June 25 through 30

[chochiyo_sama]

Saturday, June 25

This morning, I filled my pill caddy and called in a refill for my metformin prescription.  The rest of my day was spent quietly watching TV and messing around on the computer.  Lily brought me four pieces of garlic bread that she had made and my mail.  The garlic bread was good.  Home made garlic bread is always the best.

Today was a lovely summer day.  I am thankful that Joni is in Koda where she will receive continued medical supervision and intervention so that she will not die of starvation or falling or whatever it is that is making her eyes and skin yellow and making her so weak that she cannot walk or stand.  I hope they keep her all summer.  I hope they also provide her with some psychological help as well.  Maybe they can convince her to leave her worthless alcoholic husband who constantly abuses her physically, mentally, and financially.  One of my brothers-in-law already drank himself into an early grave.  Perhaps this asshole will follow him into the grave.

 

Sunday, June 26

DeAnn and I had another good Zoom.  It is a good time for us to clear all the minutia out of our brains and discuss the plans, dreams, and accomplishments we are working on.  We celebrate the complete ones and plan for the ones next on the agenda.

Today was another sunny, lovely day.  I spent most of it messing around on my computer though I did take the time to sort through the mail and other stuff that has accumulated on the table by my chair.  I cannot seem to keep that space clear of random crap. 

I texted Hope and learned that she will be coming again on Wednesday to clean.  I am so thankful for every visit she makes.  She is a hard worker and a thorough cleaner.  My house is improving by leaps and bounds.  It won’t be long before the entire main floor is clean and orderly.  We are saving the dreadful laundry/craft/sewing room for last as it is the most horrific.  Hope is a good organizer, so I am sure it will be significantly improved.

 

Monday, June 27

I called Joni today.  She is feeling better and a little stronger.  I told her to stay as long as they would let her and not be in a hurry to go home.  They have put a tube through her nose and are feeding her via that.  She needs a lot of nutritional support as she has been unable to eat more than a morsel or two for months. 

I started reading another book—Mercy’s Rain.  It is about a young woman in the mid 1800s, daughter of a physically, mentally, and sexually abusive minister who insists that his wife and daughter refer to him only as “parson.” After he deliberately drowns one of his parishioners (whose wife he had raped and impregnated) while baptizing him, the community prepares to lynch him.  Mercy, his own daughter, is so filled with rage at what he has done that she slaps the rump of the horse they had put him on as he spouts hellfire and brimstone, and watches him jerk and twitch until he is dead.  Her mother, another victim of the parson’s never ending abuse, tells her to get out and never come back.  The story goes from there onto her many experiences as she heads out to find the source of the wild river which has been a constant throughout her childhood. 

The story was okay but I found myself getting irritated with the author’s slipping between the hillbilly jargon and commentary that sounded like clinical psychiatric jargon.  The detailed descriptions of the horrific abuse she had endured at the hands of her father (told in flashbacks of her memories) pretty grim and triggering.  If pushed, I would probably not recommend it—at least not without warning the reader that it is depressing and painful to read.

 

Tuesday, June 28

My mother has been constantly talking about how hungry she is for Culver’s fish dinner, so today I picked her up and took her to Owatonna where we went through the drive through of Culver’s.  We each got rootbeer and a three piece fish dinner with onion rings and coleslaw and a 10 piece shrimp entrée to share.  We drove by the mail box by Walmart and dropped a handful of my bills in then went to the Kwik Trip carwash and washed my very dirty car.  It had not been washed since last summer.  While the car was washing, we ate the shrimp.  Culver’s does a nice job on their fish and shrimp.  They make a wonderful corn dog too, but we had more than we could eat at one meal anyhow.  I consumed  my half of the shrimp, my onion rings and coleslaw, and the rootbeer.  I put the fish and a few of the onion rings into the fridge when I got home.  I will eat that tomorrow. 

We went by the swamp on our way to Owatonna and saw the adult swans swimming.  There were no babies with them.  I hope they had babies this year.  They are usually out there swimming around by this time.  We did have a late and cold spring, so maybe they are developmentally delayed.  I look forward to watching those swans and their babies every summer.

Shortly after I got home, the Fed Ex truck delivered my order from Chewy.com.  The boxes were so heavy he struggled terribly to get them to my house.  He used a dolly, but I guess he was in a hurry to get them to me and leave.  He should have made 2-3 trips and he would not have had to struggle so hard.  He was kind enough to help me get them into my house as they were so heavy I would have had to call my brother to get them in if he had not helped. 

The poor man was huffing and puffing and sweating like a lumberjack.  I thanked him repeatedly and asked him if he’d like a bottle of Diet Coke (as that’s all I had to offer).  He accepted it and drove off in his truck.  I am horrified that the Chewy.com people packed the boxes so heavy.  I could not lift them.  I just slid them to move them away from the door.

 

Wednesday, June 29

I got up earlier than usual today so I could do a few things before Hope arrived.  I cleaned out the refrigerator and threw out a bunch of food that had gone over, cleaned the four litterboxes in the breezeway, washed the dishes, sorted and started the laundry, and cleaned the litter box in the laundry room.  When Hope got here, I asked her to open the Chewy boxes and put the stuff away then break down and recycle the boxes. She took out the bags of recycling and garbage I had bagged up over the course of the week, vacuumed all the upholstered furniture, swept and scrubbed the floors, hauled some stuff to the basement, backed the car out of the garage so she could sweep it out, vacuumed the inside of the car, washed the outsides of all of the windows, and hauled the bags of clothes I was donating to her car so she could drop them in one of the collection boxes.  She also stopped at my mother’s on her way home and picked up two bags of clothes she wanted to get rid of as well.

While Hope was working, I made and called in my grocery order.  I bought a lot of produce again.  I love fresh produce—both vegetables and fruits.  Then I went through the two big totes of clothes that I had packed up when I no longer wore them.  I had one big black bag and one smaller white bag.  Both stuffed full.  I saved a few knit tee shirts that I intend to use to make doll clothes.  I felt a little guilty as they are all perfectly good shirts that someone could use, but I still kept them.  There were plenty of other shirts in the bags.  When my house is back in good order, I will use that fabric to make my dolls some nice tee shirts and turtle necks to wear under their jumpers and bib overalls. 

Lily stopped in to see Hope while she was here and brought my mail again.  There were two packages from Etsy—one had some clothes for my Wellie Wisher dolls and the other was some for the Minikane dolls.  I don’t have patterns for the Minikane dolls, and I cannot stand having naked dolls laying around. 

It was another lovely sunny day—but really hot.  Poor Hope was sweating after she did the windows, garage, and car.  We just sat and chatted with Lily for a while.  She was here almost six hours.  I paid her for the full six hours since it is her birthday next week.

 

Thursday, June 30

We had some brief, sporadic rain showers today.  We needed a much more steady and heavy rain.  My lawn is yellow from thirst.

Lily spent the day at Haylie’s today, helping with her two little girls.  When she got home, she brought me a container of the orange jello salad she made for her friend who visited earlier in the week.  I ate that for my supper.  It was good.

Because I worked so hard yesterday, my shoulders and knees and low back have been intensely painful today, so I have not done much.  I watched a little TV, poked around on the internet a little bit, and kept reading Mercy’s Rain.  I will finish it soon.

Comments

[the_godiva]

I filled my new pill caddy last night. It is bigger than my old one so the pills fit in easier, but the lids seem like they don't snap as tight so I always have to check they are all tightly closed before I turn it over to take my pills.

Keep gifting Jeff with plenty of his favorite booze in the largest sizes possible and keep an eye on the animals. Don't hesitate pulling them out if he is neglecting them.

How are you and DeAnn coming along on that workbook? Are you done now and on your own or still working through it?

I don't remember when the last time my car was washed. Probably also a year as it was before I got Freyja. I will probably have to fill up buckets, carry them out to the alley and hand wash my car before my next driving test. God, I hope I don't screw up and I pass this time.

Poor Edward Tulane is still "naked" but his body is made from a ticking pattern so he doesn't look naked, just wearing striped long johns. Ursel has an ill-fitting dress I bought for her as her original one is in bad shape. The Daisy Kingdom dolls are in their original underwear still in their original bags and put away in an American Girl trunk. Not sure if I will do anything with them or just give up and sell them as is. I have all of this Daisy Kingdom fabric as I was going to sew the doll dress fabric panels up for them and then make myself dresses because I love that fabric. But I just don't wear dresses much any more. I don't go to church, know now one that is going to get married, and I only dress up to go out to a restaurant now and I have more than enough clothes to do that.

I talked to my Mom almost two hours last night.

I used to always finish a book I started and never looked at the end. Now if I'm not enjoying a book I stop reading it and I will look to the end if I'm afraid the dog might die or something. What I enjoy about the Chet & Bernie books and the Andy Carpenter ones is that I don't have to worry about the dogs dying. Or other animals for that matter. People I really don't care about.

I am watching The Old Man on HULU and am deathly afraid one of the two wonderful Rottweilers are going to get killed off before the show is over. We're up to episode four and I am going to be very pissed if I've watched this whole thing and then they kill off the dogs or even one of them. From the little I've gathered from the book reviews on Amazon, Dave and Carol not only survive but are the best part of the book. But that doesn't mean the TV series won't gratuitously kill one or both off just to jerk us around.