September 27 through October 2
Oct. 3rd, 2021 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chochiyo_samaMonday, September 27
Progress continues on the house. The men work hard from about 7 am until around 2 pm. They don’t take many breaks, and they don’t lollygag. They work steadily all day.
The garbage full of rotten frozen food went this morning. I was glad to see it gone. I worked on the breezeway today—I scrubbed out the freezer which now looks brand new again. I discovered that the box of cat litter which I thought was empty was actually full and unopened. It had soaked up quite a bit of the nasty freezer melted juice. The bottom of the box was destroyed. I had two small wastebaskets in the breeze way, so I scooped what was good into the waste baskets. That’s how I did it before when the idiot delivery dude left it on the step in the rain without ringing the door bell. I would say I was able to save between 2/3 and ¾ of the litter.
While I was out there, I cleaned the litter boxes, swept and scrubbed the breezeway and kitchen floors, bagged up more garbage, and watered my plants. I was also working on some laundry while I did all of that.
By the time I was done with all that, I was pretty hungry, so I made a can of Progresso clam chowder. I love clam chowder, and it is quite satisfying.
It was another stellar fall day with pleasant, cool temperatures and bright sunshine. I would be happy if this weather lasted until Christmas.
Tuesday, September 28
The workers are working hard on the deck. It is pretty—the wood is sort of a dark reddish brown. It looks very nice with the siding.
It is another lovely fall day. I love these days and look forward to the day when I can actually sit out on my deck and enjoy the day.
My house has been infested with fucking nasty little gnats that bite. I am sensitive to their bites. Every time they bite me, I get nasty, itchy bites that swell up to the size of fifty cent pieces and last for 2 weeks or more.
I made a Marie Calendar chicken pot pie for lunch. It was much better than the smaller and more expensive Schwan’s pot pies. I will be going with these for the future. I also baked a package of the Schwan’s BBQ ribs. I over cooked them a little since I did not hear the timer go off due to all the construction noise. They were a little fatty, but rib meat is very delicious and tender. I will have to buy those again. There was enough meat in that package for at least 5 meals. Three of the ribs were satisfying for a meal. I had three ribs and a big lettuce salad for supper.
While my pot pie was baking, I washed the dishes and cleaned all the yucky stuff out of the fridge. I have been so scattered in my thinking that I have let way too much food spoil. Good, expensive food. Makes me so disgusted with myself. The potato soup I had made was so good—but I let at least three meals worth spoil. In the end, it was okay for that though, because while I was scraping it into the garbage, I discovered a large, fat, dead fly floating in it. I will be so glad when winter kills all those bastards dead.
Lily came over in the afternoon to watch the two episodes of Chesapeake Shores that I had recorded on the DVR for her when she was gone. I don’t watch that show, but I kept busy with other things while she was watching it. She brought my mail, so I sorted through that. I had one bill to pay. The rest was catalogs and junk mail which I threw into the recycling.
Wednesday, September 29
More excellent progress on the exterior of the house. The deck is almost done. They should finish it tomorrow.
I did more laundry. I seem to have a never ending plethora of laundry.
I ate some toaster waffles for lunch and had ribs and a lettuce salad for supper.
I spoke to Joel Lamm, the guy working on my refinance, and he assured me that everything is on track. I made my grocery delivery order and called it in. I also placed an order for delivery to the Schwan’s man. Since my freezer is now completely empty, I figured I should order a few things to justify having it plugged in. I bought some frozen vegetables, a bag of frozen cherries, two pints of premium ice cream, and a small box of vanilla ice cream which I will use for making root beer floats. I also bought a bag of vegetable fried rice, a bag of frozen General Tso’s chicken, a box of pork egg rolls, a bag of frozen steamed dumplings, and a container of frozen spinach and artichoke dip. Now I have enough food to get me through at least two weeks ordered. And it is a nice variety of foods, so I won’t get bored.
Thursday, September 30
Today, I was told that the siding and deck are done. The deck is not as wide as I wanted it to be. I am going to be asking them to extend it at least another 3 feet in width. As it is now, it is just a handicapped accessible walkway and not truly a deck. Also, the down spout of the gutter is NOT acceptable. First of all, they put it down so it ends on the cement “patio” area outside the breezeway. When the water drains out in the winter, it will freeze there and become a treacherous icy disaster. Also, the end of the down spout stretches across the concrete area about ¾ of the way, leaving only a small opening to allow access to the breezeway door. My 80 year old aunt and my 87 year old mother could easily trip over that, fall on the concrete, and break a hip.
Of lesser importance, the downspout takes up too much room along the wall for my garbage can to fit in its little “parking stall.” Also, the ignorant placement of the downspout also blocks the garbage can from being rolled out to the curb and back again. Whoever did this was an idiot.
I had a Schwann’s caramel pecan roll for breakfast, blueberry toaster waffles for lunch, and three ribs and a bowl of cheerios for supper. My eating habits are insane.
Lily asked me to order some Schwan’s stuff for her, so I placed another order. I will be getting a huge order tomorrow, between the two of us.
Friday, October 1
More work on the laundry.
The Schwan’s order came early. The Lerberg’s order came much later than it usually does because the school had their homecoming parade today. The football game and dance is scheduled for tomorrow night instead because there is a shortage of football referees due to the pandemic situation.
I got all of the food sorted and put away.
Lily and my cousin Gene’s wife Gail stopped on their way home from lunch to pick up Lily’s Schwan’s order. They had eaten at the new Cuban restaurant in Geneva. They brought me a shrimp dish for lunch—It was supposed to be a bowl, but they had it divided into a pod thing. There was a scoop of black beans, a scoop of sticky white rice with a thin fish patty on top of it (the fish patty looked like a McDonald’s hash brown patty, but it was rounder and made of breaded fish), six small spicy shrimp, a good sized scoop of guacamole, a little pile of shredded lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and other veggies, and a little plastic tub of creamy green sauce. The food was different—I did not hate it, but I have to say it didn’t delight me either. The shrimp and fish patty were good. I don’t really like black beans unless they are in some kind of soup or hot dish. I mixed them in with the rice and ate them any how. I would probably never order that particular dish again. And if that is a representative sample of the food, I would probably never eat there again.
I told Lily I enjoyed it and that it was good because I didn’t want her to have hurt feelings. It was very kind of her to bring it home for me.
When I woke up this morning, the huge dumpster was gone. I am kind of sad that I missed seeing them haul it off. It was way over full. My old shower chair was precariously balanced on the top like a cherry on a hot fudge sundae. LOL.
It looked and felt like impending rain all day, but it never rained. I was disappointed. It was very humid, and that seemed to have the effect of making my shoulder and knees excruciatingly painful. My arthritis strength Tylenol was pretty much ineffective. It was hard to do anything due to the intense pain I was in. ☹
Jack had planned to come and help me move my freezer over today so I could sweep and scrub under it to make sure all the sticky from the melting freezer stuff would not attract ants or other pests. He was expecting his contractor to come and talk about finishing his addition and planned to come to my house after that happened. However, the worthless contractor never showed up. Cora’s homecoming parade was this afternoon, so he had to go to that. So his plan is to come tomorrow to help me. All good, so long as I get it done.
My mother informed me that Kim is coming down tomorrow and the two of them are going to Sandy’s salon to get their hair cut. Then Kim will work on her storage shed and all the crap she has in mom’s three season porch.
Saturday, October 2
I dried the last load of laundry. Jack texted me at 9 am that he was ready to come over and help me. I texted him back that I needed a few minutes as I had just woken up. I wasn’t even dressed yet.
I quickly got myself up and ready for the day then opened the doors and texted him to come any time. He showed up very quickly and helped me by moving the freezer over. He saw I was moving slow, so he grabbed the broom and swept the area where the freezer had set. There was so much cat hair under there! A few spiderwebs and spiders too. It wasn’t as bad under there as I thought it would be. There was only a small line of dried up sticky crap right in front of the door. It was pretty stubborn to scrub up, so Jack grabbed the mop and used his man muscles to scrub it better than I could. Then he took out three bags of garbage, one of which was really heavy, two bags of recycling, and two big cardboard boxes. Recycling does not go till next week, but he wheeled the garbage out to the curb for me.
When that was done, he came in and visited for a while. About a third of the people he works with at the prison are refusing to get the vaccine, claiming it is made of aborted fetus material. They are already short staffed, and if all those people get fired, which is the current plan, they will be in very bad shape. Jack is really able to retire at any time now. I advised him to do it. He owes them no loyalty. They have been treating all of their workers like absolute shit for years.
Quite some time ago, I told him that he could probably make good money doing substitute teaching. He pooh-poohed it at the time, but he has been talking to one of the junior high teachers who told him about the current sub pay and encouraged him to think about it. So, he is now more interested in it.
Tammy called me on her way to Sadie’s house. They are going to the Eagles’ concert tonight. They are going to stay overnight in a hotel across the street from the concert venue and come home in the morning.
The people who own the land the boarding barn where she lodges her show horse are getting divorced. The couple has possession of their daughter’s three cats, a 14 year old gray striped tabby, a 2 year old seal point Siamese, and a 1 ½ year old orange kitty, but neither of them want to take those cats with them. So they took them to the horse barn and tossed them in there. The cats are terrified, having been house cats their whole lives. The senior cat has crawled into the bottom level of the cat tree and refuses to leave. Someone took the Siamese, but no one wanted the other two.
Tammy called me to see if I was interested in them, and my heart ached for them—how terrified they are. I don’t see how anyone can be so cruel to cats they have had since they were kittens. Those cats would end up either running away to be eaten by the many coyotes who are in that area or stomped to death by huge horses. So, I said bring them down. We will see how they integrate with my Peach.
It turns out that the daughter has decided to come and get them. So whoever took the Siamese will have to bring her back, and the others will not become my babies after all. I told Tammy to tell the daughter that if it didn’t work out, I would be willing to take all three—even temporarily until she finds housing that will allow her to take them in.
I called Arlen about the down spout and he assured me he would send someone over to fix that. When he comes, I will talk to him again about extending the deck out farther. Supposedly there were pipes or something that prevented it, but there has to be a way it can be fixed.
Later, Mom called and asked if I had her debit card, thinking I may have accidentally stuck it into my billfold after I helped her fill her gas cans last week. I checked, but it was not there. I told her I would drive over and she could check the car to see if it had fallen under the seat or something—then I would drive her to see my completed house then go on to Owatonna to see if it was left at Dairy Queen where we got ice cream after filling the gas cans.
She loved the house and thought everything was very classy looking. We went on to Owatonna where I stopped at Subway and bought four 20 ounce Diet Cokes, and a spicy Italian sub for Sunday. I will be having a Zoom meeting with DeAnn which always goes long, so it is convenient to have a ready made lunch at hand for when we are done. Then we went to Dairy Queen where we got hot fudge malts. I asked the girls working about the debit card. They checked their safes and said they had nothing and asked if we were sure it was left there.
I told them we didn’t know where it was left as it was just discovered to be missing today. We left Mom’s name and number just in case it turned up.
I did not want any food from DQ as the last time I got a hamburger there, it was not great. So, I thought I’d get a fish burger from McDonald’s but the line there was enormous. So we went to Culvers and I just got a small order of shrimp—only shrimp—not a basket or a dinner. It turned out to be just the right amount of food to satisfy me.
I swung by the post office and dropped my bill into the outdoor mailbox. Back in Ellendale, I dropped her off and went home. I put away the sandwich for tomorrow and the Diet Cokes. I had just come out of the bathroom when Mom called and told me she had found her debit card!
We had issues with one of the gas cans. We couldn’t get the top off. So we speculated that perhaps she had stuck her debit card in her pocket to free up her hands. And that turned out to be what happened. She found it in the pocket of the black capris pants she had worn that day. So, happy news.
At that point, I was tired and aching, so I took more Tylenol and went to bed so I could get up early tomorrow to do my Zoom with DeAnn. I never did finish reading Chapter 7, but I did get part of it read.
no subject
Date: 2021-10-04 09:30 am (UTC)If you can take Benedryl it help with the itching. It's an antihistamine.
You can also go online and find a product called Apinol. It is a topical that smells like turpentine but also takes away the itch and can even act as a repellent.
I buy the Marie Callender's turkey pot pie as I think they are tastier. They are definitely the best tasting pies in the frozen section and they come in small and large. They have a restaurant here locally but I don't go any more. Their other frozen dinners are pretty good too. I like their chicken and broccoli fettuccini Alfredo.
Better to toss out the soup than find that fly in the bottom of the bowl after you've had lunch.
Yeah, that total downspout thing is a disaster built by a moron. It all needs to be redone and moved to a corner to channel the water into the lawn, not concrete. Not to mention that it might damage the foundation or leak into the basement. Just stupid. They'll need to angle the gutters to the corner and move the downspout there.
If it was supposed to be shrimp bowl, maybe you were meant to empty all the little pods into a bowl and eat it together.
Kim still has her shit on in the shed and on the porch? Well, I guess we know how Mommy's pet is.
Jack would be smart to retire and get his pension, then do teaching to supplement. I certainly don't advocate substitute teaching for any length of time. I had to do it the last few years when I moved back and forth from year round to traditional. It made no sense but oh well. The last time I did it they were absolute shits so when I retired I said I would never substitute again. Not even as a librarian.
I suppose good that the daughter has agreed to take them but a bit late. Telling those generous people they have to bring the girl back is crushing. I'm sure they've already bonded with her. And what took her so long? The boys have been living a terrified life. She should have thought all of this out before any of it happened. I'm sure her parents told her to come get her cats and when she didn't that's when they dumped them in the barn. At least they are now back with her but who knows if she'll do something awful now and no one will know.
When they fix that downspout make sure they don't just move it to another spot. They will also have to slope the gutters to the downspout or the gutters will not work properly. Don't let them be cheap and lazy about it.
Good she found it. It is a PITA to have to call the bank, cancel and then wait two weeks or more for a new card, then change all of the accounts where that card is on file.