November 1 through 8

Monday, November 1

Today, I started the day with a refreshing shower.  That seemed to give me a bit more motivation than I usually have, so I proceeded to work hard in the kitchen—I prepared a beef roast with potatoes, carrots, onions, and cabbage. It turned out perfectly beautiful and delicious. It takes a while to peel everything and then a few hours for it to cook.  While waiting for it, I made one of the Schwan’s chicken patties in the microwave and ate it on a hamburger bun with some mayonnaise.  It was okay, but I think next time I will try it with some barbecue sauce or some pickle relish.  I had the roast for supper.

Two packages arrived today.  I am not sure what’s in them as I ran out of steam and decided to open them tomorrow.  Maybe. 

I talked to Mom and Tammy today.  Mom is feeling better though still weak.  Tammy intends to take her back up to Buffalo with her when she goes home.  Bert is getting impatient about Tammy being down here all the time.  Yet, Mom still needs to take it easy and needs to have someone with her.  I am glad Tammy plans to take her home. Bert forgets how much time and energy they put into taking care of his mother when she got dementia and how they had to run to her house in the middle of the night because she accidentally turned off her heat or thought there were kids in her truck running down the battery by listening to the radio.  Or when someone found her walking down the road in the middle of the night during a blizzard and called the cops.  Then all the while they visited her daily or multiple times a week when she was in the memory care place.

 

Tuesday, November 2

I opened the packages from yesterday—it was more pods of Sheba pate and cuts.  I unboxed them and took the pods into the bedroom and put them in the headboard of my bed.  I gathered up all my dirty laundry and put it in the hamper. 

Brian Anderson, the notary, came to my house with all the paperwork to finalize my refinance today.  It was nice that I didn’t have to leave my house to deal with this business.  Brian was a very nice guy.  The stack of shit we had to go through was about two inches thick—and I had to sign my name about a million times.  We chatted casually a bit as we went through everything. 

It turns out that he is also an anti-tRUMPer, so we talked at length about Q-anon, Tucker Carlson, the idiocy of the tRUMP KKKult, and the despair of having so many loved ones/family members who have embraced the ignorance and stupidity of the KKKult.  We also talked about the disgrace of the KKKultists claiming that tRUMP is the Christian evangelical right’s psychotic embracing of such an evil man as a “prophet of almighty God.”  Then we talked about religion and politics a bit.  He belongs to a Facebook group called “The Christian Left,” and he encouraged me to join that group and to friend him on Facebook.

So, after he left, that is what I did.  I do like that FB group.  Also, he is in a band with the dad of one of my former students, Tiffany Gustafson, who was just a wonderful kid when she was in high school.  He is also a cat lover and a life-long single man.  Again, when I told Lily about him, she thought maybe this was the “answer to my prayers” since we “hit it off so well.”  Yeah.  Not so much, since he is probably 30 years younger than me.  LOL.  Her hopes spring eternal. 

I’m just happy to have made a friend with common interests.

Anyhow, Brian told me that my money should be in my account by Friday, but perhaps it would not make it until Monday.  It will be a relief to get the debt paid off. 

My brother Jack was tested for Covid today just because his daughter has just recovered from it, and he had lots of contact with Mom while she was bad with it.  He tested negative.

Tammy came over tonight to attempt to catch LeeLee.  Did I ever mention that LeeLee has turned out to be a boy instead of a girl?  Anyhow, the attempt to catch the little shit was in vain.  That cat is as good a hider as a Sasquatch.  Literally not a whisker could be seen.  I guess he will be staying with me another week or so.  He has been creeping out into the main part of the house while I am sitting in the living room watching TV.  He stays low to the ground, pauses to look at me with huge eyes occasionally, the scuttles off to the kitchen to cruise for food or to the breezeway to take a dump.

Mom is feeling so much better today that Tammy has decided not to take her back home with her.  Personally, I wish she would, but I understand that Bert is a pain in the ass and she doesn’t enjoy putting up with his constant yapping.

 

Wednesday, November 3

I accomplished a little today.  I put away the pods of Sheba soft cat food, wrote out my bills, and went through a bunch of paper stuff, some of which I filed and much of which I recycled.  My new angled back scratcher arrived today. As it usually happens in an ironic twist of fate, my back, which has been itching relentlessly for WEEKS (which resulted in me ordering this angled back scratcher as the rigid straight one could not be manipulated into scratching the itchy spot, immediately STOPPED being itchy.  Sigh. 

Tammy unsuccessfully attempted to capture LeeLee both last night and today.  No joy.  That cat is a better hider than sasquatch.  He’s like a shadow slinking out and scuttling through the house at night to check out the litterboxes and the food and water dishes then lurking back to the laundry room to hide in all the little hiding places between totes of fabric.  I think the only way to capture him is to shut him out of the laundry room so he is forced into the rest of the house where the hiding places are severely limited and much less effective.

I began to actually suspect he had hidden somewhere and died.  He is 18 years old, after all.  That is very old for a cat. But, shortly after Tammy left, he appeared.  I was glad to know he wasn’t dead and decaying somewhere in my laundry room.  He is a very pretty cat.  If we never catch him, he is welcome to stay with me—I just feel bad that he is so unhappy and scared.  A cat (or any pet, actually) should be basking in love and joy and affection and contentment every day not cowering in a seldom used room full of boxes and random crap and crying all night for his little cat friend Ollie. 

Lily’s covid results came back negative today.  I was very relieved as she has been coughing terribly for weeks.  That’s how Mom’s symptoms began—with a harsh and unrelenting cough.  Kevin, my sister-in-law’s brother, got the infusion today to treat his covid.  I hope it is as effective for him as it was for Mom. She started getting better right away after the infusion.  Mom told me today that she feels much stronger today.  She is slowly getting better, day by day.  She is still lacking in strength and stamina. She says her legs especially feel weak and trembly when she attempts to do anything.

 

Thursday, November 4

Today I wrote out a grocery list and called in my order.  Then I cleaned LeeLee’s litterbox in the laundry room and sorted and started my laundry.  I worked a little on the ungodly mess that my laundry room is in.  It seriously looks like a hoarder lives in there.  Maybe one of those homeless people that stack up random garbage in some random abandoned building. 

In the kitchen, I made a can of chicken noodle soup while putting away my clean dishes and tidying a bit in there.  Lily called and told me that my cousins Orville and Gene came up to store Orville’s sports car in her empty garage space.  Mom is continuing to feel better.  She is impatient to be back at full speed, but she needs to be realistic.  She is 87.  She is not going to bounce back like Cora did—Cora is 17.

Nothing too exciting happened beyond that.

 

Friday, November 5

After bagging up the garbage in my bedroom and the living room,  put away the clean laundry, cleaned the litterboxes in the breezeway, wiped up some schmutz on the breezeway floor, and washed the dishes. 

My former student Dean called me this morning to chat.  He is having difficulties in his marriage and his sister who is his usual sounding board was not available.  His wife is Chinese, and her English is not strong while his Mandarin is almost non-existent.  She is pregnant and experiencing pregnancy hormones, and, I think, culture shock.  She wants to return to her parents’ home and possibly end the marriage.  I am not much of an expert in marriage, especially marriage where the language barrier is a factor as neither can really understand the full impact of the other’s attempts to communicate their feelings and needs.  I recommended finding a bilingual marriage therapist—possible someone of Chinese descent so he/she can help them understand the cultural divides.  I just hope I didn’t do any further damage.  I tried to just make common sense recommendations and tell him I loved him and that things will work out. 

I also told him to call any time.  We have been very close since he was in the 9^th grade.  Prior to that, I was very close to his sister Crystal.  She is truly a gifted human being.  She is the one who pushed Dean and I together as she felt he wasn’t living up to his potential and wanted me to encourage and groom him to the greatness she saw inside him.  Both are exceptional young people.

Lily stopped by this afternoon to bring my mail and a bag of cinnamon bears from Fleet Farm.  They are hard to find, and Fleet Farm always has them.  Lily offered to get Mom’s mail for her since she hasn’t been going to Bible Study yet—and the lady who picks her up for Bible Study usually stops and gets her mail for her.  I bought her a grill cleaning spray from Amazon, and she picked that up while she was here.  I love my auntie.

In the afternoon, Sally from Lerbergs delivered my groceries because Ross was gone to the East Coast to help his son move.  I wiped them down and put them away.  Then I wiped down two 6-packs of 7-up and A&W Root beer and restocked my small kitchen pop fridge.

In the evening, I chatted with Eric Churchward, one of my former students from Triton, on Facebook Messenger.  He is now an ESL (English as Second Language) teacher in China.  He has been all over the globe teaching ESL.  I am pretty proud of him.  The funny thing is that I have been thinking about him recently.  There was nothing earth shaking in our conversation—we just caught up.  The interesting thing about Eric is that he was very talented and theatrical, and astonishingly, he looked like a brunette Leonardo DiCaprio.  Especially his smile and the shape of his face.  I have no idea what he looks like now—as we talked on messenger only. 

So many times in my life I have been humbled and amazed by the kids I taught turning up out of the blue to call me “Miss Harpel” and tell me that I was extremely important to them when they were young.  That me being there in their youth made their lives better and gave them the inspiration to live their best lives.  I am sure there were many other adults in their youth who did the same thing. It is always a whole community of people that get things done—not just one goofy weirdo like me who made them laugh and listened to their dreams.

I wish Eric well, and I hope he succeeds in getting the PhD in education that he told me he was hoping for and dreaming of.

 

Saturday, November 6

I started today with a lovely, much-needed shower.  I was starting to feel like one of those really stinky hermit people who never leave the house and never take a bar of soap to their stinky bodies.

I stripped all the bedding off my bed so I could wash it.  Now that I am nice and clean, I want my bedding to be nice and clean as well. 

I used my battery operated broom to sweep every room in the house except the bathroom.  Then I made myself a Schwan’s pizza and ate half of it for lunch and a fourth of it for supper.  I haven’t had pizza in eons, so it tasted pretty good.  It had pepperoni on it.  Normally I do not like meat on pizza as it gives me acid reflux.  I prefer a simple cheese pizza or one with black olives and mushrooms.  My absolute favorite is the Papa Murphy’s vegetarian gourmet.  Those are fabulous.

 

Sunday, November 7

Lily called me early this morning before DeAnn and I had our Zoom meeting.  She was concerned because she had a $191 charge on her credit card that she could not account for and asked me if I knew of anything she might have bought or if I had helped her buy anything on line.  I was still in bed when she called, so I told her I would get dressed then look on line to see if I had bought anything for her.  Well, I checked our accounts at Chewy.com, and it turned out that they had charged HER credit card instead of my Debit card when I ordered all that calming stuff for Ollie and LeeLee.  I don’t know if it was their mistake or if I just hadn’t checked when I ordered to be sure the right card was selected.  It SHOULD have been my card since it is marked as my preferred method of payment.

She was relieved that the mystery was solved, and I offered to either give her a check or pay for whatever she ordered next on line or from Schwan’s.  She wanted me to help her get Christmas gifts for her great grandchildren on line, so that will work out perfectly to get her money back for her.

Since I was already on Chewy, I placed an order for cat litter, Sheba most food pods, Temptations treats, and catnip spray for my fur babies.

DeAnn and I had a good Zoom.  Those weekly meetings are very motivational for me. 

 

Monday, November 8

My credit union, through which I do all my banking, renamed itself, so I spent a while today setting my account up again.  I had to redo my password and order new checks since I am running low.  I also needed to check to see if my refinance money had been deposited.  It had been.  Arlen came over and I gave him the check for the siding and deck.  He promised me the downspouts would be redone just as soon as the truck that makes the pieces to order was available.  I will keep hounding him relentlessly until it is done.  I want it finished before the snow and ice season gets going.

In other news, Mom felt well enough today to carry her laundry to the basement and wash it.  I think she had Erik carry it back upstairs for her.  She is on the mend.  The covid took a toll on her strength and stamina, but it is slowly returning.  Lily stopped by and picked up the key to her mail box so she could get her mail for her until she is well enough to return to Bible study.  Jodi, her friend, picks her up for Bible study and then swings by the post office on her way home so Mom can get her mail. I told her not to hurry back to her old activities until she was back up to par.

 

 

November 9 through 18

I have fallen so far behind on my DW journaling that I am going to try to just hit the major highlights of my days.  I am sure NO ONE wants to read a month’s worth of my daily minutia.  I just want to have the gist of my life down so I don’t have big blank spaces in my journal like I had when I was in the hospital for months in 2019.  So, I will be working my way through November 9 through the present.  I doubt I will be doing it all in one fell swoop.  Probably will be broken into two or three entries.  I will do my best to get caught up as quickly as possible.  It seems like I am always behind.

 

Tuesday, November 9

Today I dealt with garbage.  I bagged up and took out all the garbage in the house then cleaned the litterboxes and took the scoopings out as well.  I washed the dishes and the cats’ dishes then refilled them with fresh food and drink.  I had a brief sighting of LeeLee scuttling out of the laundry room to eat soft food and use the breezeway litter boxes.  He is getting bolder.  Still no overtures of friendship toward me though he does try to engage Peaches occasionally.  She shows no interest in him.

Lily stopped in.  She brought my mail and dragged my bins up from the curb.  She had been to the grocery store and brought me a six pack of Diet Coke, a bag of hard rolls, and a loaf of French bread.  I gave her several sturdy boxes I have been saving for her as she is going through all her stuff with an eye to having a garage sale in the spring or donating a bunch of stuff.  She is also reconsidering moving into that senior living center.  To do so, she will have to get rid of more than half of what she owns.  I told her she should set up a system where she has one set of boxes for what she wants to keep, one for what she wants to sell or give to her family, and one for garbage or donations.  Joni and Jeff had dropped several winter squash from their garden off at my house, so I told her to take half of them.  I think she only took 2-3, but that’s a help as I could never eat all of them and I don’t feel like baking and freezing all of them.

My Chewy.com was delivered and I was able to get it into the house.  It was very heavy as there were two boxes of cat litter in the order.  I have cat litter set up to be delivered every 6 weeks now.  I may change it to every 8 weeks since Ollie is no longer with me and LeeLee will be going back to his original home as soon as we can capture the illusive little shit.

 

Wednesday, November 10

I got a lovely, refreshing shower in today.  Later, I talked to Mom who told me she had made it downstairs and got her first shower since being diagnosed with Covid.  Tammy said she really needed one as she smelled nasty.  I suppose that was partially a side effect of Covid itself and also due to the inability to get down to the basement to shower.  We have been working on her to have a shower put into her upstairs bathroom.  Her bathroom in the basement has the world’s smallest shower—it’s like a little tin cracker box.

My prescription refills came today.  The FedEx driver and I always have a nice chat when she delivers my prescriptions.  She complimented my new siding and deck.  She is a very nice lady.

Today, I put the rest of my stale unsalted sunflower seeds out on the deck railing.  The blue jays LOVE that stuff.  The squirrels don’t seem to care for them. 

It rained a little bit today. It was supposed to snow, but it never did. It wasn’t supposed to be much anyway.  I unloaded the dish drainer and put a Marie Callander chicken pot pie in the oven for supper.  That brand is so much better than the Schwan’s chicken pot pies.  Much better flavor.

 

Thursday, November 11

Laundry again.  Sorted and washed the lot.  I baked Schwan’s breaded chicken patties for lunch and ate them on hamburger buns.  They are actually much better than I thought they’d be.  I need to buy some pickle relish to add to the sandwich.  After lunch, I had an unplanned nap.  I guess I was more tired than I thought I’d be.  I think I slept about 2 hours.

I talked to Tammy on the phone.  She told me that the rescue she supports is going to give me little football fatty pants kitty for free since they know I am disabled and limited income and she is a special situation kitty who will need a lot of love and attention due to her original owners being idiots.  They got her as a tiny kitten but could not handle the natural energy of kittens.  So they locked her in a room with nothing but a litter box and food and water.  All she had to do for two years was eat, sleep, and poop.  So she became pretty obese.  I don’t know why they finally came to their senses and gave her  to the rescue.  She has been neutered and declawed.  Since being in the rescue facility, she has discovered that she likes affection and petting.  I am really looking forward to showering her with love and attention and spoiling her rotten.  She has some kind of respiratory infection, so they cannot release her till that is resolved.  That is a good thing as I don’t want Peaches getting some disease.  Also, this will save me vet costs. 

This rescue has also agreed to take the five remaining puppies that my idiot brother in law Jeffrey thought he was going to get $1,500 a piece for. They will also take the three wire hair hunting dogs that Jeff bought for $750 each to “train” and then sell.  Those poor little things have spent the last 3 years locked in a kennel in shit up to their knees with no attention, no affection, no toys, no social interaction, and no training.  On the rare occasions that they escaped from their kennels, they immediately started killing anything they could get their paws on—chickens, squirrels, cats…anything they could catch.  Jeff is such a fucking idiot.  I felt so sorry for those dogs.  I had seriously been considering calling the Humane Society on them, but now that rescue will take care of them and socialize them, if they are salvageable.  Poor little innocent creatures.  They were just babies when the idiot got his hands on them.

I am investigating a company that comes to your house and puts Christmas lights on the outside.  I saw it advertised on Facebook and chatted with the guy who runs the place.  He said he would come to my house on Saturday to give me an estimate.  I would love to have my house’s roof edge lined with Christmas lights—the white lighted “icicles” that hang down—and the deck railing decorated with artificial pine boughs and colored lights.  Maybe a wreath in the center of the deck and the big picture window also outlined in colored lights.  I am not willing to spend more than $300 to do this, and it is probably foolishness to pay that much.  Lights and other decorations are included in the price of decorating it.

 

Friday, November 12

Prior to the deliveries of groceries from Schwan’s and Lerberg’s today, I cleaned all of the old stuff out of the refrigerator and dragged the kitchen garbage to the breezeway. I have plenty of things to eat in the house again.  I washed the dishes and put away the food. I had a bunch of shriveled apples in the fridge.  I threw away the ones that had rotten spots and moved those that were only shriveled onto the counter, possibly to be turned into apple dumpling or apple crisp or coffee cake.  I have not baked in quite some time, but I hate for those apples to just be thrown away.

It was another quiet day.  I was able to catch up with all the episodes of Young and Restless I was behind on while sorting through some paper stuff and messing around on the computer.  There was a bit of snow today—it amounted to nothing but it looked pretty falling out of the sky.  I enjoyed watching the blue jays gobbling up the sunflower seeds on the deck railings.  There were up to 5 or 6 out there eating at a time.  They do not like to share.  Ha.  Each of them thinks that he/she and ONLY he/she is entitled to eat the offerings placed out there.

 

Saturday, November 13

I washed a load of laundry and then went into the kitchen to sauté mushrooms and onions in butter, boil some potatoes, and fry an enormous beef steak.  It was big enough to cut into four pieces for four different meals.  I love onions and mushrooms sauteed in butter with steak.  Such a good flavor. 

I used the battery operated broom to sweep the main rooms on the main floor.  The cats seem to be tracking a lot more litter than normal throughout the house.  I need to get one of those pad things to put under the litter boxes to catch the litter that sticks to their little feet.

Tammy told me Michaels on-line had a big half price sale on Christmas trees.  My tree went to the landfill in the great sewage back up debacle this summer, so I ordered a nice tree with the lights wired right into it and a few cute half-price ornaments.  I used to have so many ornaments, but when I left West Concord, many of them disappeared. I don’t know if I lost them or gave them away.  It was a dark time for me.

 

Sunday, November 14

I got up early as I had a Zoom meeting with DeAnn this morning.  I had time to fill my pill caddy and review my chapter for the Zoom meeting.  DeAnn and I had a good discussion, as usual.  When it was over, I had a late lunch of leftover steak, potatoes, mushrooms and onions.  While my food was heating in the microwave, I washed my dishes. 

While I ate my lunch, I watched the crowd of blue jays eating on my deck again.  Shortly after 6 pm, I checked Ebay.  I had a bid on an “Urban Song” doll.  I have a Song with long braids, but the one with the short bob is the one I originally wanted.  She wasn’t going for much, so I bid on her and WON!  I was so happy.  I’d really like a “Peaceful Warrior” who is also a Kish Chrysalis doll, but she was already nearly $500 and I cannot afford that.  The “Song” girls are pretty little Asian dolls.  I think they are meant to be Japanese.  They will now be sisters.  “Peaceful Warrior” is a lovely little ginger with freckles and blue eyes.  Her hair is twisted into little buns on either side of her head, held in place with small chopsticks.  She has very small buns—not the huge “Princess Leia” type buns.  One day, maybe I will find one I can afford.  Not today, though.  I made an offer on a Mattel Tiff (same size as vintage Skipper) from the early 1980s, but the seller wanted a fortune for her.  Again, I cannot afford hundreds of dollars for a doll.  Especially not when her hair was not in very good condition.

I haven’t bought anything on Ebay in many years, so this was a real event for me.  LOL.

 

Monday, November 15

I started the day hammering my aching joints with hot water in the shower then did a load of laundry and cleaned LeeLee’s litter box in the laundry room.  Then I tidied up the bedroom, gathered some clothes that somehow landed on the floor instead of in the hamper, bagged up and took out the garbage, and hung up a few things. 

Lily stopped over and brought me a container of the rice pudding she had made for her Wednesday dinner party last week.  It was good.  Not great, but good.  She also brought me six 6-packs of Diet Coke she had picked up on sale.  She stayed long enough for me to help her find Christmas gifts for some of her great-grandchildren.  Amadeus is into Dungeons and Dragons, so we got him a nice little carrying case with a set of multi-sided dice and a set of gaming headphones.  We ordered two sets of Legos for Atlas.  One was an Avengers set, and I don’t remember what the other one was.  We got Mila several paperback Baby Sitter’s Club books and Ember got a Noah’s Ark bank.  The first three kids have birthdays close to Christmas, so one of their things was for Christmas and the other for the birthday.  Mila’s books will be split into two gifts.  Now Lily owes me $40+ again.  I owed her for the error on the Chewy.com order.  It all comes out in the wash.

I bought myself a $500 birthday gift.  My shoulders are so messed up that it is hard for me to use my heavy vacuum cleaner, so I bought myself a light weight, heavy duty battery operated vacuum that is especially powerful for sucking up pet hair.  That pretty much nixes the idea of decorating my house with Christmas lights.  Lily has the same kind of vacuum cleaner except hers is not specifically designed for pet hair. She loves it as it is so light weight.  I look forward to using it.

I think my TV remote needs new batteries.  It stopped working today.  I couldn’t turn the TV off, change the channel or volume, or anything.  I don’t have any AAA batteries on hand.  I had to leave the TV on all night. 

Not much else going on today. 

 

Tuesday, November 16

Today, I cleaned the breezeway litter boxes, used the battery operated broom to sweep the breezeway and kitchen, and dragged the heavy kitchen garbage out to the bin.  Getting it in nearly killed me, but I accomplished the mission.  I watered my plants in the breezeway and refilled the jug of water.  I just set it next to the breezeway door as it hurts my knees to go up and down the step into the breezeway.  I don’t go out there unless I need to.

I washed, dried, and folded more laundry.  I bagged up a bunch of recycling, put more peanuts in the shell on the deck railing for the birds and squirrels, and worked on my DW journal backlog. I went into the kitchen to make a can of clam chowder and discovered a huge puddle of water around and under the fridge.  I soaked it up with towels and called Sorenson’s immediately.  The last time this happened, the pipe that supplied water to the ice maker had cracked.  No one at Sorenson’s answered, and no one got back to me either.  Assholes.

Lily spent the day with Haylie.  On her way home she stopped at some store and picked me up a set of AAA batteries so my TV remote is functional again.  Yay.  She also picked up Neosporin, Vicks Vapor Rub, Vaseline, and a box of raspberry Bismarcks for me.  We visited a bit.  I gave her one of the raspberry Bismarcks, and she took a bag of recycling to the bin for me.

 

Wednesday, November 17

Today the UPS delivered the two boxes of Chai Tea Latte I had ordered for Lily and my new battery operated vacuum cleaner.  Waylon, my mail man, brought me three packages also.  Those packages contained three wonderful books from my friend Godiva for my birthday.  Two were sweet cat books, and one was of vintage dolls and the little girls who played with them.  I enjoyed looking at them for quite a while. 

I gathered up all the towels from yesterday’s water debacle and discovered that the water actually came from the gallon jug I had filled with water for my plants.  It apparently sprang a leak.  So, I called Sorenson’s and told them to disregard my previous call.  They never bothered to return it anyhow, so fuck them.

Mom had a 2:30 appointment with Dr. Skorin to have her macular degeneration evaluation.  She wanted to go earlier so she could go to the bank before we went to Albert Lea.  That was fine with me as I had two checks that needed to be cashed.  She is still weak and has low stamina, so I dropped her off at the door to the clinic, reminded her to have the people at the desk call me when she was done so I could pick her up at the door, and parked down by the helicopter pad on the lake. 

It was a very windy day, and the waves on the lake looked big enough to surf on.  I spent time texting my friend, taking pictures of the lake and one of the vintage mansions on the shore, and messing around with YouTube on my phone.  Usually Mom’s appointments with the eye doctor take about an hour.  The hour came and left.  No mom.  At 4:30 I thought maybe she had forgotten to call me and was sitting in the atrium fuming because I wasn’t there picking her up, so I drove around and parked outside the doors and peered in to see if she was in there.  No joy.  I went back and parked again.  I started to worry that perhaps she had passed out again and had been taken to the ER or something.  Being unconscious, she would not have been able to tell them to notify me. So I found Dr. Skorin’s office number on line and called.  They had to check to figure out that she was still there.  They said she was still waiting to see the doctor.  Holy shit!  I told them that she was still recovering from Covid and did not have her normal strength and stamina and asked them if they could put her in a wheelchair and take her to the door when they were done with her.  The woman said they could tell that she was not her normal self and that she would make sure they did that. 

Well, around 5 pm, I got a call saying she was ready to be picked up and was on her way to the door.  Those assholes did NOT put her in a wheelchair, but they did send someone to walk with her to be sure she didn’t collapse on the way.

By this time, it was getting dark and was really cold.  The sunset was quite impressive.  Mom wanted to get a bucket of KFC, so we went through the drive through and got two 8-piece buckets of chicken.  One for her and one for me.  Now we will have several meals of leftover chicken.  All we got was chicken this time.  I kinda wish I had gotten coleslaw.  I have been craving coleslaw lately.

From there, we went to the Taco John’s right next door.  I have been craving beef burrito with sour cream for weeks.  Both fast food places had insanely long lines.  I suppose everyone in the city was not in the mood to cook.

While waiting in the long lines, we got to watch the full moon rise.  It was quite beautiful.  I hate driving home in the dark—always paranoid about suicidal deer.  But we made it safely home without issues.  I dropped mom off at her house.  I told her I would not leave until I saw she was safely inside the house since she was exhausted and very weak.  She made it up her stairs and into her house.  I waited for her to close her garage door, but she never did.  I had thrown my phone into my purse and didn’t feel like fishing it out, so I decided to drive home (I had to pee like a race horse) and call her from home. 

I had to pee so bad that I thought I would explode by the time I got into the house.  I put my chicken in the fridge, dropped my beef burrito in my recliner on the way to the toilet, did what I had to do in the bathroom, then collapsed into my chair.  I tried to call my mother but she did not pick up.  I figured she was on the phone with someone, so I got on the sibling group text and asked if anyone was on the phone with mom, and if so, could they ask if she had put down the garage door as I waited quite a while and she never put it down.

Pretty shortly, Tammy replied that she was on the phone with Mom.  Mom went to check the garage door and it was still up, so she put it down, and now all was well.  With the full moon and all, I didn’t want any werewolves getting into the house where Mojo would have to end them.

I was exhausted from sitting in the car all that time.  I gobbled up my burrito, watched a little TV, and went to bed. 

 

Thursday, November 18

Somehow my recycling bag got knocked over, so the first thing I did this morning was pick up all that stuff.  Then I folded the clothes in the dryer, cleaned the litter box in the laundry room, and sorted and started this week’s laundry.  I feel like I am constantly doing laundry. 

I looked over the Lerberg’s ad, made a list, and called in this week’s grocery order. I ordered a meat and cheese tray and three boxes of crackers to take to Thanksgiving.  I should make the pasta salad that everyone loves so much, but I just do not feel like making anything.  Everyone loves crackers, meat, and cheese.  I bought two bottles of large fancy green olives too.

I warmed up some chicken for lunch, and while it was heating in the microwave, I washed a large sink full of dishes.  After I ate my lunch, I went through my bag of mail, recycling what I could and setting aside the mail that needed to be dealt with further—like bills and catalogs that I wanted to look at. 

I got the package of ornaments from Michael’s on line and opened it.  There are some really cute things in there.  I need to restore my collection of ornaments.  I had YEARS worth of ornaments.  I used to buy a special ornament every year since 1975.  That’s when I was sure I would marry Philip Pennington—we looked at wedding dresses and everything.  I kind of suspect that if he had bought me a diamond, we might have done it.  I would have felt obligated.  Thank God he never did.  Ha!  But I did establish the tradition of buying one really nice ornament a year.  The first one I bought was a Hallmark angel that looked like a frosted sugar cookie.  I bought it at a drug store in downtown Winona.  I remember it was on the corner of the block opposite of Picadilly Square which was a delightful shop where I spent a lot of time.  That’s where I bought my scrimshaw unicorn necklace and some cool mugs.