Last Friday night, feeling lazy so a pizza from Pizza Hut gets ordered, pizza because they deliver. Mouth said yum! Stomach and intestines had a different opinion. Something was off, not enough for full-blown-I-think-I'm-going-to-die food poisoning but enough that little sleep was had Friday night with stomach cramps and gas. The worst of mine lasted about 24 hours so around 7:30 I knew some of my stomach was about hunger. I fixed me a couple of scrambled eggs, soft and bland, and I was feeling better. Not so Marc. He got the worst of it and was still stomachachey all day Sunday as well and not so great Monday. So yeah, food poisoning. Yay!
Then Sunday morning we got up and there was a thick line of ants coming out of a tiny little crack in the corner of an upper cabinet on the exterior wall marching down, across the inside bottom of the cabinet out and across the outside bottom of the cabinet, down the wall, and across the counter to a Corningware covered dish that had a small piece of leftover roast in it which I had taken out of the refrigerator at some point on Saturday because it had been in there too long and didn't dispose of thinking I would just take care of it today when I felt better. Well, the ants were ecstatic. Took a while to get them all swept into the sink of really hot water and then I caulked the corner of that cabinet. Take that you little bastards!
Sunday was our last bit of semi-cool mornings, tolerable days and not humid weather and I still did not get any outside work done. I did, however get more than half of the tomatoes processed for freezing, 6 cups worth. This time I did it a little differently to see if I could get better results than the watery stuff I've been getting the last couple of years. I thought I would stew them a bit before freezing but instead I removed as much of the seeds as possible and then lightly squeezed them to get the juice out then cut them up and sealed them in bags with my vacuum sealer. I got the last bunch done yesterday and did stew those just to see how the two methods compare when it comes to thawing them out and using them. Well, I thought it was the last bunch of tomatoes but the community center Hesed House has a garden and they were giving their harvest away free for the taking, donations accepted but not required so I got more tomatoes which still need to ripen some and some green beans and then when I walked the dog my neighbor Leonard who has a great garden loaded me down with a bag full of gorgeous tomatoes. So now I have more tomato sauce to make and more to cut up and freeze.
And Monday I got zilch done. Instead I let myself get drawn into two 'conversations' on FB, one about Tara Reade who I think is not credible and the other about Bernie/Biden. They started out civil enough but some people just cannot tolerate a difference of opinion or a refutation of their beliefs. They were practically insulted that I think Bernie isn't electable, too extreme, and that I think his solid core is a cult just like Trump's, “the last thing we need in office is another cult leader”, I wrote and the initial response to that statement just about proved my point. When they devolved into profanity tinged with anger from the other two participants, guess I hit a nerve, I exited, “you guys carry on”, and unfollowed the asshole and went and fixed my dinner. When will I ever learn?!?
Yesterday beside doing the tomatoes I cut back all the purple coneflowers in the front flower bed which had mostly gone by and I can see the rose bushes now, there used to be one in the middle there but it died under my care, and then gave it and other sections of the other flower beds a good watering moving the sprinkler from spot to spot every couple of hours. Actually I've been doing that pretty much every day for the past week. It's so dry here, I can't remember when we last had rain.
When I went out to take the picture above I inadvertently took a 26 picture burst and as I was moving the whole time they were all slightly different.
Today my plan is to go borrow my neighbor's chain saw and cut down those tree trunks along the fence line myself since everyone I've asked for help with this task agrees to help but none have shown up with a chainsaw and done it. I've never used a chainsaw but if my neighbor Edith can handle it, so can I.
I talked to the septic system guy Monday and he thinks he'll be getting to me next week and since only two of my son-in-law's trucks have been moved in the last month when I told them they had to go sooner rather than later I had to light a fire under his butt yesterday. Every one of those trucks/cars need to be gone by Monday or I'll get rid of them myself. My neighbor Judy has had her eye on one of them but he and the grandson hauled two of them away last night and I think that's one of the ones that got moved.
Zuckerberg is a Jewish surname of German origin meaning "sugar mountain". People with the surname include: ... Mark Zuckerberg (born 1984), American programmer and internet entrepreneur, founder of Facebook.- How he became a little Nazi is beyond me!! Drop facebook and do it now, you will be better for it, I promise!
ReplyDeleteFB is my connection to the national and international glass art community so I'm not going to drop it. also a lot of good stuff comes across my news feed. I just have to remember to not try and engage nutjobs.
DeleteOh, your zinnias! We have some but not enough. Next year I want to make sure we get some red and yellow ones. Ours, like yours, are mostly pinks and lavenders. Nice, but I want ALL the colors.
ReplyDeleteDid you let Pizza Hut know they'd poisoned you? Not that they'd probably care.
Anyone who would prefer Trump's vileness to whatever they perceive as Biden's foibles is just vile themselves.
I thought about calling PH but no we didn't.
DeleteI wish I had all colors of zinnias too, some orange and yellow and mixed in there would be nice. guess I'll have to start new seeds and see if I get some next year.
They are lucky I wasn't involved in the Facebook discussion...I would've chimed in that it's all but proven what a Russian rube Bernie and his most ardent cultists are. There's plenty to be found on the internet re THAT. ;)
ReplyDeleteI dropped FB and never looked back. I feel better and my Bp is almost normal. You would be better off finding a better place to meet friends.
ReplyDeleteThere really is no better place for the main reason I stay. I keep in touch with glass artists all over this country and other countries, see what they are doing, get technical help with problems, find out about calls to artists, etc. I've signed up for other social media sites but there are no glass groups. My BP is OK and I have no problem ignoring stuff.
DeleteFB can be toxic, I have a Closed Page but still had to dump some people whose feeds were just too toxic and annoying to tolerate, so I dumped them, won't engage with stupidity, hatred or cult followers... glad to identify them and banish them! *LOL*
ReplyDeleteI laughed at your comments about your FB encounter, but only because so much of it sounds like the kind of toxicity that develops on Twitter, where I do have a presence. I keep it primarily for weather, hurricane, and traffic information, as well as things like plant explosions, and I never post tweets myself, but it can take a whole lot of discipline to look at a trending topic and not "bite" on it. I'd rather bite on a good, ripe tomato!
ReplyDeleteSo sorry about the food poisoning. I hate that horrible feeling, knowing that things are going to be bad, and all you can do it wait.
ReplyDeleteThere is something perverse in male genes! Years ago my brother bought a 1940 jeep willys "of great value", and asked if he could work on it at the barn at the old house. He kept a current plate on it, so I could not ask the township zoning inspector to have him move it. He poured hundreds of dollars into repairs, probably thousands. The furthest it ever drove was down the hill to the end of the road. Fortunately (he was thinking ahead), he took a granddaughter with him, and the poor child walked a mile back uphill in blazing heat to convince some adult at our annual Forth of July or Labor Day that Uncle Walt needed help. Several years in I told him it had to go, as another vehicle violator in the township cited the Fiscal Officer's jeep as the reason not to get rid of his junk cars. No luck. Finally I sent him a certified letter that on the first of the next month they would be towed.It caused a family rift; all his sons went snotty ballistic. No one wanted the jeep, though. I told him I would pay for towing to a place of his choice, but his back remained turned. The jeep was towed away to a storage facility, and was there when he died. All the sons but one wanted the great inheritance of the sale of the jeep. Eventually my nephew said if he heard another word, the title and the keys would be left on the front seat and he would stop paying rent on the storage unit. I just love family adventures. Except the ones that cost you a family.
ReplyDeleteJealous of all your zinnias. Do you plant from seed or have they reseeded from last year.
ReplyDeleteI did get a few, and I mean like 4 or 5 volunteers. I collected spent flower heads at the end of their blooming last year, broke them all up, and just scattered the mess on a newly weeded section of flower bed in March maybe. got better results from when I plant seeds in starter trays and then transplant.
DeleteNice zinnias! And needless to say, hope the chainsawing goes OK! These days I stay away from Facebook conversations about politics, and I'm not even on Twitter, so my blood pressure tends to stay pretty low. I didn't think Bernie was electable either, but I wish I felt more enthusiastic about Biden. Still, God knows he'd be a million times better than Trump. We've finally had a couple days of rain here. Woo hoo!
ReplyDeleteI hope the chain saw event had a better outcome than the pizza event.
ReplyDeleteI just chuck all the sort of chopped tomatoes in a large cast iron pan, add some salt and olive oil and simmer low, with lid on, until it's all fairly mushy, blend the lot with a blender stick in the pot and freeze in portions. That way we can add whatever herbs or spices we want when we use them. I only do this with the last lot when I am too fed up with being proper cook.
I'll jump on the zinnia bandwagon - lovely! And I'm hoping the Great Chainsaw Escapade was successful!
ReplyDelete