June 19 through 24

[chochiyo_sama]

Sunday, June 19

David Lassahn mowed my yard and trimmed with the weed whacker, so it looks very nice.  He also took Tyrone’s graduation card to him.  I worked on my laundry and had a productive Zoom with DeAnn.  This morning’s entry in my devotional book addressed an issue I have been having in my prayer life that I am going to work on.  I have been dissatisfied with my prayers as they have sort of become a repetitive “grocery list” of issues.  It feels like I am praying exactly the same prayer over and over again—the only differences are what I am thankful for that particular day and any new issues that come up that I feel I need to address.  I am going to try to work on that—praying more specific and detailed prayers instead of the lists lacking in developed thought.  It would be okay if I just wrote the “list item” then prayed in more detail in my head.  I get distracted and zone out when I don’t write out my prayers, and even when I DO write them, I get distracted.

I will work on it.

I was very thankful for air conditioning today.  It was pretty brutal outside. 

 

Monday, June 20

I had a pretty quiet day today.  There has been so much going on that I got behind on my texting with Mary, so I tried to catch up with that.  I met Lily’s neighbor Jason today.  He has done some odd jobs for her, and she told him that I was looking for someone to do some work for me.  He called and asked if he could come over at noon tomorrow to discuss what I need done.  I said he could come anytime after noon.  I am very excited by the prospect of getting some of the dreams underway.

My brother Jack came over to give me a Cool Whip bowl of macaroni and cheese left over from Cora’s graduation party.  I am always glad to get a gift of food.  I like having stuff that is quick and easy to warm up and eat.

In other news, my sister Joni was admitted to the hospital where they will keep her for a few days before being transferred to a recovery facility where she will receive treatment, therapy, and counselling.  I just hope it is effective.  If she doesn’t get some real help, she won’t be here much longer.

 

Tuesday, June 21

I started the day with a very refreshing shower.  Then I folded the clothes in the dryer, washed and dried another load, cleaned up a pile of puke in the living room, cleaned the litterbox in the laundry room, and gathered and tied up the garbage and recycling from the living room, bathroom, bedroom, and laundry room.

Jason came over shortly after noon and I went over all the things I needed done and showed him around.  There was something wrong with the bathroom exhaust fan; it was running all the time, and it was impossible to turn it off.  He determined that there was something wrong with the switch and said he would buy a new one and come back.  He did pull the grate off the fan, cleaned it off as it was covered in dust and fuzz, and pulled the electrical plug in the fan out so it stopped its constant, annoying whirring.  The other thing in the bathroom was the towel bar which was barely clinging to the wall when I moved in and recently pulled away completely.  The end piece that screws into the wall had fallen off completely.  He said that needed a bigger butterfly screw and that he was sure he had some at home.  He'd fix that at the same time as the switch that runs the fan.

I talked to him about the bookshelves I want built floor-to-ceiling in the office.  He discouraged me from doing it on the south wall where I thought I wanted it because the desk would not fit right on the north wall.  The north wall works just as well for me, so long as it is sturdy, looks nice, and will hold all my books.  We talked about how I want the entire inside of the house (on the main floor) painted, and he said he loves to paint.  So we discussed colors and rooms.  I want a pale lilac in the bathroom and something light and warm in the living room/office/hallway.  It will probably be a creamy almond color in the living room, but I would be okay with the right shade of green.  Not the hideous dark avocado color it is now.  Not grass green or mint green.  I like mint green, but all my furniture is earth tones, so I need something that looks good with them.  In the bedroom, I want something that reminds me of the sky/ocean in Greece/Italy.  Something fresh and clean and calm.  Right now, my bedroom is a hideous yellow that reminds me of an unflushed toilet full of old men’s stinky urine in a gas station men’s room.  Not conducive to sweet slumber.  I’d like the kitchen to be a color like the turquoise/blue of the tile Mary got for me when she went to Europe for her watercolor adventure.  It is such a beautiful color.  In the laundry/craft/sewing room, I am not sure what color to choose.  That might be a good place for a minty green.  Or maybe a peachy color.  I had a lot of peach in my old house.  I will need to look at a lot of samples.

He is also willing to clean out the weed patch in the north side of the yard and seed it into grass as well as get the grow boxes on the deck ready to plant.  It may be too late to plant anything this year, but I’d like to at least put in some flowers. 

Jason was in a car accident a few years ago and has issues with his legs, hands, and back.  He is capable of doing just about any physical labor, but he can only work at it in short bursts with frequent rest breaks.  Like my uncle Jerry, he can do anything—wood work, plumbing, electrical work, lawn and garden stuff—and he likes to make things look good.  He doesn’t have a full time job but his house is paid for, he lives very simply, and he makes enough money doing odd jobs to live.  He’s a nice guy.  He’s 50 years old, has a 27 year old son, an aging dog whom he loves like another child, and looks like he is no more than 30.  He says he doesn’t like to be around people much as he has an anxiety issue as well.  Also, he called himself “dumb” because he had such severe ADHD that he quit going to school when he was in the seventh grade.  He didn’t communicate like anyone who is “dumb.” 

Maybe it is my background in working with alternative school students, but he and I hit it off.  He hung around chatting for over three hours.  We could have concluded all our business in less than an hour, but we had a free-ranging conversation about everything from politics to art to education to paranormal events, science, and aliens.  I haven’t enjoyed a conversation that much in ages.

He later told Lily that he usually didn’t much like being around the people he worked for but that he wasn’t going to have any issues working with me.  I took that as a compliment.

 

Wednesday, June 22

Last night I had a very involved and disturbing dream.  In the dream, one of my former students, a girl with long blonde hair was being really nasty to me—saying hurtful things, throwing garbage and stuff at me, and just being a terrible human being.  At some point, I got sick of her, lunged at her, and grabbed fistfuls of her hair in each hand and tried to yank it out of her head.  Now, I have never in my life been in a cat fight with another girl/woman or slung anyone around by her hair.  In the dream, I knew her name and was screaming at her—things like “Who the hell do you think you are?”  I don’t remember her name now.  When I couldn’t get her hair pulled out, I walked away from her all pissed off and steaming. 

Then I was in a restaurant sitting with some other people, and I looked up to see her sitting right across the room from us, smirking at me.  When she caught my eye she threw something sticky and disgusting at me—it was about the size of a sub sandwich.  It bounced off me, and I lost my mind.  I grabbed a pair of scissors off the table and rushed her.  She just sat there doing nothing while I grabbed her by the hair again and started chopping her hair off.  She just sat there and did nothing.  Maybe she was afraid I was going to stab her with the scissors. 

There was no indication in the dream of why she was treating me like that or why I hated her with such venomous rage.  It disturbs me that I could act that way—even in a dream.

I had a second dream—or maybe it was the same dream, but I don’t know how it evolved from this craziness to what it became.  I was standing just inside a building with some other people looking out the big front window when we saw a huge meteor streaking across the sky.  It was far up in the sky and looked like it was about the size of a basketball.  It was flaming and traveling really fast.  Then another one zoomed through the air in the same trajectory as the first.  It too was flaming.  Two more followed that one, and the final one was kind of flickering and pulsating.  As it did, the surface of the meteor seemed to take on the appearance of a flaming globe.  I could mostly see the shape of South America as the north pole area was tilted away from us. 

I stood there wondering if this was the end of the world.  That’s all I really remember about that part of the dream.  It was also disturbing.

Hope came to clean today.  On the way, she stopped at Walmart to pick up replacement light bulbs for the recessed ceiling lights in the living room, hallway, and breezeway.  She got a box of eight, so I will have spares for when the rest of the lights burn out, which they eventually will.  Se replaced the two in the living room and hallway and stored the rest of them in the breezeway on the wire shelf.  She took out all the garbage and recycling, hauled a few things to the basement, and helped me clean out my bedroom closet. 

The boys had knocked all the totes off the shelf in the closet, some of which popped open and spewed their contents all over the place.  I sorted through all the doll clothes and got them back into the correct totes.  I finally got rid of the box of medical supplies that the idiot nurse in Waseca sent home with me.  It was rather ridiculous.  I was put in a room that had a big storage area along one wall.  I never touched any of that stuff nor did I open a single drawer.  Yet, this dipshit emptied every single drawer into those “patient belongings” bags and sent them home with me.  When I went through it all, there was RIDICULOUS stuff in there—syringes, bottles of alcohol, IV needles, leg wraps, all kinds of stuff.  I had asked her why she was doing that, and she claimed that everything in the room had been “contaminated” by my presence there, so it had to leave with me.  Why she would send home intravenous needles home with me, I will never know.  What the hell would I want them for?  If they were truly considered contaminated, they should have been disposed of properly as medical waste.  She was a weird and arrogant bitch.  Everyone else there was so nice and kind, and she was like a bulldozer.  Ugh.  I hope I never see her again.

Anyhow, I had thrown away a lot of that crap before, but what was left, I asked Hope if she knew anyplace that would be able to use it.  She thought maybe the women’s or men’s shelters might appreciate some of the stuff.  Anyhow, she took it with her, said she’d go through it and see if there was anything she herself might be able to use would look into giving it to some other place. 

I had washed all the new clothes I had bought since I don’t like the feeling of the sizing they put in clothes to make them crisp.  I also had my regular wash all folded in laundry baskets.  I hung all the new clothes in the closet and put all the other clothes in my dresser drawers.  In the next few days I want to go through all my drawers and get rid of clothes I never wear.  I am considering offering them to the women’s shelter. 

I worked on the closet’s contents while she thoroughly cleaned the bathroom.  I had an appointment to get my hair cut in Geneva at 1 pm, and Lily was going to the cemetery there to water the pots and pluck off the dead leaves and flowers.  She loves to do that.  Anyhow, she offered to take me to the shop, drop me off, and pick me up when she was done at the cemetery. I was glad to take her up on that offer.  I brought a book along to read while I waited for her. 

It had been almost three years since I last had my hair cut.  When the spawn of hell, my nephews, lived with me, it was so stressful (on top of all the medical crap I had been through) that my hair was falling out in clumps, so I had gone to a Great Clips and had them shave my head.  My falling hair had clogged up the shower drain and was all over my bed every morning, so I just figured the best thing to do was get rid of it.  I did whack off my own bangs a few times since I cannot stand having hair in my eyes, but other than that, my hair was free to grow and grow it did.  My hair had almost grown down to my waist, where it had not been since I was in college.  Sadly, in those days, it was thick and glossy and beautiful.  These days, it is thin and brittle and dull. So I had no regrets getting it cut off.  The stylist cut it in kind of a blunt style that comes down about to my jaw line and is one length around my head.  My eyebrows were starting to look like they escaped from Andy Rooney’s face, so I asked her to trim them up too.

It felt so good to have all that long, stringy hair gone.  Much cooler too.

I sat and read my book (The People Next Door by Keri Beevis) for about 20 minutes till Lily came to pick me up again.  It’s the story of a couple who are invited to the neighbor’s house for supper.  These neighbors cannot stand children, especially babies, and their babysitter falls through.  Because their 8 month old baby is sleeping soundly, they decide to just go next door to the party, taking their baby monitor with them and going over to check on her every half hour.  All goes well, until they come home for the night, and their baby is GONE.  It isn’t the MOST satisfying suspense novel I’ve ever read, but it is holding my interest.

When I got home, Hope had swept, vacuumed, and scrubbed all the floors, vacuumed the upholstered furniture, and put all the now reorganized totes back up on the shelf in the closet.  When I got back, she hung the metal lizards I had bought several years ago up on the front of my deck.  They look very cute there.  She also washed the picture window, side windows, screen door, and front door window both inside and out.  My house is really starting to look good.  She was here for 6 hours and worked like a trooper the whole time.

On the way home from Geneva, we stopped to get my mail.  After Lily and Hope left, I sorted through my mail, paid my bills, and got the envelopes ready to send.  I had a lot of expensive bills this time—my car insurance for six months was $578, and I got billed my share of the four day hospital stay.  It was $1,378.  The total bill was almost $20,000.  Thank God I do not have to pay the whole thing.  I could have paid the whole bill, but I didn’t want to be without any money in savings since Jason is going to be doing some work for me.  So, I called the hospital and arranged to pay my bill in three installments over the next three months.  They thought that was fine—probably because most people arrange to pay in increments of $20-50 a month.  I like to pay off my bills as quickly as I can.  I do not like debt hanging over me.

My credit union has changed from United Educators to Experion.  With the change, they sent out new debit cards to its customers.  It has some different kind of chip—they called it the “no contact debit card.”  Anyhow, my old one would be useless in a couple weeks, so I activated the new card.  It’s always something.  Now I have a different number, so I have to go on all the on-line places I buy things at and update my card info.  I already did Chewy.com as I had to order more cat litter and food. 

I was really hungry as I hadn’t eaten anything all day.  My mother has been saying she wanted Dairy Queen, so I tried to call her to see if she wanted to get DQ for supper with me.  She didn’t answer the phone, and I decided to go alone.  I hobbled out to the garage and was just crawling into my car when my phone rang.  It was her.  I asked if she’d like to go to DQ, and she said she’d love it.  So, I picked her up and we went to Blooming where we got hot fudge malts, fish sandwiches, and onion rings.  I was so hungry that everything tasted like fine cuisine.  LOL.

It was a very busy and productive day.

 

Thursday, June 23

Ten years ago today, my niece Kaylee died.  She was born with a seizure disorder which just kept getting worse and worse.  The doctors kept removing pieces of her brain which they claimed were causing the seizures until there was almost nothing left of her.  She was always a sweet and gentle and loving child—but her entire life was pain, suffering, and hospitals.  Also, she was breath takingly beautiful.  Towards the end, her pretty little face had gone slack and she drooled all the time because she had been so damaged by all those surgeries. 

I hope that there is an afterlife that is beautiful because that sweet child deserved a shot at something better than what she got. 

She celebrated her golden birthday in Heaven.  Life sucked for her, but yet she was always happy and loving.  She couldn’t communicate at all, but, for many years at least, she showed by her behavior and responses that she was “in there” and had comprehension of what was going on around her.  Poor sweet girl.

Lily stopped in to bring my mail and 2 6-packs of Diet Coke, some honey ham sandwich meat and a container of deviled egg potato salad. When she left, she took the bills I had written out yesterday as she was on her way to the post office and was willing to mail them for me.

Jason came over around 1 pm and fixed the switch, fan, and towel bar in the bathroom.  He also repaired the broken hinge on the cabinet that Tony and Todd Yankoviak made for me in their shop class many years ago.  I have always loved that cabinet.  One of the braces that held the top shelf in place had come undone, and he fixed that too. He showed me the sketch of the bookshelf he could build and showed me the figures on what it would cost.  I think it will be perfect.  He explained to me again how he can only work for so long with his disabilities, and I told him I had no problem with him taking his time as long as the shelf was sturdy and well done.  He promised me it would be very nice. 

The work he did took very little time, but he stayed till after 5 pm, chatting up a storm.  I gave him two of the mini raspberry bismarks Lily had brought me, and he munched those up.  Lily told me he had a sweet tooth.  I think we might become friends.  I would enjoy that.  I don’t have many friends close enough to come over these days.  Lily is about the closest thing I have to a friend.  Not that I expect that a young fellow like him would be interested in hanging out with an old coot like me, but you never know.  We share a lot of common interests.  He’s had an interesting life, and he is a deep thinker.  And I think he sincerely likes to help people.  I respect that too. 

After he left, Becky Lassahn came over.  We visited briefly.  She was having a Pampered Chef book party and brought me a catalogue.  Pampered Chef is way too expensive for my blood, and I don’t really need anything.  There is a pan in the catalogue that can be used as a steamer, frying pan, baking pan, and something else.  That would be a nice pan to have, but it was almost $300.  No thanks.

 

Friday, June 24

So much was going on that I was too distracted to make a grocery list and call it in or to get online and make a Schwan’s order yesterday.  I decided I just wouldn’t get groceries from Lerbergs this week.  I have plenty of stuff to eat in the house.

I got a lot done today—I sorted, washed, and dried this week’s laundry, cleaned all four litterboxes, cleaned up a pile of cat puke in the breezeway, put my spider plant into a new pot with new dirt, watered my plants, washed the dishes, placed my order to Chewy.com, bagged up all the recycling and dragged the bag into the breezeway, and started putting my Wellie Wisher doll stuff into the antique dresser.  The cats would not leave me alone, so eventually I gave up on that job.  I will attempt it again another day when they are either sleeping or rampaging in the basement.

The Schwan’s man, Larry, came just as I finished repotting the spider plant.  He was kind enough to put it on the top shelf of my metal shelf thing in the breezeway while I looked at his catalogue.  Usually I place an on-line order, but yesterday was just too busy.  I was too tired at the end of the day to do anything but go to bed.  I have been very tired at night lately—all I want to do is go to bed and sleep.  I ended up buying the Schwan’s ready to warm up and eat pork ribs, their ready made microwavable mashed potatoes, chicken kiev, and shrimp and lemon grass wontons.  I have never had the last item before, but I love wontons and shrimp, so I am sure I would love them.  I may have them one of these first days.

I was afraid that if I just set the spider plant down, I would forget to put it up high in the breezeway and the boys would savage it.  For some reason, cats LOVE to eat spider plants.  It must be like a salad for them.  Larry is nice to me because I spend a fortune on Schwan’s foods.  I don’t know if he works on commission or not, but if he does, he appreciates me.  LOL.

I also bought an orange chicken skillet meal for Lily. She is having a friend spend a few days with her starting on Monday, and she has just been so worn out lately that she doesn’t feel like cooking.  She asked me to get her something from Schwan’s that she could have for a meal for her friend, and I thought that orange chicken sounded good.  It’s like a stirfry with breaded chicken, lots of vegetables, and rice in an orange sauce.

Lily drove to Mankato today to meet another friend for lunch at Red Lobster.  Something is wrong with the air conditioning in her car, so it produces almost no cool air.  She had called me on her way to Mankato and talked until she found Red Lobster.  I told her about where it was and told her to watch for Olive Garden because Red Lobster is just past Olive Garden.  She made it about fifteen minutes before her friend and sat in the parking lot talking to me until her friend came. 

She wanted me to call Lerbergs and see if they had zucchini and summer squash in stock as it was on their sale bill.  I said I would have bought some if I had ordered, but time just slipped away from me.  She said if there was anything I wanted, she would pick it up for me when she got back to Ellendale as she needed a couple of things there anyhow.  She said to just text her with the information and a list of what I wanted. 

I called and the zucchini and summer squash had not been delivered.  So I texted Lily and told her that information and asked her to pick me up 3 ears of sweet corn, green and red grapes, 3 nectarines, 5 on the vine tomatoes, and a box of strawberries.  I always get a lot of fresh produce.  I love fresh fruits and vegetables.

She stopped at my house to drop off the groceries she bought for me and had to tell me of her experience on the road home.  She said she was so sleepy she could hardly keep her eyes open and the car was so hot that it was stifling.  She said she kept drifting off and her car was all over the road.  There were people behind her in another vehicle, and she said they went slow and hung way back.  She thought they probably thought she was drunk.  She said she suddenly woke up to discover that her car was going down in the ditch—a very deep ditch—and her SUV was leaning so far over that she was afraid it was going to tip over and roll.  Suddenly her steering wheel jerked to the left and she was back on the road again.  She is sure that “Jesus took the wheel” just like that country song.  I said I don’t doubt it.  I told her she better get that air conditioning fixed before it kills her with that heat.

To top it all off, she said the food at Red Lobster was not even passably good.  She said it used to be so delicious, and now even the good biscuits were tasteless.  Such a disappointment.  Drive an hour to get a delicious meal only to pay a lot of money for crap and almost die on the way home due to heat exhaustion. 

At least she survived.

About 6 pm, I was sitting in my recliner watching TV when my neighbor from down the street came up the ramp.  Her name is Sharon.  She is a nice lady but is a tRUMP loving gun nut.  Sigh.  I don’t know how that evil scum was able to brainwash otherwise kindhearted and decent people into worshipping his evil ass.  She said she had been worried about me since she hadn’t seen me in months.  She was the one who stopped and knocked one morning last week, but I was still in bed and not dressed.  But the time I got some clothes on and got to the door, no one was in sight.  I wondered who that was.  Anyhow, we had a nice visit for about two hours except for the part where she was defending tRUMP and howling about how the gubbermint wants to take our guns so they can control us.  Feh. 

That pretty much catches me up.  Almost anyhow.  There has just been so much going on and I have been abnormally tired lately. 

Comments

[the_godiva]

It's Sunday. I have a list of things I want to do but time will tell if any get done. I have another load of laundry ready to go. I'd like to do some work on my dresser drawer to finish it up and get the new knobs on it. I want to bring the trash can to the back, fill it and then take it back to the front. The front gate is already locked. It's just a fight to get the dogs to return to the back yard.

I want to get in the sewing room and get all of the watercolor stuff out and go through it. I need to sell stuff that I am never going to use and get it out of the house. WetCanvas is still temporary active so I might start there. Then switch to Etsy as they are art supplies.

I managed to get the bedroom temperature down to 76.5 by leaving the window open all night and the fan on high.

The colors sound lovely. I'm sure it's not too late to plant. You can get seedlings already started and if it takes too long for vegetables there are always flowers. But I'll bet you could do some tomatoes if you buy good sized plants.

Sounds like Jason is a real find. I hope he works out well for you as you'll have odd jobs for him on and off for quite a while. Maybe he could even build that Catio.

Hmmmm. Are you angry at anyone? Seems to be some subliminal anger issues. Has anyone ticked you off lately?

I've still got some syringes left over from Ramses and Candy. I kept them because sometimes they come in handy for crafts or something. I've used them to put glue in tight spots for repair and also to get perfume out of bottles to transfer in to a spray bottle for travel.

Lily needs coolant in her AC unit in the car. It may need to be replaced as I don't think they need to be serviced any more so it may have a leak, which means replacing it.

Nice to see you had a nice week. Hope it continues to be uneventful.

[chochiyo_sama]

Nothing that I can think of has made me so filled with rage that I wanted to attack someone. I am pissed at the Supreme Court, and of course I would always cheerfully throttle and castrate tRUMP or his spawn--but no more raging than I normally am about them.

Jason is a gift. Not only is he a willing worker and a kind and thoughtful person, he is a kindred spirit. We have such good conversations.

Lily did get her AC unit filled with coolant. They said to bring it back in a week and they would check the level to see if it was leaking out. So far, it seems to be okay.

[minoanmiss]

I think you and Jason were meant to meet.

[chochiyo_sama]

I do believe we will be good friends. It's nice to have an actual human to visit with that you can see and hear. I do love my on-line friends too, and I enjoy the conversations--but an actual face-to-face freewheeling conversation is a special kind of pleasure.