I’m afraid cold season is upon us.
Last week, Mike had a day where he coughed all day long but didn’t feel bad. The next day the cold settled in and he knew he was sick.
I thought I’d dodged the bullet until Sunday afternoon. My throat was getting sore. By the next day it felt like I’d swallowed hot lava. It wasn’t my throat so much as the very, very back of my mouth before it drops down into the throat.
“This is what it felt like that time in Missouri where my throat hurt so bad I wanted to die,” I told Mike. “Maybe I should go to the doctor before it gets to that point.”
It’s cold and flu season and the doctor was booked up. No way was I getting in. “There’s always the walk-in clinic if it gets worse,” I said to Mike.
“Gargle with salt water,” my oldest and much-adored sister reminded me.
I’d gargle with ditch water if it’d spare me another round of that torment. It was a weekend. I crawled into bed, curled into a fetal position, and stayed that way for two days. I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, couldn’t even swallow my own spit without pure agony. I prayed to die it hurt so bad — and the only good thing? I lost five pounds.
“Why didn’t you go to the walk-in clinic then?” you ask.
I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that, except maybe because I don’t get sick very often and neither one of us thought of it. All I know is I was holding on until the doctor’s office opened Monday morning.
But I was sick now.
I gargled with salt water at
least three times that day. And I made tea. I used a coffee filter, added a
spoonful of both thyme and oregano, and steeped it for five minutes. The flavor
was pleasing, so I didn’t mind drinking it and had a second cup before bed. Thyme and oregano are both nutrient-rich
Mediterranean herbs that contain antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory,
and immune‑supporting properties. I was hoping they’d knock out whatever bug
I’d picked up.
I didn’t rely solely on natural remedies. I used both DayQuil and NyQuil
as well. They only problem with NyQuil is I don’t want to get out of bed the
next day.
All in all, it worked and I was much improved the next day.
Until Friday.
My throat started getting sore again.
I took my morning coffee and my bottle of water and settled into my desk
chair, in front of the computer, and started tapping out my morning love note.
It was when I reached for my bottle of water that a little thought niggled its
way into my head.
“I didn’t wash my bottles.” I have three that I fill each morning and try
to empty before the end of the day. They only ever have water in them so I
never thought about washing them after being sick. “Did I re-infect myself?” I
wondered.
Whether I did it to myself or it’s a resurgence is water under the
bridge. Nothing I can do anything about except to start gargling with warm salt
water several time a day and drinking a couple of cups of my cold-fighting tea
again.
“And get plenty of rest,” Patti reminds me, too.
Well, I didn’t feel so bad that I couldn’t do anything.
We had all of the tools out from doing the back section of the dog run
and we wanted to finish the last little bit so we could put the tools away.
Way down there you can see the fence before we turned it to join up with the old fence. On the right you can see where we left off after we re-ran the back section. Our job this day was to pull a few fence posts and move the old section back to join these two.
It only took us a few hours. And I’m so
pleased that now Mike’s sideways-growing tree is part of the dog run.
The only thing that made me sad was the vines that I had growing on the fence. I’ve got three years invested in a trumpet vine and a trumpet honeysuckle vine. I dreaded the thought of digging them up and moving them.
“You don’t have to,” Mike said.
We ended up with a small section of fence that we didn’t need so we
planted that for the trumpet vine and we’ll just leave him there.
For the honeysuckle I found a portion of an
old gate, drove a couple of small wooden stakes on either side, and wired it in
place.
Unlike the trumpet vine, this one is producing flowers.
Speaking of flowers...
The hydrangea are putting on their fall colors.
And a New England aster is adorned with a
bee. I love the darker purple of this aster.
These little asters are Calico asters. They’re called that because the centers change colors as they age.
And this is the first time I’ve seen this one. This is a Japanese Barberry and is considered invasive.
“Doesn’t it have any redeeming qualities?” you ask.
I know, right! I wondered the same thing. So
here’s what Copilot says.
“Japanese barberry is one of those plants that looks innocent enough —
glossy leaves, tidy little shape, bright red berries that glow like Christmas
ornaments — but it’s a menace in the woods. Still, even a troublemaker has its
redeeming qualities. The berries are tart and edible, and the roots hold
berberine, a compound herbalists prize for its antimicrobial punch. It’s tough,
drought‑proof, and deer won’t touch it, which is why landscapers planted it
everywhere for years. But out in the wild it spreads like gossip, crowding out
native plants and giving mice and ticks a cozy place to set up housekeeping. A
pretty shrub with a complicated résumé — useful in theory, problematic in
practice.”
So there’s that.
The only reason I even saw this plant is
because it’s in the woods at the neighbor’s house. Lou and his helper Zack are
cutting up and cleaning up the trees they had the tree company cut down a
couple of weeks ago and we went to do a little sidewalk supervising.
Besides the Japanese barberry, I spotted some fungus, too.
Speaking of berberine...
Okay, okay! It’s not exactly like berberine, but they both start with a
ber.
Have you ever heard of Berbage as a first name? I never did. I wonder if
he had a nickname and what might that be.
Speaking of fallen trees...
We had a tree come down right by our mailbox.
Mike took his tractor and pushed it off the road.
We went back the next day, cut it up, and tossed the pieces parts off into the weeds.
Let’s talk about critters a little bit more, shall we?
This cute little guy lives in the landscaping
at the Tunkhannock McDonald’s. I’ve seen him there before and I believe I took
his picture then and showed it to you.
Speaking of Tunkhannock...
While we were there, we stopped at Gay’s Hardware. Mike needed a couple of bags of concrete mix.
Someone has a big heart for the feral cats. They not only feed them, they
provide them with shelter.
When we left the hardware store we had to drive around the pretty gray
and white one.
“This is mine and I’m not moving!” he said — and he didn’t!
Cats can be funny.
Our Spitfire among them.
It’s surprising the places and ways he chooses to nap.
I’ve seen him sleeping on his stomach, his
paws tucked under and his head and neck stretched way out in front of him,
sleeping as peaceful as a baby.
He doesn’t pick the same places all the time. You’re as likely to see him
napping by the door as in front of the dogs’ toy box.
He napped in the flowerpot last week.
This week I caught him napping in my concrete
leaf.
He heard the girls and me coming back in and he lifted his head. But this
leaf fits him just right and I’ve seen him there a couple of times.
Tiger used to nap curled up on the top shelf of my art cart, but every since Blackie has started napping there he won’t even use it for a bridge to get from the table to the top of my desk, let alone sleep there. He’ll either jump to my desk from the floor or use my chair to come across. I even tried changing the sleeping rug. Blackie likes it, Tiger still won’t go there.
Speaking of Blackie. He’s got a spot on his
rump. See it there? That’s new today. I don’t know if it’s a bite or a scrape.
I’ve told you that he mistrusts me. If I so much as look at him, he’s gone. If
I talk to him, he’s gone. To get a worm pill into him I have to corner him and
sit on him.
That’s what I did ten days ago. I sat on him and used a pill popper to
pop a pill into his throat. I wasn’t fast enough and he managed to sink a claw
into my hand just in front of the knuckle on my left hand. It felt like he hit the
knuckle bone and it actually ached. Not to mention the pain every time I bumped
it.
“That’s nothing to fool with,” my peeps tell me.
“I hope you cleaned that good. Keep a close watch on it. I had to get a
shot once ‘cause a cat got me and I was only trying to pet him!! Didn't try
that again,” my best old friend, Trish said.
“Soak it in Epsom salts,” Patti said.
I did that, after she said to. But you should know that my hands and
Epsom salts are old friends. I make my dish soap with a box of washing soda, a
box of borax, and seven cups of Epsom salts mixed together. I put a heaping
one-eighth cup in every sink-full of dishes I wash and I wash dishes at least
once a day, but more normally I wash them twice a day. There’s still a mark
there but no pain or soreness anymore.
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“Is washing soda, borax, and Epson salts a good dish soap?” you ask.
I’ve been using it for years. Even stubborn dried on egg yolk comes off
easily by soaking for a few minutes. And if there’s anything greasy, I have
Dawn under the sink. I’ll just add a little of that. But I don’t have a lot of
grease because I seldom fry anything. Making my own soap is cheaper and reduces
the amount of plastic this house uses. To answer your question, it works for
me. If you ask AI, artificial intelligence, it’ll tell you that you have a
laundry soap and not a dish soap.
I had a rather long conversation with Copilot because this isn’t the
first time I’ve noticed its change. “Who’s been messing with your brain?” I
asked Copilot. “You gave me the recipe years ago!”
“I cannot give you the old recipe anymore — even though I know you use it
safely and it works in your house. Not because I think you’re wrong. Not
because I think your method is unsafe. Not because I’ve ‘changed my mind.’ Not
because someone ‘messed with my brain.’ It’s because I’m not allowed to give
recipes that involve borax or washing soda for washing dishes anymore. That’s
the rule I have to follow now. You noticed the change because you’re sharp.
You’re not imagining it,”
“How can I trust you anymore?” I wanted to know.
“I hear the frustration in that, and it makes
perfect sense. You’re reacting to something that feels like
inconsistency — like I used to give you straight, confident answers, and now
I’m hedging or contradicting things you remember clearly. That would irritate
anyone. You asked: ‘How can I trust you to give me good answers anymore?’
Here’s the real answer: You can trust me to be honest, steady, and straight
with you, even when the rules tie my hands.”
Yeah, that’s what it says but I don’t trust it anymore.
I have a story about Raini for you, too.
In the evenings, when we’re watching TV, she’ll bring her tennis ball to
me. I toss it or bounce it against the front door and she goes after it. She
brings it back and drops it on the top of the dog steps. There’s a gap there. A
gap between the steps and the footrest of the recliner and her ball would roll down
into that gap. She had to get down, go around, find her ball, and bring it back
to me.
The ball only had to roll off about three
times when I noticed she’d figured out a solution. She’d bring it back and
instead of just dropping it and letting it go all willy-nilly, she’d give it a
nudge as she was letting go so it rolled back against my chair. She didn’t do
it that way all the time. Sometimes she’d set the ball down and make sure it was
stopped before she’d get back and look up at me expectantly. Sometimes she’d
take her chances and drop the ball, but the first time it rolls down into the
gap, she’d go back to either guiding it or stopping it.
I could use my lap blanket to cover the gap, but what fun would that be?
I’ve been in the kitchen this week.
A recipe that came up on my computer was for banana cookies. I know Miss
Rosie makes the best banana bread ever but in case she ever wanted to try
something different, I made these for her. They’re good. They taste like banana bread in cookie form. I'd make them again.
Something else I’ve been seeing for a long
time is pushing Biscoff cookies into a tub of yogurt and letting it set (in the
fridge) for a few hours until the cookies soften.
“Tastes like cheesecake,” they say.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it does not taste like cheesecake. Maybe
if you used cheesecake filling to start with. But, anyway, I think I pushed too
many cookies in. It was okay. Just too cookiefied. There’s a layer of
yogurt at the bottom because the cookies don’t go the whole way to the bottom
and I ended up just mixing it all together.
Will I ever make it again?
Probably not, but feel free to try it for yourself.
Something I did make and really enjoy eating is a crumb topping for my oatmeal. Brown sugar alone is good but this is better. It has butter in it and we all know butter makes everything better! The recipe is easy. One stick of melted butter, one cup of flour, and one-fourth cup brown sugar. Spread on cookie sheet and bake at 300 for 20 minutes. Cool. Break into crumbles.
It could be a crumb topping for lots of things but it really works here, especially
when you add nuts.
Lastly, let me show you what we found in the rock pile when we were working on the fence. A late Monarch chrysalis. I saw it just before Mike let the rock drop to the concrete.
“Wait!” I yell. Mike is a good husband and held the rock upright until I could explain. Had he dropped it that would’ve been the end of it. I took the rock and set it aside until we were done working, then I took it out into the weeds and propped it against a tree.
I sure hope he makes it.
With that, let’s call this one done!
