Blogging's been kind of light and lowfat lately, what with me working on a paper and, by extension, my freaking problems. Well, maybe not lowfat, what with some of those recipes. And there will be more! Not all mine, of course. Kevin made a deliceux dinner the other day: mediterranean chicken in puff pastry with new potatoes and green beans. I took pictures of him making it, but forgot to take pictures of the finished product. I'll take pictures of the finished product next time he makes it, which can't be too long bc he has extra pastry in the freezer (yes, he made the pastry himself!), and I'll post the whole thing, recipe and pictures, then.
This was one of his meals for our third Saturday dinner thing. He got some of the ingredients from the farmers' market that morning. There's a farmers' market in town on Saturdays during the summer and fall. Everything he got there was so fresh and tasty! The potatoes, the beans and the strawberries for the strawberry shortcake (I made that, but again I forgot to take pictures of the finished cake!). There's such a difference between fresh from the garden and store-bought. Having that farmers' market is such a delight.
It makes me want to plant a vegetable garden! But I have to be realistic: right now, there are zero flowers in front. I usually plant annuals, but this year so far there's nada out there. I think I'll take a page from my neighbor's book and plant perennials. Actually, I might take some cuttings from her yard and plant them in the fall. I picked out some red carpet tulips to plant in the fall, but what to do when the tulips are past and the stalks are died back? Perhaps I should intersperse a few later blooming plants among the tulips so that it doesn't look so bare when the tulips are gone. I'll have to consult Sandy next door. I also have an empty area under a tree in the front yard. I usually put annuals there, too. She also has a front yard tree and has some kind of lush leafy perennial there. I think I'll have to get some of that, too. The annual flowers don't grow well under the tree anyway; they're never quite as nice as the ones along the walk that get more sun. Funny, the two neighbors that have lived in that house while we've been here have been great gardeners.
The other thing about having a vegetable garden here is that it's 99.9999% guaranteed to be eaten by critters such as skunks, possums, raccoons, groundhogs and whatever else lurks around out there in the backyard. I'd need a fence: tall enough to discourage jumpers/climbers and dug deep enough to discourage diggers.
So anyway I just emailed the guy a draft of the first section (no, not the one paragraph introduction, sillies) of the paper. I hope it doesn't suck. That's the spirit, innit? The next section will be on Lewis's criticisms of universals and I'll start on that on Friday. Actually, I have a draft of it, but it's, shall we say, very colloquially written ('universals stink more than Lewis originally thought'). I once took a very helpful business writing seminar at which they offered one especially important piece of advice: Just start writing. Write and don't go back to edit anything. Ignore typos, redundancies, poor word choice, grammar, structure...just get the stuff you want to say down. Go back later and edit. I find that very helpful, although it's so tempting to stop and fix things, mull over word choice, etc.. Do I always do it? Noooo, but it really is good advice, honest!
Today I visit dear old Mom. I try to see her on a regular schedule of every other Thursday, although that doesn't always work out. Kevin took a day off recently and we went out to Amish country, PA to pick up a glider and ottoman brother Greg et al and we ordered for Mom. Today I'll drive it up to Mom's, unless the weather is very bad. It's in the back of Kevin's truck, which is open. It's wrapped in blankets and plastic, but it's not waterproof and I don't want to drive up if it's going to get soaked through. If that's the case, I'll just drive up in my car and bring the chair and ottoman another time. Although maybe I could fit the ottoman in my car. I drove the truck out to PA the other day bc I'd never driven it before and I wanted to have some experience driving it before doing so alone today. He's had it for maybe not quite a year, but I've never had occasion to drive it. It was a little odd driving a big truck after driving my little car, but I felt pretty at ease with it.
She usually has somewhere(s) she wants to go and, bc she doesn't drive (never learned), she saves that for when I visit. Now, she does get rides from others, but she doesn't like to burden them (surprise, surprise) so she saves non-essential trips for me and gets rides to the doctor and other appointments from my brothers. I'm not sure how she's going to do with the truck. I'm bringing a small step so I can get in the back of the truck to unload the chair. She could use that to get in the truck (bc it's kind of high) so we can go wherever she wants to go. I'll see if she's comfortable with that. Otherwise, it will have to wait until next time. If nothing else, there's always cleaning I can do while I'm there. I reckon tomorrow I'll finish the kitchen counters and cupboards and maintain what I cleaned last time.
Uh oh! Miles is taking off with a flash drive that has my paper on it! Nothing is safe around that cat. Kevin bought two large tomatoes from the market and put them on the counter only to find tooth marks all around both of them later on. Miles loves to carry stuff around in his mouth. Apparently, those tomatoes proved too big for him, but, based on the number of tooth marks, he tried for a good long time to drag them off, play with them and then lose them under furniture only to be discovered when we notice a trail of ants going to and from the offending decaying vegetation.
Just as a side note, I typically publish posts in the morning even though I may write them another day at another time. E.g., I'm writing this Wednesday evening (technically, very early Thursday morning). I stick with the morning publishing time so that it's predictable for regular readers; if there's nothing posted by 9:00 AM, there probably won't be anything posted that day. I don't know what made me think to write that, but there it is. Oh! I think it was bc I'd caught myself making a few mistakes that wouldn't be mistakes except for the fact that I post later than when I type.
Speaking of cats, tomorrow's cat blogging will be on Edison and Clomicalm, the wonderful wonder drug that stopped his inappropriate urination (i.e., peeing all over the house).
Still speaking of cats, poor Nosey is locked in the bathroom. We need to do this periodically to get a urine sample out of him to test his sugar: we leave him in there w/an almost empty litter box. That ways we know for sure that it's his urine in there. We also test it for blood and ph. He's had a tiny bit o' blood in his urine for a while now. One specialist said it's nothing to worry about, it's such a small amount. IIUC, it's not uncommon for dogs to have a little blood in their urine. We're not real comfortable just letting it be; we're trying to figure out what Nosey's freaking problem is that's causing even this small bit o' blood in his urine. The test strip we use to test for sugar also tests for blood, ph and a bunch of other things. He's had an x-ray recently that didn't show any stones. He'll probably go in for an ultrasound next. Fortunately, he does not appear to have any pain around urination.
Sometimes it seems like a cat clinic around here. Right now we have three cats on medication. Edison gets his daily life-saving Clomicalm (so called bc I was going to kill someone or something if he didn't stop peeing everywhere). Nosey gets insulin 2x/day and a vitamin B shot 1x/week. Dolly gets methimazole every day, budesonide every day, chlorambucil every third day and a vitamin B shot 3x/week. Sometimes I think I should be a vet tech. Oy.
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