Day One-hundred-and-thirty: Narrowed choices

Today my choices for breakfast were narrowed considerably by what was clean to cook in, nothing.  Rather than delay breakfast until after a kitchen clean up, I had a tomato open faced sandwich on a slice of my Almost No Knead whole wheat bread.  Then I had another slice with honey on it.  Not only was the bread good, eating breakfast this way delayed my kitchen cleanup chore.

One nice thing about cleaning up the kitchen is the hot water.  Yesterday I finally broke down and took my thermostat off of "hold" at 58 degrees, which meant that it was to go to the pre-programmed temperature setting.  When the furnace didn't come on, I checked what the programmed setting was only to discover that it was set for 60 degrees during the day.  This was obviously programmed for a time that I was working.  Rather than re-program everything to be more in compliance with my Life after Layoff schedule, I decided to suck it up, put another layer of clothes on, and find some other way to keep warm.  (I should have done the dishes then.)  Ah, the joys of warm water.

After the dishes it was close enough time to eat lunch but since I had already had my tomato for breakfast, I had Bush's chili beans and a salad.  Then I went out and cleaned the gutters.  They weren't as bad as I had thought they might be but they were bad enough.  Some places even had moss growing.  When I was almost done I remembered the gutter scoop that Marilyn had bought and went looking for it in obvious places.  It wasn't in any of them so I completed the chore the slow way.  At least this time I wore gloves, my bulky leather work gloves on hands that already don't fit very well into gutters, let alone clasp the stuff to get it out.  And finally, I made a start of cleaning the rest of my house.  I'll finish the rest tomorrow, hopefully before my youngest daughter and son-in-law arrive.

The Comcast guy never came, but I had already disconnected the cable box.  It's a lot less tempting to turn on the TV when it isn't plugged into anything.  I called and they suggested I call tomorrow. 

After a long gap I've started writing more of the "memories" I have of Marilyn.  I still have a lot to write and may never be finished but I was running out of prepared topics for the blog.  My daughters were right to ask me to do this.  It is good to remember the joy.