Last day of March (ramblings)

Well, I'm still feeling just as grumpy as I did yesterday, so I've decided this must be how I process fear, or maybe my anger at the mess we're all in:  The most interesting things I do from one day to another are: (1)walking in the pasture with the dog, (2) planning the noon meals, and (3) watching one episode of West Wing with Cliff at some point each day.  I have to force myself to update my blog now.  Blogging seems so inconsequential in the vast scheme of things.  But if I'm still alive in ten years, I will want to look back and see how I dealt with the pandemic.  I doubt anybody else will read it when I'm gone; my kids and grandkids don't care much about how the previous generations of their relatives coped with life.  I love the stories from my family's past, but you can't pass that on to anyone else.

Today there is no meal planning to be done because I made tuna-noodle casserole yesterday; it makes four generous servings, so we'll finish that up today with whatever vegetable I'm in the mood for.  I especially look forward to the home-made oatmeal cookies we'll have for dessert.  That's become my favorite cookie recipe.  When they're gone, I'm going to make a mayonnaise cake.  I'm fairly sure my mom made it a time or two when I was a child, but in Cliff's family, that was the only chocolate cake his mom ever made.  His Aunt Gertrude made it all her life, too.  I asked Cliff what kind of icing they put on it; turns out his mom didn't use icing, just served it up as is.    

I have to stop thinking about food, I'm starving!  I am not on a diet, but while I'm taking these four pills a day for my stomach, I may as well be.  I don't eat much between meals anyway, but now I can't, at all:  The pill is to be taken on an empty stomach, at least two hours before the next meal and an hour or two after the previous meal. This means there really aren't a lot of times I can eat between meals.  I have to keep the stomach empty while the stuff does its magic.  And by the way, it does seem to be working.  I'm not taking omeprazole at all now, and my stomach hasn't been on fire for days.  I just passed the halfway point with Sucralfate, so I'll be on the four-pills-daily regimen for awhile yet.  Meanwhile, my weight is staying in a good place.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OK, I ran out of blathering earlier, so I found a movie to watch that was surprisingly good, considering it was made 98 years ago in 1922:  Nanook of the North.  It's the first documentary movie ever made, although they didn't call it that; I doubt if the word documentary was even in existence back then.  Cliff and I were just going to watch it a few minutes out of curiosity, but it was so interesting we watched it all.  It was entertaining, to say the least; and we learned some things.  I recorded it on Turner Classic Movies, not knowing it wasn't a "talkie".  
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We ate dinner after our movie.  Now I'm thinking about calling Nuts and Bolts in Lexington to see whether they have topsoil and compost.  If they do, I'm going to ask if they will come out to our car, take my money, bring back my change, yada yada yada.  That'll give us a little ride.  Even Gabe can go.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuts and Bolts phone doesn't even ring when I call it.  There's a store in Odessa too, and their phone doesn't ring either.  Maybe they had to shut down.  With no way to get topsoil and compost, Gabe and I went to the valley in the woods for some peace and quiet; we no sooner got there and had the blanket spread out when some punk on a four-wheeler decided to go back and forth a dozen times, right behind the place.  Bad timing on my part, I suppose.  I let Gabe off-leash, since it's pretty easy to keep track of him down in the big canyon.  I enjoyed laying on my back looking up at the trees against the blue sky while he spent time sniffing everything he could.

Watch how well Gabe comes when I call him.  Unfortunately, he comes so well because he knows I have some chunks of cooked chicken.