Coffee Chat - Oh the Difference a Day Makes

Good afternoon! 
No coffee this afternoon...It's warm enough to warrant lemonade and I have fresh lemons aplenty on hand...

This past weekend, I didn't feel well.  Not a real illness, but more that I felt I was fighting off something.  I gave in and rested and woke feeling terrific on Monday morning.  True, I gave up two full days to doing little more than resting, but gracious, I've learned a few things in these accumulated years of mine: rest when the body demands it is for a purpose.  Ignore the warning and pay the price with an illness that knocks you off your feet for a couple of weeks and who, in Springtime especially, has a couple of weeks to spare?!

Saturday I did go to synagogue and stay for the meal afterwards.  I prepared a simple meal of Corn Moussaka and Red Cabbage Salad with fresh Tangelos for dessert.  It was a lovely day and a special celebration, Purim, but I wasn't up to staying for the whole long day of it.  I regretted leaving early, as it was truly such a fun celebration last year, but I headed home and napped. 

Sunday I passed on visiting Granny.  At her age, she has no need of viruses and bugs and such.  I stayed right here at home and didn't stray very far from my chair for long stretches.  A very bare minimum of housework was done.  I didn't feel like reading (see how ill I was? lol) or eating or tackling big projects.  I just wanted to stay in my chair and rest.

Monday, however...Well Monday I was up early and off and running and felt just dandy.  Sunday had been a little cloudy for the most part.  Monday, the grass had grown four or five inches overnight, the trees that had bloomed or were blooming had leaves and I spied more iris blooming in the yard.

Before noon I'd stripped the heavy curtains from the bathroom which had begun to seem suffocating to me and had thrown them in the wash, cleaned the house top to bottom, made out a shopping list and was working on the new 'How to Eat Groceries' post.  I spent a portion of the morning organizing my recipe notebook, dating the newly pulled recipes from magazines (those 'sounds good, hope to make someday' recipes) in the past two months.  I date them so I can toss them next year if I haven't tried them. 

I pulled some things from my closet to try to work up new outfits for Spring, but realized after about three outfits that I was too tired to bother with that. 

The mail carrier (we call her "The Mail Lady") brought mail to the door Monday. There are two women who run our mail route and we get them on alternate days.  Hence we simply refer to them as The Mail Lady and don't bother with names.  I like both the 'girls' as Granny used to call them equally well.  The courtesy of bringing a package up to the house is one of their sweetest traits.  The former mail person used to just lay the package atop the two mail boxes in the bottom where it sat all day long, come what weather there was.  We weren't very fond of the last mail carrier to be honest.

When I hear the horn blow in the backyard and know that a package is being delivered I feel excited.  I also like the opportunity to chat a moment with The Mail Lady who always asks after Granny.  Monday I had a piece of Mrs. Harris' poundcake on the counter.  She'd sent home three pieces the last weekend we had Sunday dinner and I put them in the freezer.  That day I'd removed them from the freezer to thaw and put one in Chance's work lunch and had one for my afternoon snack.  I carried the last piece out to The Mail Lady.  She was pretty happy to have that something extra for her afternoon snack.

I don't think there is a thing lovelier than seeing a package as mail, do you?  So you'll understand perfectly when I share how extreme my disappointment was!  It wasn't the book I'd ordered at all, but another entirely, one that wasn't of the least interest to me.  I was so sad!  Not the cookbook I'd been looking forward to for ten days at all.  I wrote the one who'd sent it to me and they wrote back stating they'd refunded my money and was sorry about the mix-up.  The book I'd wanted wasn't really in stock after all and somehow they'd shipped out the wrong book.  "Don't bother to return it," the email said, but I'd already done that by the time I got their email.  Most puzzling to me was the statement that they didn't really have my book in stock.  Since this was my second attempt at ordering the same book through two different merchants it was a huge disappointment to me.

That was my second disappointment that day, the first one having been of a greater proportion of disappointment, I was a little compelled to begin to think gloomily of Monday as a 'bad day' but I knew that sort of thinking is dangerous to the peaceful heart, so I decided I needed a quiet place to get a new perspective.

I decided to go sit in the craftroom.  I recently moved that rocker of mine to that room.  It keeps getting shoved from room to room, but I think it's finally found a home.  Chance doesn't want it outdoors on the porch or deck, not put in storage, but no one ever uses the chair.  However, it now sits right next to the window in the craft/guest room and it's a peaceful spot to sit and rock and contemplate life.  I changed the heavy comforter out for lighter Spring comforter and colors this week.  There's still work to be done in that room. I figured out a new arrangement for furniture that might make the room seem larger.  I made over the room in my mind the little while I sat in there.  Do you do that?  Start planning a makeover of a spot that is a work in progress as you sit quietly?

I rocked and contemplated the view (and spied more iris blooming under the Sweet Gum tree) and thought about all the things that had occurred in the week just past that were blessings, beautiful happy events and planned my room makeover and dreamed of the garden I one day long to have and before you know it, I felt much better and there was no more bad day.

Tuesday I was out shopping.  I hadn't planned to do such a big shop but I felt very strongly the urge/need to stock up on staples like tuna and toilet paper and paper towel and peanut butter.  I don't know why I'm deepening the pantry so hard of late, but I'll give in to the urge and do it.  I made a number of stops.  I went into three grocery, two drugstores, Walmart, Best Buy and the post office before the day was done.  Then home to unload and put away things and for all my busy day I was home before 2:30pm.  I seemed to be in super mode just as I had been on Monday.

I had such a lot of pain in my knees and ankles and hips yesterday.  Thinking it over I realized that I had nothing or anyone except myself to blame for my aches and pains.  You see for the past year I've followed a regime of vitamin and minerals and anti-inflammatory medicine that has worked beautifully at keeping pain at bay.  The trouble was I'd been feeling so good of late that I slipped up and stopped taking the vitamins and anti-inflammatories routinely.  It isn't as if it's such a hard thing to do.  I take 1000mg of Vitamin C, 1000mg of Calcium, 500mg of Magnesium, and 1 Motrin every 12 hours.  In the mornings I also take a Vitamin E and Vitamin D.  Just twice a day.  On days when I'm on my feet for long hours such as yesterday, I might take a Motrin or Tylenol midway through the day.  But Mrs. FeelGood decided she no longer needed to do this simple little thing and skipped several mornings and a couple or three nights and wham!  Joint pain is back to where it was two years ago before we fell upon this easy to follow preventative routine.  Needless to say I was back on that routine this morning and will be taking them tonight as well.  And every day from now on.

This morning I figured I already hurt anyway, so I might as well go on out in the yard and do some work.  At least I couldn't complain that the yard did me in, lol.  Chance will be mowing this week and the yard does need it.  I picked up Maddie's 'stuff'.  Maddie's stuff was mostly in two main areas that we refer to as "Maddie's playpens".

These two spots are not small areas such as a playpen normally would be, but in proportion to our yard they are smaller areas where she tends to group her stuff.  Maddie's stuff includes a couple of real toys, aluminum cans borrowed from who knows where, tree branches, rugs and towels filched from the porches and dog shelters and claimed as hers, deer verterbra and jaw bones, rocks from my flower bed (big chunks of rock, I don't know how she manages to carry them!), plastic bags, dishes that were being used as pet pans by some neighbor or other, etc.  Quite the mess. 

I got my wagon out of the shed and carried along the garden clippers thinking I might as well cut down the most unsightly of the old weed stalks around the flower beds and the branches that weren't quite broken through on the lower levels of the trees.  I worked away for well over an hour then picked up all the bones and stuff that Maddie had.  Maddie didn't much care to have me pick up her things, but she gave in with a deep sigh when I fussed at her for trying to snatch one of her rugs.  She is a very philosophical dog.  If I wasn't interested in playing snatch away with her, then she'd chase bumble bees away from me instead.  I can't say I was sorry that she chose that activity. 

There were all sorts of bees about outdoors and they were all curious as could be about this lumbering giant outdoors in their world.  They were continually flying up to look closely at me and buzzing about my head.  They didn't make me nervous but they were so in your face that I was a bit put out with them.  Maddie would see one buzzing about me and she'd leap up and snap at it.  Then it truly seemed as if the bees would recognize that she was having fun and they'd lead her all over the yard, with her following right along, leaping and snapping when they'd dive a bit closer to her. 

I was just about hot and tired enough to start feeling snippy when Chance came out on the deck and warned me he'd just invited Rabbi to come out to the house.  I like having Rabbi come by, but I'm not terribly happy over any company when I'm sweating and need to shower and am breathless with exertion (all that unaccustomed outdoor work, whew!).  "Oh he's not going to be here right away...He said it would be at least fifteen minutes."  Gee thanks!  It's a tremendous help to know I have fifteen minutes to get myself company ready!

I shall not complain hard here.  Rabbi brought lunch with him, a lovely lunch of KFC BBQ chicken, buns, chips and dip.  All I had to do was heat the chicken and direct the guys where to find drinks, or which jars to open from the fridge.  That was a true blessing to have such a good meal without having to prepare it!

You know, I seldom plug a product but I will say this about the KFC BBQ chicken: it was really good.  I was very surprised by how good it was.  Being Southern, I thought the only way to eat shredded BBQ was pork and since we no longer eat pork, I pretty much discarded the idea of BBQ sandwiches.  So to discover that this BBQ chicken was so tasty is like having a special treat.

We all sat about and chatted after dinner, touching on many subjects over the next couple of hours.  I can't say I'm sorry for the interruption to the day.  Chance needed the quiet day to rest after his work week and the impetus to drive to town to run errands, the idea of mowing grass today, all just slipped away.  He'll surely run errands tomorrow and probably mow the lawn as well, but for today he's resting and doing nothing much and that's what he needs.

Hmmmm...he and two dogs and a cat might all think they need food about now as well.  Guess I'd better end our chat and feed them all.  I'll have to see what Chance and I have on hand but I'm leaning towards a nice Western omelet and toast for us.

Currently reading: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

Currently listening to: the tap of computer keys on two laptops and an instrumental titled "Prayer' by Raphael on the New Age channel on tv.

What I see outside my window: Sunshine, waving tree branches from all the high winds we've had today, grass that looks to be more than ankle high (and is!)

And here's my husband asking "What's for dinner or am I on my own?"  Guess I'd better get moving!