Archive | August, 2017

It’s in the Blood

27 Aug

This morning, my feet were so swollen I couldn’t get into any of my shoes, and you could trace the rash’s progress up my legs –  a blister about every two or three inches up to my groin, in more or less a straight line.

The Squire went off to church, and I tried to find something to wear. When he got home, he helped me wrap my feet in gauze, to both protect them and squish them down so I could put something on my feet, other than fuzzy bedroom slippers.  (Yes, I know there are people who go out in public that way, but I’m not one of them.  Anyway, my slippers are in the attic with my winter clothes. ) Properly shod, we trotted off to Patient First.  I took that lovely picture of Lynn and me to show the doctor how badly I can blow up, and explained that when I was eight the doctor had told my mum that the poison was in my blood and they needed to keep a watch on any future cases. I got a rash on my scalp and on my eyelids. It is a mighty wonder I’m not blind.  And when that was over, I got boils.

Anyway, I explained to the doctor that while I realized PI was a “minor” complaint, I didn’t like the way this case was playing out.  She traced my spots up my leg and allowed as how she’d never seen such a thing, and gave me prednisone.

We stopped for lunch at a pizza place called Pie Five. You can select your crust – thin, Italian, yeast raised, or gluten free. Four or five sauces, and as many toppings as you wish. I was able to pile on double mushrooms, Kalamata olives, fresh tomatoes, and a few slices of mild-hot peppers. The Squire indulged his taste for “dead animals” and got pepperoni, sausage and bacon! A salad and breadsticks to share topping it all off. A bit more expensive than we expected, but we can eat again on the leftovers.

Bringing home a frozen pizza and cooking it in you oven may be handy, but honestly, you can’t beat a properly made pizza parlor pie.

Say that three times quickly.

 

 

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One of Those Days

26 Aug

About a week ago, the blade belt on the tractor broke just as The Squire finished the front lawn. He called and ordered a replacement, which arrived this morning.  He and I both worked on getting the belt on the machine, which involved a lot of heavy lifting, pushing, pulling, and cursing.  Remove the deck, fuss and fiddle with the various pulleys, get bolts through holes, insert pins, etc. Very hard on knuckles and knees.

So – after several hours of this business, we finally got the tractor in working order.  The Squire hopped on and headed out to mow the back yard. He got about twenty feet, and the drive belt broke! We will draw a curtain over the scene that followed.

Many years ago, The Squire had my godson, Steven, help him with this job, and that young man suggested simply turning the mower on its side. Ah, if only that worked!

After dinner, I discovered I’d managed to get poison ivy on my feet. No idea how that happened. I can catch the darned stuff if the wind is in the right quarter, so I am pretty careful.  A year or so back, I got rash on the back of my calf, which I finally figured out came from the cuff of my boots; apparently I had walked through a patch of poison ivy and the oil was still “active” several months later.

ADDENDUM

The above was written last night.  I now have poison ivy all over my legs! I sleep on my back, with one leg or the other hooked under the opposite knee – think flamingos – and I seem to have spread the rash from my left foot to my right leg. Scratching it in my sleep didn’t help a bit!  Lovely. Just lovely.  I made up some aspirin and hand lotion and dabbed it on the spots, which killed the pain.  I wanted to get a pedicure on Monday, but that’s out of the question, now.

 

 

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Chow Hound

21 Aug

ChowhoundWhen I woke up at 2 AM for my regular middle-of-the-night ramble, Blazer was sitting outside the bedroom door.

With his dish in his mouth.

I put him outside to make a puddle, while I did pretty much the same thing, and then we both went back to bed. I got up “for real” at 7 AM, and fed him.

After we had both eaten our breakfasts, I went into the den to check my email. Turned around and he was staring at me.

Honestly, you’d think he never got fed.

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How’s the Weather?

19 Aug

It started to rain just as I left work last night, and poured stair rods all the way home.

The entire twenty-four mile trip was made in a downpour hard enough to make the wipers practically useless. The streets were so deep in water it was as if I was driving down the center of a river, and the air had that funky smell you get when you clean out the gutters.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a fish to swim past the windshield.  I’ve driven those roads for fifteen years or more, and I still managed to drop off into a ditch coming over Sunshine Avenue. The lightening seemed to be directly overhead, and the thunder was  loud enough to make one jump.

When I got home, The Squire was nervously pacing up and down up and down the patio, keeping an eye on the stream bank, and stray items were picked up and stacked on the picnic table and in the cart.

Of course, I hadn’t been in the house fifteen minutes before the worst of the storm passed, and by the time I went out to feed the local wildlife, the sun was poking through the clouds. The dishes were completely full of water, so it looked as if we’d gotten two inches of rain in about a half an hour.

Today is cooler, but that’s not much help when the humidity is higher than the temperature. To quote on of my favorite authors, it’s as if I’m breathing Jell-O.

 

 

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M & Ms and OCD

15 Aug

When I get a bag of multi-coloured candy, whether it be Gummy Bears, Robin Eggs, Skittles, or  M & Ms, I have to sort through and find out how many different colours are in there.

Six? Then I will have one of each colour, and always eaten in the same order, usually in the same order as the colour wheel – red, orange, yellow, green and blue. And the brown one by itself.  When I run out of one colour, then I will have five candies. Not five of one shade and an extra to make six.  Five. Then four. Three. Two.

And then the last odd ones sit in the jar for ever.

I keep my coloured pencils in colour wheel order: black, red, orange, yada, yada, and brown on the far end. A box of 64 Crayolas can send me into a nervous swivet!

And I’m not really OCD. I’m CDO, so the letters are in the correct order!

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Somebody Hates Us

11 Aug

signFor quite a while, our church has had trouble with vandalism. Fence posts have been broken, plants pulled up, rocks thrown, and so forth.

The worst of the abuse has been heaped on the signs we put up out on the main road through town.  One of our members has very generously provided a large “tent” with a sign on each side. Most of the time the signs are for our regular Sunday services, but when we are having an event of some sort, he pays for signs to advertise those, too.

The signs have been closed and laid down, the plastic has been cut with a knife and the signs themselves slashed, and now this one – which is covered with plexi, rather than thin plastic – has been defaced with spray paint. This was not a “crime of opportunity”; it shows some forethought. Who carries spray paint in the car?

Fortunately, somebody happened to see the car “hovering” in the parking lot one evening and made note of the license plate.  Next step is to call in the police – and the local newspaper.

Enough is enough!

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I See Dead People

6 Aug

Not that I superstitious, but over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been dreaming about people who are no longer with us.

The first dream was about my sister. Our former rector, who is – as far as I know – very much alive, was hunting for me through a large building, perhaps the boarding school I attended as a child. She was calling and calling, but I wouldn’t answer, until she told me Lynn was looking for me, too.

A few nights later, my dad wanted me to hurry up and visit the Giffords, who were friends of his from St. John’s, before he went to Sewanee. Hugh and Carolyn died before my dad did, and Daddy died in 1999.

Last night, I was on my way to a hospital, to visit a fellow we always called Bowtie Bill.  He died about ten years ago.

Not that I’m superstitious, or anything, but I don’t think I’m going to start any new projects.

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The Real Dope

4 Aug

When The Squire left this morning to go up to Physical Therapy He saw a slew of County police cars gathered around the tattoo place up the street. The officers were talking to a number of people, either employees or customers of the place.

When he came back, he said the building was being gutted.  It didn’t look as if it was the police doing the work, but there was a lot of debris – shelving, broken furniture, and so forth – piled on the parking lot.

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The Magic Driveway

3 Aug

For starters, the driveway is haunted.

When we moved into this house, forty-three years ago, we discovered the driveway makes odd noises.  We can hear tires on the gravel, doors slamming, and sometimes a woman’s high heels clicking along the sidewalk. Whichever dog we have at the time will bark madly and run to the door.

Nobody there. There has never been anybody there. Very mysterious.

The funny thing is that when we do have company, we seldom hear them arrive. Beats me.

In addition, there seems to be a  secret signal to let other drivers know when we are coming. It doesn’t matter if I am driving, or The Squire, if we are coming home or leaving, if we are turning right or left, cars come out of nowhere. The road can be clear for miles in either direction, but let us try to get out in the morning, and a dozen cars will appear and slow down as they near our turn. When we have been shopping, and have ice cream rapidly melting into the back seat – whoosh! Four cars and a semi will barrell down the hill.

The Squire claims all those other vehicles are from North Carolina, just trying to help. When we go down to visit his family, we always know when we have crossed the state line.  In the far distance, we will see a car, sitting at the end of a driveway. We are the only vehicle coming in either direction, and that driver will wait until we are almost on top of them and then pull out directly in front of us. He says it’s been that way since he was a teenager, just leaving to drive.

He tells me, quite seriously, that some of those folks actually have to go back to the house. “Maw, I couldn’t get out of the drive. There weren’t nobody comin’.”

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