Monday, April 24

Monday, April 24

I slept in until after nine this morning, then Sawyer woke me up by putting his paw on my face and gently extending his claws until I was being poked in the face.  UGH.  Monster.

I got up, did my morning routine, fed the cats, and fired up the computer for this morning’s zoom with DeAnn.  While waiting for her to arrive, I poked around online for a while.  We talked a while and then started the 50 minute work period.  I cleaned litterbox in the laundry room and swept up the scattered litter.  They are very enthusiastic diggers and buriers.  I had to hold Peaches for a while, and then I saw the Fed Ex truck pull into my driveway. 

I was very excited to see it as I assumed it would be my next shipment of Trulicity as I only have one syringe left.  I am worried that the Fed Ex driver will just dump the Styrofoam box on the deck or the breezeway steps without knocking or ringing the doorbell and I won’t notice.  That drug cannot be frozen but MUST be refrigerated.  The driver took forever to come to the house, and when he did, he was just carrying a little bitty box—NOT the Trulicity.  It was the stupid Direct TV cable box that Lily had to have sent to my address because the idiots at the Direct TV call center would not send the package to her house because she has a post office box.  Sigh.

So, I texted her and informed her that her box had been delivered and she should come and get it whenever she wanted.  I also asked if she’d mind picking up my mail when she came since I had not been to the mailbox for over a week.  She responded that it would take a while because she was busy cleaning her house and making food for her dinner party tonight.  I told her whenever was fine, and that if she couldn’t come today that was fine too.

DeAnn and I talked a little longer after the 50 minutes was up.  Then we signed off, and I went into the kitchen where I cleaned the refrigerator—I threw away a lot of expired yogurt, some rock hard oranges, three bottles of salad dressing that expired in 2020, and the last dregs of the pasta salad I had made for Easter.  There were two very withered apples that would have been fine baked in something, but I have a lot of other apples, and I did not feel like baking today.  I cut them up into chunks and tossed them out for  the birds.  Robins love fruit, especially apples.  I love robins.  So it works out.  There was also a very old steak that I had cooked about three weeks ago in there.  It had gotten to the back and buried under some other stuff.  It still smelled fine and was not slimy as old meat gets when it goes bad, but I did not trust it, so I chopped it into small bits and put that out on the deck for the hungry stray kitty.  I had a container of unsalted sunflower seeds that had gone stale, so I put them in the bird feeder.  Either birds or squirrels will enjoy them.

I rearranged the shelves after wiping them down.  The refrigerator was not as nasty as I thought it would be.  It did take a while to get everything cleaned out.  I had not eaten anything except some Werther’s hard caramel candies, and I was getting really hungry.  I ate some beet pickles and some buttered saltines, then I washed the supper dishes from last night and all the containers that had been in the fridge.  There were not many dishes, but I figured I might as well get them done.  Lily called while I was doing dishes and babbled on and on about all kinds of things that I did not care about regarding people I do not know.  I was so tired and hungry I had a hard time focusing on what she was saying.  She said she was curling her hair and when she was done she would come over to get the cable box and bring me a bowl of the stew and some of the garlic bread she served to her friends last night and my mail.  I wanted to get the litterboxes in the breezeway cleaned, but Sawyer was in my way.  I thought, “Screw it,” and went to sit on the recliner for a while.  I was tired, and my shoulders were aching.  Lily came shortly after that, bringing my mail and the stew and garlic bread.  I gave her the box, two bills for her to drop in the mail as she was headed to the post office, and a devotional book for young people.  Her granddaughter Ashley (Roger’s daughter) recently fell in love with a very religious boy, had a religious conversion experience, and got baptized.  Someone had given me this devotional book years ago, and I came across it while cleaning a while back.  I read through it last year. It was okay,  but it was obviously written for really young folks just settling into early adulthood.  Not for an old, jaded, retired person like me.  I figured Ashley might get more useful advice out of it than I did.  Roger s coming later this week to take Lily to a follow-up meeting with her surgical team in Rochester.  She will send it home with him.

When she left, I ate a couple pieces of the garlic bread, bagged up the recycling in the indoor bin and the kitchen bag and dragged it to the breezeway, and then put the stew in a pan to heat up.  While that was heating, I dragged the kitchen garbage can into the breezeway, swept up the scattered litter, and cleaned the three litterboxes.  I added that stuff to the kitchen garbage, tied it up, and considered taking the garbage and recycling outside to the bins.  I decided that I was too tired and sore after all the cleaning and scrubbing I had done the last several days. 

Then I took my bowl of stew into the living room and ate it while doing my written prayers.  I got very close to done, when I started getting texts from the group of “girls” from the West  Concord friend group that they had a zoom in progress.  So I set my prayers and last dregs of stew aside and logged onto the zoom. 

We discussed the girls’ trip we have been talking about every time we zoom.  We decided to go to Spooner, Wisconsin, in the last week of June.  We booked a really cute “rustic” (not real rustic, just aesthetically rustic) cabin and reserved seats for all seven of us on a two-hour train tour during which a nice dinner would be served.  Nancy, one of the “girls,” has a husband who, along with a few other veteran pals who used to fly helicopters when they were in the military, owns a Vietnam era “Huey.”  They fly people around in this Huey, especially veterans and other groups of people.  She said that her  husband and his friends have not had a lot of bookings lately.  While she was talking to him about the girls’ vacation in Spooner, he suggested that they take us up in the Huey!  That sounds like so much fun!  I have never been in a helicopter, and to go up in a Huey sounds like a very cool experience.  We discussed a lot of other things available in or near Spooner. 

I’m excited about this.  I haven’t been on an actual vacation since my niece Kaylee was born in 1988.  We left the day after she was born for two weeks in Arkansas and Missouri.  That was really the only vacation I was ever on as an adult.  This one will only be a four day short vacation, but I think it will be a blast.

After we wrapped up the zoom, I finished my prayers, gave the last dregs of the stew to the stray kitty, and ate an ice cream bar for dessert.  I started going through my stack of mail,  but I decided I better write up my DW journal entry before it got any later.

I forgot to add that in today's mail was the package containing the three pairs of doll panties I got on Etsy for my Minikane dolls.  I cannot tolerate dolls wearing dresses without underwear on.  These dolls really should have diapers instead of underpants since their "age" is probably between 6-9 months old.  Maybe I will eventually replace these panties with the custom made diapers I have seen on Etsy.  They are more expensive than the panties, but there are lots of other more "mature" doll children whom these panties would fit.

Tomorrow I will continue  to work in the kitchen.  The counters need to be cleared off, wiped down, and straightened up.  I have a lot of clean dishes sitting on the counter that need to be put away too.  The microwave needs to be thoroughly cleaned as does the stove.  I'd also like to polish the lower wooden cupboards with Orange Glow.  I cannot reach the top of the upper cupboards without standing on something, which I fear doing due to my very unstable knees.

I may attempt to put the two heavy bags of garbage in the garbage bins and throw the two bags of recycling and some cardboard in the recycling bin outside.  If only my shoulders will be good enough to lift and dump the cans of garbage.  The recycling is very light.  It's just awkward.

If I could get those tasks done, I would feel like I had a productive day.  I would also like to dig in the freezer and see what I have that will get me through this week.  I need to start eating some of that Schwan's stuff.  The freezer is packed.