Tired Of The Heatwave
10:41 p.m. - 2014-08-02


The mornings aren't too bad, but by about three in the afternoon, the AC just is not sufficient, and it starts to get pretty warm in here. Today is the exception, and the lovely fog is coming in. Tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler, so the fact that I am going to make spaghetti for dinner doesn't fill me with dread. It was too hot to cook Sunday dinner last Sunday, so my MIL took us out to dinner as a Thank You for all the meals I have served to her since she became a widow. We just find her good company, so it is not at all a hassle to have her over every Sunday. She likes the way we do not edit ourselves when she is around and she gets the real, uncensored us. This enables her to be her own real self with us which has resulted in us hearing some really interesting family stories we have never heard before.

Another shirt for the spouse is almost completed, just waiting for a cool morning to do the buttonholes and sew on the buttons. Meanwhile, I got distracted again and started working on the fitting for a summer shirt for me. I am using a recently purchased pattern, and got the front so that the fit was really not bad, but the back had a yoke and a pleat, and I didn't like the way it fit. Today I used one of my old TNT shirt patterns and frankensteined it into a back for the new pattern. I have some expendable fabric that I am using for the muslin to see if it fits at all. It's been awhile since I made anything for myself.

We got the water bill this week, and it notes that we have reduced our water usage by 50%. I think they advised us to reduce by 15%, so we deserve a big gold star for being good citizens of the drought. Of course, our yard looks like we cut down by 50%, but you can't have everything.

Today was the Peddler's Faire in Benicia, but we were too tired of the heat to make the effort. Usually we go at the crack of dawn and walk all over to the 300 booths or so, but this year I spent the morning making spaghetti sauce, three-bean salad, and chocolate pudding, and he worked in the yard in the vast excavation he has going on out there. The idea was for him to make a nice raised bed so that we wouldn't have to bend over so far to grow vegetables, but he decided to dig down about 4 or 5 feet and get out the tree roots. He just keeps digging and digging and now it looks like the Grand Canyon. At least he is getting exercise.

For some reason, cherries aren't so horribly expensive this year, and it has dawned on me that my cherry pitter is the pits. It hurts my hand to use it so I tend to avoid the purchased cherries until they go bad. I decided that it was time to get a new cherry pitter, so I am trying one that does 4 cherries at a time. We'll see if it really works, and if so, this could be a Good Thing. I read online about how great it is to pit cherries with a paper clip, but no, it did not work for me. I saw another method of using a cheap fork and bending the tines to make a cherry pitter, but I haven't tried that one yet, not having a cheap and flimsy fork yet.

Korean Drama Review: I liked The Greatest Love (Best Love) very much. Turns out it is another Hong sisters production, like My Girl, which I also enjoyed. My dad got me started on watching Korean dramas when he was watching Dae Jang Geum, the long drama about the royal kitchens and the girls who were trained to work there.