned and cut up the watermelon and cantaloupe.  The cantaloupe was perfect and delicious.  The watermelon was not ripe enough.  A large chunk of the “meat” of the watermelon was white and not sweet or tasty.  That was disappointing.  The very middle was okay—at least it was edible, but again, I had to throw quite a bit away.

By the time I was done cleaning out the fridge and cleaning the rinds and husks off the fruit, my kitchen garbage was stuffed full and so heavy that I could not lift it out of the can.  I texted my nephew Caleb and asked him if he would be willing to stop on his way home from work and bring me my mail and take the kitchen garbage out to the bin.  God bless him, he did that for me, and I gave him some cash and told him to have fun over the 4^th of July weekend.  He hung out and talked for a while, caught me up on all his recent exploits—mostly working for the highway department and working on an on-line internship with one of his professors.

Just as he was leaving, my mother called and wanted to know if I was still planning on taking her to Owatonna to get something to eat.  I told her that Ross had come later than I expected and that Caleb had just done a couple things for me, but I could be there to pick her up in about 10 minutes.  I had to put on my shoes and bra and go to the toilet first. 

I took her to Owatonna on old highway 45 which goes by the swamp.  The swans were not swimming out in the body of water, but they were visible in the tall weeds in the middle.  We could not see the babies, but we did see the parents.   I took her to Subway where we got spicy 12” Italian sub sandwiches and Diet Cokes.  We ate them in Moorehouse Park while watching the kids and dogs frolicking and enjoying the lovely, sunny day.  There was a young girl parked next to us, also eating her supper.  She had a small, elderly doggo with a big tumor on his tummy laying on the grass near her car.  He was the sweetest thing.  When she finished eating, she gave him a lot of loves and some treats which he enjoyed immensely.  He kept kissing her face, and she kept telling him not to lick her face, but he kept on.  We had our windows open, so I said, “He LOVES you.”  She smiled and laughed. 

We only ate 6” of our subs so we could have the rest tomorrow.  It’s nice to get a second meal’s worth of food when we go through a drive through.  I do not enjoy cooking.  At least not that often.  When we left the park, we went through the drive through of Dairy Queen for malts to drink on the way home.  I got a hot fudge malt which was a little runny but still delicious.  Mom got a pecan cluster blizzard which was also runny.  In fairness, the temperature was over 90 degrees, so runny was about as good as could be expected. 

When I got home, I went through my mail.  I had a small package with some very cute Mickey Mouse “patriotic” fabric that I intend to turn into Independence Day clothing for some of my dolls.  It should work up very cute.  I also go the three little baby dolls I had ordered last weekend.  They are bigger than I expected but every bit as cute!  I got three girls, and they are anatomically correct.  I was slightly shocked to discover they even had little molded butt holes.  I don’t know if we need that much reality in dolls, but whatever.  Their private parts will not be on display for long.  (They came starkers, so I have to dig out my baby doll patterns and get busy sewing at least one outfit each for them.)

 

Saturday, July 3

My spicy Italian sub was my lunch.  Later in the afternoon, I had a bowl of potato salad I had bought from Lerberg’s deli section.  It isn’t as good as homemade, but it is good.  Between those events, I read Chapter 4 of my Artist’s Way book.  This chapter is Recovering a Sense of Integrity.  The purpose of this chapter is “designed to catapult you into productive introspection and integration of new self- awareness.”  The key element of this chapter is to deprive ourselves of reading so that the “silence” will force us to think our own thoughts and feel our own feelings rather than numbing ourselves with the thoughts and feelings of other authors.  I may talk more about this chapter later as there is a lot of good information in it, even though it is not as long as some of the other chapters.

I gathered up even more recycling, cleaned up some of the debris around my recliner that tends to accumulate, and opened two packages that came a while ago but which I had not opened yet.  One was just a container of more “Temptations” treats for Peaches. 

The other contained two sets of IKEA bedroom furniture which is for little boy dolls.  It should work perfectly for the two “Todd” dolls from the 90s who are the same size as the little “Stacy” dolls.  These boys are in the family made of my childhood vintage barbie, a dark hair vintage Ken, two “mod” Skippers—one with bendable legs and one without, both with the cherubic faces, long straight dark hair, and “real” eye lashes.  The story for these dolls is that “Barbara,” a busy, socialite, is married to Kenneth who is a doctor.  Ken has a twin named Dennis who also went to medical school to be a surgeon, but a tragic accident caused him to lose his thumb.  (The doll is actually missing a thumb.)  So, Dennis dropped out of medical school in despair, married his high school sweetheart, a nurse who works in Kenneth’s clinic.  Dennis is now the janitor in that clinic.  Kenneth and Barbara have two sets of twins—the girls are Chloe and Zoe, and the boys are Kenneth Junior (“Kenny”) and Benjamin (“Benny”).  This is a upper middle class family, so their home has to be nice.  I have been collecting things for their home for some time—I hope to make it like a time capsule of the 1960s. 

I love my dolls and they all have a story.

In more painful news, my 6 month car insurance bill was in the mail.  I had to write out a check for over $500.  Ouch.

That’s about it, and now I am caught up again!