July 12 through 18
Jul. 19th, 2021 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chochiyo_samaI stripped my bed this morning so I could wash all my bedding. Then I cleaned up the area around my recliner
and went through all the boxes and bags that had gathered around it. I had received a card from the post office saying that my mail box “needed attention” (the door is broken and the mail box really needs to be replaced) or my mail service could be “interrupted.” In other words, “Get a new friggin’ mail box or we will hold your mail hostage.” So, I got on Amazon and ordered a new mailbox.
I broke down all the cardboard in preparation for recycling it, cleaned the litterboxes, and activated my new debit card. I also went onto some of the websites where I shop and swapped out the old debit card number for the new. I still have to visit and swap out the cards on Chewy.com and Target.com. Otherwise, I am good to go.
I took Mom to Owatonna where we visited Dairy Queen where we bought sandwiches and malts. I got a chili dog and a double cheeseburger. I ate the chili dog and saved the cheeseburger to reheat and eat another day. We also stopped at Subway where we each bought a 12” spicy Italian sub which will provide each of us with two more meals later. I also bought a dozen of their macadamia nut cookies. I was so hungry for something sweet a few days ago, but I had nothing in the house and was too lazy to actually bake something. I just don’t feel like baking much these days. The dozen cookies will provide me with a balm for my sweet tooth for a few days.
When we got home from Owatonna, we discovered that the electricity was out, so the garage doors would not open. Mom had her house key with her and had mine in her purse, so we were both able to get in. It was probably around 6 pm at that time, and the lights did not come back on until after the sun had set and it was almost full dark. Mom went to bed, and I was about to go to bed when the lights suddenly came back on.
I have not heard what caused them to go out, but it affected the entire town, including the Casey’s at the edge of the interstate.
My phone has not been holding a charge, so I was very worried that my phone would die and I would have no access to the outside world. I really need to get into the Verizon store and get a new phone that I can depend on.
Tuesday, July 13
I worked on my laundry—folded the clothes in the dryer, threw the wet load in the dryer, and washed the bedspread and pillow shams. They are so old they are falling apart, but I have not found another that I like. I had two with cats on them, and they are cute, but I just do not like them on my bed. They are too thick and hot. If I had a guest room, they’d work great. I just cannot sleep with them on my bed.
While I was bagging up more recycling, my Eliquis prescription and the cat treats I had ordered for Peaches were delivered. I ate half of the spicy Italian sub for my lunch. Later, I took Mom to the post office to pick up her prescription delivery and to the bank to get some cash. I had a check for a little over $20 from some refund, so she cashed that for me as well.
Mom has two appointments coming up next week and the week after, so she offered to fill my car with gas for my “taxi service.” After I pumped my gas, I turned right instead of left without engaging my brain, so we ended up going to Blooming Prairie to the Dairy Queen where we got ice cream.
Before I took her home, we swung by my mail box and she grabbed my mail out of there. I got my LeeAnn doll package from Affordable Designs. It was Leona, who is supposed to represent a little girl from Peru. To me, she looks Navajo, so in my doll world that is what she is going to be. Immediately when I looked at her, the name Veronica came to my mind. So, she will be Veronica. Her hair is way too long—it hangs practically to her knees. I do not get the obsession with making doll’s hair so very long. It just gets snarled up and caught in the clothing or in other doll’s hands. I may trim it up till it is between her waist and shoulders. That is a much more appropriate length for doll hair. We’ll see. She is a very pretty doll.
Denis (the “dad” of the LeeAnn doll group) is having a big clearance sale where everything in his shop is 50% off for those in the LeeAnn Facebook group, so I do not feel guilty about getting a few items. I bought two of the dainty white blouses available for the girl dolls, and now I wish I would have bought enough for each of my girl dolls to have one. They came in yellow, blue, and pink as well. Sadly, every color is sold out. Sigh. Usually, I just make their clothes myself unless it is something that I am not able to make. He has a lovely assortment of shoes for both the boys and the girls. Everything is so realistic. I am trying to make sure I have “mary jane” shoes for each of the girls, “loafers” for each of the boys, and “sneakers” for each of the dolls. That way, they have “good” shoes and “play” shoes. I have quite a few “crocs” too. They look really cute with short outfits. The boys do not have any crocs. That makes me sad. They need some sort of sandal too.
The other thing I did today was to call the plumber about replacing the old, nasty basement toilet. I am going to have them take the toilet currently in my bathroom to the basement and put a new and taller toilet in my bathroom. Then each place will have a good toilet. The toilet currently in my bathroom is only about a year old as it was put in shortly after I returned from the hospital after the appendix issues. So far, the basement is remaining free of sewage and other leakage.
Wednesday, July 14
We had a lovely all-day rain. Most of the day it was a steady, moderate rain, but for occasional bursts, it was a downfall that caused about 3” of water to flow like a river down the streets. It was glorious. You could almost hear the thirsty ground slurping up the water.
I finished my laundry, including the bedding and the bathroom rugs. I am going to retire those damned rugs. They will not stay in place and constantly are putting me at risk of tripping and falling. I bought two new rugs while I was in Walmart with Mom a while back. They did not have the around-the-toilet rug. In fact, many of the shelves in the store were poorly stocked. One of the workers said it was because they did not have enough workers to keep up with all that needs to be done. There was only one check out line with an actual human checking people out. I hate the self-checkout lines, so I will not use them unless it is my only choice. I see them as a way to screw actual humans out of a job. I have no desire to enrich the Walton family further at the expense of low-income people.
I ate the other half of my spicy Italian sub for lunch along with a couple of the cookies. Lily and I discussed sending some flowers to Mary Groth (the gal who always gave us cinnamon rolls every Saturday) who is in the nursing home right now, recovering from fracturing some bones in her leg. She HATES the nursing home and is making quite a pill of herself demanding to go home. Apparently she has made some of the nursing home staff cry because of her foul temper and sharp tongue.
I certainly understand her feelings. I didn’t verbally attack anyone when I was in the recovery facility, but I cried a lot and suffered from horrible depression while I was there. Her situation is made worse by the fact that she has no “quiet” hobbies. She hates to read and does not do any kind of hand work like embroidery, knitting, or crochet. The only thing she will do is put together puzzles. And she gets tired of that fast. While I was in the hospital, I slept as much as I could, sewed some doll clothes, crocheted doilies, and read a BUNCH of books. I tried to watch TV, but I found that it just did not hold my interest. Also, anything I tried to watch was constantly interrupted by physical therapists or nurses or one of dozens of other people who were constantly coming in to my room wanting to take my blood or give me pills or whatever. I HATED being there.
I missed my cats. All the furniture was hard and uncomfortable. The good sucked as they made up for the lack of salt (which I don’t like anyway) by over seasoning everything with disgusting herbs. They served this nasty fish called tilapia which tasted the way wet, dirty socks smelled. Ugh. Gross. I lived on cheerios, peanut butter toast, and chicken noodle soup.
Anyhow, I called HyVee in Albert Lea and had them send Mary a bouquet of flowers from Lily and me. It was a happy little bouquet with a lot of red, orange, and yellow flowers.
Thursday, July 15
I started my day with an extra long shower. I wish I had a bathtub so I could have soaked my weary, sore body in hot water and Epson salts, but I had to settle for letting the shower head pound every inch of my body with water as hot as I could stand.
My two major accomplishments today were to sign up with a cleaning service—a person will come to clean my house on July 27. I gave myself some time to clean up the clutter so she can get at the parts that need cleaning and to attempt to renew my subscription to WORD. I must have done something wrong as it has not effective. I am still getting them message that my Subscription is expired and to avoid Word being interrupted, I need to reactivate it. Annoying.
I thought I saw water in my basement, so I texted Jack and asked if he would go down into my basement and check for me. He discovered three packages out on my steps and brought them in. One was my new mailbox. It did not take long for that to arrive. He discovered that there was nothing major in my basement. A little bit of moisture had seeped in along the wall, but nothing that threatened disaster.
I was talking to Jack about my fly infestation and about how gross it had been to discover the mass of maggots. I picked up my Cedar scrubber to show him where the maggots had been discovered en masse, and a BUNCH of maggots dropped out of it again! Despite the fact that a new scrub pad had been put on it. The maggots must have crawled up into the hollow guts of the device and tumbled out when I picked it up. I had Jack take it out and throw it into the garbage bin immediately while I picked up all the loose maggots and imprisoned them in a ziplock bag. The ultimate possibility of soaking the house in gasoline, then tossing in a lit match as Peaches and I flee the premises is back on the table.
I can handle the flies, but I CANNOT handle maggots.
Lily has been hounding me relentlessly to come and help her go through Grandma Harpel’s stuff at her house, and I have so much of my own work to do—I just resent the incessant hounding. I told her I would go tomorrow to help her, but I am bitter and resentful of having to do it. I am trying to refrain from being nasty about it to her, but I feel nasty.
I think I am still recovering from the stress of the basement debacle. I just want to be left alone in my house to do what I need to do.
I will still go to her house and help her all day tomorrow—but I will be fuming inside. I am not a very nice person, I guess.
Friday, July 16
I was at Lily’s house sometime between 10:30 and 11 am. She had pulled her car out of the garage so I could pull right in and have a very short walk to the door. She is very thoughtful that way.
We went through a huge stack of Grandma’s photo albums and scrapbooks. As we went through the books, I repaired any damages that we found—there were not many, but I figured we might as well repair what needed it as we went. Tammy wants all of the books that Lily does not want to keep. Scrapbooks and photo albums. I will be keeping some of the photo albums myself which is only fair since *I* was the one who put 90% of them together in the first place. I don’t want the scrapbooks. Tammy would like to use the trip scrapbooks to recreate Grandma’s travels in her own life. I think that would be great. She and Bert have the money. They might as well use it to travel and enjoy their lives.
Amongst the scrapbooks and photo albums was a small book with a tooled leather cover and an inscription inside dated 1888. It was given to my great grandfather by his uncle Manfred for Christmas. It was about the size of a modern day comic book—perhaps a little thicker. It was a long poem about the first Christmas called Pilgrims of the Night. Lily did not want it and intended to throw it in the garbage if I did not want it. I think it may have some value, but it is also a family heirloom of sorts. I took it as well as a few scrapbooks and photo albums which I will give to Tammy. I kept my Grandmother’s 45th Wedding Anniversary scrapbook and some photo albums from the 1980s for myself. I gave the book to my brother Jack who has a strong interest in history and genealogy. I figured he would really love to have something that once belonged to our great grandfather. Hopefully one of his children will also value it and keep it.
I suspect one more day will take us through the rest of Grandma’s photo albums and scrapbooks. Then we will start on Lily’s Christmas stuff. I love vintage Christmas stuff, and I am sure she has all of grandma’s Christmas decorations too. Her children and grandchildren have no interest in that stuff, so I will take anything that has value. Some I will keep for myself, and other stuff I will pass on to my siblings.
She made grilled cheese sandwiches for our lunch. I had a queasy stomach most of the day, but after I had lunch I felt better. Later in the afternoon, we had rootbeer floats. She brought me one of the lemon bars she had made for Roger when he came down to help her with her sale of the lot to her neighbor.
From Lily’s, I went to Mom’s to give her the garage door opener as Erik (Joni’s son) is moving in with her for a few months to save money. He will need the garage door opener to put his car in the garage and to get into the house. We went from her house to Jack’s to give him the book, which he was thrilled to get. Then we went to Owatonna where we got food from the Asian Kitchen. I got Shrimp Egg Fu Yung, steamed dumplings, and crab rangoons. She got Shrimp Egg Fu Yung, Beef and Broccoli, and egg rolls. I have inspired her to do what I do—get a couple of entrees because then you can eat at least four meals from what you get. I have come to hate cooking.
I ate half of the egg fu yung and the crab rangoons for supper. I love their egg fu yung. It is so delicious.
Tammy is in Winona with her horse. Apparently he won several ribbons at the horse show down there. He is a very beautiful horse and loves to “strut his stuff” at those shows.
Saturday, July 17
Now that I know a cleaner is coming to work on my house in a few days, I am inspired to work on the clutter. Today, I wiped down a bunch of my pop and filled the pop fridge in the kitchen. Then I broke down more cardboard and stuck it into a big cardboard box to recycle. I also bagged up a bunch of paper, plastic, and metal recycling. I picked up a variety of clutter and found another lone maggot under a cardboard box. I put an end to him. Bastard. How many more are infesting my house??
I ate the rest of my egg fu yung for supper.
I didn’t do too much other than that—I killed a ton of flies. There are still a ton more who need to die. Erik moved a lot of stuff into Mom’s house today. He will move himself and his cat in tomorrow after he packs the rest of his stuff into his car and cleans his apartment. I hope she will treat him better than she treated me when I lived there.
Peaches and I had a very nice snuggle in the early evening, putting an end to my efforts to clean the house. LOL.
Sunday, July 18
DeAnn and I had a good Zoom meeting despite the fact that neither of us had done the actual assignment. I was dealing with the emotional aftermath of the basement debacle, and she was dealing with a desperately ill cat, emergency, middle of the night visits to the vet hospital, a teenager with many rowdy friends hanging out day and night, and a power outage. Sometimes, life just gets in the way. I was able to convince Josh (the kid formerly known as “Josue”) to stand in front of the camera so I could get a good look at him. In my mind he is still a little bitty kid, but he has grown into a big guy—taller than DeAnn. He is still a beautiful boy. It literally brought tears to my eyes to see him.
I killed a bunch of flies again. There are still plenty of live ones left over. I washed the dishes, put away the clean dishes, cleaned up three or four piles of cat puke, cleaned the litterboxes, cleaned out the refrigerator, and bagged up a bunch of nasty old food from the refrigerator. I was able to carry 3-4 bags of garbage from the rest of the house out to the bin, but the two bags of kitchen garbage were just too heavy for me to lift into the bin. I texted Caleb and asked if he could come over and take that garbage out to the bin then move the garbage and recycling to the curb.
He replied that he would do it after supper. A while later, I warmed up the steamed dumplings and was eating them when Jack and Caleb came. I had opened the breezeway door and they came in and hauled out the kitchen garbage. I had a big box of broken down cardboard which they managed to stuff into the recycling bin too, so all that stuff will be gone instead of cluttering up my house. They took a quick trip to the bathroom as there was a little water on the floor. Jack determined that it was coming from the air conditioner, so I am okay with that. As long as it isn’t from the sewer, I am content.
Lily called and was very upset. Her friends Ed and Amy had spent the afternoon at her house playing games. Ed disappeared into the bathroom for an extended time, and Amy hinted strongly that she was hungry, but Lily just wasn’t up to making a meal for them. Amy had also wanted to bring some laundry to her house to do. She left them know that she wasn’t thrilled with the idea since her water bills were so high last summer when they did their laundry at her house all the time due to covid closing down the laundromat. She fed them some pretzels, and they left disappointed.
Shortly after they left, she went to use the bathroom, and her toilet was plugged up. She attempted to plunge it and almost had a nasty overflow of poop and foul water. I told her she should call the plumber right then. It wasn’t too late—only around 5 pm. But she didn’t want to as she didn’t want to be charged the weekend fee for a plumber’s emergency visit.
So, she spent the night trotting down to the basement toilet every time she had to go. I worried that, in her current state, she might fall down the basement stairs in the middle of the night as she has to get up to go to the bathroom. I would rather pay a little more and not be inconvenienced or put at risk.
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Date: 2021-07-19 11:22 pm (UTC)My plan didn't work on Freyja this morning. She was up aat 7:30 and wouldn't go back to sleep so I had to get up and let them out. But I didn't feed them until 9:30. I had to get up as the neighbors decided to replace a stairway on the apartment building and the noise has been horrible all day. They just did that stair way within the last 10 years so I don't know why it is always that one. Whatever the problem is they're not fixing it.
If your doll was from Guatemala the hair could be wound with ribbon and then wound around her head like they do there. I have some special hair ties that let me do it with my own hair. I'll bet you could find some picture and directions on the internet. That way you wouldn't have to cut her hair. But a braid for now will do.
You can make any rug into an around the toilet rug with a sharp pair of scissors.
At least this gives you an opportunity to get some more of your Grandma's stuff from Lily. I'm glad you got some of the photo albums. If Tammy doesn't like it then the next time she can go over to Lily's and do all of the work.
Is your mother going to put Erik in the basement like she did you? Any idea if his cat will get along with Mojo? Who knows? You might get Mojo to live with you sooner than you thought if they don't get along.
Ed and Amy have their nerve. I'll bet the visit was only do get their laundry done and they timed it to get a free meal too. Ed probably clogged that toilet up with a ton of toilet paper on purpose.