2493 Days since retiring July 1, 2005!

”Whooooossshh!!”

The sound of time collapsing around one. This golden age sucks. The only thing golden about my life now is my underwear. As soon as my bladder notes that we are now more than a fast toddle away from a urinal it sends a signal my dingaling to start dripping. I can spend several hours in sight of a pisser and not feel an urge. Grrrr!

My friend in New York did die. It was just months after her diagnosis with ALS to the end of her world. Glo is the one that taught me all I know about html and website design. She will certainly be a help to God with all the old folks he gets daily.
It has been 2 weeks since my last entry so I really should explain my absence. I have been busy. Most mornings I go to the HBU gym for pool and steam room with very light workout with weights and treadmill. Those mornings I do not go I go instead to a classroom where we oldlings are relearning slow dancing as an aid to balance and close contact with other people. As I have aged I have begun to touch others less and less. Human contact is essential to our psyche. But… Many evenings I have spend in various building in the area applying for watchman positions. Sadly most of the openings now require a wide assortment of computer skills. Can’t have people just setting and watching property. So far the most encouraging thing I have heard was “Gee you ought to get a job as Santa”. Those jobs are very scarce and booked a year or more in advance. Plus I really don’t like snotty nosed kids.

Between sleeping late and learning to cook my time is pretty well used up. Rascal and I usually hit the sack about 10 pm. I get up to take my final round of pills and blood pressure measurements. He gets up to check his plate and bite me if it is empty. Then I go back to bed. About midnight he gets on the bed and settles down under my right armpit. I cover him and we sleep sound. The fan blows cold air across my face but he is in the valley of armpit so he stays toasty. About 4 or 5 am I wake to take my levothyroxine (without food) and pee and put a little dab of food on his plate. I also lay out the components of my planned breakfast then go back to bed. Usually I have to struggle to get back into bed because he seems to “ooze” to fill the space I was in. I took this picture during the 4 to 5am period . As you can see he is sound asleep and limp as a noodle. Yep he sleeps with his eyes apparently open.

When he gets up he gulps down whatever is on his plate. I have learned to ease him into the day with small portions. Otherwise he will gulp it down and then upchuck. Few things are as revolting as hearing a cat vomit.

Dinner today was planned to be spaghetti which I had no idea how to fix. I found a recipe using Ragu sauce and ground meat but it sounded a tad bland. I added a thinly sliced huge white onion and 2 chopped ripe tomatoes that we going to go bad in a couple of days to the mix of browned ground meat and Ragu. I simmered all that and tasted it. Not tomatoey enough so I added a half cup sun dried tomatoes and 4 garlic cloves mashed in my new garlic press. After 30 minutes I realized the sun dried tomatoes were not going to cook down so I dipped them out and chopped all I could find as fine as I could. I added them back and turned the crock pot on high for a couple hours. Reset to low and let simmer for 4 hours. I realized then that I had way, way too much sauce for me. Called YD and asked her to come get it. In the meantime I had brought a pot of water to a hard boil and dropped in the spaghetti. I cooked that for 6 minutes the dumped into strainer and plated batch and spooned sauce over noodles. Very good except the spaghetti was still a little too firm and the sliced onion was too stringy. Next batch I will chop the onions and use angel hair spaghetti.. I give myself a C+.

I have no clue where the watery liquid came from. I thought I drained the spaghetti well. None the less it was edible.

Yesterday I experimented with the concept of well done. I have no experience or sense of what a piece of beef looks like when it is “done”. Both my meat thermometers are marked “well done” at 171F. So with that idea. I took a piece of pot roast I was going to grind by hand for chili and cut it into hunks. I inserted the temp probe in a piece and closed that in a zip lock bag that I suspended in boiling water. When the thermometer read well done I took it out of the bag and dropped it onto an old skillet from home. I think it was almost red hot because a bamboo skewer started to smoke immediately touched the skillet. I let the meat just barely settle before flipping it over. I ended up with dark sear on all sides. Of course this cut of meat needs to cook longer to break down the gristle and connective tissue. The water idea was good but a hassle so I took the next piece with probe inserted and in zip lock bag and laid it in the skillet after it cooled and put that in my oven set at 225F. When thermometer read 171 I took the skillet and bag ot of the oven. The bag with the meat I sat aside and put the skillet of the stove as before.. When the skillet was again bamboo smoke hot I dropped the meat on it and seared all sides. After the skillet cooled enough I rinsed the liquid out of the bag with a cup of white wine and cooked it down for use as a sauce on the steak. Someday soon will cook my filet mignon to medium well done.

And maybe someday I will consider myself as a cook. Right now it is just slightly more than a hobby.

There are two statues in a park; one of a nude man and one of a nude woman.

They had been facing each other across a pathway for a hundred years, when one day an angel comes down from the sky and, with a single gesture, brings the two to life.

The angel tells them, "As a reward for being so patient through a hundred blazing summers and dismal winters, you have been given life for thirty minutes to do what you've wished to do the most."

He looks at her, she looks at him, and they go running behind the shrubbery.

The angel waits patiently as the bushes rustle and giggling ensues. After fifteen minutes, the two return, out of breath and laughing.

The angel tells them, "Um, you have fifteen minutes left, "Would you care to do it again?"

He asks her. "Shall we?"

She eagerly replies, "Oh, yes, let's! But let's change positions. This time, I'll hold the pigeon down, and you Crap on its head." ...... AND WHAT WERE YOU THINKING????

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.