Water! I need water, and possibly a fan.

Rachel called down from her floor last night to tell me that we needed to go to the farmer's market today, to buy some bread that one of the other nurses makes to sell. It sounded like a good plan to me, so when I woke up, I called her. She had just woken up too, and was ready to go.

(I called RA, but she was busy with some zuchini bread and had just put a casserole in the oven, so she couldn't leave.)

While Rich and Kim are gone, I have to drive Rich's car, because they took the van. My feet don't quite reach the pedals, so I have to drive with my toes! You can imagine how comfortable that is. When I picked up Rachel, she drove the car - her legs are longer than mine.

So we went to the farmer's market, and bought some vegetables, and some lovely breads, and then we went back to Rachel's, where we changed our shoes and went for a walk, but OMG, it was so hot!

There is a nice hilly path right by her apartment, so it is convenient, and I like the hilliness of it, so I want to do it again, but we only made one circuit today because of the heat. When I got home, I was so sweaty, and that made me feel really cranky!

I lay on the bed in my room, in the dark, with the ceiling fan on, because really I was wondering if I had heat exhaustion or something. I felt terrible! Rachel came to my house later to make salad, and I was feeling somewhat better by then. I got up and drank a big glass of water, and that helped.

So yeah, I am a fragile little wilting flower, but what I really wanted to tell about is the beautiful salad we made! Crazy Aunt Purl mentioned this list of 101 Summer Salads on her blog, and they all sounded good, so we decided to try to make all of them, one at a time of course, and probably in order, just for fun.

Today we made the first one on the list, with watermelon and peaches and some scraggly wilted basil that was getting old in my fridge. It was very good!

When Rachel left, I was tired, and I just went back to bed. Woke up at 10 and came to work. I slept a lot yesterday, too, so maybe I am catching up after being sick all week last week. Or maybe I was exhausted! From heat!

I'm both hot and crabby

I'm not just hot, not just crabby, no, I am both hot and crabby.

It's been a long week

I've been sick all week with one thing and another, and yesterday I finally started feeling better. I have been working on this baby blanket since last Sunday, and it was so much fun to make that it was all I wanted to work on! I finished it this morning just before I went home from work.

Here is the blanket in progress :


It doesn't look very impressive in the photo, but I'll post another picture when it's blocked and I am confident it will be beautiful.

I was furious at work Sunday morning, in spite of the beautiful blanket, because the morning operator, who is one of the bimbettes from the answering service, was an hour late! I called the answering service when she was 5 minutes late, and they called me right back to say she had been mistaken about the time but would be here soon.

Half an hour later, when she still wasn't here, I called her myself, and asked if she was coming to work, and she said yes, in a tired voice, poor dear, and I asked if she was on her way? She sighed out another yes, and then proceeded to not show up for another half hour! WTH?

So then I was sitting there fuming about her not showing up for work, and how she isn't very smart about her job anyway, and apparently has no circulation at all, because she always turns the heat in the office up to 85 and turns on the little space heater, and then closes the door to keep the heat in...

That's when I had an idea...a terrible, awful, clever idea. I turned the thermostat down to 65 to start cooling the place down, and then I hid the little space heater on a shelf behind some boxes in the operations storage area. It was 7:45 by then, so I hurried back to the office and waited, but then I glanced up and saw two sweaters hanging on hooks behind the office door! I grabbed them, along with the lab coat that has been hanging there forever, and hurried to put them in the server room. The temps from the answering service can't get into that room- it's got one of those plates of buttons on the door to punch in the passcode, and the operators don't need to go into that room, so the temps don't know the code.

I sat back down at the desk, a little out of breath, but it was another five minutes before she came in, and instead of apologizing for being late, she gave me a dirty look, like it was my fault! So I didn't say anything, just picked up my bag and left, chuckling evilly to myself all the way to the parking lot.

Later this morning, when I was laying in bed, unable to sleep because that's how much my life sucks, I called Diana and told her what I'd done. I asked her if it was too evil, but Diana assured me that it was just evil enough. She said she thought the punishment fit the crime - she was an hour late! Yeah, it's not like I locked her in a walk-in freezer and went on home.

I was taking a nap before work tonight, and I dreamed that I was explaining to someone about Bimbette being late for work, and in my dream I called her a crackwhore, and then apologized, saying it was an insult to crackwhores, because at least they show up on time for work!

Why are the comments not working?

There were juice boxes, too!

This is my weekend off, so I got up and went to church this morning. I'd only had three hours sleep, at the most, but I figured I would just catch up later, so I dragged out of bed, and went to church.

After sacrament meeting, the crazy old dear who is the nursery leader came up to me and told me that her knee is in bad shape and the doctor upped her medications, and she wondered if Rachel and I would teach the nursery class for her.

I have actually been thinking about the nursery, because I've gone in to help out a few times at Rich's request, and I think the nursery leader just needs some training in how to make nursery a little bit more like a classroom experience. Not a lot of changes, and not to make it a more regimented thing, but just to give a little bit of a regular schedule and to teach a tee-tiny short lesson and have a regular singing time. So that when the kids leave the nursery when they are 3 years old, they will be prepared for Primary, where they will be expected to participate in singing time, and to sit down and have a little lesson time.

The current nursery leader is a fairly new member of the church, and she's not familiar with the whole Primary class idea, and doesn't know anything about the nursery at all. There is a lesson book, but I asked her if she had one, and she said she lost it. Rich said he has one, and I can use that, so I was already planning to start bringing in a lesson on the weeks when I'm there.

So today Rachel and I went to the nursery. There are only two nursery-age kids right now, both of them are around 18-19 months old, and they know each other. For the first hour, we sat and talked and planned a little lesson ("Heavenly Father gave us animals!"), while the kids played with the toys.

There are some nice toys in the nursery room, and the two little boys were mostly interested in playing with two large fire trucks, which left me free to enjoy the box of dinosaurs all by myself.

There are about ten really nice plastic dinosaurs, no, there must be either nine or eleven of them, because there was an uneven number, as I discovered when Rachel left for a minute to use the ladies room and I started pairing the dinosaurs up, posing them like they were slow-dancing at the prom, and there was one left without a partner, so I put him off to the side, looking away from the dancing, and imagined him thinking about how his life sucks and no one understands him, and wearing black nail polish.

I explained the scenario when Rachel came back, and she thought it was funny until I moved the dinosaurs around so some of them were making out and three of them got together while I hummed the song, "Three-way". Rachel said that was just wrong, and anyway, one of the little kids started humming it after I had sung it a couple of times, and Rachel said his mother might not like it. (His mother reads this, so Hi Jesse!)

When there was a threesome, that left another dinosaur out in the cold so he went and sat by the emo-saurus, and they whined about how no one cared about them, and the first one told the other one about shopping at Hot Topic, and then he sang the Death, Death, Devil, Devil song. It was pretty funny until Rachel texted me four hours later at home to say that she had that song stuck in her head and was tired of it.

We cleaned up all the toys and had snack time, which was great because Rachel and I were both hungry and there were Cheese-Its. Then we let them play a little more until lesson time and one of them was smelling pretty stinky, which is what always happens in the nursery. We were hoping one of his parents would drop in to change his diaper, since we aren't supoosed to do it, but it didn't happen so Rachel called him Stinky, and also Big-foot after he kept stepping on the other kid every time he walked by.

I think it all went well, and we had fun, which is important. Rachel is a bit worried that we have lowered their self-esteem and also, exposed them to deviant behavior among dinosaurs, but I think they'll be fine.

Is it Saturday already?

I haven't worked since Wednesday night/Thursday morning, so that's why I haven't updated. I've been using Tylenol PM to sleep at night, but I've been walking around in a fog anyway. I can't explain it. Thursday was especially bad.

So Thursday night I went to see The Half Blood Prince, and it was very good, in spite of Kim's complaining. She is not a fan of the Ron/Hermoine pairing, and I had to suffer for it. I went again last night with Rich and enjoyed it again, but this time it was a crowded theater, which doesn't make me happy. I'm never satisfied, am I?

In which I have issues.

A few months ago I was talking with Diane from the lab, and she said she was thinking of going to nursing school. I agreed that it was a good idea, and shared my experiences with nursing school, which include applying and being accepted twice, dropping out in the middle and then deciding to apply a third time, but coming to my senses later and not pursuing it.

Diane was so enthusiastic about it that she almost sucked me into it again, but I said no. She has been taking the pre-requisite classes since then, and last night she said that she needed to go out to the college in the morning to make a change to her Fall schedule. I offered to go with her because I still needed to drop my Fall classes.

So we met in the parking lot after work this morning, and went out for breakfast, and then drove out to the college. I did my dropping, and then interviewed the registration lady about the collection of lighthouses on the counter while I waited for Diane.

The lighthouses are the property of both of the registration ladies, since one of them was collecting them and introduced the other one to her hobby. The lady who was helping me said that she goes on lighthouse visits every weekend during the summer and she especially loves the ones on the Western shore of Michigan. She was so enthusiastic that it was fun to talk to her.

Afterward I went home to bed and had a hard time falling asleep! I did finally go to sleep but I woke up too early, and didn't nap for long enough tonight either. I have the next three days off, so I'll catch up.

I rode out to the fairground with RA and waited in the car with the AC on while she entered the fair, using her exhibitors pass, and she came back with cheese curds for us, which is really the only reason to even have a fair, in my opinion. Cheese curds here in cow country are dipped in batter and deep-fried, making them a soft and gooey treat. It's a good thing they are only available at the fair, because I would be living on them if I could get them anytime.

Kim and I took the two-mile walk tonight and while we were walking, Rachel called. I told her I dropped the Fall classes but it was too late to drop the summer class without the teacher's signature. She said I should just get his signature, and I said it would be embarrassing to tell him I was dropping because I just don't feel like finishing. Rachel told me to say, "Weren't you listening when I made that first speech about my commitment issues? You bastard!" That cracked me up.

She's going to be pissed when she reads this.

Remember that game we played on the internet years ago, the one that tested your gaydar by asking you to identify whether a pictured man was gay or Eurotrash? (You can refresh your memory here. )

I was reminded of that game today, when Kim was getting ready to meet up with Sando and Davito at the county fair. She was wearing cargo shorts, and when she said she didn't want to carry her purse, I told her to put her ID and her debit card in one pocket and her phone in the other and that would be fine.

As Kim was arranging her pockets, Rich was coming down the stairs from his office, and overheard her mumbling something about a fanny pack, and he, wanting to be Mr. Helpful, said that he had lots of fanny packs! In his closet! and he ran back upstairs to grab one for her.

I groaned and told her not to wear a fanny pack, for crap sake, but she put it right on, and not slackly hanging in a casual way off of her hips, either, but cinched right up like a German tourist. As she headed out the front door wearing a fanny pack and cargo shorts, I wailed after her that she had plenty of pockets, but she paid no attention.

Rich demanded to know what was wrong with a fanny pack, pointing out that he wears them all the time! I told him that he is an old man who doesn't mind looking like a dork, but she is young and should be trying to look good! He found that offensive, go fig.

Everyone who knows Kim knows that she has a terrible tendency toward loading herself down like a pack mule, because she likes to have supplies for any situation that might arise - cut your finger opening a can of soda? She's got a bandaid! Have a headache? Allergies? Diarrhea? Kim has a small pharmacy in her purse! Do you need something to read? She's got books, a magazine, and a notebook with the novel she is currently writing, all in her backpack, along with dry socks and an extra pair of flipflops. She's got poptarts if you're hungry, and change to get a pop if you need one to wash them down. She's carrying a bottle of water if you get dehydrated...

So yes, Kim is the one you want with you if you are lost in the Alps, but I hate to send her out into a social situation, one where she might want to look cute and impress someone, looking like she's been staying at a youth hostel in Austria. If you need someone to carry the gold and jewels back from your quest through the mines, though, give her a call!
*****
What I'm reading today: Just finished reading Julie & Julia, and I loved it! I knew about the blog when she was writing it, but I didn't read it all the time, and I heard there will be a movie soon, but then Diana mentioned that she was reading it, so I downloaded it yesterday and read it all night at work, and finished it tonight while Kim was out and Rich was at karate. After reading it all night, I had to buy the ingredients for Potage Parmentier (Potato Soup) and I made it for dinner. It was wonderful.

What I'm knitting today: I'm almost done with the body of the fourth baby blanket, another one that I'll be giving away to a pregnant friend, and I'm getting a little tired of the pattern. A few days ago I saw a new pattern on Brooklyn Tweed for a lovely lightweight wool baby blanket with a lacy edge, and I cast on for it right away. This wool is pale blue, and feels a bit scratchy on the needles, but I think it will wash up soft and be beautiful for Rachel's baby, Iggy. (Haha, I slay me!)

Is it Tuesday?

I was minding my own business at home tonight when RA called and said she had just finished baking Experimental Pie #2 - a practice pie for her county fair entry. She wondered if Kim and I would like to come over and try it. Of course we would!

She made Experimental Pie #1 last week, and she and I each ate a piece, then discussed the ways it could be improved. She says her husband ate the rest of it over the weekend, and now he is a little tired of pie. Kim and I each ate a piece and so did RA, and we all agreed that the second pie was fantastic, and then RA packed up two more big pieces for me to take home for Rich and Rachel, because she was trying to give away as much as she could so she wouldn't find herself eating it in the middle of the night, or waking up on the kitchen floor with a sticky fork in her hand, and an empty pie plate next to her.

Rich got home from camp Saturday morning about 10, which is much earlier than I expected. I woke up when I heard him come upstairs, but then I went back to sleep. When I woke up again in the afternoon, he had unpacked his filthy clothes and draped his sleeping bag and mattress around the dining room so let them dry. He had a great time at camp!

Tonight I made some hot curried chicken for dinner, and Rich ate it, but he kept gasping for air and sweating because he thought it was too spicy. I told him that eating camp food ruined him, and asked him if he only ate sloppy joes and beans while he was there? He said they did seem to serve a lot of beans!

Oh, but while I'm talking about food, let me just say that on Saturday we grilled pizzas on the new grill, and they were wonderful! We still had dough left, so we made them again on Sunday, and really, I could eat them every day. I'm looking forward to grilling them again this weekend!

Kim is back to work this week, and is starting out the week with a sleep deficit. I'm afraid it can only get worse from here!

In which I went to camp.

Since Rich went to camp I haven't had a call from him, only a text message the first day he was there, that said to reply if I got the message. I replied, but never got anything back, and I assumed that there just isn't any service out there in the woods.

One night I sent him a message that said I missed him, and included a piece of local news I thought he would be interested in. Two days later, I got a text back from him, responding to the news, and saying that his jeans were dirty because it's been raining, and the other pair he took have a broken zipper in the fly.

That was Wednesday night, and yesterday when I woke up, I had a plan! RA needed to go to Lena, a town that is about halfway between here and the campground, so we bought a couple of pairs of jeans, and set out on an exciting journey!

We made the stop in Lena so RA could buy some frozen apple slices. (She's making apple pie to enter in the county fair this year.) Then we were on our way to camp.

We had an idea of where the camp was, but it has been a few years since either of us have had a boy in our home who was going to scout camp, so we were a little fuzzy on the exact location. That does not stop us.

As we got close to the area where the camp is, we stopped at a convenience store, and I went in to buy a couple of bottles of Mountain Dew for Rich, and I asked the really attractive young man who was working at the counter how to get to the camp. He confirmed that we were going the right way, so good enough!

We did miss the entrance to the campground and had to go back, but we got there in time to see the evening flag ceremony, and then I found Rich and gave him the bag of jeans. He was happy to get them, but then he wanted to hurry off and get some dinner because he'd been kayaking all afternoon, and he was really hungry.

When I got home, I made dinner for Kim and I and then we just sat and watched TV for a while. Kim did get up long enough to clean the litter box, so that's something. She's had a really lazy week because she didn't have to work.

There is a mouse in my office and Erin calls it Speedy.

I woke up this afternoon and I wanted nothing in the world more than I wanted to drop my stupid Speech class! I couldn't imagine why I had taken it in the first place, and I also want to drop the two classes I am signed up for in the Fall!

I dealt with it by calling my three closest advisors, Rachel, Diana, and Sarah! Rachel is willing to go with me to drop the classes for Fall, so that's what we'll do next week, and she suggested that I use a paper written by Kim for one of her classes as a basis for my next speech. Diana told me if she were in my shoes, she would not want to let the money go to waste that I paid for the class, so she would finish it even if it killed her, and then she had a couple of good ideas for the speeches, so that made me feel like I could probably do it, although I never really have a problem with pissing money away (but I should!). Sarah told me how she breezed through her speech class pulling prize-winning speeches out of her ass, because that is how things go in her sunny golden life, and I could not be happier for her, but it wasn't so helpful. What she did say that helped me was when I asked her why I took this class at all, and she said it was because I wanted something to do. Oh, right! That made me feel better than thinking I just went insane one day and took classes for no reason. I do get bored, and I look around for entertainment, and next time I get the urge to take classes, I will ... do something else.

So I'm still taking the class, and I'm behind on the online lectures again, and I still have to make up questions to ask in the forums because he wants an original question from us for each chapter, but I think I can manage to finish this class. Ugh. I can't think about it right now.

Rich is still gone to BS camp, and it was raining all day today, but he is prepared. He took his big rain poncho, so I'm sure he is fine. What I really miss is that he isn't here to do the dishes and take out the trash, but last night Kim did the dishes and today she took the kitchen trash out to the garage, so we're managing to keep going, even without him.

I made dinner yesterday and again today, and I have a plan for dinner tomorrow, so yay! Look at me, cooking! Yesterday it was chicken curry, and today I made enchurritos. Tomorrow it's going to be cashew chicken.

In other news, Axel told me last night that he has a girlfriend now. He met her on an internet dating site and they emailed each other for a month or so, and they went out for coffee together this weekend. I said, "And she's already your girlfriend? Since Saturday?" He said yes, that their personalities are alike, and then he said that she isn't the kind of girl who would usually go out with 'a guy like me' - a phrase he has used before to describe a woman who isn't up to his standards of beauty - but she has a really pretty face (so she might be a little heavy?) and also, she worships the ground he walks on. He's so shallow he makes a mudpuddle look like the Atlantic Ocean. I predict this won't last, and he might as well give up. He's never going to meet a woman who loves him as much as he loves himself. I'm ashamed of him.

In which I make tools, like a chimp!

Last night at work I made a little shopping list, because I am tired of trying to think of something to make whilst standing in front of the refridgerator looking hopefully for something appealing. I just got back from shopping with RA, and I've got groceries now.


When I got home from the store, Kim was home from having a Sisters Bonding Lunch with Rachel. I told her that I bought something for her, and if she unpacked the groceries she would find it, so she went right to work, putting things away. It's like a treasure hunt!



So Kim was putting things away, and I was watching, and then something laying on the counter caught my eye. It was the sign Becky sent me! Still laying on the counter, waiting to be hung displayed!


I told Rich a week or two ago that I wanted the sign to be hung in a spot on the kitchen wall where there used to be a wall phone (back in the days before cordless!), and then we both went blithely on with our lives, hoping that someone would hang the sign, but no one did.

So I looked at the phone hardware, still attached to the wall, and I thought to myself, "What would Becky do? She's a single woman who lives in a house, and if she wants something hung on the wall, she just does it herself! I need to be more like Becky!" With that brave thought, I got myself some tools:
and went to work. I unscrewed about 185 screws using the edge of the big butcher knife, until I remembered that I had seen the small screwdriver in a cup full of pencils so I rooted around until I found it. Using the small screwdriver, I removed the last couple of screws and took this hardware off of the wall!

Which left me this :I was too afraid to try trimming the wires - I could get electrocuted! Then, using the handle of the butcher knife as a hammer, I pounded this hanger into the back of the sign:

And hung it on the wall, covering the wires:

How about that! I'm amazed amazing!

Oh, and the thing I bought for Kim? It was a DVD of The Haunting that was in the sale bin near the checkout at the store. It's the original, about ghost hunters who go to investigate a reportedly haunted house! I thought she and Sando would like it, since they spend every Friday night eating pizza and watching Ghost Hunters on TV. I hope it's not too scary for them!

In which we enter the machine age.

First day of Rich's long week at BS camp and I managed to get through the day without doing dishes. How did she do that? you may wonder. Here is the secret - I didn't cook or eat at home all day! I went out with RA for lunch when I woke up, and brought back a hamburger for Kim, and then I went to the Chinese buffet with Rachel and Ash for dinner. Now I am at work, and I'll have oatmeal later, or a peanut butter sandwich.

Kim has been gone all day. She left after she ate her burger, and wasn't back when I left for work. I texted her when I got home from dinner and she said she was watching anime at Ana's because Ana's family was in Chicago all day and she was lonely. I looked around my empty house, and sighed. Irony, much?

The only company I had at my house today was when Rachel and Ash came over to get my old knitting machine. They were very excited about putting it together and using it. They took it back to their place and Ash set it up, and when we went out to dinner, they were telling me how great it was working! We went to the fabric store after dinner to buy more yarn for him to practice with, but tonight when I got to work I called Rachel and she said the knitting machine was sitting in the corner for a while. Apparently there were some problems, and Ash needs a break before he goes back to using it. Yeah, that happened to me, too, and the break has lasted about 10 years. That's how long it's been under the bed in the yarn room.

In which Rich is going back to nature.

So I just dropped Rich off at the church. He's going to Boy Scout camp for a week. Hah! Good luck on that, buddy. He packed his old backpack and gathered up the rest of his ancient equipment from his backpacking days, and he's off. They were meeting at the church and driving up to the camp together in a van.

I remember when we visited Scott on Parents Night at that same camp. We had to hike up the side of a mountain (well, what passes for a mountain in Illinois) to get to the area where our ward troop was living, and I was complaining all the way there, and hoping there would be a chopper waiting at the top to airlift me to a hospital, because I was sure I was going to need it. When I reminded Rich of that, he nodded and said it was called "Suicide Hill."

Kim and I are considering going to camp on Parents Day to visit Rich. We'll see - it's on a work night, so I might not feel like making the effort if I need a nap.

She's gone and she's wearing your red sweater

Rich is in the living room, packing his ancient backpack so he can go camping tomorrow. He's going to camp with the ward Boy Scout troop for a week! An entire week! Good thing we don't still have a dog, because you know who would have to take care of it while he's gone.

Kim was already gone when I got up today. She was out late playing video games at David's with Sando, and then she left today to go to Catsy's for the day. When I texted her to see if she got there okay (it's about an hour and a half away), she said they are in Dubuque, and she has a parfait. Everybody loves parfaits! They've got layers!