Summertime life in our back yard

Variegated fritillary (euptoieta claudia) on Indian Blanket

 

Assorted past

No, thanks.

 

In whole or in part

"Apart from the Chrysler brand", but a part of the Chrysler Corporation.

 

Our Day

A slow start on a cloudy but dry Thursday.  We ate breakfast and finished Spelling Bee, and I completed the Immaculate Grid with a decent score.  Then she played other games and looked over the day's news while I went outside and saw a bumblebee on a marigold blossom.  

Back inside, I sat in the rocker-recliner until a nap sneaked up on me.  After reawakening, I got dressed and we drove to the shopping district to look for drapes for the living room.  Nothing PG wanted at Lowe's, but At Home had a dark gold model with a brownish-red pattern that she liked.  

From At Home, to Crazy Cones for soft-serve.  From there to a car wash where washes are half-price ($5) on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons.  

We got home and I put up the drapes after taking down the prior drapes and their hardware.  Also caulked the screw holes.  Tomorrow, sand the caulked areas and paint over them to match the beige wall. 

No walking around the block this evening.  I had a Good Cat on my lap.  

Another half-speed run-through of Rikki, reaching measure 30.  Starting to feel like this is doable.

This is how it was planned to go

I get up around 8:00, go downstairs,

Pour a bowl of cereal, a half-glass of juice and fill it the rest of the way with seltzer,

I do not reach for any pills.  All I have is baby aspirin and sertraline, and these days I don't feel like I need either.

I finish off Spelling Bee and begin Immaculate Grid

I check the Politics list within Xitter

I put my dishes in the dishwasher and take the iPad into the family room, and sit down on the recliner

If I'm lucky, my cat will come over and lie down on my lap

I can continue getting news from Xitter

I can read another chapter of 1776 or another day or two of The Long Season

I can put in the earbuds and listen to the machine voiceover while reading a story from Le Monde.

I can skim the headlines in the Times, Post, and Google News

From time to time, I check Facebook and Slack for news about the foster kittens.  If any, I screen shot the page or copy and paste the relevant text into a NoteTab .txt file, then save it into that month's subfolder in Dropbox.  If there are photos, I make a copy and save them into the same subfolder.  (This feels more important than the rest of the actions.  Those other actions are for my own amusement, but the Kitten Fund is the closest thing I have now to a job.)

Later, I take a walk around the neighborhood, and to keep my mind busy, I put on a podcast or count the rabbits.  

I look over the current lesson in Drumeo and work out the sticking (Today, single paradiddles)

I pull out the four printed pages of the drum part for Rikki and work out the sticking for a few more measures.  (Today, the first four bars of the first chorus.)

As of early June 27, this is how I envisioned retirement.  Then came the Biden-Trump debate and the overwhelming dread it produced.  Then came the first Monday after leaving my job, and the suffocating grief it produced. 

I collected the WFH gear and stuffed it into a provided box, and took it to the nearest FedEx store to return it.  

We had a contractor in for a week, which threw everything off for humans and cats alike.

Then someone shot at Trump.

Then my Welcome to Medicare visit, with an abnormal EKG.

Then my 68th birthday, and a day later, my wife's birthday.  That shook me, too.

Then there was a letter from my former employer that didn't make sense, so I drafted a response to mail back the following Monday morning.

Then the plastic line from the cold water pipe in the basement to the refrigerator upstairs split and sprayed water on possessions that need to be kept dry.  I felt better about my state of mind while solving the immediate problems:  put a bucket under the drip coming from up above the sink; find the squeegee and move the water on the floor over to a drain; find the leak and turn the saddle valve from On to Off, only for nothing to change, so I folded over the plastic line and duct-taped it in place to stop the flow. Just in case, I put a large plastic box under the sealed line and tied the line to the stepladder so it wouldn't thrash around if it did come loose.

The immediate crisis was past, and then I phoned the plumber.

He recommended replacing the plastic line with one made of copper, and replaced the useless saddle valve with one made by SharkBite.  As long as he was here, I asked him to replace the other saddle valve that was controlling water for the HVAC humidifier, and replace the pipe where rubber-lined clamps covered the pinholes made by past saddle valves.  In a couple of hours, everything was fixed, and I felt better about the plumbing in the basement.  I shouldn't have to deal with that kind of problem again.  Cost?  We could afford it.  

Then I contacted the internet provider/cable/phone company to try to get them to reduce the monthly bill, which has risen sharply since the previous reduction.  Not only did I get minimal sympathy, the reduction (such as it was) corresponded with the sympathy.  

Then Biden dropped out.

Then a spring fell off under the rocker-recliner and I had to play chair repair.

All that in less than a month.  PG gave me all the loving support she could.  I walked more, ate less, took sertraline.  By the end of July, I'd gone from 229 to 225.  

Then things got better.  I kept walking and drumming, but ate more and stopped sertraline.  My state of mind was much improved, but by this morning, I'd gone back up to 232, which wasn't planned.

But now that I'm over the shocks of 2024 presidential politics and the adjustment to being without a paying job, the framework I'd planned prior to retirement is holding firm.  I volunteer, doing things to help cats, I learn more about a foreign language, and I learn how to play a musical instrument.  Repeat as long as the household's health holds out.

Our day

The usual games (Spelling Bee, Wordscapes, Immaculate Grid)

PG put the rabbit tchotchkes back in the living room display case

I gathered the fallen tree branches and limbs and took them to the township yard waste facility

On the way home, saw three deer in a bean field, stopped and took pictures

I caulked a gap under the front door where tiny ants were getting inside

PG smoothed out an area where the floor installers had cracked, then caulked, the side of a kitchen cabinet

Supper from Cactus Blue, dessert was homemade chocolate pudding.  Drove by the newly opened Cane's near the house, but the drive-through line stretched out past the parking lot and onto the street.  

The hot weather and the subsequent tropical depression have passed, so I can walk in the evenings again.  Plenty of rabbits out and about near sundown.  

We've had the current washer-dryer setup for more than a decade, but only now am I learning that the time on the timer can change according to the humidity the dryer senses.  Put it on auto dry, normal, and maybe 40 minutes will appear.  But if it's a small load of things that aren't sopping wet, and that 40 will jump down to 15, then to 5, as it did today while I watched.  It's no spring chicken, but at least it's still working 100% for now.  I'm not looking forward to spending money on a new setup.  

Back to the present:  to access the drain hole in the freezer, I removed a couple of hex nuts and bent back the cover.  The ratchet removed the nuts, but wasn't working well to re-insert them afterward.  I knew we had a nut-driver kit someplace, but couldn't find it in the basement or the garage.  I almost ordered a new one before remembering I'd used it upstairs on my PC and had left it with the SSD sticks and spare parts.  Having the right tool made the freezer panel a two-minute job.

A new friend

Here's Lilith, who PG and I met today at our doctor's office.  She was shy at first, but accepted all the loving we could give her.

Temporary replacement cat bed

Some months ago, Pat bought a cat bed for Good Queen Swirly. After adding our scent to it, we placed it behind a chair in the family room, and she took to it immediately.

But recently, another cat marked the bed and the floor beneath it, and Swirly won't go back there anymore. We washed the bed and floor and used Nature's Miracle, to no avail.

I laid a fleece blanket on top of the table next to my recliner, and after a day or two she began using that as a replacement. That'll work for now.

We can always get another cat bed for Swirly, but she won't even go behind the chair despite our treatment. We're kind of stuck for an answer.