Filed under: Dewicate feewings, Disease and infirmity, dogs!, family, He'p meh He'p meh Oh Lawzy He'p meh, home and hearth, I feel so smart! | Tags: solving personal problems
I’m getting a new fridge. I’ve never had a side-by-side before. Never had an icemaker, either. Now I’m getting both! I’m so fancy! They’re supposed to show up late morning. I am happy that Will will be here, because I have have issues with being a woman alone at home and men-types showing up and coming inside. Call me old fashioned but there it is. Will said he’ll stand in the kitchen with my 14 inch butcher knife and growl at them.
Poor Puppy Rusty/ That Little Shit has a solution. He has had to wear a Cone of Shame because he’d gnaw on the cast on his leg. However, TCoS is awkward and makes it difficult for him to get a drink unless the water bucket is completely full. Also, he likes to sleep on the bed, and has inexplicably decided the best way to sleep is to snuggle up next to Terry. Which is difficult whilst wearing TCoS. So, last night while I was laying on my back, wide awake (about 3am) I decided what he needed was a sock to cover his splint, something tough. Denim. I have many scraps of denim. So, this morning (feeling smug at my ability to come up with a solution) I made a well fitting denim sleeve-sock that covers the splint and he cannot pull it off or chew through it. go me! And he is MUCH happier at being out of the Cone of Shame.
I was wide awake at 3am because 2 minutes earlier, I tried to turn over and heard a *CRUNCH* in my upper back, right between the shoulders. I saw white, felt nauseous, and decided the best thing to do was lay there and not move at all. Then I thought about solutions to various small problems and came up with the denim sock concept.
David, bless his heart, didn’t have a class until 9, and took #4 to school for me, while I sat in the recliner, sipping coffee and waiting for the motrin to start working. With a heating pad on my back that feels like Jesus might be giving me a back rub. Will has agreed to pick #4 up at 3. Good men, they are.
There’s a hutch in the kitchen It had to be moved over a couple of inches to make room for the new fridge, which is 2-1/2 inches wider than the old one. It holds lots of stuff. Yesterday Terry instructed me to empty it then have the boys pick it up and move it over, as the legs wouldn’t hold up to sliding over. So I emptied it, then decided I didn’t want to wait for the boys to be available to move it, and moved it myself. Which broke on of the back legs. Way to go, Rootie, see what happens when you disobey someone who nearly always knows what he’s talking about? So, today I am going to empty it again (with the boys help) and have them carry the hutch outside, and see about repairing the broken foot. I do not want my disobedience to mean lost fun time for Terry. Sorry, hon…you were right.
Filed under: *eep!, *whinge*, Dewicate feewings | Tags: Coping mechanisms, perspective, refrigerators
Yesterday, I noticed that the ice in the freezer wasn’t ice. Uh oh…I thought. The freezer’s on the fritz. Terry spent time cleaning the coils and doing his magic man-thing to it…but still no ice, just trays of water. However, the air in thair was nice and cold so…no problem, maybe it’s just 38 degrees or something. I took the (still mostly frozen) stuff and put it in the big freezer. most of it, anyway. Just the important stuff.
However…this morning the inside of the fridge was definitely warmer than it should have been. So we got to number crunching, and determined that it would be actually the same price to purchase a new fridge than the spend all that on service calls and new parts and not to mention the time spent waiting for the inevitable out-of-stock issue that requires another service call so oh heck, go price fridges at Lowe’s and see what you can find, said Terry.
While talking on the hone with Terry, discussing all this, my phone died. No chirp, no warning at all of the possibility of battery run-outage. Just a little blip sounds and it turned itself off.
and the engine malfunction light is on in my car. I do know why, and it’s an easy enough fix,once I can remember to tell Terry.
and the leaves are falling off the peach tree and I have no idea why.
and #4 is failing 2 of his classes, which might mean Summer School if he doesn’t bring those grades up in the next 3 weeks. Ugh.
HOWEVER…as ridiculous as all that is…I am remembering PERSPECTIVE.
In my immediate family:
No one has died.
No one is seriously ill.
No one is pregnant. (well, I mean, no one’s girlfriend is pregnant, as far as I know. If she is,please give us a few days before informing us)
No one is in jail.
So, in the grand scheme of things…really everything is pretty good.
However, number crunching also reveals that the purchase of a new fridge means no vacation this Summer. That’s ok. The beach is a 1 hour drive, so maybe we’ll do a couple of day trips and I’ll make lots of barbeque.
My Poor Puppy Rusty, (that’s his name now, to be referred to as “PPR)…he has a broken foot. 3 metatarsals in his front left foot, with nice clean breaks, not displaced (thank goodness, that would have required surgery and pins). The vet showed me the xray, and said he’d put a splint on it. It’s a neat little cup thing that fits over his foot and up the back of his leg, held in place with purple-with-blue-spots bandages. He got a doggie valium for the splinting, and was grooving on it when I picked him up.
“What? No Auburn logo bandage?” I exclaimed.
::blink:: he responded, and quietly pointed to the University of Georgia Veterinary degree hanging on the wall.
“oh well,” I said. “Nobody’s perfect.”
He turned to his office manager and said “Please give this client the Auburn University Special Price.”
“Yessir, Dr. Gary!” she chirped.
Turning to me she said “That’s $260, but with the AU Price, you only have to pay $800, half now and half in 2 weeks!”
I turned to Dr. Gary and said “You know, my father taught at the UGA Vet school for 9 years.”
He said “Why didn’t you say so?” and told his office manager “UGA prices please!”
She rolled her eyes at both of us and said “That’s $190, payable over 4 months, and you get a free packet of Dawg Biskits”
Poor Puppy Rusty is now in the dog bed,gnawing on a chunk of leg bone, The other dogs are perched around him, like a trio of vultures, waiting for him to choke on the bone so one of them can grab it.
PPR is a Flea Magnet. That is a special type of dog that, for some reason, fleas are more attracted to than typical. Since we got him, there have been very few fleas on the other dogs (even without the normal weekly shampoo or dip) and he requires a bath every other day, and is STILL covered up with the a few hours later. I mean, really, 100 fleas on this poor thing. So, I figured he needed something more effective. Dr Gary put him on Comfortis, kind of pricey for 4 dogs (at $18 a month per dog), but he felt like, given PPR’s body chemistry, maybe just putting him on it would work. He’ll keep them off the other dogs, and when the fleas get on him they die. So, 4 hours after giving him the tablet (once a month like heartworm stuff), I checked him over and found some fleas…BUT…they were all DEAD! Awesome 
The Next Day
He shall now be known as That Little Shit (or TLS).
You see, the veterinarian, Dr. Gary, prescribed TLS some pain pills. Nothing strong, he assured me, just something to help, an NSAID, like Doggie Motrin (dogs can’t take real Motrin, it will shut their kidneys down).
“Give him some at bedtime, it will help him sleep comfortably”
phphpht. Give him some at bedtime. It will help him sleep comfortably. My aunt’s ass.
Rusty, That Little Shit. I gave him the pill and he seemed to start seeing things. He was laying on the bed, then sat straight up and was looking around, really alert, like he was following a fly through the air. I didn’t see a fly. Then he started wiffling at the fly.
I decided ok, maybe if I turned out the light he wouldn’t see anything.
So I did, and he laid down, continuing to wiffle.
Eventually he settled down and (I thought) went to sleep.
This was 11 pm. Later than my normal bedtime of 9pm, but hey, I was gonna get to sleep in the next morning!
Ha.
At 1am, he started barking softly and hopping around on the bed.
Great, I thought. He has to use the feckin’ bathroom. I put him on the pee pad, conveniently located in our bathroom. He ran to the door and tried to crawl under it.
Great, I thought. Suddenly he’s developed manners and only wants to pee outside. So I took him downstairs, across the house, and outside. He hopped around the patio, located a golf ball and brought it to me.
He wants to play fetch. At 1am. That little shit.
I said O Hell NO, and took him back to bed.
He laid down and appeared to go to sleep.
2:30am, same thing.
4:20am. Same thing. This time I have the bright idea to get the other dogs out of their crates, to keep him company. I do this, give them all some food, and open the door so they can go outside if they want to.
They don’t want to.
They (all 4 of them) crowd at the bottom of the stairs (there’s a gate there to keep them from coming up) and yodel their disapproval at my absence.
Finally, at 5:15, I came downstairs with a pillow, and got in the recliner to sleep, and slept undisturbed until 9:30. I woke up to find TLS attempting to remove his cast, so was able to get some deep and somewhat sadistic pleasure at snapping The Cone of Shame around his neck. I am also contemplating his lovely curly buff colored fur coat, and how nice it would look as a collar on a tweed cloak.
Granted, I am a Culinary Adventurer. I’ll try most anything, if someone else is paying for it. Even with my last post about being change resistant, I do love to try new food. I am not, however, one of these people wearing black linen and a thumb ring, tkaing tiny tastes of various things and comparing them to other, better things from different restaurants. The fried pickles at Cock of the Walk are so completely different from the fried pickles at Zaxby’s, but both are delicious. Yes. I like the gnocchi soup at Olive Garden. I LOVE the tuna tartar at Emma’s, and the tuna salad at Walker’s Pharmacy and the tuna casserole at Ruth’s.
and
I like American cheeze. I like Pillsbury crescent rolls from a can. And orange sweet rolls from a can. And margarine on white bread with a sprinkle of sugar. And Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. And strawberry Poptarts (without the frosting, and toasted). I like chicken noodle soup from a can, and I LOVE creamy generic brand peanut butter with it’s slightly scorched taste, spread on cheap saltine crackers and eaten in bed while watching a 1970′s horror movie starring Christopher Lee as a heretic priest.
and
I like massaman curry from Zab-E-Lee, the dim sum and congee from The Oriental Pearl in Chamblee, and the jellyfishsalad from that Japanese place in that midtown mall in Atlanta. The name escapes me but it was delicious (and I thought, also corageous coerageo oh heck…brave)
I’ve eaten salted fried grasshoppers (taste like popcorn but twice as crunchy), unidentifiable vegetables in an equally mysterious sauce in a country of which I was not a citizen, and drank something from a bottle labeled YamYam.
I am not afraid of trying new foods. Elk sausage (wow…delicious), wild pig (as long as it’s properly cooked), some colorful fish recently pulled out of the ocean, rock lobsters, crawdads, and even once…possum. Not the cute Australian possum, but the overgrown grey and black rat cousin foul garbage eating possums of the Deep South. Never again. Afterward it occurred to me that one should never eat something that buzzards refuse to eat. Bleh.
I love food. But the term “foodie” has become kind of…i don’t know…overused and even somewhat derogatory. I am not a hipster. I am not a snarky New Yorker with a thumb ring and overdeveloped sense of entitlement (Looking at YOU, Anthony Bourdain). I like to think of myself more like Andrew Zimmern, only…not as adventurous as that. I prefer my animal-based foods to be cooked, due to an ingrained fear of parasites. Mr. Zimmern is a nice man, someone I’d love to have in my kitchen. Mr. Bourdain would make me nervous, then cranky, then irritated and I’d want to put alum in his fermented YamYam juice.
Maybe I am indiscriminate, with my love of Pillsbury products and Kraft foods and General Mills. Maybe I’m just comfortable enough to be able to admit it, that crap foods taste good. There’s a reason why they’ve stayed in business for so long. And while I bake my own breads and make my own salad dressing and grow many of my own vegetables, I don’t do these things out of a sense of superiority (Look at my bread,I’m better than you because my kid’s school sandwich is homemade bread, homemade mixed nut butter, and plum jelly from the tree in the backyard!), I do it because I can, I enjoy it, and it is satisfying. The other mothers, the ones who throw a store bought Lunchables in their kids backpacks, they do other things,far better than I do.
Filed under: Dewicate feewings
As a child and young adult, I thrived on exciting times. Going places, moving, doing something new, I loved that stuff! I’d get excited about some new music, or a change in the fashions, or an opportunity to spend time somewhere I’d never been before.
Now? I’ve become one of those old people who orders the same thing off the menu every time. Depending on the restaurant, of course. At Emma’s, it’s the tuna tartar….kind of an adventurous thing, but their’s is so delicious that even when there’s shrimp and grits or perfect ribeye, I get the tuna. At Coconut- it’s the massaman curry. Last time I ate there I got courageous and ordered the pineapple fried rice, which was fabulous,but gave me a stomach ache that wouldn’t go away for 2 days. I think I’ll stick with the curry from now on.
I like to go places I’ve been before. Dillard, Ga and the mile long stretch of antique shops, Tybee Island and the empty beach. I don’t even like to change veterinarians. I tried that not long ago and didn’t like it, so back to the old one we go.
Our medical insurance changed recently. No one asked me if I was ok with that, which I thought was rude. Now I am having issues with the pharmacy. The one I’ve used for the past 7 years won’t accept our new insurance so I HAVE TO CHANGE. Ugh. And one of the pills I take has changed color…which makes me nervous. WHAT IF IT DOESN’T WORK RIGHT? It says it’s what it is supposed to be, but the color is all wrong and that is…change. Which I don’t like.
Every now and then my clothes wear out, and it’s time to get some new ones. I hate that. Different clothes?? WHAT?? The good news is now I’m back to sewing everything, so I know I can get what I want, instead of having to hope that the store will have what I like, which they never do. My style sensibilities come straight out of Quaker Times circa 1960. Or Nuns Gone Wild, or something. Pretty conservative, I tell you what.
The thing is, when I find something I like, I see no reason to change it. I remember being the age of my children, and how my parents had that same sensibility. We’d go eat at Manuel’s and every time…every single time…Dad would order the enchiladas. “I like enchiladas.” he’d say. Dad! Try this burrito! The chimichanga is amazing! “No. I like enchiladas.” and that would make me nuts. But now, I am just the same. We go to El Sombrero, and I order the tacos. I like their tacos. They’re delicious. Sometimes I get a margarita, if Terry’s driving. I like my mid-calf length a-line skirt and cotton blouse with the peter-pan collar. It suits me. I am not interested in looking like a circus tent or a birthday cake, which is what happens when someone my size wears the clothes that are stylish right now. And if someone mistakes me for a Quaker Nun, I’m ok with that too. I have yet to see a nun with cobalt blue toenails, but who’s to say it hasn’t happened?
The closest I come to being adventurous is when we go to The Dekalb Farmer’s Market, and I get lost in the cheese department. Our modus operandus while there is to get the cheeses we know we love, and one more that we’ve never tried. Just one small wedge, not much of an investment in case it’s nasty. I don’t mind spending $2 on something risky like that. (that is why I dislike going to the theater for movies. what if I hate the movie??) I’ve met many delicious cheeses that way- Sage Derby, Harlech Somerdale, Wensleydale..and so on. Rocinante, O yum. It’s easier to be adventurous with food if it’s a small initial investment. It is why I am iffy at restaurants. They’re expensive and I don’t want to spend money on something I might not like.
does that make me old and crotchety? Have I turned into my parents? probably. but I’ll leave the adventure and excitement to the next generation. I am ok with that. I don’t resent, regret, or miss it.
Edited to add:
We went out to eat this evening, to the local Thai restaurant. When we sat down and the waitress was taking our order, she pointed to me and said “massaman curry with chicken, right?” I tried to be a little offended, but she was right. That’s what I ordered.
and for your enjoyment, the latest rose that’s blooming:
Golden Celebration- the flower is 6 inches across!
Filed under: Uncategorized
Lovely things are blooming in the House of Rootie…well ok, they aren’t blooming IN the house, but rather on the patio and in the garden, but House of Rootie also includes Property of Rootie…ok of Rootie’s Husband but Also Rootie because I think my name’s on the deed too…oh heck you know what I mean.
Honey Perfume, Golden Celebration, and Comte du Champagne roses
Some kind of antique Noisette rose with a shady history. Mom got a cutting from someone who stole a cutting off one she found in a very old cemetery.
Lady Emma Hamilton, a lovely small shrub that does well in a pot on the patio. David Austin Roses
Egyptian Irises. Very cold sensitive, but do well up next to the house. The flowers only last 1 day, but it blooms profusely for a couple of weeks.
Filed under: church, food, God Stuff, Holidays!, home and hearth | Tags: Easter
I don’t really do a Thing for Easter. The house is not decorated, there are not baskets of candy and stuff for the kids, and I don’t bake a ham or fix a fancy dinner of any sort.
It’s not that I don’t get excited about all that, but…honestly? I celebrate Jesus’s resurrection every Sunday, and doubly so on Communion Sunday (first of the month)…so…no, notsomuch with the annual thing.
All the eggs and bunnies and chicks and pastels and chocolate in the world don’t mean a thing about the Resurrection, to me anyway. And since I am the one in the house to whom all the work of baskets and hams would fall, nope. I am not even sure what we’re going to have for dinner today. I don’t typically cook on Sunday AT ALL, but there is still some sort of cultural pull telling me I am supposed to fix dinner today, since it’s Easter and all. Maybe I’ll make some deviled eggs. We all like those.
The only thing I did, as a bow toward Easter Cultural Mandates, is make a new dress. I needed one anyway, and Terry found this really pretty coral colored linen, and I have a pattern I’ve used a couple of times, for a dress that fits nice and suits my style. And I bought new shoes to go with it. So now I have a new dress. However, it might require wearing some form of pantyhose or stockings, and…no. Also, my ankles are a mess from chiggers gotten at Mom’s. I am incapable of not scratching and now the ankles look a bit like the dachshunds have been gnawing on them. Maybe I can pretend the scratches are some sort of art-nouveau tattoo. Maybe I’ll wear a humongous rose in my hair, so people will notice that, instead of the ankle mess.
Anyway, Easter. Yep. I like it. I like the hymns we sing this day, I like seeing the women in church wearing their new stuff and the little girls who all look like peonies with their puffy skirts and multiple petticoats. They never dress like this any other Sunday, but Easter Sunday brings out the Victorian Stylist in women with daughters.
And about hams…I’ve never understood why we Protestants bake hams for Easter. The books of Acts, and Peter’s vision that released us all from the mandate of Kosher cooking didn’t happen until a while after the Resurrection, so it always seems a little inconsistent and odd that we would bake a ham to celebrate the resurrection of a Rabbi. Lamb seems more appropriate (given that Easter falls with Passover). I don’t particularly care for lamb. I don’t like any sort of baby animal. Not out of preciousness or softheartedness, but baby meat (lamb, veal, suckling pig) tastes weak to me, and if I’m going through the effort of fixing an expensive cut, I want it to taste like something more oomphy than milk.
The school Eli goes to has a Seder right before Spring Break (which coincides with Passover/Easter Week), and after the Seder they serve fried chicken and mac&cheese. Maybe that’s what we’ll have, assuming Bi-Lo is open today. Which is not a safe assumption. Walmart will probably be open but I don’t like their fried chicken and they are inevitably out of it when we get there after church. Pastor Barnes tends to go longer than typical with his sermons, so we don’t get out until after 12:30. His statement on the matter is “I’m going to preach until I’ve said all I say, not until the clock says 11:55.” Which is fine with me.
So anyway, today I will celebrate Christ’s Resurrection as I do every Sunday. I’m glad He did it. I’m overjoyed that God decided the best way for us to be able to relate to Him was to come to Earth as a man, and live among us for 33 years, and experience our frustrations and all the nonsense that comes from being human. It’s a comfort to know that God knows what it’s like.
Happy Day!!
