I Got Rickrolled in the Grocery Store

We of a certain age remember when websites were hacked so that when you went to them, you heard this music — which meant you’d been Rickrolled. I mentioned it because today while I was standing in the grocery store checkout line (cantaloupe, macaroni salad, cheese cake and chicken salad with grapes!) this song started playing on the store’s overhead “elevator music” speakers. The cashier was of an age where he laughed once he’d listened long enough to tell what the song was. The Gen Z sacker was clueless (and about 15 years too young). (Sigh.) But the cashier and I rocked on. I want my MTV . . . to play music again.

When I get groceries, I usually get a couple of Andrew Jacksons for mad money, and as I was tucking them in my wallet, I remembered the old movie about him and the scandal about his wife, with Charlton Heston and Susan Hayward in the title roles. I know I’ve seen it at least once, almost certainly on TV, since it came out in 1953. It’s available on YouTube if you’re interested.

We’ve been having highs in the high-90’s F/32+C for days now, but it’s not going below 70 F/21 C at night. Still, if you’ve got to get out in it, it’s not too bad with a humidity of 22% especially if it’s breezy like it was earlier.

Today was errand running day. Mom got a check from her stock that I tried to deposit in her account over the phone app. Even though my name is also on the account, the phone app rejected it because the check was made out to her and I had endorsed it for deposit. No biggie. Her bank is further down the same street my bank is on and the post office was even further down that same street. So I hit the gas station to fill up the tank, then on further to the post office to mail a care package to my BFF, because both of them were on the north side of 4th Street. Then on the way back, I hit her bank to deposit mom’s check in person, and my bank, both of which are on the south side of the street. Took me about an hour. Then I got groceries and got Rickrolled.

They do this chicken salad at Market Street that has purple grapes in it. You’re supposed to eat it with a fork and maybe some crackers, but it makes a great sandwich — only you have to eat the grapes out of it first or the sandwich is really lumpy. I’m currently snarfing one down made on flatbread rounds with a nice slice of tomato on. They also have a nice macaroni salad, too. I’m having a side of cantaloupe pieces drizzled with ranch dressing and some of the macaroni salad with my sandwich. Summertime fun!

I have a pitcher of Stash Tea’s “Breakfast in Paris” blend (gunpowder tea with vanilla and lavender), with about a cup of vanilla almond milk coffee creamer in, thoroughly refrigerated. So delightful. If you’re a fan of Starbuck’s “London Fog” but you don’t like Earl Grey tea (The bergamot flavoring in the tea is a problem — I’m allergic to oranges), this tea is a great substitute for Earl Grey, especially if you like vanilla.

Just as a public service: What the well-stocked kitchen has in its utensil drawer:

Left to right:

• Cake Server: Used only when I make tea by the pitcher to act as a heat sink when I pour in the boiling water.
• Orange Serrated Knife: So I only have one knife with tape goo on the blade from opening packages.
• Peeler: For peeling carrots, potatoes, cucumbers and fingers.
• Channel Locks: To open bottles of Bodyarmor sports drink. I drink a lot of them and I got tired of having to go into the bedroom closet and get them out of my toolbox every durn time.
• Marking Pen: I live alone. Stuff has expiration dates. I write the date I open it on the container so I know if I’m consuming it fast enough. Especially milk.
• Various and Assorted Bottle Brushes: For various and assorted stainless steel drink bottles, the cleaning of same.
• Cork Screw: I wouldn’t touch a straight line like that with a stick.
• Bottle Forceps: So I will never need them.
• Ice Cream Scoop: Not used since I started buying the single serving pints.
• Measuring Spoons: In case I need to measure a spoon.
• Spatula: See Bottle Forceps.
• Kitchen Shears: For cutting open the plastic mailing envelopes stuff comes in, like medications, etc., and opening the plastic packages bacon comes in that you’re supposed to be able to pull apart at the corners, but never can.
• Bread Knife: For slicing unsliced bread, fingers and burglars.
• (Partial view at top) Mortar and Pestle: For when all you can find is whole allspice and you need ground. (Don’t you just hate that?)
• (Partial view at bottom) Church Key: For opening those bottled beverages that have little metal bottle caps. The end that makes a triangular hole in the tops of cans has been rendered largely obsolete by pull tabs but can be used in conjunction with a hammer to perforate the bottoms of cans of jellied cranberry sauce and refried beans (which can’t be opened with a can opener any more) so you can get the durn stuff out of the can without having to dig it out with a spoon.
• What the blue and purple things at the top are for:

My heavy glass sangria pitcher full of cold London Fog! Making it requires the cake server and a wooden clothes pin, hot water, five tea bags and vanilla almond milk. Serve hot or cold.

And Then There Were Three, Redux

So, all the blossoms have finally fallen off mom’s purple orchid, and when I went to show mom the flannel long sleeved shirts I got for her, I came back with it. (Have you any idea how hard it is to find a long-sleeved women’s plaid flannel shirt that doesn’t make your nearly 99-year-old mom look like she’s channeling lumberjacks?)

One shirt was a demure light blue/beige/tan plaid, and the other was a restrained dark green/beige/tan plaid. She liked them. I had also found her a Pepto Bismol pink waffle fabric cotton long-sleeved shirt which she also liked. She likes long sleeves, collars up around her neck and buttons down the front. You can find zillions of long sleeved cotton “Oxford style” blouses, but the material they’re made of is too thin to keep her warm. So cotton flannel it is. (There’s a thermostat on the wall beside her bed, but “They keep it so cold in here.” )

After I sewed her name tags onto them, I took them back, along with my peace lily (at right), which was getting too much light in my window (!), and guess what?! Somebody had given her another purple orchid!!! Guess who’ll end up with that one when all the blooms fall off. Sigh.

They come planted in little perforated plastic pots which are then put into a decorative solid ceramic pot.

When I got it home, I could lift the plant out and get a look at it. It was sitting in about an inch of water and the roots did not look good. I’ve ordered and received a proper pot for it. So now I have THREE orchids (all of which need repotting), an anthurium, an arrowhead plant and a Christmas cactus. She’ll end up with the anthurium next. You watch.

She’s not getting the arrowhead plant or the Christmas cactus. I had a Christmas cactus a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. It was planted in a terracotta pottery bowl, bloomed like crazy, I had it for over a year and I had to leave it behind when I finished tech school, because state lines and airplanes. Broke my heart. Now I’ve got one again, it’s beginning to flourish, and I dote on it. And I’ve wanted an arrowhead plant forEVER. Now I’ve got one. Mine!

You will note in these four pictures scattered instances of this oxblood red pottery, which is Chinese by way of Pier One, and which gladdens both heart and eye of yrs trly. (You will politely ignore the sunflowers in the left vase that desperately need re-deranging). Then there is the pair of red throws over the chairs. Then you will notice that the very busy rug underneath the chairs is green. Sorta-kinda.

(Luxury vinyl plank flooring is all very well, but if you have an ottoman, you need a rug to put the chair and ottoman on so that the ottoman will not wander too far from the chair.) (This is a principle of interior design known as anchoring furniture.) I have ordered a very busy red rug, the background color of which looks to be the same oxblood red as the vases and the background of the throws. We’ll see.

You will also notice that rampantly blue, turquoise and fuchsia thing on the table in between the chairs, which is a work in progress. It is the visual equivalent of a regimental brass band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and wants two more skeins to be long enough to drape dramatically about the shoulders when one traipses about. It prevents people from telepathically reading your thoughts because the colors are so loud nobody within a fifteen foot radius of it can hear themselves think, let alone anybody else . . .

Speed shifting between topics, I’ve had my 12 visits to the punch doctor (chiropractor) and I have to say that this is the first treatment that has actually helped my left neck and shoulder. My second cervical vertebra (C2) is visibly cattywompus on x-rays owing to an incident involving an attempt to put a 40-pound bottle of water upside down onto the dispenser for same. Sleeping on my left side and carrying a purse on that shoulder doesn’t help, never mind late onset scoliosis which I appear to have inherited from my mom. The punch doctor wants me to have more treatments. We’ll see if the VA agrees with him. The thing I think helps the most is the neck traction and that full Nelson maneuver that pops my spine like a string of firecrackers.

I was supposed to have a squeezogram (mammogram) Monday but one of their techs was out and they called and rescheduled. The next earliest appointment I could get is in September. Eh, ça va aller.

I am currently rereading Connie Willis‘ Hugo-award-winning book “To Say Nothing of the Dog” which is laugh-out-loud funny. It involves time travel, and is like a combination of P. G. Wodehouse, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python. It’s a sequel to “Doomsday Book,” set in the same “-verse”, but “Doomsday Book” involves the Black Death and Medieval England, and isn’t meant to be funny (but won both a Hugo and a Nebula anyway). Suffice it to say, there’s a reason this woman has won seven Nebula and eleven Hugo awards. She hits it out of the park every time.

Today’s earworm is brought to you by the Moody Blues. You’re welcome.

The original orchid which is in the process of taking over the world and which is still blooming. It’s going into a bigger pot once it drops its blooms.