August 2020 Chat & Musings

[agate]

There are other males here besides Howie. They may not appear very often but they are here.

[Virginia]

Thanks Agate, you are right there are, it was just Howie who Nuthatch always inquired about, so I wasn't thinking of the others that show up.

[Howie]

Hanging out with a bunch of females ain't too bad.

[Howie]

I just got back from a store run. I didn't get all that much, and was able to carry it all out to my car. I use the motorized carts to shop, and when I have lots of groceries, I take the cart all the way out to the car, unload it, then take it back inside, and ALWAYS plug it in to be recharging for the next person. I wish everyone did the same thing.

Man that was a long paragraph!

Everyone have a great day!

[stillstANNding]

That is a long paragraph for you, Howie, but not really long.

I’m glad you were able to shop.

We are headed out to our vacation.
ANN

[agate]

I just got back from a store run. I didn't get all that much, and was able to carry it all out to my car. I use the motorized carts to shop, and when I have lots of groceries, I take the cart all the way out to the car, unload it, then take it back inside, and ALWAYS plug it in to be recharging for the next person. I wish everyone did the same thing.

Man that was a long paragraph!

Everyone have a great day!

They pay by the word here.

Everyone who adds content is greatly appreciated, I hope.

When I was using stores more often, I was keenly aware of how many carts were sitting there needing to be charged. Seems as if the stores could try harder to monitor that situation. I realize that the employees have plenty of other things they have to do but people get discouraged and don't go back to a store when they find that they can hardly ever get a needed cart. If they're going to build these humongous stores, they ought to think about the people who find them too daunting.

[agate]

That is a long paragraph for you, Howie, but not really long.

I’m glad you were able to shop.

We are headed out to our vacation.
ANN

Hope you'll enjoy your (socially distanced) vacation and share the details.

[Virginia]

Ann, I thought you would ride your bike by here, so you could wave good-bye. You could have gone by Howie's first. Peter would have been glad to follow and pick you up. Have fun!

[stillstANNding]

We are in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, Virginia. We ate lunch at home and then left around 1PM. We planned to stop at a specific grocery store off the highway a ways - not the one on the way that everyone going to the Cape stops at. It’s a Big Y. I have to say they really have a clean store and take precautions seriously.

We enjoy shopping in new-to-us stores. We had been to this one once before. And it gave us a chance to walk around in AC.

We arrived at our cottage around 5:30 PM. It wasn’t paradise. The cleaner had left every window open - to air it out - but it was an unusually hot and humid day for here so it was also hot and humid in the house. Did I mention it was also low tide? Complete with the low tide smell?

After we closed the windows, we turned on a single, anemic AC and positioned fans around the cottage. I struggled to clean all the grocery items and unpack our dry box and cooler.

Peter finally helped me by suggesting a shower, an iced water and cold packs. It saved me. It was a good reminder of simple self-care and things look and smell better today.

ANN

[agate]

That's the big problem with travel. You just never know what you're getting into and once you're into it, you don't necessarily find an easy way out of it. Sounds as if you've coped with an unfavorable situation by turning it into a far more favorable one.

With luck, some cooler fall weather might come your way!

[Virginia]

Ann, you will end up enjoying your vacation I promise you. However, just what you had to go through to make it more livable for the rest of the week, made me kind of glad I am home. It is hot here today and going to get hotter Thursday as the week goes on. High temps and high humidity.

Well, I am having tomato sandwich and corn on the cob again tonight. I don't know how these tomatoes taste, but they look great - home grown. My sister-in-law went to the grocery store for me. My brother helped her bring some things in the house. They are really good about wearing their mask when they come in and they do not stay. They also picked up some medicine for me at Costco. I always dread that because the walk through Costco is just too much for me. I have to get my medicine from there every 3 months. They went for me last time and this time and plan to keep it up. They're already making plans for what I need next week. The bread my sister-in-law got didn't have a real far out date and she could only get six yogurts with good dates, so she already has those two items on her list. They sometime get upset if I go to the store and they don't go. She thinks she has done something wrong.

They got the tomatoes and corn at a stand close to where they live.

Cape Cod is nice and I hope Ann and Peter have a great week.

Howie and Sam come out, come out wherever you are!

[Howie]

Sam, what's that terrible screeching sound? OH, it's Virginia. Hi Virginia!

[agate]

I have some photos from stillstANNding that I hope to get around to posting very soon.

I'm still catching up with tasks that were put on hold during the 3 weeks when I was busy with my neighbor friend's apartment. One of those tasks involves a yarn storage container that arrived at that time. I set it up but it clearly needed some adjustment because it's dragging on the closet floor. The adjusting involves dismantling it and redoing it, and that means removing all of the yarn first. I just haven't got to it yet but maybe today, if I'm not wiped out after doing the ironing.

And recovering from last night's little adventure. Who knew that an aerosol can could spontaneously spring a leak?

I was up at about 3 AM on a bathroom trip and as I passed by the closets I heard an odd hissing sound. Then I noticed an odd glob of white foam on the carpet. Then I realized that something was spraying a mist in my face.

At first I thought that the upstairs neighbor must have a plumbing problem that was leaking through my ceiling. But no.

I opened the closet door and discovered that an aerosol can of mousse was spraying itself around.

I'd been storing an extra can of (hair) mousse on the closet shelf. It had been there for quite a while, maybe a year, just sitting there not bothering a soul. I hadn't been anywhere near it in weeks. Nothing could have punctured it.

But it had sprung a leak somehow, and it wouldn't stop spraying white billowing foam all over. When I put my hand over the spot where it was leaking, it kept on spraying around my hand.

Very groggy, I rushed to the bathroom sink and kept running water on it while pressing down on its dispenser at the same time as I was trying to slow down the leak. It still went all over the mirror and elsewhere but after quite a while I emptied the thing out to the point where I could put it in the waste basket and forget about it.

I've always felt that those cans didn't hold nearly enough mousse. Not this one. I came away feeling that it must have held a huge supply of it because it took so long to get rid of it all.

Then I had the job of trying to clean it up where it had sprayed around. I figured it would leave a sticky residue.

So watch your aerosol cans, folks. They can do funny things when you're not looking.

I had another extra can of it sitting on the shelf. To be on the safe side, I tossed it out too. A small price to pay for preventing that from happening again.

Things to be thankful for: If I hadn't happened to be passing by just then, I'd have had a much bigger mess surprising me in the closet.

I should mention that this happened after an evening when I'd spilled a half glass of Diet Pepsi all over the kitchen floor and had to get down on my kneeling pad to mop it up. I was too tired to bother getting a rag and used paper towels. It's against my principles to use paper towels for something like that because they're costly, and rags can just be wrung out and reused. But I treated myself this time and just reached for the paper towels.

I'm glad I did that. I saved energy for dealing with the Mousse Incident.

Anyway, all of this is by way of explaining why I haven't yet got around to sharing the photos from stillstANNding.

[Howie]

Just think if it had been a can of spray paint!

[agate]

Just think if it had been a can of spray paint!

Wow! More things to be thankful for! I'm just brimful of gratitude at this point.