Hotober

Here it is October and it was 90 F (932.2 C) yesterday.  I just wish it would get cool already.  Yet another 90+ day is predicted for the 7th, and the 10 day forecast contains only a couple of days with predicted highs below 80 F (26.6C), with lows in the 50’s F (10+ C).

If the weather will just get cool, I can pull the folding banquet table out from under my bed and block some shawls, which will involve using a steam iron since the shawls are made from acrylic yarn.  There’s no point in using a steam iron unless it’s going to help heat the house.

I’ve had a box of Barilla Rotini and the big covered pyrex bowl sittting out on my counter for about 10 days now nagging me to make pasta salad, which I finally did early yesterday morning before it got hot.  I cooked the whole box, but I only put about 1/3 of it in the pasta salad.  (I’ll eat the rest of it straight tossed with olive oil and zapped in the microwave.)  I chopped half a white onion, about five green onions, put in half a little can of chopped olives, a small can of Delmonte mixed vegetables (peas, corn, green beans, lima beans, diced carrots) and diced Carving Board turkey, with mayo to moisten.   Very tasty.  Some quartered cherry tomatoes or chopped celery would have been nice, if I had had any. . . .

After that, I’ll be having chili cheese dogs.   (Why do hot dogs STILL come in packages of 8 and buns come in packages of 6!?)  I’ve got half a pack of hot dogs (4) and a package of buns (6) in the on-deck circle of my fridge and a can of Wolf Brand chili in the pantry.  I’ll chop up the other half of the onion I used in the pasta salad, and I’ve got a package of sprinkle cheese.   They’re “artisanal” buns, so I guess I could have two hoagies with the extras.

There’s a series on YouTube called Cocktails with a Curator, where one of the curators of the Frick Art Collection discusses a painting or an objet d’art, while having an appropriate cocktail — recipes are given in the program notes on the website — evidently you’re supposed to mix yourself one of whatever they’re having so you can sip along with them.  The videos are pretty interesting, but I’m telling you, some of the cocktails they come up with, I don’t think I could even finish half of one before I’d be hooter than a drunk owl.  When you’ve already combined absinthe and vodka and the mixer is champagne, that’s a little hard core, guys!

I keep having these stupid dreams where I can’t find my car, or I can’t find my luggage or my purse, or I can’t find a place I’m supposed to go to.  Like, every night.   Then I wake up mildly anxious and unsettled.   Of course, some of the medication I’m on (metoprolol and cetirizine (Zyrtec) list “nightmares” as a potential side effect.  I wouldn’t class these dreams as “nightmares” per se.  Nightmares are frightening.  These dreams are just disquieting and annoying.

I did have one the other day where I attacked this woman — I’m talking hitting and punching and strangling.  She was not somebody I knew.  I only knew she needed to be stopped.  I was shocked by the violence of my actions in that dream.  Very out of charracter.  I don’t remember ever having such a violent dream.  If I have any more like that, I may have to change to another allergy medication or cut back on my metoprolol a bit.   When I take a whole tablet, all I want to do is sit and stare at the wall.  I cut back to half a tablet, which was an improvement, but my cardiologist kept wanting me to take the full dosage, so I’ve been taking half in the morning and half in the evening, and that was OK.  I may have to see about cutting back again.

I got my mom a sound bar for her TV for her birthday and I got it installed the other day.  I thought at one point I was going to have to go get my Act of Congress to get the thing to work.  The sound bar comes with both a m/f plug in cable and a fiber optic cable.  There was only one place for the plug in cable to go, and it wouldn’t work.  Of course, my mom’s TV is 11 years old, so forget there being a product manual that might have told me where the fiber optic cable jack was located.  I finally found it, and got the thing connected, and voilá.  Worked like a champ.  I hope it helps her.  Age related hearing loss runs in her family and her hearing loss is pretty bad in the speech frequencies so about all she watches are game shows and sports — things you don’t have to understand dialog to follow.   Of course, if you have a sufficient drop-out in a particular frequency or frequency range, no amount of volume will help.

Unfortunately, she’s not interested in reading books.   All she wants to do is sit in the chair and watch TV.   I suspect she has a significant amount of situational depression.  She is a very social person and her inability to socialize due to COVID has hit her hard — that on top of the fact that she keeps outliving all her friends.