Monthly Archives: April 2015

Technology Is Needy

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Pamela

I don’t even use very many programs or apps yet all my devices (said with disdain) are like puppies, whining and whimpering because I need to do something for them. WordPress is totally needy. Please update now.

Update yourself. And there’s a little widget telling me that 7 other things need to update. And then my phone has a notice because some app that I still don’t even know how to use needs to be updated. Adobe Flash – I swear that thing wants to be updated every month and it always interrupts me when I’m right in the middle of something. And remember when I updated my operating system and now I can’t get Acrobat to work right?

Technology is like everything in life, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a complete annoying pain in the butt.

So this is the garden. This is the garden with me having done nothing except bury a few withered potatoes. A lot of what you can see there is weeds and sunflower volunteers.

I’ve partially cleaned it up and will try to do it a bit more completely this weekend. I’m ambivalent about the garden this year. For sure there will be tomatoes and pumpkins. And I tidied up the raspberries but I’m not in the mood to do the rest.

I originally was going to talk about my lunch today but I was so busy at work I never got around to it. I’ve written about this before but when I bring my lunch to work I tend to bring way too much. I have a bunch of tiny plastic containers and I bring little bits of leftovers, hunks of cheese, crackers, nuts, cookies, vegetable wedges with pickles. Today I had hummus and Cheez Its. (Which I did not eat together.) I also bought a bag of those tiny tangerines and I had a bunch of those. I thought I could make this more interesting but now I’ve had a long day plus on my lunch hour I went on a big walk with a friend and now I am beat, body mind & spirit.

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Not A Fan

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Pamela

Shadow got a treat and he ate every bit except for the green thing. Silly dog.

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How Your Body Works During the Crud

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Pamela

Usually when I get sick the only thing I take is a pain reliever, if needed, and I do a dose of cough syrup before bed. Otherwise it’s tea and Fisherman’s Friend. I think Tante Irmgard introduced me to FF and it is the only cough lozenge going. Might not taste great but it works. Ricola is pretty good, too, but it’s more like candy and if I eat too many I get a stomach ache.

But my new remedy that I tried for the first time this year is Theraflu which I recommend with reservations. I bought it several months ago because I felt a little off and I was going on a trip and thought it might get me through the day if I went down hard. Luckily, we didn’t need it on the trip.

But I tried it over the weekend when I felt so awful and it was pretty good. For those of you unfamiliar, Theraflu is a powder and you add hot water. I only did a half envelope at a time. It tastes like lemonade made with Pez and battery acid and it did revive me, so recommend if you have a gruesome cold especially if you have to function out in the world. However.

First of all, I know for some people, anti-histamines make them sleepy. For me it keeps me awake. When I did the Theraflu, even early in the day, I had a hard time sleeping at night.

Second, I think it disrupted the whole having a cold process. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I took biology in high school several decades ago. Here’s how it works. When your body gets a cold all available stations get down to business producing as much snot as quickly as possible to distribute to any area remotely involved in the respiratory system.

Then you come along with your Theraflu and the body’s control center tells everyone: knock it off with the snot making. And the body is like, “What? But I like making snot, I have all the materials here to make tons and tons. I want to make snot.” But the control center says, “Hard cheese, you can just hang out and prep your station. You make snot when I say so. This is temporary.”

So all the snot making systems of the body are tense in readiness for the word they can go back to work. And there you are, thinking you are getting better and the crud will be behind you soon.

Then the Theraflu wears off, the control center hits the button telling everyone they can get back to work. Now your body catches up on the last 4-5 hours of snot making and you are flooded so quickly you’re not even sure what’s happening.

At one point I was doubled over coughing so hard I put my hands over my eyes, partly because I didn’t want my eyeballs to pop out and partly because I didn’t want to see my spleen that I’d just gorked up sitting on the floor with all the used tissues.

Cough remains. We went to the store last night and bought 6 more packets of FF and 4 boxes of tissues. Also a giant basket of food because we ate everything we had even all my emergency meals I had stashed. All we had left was garden burgers and mustard.

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Too Many Movies

Posted on April 14, 2015 by Pamela

When we go to California we take Grayback which isn’t a high traffic road. This photo (and the one on the header) were taken from lookout spot that has a picnic bench and I think some interpretive signs. I love stopping here because it’s so pretty.

On this particular trip we stopped so I could duck behind a bush.

While we were stretching and taking photos a truck passed the lookout, stopped, and started backing up.

Since I watch too many movies and write stories, I assumed they were insane murderers who had stumbled upon a couple of slow moving old people who would be easy to rob and then kick over the mountain. I looked at Bob. What I was thinking was: do we jump in the car and run for it?

Bob and I both edged closer to the car while the truck pulled in.

This is a tiny lookout spot. You could park maybe 4 cars if you were really determined.

A lady was driving and there were at least 2 other people in the car. The lady smiled and waved at me. The windows were partly tinted so then I assumed it was someone in my family who recognized our car and stopped to say hello.

We are out in the middle of nowhere and I went from murderers to relatives in 60 seconds.

Turns out it was neither. They just overshot the lookout and they wanted to stop to enjoy the view, too.

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Two Cruds is Two Too Many Cruds

Posted on April 10, 2015 by Pamela

I ended up not getting very many good flower photos this year. It seems like whenever I was home, I was sick, it was raining, or the light was poop. And now the flowers are dried up or looking a little blown out. I think the ornamental cherry tree (I don’t actually know what kind of tree it is. I’ve been told more than once and my brain refuses to save that information) had blossoms for about 3 minutes that blew away at the first puff of wind.

Speaking of sick, remember a few years ago when I explained that I didn’t understand when people said, “I was sick and then I got sick again.” I always thought: how can you get sick again?

And then I got a never-ending cough, healed for about 2 weeks and got another never-ending cough.

Obviously that had to be a fluke.

Or was it?

Wednesday night when I came home I felt a little fuzzy in my sinus which usually indicates something is coming on. I felt gross when I woke up on Thursday. I thought: I feel sick. But I can’t be sick because I had the crud last month.

And off I went to work, figuring once I got out, had some tea, got to the office I would feel better.

Nope. I decided to leave early. 4pm. 3pm. 2pm.

I take a commuter bus that runs often during rush hour but only about every 50 minutes during the day. Meanwhile, co-worker returned after three days at home with his own case of the crud. He’s one of those people who never takes off work for being sick.

People: stay away from our office.

We were walking to lunch and I realized I wasn’t hungry. I was on the 12:45 bus. I was in my pajamas and back in bed by 1:45pm. After my nap I flopped on the couch with a fever and achy joints and whimpered quietly thinking: how can this be happening? I was already sick.

Fortunately, I slept about 12 hours and feel 90% better today. No fever. No aches. Just a stuffy head.

We better be done with this.

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Shy Boy Went to Live on A Farm

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Pamela

RIP you weird cat.

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We Try Out Meals From A Box

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Pamela

I could swear I made fun of this service in a post somewhere but I can’t find it right now.

Kira gave me a week of Blue Apron for my birthday and we finally signed up for it and got our meals last Friday.

The stuff comes in a big box with cooler packs. Here is everything from the box which will make 3 meals.

Look at this adorable tiny avocado and onion.

The knick knacks are spices and little things you need to add. We had to supply salt, pepper and olive oil.

Here we are ready to go with our blackened cod and red rice salad. (Red rice is still cooking.)

It was really delicious and a recipe I would never have tracked down on my own. It exceeded our expectations. The portions are generous enough for 2 good eaters plus a little left over for 1 person to have for lunch the next day.

The other two meals were a Chicken Verjus with pearled barley that Bob made last night for his Mom. I’m going to eat the leftovers as soon as I hit the publish button on this. And tonight we’re making a Lamb Meatball stew, to have with some other dishes with Bob’s Mom.

Voila!

The menu instructions are well done and mostly easy to follow. There were a couple of steps that I thought were not explained very well but since I have experience cooking I could figure out. The “time to make” estimates were slightly delusional unless you only counted the actual cook time and not the prep.

I would say that this service is best for people who like to cook and want to learn more dishes or maybe don’t have well stocked kitchens. I would say it’s not good for people who come home tired and hungry and need to throw something together really quickly. The meals didn’t take long to make but you still have to chop, peel and brown stuff.

But fun to try. Great gift idea Kira!! Thank you.

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