Providing Comfort But Not Much Else in Everyday Ramblings

This mix of oak and maple leaves is over by the community garden yesterday where I will have my little raised bed next year. It is dry and cold and the leaves are almost all off the trees by now with the big winds.

I would be enjoying my entry into retirement a lot more if my cat Diego were not sick. He threw up his breakfast just after eating it yesterday morning and has only been able to keep anything down for around an hour since then. He is active and drinking water and does not have the runs so it is not the virus they had earlier.

Carlo is totally fine thank goodness.

I have this big jacquard bedspread with a lovely leaf pattern and I ended up having to wash it twice yesterday and it is a monster and gets all tangled up and unbalanced my washer so takes vigilance and strength to wash… but heck, I am grateful at least I have a washer.

That and my sore biceps have encouraged me to teach functional strength this coming week. We are also going to go over how to safely get out of the bathtub without hauling oneself up.

Last week I taught the whole hip and nothing but the hip and in my prep for class I usually try things that are a little bit too challenging for them that I can modify. I woke something up in my front hip in the process. It is getting better but it has been useful in terms of knowing what some of my students go through.

After a nice visit with Kes and a homemade lunch on Friday I walked downtown and got my new independent discounted bus pass. Not as cheap as my work one but affordable so now I have unlimited freedom to roam all around the metro area.

On the way back from that I stopped at FedEx and got a beautiful color copy of my driver’s license and then went home, changed shoes and walked mostly back downtown with my pension forms. I was able to get them notarized and mailed off priority mail.

As this is a state pension plan I understand it can take up to three months to see one’s first payment. I have enough savings to be okay but I would like to know what the monthly amount is going to be. I went with a 15 year certain, which means I will be able to have a modestly comfortable life until I am half way through my 80th year.

By then I will probably be forced by the cost of living to share housing anyway. So I fully intend to enjoy the heck out of this time.

You hear that Diego’s stomach? Poor guy. He keeps thinking I can make things better. There is nothing wrong with his appetite.

Because I had been so busy lately even though I knew that one of the drip pans on my electric stove was getting a bit funky, I didn’t have time to deal with it. Mostly from a little bubbling over from pots of brown rice, when I was cooking eggs to put on our rice bowls Friday it was smoking a little and so yesterday I actually figured out how to clean them using vinegar and baking soda. I got the better part of the crud off. Seriously it took me an hour to figure out how to get the burner out of the socket but I know now!

There are going to be many many more adventures in the domestic arts in the near term.

I bought Kes and Most Honorable a smallish Instapot for Christmas a couple of years back. The one I received as a prize for focused wellness activity from work was full sized. This week we switched. I need to change the seal in the small one as they made some yummy Indian dishes that were highly spiced and that, umm, influences the food that comes after say…oatmeal.

This next week besides teaching I tackle getting all the moving parts to Medicare part B and my supplemental plans set up but in the meantime I at least have Part A to cover a catastrophic event. That is better than when I moved or was laid off and in between jobs when I couldn’t afford the price of extended coverage that we call here Cobra.

Mrs. Sherlock was participating in a charity event to help victims of domestic violence in Kenya yesterday (we. like so many churches have an active arm in Africa, and she has been helping out in various ways related to AIDS over the years) so we didn’t go hiking yesterday. And today she begged off saying she needed a rest day. It is all for the best.

She gets to rest and I get to hang out with Diego and try to figure out how to comfort him until we can find a fix. I wish there was some kitty equivalent to ginger ale and dry toast.

Last updated November 03, 2019