If I should die before I wake

I don't mean to sound forlorn but I am tired of being sick.  Yesterday I rallied and felt game enough to paint a big oak bookshelf black (sanded/primed/painted, actually) and thought that surely today I'd wake up feeling good as new.  But instead I am quite tubercular with a side dish of bowling ball head.  When Lillian was in middle school she dragged around with actual pneumonia for months (another reminder not to leave me in charge of your children for more than a day or two) before I took her to be diagnosed.   Which qualifies me to know what pneumonia looks and sounds like. I'm not quite there yet.  (Which is probably what I told her.)

The convenient thing about not having a job right now is that I don't have to go to work sick, which is what I would have done because it's what everyone does, whether we admit it or not.  You might call in sick  for a day or two but then you surrender and drag your puny self in and try to appear well and not cough or sneeze on your unwilling colleagues, who wish you would stay home but come to work when they are sick too.  You know how exasperated you get when coworkers call in sick and you imagine them nursing a hangover or entertaining company?  They think that about you, too.  Unless you were like I was and only missed a few days in years and years of work.  She must really be sick, they would say.  Plus they knew I had a pretty dull social life and those other scenarios were unlikely.

So today I fiddled with my blog background and poked through the bloggers that MY bloggers like; even finding a few to add.  Who are YOUR favorites?  Kindly share; I've got nothing but time these days...

I totally get it

Its the one on the right

So, a little background.  Last week A and I went to Reno, where my sister lives.  All five siblings, my mom, and a few other relatives gathered for the annual ski n' fabulous food fiesta.  It was wonderful, but because I have to balance the bitter and the sweet, this morning I stepped out into what had been my garage but was now a bayou.  Water squished into my socks and I instantly determined that my day was going in a different direction than originally envisioned.  I saw an alligator.  My inclination was to take a shower right away because it was conceivable that there wouldn't be hot water for long.

But I really needed a plan.

Obstacle!

Calling on my homeowner/McGyver heritage, I made a funnel out of a plastic bottle so the drooling water went into a bucket instead of soaking the plywood wall and the rug.  That bought me a little time.

I had to establish where the water was coming from.  Determine how fast it was coming.  Notify A who has more tools and fewer plumbing nightmares than I do. Go online and see what Ask.com thinks the problem is and what to do about it.  Drag the sopping rug (a hand-me-down 5x7 that substitutes for a doormat, which is only practical when dry) out onto the sunny driveway to drain.  Make and consume coffee.  Wonder if I have a real cold or just rampant allergies like everyone else in this county.  Worry about what to do if it IS my ten-year-old water heater. Could I afford a new one? What about tankless?  Weigh my fears about exploding water heaters that rocket up through two floors and a roof, which appeared on Mythbusters as recently as LAST NIGHT.  Remember (from journalism class in eighth grade)  to ask Where, Who, What, Worry,  Wonder, and Weigh.)  I forgot When! It might have started while I was in Reno and been dribbling away quietly for days...But I think it must have only been a night or two.  Just long enough to swamp a big carpet.

Ask.com  cheerfully explained what to do, emphasizing how simple the solutions were.  It also said that sometimes a water heater could explode or scald me or render me penniless, but not always. So A and I gently drained and flushed the tank.  A tapped on some things with a hammer. We carefully loosened and tightened and squirted WD40 and made sure everything looked like the diagram only better.  And now it's out there, full and warm and dry.

Mocking me.

Perhaps because of the cold/allergies, I should feel triumphant, but I'm discouraged.  My worldly goods are crumbling; wearing out; wearing through.  My body gets lumpier and  slower.   I try to eat eleven hundred calories a day and I'm hungry from dawn until  Jay Leno.  I don't have a job and can't remember how to do anything anyway.

I have this. Except instead of being itchy, I'm wheezy.  

But tomorrow, as Scarlett insisted, is another day.  I have projects enough to last through infinity.  Someday, eating like a refugee will chisel off ten pounds gained from menopause topped with eight years of irregular meals and perpetual weariness.  Good things are coming, even if I don't know when.

Don't look for me.  I don't ski.  I eat.

I can see clearly now

Today I got a box from Amazon (the North Pole for grownups except they send things all year long; all you need is a list.  And a charge card; unlike Santa who only requires a chimney and blind faith.) Amazon sent me a five pound tub of food grade citric acid powder.  In the past, Amazon has sent me diapers, peanut butter, silver earrings, Bare Minerals, books, and more.  They always know what I want, and they send it to me.

You may not think that you need citric acid powder but you are wrong.  This is why.  Region by region, dishwashing detergent has been begun appearing on store shelves without phosphates.  I'm sure those demon phosphates are just terrible; Google will be happy to explain it to you.  But phosphates do one thing very very well.  They make your dishes and glasses and silverware sparkle.  Without phosphates, everything comes out of the dishwasher looking like you threw a cup of milk in the rinse cycle.  If you have hard water, make that two cups of milk.  Cloudy dishes are coming to your neighborhood soon.  It's not easy being green.

Then I learned about a product called LemiShine which is citric acid in an adorable little canister with a price like a Starbucks grande.  But Amazon, who has EVERYTHING, has plain citric acid powder in a big white tub for cheap.  I'll have sparkling glassware until I die of old age.  And I can make homemade fizzy bath bombs with epsom salts.  Oops--now everyone knows what they're getting for Christmas.