Arrrgh!!!

My plan for the day is to work in the office, with the knee immobilizer on, and my leg elevated. It's amazing what adding three bodies to your house does to the level of activity and sound! I'm not complaining. Not one whit! I appreciate everything that was done for me, and I hated to see my sister, and her daughter, and her daughter's boyfriend, leave. But now that it's just Elegante Mother, the cat and me...the pace seems a little slower. The house is quieter, and I can hibernate here in my office. It's time to get more work done. I've been eying a stack of filing that has grown, and I need to request waivers.

So....I'll just be over here, playing with paper this morning. I hope y'all have a nice day!

I had HELP of every conceivable kind for the past five days and I consider myself VERY lucky!

My youngest sister brought her oldest daughter, and her daughter's boyfriend for a five day stay, to help my family while my knee is healing. If I gave you a line item list of all she did, you'd be reading for five days. The woman does not have a stop button!

Two of the days we ran errands. We returned books to the library and I picked up a book on disk (more about that later). We made it to two banks, the post office, the salon, the fabric store, the pharmacy, and to the mall, to get batteries put into a collection of watches. Nan remembered to pick up bread for dinner at Panera, one of the asiago baguettes that I love!

I had planned meals, and was going to go over that plan with her when she arrived. Dear Husband short circuited that plan a little bit when he found my grocery shopping list and brought every item home just before Nan arrived. He must have made six trips into the house with multiple bags of food. I'm sure my eyes got bigger with each trip. Thank you, Dear Husband, for doing all the grocery shopping.

Of course, I got hollered at because we spent so much on food. Nan cooked for a couple of days! *G* We had potato salad, chicken salad, green salad, summer salad, burgers, brats, and hot dogs, guacamole, chocolate dipped strawberries, brownies, bowls of strawberries, cantaloupe, deviled eggs, grilled chicken/Cobb salad, German potato salad, steaks on the grill and roasted asparagus. (Inhaling!) And that's the short list. No...we didn't do that all one night. That was just the variety of things she prepared, and why she was in the kitchen so much of her stay.

Sis and her family will be returning for a long weekend in a week. She asked me to plan simpler meals, things that are easier on the hips and thighs, and things that don't take so much time to prepare. She has a point. I'd rather spend my time talking with her than cooking. Elegante Mother wishes she could get a word in edgewise when we start talking, so you know that we are Olympic champions at this sport! *G*

Of course, there was more to their stay than all that food. Monday, Nan marshaled her troops and they blitzed the lawn and the gardens for me. She cut back all the oregano and lemon balm, and dug out a stand of weeds that was encroaching on the herb garden. I REALLY wish I had before and after pictures! She potted the last of the plants that we bought for the sidewalk container garden, and planted the buddleia, a shrub rose, and pots of phlox and petunias. We saw the itty bitty re-start on one of the morning glory plants, and she found a cage to go around it so it didn't become another bunny salad.

The Tall Lanky One (TLO) mowed until the walk-behind mower ran out of gas, and then set up hoses for the gardens. Nan asked if she could have some oregano to take home. I have an overabundance and joyfully agreed that she should take as much as she wanted. She potted up two pots of oregano. Sis ended her outdoor work by mowing more of the lawn until the rider mower ran out of gas, too.

Meanwhile, the Shorter Super Thin One (SSTO) was helping inside. She vacuumed the carpets and swept the hardwood and kitchen floors, watered the container garden, and a hanging bag of petunias in the driveway garden. She finished my ironing, and made the guest room bed, and started organizing some of their belongings which were to be packed in the car for the trip home.

While all the garden work was going on, I was washing. I got up early and stripped my bed down to the mattress. I ran the pillows through the drier, and washed all the bedding. I washed the sheets and towels our guests had used, and the mats and napkins from the table. I kept the washer going all morning. What's so amazing about that is that Nan must have done 20 loads of laundry in the five days she was here! We are either incredibly clean or incredibly dirty.

I know this entire post has been a laundry list, but I wanted you to have some idea of all the work my amazing sister accomplished while she was here. I forgot to tell you that she worked on lesson plans the evening of July 3rd, while the kids were off watching fireworks with Dear Husband. His boat is moored right under where they set off the fireworks each year, so they had a front row seat.

She also found time to make a return visit to the mall for a little shopping. AND she made the time to sit and chat with Elegante Mother in the very early mornings.

I know that I've called her "amazing." There have to be hundreds of other adjectives I could add to that. I envy her stamina, and her generosity with her time and talents. Most of all, I'm thankful that she's my sister.

Nan, thank you, so very much, for all you did for us this week. Words are just not enough.

My cat has been cranky for the past five days. When my sister came to help, she brought their beagle, Ellie, to stay with us. Ellie has grown up with cats and is used to playing with them. Our cat, Edward Scissorhands, shared our house with our dog, Defer, for easily ten years, but he and Defer had an understanding. HE was top dog in the house, not Defer. For some reason, Defer let him get away with that. Of course, Defer was a gentle, amiable soul.

So, Ellie wanted to play, and Ed couldn't be bothered. Ed decided that he would absent himself as much as possible throughout the day, and return at night when Ellie was asleep in her travel cage.

Yesterday afternoon, our visitors packed everything up and headed for home. Ed was sitting on the sidewalk, so I opened the door and invited him in. He refused, even though I held the door wide, showing there was no dog waiting to greet him.

A little later, Elegante Mother repeated the entire scene, and Dear Husband tried again after dinner. By the time my stepson came home, the cat was not to be seen.

I tried once more before we went to bed, without luck, so Ed was allowed to stay outside all night.

I have an electric typewriter in my office that I keep for emergencies and for forms in triplicate. It's covered with a quilted (what else!) dust cover and a black, furry body.

The cat returned this morning, worn out from an night of carousing. For some reason, he has decided that my typewriter is his bed of choice. I've watched him languidly ooze from one position to another several times, but most of those positions involve a nose buried under an arm or a tail, or pushed down into the opening of the typewriter. I'd say he's hung out a "Do Not Disturb" sign!

We're going back to our usual regimen. NO OUT after 2:00. Somehow, I don't think he will argue about it today.

I'm pondering the subject of generosity this morning. I've been the recipient of great generosity the past two weeks, and I'm both happy and surprised to be able to tell you that it is alive and well in the heartland!

When the word got out that I'd blown my knee, I had visits from all three of my sisters. Two of them brought me chocolate! *G* Two of them have donated huge amounts of their time to see to it that my household continues to run smoothly.

In addition to the family support, part of our exercise class came to visit one week into our incarceration, bringing coffee, donuts and MORE CHOCOLATE! They gave me the greatest plaque, which I will treasure: "This too shall pass. Now would be good." Boy, does that sound like me!

The exercise class and the Red Hat ladies have e-mailed me and phoned and sent cards. The first two days my knee was immobilized I entertained myself at the computer. The members of the herb group I belong to were VERY gracious about the number of my posts. I had just announced that I was stepping down, handing the ownership to the woman who had really been the manager for the past year, and that I was going to quietly take a back seat. Immediately after that post, I blew my knee With all the time at the computer, I flooded them with posts as I caught up on two months of mail! They were really good sports, and helped me through a difficult couple of days.

So, I'm here to tell you that generosity is a virtue that still exists. People have shared their time, one of the most valuable assets we have in this century, with me. I'm a bit overwhelmed by it all, and VERY grateful.

A comment on the radio this morning got me to thinking along the lines of the best inventions that make our lives more comfortable. The radio personality was talking about the fact that birds seem to follow him around. Last weekend, as he was about to walk into a wedding reception in formal attire, a bird splattered his suit jacket. This weekend, when he was attending a civic function, he parked his car in an outdoor lot. When he returned at 1:00 a.m., his car was covered with 100 or more "deposits."

Of course, that lead me to sigh with relief that this house has an attached garage. I have NO idea who decided to connect houses with garages, but it was a stroke of genius! I don't have to suffer the cold rain, sun, birds or even prying neighbors. It's just a few steps up into the house, rather than a hike, when it's time to bring in groceries. Who would have thought that such a simple change could make your life so much easier?

I think it must have been a female engineer who suggested putting ice and water service into the door of a refrigerator. From a mother's point of view, it has to be a benefit (once the kids are past the age where playing in the water fascinates them). You can provide your children with cold drinks without having to open the freezer door, or they can serve themselves if they are old enough. BUT, no one has to fill the ice cube trays! How many times have you gone to the freezer to find ONE ice cube left?? Think of the family arguments this has saved!

I suppose that men like the idea of a gas log, rather than having to chop wood, lug it in, and then carry the ashes out. Personally, I prefer a wood fire for the rare times we use the fireplace, but there is something to be said about not having to clean out the ashes.

Have you tried the product that is a toothbrush with toothpaste ready to go? I understand that some parents pack these disposable brushes with their children's lunches, and other people use them on short trips. There are dozens of variations on this idea. It's instructive, and amazing, to stroll down the toothpaste aisle of the grocery store these days.

There are tons of things we take for granted that most of the world has yet to see: in-home washers and driers, showers, garbage disposals, trash compactors, towel heaters, security systems, microwave ovens, and, of course, computers.

I like to think that I could do without a lot of these creature comforts, but while they are here, I plan to enjoy them. I can recall the interest in the Foxfire books when they first came out. There are twelve of them now. These books record what life was like in the Appalachian Mountains of northern Georgia, and supply instructions on how to accomplish every day activities such as spinning, weaving, creating tinctures and poultices from herbs, butchering a hog, or making a dulcimer. I think it's a GOOD idea to record this information. I can see a time when we might need to know those things, and certainly there are still places in the world where it's important to be self-sufficient.

But, I have the great, good fortune to be living at a time, and a place, where I can take advantage of men's inventions. I live modestly. I recycle, I don't litter. I combine my errands to I can make fewer trips and use less gas. My house is not overheated, or over cooled. If needed, I could grow my own fruits and veggies. I'm going to quietly enjoy my attached garage, knowing that I can contribute more to my world if necessary.

What invention is important to you?

I was famished at 6:00 with no dinner prepared. It was time to clean out the fridge! I had the most incredible salad....

Diced red and yellow bell pepper
Sliced new pickle cucumbers, the first of the season, astringent and crunchy
Carrots sliced into very thin julienne strips
Broccoli stems done the same way
A tiny bit of red cabbage
Crumbles of feta cheese
Julienned strips of turkey
Marzetti's Asian Crunch salad topping
A bed of mixed romaine, iceberg and spinach,
topped with Green Goddess dressing

Until I got to the dressing, it was an incredibly healthy meal, and did it pack a CRUNCH! Perfect for a heat wave day.

I was sitting in the car with Dear Husband this afternoon, and commented that I had not had anything from McDona1d's in more than four weeks. I've been able to ween myself away from fast food for the most part, but I have this thing for one of the breakfast items at McDona1d's. I managed to keep it down to once a week, and when I told my doc that I had fast food once a week, she looked horrified. Of course, then my general fast food intake increased, perverse puppy that I am. Then I had to go through the angst of cutting back again.

For the past four weeks, while I haven't been able to drive, I've been making better meal choices. I didn't miss fast food once during the four weeks, but now that I'm coming closer to driving again, the idea of a fast food breakfast lodged itself in my brain and won't go away!

Dear Husband asked how long it takes to ween oneself off junk. I'd like to be able to say four and a half weeks, but it depends on how I hold up to temptation.

We had a busy day on Sunday. My youngest sister, her two daughters and one of their boyfriends came up for the weekend. Dear Husband took the younger girl and her boyfriend to stay on the boat overnight, while the rest of us vegged out at home. Saturday night we had a phone conference and agreed to meet at Chinatown in Chicago in time for lunch.

Most of us are pretty good path finders, but the exit to Chinatown eluded us, so we had the scenic tour of the neighborhood where the fruit and veggie market is located. Thanks to cell phones, we managed to meet, parked the cars and headed onto the main drag of Chinatown. We decided to try a lunchroom that was new to us. We were their first customers, but the place filled up fast.

Everyone ordered, dishes were passed and shared. Five us ordered dishes with shrimp. It was the first time I'd ever seen shrimp and scrambled eggs! As usual, we were stuffed, and we were just starting the day. The streets were lined with vendor booths under white canvas tent tops. As we walked along, we filled our bags with almond cookies, a red fabric purse, two stalks of silk orchid blooms, umbrellas, and bottles of icy cold water. My sister bought a conical woven hat to shade her eyes. I'm sure it's become the required headgear for gardening in central Indiana.

We watched a very brief Lion Dance and then headed toward the cars. Our goal was to see the Shedd Aquarium, and attend the three o'clock show at the Oceanarium. Who knew how difficult it was going to be to find the exit to the museum campus off of Lake Shore Drive???

After a lot of false starts and seeing things a second time, we managed to get everyone off-loaded, through the ticketing process and back into one group. Elegante Mother let us put her into a wheelchair for the day. The museum staff, seeing the wheelchair, moved our entire party to the front row seats. EM thoroughly enjoyed seeing the dolphin show up close, and the dolphins were kind enough not to drench us.

At the end of the day, one carload headed home to Indiana, and another made the trek west to the suburbs. I was exhausted. I definitely walked too much on a knee that had been free of it's immobilizer just four days. When we got home, I covered my knee with an ice bag, and let the cold do it's work. It wasn't a prudent choice to spend the day in the heat, walking around for six hours, but I'm glad I got to participate. I had a good time, and it looks as though my knee will recuperate.

Next time.....I'm taking a cab to the museum!

Tuesday, a strong storm cell came through the Chicago area. Most of the really heavy rain was dumped on the towns near the northern border with Wisconsin, but we had our share of the high winds.

Unfortunately, one of our old trees succumbed, either to a lightning strike or to the high winds. When Dear Husband made his mail walk down the driveway at 5:15 in the morning, it was apparent that the tree had fallen and was snagged on a mulberry tree at the bend in the driveway. He trimmed enough branches to allow his truck to pass. He came home early to do battle with the tree.

He cut the smaller branches first and pulled them to the side of the drive. Then he started on the the trunk. He said that the tree was winning the contest because the chains on the chain saw were all dull.

We have been collecting branches from across the grounds the past year, and stacking them to the east side of the driveway. DH rented a chipper-shredder last month and chipped through the stack in one afternoon. He mowed the area that had been covered with branches, and it looked bald. Apparently Mother Nature wanted it covered up again with branches, so she sent a storm to help us restock.

The skyline has changed. The bend in the drive is much brighter now with a tree and a half gone. The mulberry that caught the falling tree lost branches, too. It will be interesting to see what effect the additional sunlight has on the area that's been opened up. Fewer shrubs, more grass, LESS POISON IVY are just a few of the possibilities.

Well, 41 days after my knee went bad, I'm driving again. We went to exercise today. YEA!! But, the knee is not yet healed. It's slightly less painful than it was the day it went bad, but it still hurts to rise from a chair after I've been sitting for a while, and I have to be careful how I do steps.

The Physician's Assistant at the Orthopedic center thinks I have a medial collateral ligament sprain. She also thinks that the three weeks of immobilization helped that sprain. But, that immobilizing wrecked havoc on the hamstrings on that leg. I'm going to physical therapy to stretch the hamstrings out. I've seen improvement every day for the past week.

I was timid at first. My therapist was surprised that I wasn't driving. She asked if the PA had said not to drive. I began to realize that it was time to quit babying the knee and get back to life.

My gait is a bit odd, but the therapist assures me that it will come back. Sitting for three weeks, trying not to further damage the right knee, I put a lot of demands on the left side of my body. She has me working on all the major groups of muscles from the waist down, to re-create muscle support for balance and walking. I think I have about two or possibly three weeks left of therapy and then it will be time to get back to all my chores. Boo! HISS!

If at the end of the three weeks my knee still hurts, we will probably do an MRI. I find it odd that they have chosen to wait to see what's wrong, but my knee seems to be healing. We'll have to trust that they know what they are doing, and hope the knee continues to heal.

The end of therapy will put me at just about six weeks from my visit to the doctor. Bogie....did you say that WS was told to wait it out for six weeks, and then another two? That seems to be the magic number.

Dear Husband and I have watched several documentaries on a new hotel that has been built in Dubai. A man-made island has been created offshore to support a "tent building" that is sixty or more stories tall. Part of the skin of the building is canvas, and the building has the shape of a sail filled with wind.

One of the things that caught my attention was that the builders were commissioned to create a memorable design that would make the shape one of the ten most recognizable buildings in the world.

They drew two shapes which we recognized immediately, but left the rest unmentioned. That list has been on my mind all day.

They drew the Opera House in Sydney, and the Eiffel Tower. I might quibble with the Eiffel Tower as a building, but it is a memorable design.

...to the quality of work I was doing in May and June that the gardens have survived so well with so little attention since June 10th. Before I hurt my knee the gardens had never looked better. In all fairness, the gardens are at their best in May and early June, but the weeding, mulching, fertilizing, and planting of new plants was coming along very nicely. My sister, Nan, helped that plan along by getting the last of the plants that I had purchased in May into the ground for me. The perennials have a nice start, and thanks to heavy mulch, there isn't a horrible amount of weeding to be done.

Today, was the first time I have been able to get into the gardens to weed. I worked around the edges of the garden at the front side walk, pulling out crab grass, trimming back iris and coreopsis, and pulling elm tree seedlings. I tried kneeling on my left knee with my right leg extended to the side, but that was uncomfortable, so I tested my weight on the outside edge of my right knee cap. With a foam kneeler, some Advil, and very judicious movement of my weight, it worked. I weeded for an hour or so in the morning, and another thirty minutes this evening.

I wear latex gloves when I weed. I took a plastic grocery bag out and used it as a barrier over my arm to pull a poison ivy plant that had taken hold in my favorite iris. I'll have to be cautious for the rest of the year, because it's likely that the iris leaves have traces of the oil from the poison ivy.

It seems that we are expecting rain off and on this week. The lawn has been grinning at us and waving. Soon we'll loose small children in it. Dear Husband has used his spare time this week to cut down the trees that fell over last week, so the mowing has gone wanting. I asked my stepson to fill in with an hour of mowing today, and I used the walk behind mower to trim the north lawn around the herb garden. I still need to use the string trimmer, but things are looking MUCH neater. It's satisfying to see these chores done.

I used a watering wand in the herb garden tonight. It's time consuming to do the job right, but it gives me the time to see things up close.

The volunteer day lilies are blooming. When I looked out the window this evening five small birds were resting on one of the stalks, waiting for their turn at the bird feeder.

In early May, I severely trimmed one half of my sage plants. I wasn't sure that I wanted to prune them that early, so I stopped halfway through. It's been interesting to see the results. The unpruned half is quite large, and bloomed early in June. The leaves are a rather sickly yellowish green, with spots that could be insect damage. The pruned half is more compact (and pleasing to the eye), the leaves are healthy, and the color is the true sage green. SO...a note for my garden journal: prune the sage!

I have one cherry tomato plant and one miniature yellow pear tomato plant in the herb garden. I've had the first fruit of each, and I'm eager for the rest to ripen. There's nothing like a homegrown tomato!

At the north end of the herb garden I've planted several lavender plants. Imagine my surprise when garlic appeared next to them. I thought I had harvested all the garlic last year, but I have a good stand of it. The garlic has gone to bloom. It won't be long before I can try, once more, to dig it out.

The yarrow blooms have all begun to turn brown. I never remember to deadhead to keep the plant blooming through the summer. The clematis that climbs the trellis just behind the yarrow may be dying. I've talked with the county extension master gardener without getting a definitive answer on what's happening. From what I've read, this could be a fungus, and the solution is to cut the infected canes at the ground. Unfortunately, I think all of the canes are infected. I'll cut them back to the ground this fall, but I don't expect to see new growth next spring. Too bad....it's been a lovely plant.

The mat of thyme is growing back nicely. The lemon balm is very fragrant, as is the scented geranium. The new apricot-colored small rose is not doing as well as I had hoped. The Scottish spearmint needs to have the flowers pinched off, to reshape the plant. The silver and gold thyme at the south end of that section have grown nicely this year.

The winter savory is beautiful! The plants are nicely shaped and healthy. I'm SO glad Nan questioned my instructions to dig it up last year! Thank you, sis!
The oregano got leggy, and I let her have her way with it again this year. This time she surprised me by trimming it back less than last year! *G* I know....I'm never satisfied! If you haven't seen my sister's blog entries about her garden efforts this year, be sure to go visit and see what she's been up to.

The chives are healthy, as usual, the basil seems to be going great guns. The Italian parsley tried to set blooms, and I trimmed the bloom stalks back. The rosemary plants are still tiny. I don't know why. The dill needs to be ripped out. It's going to seed, and we don't need any more volunteers. The purple coneflower is thick, and lovely. I hope the stand of yellow coneflower in the front gardens will be as vigorous.

And that's the herb garden news that's fit to print.

This has been a weekend for comfort food. Dear Husband is off to sail the south end of Lake Michigan, and we girls, and Ed, are bach-ing it. I started Saturday out with a big bowl of Cheerios. I haven't eaten cold cereal in a long time, and it brought back memories of school days.

Elegante Mother, who will be 90 in December, has had a change in her eating habits. She's eating less at meals and snacking more between meals. Dinner gets pushed around the plate, but she never ends dinner without having ice cream or some sort of dessert. I worry that she's not getting a balanced diet.

Last night we made a meal that we haven't cooked in close to forty years. When I was a kid, Mother would cook breakfast sausage links, and roll out a dough made of Bisquick. She would lay half the dough in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan, set the cooked links on it, and then use the second half of the dough as a cover. We made half a recipe last night, and had half of it left over.

With the fat left in the pan from cooking the sausage links, you make a gravy to spoon over the baked casserole. We call this dish as "Pigs in a Blanket.

EM and I started dinner together, and realized that neither of us quite remembered the recipe. She cooked the sausage while I rolled out biscuit dough. We jointly made the gravy, with her adding flour while I stirred.

It turned out well. We needed to salt and pepper the assembled meal, but otherwise it tasted like the meal I remembered. It was an interesting trip back to my youth. Dear Husband would have enjoyed the meal, but this is another meal in the category of comfort food that he should no longer eat. We make things on the weekends when he is away that he would love to have. I do my best not to taunt him about the meals he misses when he goes off to sail.

EM is asking for my homemade macaroni and cheese. I make a white sauce, add shredded sharp cheddar to it, and add that to boiled shell or elbow macaroni. It's baked for 30 minutes, and then Durkee onion rings are scattered across the top, and baked for another two to three minutes to crisp the onion rings. This meal gives me heartburn, so I try not to make it often, or try to have an alternate available when I do make it.

Something else Elegante Mother has asked for is the tuna casserole made with wide egg noodles, tuna, peas and white sauce or mushroom soup. We add crushed potato chips to this casserole the last few minutes. Can you see where her tastes are going? Old-fashioned food that is high in fat. I don't cook that way any longer, and she misses it.

We have a box of Tilapia fillets in the freezer. The other night after physical therapy, I needed to pull together a very quick meal, and I chose to make Parmesan Encrusted Tilapia fillets. After you cook the tilapia in a sauté pan, you remove it from the pan and keep it warm. Then, you add olive oil to the pan to cook a minced clove of garlic. When that's soft, you add white wine, lemon juice and chicken broth to the pan and reduce it by half. The last step is to add a pat of butter and whisk it into the sauce. It was wonderful! It's really too bad EM won't even try a taste of it. She refuses to eat it because it's farm raised.

So....We are all yet living....getting ready to face the coming week. I hope you have a good week. If you're in the awful heat, remember to stay hydrated!