Still More Cleaning Out

Hallelujah, my room is my own again!!  Mostly, anyway.  There's a box of Christmas wrapping paper that needs a new container.  Did you ever try to find a wrapping paper container in the middle of July?  You'd think there would be some plain ones for birthday and anniversary and graduation wrapping paper.  And I'm not being fussy.  There are all types of storage/organizers.  I'll take whatever I find first.

I'll probably have to go to WalMart, where I'll walk about three miles to find storage boxes for wrapping paper. *sigh*  There are also a couple of empty boxes in my room.  And one box of give-away.  And a bag of yarn for one of my pals who still crochets.  But, it's a lot better than before I got my closet done.

The cats helped, of course.  I used good ol' Spic & Span to wash the floor and walls.  Chloe walked in just as I was starting, didn't find anything to sit on, so she left.  I worked my way from back to front.  Bebe sat behind me the entire time.  Once, I accidentally bopped her in the face with my foot when I was scooting backward.  When I was done, and sat back to survey the closet, Be walked in front of me.  Boy, did her nose wrinkle!  I guess cats don't like the smell of Spic & Span.  I like it.  That smell says "clean" to me.  It says "The Tough Job Cleaner" and my closet was one of the toughest!  Of course, the fact that my dad left three boxes of it in the utility cabinet helped me to choose it.

Moving on, I sorted through the scrapbook stuff again, to make sure I had pulled all the photos out of the boxes.  I also repacked the stuff into cardboard boxes.  I had two big Rubbermaid containers and a huge Sterlite container left empty.  The Rubbermaid containers were promptly filled with the photos and photo albums.  I'm saving the huge Sterlite container for when I start working in the shed out back.  I'll tackle the shed once this scorching weather breaks.  As it looks now, probably in January.

In the meantime, I started on the downstairs back bedroom closet.  There are more pictures in there.  Some Christmas decorations, too.  The majority of the stuff is from when my mom used to make dolls.  Well, the doll outfits, actually.  She would crochet these fancy historical dresses for the dolls.  So far, I've pulled out one huge box of doll paraphernalia.  This consisted of, among other things, naked dolls, satin roses, parasols, shoes, ribbons, buttons, stockings, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera (that always reminds me of Yul Brynner in the King and I).  And a smallish box of office supplies.  I sorted through the stuff, filling a kitchen garbage can with things like dried up pens, Post-it notes with no sticky left, dried up rubber bands, old file labels from files long gone, dolls socks with no mate (just like us real people) and unraveled satin roses.

Since I was downstairs with this stuff, guess who was helping me?  Got in one!  Of course it was Tabitha.  She stole roses (about a half inch diameter) and paper clips with reckless abandon.  She very nearly upset a container of jingle bells.  Thank God I caught it in time.  Do you know what it's like to step on those suckers?  Yeah, BIG OUCH.  Worse than Lego's, and I've stepped on more than my share of those, too.  I'm still picking up paper clips, though.  And I found a little rose in my shoe today.  I like to think of it as a gift from my Sweetling.  In all likelihood, she was hiding it from the other cats!

So time marches on and I stumble along with it.  The smaller box of office supplies sits on the living room floor because I don't know where to store it just yet.  The huge cardboard box rests, empty, along side its littler cousin, waiting for me to find a lid that matches it.  In the meantime, Tabitha and Khai use the big box to play in.

Hey, when life gives you lemons, you can squeeze them into your cleaning solution!

If I Knew Then What I Know Now . . .

. . . it probably wouldn't have been as much fun!

I realized yesterday that it's been two years since I started writing my book.  That's a long time when I think how some authors put out at least a book a year, sometimes more.  Of course, those are established authors.  I'm a newbie and it takes us longer.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Well, maybe not such a newbie.  I've been writing my whole life.  I wrote some great fiction when I was in high school.  A good friend reminded me of that today.  Senior year, typing class.  I was a good typist.  I probably could've been a great typist.  I always finished my assignments quickly and accurately.  Then I used the remaining class period to type, uh, hmmm.  Sheesh, I don't know what to call it.  Scenes, I guess.  Just quickly dashed off descriptions of what my fruitful, 17-year-old, hormone-driven mind brought forth.

I shared desk space with two other girls.  One of my bff's and a Junior girl, who both shall, for now, remain nameless.  Seating was arranged so that we were at right angles to each other in our groups.  I had another bff in the class, but she got stuck at another group.  Oh, what she missed out on!

⇦ An IBM Selectric Typewriter--I think this is what I learned to type on.  Something like it anyway.

Although I was only marginally experienced in physical intimacy, that didn't stop my extremely active imagination from conjuring up scenes that'd make a 'ho blush.  I cannot believe that our instructor had no clue what was going on in our little group.  The laughter that was barely stifled, the reddened faces and, sometimes, the tears of hilarity streaming down our cheeks, were often disruptive to students at other groupings.  That poor Junior didn't know what to make of me and my bff.  We shared with her, of course, but sometimes she pretended to ignore us.  Looking back, I think Mr. B__ got ahold of some of those descriptions and was either: A. too embarrassed to tell us to stop, or B. too turned on (yecch!) to tell us to stop.

My bff kept some of those papers, but lost track of them somewhere along the way.  That's probably a good thing.  But part of me would like to read them again.  Not for their porn value, (well, mostly not) but because they made people feel something.  No, not like that!  Get your mind out of the gutter!  I mean the humor and embarrassment and curiosity.  Even shock.  (I seemed like such a sweet girl--still waters and all that!)

So I want to find that young girl inside me again.  I want to incorporate her style into my writing--within reason.  I'm not out to sell erotica here.  And I already did a posting on not describing any hanky-panky in my book.  I couldn't do justice to it anyway.  It's been an awfully long time . . .  Whoops, digression and TMI!

Maybe if I posted sections of my book as I go along, it would keep it moving.  Especially if I thought you were looking forward to it.  No need to disabuse me of that thought.  Let me have my dreams.  Remember that old Everly Brothers song?  ♫ Only trouble is, gee whiz, I'm dreamin' my life away.♪

All Creatures Great and Small: Part II

We have another "small creatures" plague.  This time, it's not ants.  It's not even *shudder* spiders.  Shhh, don't say that out loud--they might hear you!  This time, thank you God, the problem is outside.  Right outside the door to the backyard, in fact.


You need to understand the background here.  About 17 years ago, my sister gave my mother a purebred Dachshund puppy.  My sister didn't pay much for him because Oliver was, um, slightly irregular.  He had reverted front leg paw joints.  It made him look like he was walking on his elbows.  Anyway, he was tiny and cute and needed to be housetrained.  Which meant he needed to do his business outside.  Since he was awfully tiny and had that sad-eyed, hound-dog look, my father built an extended overhang over the door to the backyard.  To protect him, you see, from rain and snow.  [insert eye roll here]


Oliver went to the Great Fire Hydrant about three or four years ago.  This stupid-looking overhang is still there.  So I told my mom it needed to come down.  It was ugly and it blocked the sun which kept that portion of the patio from drying thoroughly, which, in turn, allowed moss and mold to flourish there, unless I spray a bleach solution on it every couple of months, which then causes my asthma to kick in and makes me cough and wheeze.  Well, the mold sets off my asthma, too, so either way, it needs to come down.  My mother looked stricken when I said this.  Not only was it something my father built, but it reminded her of Oliver.  [eye roll]


I grew up with bees and wasps in our area.  I was never stung, but my sister was.  Of course, she had stepped on the stupid thing getting out of a pool, so I can't say they were attracted to her.  We had a German Shepherd that liked to catch flies and eat them.  One time, she caught a bee instead.  Poor dog's face swelled up.  She never caught another bee, though!  No, I am not digressing here, there is a connection if you just be patient.

A few years back I bought an umbrella for our patio table.  The second year I had it, wasps built a nest inside it during the early part of Spring.  After I sprayed it and hosed it down, I had it up so it could dry.  A sudden thunder storm broke the umbrella, so that was the end of that.  But not the end of the wasps.  This must be the type of wasp we had! --> 


Three years ago I notice a wasps nest on the underside of the overhang.  I took one of the four or five cans of spray still left and sprayed it.  End of story--for that year.


Last summer I notice a couple of wasps nests.  More spray.  But they came back!  They built in another spot, of course, but I must have sprayed five or six nests, total.


So this Spring, I'm watching that [expletive deleted] overhang and trying to convince my mother to let me tear it down.  I sprayed a nest in April.  I sprayed three nests in May.  Another two were dispatched in June.  Now, in July, I've already shut down seven.  And we're only half-way through the month.  And I'm all out of wasp spray and have nine days to go before payday.  And I know there are more.  I saw them this morning. Just before I fled the scene after my wasp spray ran out.


On the plus side (my silver lining!), my mother has finally consented to letting me tear down the overhang.  Except now I have to wait until fall, after the first freeze, to make sure they're dead.  Just because I've never been stung before doesn't mean I want to start now!


I'm going to look for this:

I'll be back

Take Two Aspirin . . .

. . . or acetaminophen or ibuprofen.  For me, hands down, ibuprofen is what works when I hurt or am sick.

That was me last week.  I was sick as a dog.  I wonder where that expression comes from?  Anyway, I had the worst sore throat since 22 years ago when I had Strep.  This wasn't Strep.  I knew it wasn't.  I knew what it was from the first moment it hurt when I swallowed.  Or breathed.  Not really two things you can stop doing for awhile.  But it was a Friday when it started and I gave myself the weekend to get better.

I should've called the doctor on Monday.  No, meshugener (Yiddishdictionaryonline.com) that I am, I dragged myself to Half-Price Books because I had coupons!  I did get a couple of excellent buys on two new releases and found two books to fill in a series I've been reading.  Oops, digression.

 

I had my tonsils removed when I was three years old.  It's actually one of my earliest memories.  The girl next door lent me a suitcase . . .  Whoa, sliding into digression again.  Everything at the back of my mouth hurt.  The soft palate, the uvula (sounds like a dirty word, doesn't it?) and, of course, my throat.  I don't know if I had a fever.  As par for the course (now that's an expression I understand) in my house, I could not find a thermometer.  Not even the old fashioned kind.  What I did find was the pain pills from my Carpal Tunnel Release surgery back in October.  Thank God for Darvocet!!  I alternated between the pain pill and the ibuprofen.

I called the doctor's office Tuesday and got an appointment for that afternoon.  Now I had a dilemma.  The pain pills were helping, but they made me narcoleptic.  So, for my appointment, I had to skip a pain pill.  I took 4 ibuprofen tablets, instead.  They barely took the edge off the pain.  And when the nurse took my temperature, it was a perfect 98.6 degrees.  The doc listens to my symptoms, looks down my throat and says he's "not convinced" it's a bacterial infection.  He tells me taking the pain pills and ibuprofen alternately is fine, as long as I don't exceed 2400 mgs of ibuprofen in a 24-hour period.  I didn't ask what would happen if I did exceed that.  I already had, so what was I going to do?

Tuesday night was the worst.  It was hot and I felt horrible.  Then, at about 4:00 a.m., I heard one of the cats retching.  It's not a pleasant sound in the daytime, but at night, it seems much worse.  Then I realized how much worse.  I turned on my light to find Jessie, one of the old girls, sick.  On my bed!  So there I am, 4:30 a.m., so sick I could cry (except that would hurt my throat) and I throwing sheets and stuff through the washer!  And that was after I washed my right leg.  Yeah, my leg.  At least it wasn't my head!  I crawled back in bed about 5:00 a.m.  I just left the mattress pad on and put a clean pillow case on my pillow.  No, Jessie hadn't actually messed up the pillow case--thank God!--but I'd been so hot and sweaty, I figured, what the heck.  The cat was fine the next day.  Must be nice.

On Wednesday, I vegged out all day.  On Wednesday night, my right eye was itching.  This isn't all that unusual for me.  I live with and am allergic to cats.  But my reliable allergy eye drops didn't help much.  When I dabbed my eye after putting the drops in, I noticed something on the tissue that wasn't right.  Again, I knew immediately what I had.  Conjunctivitis, or Pink Eye.

I called the doctor's office at 9:30 p.m. and left a message for the doctor's nurse.  She called me the next morning saying that my message had cut off and she started asking questions.  I was abrupt with her and told her that I had Pink Eye and that proved that I had a sinus infection.

By the time I got the phone call saying antibiotics were called in for me, my eyes were so dark pink and swollen that I looked like an alien with Down's Syndrome!  I should've taken a picture, but it's not something I would care to see again.  I sent a text message to my daughter asking her if she could "pick up Rx's 4 me @ CVS?"

I find out later that she did not know what Rx was, at first.  Fortunately, she's clever and deduced I meant a prescription.  Unfortunately, I had not told her they were for me (even though I'd been sick for nearly a week at that point, but, oh well, she did figure out the Rx thing!), nor did she realize the 's after the Rx meant plural.  *sigh*  It's a good thing they know me so well at CVS (or maybe not such a good thing, huh?) because they gave her the correct stuff.  She even paid for it for me!  Of course, they were only $2.50 each, but still.  I felt better within 24 hours.

A lot of my Facebook friends offered sore throat remedies:  tea with honey (I can't because of the diabetes, I tried tea with Splenda and couldn't swallow it.); wrapping my throat with hot compresses and gargling with salt water.  My favorite--and the one I actually used more than once--was ice cream!  It was so soothing and I could swallow it easier than water.  Something about the viscosity of it.  Pudding worked well, also. :-D

Today, or rather, yesterday, was the first day I felt almost normal.  I went to Target for a couple of things and wasn't exhausted when I got home!  I did end up taking a 3-hour nap, but I'm still recovering after all.  It's good to feel like myself again!  Almost.