Enough, Already

Gainesville

Here's the image they had made into a beautiful and gorgously framed print for my retirement gift. This dumbed-down version is just to give you an idea-- the scan was way too big for Blogger to cope with. I can't wait to get it hanging on the wall here in my study. (As always, click to enlarge.)

One of the unexpected gifts was a copy of Nora Ephron's latest, I Feel Bad About My Neck. I read it yesterday, practically straight through. It is wonderful. I chuckled a lot, sometimes out loud. I've always loved her. Heartburn introduced me to the idea of cooking as a competive game (and thereby saved me from getting caught up in it). Of course, Sleepless in Seattle is one of my very favorite movies ever. She manages to be witty and wise in equal measure, and I wish I knew how she does it. The new books is highly recommended to Sandy and Mom. (Marty, you're a bit too young for it, and Chris is way too male.)

Speaking of books, Mom, I'm about to order Adri's new book for you as a belated birthday gift. It doesn't come out until October 31, so expect it sometime shortly thereafter. Since I'll be ordering from Amazon to your address anyway, what were the books you were planning to order? I can very easily include them with my order.

[begin lecture] Please don't demand so much of yourself while you are convalescing. You are NOT expected to get all your routines back immediately! Don't even think of jumping back in where you are. The thing to concentrate on at this point is Baby Steps. If you can do 15, 10, or even 5 minutes per day of anything, that is enough. And eat anything you want, whenever you want, as much or little as you want: just EAT. [end lecture]

Yesterday I finally got back to finishing off the stuff from the single shelf I'd decluttered in the kitchen a month or two ago. I hadn't been able to decide whether to just dump it all in the garbage, or empty the cans and bottles for recycling, so just left it all in a plastic garbage bag on the floor, where it got kicked around a bit. Unfortunately, one of the things in there was an opened jar of sun dried tomatoes in oil. It had tipped over. The oil seeped out. The plastic bag leaked. Horrible mess, which I'd been putting off. Made myself do the recycle thing, emptying each and every container. It took 45 minutes. While putting the stuff into plastic bags to trash (we don't use the garbage disposal, since it ends up in the septic tank), I got to thinking of recipes:

Landfill Surprise

Take one large can pork and beans, one can Harvard beets, one can spinach, two bottles black olives (one pitted, one not), one can stuffed green olives, one bottle artichoke hearts, one bottle sundried tomatoes (with or without oil).

Place in large plastic ziplock bag, and squish to mix well.

Place in microwave for 10 minutes, or until explosion occurs.

Enjoy the hilarity that ensues.

Anyway, that's a mere sampling of what I tossed yesterday. Today I tackled another shelf, and it was much easier. Nothing nearly as evil as that, and only 8 cans need to be pitched. I picked a much sturdier plastic bag to hold the cans, and no open anything are in there. I learned, to my dismay, that low sodium soy sauce is supposed to be refrigerated after opening (others should be, but just "for quality") Let's hope I actually open those cans and make a new Landfill Surprise before another month or two go by. Not exactly exemplary progress in this week's Zone, but better than nothing.

Only sporadic success with keeping the other bathroom swished /swiped and hand towels changed daily. Baby steps.

Tried something new at Outback last night, can't remember the name of it but it involved chicken breast, shrimp and an amazing corn cake thing. The place was jammed, for reasons yet unknown, and neither Mel nor Angie were there. The novices running things knew us, though, so we were well cared for.

Today was a short day for me: since it was a long day for Bill, he left so early that I didn't get the usual wake-up signals, and so slept til [blush] 11:00. I know I must have accomplished something other than reading several days-worth of papers, opening and reading the mail, in addition to the usual routines, but I'll be gosh-darned if I know what it was. Maybe that was enough.