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?
I really have nothing of value to add. My husband died of a heart attack at age 45. I know about week after week of someone occupying the entire sofa, with a large bag of chips and a large bowl of dip. Later being irritated because I did not vacuum under the cushions for all the crumbs.
ReplyDeleteAny warnings from me fal on deaf ears, just like the warnings about the 4 packs of cigarettes smoked daily before the last heart attack. He quit for a short time after the 2nd heart attack, but gained weight and decided to start smoking again to lose weight. I refused to let him smoke indoors and would have thought the Minnesota winters would discourage continuing with his habit. Some people can only learn by experience, the last heart attack made him stop smoking entirely, but did not change his diet. Another BIG scare will have to do that .... if he survives.
DeleteYou always manage to make me smile.
ReplyDeleteAs happy as I am to be entertainment for you, it would be a lot funnier if it was happening to someone else. For me, anyway!
DeleteI'm trying more diligently to follow the Dr.'s advice, after one heart episode and a stent, and with all the drugs going through me he says my heart is normal now. Between heart and lungs, I am grateful each day I wake up! I do go off the plant based diet often, but stay away from beef. No more fast food for me, though it was salads the last few times from Wendy's. Oh I do hope your sweet turtle has a good time in her new house, with all kinds of engineering additions.
ReplyDeleteHeWho is a strong believer in pills! If a pill can fix it, then just take pills and keep on with your lifestyle. Gradually, the dosage will increase until you have reached the maximum and thenhave to change your ways anyway. Better to do it and get off the pills is my way. Since being very cognizant of his sodium intake made me change the way I cook, restaurant food tastes so salty to me it is undesirable. I have lost a good chunk of weight over the last two years and now I am cutting my blood pressure meds in half. If nly my heart arrythmia would calm down and I could ditch the beta blocker, life would be great. Dora is one happy creature!
DeleteI have to ask, with no oven how did he cook (reheat) the Banquet chicken?
ReplyDeleteYes, I have HeWho's mold-brother right here, contemplating enlarging a hole in my new burner drip pans with a Dremel tool. Because, you know, that makes more sense to him than forking over $10 for different drip pans. HeWho's a corker, and Hick's a drip! Imagine if they went into a handyman business together...
ReplyDeleteA heart attack is about the only malady Hick has not experienced. Good thing you had that wine (courtesy of Dora, left over from her cork) so you could stomach the fried chicken consumption show.
That cork didn't even get used and the bottle is a big one. They say a glass of wine daily is good for the heart. See, I am just following a healthy diet. It does not help with my light headedness or dizziness, but after about half the glass, I no longer care. I doubt many people would hire the services of Drip and Corker, but you never know. Some may wonder why I didn't just buy an aquarium for Dora, along the same lines of your comment about the drip pans. I would need at least a 40 gallon and I am too um... cheap to pay for one. It is a lot more than $10. Plus the fact that an aquarium would not come with a nice plug in the bottom!
DeleteI'm wondering if you could somehow fix one of those taps that you see on water dispensers to make draining the habitat easier. An entire box of chicken in one night? Oh dear!
ReplyDelete