What Did You Do Today?

An interesting day! Here is what I’ve been up to.

My ankles and feet feel cold, for the first time this autumn. The temperature in the house this morning was 19C, and it seems to be going down 1C every day. Now I know at what temperature I begin to feel slightly, every so slightly, uncomfortable in the house. We are expecting our first snow flurries today, and the heating system has not yet been needed. It won’t be long now though.

Last night I slept for 7 hours, straight through. This is a relief, and is due in great part to the cooler temperature in the house. 19C is a perfect sleeping temperature for me, with percale sheets on the bed, covered by my crocheted blanket. Through the fall food preservation season the kitchen was going full blast for 14 or more hours a day, which generated a lot of heat, and kept the interior temperature in the house between 21C and 25C. It seemed ridiculous to turn on the air conditioning when it was only 10C outside, and also silly to open the windows and cool the house down when we had all that lovely heat. But it wasn’t great for sleeping.

It was time to strain the liquid from fermented Crabapples, from the fermenting crock, into a gallon glass bottle. There was about a half gallon of Apple Cider when all was said and done. The top of the glass bottle has been covered with a clean cotton rag, secured with an elastic. It has been placed in large heavy cardboard box to keep it dark. The box is on the kitchen counter so that I can check on it from time to time. The Apple Cider will sit there for three or more weeks, as it slowly converts into Apple Cider Vinegar. My fermenting skills are not well developed as yet, so I am quite pleased with this good result.

About two weeks ago I burned my finger rather badly, taking a pan of muffins out of the oven. I cleaned the burn, dressed it, and forgot about it. My hands were very busy in the kitchen, as it was still full on food preserving at that point. I think it needed more tender care than it got. I noticed last week that it was infected. I’ve since been soaking it in salt water, two or three times a day, and wear a glove on that hand when working in the kitchen where my hands are constantly getting wet. The infection is gone, but it will be another week or so I think, before the wound has actually healed to the point where I can get my hand wet again. It is so annoying!

For the last four or five years we have had no children come to the door on Halloween Eve. We stopped buying candy because we didn’t give it away, and we don’t want to eat it. This year we are not buying candy. We’ve had no children visit at all, for years. I hope that this year, when it is so dangerous for seniors to be in contact with strangers, that we don’t have children suddenly deciding to come to our door. We live in an area where the authorities have deemed the risk of Covid-19 insufficient to curtail door to door candy collecting. Personally, I think it very foolish for seniors to risk answering the door to a series of strangers, who are traveling from door to door. There will be no contact tracing possible with this scenario. I guess if I was in my 30s, and in great health, and was not in contact with anyone who was vulnerable, I would be participating without a second thought.

Missing people today. Maurice Laframboise passed away a few days ago, an old friend with whom I had recently reconnected. Another old friend, Pauline, passed away in 2007, and I just discovered this news today. I was the Maid Of Honour at her wedding, and lost touch with her after that, as our lives took different directions. Because I had not seen them is such a long time, I cannot fathom that they are gone. Their existence is just as valued now as it has been all these decades.

This is the second week that Attila has been back at work. I miss him very much indeed. Soon though, it will seem normal again. Transitions are often uncomfortable, be they welcome or no.

My newish food processor, which is under extended warranty, has a crack in the plastic bowl. I noticed it on Sunday, as I was pureeing tomatoes. Less than two years old and already falling apart! My Cuisinart is still going, with a cracked bowl that cannot be replaced, after almost 45 years of service. It was the last model made in Japan, before the company was sold. The Cuisinart lasted more years, than the months that this new food processor lasted.

Yesterday I spent four hours on the telephone.

First with the extended warranty people, who informed the that expensive extended warranty would not replace a part, but demanded I ship the entire unit and accessories to them so that they could send me a coupon for the amount it originally cost, to spend at the store where I originally bought it. I wish I had read the find print on that warranty, never again will we purchase an extended warranty from a retailer. So after a lengthy discussion with the extended warranty people, I decided to hold off on the reimbursement process until I had spoken with the manufacturer.

The first call to the manufacturer was bizarre. I kept thinking to myself that the human that I was talking to, whose name I could not understand, must be on drugs. He spoke so quickly, with such a heavy accent that I had to ask to repeat every single sentence. I had to paraphrase what he was saying to ensure I understood it. Sometimes what he said didn’t make sense. We worked through the process, eventually, but then I was disconnected, and it all fell apart. He did not call back. So frustrating. So another call was made, and this time I spoke with a woman named Adele. Adele spoke clearly, concisely, and handled the whole thing extremely well. A new food processor bowl is on the way as the unit was still under the manufacturer’s warranty. It will not arrive any time soon, but it will arrive before next autumn, when it will be needed for harvest preservation.

I did a bit of poking around the internet, looking at food processors with metal bowls. Plastic is only good for a few decades, or months as I have discovered. I found my dream food processor, which is a fantasy item, that I will never purchase. I might have bought this 40 or 50 years ago though, when I knew I could probably get decades of use out of it. It would have paid for itself eventually.

I wrote recently that my mental and physical health have improved under Pandemic conditions. And that is true. My financial health is failing, but until that affects my mental and physical health it is not as significant as one might expect.

Stay safe dear friends!

Worldly

Weather

2°C (19C in the unheated house)
Chance of Flurries
Date: 11:00 AM EDT Tuesday 27 October 2020
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.6 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 2.0°C
Dew point: -1.6°C
Humidity: 77%
Wind: NNE 16 km/h
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
Unknown

In a very strange way we are in this Pandemic together!