Category: Words of Wisdom

Here We Go Again

Important news first. Mom’s second COVID test was negative.

The fifth of six sessions of Rituxan starts tomorrow bright and early at 8 AM. With any luck I’ll be out before six, but not much before. I get the WBC booster shot Tuesday and then three sessions of hydration. Then I’ll have only one more to go.

I’ve got a load of sheets and towels in the wash, and after them will be a load of clothes. I need to get something to eat, too.

Friday I did all my running around. I got my refill of prednisone. I got my hair trimmed, which means I had about an inch whacked off the back along the back of my neck, and the rest of it just trimmed to even it out. I’m working toward getting it all one length. Until it’s long enough to go into a ponytail, it’s going to be a PITA. And, I got some groceries. Since they stopped making my favorite flavor of BodyArmor, I’ve quit drinking it. (So there!) I did get some peach flavor frozen things on a stick, though, which helps with the heat.

We’ve been having raisin weather again (still, actually) — high 90’s F/35+ C at around 30-40% humidity. The heat just sucks you dry. (You’re a grape til you walk out the door . . .)

They were supposed to get the AC fixed downstairs last week. It’s still not back up. Hopefully, they’ll get it up soon. Of course, the time to get the AC fixed is in winter; now that we’re in the dog days of summer, everybody and his cousin wants their AC worked on. Don’t know if that’s the delay or what. All the business offices have relocated to vacant apartments for the duration and are scattered all over the building. You can tell the moment you get into the hallway by the mail room. The temperature goes up about 10 degrees. Like walking into an oven.

In the knitting news, I have a bootie and a fourth done, and about ten more rows on the little top they match. I’ll likely finish the top while I’m infusing tomorrow, and the bootie won’t take that much time. That and finishing a hat will complete the haul for the new little 1st cousin 2x removed and I’ll get it in the mail. Finally. The baby was born 22 July. I really need to get it in the mail.

The yarn I’m using for this is cotton, and it is the split-y-est yarn I’ve ever worked with. It’s spun as a single ply from what is essentially cotton thread. Glad I’ve almost used it up. Gotta hit the button stash to see if I have the right buttons. I need three.

I’ve got the last load in the washer and it just has to go through the dryer and get hung up/folded and it’s beddy-boo for yrs trly.

Little Wisdoms

Thought I’d share:

Changing sheets: Don’t bother trying to figure out which is the short or long edge of a fitted sheet before you put it on. Just grab a corner, check to see the sheet is right side out, and put it on. You have a 50% chance of it being the right corner. If you don’t get it right on the first try, you have a 100% chance of getting it right on the second try.

Do the bed by halves longways. Get the fitted sheet all the way on, then put half the top sheet on, and half the blanket/quilt on while you’re standing on one side of the bed. (This means you have to notice and remember how much the top sheet and blanket need to hang off the side of the mattress when they are centered on the bed!) Then go round to the other side and fix the top sheet and blanket/quilt on that side. The fewer times you have to walk around the bed, the better. Wait to tuck your top sheet in until you have your blanket/quilt on. Then you can tuck both in at the same time and you only have to lift each corner of the mattress once.

Emptying the trash: I used to keep all the boxes of different size trash bags together in a drawer. Then, when I’d go to empty the trash, I’d have to mentally go through the house and pull out a fresh bag for each of the various trash cans and waste baskets and carry them all around in my hand as I worked my way around, juggling the full bags and the fresh bags as I went. (I’d invariably forget to get the right number or size bags and have to go get them!) Nope! Discard the boxes and put the roll of bags in the bottom of the empty can they fit. If you have several waste baskets/trash cans the same size, get a roll of bags for each one. That way, you pull out the full bag, and there’s the roll of fresh bags right there. Pull off a fresh one, put it on, and you’re done. Also, put as many bags of trash inside other bags of trash as you can. Fewer bags to schlep around.

Dish washing: If you wash your dishes by hand, get one of those decorative soap/lotion pump bottles and put your dish washing liquid in it. That way, you don’t have to be bending down and getting your dish soap in and out from under the sink each time you wash dishes. You can leave it sitting out by the sink in your nice decorative pump bottle. One good “pump” of dish washing liquid is usually plenty to do a sink full of dishes. You’ll find you don’t use as much dish soap, which saves you money. Then, instead of buying a whole new bottle of dish soap each time you run out, you can buy the large economy “refiller” size of dish soap and refill your little pump bottle when you need to (which also saves you money and puts less plastic in the landfill!).

Clothes washing: When you’re starting a load of laundry in the washer and are getting out your laundry washing products, etc., get a dryer sheet out at the same time and toss it in the empty dryer. This saves you a step when you take the clothes out of the washer to put them in the dryer. (Better yet, get one of those “dryer balls” and just leave it in the dryer all the time. Then you won’t have to buy — and throw away — dryer sheets!)

Floors: There’s a reason those floor cleaning mops with pads and the special squirty stuff attached and those dusting wand gizmos are so cheap. The company makes their money on the bottles of special squirty stuff and single-use pad thingies you are constantly buying and throwing out. You can buy floor sweeper/moppers with cloth pads and microfiber dusting mitts, both of which you can wash in the washing machine and reuse. The mops and pads are a bit pricey, I’ll grant you, but then you can use the handle part for years and years, and those pads work great wet or dry on the LVF plank flooring that’s all the rage these days. Any cleaning accessory — cloth, mitt, pad — that you can wash and reuse will pay for itself in the money you save not having to constantly be buying single use/throw away supplies. And a trigger spray bottle of Pine-Sol or Windex works just as well as their special squirty stuff.

Bath Linens: When you buy a new set of towels, buy extra washcloths and hand towels — If you buy two bath towels, buy three wash cloths and hand towels. (The wash cloths and hand towels are what wear out first.) Leave the extra washcloth folded on the counter beside the bathroom sink to wipe down any water splashes on the counter, especially if you have hard water where you live.

Don’t use fabric softener when you wash your toweling. Fabric softener has silicon oil in it as an antistatic agent that gunks up the fabric and lessens the toweling’s absorbency. To keep your towels, hand towels, kitchen towels and washcloths soft and fluffy, add a half cup of distilled vinegar to the wash instead of fabric softener. Don’t use dryer sheets with your toweling for the same reason. Your towels will dry you (and themselves) much faster.

When you wash your bath mats, don’t dry them in the drier. Over time, the dryer heat will ruin the non-skid backing. After you wash them, throw them right-side-up over the top of the shower stall or over the shower curtain rod and let them dry in the air. Then, your bath mats will last as long as the towels you matched them to so carefully!

Remember: Styrofoam is forever. It and most other plastics takes centuries to biodegrade, if at all. The world of plastic waste and trash you are creating now is the world your children and grandchildren will have to live in.

Reuse, repurpose, recycle.

Words Worth Sharing

To Love Someone Long-Term Is to Attend a Thousand Funerals of the People They Used to Be

– Heidi Priebe

The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer.
The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore.
The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into.
We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out;
to become speedily found when they are lost.
But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be.
It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way.
Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame.
Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.

From the excellent blog In The Margins

Not Off To A Good Start

Yesterday, a small minority of delusional/irrational/irresponsible idiots acted out in my nation’s capital and embarrassed and dishonored this country that I and other members of my family have proudly served.  They also brought dishonor on the flag of my native state in the process.  I neither support nor condone their actions and consider their behavior  beneath contempt.  That’s all I’ll say on the matter.

I made Julekuler again this year, the little knitted Xmas balls.  I pulled the pattern graphs up on one monitor and used a sticky note to keep my place, so I could catch up on some of the channels I follow on YouTube on the other monitor.   By the way, if you’re into colorwork and want to take a bash at these little Xmas balls, you can download the pattern and charts for free here.   Arne & Carlos have also put out a whole book of patterns for bigger Julekuler.

Santa visited my house this year and got me a new lo-o-o-ng toaster.  I kept the short one, though, for when I want to toast square slices of bread to make sandwiches. (I never toast more than two slices, and toasting them in the long toaster is overkill and not energy efficient.)  I have mounted a small plug strip with its own fuse to the underside of my cabinet to accommodate all these electrical appliances.  The plug strip is the only thing plugged into that outlet.  The microwave is plugged into a different outlet on the adjacent wall. I guess I’m going to have to get more of that avocado green cotton yarn and knit a cover for the long toaster now.

Saw this.  It was spot on.

I had so much fun earlier in the week.  At about 6:30 Sunday evening, I ran some hot water at the sink to thaw out the sweet/sour sauce for my spring rolls and there was no hot water!  I checked the water heater and the little light that’s supposed to be on and blinking when the pilot light is lit, wasn’t.  Sunday night, woke up in the middle of the night, reached for the light switch on my bedside light.  No light.   Fortunately, I keep a little flashlight in my night table drawer just in case.  I checked the ceiling fixture and my outage was in the bulb and not in the electricity. Did what I had woken up to do, then pitter-patted barefoot to the utility room to get another light bulb. The plumber was able to work me in Monday morning and came to look over the water heater and relight the pilot light on it. There seemed to be no overt reason the pilot light went out and the water heater wasn’t that old (2016).  By then, I was running late for rehab.  Went to brush my teeth and my electric toothbrush wouldn’t work.  Changed the batteries, and it still wouldn’t work.  Had to brush my teeth manually. (!)    After I got back from rehab, I futzed with my toothbrush and finally got it to work.  Must have been a gremlin loose in the house.  It seems to have moved on, thankfully.  I think I know where it went.

This is why knitters should always keep a crochet hook handy even if they don’t crochet.  (You can click on the pix to enlarge it.) Instead of frogging the whole shebang back about three inches just to fix one stitch, I dropped that stitch off the needle, frogged it back to the mistake, and used the crochet hook to pick it back up again.

That’s the infinity wrap I’m working on. It’s also a case in point for the value of pausing every so often to check over your work so you can catch a mistake sooner than I caught that one.

I’ve knitted 18 inches’ worth and still haven’t used up the first ball of yarn yet.  Once I do, I’ll know for sure if I’m going to have to get another skein of yarn, but I don’t think I will.  I’ve already got six skeins total, which should be enough.  Yarn chicken on a grand scale.  It’s long enough now I’ve had to roll the bottom up and pin it with a large stitch holder to keep it from flopping all over my lap.

Weatherwise, we’re looking down the barrel of  a winter storm.That’s snow in the forecast for Sunday, and lows in the teens through Tuesday.  The humidity is supposed to be 91%, but not in my house it isn’t.  Not with my heater coming on every 20 minutes.  When I go to get up from my computer desk, if I don’t remember to take my ear buds out before I take the lap robe off my lap, I get some DIY electroshock treatments from the static electricity.  Gets your attention, I can tell you.

I only read 142 books last year, and only one so far this year.  I need to get on the ball.

I’ll leave you with this:

More Thinky Thoughts

“There is much I don’t understand . . . Much the world does not understand. But we should not be afraid.  How else will we discover the answers?”

An uplifting quote from a graphic novel I’m reading*.  Thinky thoughts with lovely artwork = Win/win.

I went to rehab Monday (treadmill 30 min, recumbent bike 20 min), stopped briefly at my mom’s house to lend moral support for the plumbing disaster that thankfully didn’t materialize, shopped all over Wal-Mart, shopped all over Market Street to get the things Wal-Mart didn’t have, schlepped it all home and put 95% of it away.  I managed to muster the energy to eat something, crawled into bed about 9 p.m., crashed, burned, and slept through most of Tuesday.

Baked three small potatoes the other night.  Wash the potato with a brush, dry it with a cloth, smear the skin liberally with olive oil and bake at 360º for 1 hour.  When you bake them in the oven with the olive oil, the skins become so soft you can eat the whole tater.  I bake them three at a time because energy efficiency. The oil baked into the skins seals in the goodness and allows them to be refrigerated for up to a week without losing their moist, flaky texture.  I like to slice them open and lay them out in a soup bowl, throw all kinds of toppings (finely chopped meat, drained vegetables, butter, maybe a little Ranch dressing, or whatever else is handy) on them, top with sprinkle cheese and nuke in the microwave.  I just finished hoovering one up moments ago, in fact.  Serious noms.

Monday the 21st is my last session of cardiac rehab before Xmas, with two more sessions left in this annus horribilis.  I’ve got three more Julekuler to knit before Monday (little tokens of appreciation for the cardiac rehab therapists).  Won’t be hard.  Snuggle into my knitting knook, deploy a lap robe, conjure up a little music, a little yarn, a little time . . .  A pleasant interlude to stoke up on some serious Christmas spirit.

Next week, I get to mom-clean** the house and orchestrate a Christmas dinner for two.  As I have mentioned on several occasions previously, my threshold for critical mess*** is a good deal higher than that of other members of my immediate family, and roundtoits have been a little thin on the ground of late.  But now I have Bluetooth earbuds, and there is Psychedlik.com with 24/7 psytrance music.  Yowsa.  I find I can get busy better when there is appropriate music to get out and push. . .

Next week (Tuesday, in fact), I also get the long awaited crown seated which marks the final installment of the dental implant process that has been a work in progress for lo, these many moons.  I’ll have seven molars again, just in time for Christmas Dinner!  Oh, frabjous day.

I really, really need to haul the fold-up banquet table out from under my bed, get out my blocking squares and T-pins, the steam iron, an extension cord, a couple bath towels, a tea towel, and my spray bottle and block some shawls.   These two are among the three made from acrylic yarn that I need to kill.  Whether I will or not remains to be seen.  As I mentioned, roundtoits have been rather thin on the ground of late.

Got my name in print.  Thursday, I received my hardback copy of Trader’s Leap by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee, in which my name appears in the forward as one of the Mighty Tyop Hunters, as I helped proofread the E-ARC**** for oopsies, fingerfumbles, and say, what?’s — which I would have done anyway for no other reason than to express my gratitude for the many years of Liaden Universe reading pleasure I’ve gotten from the books of this literary dynamic duo. They are among the few authors whose books I keep in dead tree editions for post-apocalyptic rereading because, unlike ebooks, they require neither electricity nor technology to operate.   Space opera at its finest.

Two weeks left in 2020.  Thirty two days left before we get that dumpster fire out of the Oval Office.  There is a vaccine!  The VA will be getting and giving the Moderna flavor of it.  I may have to drive to Amarillo to get it, but I will be able to get it.  I continue to hope against Hope that the light we are glimpsing faintly at the end of this long, dark tunnel is not another train.

*Caveat: The one this quote came from is for the open-minded reader.

**Clean enough for you is not necessarily clean enough for your mom.  Still, a house ought to be mom-cleaned at least once a year. The only clean cleaner than mom-clean is feng shui clean, which happens in the week before Chinese New Year.

*** critical mess -- the point at which your inability to stand the mess any longer sets off a chain-reaction of house cleaning. 

****E-ARC - Advanced Reader's Copies are nowadays sent out as ebooks.