A Different Life II

[Lily&Me]

Thank you, and in fact my reaction to conscious sedation was vomiting while I was under.

It was something of an emergency, apparently, and they told me I could have gone directly to the ICU.

I don’t remember it, but I will talk with my Dr. about it Monday morning.

I’m not sure I have the nerves to have my eye cut into with only a local, tho.

I don’t have astigmatism, so my options are correcting for distance or close.

Maggie

[mimiandrews]

Don't worry about it. That "I don't care" drug they use is pretty effective.

[Lily&Me]

Thanks, Mimi.

I know way more people who have had cataract surgery than have not, and no one has reported a bad experience.

Thousands of these are probably done in this country every week.

I will soon be one of the masses having the benefit of this modern technology, as opposed to just going blind.


Maggie

[mimiandrews]

You're going to love being able to see clearly when you first wake up in the morning. Colors are better, and night driving is no longer a problem.

[Lily&Me]

Yep, the night vision issue has been a biggie, to the point that I don’t drive at night unless absolutely necessary.

I have just learned here about how much more vivid colors are after cataract surgery, which I didn’t know.

Any port in a pandemic, I say...take your bits of joy wherever you can, right?


I have been following a coffee maker thread here, and rather impulsively ordered this little stovetop coffee roaster the other day, as I have been toying for some time with the idea of learning to roast coffee beans.

Looks simple, and portable...I envision slow travel mornings, indulging in coffee from beans I roasted the night before.

The idea of the aroma of roasting beans in my own little house and Interstate is very, very tantalizing.

I just got the shipping notification.

Good to switch things up a bit for our mostly housebound selves these days.


Going to my son and his later today, but am first going to try my hand at a Tomato Basil Soup.

It has very simple ingredients, and concludes with the use of an immersion blender.

Sounds yummy, to me.

I’ll let y’all know how it turns out, and post the recipe if it is good.

[Lily&Me]

Delicious!

https://www.thedailymeal.com/print-preview/2042366

I need a grilled cheese made on Wonder Bread with velveeta or other American Cheese to go with this, but none of those items exist at my house.

If you don’t see the ravioli in the recipe, it’s because I didn’t add them.

[Lily&Me]

I’m having standard cataract surgery, with a knife, as opposed to laser surgery, as Medicare will only pay for the latter under certain circumstances.

Said circumstances not applicable to me.

And, my vision will be corrected for distance, so I will still need reading glasses.

Which is fine, as I already have them in the Interstate, the car, the kitchen, by my favorite chair, and in my bedside table.

My questions answered, by the man who will be doing the surgery.

I’m not really stressing about this, but am ready to have it over with.

Stress may come.

Maggie

[Gearheart]

My sister in law does those surgeries for the Cleveland clinic. You’ll be fine.

[mimiandrews]

Be aware that your reading glasses prescription may change. Mine did. Having worn reading glasses over my contacts for years, I though it would be the same. Surprise!

[Lily&Me]

Hi Gerard, and thank you!

(Virtual) hugs to you and Laura.


They tell me about 10 minutes for the actual procedure, which is pretty amazing.

I can do almost anything for 10 minutes...and have.


Mimi, I have been using 2.00 and 2.50 reading glasses for years, but still have a few pairs of 1.00 and 1.50 laying around in drawers, so I’ll be able to get started with whatever is needed as final results start to roll in.

I understand it can take awhile before your eyes actually fully become their new “normal“, and that a bit of tweaking of some sort in the first year or so can occur.


It has been quite cold and rainy yesterday and today, with a chance of light snow.

I remember Halloween last year, when we had a frickin’ blizzard.


I use my wood stove during the day, but turn the furnace on and set to 65 for the nights the last few years, so that I’m not getting up in the mornings to 52 degrees in the little house...which has happened.

I loooove the ritual of the cool house and setting a fire in the mornings, but I like having a cup of coffee, first.


I have always been one to keep a supply of what I consider home “essentials“, not liking to be down to my last roll of toilet paper or going to bake something and finding myself with not enough flour or whatever.

But this pandemic and the experience of seeing empty store shelves at times has me scanning aisles every time I’m in a store for things that have sometimes been difficult to find in recent months.

The flour section is full!...grab an extra bag of whole wheat and put it in the freezer!!!

Lots of Lysol toilet bowl cleaner!...grab a 2-pack and stash it away in the bathroom cabinet!!!

Full shelves of toilet paper!...grab a 12=48 pack of rolls for “just in case”!!!

It’s a pandemic, and there’s no real end in sight.

We prepare as we are able, and I remind myself often that my mere inconveniences ain’t nothin’ compared to what many are experiencing.

There were years for us of hand-to-mouth existence, when stocking up on anything was simply not an option. Been there, done that.

I started an automatic payment to our local food pantry in March, have maintained it and am continuing it indefinitely.

They buy mostly from the Food Bank, and can turn $1 into $3 that way, I believe they said.

Any who have more than they need should do something to help those who are struggling. IMHO.


Going to haul firewood today. Good for my aging bones.

[Lily&Me]

In my pandemic-inspired tidying, sorting, organizing, ridding out, et al., I have been of late working on recipe organization and consolidation.

Aside from cookbooks, of which I have more than I can count, I have this written recipe organizer as well as two of those like photo albums where you insert clipped recipes from wherever.

In addition to those, I had things written on post-it’s and scraps of paper, saved in my Bookmarks, in Pocket, and in my Pages & Acrobat Reader apps.

Too often, I want to cook something I remember making before but have to launch a personal scavenger hunt in my own kitchen to locate the recipe.

So, I’ve now gotten all the bits of paper as well as anything I still wanted from Bookmarks, Pages & Acrobat copied into here, and otherwise deleted off my IPad.

Good, yes?

[Lily&Me]

Cleaning the little house and doing up laundry this morning, I turned the Today Show up so that I didn’t miss anything important.

In particular, I didn’t want to miss the annual Halloween event where the newscasters and weather people dress up in fantastic costumes and do a skit, dance, sing, etc.

I wasn’t disappointed, and it made me actually a bit teary to see them all socially distanced but doing their annual thing with such gusto and enthusiasm.

In a pandemic that, among other things, has consumed 2020 and changed the way we do so many things.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch, in my opinion...the new normal, one piece of Halloween adapted for the pandemic.

https://www.today.com/video/today-ha...ay-94993989801


We don’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, and this year I’m going to lock the door and leave the porch light off.

Like I did last year, when we had a blizzard.

No pumpkin carved and candled for the front porch, no me ready and waiting for 0-12-15 kidlings of various sizes.

As the grands have grown up, they always came over after they had canvassed their own neighborhood, but they’ve outgrown the door-to-door stuff.

No good way for me to do it this year, so I’m just going to skip it.

BUT, the Today Show cast put on their annual “do”, and it was good.

A little bit of normalcy in a very not-normal time, and a reminder that we will get past all that 2020 has brought.

Tho maybe not til 2022. Or longer.

We are hard-wired for resilience, so we get up and we go on.

It’s what we do.


Maggie

[Lily&Me]

My resilience and natural optimism are struggling a bit lately, between the out of control, ballooning pandemic and other unprecedented unrest in this country.

I find that I don’t want to run out of anything.

Everything in the little house that is not reusable at this very moment has back-up. I think.

Picked up a bin of Quaker Oats this morning, as the last one on the shelf went the other day into the big jar in my kitchen cabinet, and a 6=24 pack of toilet paper.

The 12=48 pack that I bought last week is my just in case backup, but this one is simply to replenish my toilet paper shelf. That is down to three rolls.

Do I need more toilet paper or Quaker Oats this very minute???

No, I do not, but that ever-present, lingering-for-many-months-now sense of disaster looming is pushing me to prepare.

And for what, I am truly not certain.

Therein lies the real problem.

What is coming, and what can I do about it?

I can prepare.

My dear SIL will be on duty in NYC beginning tonight, as unrest there is expected to grow thru tomorrow and on into who knows when.

He usually works in street clothes, but tonight will be on the streets, helmeted and with his bullet proof vest on.


Googling mantras for anxiety , I found this list, which I will share in the hopes it may help someone experiencing the same unsettled-ness.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...ing-situations

I especially like “Put the oxygen mask on yourself first”.

Sigh.


Maggie

[Lily&Me]

I needed a distraction today, and my decaffeinated unroasted coffee beans arrived via UPS to provide just that.

I mixed them with the regular that arrived last week with the little roaster, then portioned them out and vacuum sealed them up.

And then, I roasted 1/4 cup of beans. In my own kitchen, with my very own little roaster.

Took about 5 minutes, and creates a fair amount of smoke, which may be a health hazard if done regularly, so I’ll have to look into that.

You have to shake them in a colander after roasting, to sift out a little papery coating that comes off in the roasting.

They’re a little dark, so I hope I didn’t burn them. I guess I’ll find out.

It does smell heavenly in here.

I’ll grind some up for a cup in the morning, and report back.

[tallytwo1994]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

In my pandemic-inspired tidying, sorting, organizing, ridding out, et al., I have been of late working on recipe organization and consolidation.

Aside from cookbooks, of which I have more than I can count, I have this written recipe organizer as well as two of those like photo albums where you insert clipped recipes from wherever.

In addition to those, I had things written on post-it’s and scraps of paper, saved in my Bookmarks, in Pocket, and in my Pages & Acrobat Reader apps.

Too often, I want to cook something I remember making before but have to launch a personal scavenger hunt in my own kitchen to locate the recipe.

So, I’ve now gotten all the bits of paper as well as anything I still wanted from Bookmarks, Pages & Acrobat copied into here, and otherwise deleted off my IPad.

Good, yes?

What a job, congratulations! I keep most of my recipes on the computer, but the ones I like and use often I do print out. As long as they are on the computer I can take them with me on a thumb drive. This makes it easier when I’m away from home at my mother’s house. Maybe one day I will organize mine in this way too. I’ve been thinking about restocking my essential items too. I pretty much keep supplies on hand during a hurricane so I’m not having to shop for much, but I have been using some of the items that have been on hand for a number of months.

Carol

[Lily&Me]

Hi Carol.

I am old enough to generally still prefer paper to documents saved electronically, and carry another binder like that one for recipes in the Interstate.

Sitting with that one the other day, I imagined a grandchild having it at some point.

Tho they haven’t learned to read cursive writing, so maybe not.

Maggie

[Lily&Me]

My home-roasted and ground beans made a decent but not great cup of coffee this morning.

I roasted these this morning, taking about 15 minutes over lower heat, and will grind them up this evening for the morning.

The roaster came with no instructions whatsoever, and youtube videos are a bit all over the place in terms of how high a heat, how to roast and for how long.

15 minutes is probably too long, but they don’t seem burned and I’m sure I will eventually find a happy medium.

Recommendations for how long to sit after roasting and before grinding also varies, from overnight to a full 24 hours.

There will be a bit of a learning curve, and that’s okay, as my brain right now welcomes something else to focus on.

[Lily&Me]

Yesterday’s beans made a barely palatable cup of coffee, but I drank it (twice) because I wasn’t going to throw it out.

Lower heat and for longer is definitely not the answer, and in grinding them I’m not sure they were all even roasted thru.

I always buy the darker roast coffees, as I like a really robust flavor.

Roasting in this little guy gives your arm a real workout, as you have to keep the roaster moving, and when you get to 70+ that is always a good thing.

These were over a higher heat this morning, for about 9 minutes.

I feel like Goldilocks sampling the porridge.

[Lily&Me]

When one is living in troubled times, one looks for signs the tides are turning.

They bring hope, and hope is a good thing.

I planted a burning bush in my front yard the year Doug died, in the spot where the dead tree had been taken down the fall before and tree sections stacked by he and a neighbor on the south side of our house.

The tree that was turned into multiple cords of firewood by our firewood guy and his gas powered splitter that same spring, thrown over the fence into the back yard and then stacked neatly in two places by myself, mostly, with some help from the grands.

It took a loooooong time to haul that wood across the yard with my newly purchased Gorilla Cart.

6 1/2 years ago, the burning bush was planted and all that wood was hauled across the yard.

Today I got up to see that burning bush turning red, as burning bushes are supposed to do, and which it did today for the very first time.

A sign!!!, I thought.

It made me smile at 7:10 this morning, heading off to do labs.


A little bit ago the mail arrived, including the J.Peterman Owners Manual No. 185, addressed to Doug.

The first of these in many months, as he is not here to make purchases from them and so they no longer see this address as a source of revenue.

I always set them out so they can be seen...a tangible nod to Doug, whose last bottle of J.Peterman after shave still lives in his side of the medicine cabinet.

If you have never seen a J.Peterman catalog, they are worth a look just for the stories of the clothing and articles within...each calling up images such as foggy evenings in faraway places, smoke filled rooms, romantic rides down canals at sunset. Etc.

https://jpeterman.com/

Another sign!!!, I thought to myself.

Better times are coming, that’s what I think.

[Lily&Me]

So I’m getting a progressively better cup of coffee out of my home-roasted beans, but am not yet where I want to be.

I’m going to try letting the beans sit at least a full day before grinding, have also ordered one of these little thermometers to get a better gauge of how hot my beans are actually getting in the roaster.

One of the YouTube instructional videos uses one of these, and his dark roast beans at 380 degrees or so come out glossy and caramelized...a state I have not yet achieved.

Roasted these yesterday, about 13 minutes, but still without the gloss and caramelization I want.

I will grind them this evening for tomorrow’s coffee, and do my next roast with the aid of the little thermometer.