My Weblog

Sometimes you can just tell..........

that a man designed your house. The most telltale signs are in the kitchen. Tiny kitchen. Miserable excuse for a pantry. Sink is too shallow. And I could go on. Here's a different man-ism. My bedroom is on totally the other end of the house. That means that, at night, it is totally dark, pretty much no matter how light it is in this end of the house. So, you walk into the bedroom, through the double doors, and the light switch is behind the door. Meaning, you have to come all the way into the room to get to the light switch. Now, maybe if I were a big burly man that wouldn't bother me, but I'm not a big burly man. In fact, I'm a somewhat weak older woman. I don't like to walk into totally dark spaces. Do you?

My solution has been that I have an OLD floor lamp with an adjustable light in it that has to stay on all the time because the best place to put it is across the room. If I don't leave it on all the time, I am still confronted with the need to walk into the dark bedroom to get any light. Because the light is OLD, I'm sure it's not energy efficient and I hate the idea that I have to leave it on 24/7 (and pay the resulting electric bill.) I really don't need to be paying for that bill. But I haven't had any idea of an alternative until now.

My first idea was to look for a power strip with a remote. I could just grab the remote, say from the top of the dryer that is right outside the bedroom doors. I may have now come up with an even better (long term cheaper) alternative. I am looking at getting one of those solar lightbulbs. They recharge with the sun and have an on/off button. So, I could light my way into the bedroom with NO further cost. I have one of those bulbs in my Amazon cart. I haven't ordered it, but I'm giving it strong consideration.

I haven't been very chatty here lately, but I've been learning a few things and doing some stuff I didn't think I could do. I cleaned the extremely dusty, totally gross intake duct. I took my Flylady mop with the washable head to it--after putting a scarf on my head and donning a mask so as to avoid a dust bath and an allergy attack, and got it cleaner. Is it clean? I doubt it, but it's certainly cleaner. Yay, me.

You may remember I "cleaned" (sprayed down and wiped) the front of the fridge three times. It was not til I took a scrub brush to it that it actually looked clean--4th try. The next problem was the top. I kept putting that off because I was going to have to climb to get to it. Well, the other day I did it. I had been afraid my legs were too shaky and weak to even get up on a Rubbermaid step stool. However, I am thrilled to be able to say I did just fine up there. There is one corner I couldn't get to, but the rest of it is sparkling. I'll have to go back to it and actually stand on a kitchen chair to get that last corner, but I now have the confidence to try it.

A few weeks ago I told you I bought a new cleaning tool. It's like a 1 x 4 with a handle and a fuzzy microfiber cover. It is intended to clean under appliances. I have been most concerned about the refrigerator. I had a very hairy dog, who shed like nothing I've ever seen and whose owner refused to brush him, living in my kitchen at least 8 hours a day for 8 months. The coils on my refrigerator are at ground level. I had mental pictures of how bad those coils were coated in dog hair. I underestimated badly! But, I knelt on one of the damaged kitchen chair cushions and ran that tool under there. What came out was truly unimaginable. I'm going to get back down there and go at it from the side as well in case I missed some, but you would never have believed the pile of filthy dog hair I pulled out from under there. The best news of all is that I managed to a) get down there and b) get back up all on my own, like a normal person. 

My ultimate conclusion is that I'm getting stronger. That thrills my soul. Thank you, Jesus!

 

Now, that's a cuppa

coffee.............Trying my newly purchased Yuban in my "new" old drip pot. Finally, for the first time in several days I have a cup of coffee that tastes good without the addition of a sweet flavored syrup. One problem I should have foreseen and didn't: lifting a full pot of coffee to pour into my cup really makes my wrist scream. I am just going to try to view the pain as an extra cost to pouring myself some joy in a cup.

Sometimes my plans work..........

Well, first of all, if you read my previous post, I was out $125 for an $83 grocery order from Smart & Final. Thank you, Lord. That money has been restored to my account as of today. That's the 2nd business day later, not 3-5 business days as forecast by S&F customer service. I offered to bet you dollars to donuts that S&F would screw it up and only credit me $42. You should have taken my bet. I'm still wondering who actually received my $83 delivery--I hope they needed it more than I did.

Needless to say, I am not amused at the idea of processing another delivery order through S&F--afraid of another screw up...........And, I still can't process a pick-up order through the Smith's website. So, I resorted today to an order through the Albertson's. Didn't want to do that because, in my opinion, the Albertson's website is pretty unwieldy compared to Smith's and their prices are higher. But, they are closer so I guess I saved a few pennies on gasoline.

I rarely leave the house these days, so I have a lot of pending errands. In the same strip mall as Albertson's is a Goodwill drop off and a branch of my bank. So, I knocked off a few errands all at once. I dropped off a bunch of bags of donations. Then I managed to make a bank deposit. Then I got my groceries. And finally on the way home I went just a few blocks out of my way where I normally find the cheapest gasoline and for $40 almost filled my 3/4 empty tank. The "good news" there is that hibernating at home means 3/4 of a tank of gasoline lasts a good 3 months where, when I was working, I'd have needed that much gasoline much more often. 

Day before yesterday, my Keurig died. It was a very sad occasion for me. Fortunately I did have some ground coffee in the cupboard. I pulled out my make-it-on-the stove percolator but what I made in that was darn near poisonous. Completely vile in taste. The coffee in my cupboard was Folgers and I think that is my problem. I never made a decent cup of coffee with that brand. Joe did--one of his few culinary talents. I went out in the garage and dug out a drip style coffee pot I'd retired years and years ago. I couldn't even make "good" coffee in that with the Folgers! So, today I bought some Yuban. That was one of my two go-to brands back when, so maybe I'll have better luck with that. I'll keep trying because a container of Yuban coffee and an old recycled drip pot are cheaper than the most bare bones Keurig. I do hate that I had a fresh cup of coffee with the Keurig in about 2 minutes and the recycled pot takes about 10 minutes. However, I can always find something to clean or put away in the kitchen...........

The pitfalls of online grocery shopping

For months now I've been doing pick-up orders for my groceries through Smith's. However, starting about 3 weeks ago, the Smith's website will not allow me to sign in. I have no idea. I've spoken to their customer service. I went through a procedure with them and the website allowed me back in--once! Since then, we're back to the exact same error message.

I decide just to go ahead and order through Smart & Final. My closest S & F store does not have pick-up--you have to use delivery. That costs an additional $9.99 plus a 5 % tip. This is the reason I seldom use their service. I do not need the extra expense. However, yesterday I processed an order for $105.60. ( My order last week was under budget and I decided I would use the excess this week.) They put a hold on my bank account for $125.81. In theory, that's an estimate to assure the money's there to cover the order.) Well, the bank reduces my account balance by the amount of the hold til the store tells them something different, like the ACTUAL order total. Some of what I ordered was not available so my actual order total is $82.89. 

S & F tells me it will take them 3-5 days to process any credit. They also tell me the Insta-cart employee signaled she'd delivered the order. (I wonder where.) S&F says they don't have the $125 and won't have any money til they notify the bank of the actual total. According to them, the bank only has the money "on hold". The bank tells me the opposite--S&F has the $125 and will continue to have it til they process a credit. On my bank account, there is a note that the $125 is "pending" but not processed. Nevertheless, my bank balance has been reduced by $125. As far as  am concerned, it's all gibberish which merely means that, at least temporarily, I am the loser. If I were to try to reprocess the order, it would overdraft my account and they would hit me with a $34 charge.

I don't see that I can influence this mess at this time in any way. All I can do is wait and monitor my account. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that when S&F does process a credit, it will be for $42 not for $125. Anyone want to take that bet?

Makes me glad I'm something of a prepper. There was nothing on my list I can't live without. Also, I do have some checks I could deposit to my bank account which would take care of the possibility of an overdraft. OR, I do have some cash, which I would use if I was desperate. I'm not desperate--just frustrated and angry.

 

This n That

i keep working arouns here, hoping things will improve. So far, I can show you pockets of improvement, but not, in my estimation, enough. I have no choice but to keep after it. I bought a new tool to help. It was pricey in view of my $0 budget, but certainly not something any normal person would think twice about. You know I am still battling dog hair. In spite of numerous vacuumings and scrubbings, it's still here, there and everywhere. I feel like my kitchen is especially bad with it and that drives me batty. I think the kitchen is so bad because she, the roommate, would sit in the kitchen every night from no later than 10 PM til 5 or 6 AM with the dog closed in out there as well. And, for me, I find having dog hair in the kitchen to be disgusting--I just don't want it around food. Anyway, this thing I bought looks to be about 1/2 inch deep, maybe 3 inches wide, and between 2-3 feet long. Wrapped around this solid base and tightly attached, is microfiber cloth. It also has a handle. I'm sure you could use it to clean the tops of paintings, mirrors, etc., but it's designed to ferret out dust and dog hair from under appliances. Of course, living here alone, I have no way of moving an appliance to clean under it, so I am particularly thrilled to have this thing. When it gets disgusting, you can use your vacuum attachment to clean it or even throw the cloth covering into the washer. 

I have still not been able to find the pad I use for kneeling or sitting on the floor. And, believe me, I have searched. I have, however, those ruined kitchen chair cushions. I'm gonna give them a try. Right now I have Tupperware all over my kitchen because that cupboard is totally upside down and I can't seem to find a way to put all this Tupperware back where it came from.

Also "lost" is a box with two new Berkey filters in it. If you're not familiar with Berkey, those water filters cost about $50 a box and the two filters in the box are good for one filter change. Fifty dollars is not something I want to rush and spend to buy duplicates right now!

Yesterday was grocery delivery day. I have had to abandon Smiths because, for some reason, I can't sign on to shop. I've had to switch to a different store whose website still loves me. I'm unhappy about that because the other store doesn't have free pickup. Rather, only delivery at $10 a pop. I found a coupon for free delivery last week, but this week I had to pay. When I was going to Smiths, my carrot to myself was a visit to Starbucks at about $5 a pop. No Smiths, no Starbucks, so I guess I can tell myself I'm really only out $5 and that will feel better.

So the "new" store had 85% ground beef in 2 pound chubs on sale this week. I usually avoid those "chubs" because you can't actually see what you're getting. Well, I'll tell you I opened one of the chubs last night and I was thrilled. If there was 15% fat in that meat, I couldn't see it. I wish now I'd bought a lot more of that stuff. 

I am still trying to buy a few items ahead. I've heard from several trusted sources that grain is going to be in short supply. Think essentials like flour, bread, pasta, those sorts of things. I'm pretty well stocked up with a variety of pastas, but I'm going to lay in more bread and flour this week. I'm also trying to beef up my stash of water. Right now I have enough water to sustain life only about 6 days--another reason I need to find those Berkey water filters!

Wazz Up?

Not much.........I spent 3 days last week mostly in bed. I woke up on Thursday morning with pervasive pain. If I owned a joint or a muscle group that didn't hurt, I would not have been able to name it. And yet, I could not begin to tell you why though I had plenty of time to think about it. It didn't help that the doctor refuses to give me the muscle relaxers that work quickly and well. I've taken them for more than 40 years on an as-needed basis. I have certainly never allowed myself to be addicted to them and never would. However, I am becoming a ripe old age, and, if at this age I did become addicted, I can't see much in the way of a problem in that. So, now, rather than it taking a day to medicate a muscle spasm into oblivion, it takes 3 days. Such a waste of productive time..........

I did what little I could during those days, and, finally, yesterday was somewhat productive. Grateful for that.

I've been thinking a lot about my time of growing up, in particular in relation to housekeeping and cooking. I was never really TAUGHT about how to do either of those things. I think the very idea that I was growing up, that I needed to learn how to be independent, never crossed my mother's mind.  My mother kept a neat and clean house. She must have had some routine, some reasoning behind it all. I never figured out what that routine was, much less why she did whatever it was she did. I do remember that she made the beds every day. And I remember doing mountains of dishes every evening so going to bed with a clean kitchen must have been part of it. And every weekend we cleaned the whole house, whether it needed it or not. She may have vacuumed on Friday, but if it was Saturday, the whole house got vacuumed again. Saturday was "magic" or something. it seemed a mindless waste of time to me and I was never taught anything different. 

So, at 17 I found myself at college, 700 miles from home. I had no idea how to keep my dorm room clean or neat. I had no idea how to do my own laundry. And my cooking repertoire was limited to hamburgers. I "fell in love" with the campus stud, and he with me, and married the day before graduation. I arrived at married life totally unprepared for any domestic duties though by then I'd taught myself how to go about washing clothes. With a recipe book at hand, I taught myself to cook. I remember it being months before I mastered getting ALL of dinner on the table at the same time. My mother-in-law taught me how to make many Italian dishes, and that was a godsend. Kept us from starvation!

Somewhere after age 30, it occurred to me that this house I was trying to manage was MY house, MY responsibility. For the first time it hit me that I didn't have to try to figure out where my mother would have stored extra blankets, or whatever. It was MY house and I got to decide where I wanted to store whatever was in question. That idea was certainly shocking and freeing. It was also disabling, because what if I got it "wrong"?

I read countless books on the subject of keeping a house clean. I don't know that I figured out that a "routine" was part of it til much later, somewhere around 40. I did clean the house, usually on Saturdays, but if we hadn't used the bathtub since the last weekend, I didn't clean a perfectly clean bathtub as my mother would have. But the idea of a daily routine totally escaped me. I did what I felt like doing on any given day and didn't do it again til I felt like it or the level of clutter got out of hand. 

I have struggled for years now, trying to get myself into this daily routine or that other daily routine. It never seems to work for long. I honestly think it has to do with ADD. IF I can stay focused on a job, I can do it well, but I am like that thing you see on the internet where the woman starts to do a task, for example, change a vacuum cleaner bag and ends up washing the bathroom floor, rearranging a bookcase, unloading the dishwasher, repairing the torn hem in a skirt, pouring Drano in all but one drain, and, at the end of the day, she finds herself with no dinner prepared, the contents of the junk drawer splattered all over the kitchen table, and nothing vacuumed because she got side-tracked on the way to find the vacuum cleaner bags.

It's a great (adventurous) life if you don't weaken. It becomes even more "fun", when everything hurts!

 

Yesterday was the day...........

I have had a turkey breast and a turkey in the freezer, waiting to be canned, for quite a while now. I certainly couldn't do it last winter because of my wrist and my leg. I didn't want to heat up the house in the summer--it was hot enough without doing that. So, early in the week I put the turkey roast in the fridge to thaw. By yesterday we were set to go. It cooked for several hours yesterday afternoon. Then I de-boned it and put the bones back in the pot to cook a while longer. They cooked with a lid, on an extremely low heat, all night. It's now amazing bone broth.

I've been wanting to make a certain meal for a while now. In some places it would be called turkey and dumplings. But the PA Dutch, my "tribe", would call it turkey pot pie. It is meat, maybe some vegetables, and broth with a bunch of rolled dumplings. I can never remember the correct proportions of flour to baking powder to salt for the dumplings. So, I grabbed a recipe off the internet. Then I proceeded to prove I'm a slow learner. I KNOW I'm used to very light salt. Yet, I put in the amount of salt called for in the recipe. For my taste, the dumplings are too salty. Nevertheless they're edible and one way or another, I intend to eat them.

I had a really difficult time rolling those dumplings. My rolling pin is a marble one with wooden handles. It's heavy. Given my faulty, formerly broken wrist, it was very painful to pick that rolling pin and move the dough mixture and lay the rolling pin on it again. Equally painful was the actual rolling. In my family, the dough is rolled pretty thin, except when a person with a formerly broken wrist is rolling it. One really needs to be able to exert some pressure on the rolling pin and, because of the pain, I just couldn't. So I have thicker than usual "dumplings". My mother certainly wouldn't approve of those. But, of course, she isn't here anymore, so they'll do.

Besides the wrist, my legs decided to give me trouble yesterday. Of course, I ended up on my feet a lot. And, when I finally got to rolling out that dough, my legs threatened to just give up and give out. But I had to push on. 

So, today, I am coping with a wrist that hurts no matter what I am trying to do (including using the keyboard), and my legs and knees don't want to work either. But I got the job done, after praying for strength. And tomorrow I will 1) set some turkey meat aside for sandwiches. I do love me some turkey sandwiches. And, 2) can the remainder of the meat and the broth for future use. So, when you can't find turkey in the store, I'll be eating my home canned turkey and feeling very blessed.

This turkey must have been the Goliath of the turkey world. I have never seen a turkey breast with so much meat. So grateful I bought that thing way back when.

Accidental cook

Last night I decided I needed some beef, in pretty much any form. I grabbed a pint jar of my canned ground beef and began trying to find stuff to go with it. Ordinarily I'd make sloppy joes with it but that didn't appeal to me. I fried up some spinach and some thinly sliced shallots. I added a can of mushroom soup and a little garlic powder. Finally I added some sour cream. I hate to tell you, but I didn't like it. I don't know 'bout you, but I've been watching my sodium for a long time. Seemed to me with that mix of ingredients, there should have been some detectable flavor besides lots of salt, but to my taste, I tasted only lots of salt. So, needless, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of eating the leftovers tonight. But I wasn't going to throw it away either. What do do?

I thought about it and realized that it was the mushroom soup that was so salty. Well, I couldn't remove the soup, but I could dilute it! Easy solution--poured in a little milk and suddenly I had some "fancy" hamburger gravy. Toasted some bread and made like an open-faced sandwich which I ate with some fancied-up hamburger gravy on it and enjoyed it.

Day in the Life

This is the 13th. I'm moving slowly, but at least I'm moving. I placed a grocery order. For those things I ordered, the full retail price would have been around $61. However I managed to snag sale savings of around $11.00. I might be able to bring it down further by $1 to $3. So, on budget.

I delivered my last 2 tax returns. I'm telling you, dealing with clients whose mental capabilities are deteriorating is a real challenge. She has been under extreme stress this year, both mental and physical, which has contributed to the problem. But, one of the things she could not seem to do was pull together the information for her taxes. This ended up making my job much harder, especially when one of the 2 tax returns is NOT the 1040 you are familiar with, and I do it by hand. Hours and hours went into that thing, through several variations, based on the latest information that came my way. I ended up with a total of about 9 hours on that. Ugh.

She also made me scared for her. I watched her try to park in front of the house. It's not often I see someone go up over the curb to do that..........I watched her walk up the driveway and then up the sidewalk. She claimed she was so slow because she had fallen a week ago and her muscles were still stiff from that. However, she is dealing with a serious lung condition. I think she was also winded and her balance was off. As shaky as I am, I felt as though I should go and "help" her and I actually felt as if my efforts would have been worthwhile. 

I haven't done any housework to speak of for nearly a week. The last time I did was the night I went after those kitchen chairs. I was so disgusted I didn't know what to do with myself. I cleaned two of them and then decided to take a good look at those cushions. Three of the 4 are not usable. The one she sat in all the time is still gray on the side she sat on. The are supposed to be tufted cushions. The stitching that created the "tufting" was machine stitched. Notice I said "was". Not anymore and I can't imagine any way I can fix that. There is no way that will fit under the presser foot on my machine. I discovered a huge brown stain on the bottom of one cushion. My guess is it's coffee spilled on the cushion/chair and left to dry there. Washing it now did NO good. And, the fourth cushion tore/frayed on one corner and some of the stuffing came out. I looked online for replacements. The only ones I really like cost $57 which is not happening for a long, long time.

After all that I was just defeated and took a few days off.

 

Not as productive as I'd like

I had a rough night last night. I went to bed at the usual time. Four hours later I was still awake. I came out and sat here and watched youtube videos til 6:00 AM. At that point I felt like I might be able to get to sleep. Unfortunately, I slept til 1:30 PM. That shortened my time for working. I have decluttered, shredded, and taken trash out. Additionally I've cleared off some of the counters in my kitchen. One set of my countertops is cluttered with Tupperware I can't get into the cabinet in which it's supposed to live. To deal with that cupboard, I'm going to have to get down on the floor.  i CAN'T do that until I find my kneeler. I've searched for that thing and I can't find it. It is certainly not in the place where I store it. Nor is it anywhere else I can think of that would be logical to put it. I'm starting to wonder if "she" took it with her.........

I don't want to go down on that floor. The kitchen is the room she kept that dog in when she was home. I've vacuumed and washed that floor repeatedly, but I can still see wads of dog hair either lying around loose or glued to the floor by the steam vac. Also, I just can't sit on the floor because of a coccyx that was broken when I was in the 3rd grade. On the hard floor, it causes excruciating pain. I can literally end up sitting on bone. And then I can only get up from there with proper pre-planning and prayer.

I've started working on the kitchen chairs. Each of the chairs had a cushion on it. It took me 15 minutes to get those cushions untied and into the washer and to clean the seat off one chair. The back of the chair is as bad as the cushions. I literally sprayed down the seat of one chair and scrubbed away at it three times before I was willing to call it clean. I can see that it's going to take a long time just to clean those chairs..........

Anyway, because I slept so late, I seem to have a bit more energy than usual at this time of night. Just wondering if I can get through 4 chairs before I can't muster the strength any more. I have the cushions in the washer and I really hope they will be clean when I get them out of there, but, forgive me if I don't hold my breath on that one..........

The struggle is real..........

I worked in this house til about 10PM last night. I finally just sat down and stayed put when my leg muscles had had all they could take. I'm nearing that same point tonight, but the truth is either I do it or it doesn't get done. I don't have to get it all done today, but I DO need observable progress. The problem is the to do list is growing, not shrinking. 

One victory I can celebrate is that I've gotten rid of one whole pile of shredding. Phew! The new shredder shreds more sheets at a time and has a larger bin, so that makes the whole process go faster. I 'm still shredding for 15 minutes a day. 

I'm also decluttering 15 minutes a day. Today I culled some books from the bookshelves. Still 8 shelves to go. I also have a large pile of donation stuff on the dining room floor that needs to be packed up and hauled off. 

I have brought my budgeting system up to the end of August. Not good enough, but a definite improvement over where it was. 

I have given the fridge a thorough cleaning. I have gone through every shelf, all the way to the back wall. I found all sorts of crap shoved to the back and left behind by "her". I also pulled out at least 10 containers with tiny scraps of stuff in them. Containers the size of the little salad dressing containers you get with a salad. And jars of unknown stuff I wouldn't ever take a chance on eating (or even opening and sniffing. 

And come tomorrow morning there are at least 10 time consuming tasks I've run into today, courtesy of "her" and "her dog".

Ugh!

And to make my joy complete, the influx of Californians trying to escape Newsome's policies and CA's taxes have driven our values so high that my house payment is going up more than $45 a month to accommodate escrow requirements for higher property taxes and higher insurance costs.