Odds and ends

Bear with me on this first odd. I've gained ten pounds. It could be the mocha or the ice cream or the thyroid, or all three, or one or two. I was pretty scrawny a year ago, after the pacemaker episode and the hole in my lung and the norovirus. The pacemaker doctor asked me to get back to 120, and I did all that by last April or so, and then paid no further attention.

Until this past week, when I realized it's getting warmer outside and soon I will ditch my elastic waist corduroys for jeans. I have not worn elastic waist trousers since childhood, and they may have seen the last winter! I put on a pair of jeans this week and faced zipping up like a teenager, flat on the bed and stomach sucked in. I got it done

But I see that heart doctor in a month or so, for the annual check up, and it would behoove me to present better. In short, a diet that does not include mocha and ice cream, for starters. It could also revert to my sister's lovely oatmeal muffins for lunch. Somehow we lost track of them this past year.

My sister just got a new kitchen. She and Tom bought a little house three or four years ago. It all worked for her except the kitchen, which had that crazy, post World War II housing type of little kitchen. She's pretty good at laying out kitchens, having done it twice at the old house. She knows what she wants, and she got it!

Small kitchen, lots of function. And more important, a new stove with oven to make oatmeal muffins.

One day last week Jan stopped to deliver a batch of muffins and catch up on gossip. And get her kitchen warming present.

I had some left overs to finish up for lunch, so it was today before I got to the new oatmeal muffins. And, oh dear, they were dryer than a bone. I manfully worked through the one I took, thinking "How can I tell her her new oven really needs calibrated. Or fixed!" I called her this afternoon, and tactfully, I hope, broached the subject.

And when I got done, Jan said "Well, that explains why I still have buttermilk left in the fridge! I forgot to add it." So, I need to lose ten pounds and hope I have a start on it.

I have been remiss about weaving this week. Each day was less productive than the previous, to the point of my doing exactly nothing yesterday. Nada. Zero. Zilch. I did get out of bed this morning feeling remorseful as well as guilty.

Fortunately, I encountered Betty and Margaret at breakfast. They are pleasant women. Betty is my table mate who I helped with her new hearing aids. And both are Tea Party, proving strange table mates can come to a truce and get along. The best part of seeing Betty so early was needing a scarf model and there she was, again.

We posed in front of the pool, in the atrium. Several women were in the pool, in the midst of their weekly exercise lesson. For the first time I am strongly tempted to join them. Eighty degree salt water sounds very tempting. I'd even buy a bathing suit.