My Weblog

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reporting in

I have been doing my shopping once a week now for a few weeks. I think this is going to work. My goal was to be able to take better advantage of the weekly specials. I think that's the only way to get through the inflation--to learn to live off of what's "on special". 

I loaded my cart with $66,XX in groceries. With the discounts for specials and digital coupons, i knocked $17 off that total. I also have some paper coupons for $1.40. So I will get out of the store for about $43-44 out of pocket. I put 4 items into my cart that didn't have a digital coupon and weren't on sale. Of those 4 items I have paper coupons on 3 of them. i got a beef roast, fresh spinach, fresh zucchini, fresh yams, fresh grapes and fresh red peppers. I also got a supply of Greek yogurt, some honey nut Cheerios, and three single serving prepared salads. 

Last week I also ordered yams. I scrubbed them, wrapped them all in foil, and baked them in the oven. Most everything I would normally make with yams would be baked or mashed, so cooking them all at once enables me to just unwrap them when needed and pop them into the microwave. Hopefully that saves some on the power bill. And, if I don't get them all eaten in a timely manner, I can just mash them up (as if I were making mashed potatoes) and freeze them. 

Today I have been accomplishing some things in the house. I decided it was some time for some motivation.  I turned to an old source of motivation. I've got some episodes of hoarders which I'm watching during breaks. I thank my God that I don't have that kind of a mess with which to deal. What I have is bad enough, and only He gives me the ability to believe that this little old lady can make a real difference. I've done my shredding, carried recycling out, moved the recycling bin in from the curb, took the roast out from the fridge to the freezer in the garage, found a turkey breast I need to can up, brought it in, wedged it in the fridge to thaw, and I used a brush as well as a dry mop to try to dust down the kitchen walls in the area where you-know who used to sit. The dust was so thick you could see little dust balls but they're gone now. I started a running list of things that need to be done. I tried to clean under the fridge which is where the coils are. I didn't manage that. The pad I kneel on has been missing since "she" left. My knees won't take it, even on a pillow and there's no meat left on my butt and hips to allow me to sit on the floor. It's literally a pain in the butt, getting old............

Once I got down on the floor, I realized I'd need the chair to get up. I grabbed the chair she always sat on and used it. In that process, I realized that the chair cushions HAVE to be washed. They are supposed to be a blue plaid on a white background. But, the only description of them now is gray. And so it goes...........Everywhere I look there's another mess to clean up. I'll be busy for a long time to come!

How do you eat an elephant?

I am still trying to rid myself from dog hair everywhere and to clean the mess that you-know-who left behind. I actually took a scrub brush and a bottle of vinegar/water/dawn to the exterior of my fridge. I feel like it's presentable now. I'd gone over it with paper towels and rags several times and it still looked dirty. The front of the fridge has that "pebbled leather" finish that's supposed to minimize fingerprints. The scrub brush enabled me to deal with the crud in between the "pebbles". So, now it looks better. I do wish that person had, at some point in her almost 60 years, discovered that the proper use of handles and knobs leaves surfaces cleaner.............

But, that is not the elephant. The elephant is two stacks of shredding to be done. One stack is corralled in a large bin. But the other stack is free standing. Or, perhaps free-leaning would be a more descriptive term. It is so tall that I am scared there could be an avalanche. But, I got the new shredder here from Amazon. It weighs a ton and I had a pistol of a time getting it unboxed and moved to the office. It does a great job. I've been setting aside 15 minutes every morning to work on this. I can pretty much shred my way through about an inch and a half per day. I'll be so glad when it's ALL done! I estimate that will be sometime in 2022..............(there's loads more to be shreded that I haven't pulled out of the filing cabinets yet).

I found out that a client of mine has a shower chair stored in her garage. She wants to give it to me and I'm gonna say thank you very much and take it. (I just recently delivered 3 tax returns to her family that literally cost me $225 to produce just for the use of the software and they handed me $100.) I have to admit that I still have a lot of concerns about my balance. So, taking a shower has been a scary proposition for me. The chair seems like a good idea until things get better. I love anything that minimizes the stress in my life.

Another habit I'm working on is dragging something either to the car or to the outside trash bins everyday. I am literally scared to walk around outside. Remember outside is where I fell. Anyway, the trash pickup is on Tuesdays. And carrying one trash bag or donation bag outside per day sure makes Monday a better day.

 

 

Green P-e-a

My grandmother was not an educated woman. i believe she completed the second grade. After that she was put to work in the fields to help support her family. I doubt she earned much, but in those days it was a truism that "every little bit helps".  We lived, after I was 6, about 1000 miles away from her. She faithfully wrote us letters. They werequite something. In spite of her very limited education, she knew cursive. I remember her letters were always written with a dull pencil. And, not surprisingly, they were full of misspellings. She also misspelled in every day life. During the final 10-15 years of her life, she had a dog she'd named Blackie. Blackie didn't have a great life by today's standards. She spent much of her life on a leash that was attached to the kitchen table leg. She had to be taken out several times a day to take care of bodily functions. Grandma lived in Pennsylvania where arctic breezes and lots of snow are common. Needless to say, Grandma, standing there hanging onto the leash, wanted Blackie to get on with it. It was normal for Grandma to prompt her: "P-e-a, Blackie". Blackie had never been to school but she learned what P-e-a meant and complied. None of us ever had the heart to try to tell Grandma or Blackie that the word was really spelled P-e-e.

Kroger's loss leader last week in the Produce Department was Asparagus. I had some for dinner last night. It's been so long since I've had fresh asparagus that I had to look up how to cook it, but it turned out really good. And today, I have Green P-e-a, or so Grandma and Blackie would have thought.............