Thinking Cap Thursday PWYC

[CathyS]

Re: dh's arm. It was the arm that he got the Shingle's shot in. They told him to expect pain in the area of the needle, but he doesn't normally carry on like he has been. I don't know if he's just complaining more in the past year or if we just talk so little that when he does talk, he's complaining. He complained about the cold last winter and the heat this summer, plus the arm being in pain. ~sigh~ I guess he's just a grumpy old man...

[Twins' Mom]

I used my thinking cap....
-take packed raincoat to post office for mailing (will do after workout)
-pick up CPAP supplies (after workout)
-find something that I can sit upstairs bookcase on while I paint it
-Send a letter re: mosquito control bill for April through August. No paying it
-Notes for temple member doing an "organizational" study for the board
-put a closet door on Facebook market - was removed when we redid the kitchen two or three summers ago
-photo SU ink pads with reinkers to put up for sale in SU buy/sell groups
-photo Silhouette Cameo machine to sell - I've never gotten the hang of it and it just sits
-make an appointment to get hearing checked and hearing aids cleaned, serviced
-repot peace lily, aloe plant
-what else?

I need to get ready for my workout....change clothes and snack. Looking for the focus cap now...lol.

[Nancy]

Been getting way to many alerts from FB so I've tweaked those.

Rested a bit after mopping.
Need to consider lunch as I've forgotten bfast.

Snail mail letter to write. I do have notes written out just need to find em.
Glad I did the stuff this morning while it's cooler. Yea!

Table still needs attn. / some done.
Lunch happened.

[Lady Maverick]

Wow! Persistence paid off. I’ve been calling every day and finally made progress on DD14’s autism evaluation. She now has three appointments scheduled between now and October 20th, and she should have some answers within the next two months.
The doctor conducting the evaluation strongly emphasizes the connection between gut health and brain function. We have over a dozen forms to fill out and upload before the first appointment. I reviewed a couple of the forms, and they are lengthy questionnaires covering a wide range of health-related habits. i am going to wait until DD14 is here to fill out the forms.

[Twins' Mom]

So glad you have your appointments set up for dd now, LadyM.

Waving to Nancy - it's our doorbell camera that is giving me too many alerts. Every time some one drives by, I hear about it.

Workout was great as usual. Did twenty of six machines or exercises - two were upper body pushing, two were upper body pulling, and two were legs. Then did .25 miles on recumbent bike. Then repeated the twenty on the six machines and did 250 steps on the recumbent stepper. Then a few other things to round out the hour.

After workout I had a script to drop at drugstore, then package at post office, and was picking up CPAP supplies. Unfortunately, they had a delay and won't have what I need until middle of next week. (Stamping my foot in frustration because the traffic was terrible today for some reason. And when I called yesterday he didn't tell me that.)

Dh is out this evening. I am going to make myself a big salad with leftover grilled chicken later. Tomorrow I'm going to spend some time at downtown library.

[MysteryWoman]

Good afternoon, all!

I can take off my thinking cap and replace it with a housework cap (maybe from a French maid costume?); I've been let go from payroll. Not earth-shattering for me -- I've had so little work lately that it was just pin money -- but my dfriend who was my project manager has also been let go. She's been there for probably 10 years. Her husband just retired -- I don't know if they're set up such that she can afford to retire a few years early.

Cathy, I was going to ask how your DH was doing. Those shingles shots are awful. When I got mine, I was told some people have a lot of pain with the first shot but not so much the other and vice versa, but there are plenty of poor folks who have problems with both. My arm hurt for three days with the first shingles shot, a little less with the second.

I'm glad the migraine medicine worked, Rose, and I hope you have a great time with your friends tonight! Oh, goodness! Axe! Now I have flashbacks to driving the middle-school carpool!

I'm sure those biscuits will be yummy, Harriet. We used to keep buttermilk powder around when we had our bread machine -- our store has since stopped carrying it. Hmm... maybe they stopped making it. As for bags on produce, I must confess I've never gotten the hang of what should go with or without. Things either dry out or get moldy.

Look at Twins, mowing down that list and pumping that iron!

Isn't it your final year of homeschool, period, LadyM? I thought DS was a senior. Or are they changing with the calendar year? Or are we talking about DD's school? Regarding the Walmart, how horrible! Horrible for the man and his family, if any, and horrible for the witnesses -- the only good thing is that none of them were shot, too. So glad to hear about the progress with DD -- I have heard of autism having comorbidities with GI problems, so that doctor might well be on to something!

As far as a focus cap goes, blessed, maybe an aviator cap with goggles?

I had a double-take regarding your gazelle, Nancy, until I remembered it was a type of fitness equipment.

I'm currently pinned into my chair. We have a card table set up in the living room. It is sometimes the bane of my existence, as the chair I sit in is heavy and against the wall. It doesn't move forward and back, but I can just move the table towards me or away -- except when DH comes and sits on the opposite side! Once I get DH to release me from my prison, I will grab my menu cards and see if I can't come up with a plan and a small shopping list for the next few days. No matter how I try to pad the list, we always end up running low just before a weekend. If only we could run low on Monday or Tuesday and hit the store for the Wednesday specials!

Have a good evening, everybody, and sweet dreams later!

[Lady Maverick]

((((Mystery)))) I'm sorry your job position was caught up with other cuts.

Yes, this is my last year homeschooling DS17 as he is a senior. GF is in 10th grade but intends to fast track to graduate ASAP. She switched to online school so she can go through the classes at her own speed. DD14 is in 9th grade so 4 more years before she graduates. DD14 is the only one that will be affected by the new law mandating 5 days a week (starts August 2026).

DS17 and Kaden, our 15-year-old neighbor, offered to check the attic to see if the central A/C duct was connected to DD14's ceiling vent since her room was much warmer than the rest of the house. They discovered the duct wasn't connected, so they temporarily patched it with duct tape, which immediately cooled down DD14's bedroom. Now, I need to schedule an appointment with the HVAC team for a permanent fix.

We have 3 extra teens here. GF, Kaden and Presley.

[Harriet]

LadyM, this is another problem with already-old produce IMO, and another reason I'll be glad to be doing my own choosing one of these days. Bell peppers - which definitely lasted the way yours do back when we had a garden.

Yes, Mystery, buttermilk powder was HRH's suggestion for a compromise to get the effects but not have the offending product in the fridge, lol. He says the bakeries would always use large containers of it, and the shelf life is long, it's cost-effective. BTW, WMart sells it here, if you are ever in the market again.

As far as the recipe, I am closing in on saying that Martha White brand is better than White Lily brand flour for biscuits. White Lily is a fine grind and too much like face powder consistency IMO. There is a slight aftertaste of the flour itself that you don't find with Martha White, and I learned on GBBShow that there is such a thing as having an ingredient so processed, or milled, that it changes the taste. Probably good for cakes.

The buttermilk in the recipe resulted in a prettier biscuit, I think - nice straight sides, fluffy inside. Brushing on butter after the bake is another trick for prettiness. HRH doesn't want to know about the milk (smile) but teased that I hadn't given him one (he'd scoffed the first one down fast). That is how he tells me how much he enjoyed them. In my mind (no proof at all) I think the two fork marks on top add attractiveness, or at least a reminder that somebody made these themselves.

Dcousin reminded me that my dmother used to make us miniature biscuits and wondered how she'd done that. It was that she had a doughnut cutter, not a biscuit cutter, and had unscrewed the inner "hole" cutter and used it for a novelty to make us children smile.

[Harriet]

Oh, I got off track onto baking and neglected to tell all the events. Dgirlcousin called and we chatted about our aches and pains and I told perhaps a tad too much about dboycousin's concerns without having his permission. (lucylee, are you listening?) So, I called dboycousin to 'fess up to every word and found he wasn't bothered about it at all.

But while we were talking, suddenly ddolder was texting my cell. Took a while, with stop-and-start texts, but she was trying to say she needed help from HRH because WonderBoy was out taking his youngest brother to sports thing and the car wouldn't restart. She herself was at parents' meeting at dgsonC's school and couldn't make calls/noise.

So off HRH went. He didn't need our jumper cables because ddolder keeps one of those smaller, easier chargers in each of their vehicles. He was able to handle it with WonderBoy (two heads better than one when one has dealt with a hundred dead batteries, but the other knows odd imported-car workings) and see to it that both boys got back to their own driveway safely.

He picked up mail, though, and lo and behold we had gotten all ds' family's mail delivered. Sigh. And amongst it the info from dgdC's school that she's been waiting for. So, called ds but they were all at the other school's same type of parent's night. He said they would try to get by here afterward but it didn't work out, so I didn't get a shower this evening, thinking they would knock on the door anytime. Sigh.

Dd27 couldn't find a minute for a phone call all day. But she did text that she understands when my appts are tomorrow and will pick me up at noon.

My children are too busy.

[lucylee]

Harriet, I'm glad you confessed and have peace of mind about your conversation, but I promise you I am making no confessions...
See J&C for more on my night!
In short -- I got mad, and just rode around in the car for a long while.

And until I got mad, I had had a really nice day.
Carpenter came back, and I now have a new faucet in my bathroom sink, new showerhead that is on one of those things where you can move it -- ideal for rinsing a little girl's hair, I believe -- he completed the floor in the bathroom (it needed the threshold joining the new vinyl tile in front of the shower to the old flooring in the rest of the bathroom, and he got my Ring camera installed at the front door. (Original one quit after just a few months usage.)
Dgrands and I had a nice time after school, and dgd and I went out to eat on a gift card given to me from a friend as appreciation for hunting privileges on my land. DGS claimed he was not hungry yet and stayed here, asked me to heat up a can of Chunky Chicken Gumbo soup after we got home. Then he pronounced it as unsatisfactory because the rice was not a good texture and the vegetables seemed like they were getting stale. I was just shaking my head... this is Campbell's soup that has a "good to" date of December!

Like someone else at his house, he's a little crazy today. Sigh. It's not even a full moon, is it?