23 September 2020
Well! The upper cabinets arrived! Boxes and boxes and boxes of them. There are 26 listed items on the invoice and yet they still managed to not include the glass paneled doors on the upper middle cabinet nor the spice rack pull out. The Baxter Restoration rep was a little miffed. He even ordered some extra molding and a super large sheet of veneer to cover the back of two of the cabinets that face the kitchen table and yet they still left things off.
Not only that but apparently his main construction guy stood him up with one of his bosses’ projects so he’s done with him. I’m expecting Lewis sometime tomorrow to assess the cabinets in place and the new uppers and how to install them. I was satisfied with the work of the other guy but I understand you don’t stand up your bosses’ boss.
At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it is not an oncoming locomotive. Again, I’m still predicting all will be done by December – assuming a hurricane doesn’t blow it all away before then.
Of course, that means I have to take everything out of the old cabinets – both upper and lower. The lower need to be cleaned out because they did ship the pull out drawers I wanted. Baxter brought me six Home Depot boxes and I’ve requested at least six more. What that means is if I want to do any cooking, I have to scrounge through around 12 boxes for supplies and dishes. I guess it is somewhat like a camping trip scrounging for things in a cooler.
Yesterday was a blah day. I did my walk and also my yoga but when I headed out to do my morning swim it started raining. I used that as an excuse not to do my laps in the pool even though it quit about 15 minutes later. Any port in a storm.
I’ve been a little leery of getting in the pool even with sprinkles. I used to be fearless and not worry about it unless I heard thunder. It reminds me of the old joke we told as kids, “If it starts to rain, go underwater so you won’t get wet.” That held until I was swimming laps with a perfectly clear sky – really, not a single cloud – and a huge clap of thunder startled me mid lap. I later read you don’t have to have clouds to have lightning. Florida is the lightning capital of the world, so I decided sprinkles are warnings. They even have lightning detectors scattered all across golf courses, ball fields, and anywhere there may be people congregated.
It was another 3am morning. I don’t know what’s going on with that but it’s gotten to be a habit. Fortunately, I dozed back off around 4:30am and got up around 7:30am. Normally I would read on my iPad but I have found when I do my accommodation goes to hell for the rest of the morning. My entire walk looks blurry.
My accommodation has been bad for about 15 or 20 years now. I can read for about an hour and I’ll have to wait another hour before anything in the distance is within focus. The early morning reads, however, take about 3 hours to get over. Not sure why the difference simply because of the time.
I may have to start my own garden club. I enjoyed the cucumber sandwiches so much last week I made more this week. I made a mistake with last weeks by putting them in a container and placing them in the refrigerator. The bottoms got soggy. I took off the top of the container and turned them over to allow the fridge to dry them out. They were at least edible. This time I placed them between layers of paper towels in the container in hopes they will absorb any moisture. If it works, I’ll be happy – and burping.
Is anyone else getting political phone calls? I rarely answer my phone if it doesn’t have a name attached to the number but since I’ve been waiting on cabinets, I’ve been forced to answer some unknown numbers. Most have been telling me how concerned they are that my extended warranty is about to expire on my jeep. I confess to having one on the jeep but it is not ready to expire. That seems to be the most irritating call in south Florida right at this moment. There are even cartoons about it in the paper.
Broward County Supervisor of Elections finally published the sample ballot for my precinct. I’ve already filled it out and am ready to go. They’ll probably start sending the mail-in ballots this next week. I understand that Florida is sending out 5 million ballots in the mail next week.
At least the web site for the Supervisor of Elections lets you check when they mail you your ballot, when they received your ballot in the mail, and whether or not you ballot was actually counted.
This year’s ballot is not a busy as past years but there is enough. Besides President, there’s U.S. House, State’s Attorney for Broward, Public Defender for Broward, Sheriff, Supervisor of Elections (the current one is not running), County Commissioner, Yes or No on a Supreme Court Justice, three District Court Judge races, one Circuit Judge race, one school board race, a water commissioner and Mayor of Fort Lauderdale.
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I can’t remember the last time I didn’t vote in an election. The mail-in ballot makes it much easier than having to go to a poll, particularly when Broward County is constantly having to reassign polling places. For a while there I was getting a change in polling place every election.
I was talking with Michel the other day and we were gingerly discussing whether or not we were going to Key West this year. She, Nancy and I have birthdays that are fairly close together (particularly Michel and me) and we decided to do an annual trip to Key West to celebrate. After broaching the subject, Michel was greatly relieved when I suggested we not go.
I think this pandemic is a long way from being over. There was an article in the online newspaper today about a group of three friends living in a house in Tallahassee while going to Florida State University. They had a very small party at their house that had 10 total people. Two weeks later, all 10 tested positive for Covid-19.
The Covid-19 Dashboard for the University of Mississippi is now at 515. The last I checked it was in the 400’s. There are also 183 active cases in the city of Oxford that are also probably students. And – Ole Miss plays football on campus this Saturday. It’s a recipe for disaster. Supposedly there is no tailgating in the Grove but that’s not going to stop the fraternity parties.
I’ve probably mentioned this before but I like to haunt old cemeteries. It’s something I got from my maternal grandmother. Ruby would love to go visit and sometimes take flowers to our relatives. There were two that we frequently visited in Morton, Mississippi: Hodge Hill and Sims Hill. Seems like a lot of our relatives are there.
Anyway, I kept noticing how many had the date of death as the year 1918. It was only later I learned about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. At first, it was taught in the schools at the Spanish Flu Epidemic. I even later learned that the reason was Spain was neutral in WWI and had not censored its press so the first news reports of the 1918 pandemic came from Spain.
What a misnomer that was. The original outbreak was traced to Fort Riley, Kansas among recruits going to Europe in 1918. It was the United States that spread the disease across the world, not Spain.
Virology was such a new field that no one suspected a virus as the causative agent of the epidemic. However, people had enough sense to wear masks even then.
You don’t hear too much about the role of the U.S. in the spread of the 1918 pandemic. That’s why I’m a little concerned about the new issue of Trump and the Republicans in Congress being upset at the revisions taking place in text books. Supposedly they are upset that the texts are trying to tell us all the bad things we did in U.S. history.
As someone who went to school in the 50’s and 60’s, I can safely say our textbooks were totally sanitized of any controversial topic. I didn’t hear about the killing of Emmet Till until a few years ago. I only knew about some of the massacres of first Americans when I read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I learned to not trust Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam. Richard Nixon and Watergate further shattered my trust in the “official” version of what takes place in history.
I come down on the side of exposing all the travesties committed by the United States in our textbooks so students can learn from them and not repeat the mistakes. I’m not saying don’t tell the good, I saying tell the good with the bad.
As a kid I was always glad to read some of the American Heritage Foundation publications on historical moments in the U.S. Pride in country was inculcated in Boy Scouts. We raised the flag in the morning and had evening retreat to lower the flag in the evening. The Scouts even offered a citizenship merit badge. We had to take civics in high school. What we were not told were the darker parts of our country’s history.
Perhaps a little better understanding of our good and bad points would lead to a little more tolerance. Then I wouldn’t have been so embarrassed when I sat in study hall on November 22, 1963 when the principal announced the John F. Kennedy, President of the United States had been shot and the entire study hall erupted in cheers. I was stunned anyone could cheer the assassination of a President. I sat meekly in my seat wondering at the hatred. To this day I have no answer.
Stay tuned and stay safe!
