Splashing Salmonella

 Monday, Monday .... Here we are, another Monday with NO STOVE. Rumor has it that the GE stove I chose to replace my first choice of a Hisense, will be here tomorrow. 

Where have I heard that before? Life goes on and yesterday I made a delectable pot of soup in the slow cooker. Using some of the smoked turkey breast and some frozen green beans and carrots from my garden along with onions and celery. I thought it was good and HeWho siad it was as he ate his bowl along with a bag of oyster crackers. 

We have been having take out and eating at food establishments. I sometimes want to tape the mouth of HeWho shut, and order for him. He ALWAYS orders food he should only have in moderation given his history of heart attacks (three, so far). If he does have a salad he will drown it in dressing, so much that anything that makes it to his stomach is incidental. And BEEF is what's for dinner, every dinner as far as he is concerned. The side is always fries, no baked potato for this cardiac patient. This is just as well, because his baked potatoes would be "loaded".

It is better if I do the cooking, because all the food we get eating out is loaded with salt. Salt makes everything taste better, you know. Along with butter and bacon fat. I read aloud the food restrictions to him while he was still in recovery mode and for awhile he ate better, but now that the memory of the heart attack is fading, he thinks himself to be "cured". I would venture to say that, just like alcoholics, you are never "cured" of cardiac disease. 

So, yesterday, I was in the process of "building" a new turtle habitat with a very deep and large plastic bin I happened upon at Walmart. I think it is designed to hold Christmas decorations. I picked up a few items at the $Tree and then gathered some rocks and tree limbs outside. I needed a plug in the bottom to make it easy to drain the dirty water and clean it. HeWho thougt a cork would do the trick.

In anticipation of needing a handy cork, I bought a bottle of wine. Dora could have the cork and I could have the wine. Imagine me thinking ahead like that! Part of the lost and never to be found box of cutlery from the move must have had the cork screw in it ....

So I pondered other solutions to the problem. The old habitat could easily be picked up and taken outside or to the bathtub to empty the water and clean it. There is "no way in how" ( a phrase form the mouth of one of my children or grandchildren ) I was going to be able to pick this new habitat up. I wanted a hole in the corner so that I could simply shift it off the edge and put a bucket under it. This water is a great fertilizer and letting it go down the drain actually hurts me!

HeWho dispatched himself to the hardware store and bought corks in three different sizes. Off he marched to his tool shed to retieve a drill bit of the appropriate size. The tool shed that his wife sorted and organized so that things such as drill bits should be easy to find ......

Of course he couldn't find the right size, but that did not stop him from drilling a hole and them mutilating the smallest cork and still not be able to plug the hole. I know this comes as no surprise to my readers, most especially Val, wife of Hick over at Unbagging The Cats. She is married to a man cut from the same mold.

So, while he stood with his finger in the hole trying to come up with a solution and bemoaning the fact that his drill bits are "lost", I came up with a better solution and grabbed a container to put under the end and make all the water go to the other end, freeing the man's finger. I asked him about some tubing meant for an ice maker that I had seen and put on a hook on the wall in his shed. This would make it much easier to direct the flow of water into a bucket and eliminate possible salmonella splashing.

I must be a genius of junk parts. He retrieved the tubing after only two trips to his shed to look for it. It was too small ...... because he had already drilled a hole that he KNEW would not fit with the cork.

Once again he dispatched himself to the hardware store. I sat myself down to wait for the magic of Tylenol to take away the headache I got from all that thinking. It was a relaxing prelude while I waited for him to return. He seemed to have been gone a long time when he finally returned with the tubing and ice cream and a corkscrew .... bought at different places.

The new tubing was set aside to eat the healthy soup I created before he woke for the day. A temporary fix with hot glue had the water in the habitat at bay and he decided he needed something else and would get it the next day whe we went to have our eyes examined. 

So as we sat in our respective assigned seats, imagine my surprise when he whipped out a box of Banquet Fried Chicken from the freezer. How could he be hungry, we just ate? It took the whole evening, but he ate the entire box of chicken meant for a family of four. I had a small glass of wine. He offered me some chicken, but who am I to deprive this man of a fourth heart attack?