Valerean

It seems our grapefruit and orange tree (and possibly our lemon, too) have developed citrus greening disease. We're going to have them tested, but what's happening to them matches all the example photos. There is no cure and the trees have to be destroyed to prevent the disease from spreading. I think that makes this the worst Christmas season for bad luck in memory. Ah, well. Having the fruit trees was nice for a few years.

Last night I filled up my new little rice cooker, plugged it in, and it didn't light up. I tried a different outlet. I fiddled with the warm/cook switch. I let it sit plugged in to see if it would cook the rice anyway. It did nothing. I bought it just last month, too. After only a month and a couple of uses it simply quit working, and at this point it's almost hilarious. I am cursed or something, and I have no idea why. It's just the holidays, and the bad luck that comes for me every time they arrive. Why do I think I'm cursed? I was busy that day going to the post office to follow up on a package I sent to Katherine with her Christmas and birthday presents, which the postal employees later neglected to scan before it left, and may be lost or stolen now, as we have no way to locate it. That was about two hundred dollars down the drain, along with some things that were handmade and that I can't replace. This missing package aggravated me because at ...

On Monday I took a pic of this Chinese cookie fortune. I'd gotten it when we tried a new place for takeout (which was very good, just a bit pricey) and saved it because of the spelling mistake. Little did I know that it was the universe warning me that fifteen minutes later the calamity part would actually arrive, and my old theory that bad luck always comes in threes was proven right yet again. This is my laptop, or rather, this is my laptop after I took it apart to see if the glass of water I spilled on its keyboard that day soaked through to the battery. I flipped it over immediately, so only a couple drops got on the battery. My guy thinks if we let it dry out for 48 hours we might be able to save it. Two minutes after my guy and I finished taking apart my laptop to inspect and then set it up to dry out, I noticed that our nine-year-old dishwasher was still running -- four hours after I turned it on. The timer dial apparently stopped working, so we looked at gettin...

I always thought the stories about washing machines eating socks or clothes was just a myth. Then an old, thin pillow case I like to use for my neck-support pillow suddenly vanished. I had put it in with our bedsheets, but when I unloaded the washer it was gone. I searched the washer, even running my fingers around the base of the agitator in case it was stuck there, but I couldn't find it. I drove myself crazy thinking I'd dropped it while loading the machine, and searched the laundry room from top to bottom. I even blamed the dogs, thinking one of them had grabbed it and hid it somewhere. My guy suggested I'm forgetting what I do with things (which is true sometimes.) Ten days later, I'm unloading the washer and I see what looked like a stained, dirty rag sticking out of the bottom of the agitator. I had just finished the load so I couldn't understand why it was so filthy. It was so stuck my guy had to pull it out, and it looked all chewed up, which d...

To finish some garments from last year I invested in heat and bond hem tape so I could cover some raw seams with twill tape. Did I mention the hem tape was black, and just a hair too wide? How bad could it turn out, right? That's how my old ironing board cover (and my iron) got covered with melted hem tape residue. Melted black residue that is now bonded to both permanently. Luckily my iron has been acting up lately, and the iron board cover was already old and stained. So I invest in a new cover and iron, which should see me through this year's sewing projects with no problem. As for bonding hem tape, especially the black kind, use a pressing cloth!

As she has to pack her lunch for work (no restaurants or takeout on the little island where she works) Kat went food shopping, and promptly got a big dose of sticker shock. For the small amount of food you see here she paid $100.49. Most of it she said was on sale, too. I looked at the receipt she sent a snap of and just the two rolls of paper towels were $9.99. Last week I paid $13.00 for twelve rolls of paper towels and groused about it. Living in a place where most of the commodities we take for granted have to be imported means paying a lot more for them, I guess. I see a lot of banana and cereal breakfasts and PB & J lunches in her immediate future.

Last year my health insurance provider decided to jack up my monthly premiums by another $700.00 a month. For the record, I made three routine doctor's visits in 2021 and had three rounds of blood tests. That's all I used my insurance for the entire year. The new premium they wanted was roughly $400.00 more a month than what I've been earning, so my total gross income alone wouldn't cover the cost. I could have asked my guy to help me with the payments, or pulled the money out of my retirement account, but I decided to see if I qualified for government assistance. As it turns out I did, so I enrolled in that healthcare.gov program where they pay part of the cost, and then paid my first, greatly reduced premium. My insurance provider got confused by this (I'm still not sure why), didn't log the change or give me credit for the first payment, or the one I made before that, and cancelled my insurance policy -- without telling me or sending me any notifica...

Quilting and sewing with puppies means not focusing on the project as much as what the little ones are doing, which is why I screwed up the straps and outside stitching for Kat's Halloween treat bag. So now that it's all finished, I have to take it apart, make smaller straps, and resew it. On the plus side I think (once I fix it) it will look cool.

I promised Kat I would text with her while she's away working, so my guy got me a smart phone. Evidently they're now as cheap as the disposable drug dealer burner phone I carry in the bottom of my purse that only costs me a hundred bucks a year. This one costs a hundred and twenty a year plus whatever my guy paid for the phone (fifty bucks, I think) so that was the first lie. I cannot believe how much crap is on these phones. Edward had to spend hours deleting and removing stuff that comes preloaded, and he keeps warning me not to do stuff. I.E. "Don't touch this or it will call 911" and "Don't do this or it will turn on by itself and run apps." P.S., it took me half an hour just to figure out how to turn it off. Jesus Christ, I'd rather carry plastic explosives in my purse. Anyway, I will check it once a day for messages from Kat, and reply to those. That's all I've agreed to do. I hate this.

This morning while I was hunting around for a synonym for the noun vigil (it sounds a bit too archaic, and watch is overused) I noticed Dictionary.com's word of the day: frazil. I'd never before seen the word, and I really don't like when that happens, so I clicked on the link for the definition, as follows: The relatively uncommon noun frazil “ice crystals formed in turbulent water, as in swift streams or rough seas,” comes from Canadian French frasil (also frazil, fraisil ), an extension of French fraisil “coal cinders, coal dust.” French fraisil is an alteration of Vulgar Latin adjective facilis “pertaining to a torch or firebrand,” a derivative of the Latin noun fax (inflectional stem fac- ) “torch, light.” It is unsurprising that frazil first appeared in the Montreal Gazette in the winter of 1888. From light to fire to ice, what do you know. It's a Robert Frost of a word -- really, you could build a poem out of the meaning and evolution of frazil. ...