Tuesday

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"Faith and love solve many things." - Phyllis Elliott
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When my alarm went off this morning, I was in the midst of a panic dream, again. What is up with this?

My dream was about a family shindig. Relatives were visiting although I did not recognize any of them. We were to go out to dinner but I didn't want to go.

What had me upset was the female children had trashed my room and broken my glass figurines. I was especially upset over a broken mermaid. I know that anything dealing with water is related to emotions and I was feeling emotional.

Then both of my parents are telling me to get dressed so I could go with them, only I didn't want to go with them. There is the usual back and forth about hurry up and get ready. Why aren't you ready? Getting ready or else? This one was from my mother.

When I was young, other than being with my Dad and my paternal relatives, I pretty much preferred my own company. I liked being alone and did not always want to be with everyone else. When I was with my maternal relatives, I felt I was always on show and had to be nice to everyone whether or not I liked them.

So, I can analyze this dream, but I am not going to. I just know it upset me and I need to be gentle with myself and get on with my day as best I can.
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When I woke up I was in a grumpy mood. The temperature was around 32 degrees. I am very glad I covered up my potted garden on the patio. Brrr.

I drove over to the church for the food bank and instead of staying like I usually do, I dropped off my bags and came back home. I had no plans on sitting in a cold truck for roughly three hours and we did not have the gas to do so.

I am glad I came home because I had time to read my daily stuff and groom Bailey. He especially liked that part because it always comes with treats.

I even tidied up the kitchen.

Michael was up before I needed to go back to the church; so, he got ready and drove me back. The selection was sparse but we did get some whole milk, a salad for two and some turkey sausage besides the usual stuff.

I still feel bushed from yesterday's walk. It ended up the three of us took a mid-morning nap. Michael got up to go to his doctor's appointment in SLO-town. I slept a little more then I got up and did some more things around the house. I finally finished the Gene Hackman book and now I am onto Sue Grafton who has written the alphabet crime books. Her first one is "A for Alibi."

Michael came home with a clean bill of health from the doctor. Yea!!!!!! Considering he is turning 60 in June, he's doing very well with all his physical ailments. The doctor told him that this is the best he has seen Michael's lab results in two years. I guess being stable in life does help one's health.

The excitement of tonight is our neighbor across the way had an explosion in his apartment. Every one of the tenants was out on the sidewalk. The folks living on the other side of the wall felt the explosion and the rest of us heard it. Mr. T., our neighbor on our right as you go out the door, said he saw a blue flash and rushed over to assist the neighbor and when he pushed the front door open saw a fire and smelled something horrible.

The neighbor said he was baking a pizza and the oven blew up. Mr. T said it wasn't pizza he smelled in the apartment.

The fire department was called and they came and checked out the place. They brought in a fan to pull out the smoke and after taking some information, the fire department left.

For background info, from the day this guy moved in, we all had our suspicions about him. We had just gotten rid of the drug dealer who was living there before and so we are shell shocked. We began noticing the foot traffic was beginning to increase. People were out on the walk way talking on their cell phones day and night. People were going around the back to enter the apartment. Trash and cigarette butts were appearing in the parking lot. Not good, not good and now this.

Every one has called the housing authority and left messages and the fire fighter said he was going to call them this morning.

One of my neighbors let the new neighbor know what we had dealt with before and we were not going to go through that again. Well, he has been warned.
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To Crochet Lady and Bex, thank you for your suggestions on how to cook rice. We read the instructions on the bag and Michael decided to use our rice cooker. The rice came out perfect and so did the beans. We did not add the sausage because Michael liked the rice and beans just the way they were. The rice did absorb the extra juice of the beans. We did add the sausage today and it was yummy too.

I did read on the bag of rice to not rinse the rice because it took away vitamins. Very strange, since we have always rinsed our rice before cooking; because of this information is why I didn't drain the beans figuring there was a lot of good stuff in the juice. So, if there was, we ate it.

mz. em

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Currently reading:

-- Sue Grafton ABC Gift Collection: "A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, C is for Corpse
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-- "Payback at Morning Creek" - Gene Hackman
-- "Living, Loving & Learning" - Leo Buscaglia, Ph.D.
-- "The Daily Book of Art/356 readings that teach, inspire & entertain" - day 128
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