Dusty's Frugal Fortnights Return!

dustydigger

Morning all,another scorcher due.21C at 9am

+  Glad I have meat already cooked ,will be making a meat pie,and pobably carrots and roasties as usual. Will do it in stages starting prep now.Back is a little better,as long as I dont sit at computer for more than 5 mins at a time. Its going to be too hot to do much work,though I really need to wash the skirting boards in kitchen,and mop the floor.

For the most part I am going to chill out in the cooler side of the house,and watch the European athletics and rowing! The heat in the kitchen gets ridiculous,all that cavity wall insulation and double glazing,plus the sun blazing in full force all day,and all the cooking I do makes for a very warm room indeed!

+Must do a load of washing. Wearing things longer and filling the washer up makes for a nice long line of clothes blowing in the breeze/ Hope its another dry day tomorrow,the bedding is a real priority,what with all this sweating at night!

I have just been standing a little while at bedtime gazing at the moon,full glorious golden August harvest  moon seems parked right in view just for my pleasure Really beautiful and calming.

Right off to cook and do washing. Barely enough potatoes for dinner,Mr D had to carry 2 bags from the town,and we have used them up since Tuesday! We really use a lot of spuds!MrD refused to buy more today,so this pm I will have to get out and get a bus down to the small Morrison to get the best spuds.

Brought it on myself of course by not putting them on my asd@ order . Normally ,spuds are #1 on my shopping list ,so where was my brain

dustydigger

 DS1 just called in ,his work went crazy this week,sending him to do inspections all over the country,work he expected to do next month. He doubts he will be able to decorating till Tuesday or Wednesday next week. I think it has to rain before then,so what do I do with all the stuff on the yard?

 We had great news from one of Mr Dusty's grandaughters in the US. She studied journalism at Yale and has immediately ,aged 24,got a job working for Bloomberg TV. She has authored or co-authored lots of articles on tech,social media,and the internet, on their website,and sent us a clip of her first time as a pundit on Bloomberg TV,explaining how Disney+ is becoming a force in the streaming world.How did that little girl of 5 going for a walk by the sea with me overnight(well it feels like that!) become this poised knowledgable confident young woman?On TV!

She is the only one of 3 of our US grandkids working.   Baby sister  is still at college at Yale doing Global studies,politics and economics. Last year she worked as an intern in a campaign against Mitch McConnell,and frankly told how tough it was.

Eldest sister is still doing medicine at Harvard,she wants to be a neurosugeon,so still years of study ahead.. I myself,DD1,and GD1 had a great time in 2019 watching them all graduating from school or college..Without covid,we had expected to see this budding pundit graduating from Yale this summer.

dustydigger

At 4.30 am I woke and there was something odd about the quality of light. Opened the curtains and burst out with the opening line of Keats Ode to Autumn. What was to me the first autumn mist. I could see nothing outside the window at all, the fog was so thick. What with  several huge golden moons in a row,the hints of autumn are definitely there,though the crazy heatwaves may hide it a little..

 I recollected being at grammar school,probably what is now year 9,and we had to take Keats poem and do a  thing, a paraphrase ,something all we girls hated,but which actually emphasized just how unique and wonderful a great poem really is.It was a difficult task,which has stuck with me all my life,the frustration I felt that I couldnt get down on paper all the nuances of this beautiful work.. I know,I should only type the famous first line,but the whole thing is so rich and wonderful I cant resist showing it all. I guess you have all noticed by now I am a bit of a poetry feak,so you shouldnt be surprised

dustydigger

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
  Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
  With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
  And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
    To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
  With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
    For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
  Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
  Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
  Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
    Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
  Steady thy laden head across a brook;
  Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
    Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

dustydigger

Oh boy,its hot. Kitchen like an inferno,just pop in and out like a jack in the box as necessary.

Mr Dusty slept in till 9.30 after a restless night,up at 5 for ages,then nodded off. 10 am breakfast,so I am postponing the dinner a bit.I woke at 5.30 and didnt get back to sleep,did a bit reading.

He always watches a recording of Match of the Day on Sunday morning but,oh joy,he has also discovered there is a programme of league matches on ITV4, so  we taped that as well,so 3.5 hours solid football highlights. He always has questions about managers or players or whatever which he has me googling.Now you see why I am getting on site so late,and will be leaving again so soon

Had wanted to make a corned beef pie for myself,but its just too hot.Salad here I come.I also have some rhubarb ,I can do it super quick in the microwave..Then just endure the heat the rest of the day.

dustydigger

Hi folks,sorry to be MIA. I have often wondered why exactly oldies die in the heat etc,and now I have seen for  myself just how debilitating heat is. I think there has been a cumulative effect really. I got through the first big wave ,when record temps were popping up everywhere,yet over the last week,though the temps havent been so high,often barely 30C,I have  become tireder and tireder,lethagic and weak. .Not too good on the anxiety and depression side either. Could be anything,anaemia,thyroid,or diabetes,who knows.Or just a weak body sapped of strength by the heat.

For days I've done nothing to prepare for the decorating,and DS1 turned up at 10.30 am today,and put in a hard shift,taping and masking walls,stripping off the paper from the small wall by the stair door. Lots of mould,probably more than a square metre spread over a corner so covering part of two walls.. He had been confident he could do both rooms in one and a half days. He knows better now! . DS2 is intending to sand and clear all that area,spray with mould killer,then that whole corner will need painting in a few days. Unfortunately DS1 checked the hall ceiling too,and discovered that there has been a leak under the tap causing water to drip down and then spread in the ceiling of the hall after ruining the sittingroom ceiling,which the council roughly replaced,didnt paint just left an unsightly mess at a time I was too ill to do anything,and in the end he said he would do it..The lazy so and sos from the council,when the ceiling came down a while ago,didnt do a thorough job on the piping,and so water has still been secretly and silently just leaking a little at a time

 The paper when he touched it was sodden,though not bad to the eye. He didnt have the tools,and was too busy painting to sort the sink  properly,but he was able to isolate the tap for the moment. He carefully warned us  that we shouldnt touch the cold tap in the sink at all. So of course Mr Dusty went up and washed some clothes,and used the tap.Hate to think what that has done to the situation. He claims he didnt hear DS1 warn us not to use the tap....sigh.......

Anyhoo DS1 has done most ot the painting on the other unaffected walls,painted the coving,and done one coat of the ceiling. He also took down and then rehung the curtains and the vertical blinds. By 4pm he was shattered,he's never decorated before,they always pay a decorator.He had to go home then,as he was expecting a zoom business meeting at 5pm. He had paint all over his hair! I was left to clean all the brushes and rollers and the tray.At least I was fresh after doing very little all day.That was the job I always hated when doing my own decorating,all that cleaning up and tidying away after a lot of hard work,so this time it was easy.,probably only 20 mins work. Amazing just how much emulsion paint is soaked up in a roller. You keep thinking you are finished,give another squeeze,and there is even more thick white paint!

Cant fill up the display cabinet in the alcove till the gloss is done,and perhaps not even then,because the wallpaper on the fieplace looks so tatty and worn. I should have been out this week looking at wallpapers,but I could barely walk across the room.Tomorrow should see second coat on the ceiling and maybe the gloss,but after that he is extremely busy,kitchen may have to wait till next week. So the yard continues to look like the Steptoes.Boxes on the yard have now got soaked,because unlike most of the country being under a drought,we have had a lot of rain.Thick mist and drizzle,leaden grey skies where the cloud is so thick its impossible to point to where the sun is in the sky,and occasional really heavy showers. Good old British weather!

beanielou

Oh dear dear Dusty.
Whatever next 

dustydigger

beanielou said:

Oh dear dear Dusty.
Whatever next 

  Hey,beanielou,when has my life ever been plain sailing.Its always one thing after another. Hey,imagine how totally boring this thread would be if it was confined to budgeting only. Snooze fest. Now you can always check in to see whatever disaster is currently raining down on me Always seems to be something new in my life. Certainly no time for boredom.

Oh I'd love me some boredom......

Going off here now. Going to order a chinese,I'm sure we had one only days ago. Mr Dusty is paying though. Trying to make a meal today was no joke with tools,paint and paraphanalia,everywhereand at least it will mean an easy lunch tomorrow for Mr D and DS1

Auntycaz

I think its the humidity as much as the heat that is so tiring Dusty and we've got plenty of that. I just wish the thunderstorms and rain they keep forcasting would finally arrive. We haven't had any rain since the first week in June.

dustydigger

Auntycaz said:

I think its the humidity as much as the heat that is so tiring Dusty and we've got plenty of that. I just wish the thunderstorms and rain they keep forcasting would finally arrive. We haven't had any rain since the first week in June.

You could be right. I just remembered a friend many years ago telling how she and her asian husband went to live on the coast of the Indian sub continent,(no more info about that). She was a bright active 22 year old,spanish by birth so quite used to fierce summer heat. But within 6 months they moved back to UK.She told of 100F temps,which back home in spain was bearable,but almost 100% humidity. She could barely walk the length of their garden without gasping for breath and taking half an hour before getting up the energy to return to the house.