August 28 through 31

[chochiyo_sama]

Sunday, August 28

DeAnn and I had a nice Zoom this morning.  Later in the afternoon, Mom and Tammy came over to see the lovely paint job in my house, bringing me a meal of 2 enchiladas, beans and rice, chips and salsa, and a slice of strawberry cheesecake from El Tequila.  It was not hot, but it still tasted good.  Tammy also brought me two beautiful tomatoes from her garden. While they were here, Tammy went down to the basement to check it.  We all live in fear of another sewer back-up.  There was no sewage, but there was water in the basement from the deluge we had a few days ago.  Tammy said it appeared that the water was coming up through the cracks in the floor. I will have to ask Jason what can be done about that.  We visited for a while then they left as Tammy was tired and wanted to head back up to her house.

Later, I worked on catching up with my DW entries and made sure all of my upcoming medical appointments were in my cell phone calendar.  In the evening, TCM was having a Cary Grant marathon, so I watched two of his movies—Houseboat with Sophia Loren and Mr. Blandings Builds his Dream House.  Both were pretty good.  Overall, it was a pretty quiet day.  I am feeling a bit better, possibly due to the changes in my meds or possibly because I had a quiet day.  Less stress.

 

Monday, August 29

Today I cleaned all four litterboxes, cleaned up several piles of cat puke, swept the breezeway, took the scoopings out to the bin, and sorted and started the laundry.  Hope texted me that she was able to come to clean on Wednesday.  I was happy about that as it would give me time to do some organizing and cleaning before she gets here.

My mom had an appointment with the chiropractor today at 1 pm.  Lily was going to take her, but Haylie, her granddaughter, needed her to come and watch her little girls as Haylie was having surgery on her varicose veins today.  Her father in law was going to watch the girls, but he tested positive for Covid, so she did not want him around her little girls. 

So, I had to drive my mother to Owatonna.  I was a little worried that my car might not start as it hasn’t been driven in over a month.  It popped right off, though, so I had no problem taking mom to her appointment.  We went by way of the swamp where we saw the swan couple and at least two of their babies.  After her appointment, we went to Culver’s and got 3 piece fish dinners with coleslaw and onion rings (for me) and cheese curds (for her).  We ate at Moorehouse park near the dam.  It’s been ages since we did that.  The fish was really good.  We both had leftover fish to take home for another meal. 

On the way home, we saw the produce truck, so of course I had to stop.  They had black diamond watermelons, so I bought two—one for myself and one for my brother Jack.  He always takes my garbage out for me, so I like to get him and his family a treat now and then.  Those black diamond watermelons cannot be beat.  Mom wanted a muskmelon, so I got one of those for her, and I also bought four huge tomatoes.  I love fresh tomatoes on toast.

We dropped the watermelon off at Jack’s house, and he gave each of us two bags of tomatoes he had frozen and two bags of apples he had frozen, all from his little “garden.”  We visited briefly with him as he was busily freezing more tomatoes and needed to get back to work. 

Before I took Mom home, I brought her to my house as she had to go to the bathroom really bad.  She took my purse and watermelon, frozen food, and leftover fish into the house for me, and took the recycling bin to the curb for me when she came out.  I just can’t drag the bins out with the walker.  I took her home and picked up my mail on the way back to my own house.

I put everything away and then just took it easy for the rest of the night.  I was tired.

 

Tuesday, August 30

I got up pretty early (for me) so I could work on my laundry and start working on the other stuff in my living room and office area.  There was a lot of stuff in the green shelf that I had “liberated” from the shop when the West Concord school closed.  It was in the “to be disposed of” pile, so I didn’t actually steal it.  For the rest of my career at Triton, I used it to store all my worksheets and handouts, sorted by class.  I took it with me to ROC and used it for similar purposes there.  More recently, I used it to store a bunch of random things, including recently purchased books that I want to read, a stash of greeting cards I had stocked up on, tons of medical crap that I had from my adventures in medical world in 2019, and other random junk.  I went through everything in that shelf and recycled most of the medical crap.  The rest I put in a bag to take to the basement to add to my 3-ring binders where I have filed a bunch of my medical paperwork. 

The cabinet under my TV in the living room is sentimental to me as two of my former students made it in Shop class.  Todd Yankoviak started it but didn’t finish it when he was in 9^th grade shop, and his brother Tony finished it when he was in 9^th grade.  It isn’t perfect, but I love it.  Two of the shelf braces had let loose, but Jason reglued them and then put a heavier/sturdier screw into them so the shelves will stay put now.  I put a bunch of my random 3-ring binders in it along with a stack of printer paper (stolen from ROC), loose leaf lined notebook paper, a whole plastic shoe box of pens, pencils, and markers, a couple of adult coloring books (one of cats and one of Star Trek) that my mom and brother got for me when I was in the hospital recovering from the burst appendix, and a bunch of the stuff I moved over to that cabinet from the “shop” shelves.  I had polished the cabinet inside and out a while ago, so it looks great and is well organized now. 

When I finished that, I polished the outsides of the two DVD storage shelves with Orange Glow, so they really shine and look beautiful.  Then, shelf by shelf, I took out all the DVDs, polished the shelves, and wiped the dust and cat hair off each and every DVD in the shelves.  Any that were still wrapped in plastic, I liberated, and tried to get them organized so that all the ones in a series were together.  I did not finish the whole thing, but I got over half done.  What is done looks so clean and shiny.  It makes me happy to look at them.

My arms were starting to ache from all the polishing and scrubbing, so I made one of my Schwan’s chicken burrito bowls for a late lunch/early supper and called it a day.  I finished all of the laundry except to dry the last load.  I threw that in the dryer before I went to bed and will fold it in the morning.  I will also strip the bed as soon as I get up and wash that.  Making the bed is really hard for me too, so I will have Hope do that. 

I went to bed rather early.  My arms and shoulders were aching, so I was glad to climb into bed, take some Tylenol, and sleep.

 

Wednesday, August 30

I was up by 7:30 in the morning.  I didn’t sleep real well last night due to the shoulder and arm pain.  Also, I had to pee about fifty times in the night (Okay—a bit of hyperbole, but it SEEMED like that many times).  I stripped the bed and threw the sheets and bedspread into the washer.  I folded the last load from yesterday and dragged it into the bedroom.  Before Hope got here, I cleaned all the litterboxes, swept the breezeway again, bagged up a bunch of garbage and recycling and dragged it to the breezeway, and opened the doors so Hope could get in.  I wanted to get all the garbage out to the bin while Hope was here, so I peeled the few potatoes I had.  There were 6-7 of them, but three of them were rotten inside, so I had to throw them away.  I was going to boil them and make potato salad of them, but there wasn’t enough to do that once I threw away all the rotten ones and parts.  So, I fried them and had fresh fried potatoes for breakfast.  I also “butchered” the black diamond watermelon and chopped it up and put it in the fridge.  So all the peelings of that produce went into the garbage and later out to the bin, so there would be nothing stinky in my kitchen garbage.  I cleaned out anything nasty from the fridge too.  I was washing the dishes when Hope arrived.

I sent her down to the basement to see if any cardboard boxes had gotten wet.  There were a few wet things, so she dealt with that while I ate my fried potatoes and tidied the kitchen.  She broke down some of the empty, wet cardboard boxes and dealt with the one cardboard box that had stuff in it.  My Frank Sinatra barbie doll’s box had gotten wet, so we liberated him from that, recycled the box, and set him in the sun to be sure he was totally dry.

I texted Jason that Hope was here as the two of them were going to be carrying in my new solid oak bookcases.  Until he came, Hope worked on the bathroom and I went back to working on the DVD shelving.  When Jason arrived, they carried in the bookcases and shelves.  I Orange Glowed the shelves while they set up the bookcases.  Hope Orange Glowed the outsides and insides of the cases while Jason put in the little pegs to hold the shelves.  When I finished the shelves, I went back to the DVD shelving and DVDs again.  Jason checked out the basement and told me I should get a dehumidifier which would help and that I might have to install a beaver system.  I already have a sump pump. 

I sent Jason home with a Cool Whip bowl of watermelon, and he hung around and talked for a while before heading home. 

Hope kept getting calls from her workplace.  Apparently they are very short staffed, and everyone has been working 8-14 days in a row with no break.  One of her co-workers was begging her to work for her tonight as she has been working 14 days straight and needs a break.  I told her to do what she needed and wanted to do.  Getting the bookcases into the house was the main thing I wanted done.  She decided to work for me till 2 pm, and then go home and nap so she could work tonight.  She got a lot done.  She dragged my recycling bin back to the house, got my mail, swept and scrubbed all the floors, put up the new, heavy-duty shower curtain liner to replace  the one my cats demolished, cleaned the bathroom, made the bed, took all  the garbage and recycling out to the bins, cleaned out the microwave which I am too short to be able to clean, and wiped down all my Stephen King books and put them on one of the shelves in the book case.  We talked a little bit about random stuff before she left, and I paid her for the shower curtain and windex she had picked up for me on her way here.  It actually worked out well for me that she only worked four hours as I am short of cash this month due to paying Jason for his labor and supplies for painting the living room, office, and hallway and for paying the last third of my hospital bill for the issue I had with my intestines in May.  Now that bill is paid off, and next month, I will have some extra money again. 

Jason’s next project will be the breezeway.  There is enough paint left over  to do that tiny space, and he has some exhaust fans at his house left over from other projects, so he will install one in my breezeway to suck the litterbox odors out into the garage.  He also has some timers he doesn’t need, so he will put the fan on a timer so it doesn’t run constantly which will save me money on electricity.  The walls in that room have to be washed before it is painted, however, as the cats sometimes have left a little poop schmutz on the wall.  I scrubbed a bunch of it off a week or so ago, but there is more now. 

He says he will not charge me for doing the breezeway as I paid him more than he asked for the area he already did.  I will have to wait a while to save up the money to do the kitchen, which I believe will be the next major project.  It will be a turquoise shade and will possibly have tile between the upper and lower cupboards and behind the stove and fridge.  It will be beautiful.

Later in the afternoon, I got a message from Randy Dohrmann, Hope’s baby daddy for her two oldest kids and a former student of mine.  He said Hope had showed him a picture of the weed/flower patch on the north of my house and said that he’d be willing to clean that up and seed it into grass for me.  I said I would LOVE that, but it would have to wait till next month as I have already spent all of my discretionary income.  He responded that he wanted to do it for me for free because I am “a sweet lady”  and he “loves me.”  Awwww.  He did spend a lot of time hanging out in my room when he was in high school as he was bullied quite a bit by the asshole crowd. 

I guess that’s it for now. 

Comments

[the_godiva]

You could have a little garden on your deck. You'd be surprised what you can grow with some rail boxes and pots on the deck. You should have some rail boxes that hang over on the outside, then some boxes along the deck. You'd get twice the growing space. The deck ones should be a bit deep so you can grow tomatoes and carrots. The deck boxes for shallow stuff like herbs, radishes, lettuce and spinach.

I have a little shelf in the bathroom in the garage that was made by a former student in shop class at Roosevelt Jr High. It has a mirror and small shelf and holds a small decorative washbowl/pitcher combo that matches the curtains and towels. I paid $10 and it is pretty much crap. I think it was likely made from pallet wood, which is cheap awful stuff. He torched it with a propane torch and then finished it with some sort of varnish but he didn't sand and finish the edges very well before he assembled it. It serves its purpose but is not a great example of woodworking. I shall probably trash it when I move but I'll keep the curtains, towels and ceramics as I might have two bathrooms if I move to Carlsbad by the Sea.

I have tons of DVDs that need to be put in the cabinet under my picture window. I haven't gone through any of that stuff for years and there is probably stuff in there that needs to GO, plus to make room for the DVDs. Unfortunately the sliding drawers were sized for VHS tapes. Well, they weren't really sized for anything as the lazy bastards that made it didn't give a shit. The project manager basically told me that when I accepted their bid they could pretty much do what they wanted and didn't have to do everything *I* wanted. Asshole. He was a new hire from back east. When I complained about a seam in the top right in the middle of my picture window the owner came out, took one look at it and said this is unacceptable and had it done over. But the installation was lousy and they never finished. The last guy remaining promised to come back to install the hardware but said he had to drop off the check before end of day on Friday. Never saw him again of course because they had their money and so I had to do it myself. I'm sure I did a much better job too. Lazy fuckers. But I learned never to hand over money until the job is done. You do not pay up front for promises as they all lie. When you hire out you better know how the job should be done and supervise, otherwise the lazy bastards will fuck up and screw you. Even when you hire a contractor you still need to be the project manager and they are the sub contractor to you. There are exceptions, like your Jason. When you work one on one with someone who is self-employed and has morals and a solid work ethic, you can give them a lot of trust.

I had a lousy day yesterday. It's been HOT. I stayed up until almost 5am waiting for the AC to get the bedroom down below 80. The whole house was hot from heat sink, being shut up for three days. I got to sleep but woke before 10am from heat even though I left the AC on all night. Even with the AC on all day the temperature crept up because the little unit can't really handle the size of the room let alone the sun beating down on it all day. Outside it got into the mid 90s. Accuweather keeps announcing rain but when I went out to bring the trash cans in (at 11:30 pm) the "rain" was nothing but an occasional single drop. We have a 60% chance of rain on Friday and 70% on Saturday with possibly lightening. A summer thunder storm would certain be a welcome change as I don't remember them for years. I hope it is a real rain and not this fake mist crap.

It's going to be 98 today and 93 tomorrow. At least when I go to my parent's house on Tuesday it will be 84 on Tuesday and Wednesday. They have a great house for when it's hot as the breezes from the ocean come up the canyons. I'm landlocked with concrete and buildings all around me. That's why my neighborhood is a crappy one and theirs is a nice one. It's usually 5 degrees cooler in the summer and 5 degrees warmer in the winter. A quiet cul de sac with a cool evening breeze. No views but on the canyon that is preserved open space so they'll never have development behind them.

I'm having Amazon Fresh deliver between 8pm and 10pm tonight. It will still be hot but not quite as bad and I can bring it all in immediately. I'll monitor the delivery and be out there as soon as it gets here. No frozen stuff and minimal refrigerated. I am tempted to make a trip to the grocery store but I want to clear out the refrigerator a bit before I do. That will wait until tomorrow night as it is still blazing hot at night. I might not do it until Thursday. I'll likely spend the night at my parent's house on Tuesday and get home midnight on Wednesday.

Around 3pm I got sleepy so just decided to take a nap because it was so friggin' hot and I slept for over 8 hours according to the Fitbit. So my sleep cycle is totally fucked but that's OK. I'd rather sleep during the afternoon when it's really hot. Not that it's going to cool down. The low was 78-80 last night so not much of a low. If I could have gotten my bedroom down to 78 I would have been able to sleep. Instead I stayed up all night

Freyja is out of the dog house almost. I repaired one blouse and now have replaced the Greenleaf and Blueberry "Draw Your World" watercolor palette that she chewed beyond use. How she got hold of it I'm not sure but it ended up on the floor and she spent an early morning chewing that, my blouse and a dupatta from my favorite Salwar Kameez. I have yet to see how I can repair that. But I can't blame her. It was the first week during her transition from the shelter to our pack. And Diana ate one of my shoes as a puppy. I replaced that too. So it's just par for the course when you get a new dog and they are adjusting to their new home.

I was looking at sewing patterns on Etsy last night and saw some that I have that are selling for $25 and $30 or more each. It's not like I'm going to be making period clothing or Halloween costumes any more. I'll probably keep a few. But if I can sell mine for the same or slightly less I can make a few bucks. Maybe I'll find that jumpsuit pattern my Mom and I have been looking for for a decade while I'm going through them. I will NOT be selling the Folkwear patterns. But there is no way I'm going up into the attic for at least two or three months. The temperatures are going to have to drop significantly first. I did pick apart the worst condition jumpsuit my Mom had to use to make a pattern so I will be drafting a pattern from that on Tuesday after we're done at the bank.

4am and it's still 82 degrees in my bedroom.

7am and it's already 79. 81 in my bedroom. Just FUCK.

I'm going out to bring my bag in from the car to repack for Tuesday when I go back to my parent's house. It was too hot to do it yesterday and too hot to do it last night.

I bought some more irrigation stuff to set up drip lines for the three trees that are still surviving and to start to replace the line for the planters along the wall between us and Annie & Dennis. Also some bubblers as I'm going to set up lines for the orange tree out front, lemon tree and perhaps the apricot tree although not sure if it's dead or not. The grapevines are green as Dennis has been watering them. My parent's are so lucky to have good neighbors looking out for them. I'm going to put a three way splitter on some water source and then run lines to the trees with bubblers and then to the grape vine. All with hose timers that can just be turned to set and then shut off. I think they go up to 90 minutes which is less than they need. If I have time Tuesday in the evening when it cools I might take the lopper and pruning saw in the back and start to cut back dead stuff. The yard is really sad. But then when you have untalented people whose own yard is a piece of shit, you can't expect them to take better care of your yard than they do their own. Putting my sister in charge of everything is proof that he has had dementia earlier than we suspected. Like probably before he threw me out of the house. Which he doesn't remember. He doesn't remember his THREE back surgeries either. And of course, the Wells Fargo money he promised me.

7:45 am. I'll feed the dogs, water the plants and unpack my car. It will be a scorcher today so that is the extent of what I will be doing. Oh, and give Diana her "itchy pills."