New Year… yep. New you? Eh, not so much. BUT… goal for the year… post (try to post?) at least once a week without going postal on anything. Hey… it’s a goal.
So…
It’s Thursday January 2, 2025. I have two, count em two, percolators of coffee on the stove. I’m midway through my second week in a row on pager duty and I know it will be THAT kind of day. The dogs are all sitting in my office looking at me like I am a horrible person because it is food time in 20 min and I’m not doing food yet. I’m pretty sure they will survive the 20 min until it is time.
Candles lit sending positive energy out into the world.
Yesterday we celebrated New Year’s Day with an early trip to the ER. The little one (okay… 30 years old, but the youngest and the shortest so… little one) finally caved and went to find out what the flank pain in their side was. Turns out that 2 weeks doesn’t necessarily make it a kidney stone passing even if that is what the pain felt like. CT scan returned that it is a very nasty UTI. I didn’t even know that you could see a UTI on a CT scan and the doctor said it is kind of a nasty one. Flank pain and shoulder pain both attributable to that infection. Call in a script to Walgreens… who’s pharmacy is, naturally, closed on New Year’s Day… so we will be picking that up when the pharmacy opens this morning.
Got home, got coffee, put Kielbasa in the crock pot with sauerkraut (you know… for the superstitious good luck deal for 2025.
Put 4 trays of eggs (from “A” dumpster from a couple days ago) and 1 tray of banana mango fruit puree from the pouch things from the dollar place about the same time in the freeze dryer. That is drying nicely.
And, speaking of dumpster land… who knew that “A” is closed on New Years Day? So… trip 1 there was early afternoon. Met a really nice couple(probably in their late 20s early 30s) who had the same idea I did… daylight at the dumpster instead of o-dark-thirty. The guy AT the dumpster and I started talking. He does mostly stores about 25 miles away but he was at his partner’s family’s house and figured he would see what our store had. Had a delightful chat about dumpsters and rescuing perfectly good produce and sometimes getting lucky with meat. His partner was taking his filled boxes from the dumpster to their car. He was headed to fill some of his favorite little free food pantries with clementines, potatoes, and onions. He was nice enough to leave me with the chicken (that I admitted I would take home and cook up with veggies and rice for the doggos).
Young one from the ER visit found their results in MyChart and kind of panicked. Ironically, we need to start saving lemon juice (guy from the dumpster trip clued me in to juice the lemons and freeze the juice in ice cube trays to use later) to help dissolve the kidney stones. Yes, little brother… the cranberry pills too… but washing the cranberry pills down with lemonade can’t hurt. I knew there had still been several bags of lemons in the dumpster when I was there in the afternoon…. and it wasn’t TOO too cold that they would have frozen solid yet… so (on our way back from getting Sprite… we are now also limiting our intake of caffeine and cola) we swung by “A” again.
Low and behold… there was another car there again. Popular freaking place!!! This time I had a very nice chat with an older man who comes to get produce for he and his wife. I loved talking to him. He accent was magical! He had a grabber (but a less effective one) and a big metal hook to drag things closer. He asked what I was looking for and he gave me one of his bags of lemons. He, apparently, never tried jumping INTO the dumpster… kind of was shocked when I did… but in return for his generosity of the lemons, I helped him rescue a boat load of navel oranges, onions and some clementines.
Talking to the kids on the way back home… Eldest told me I had just realized how much competition I have in the dumpster deal. I knew that there were times when others had beaten me to anything, at least there. I may have to rethink my routine of waiting until WAY early in the morning and try staying awake long enough to make my run in the evening… at least there.
It is sobering to realize how many people either…1. rely on what stores can’t be bothered to donate to make their own ends meet or 2. rely on someone like the younger couple to stock little free food pantries with things that stores can’t be bothered to donate. Their are laws in place that say that you can’t be held liable for something that might accidentally go sideways if you donate to charities… but stores just can’t be bothered…
So… here I am… dogs now fed. Coffee procured. Laundry half way done.
Gas (at my favorite convenience store) $3.25
Gas (where we end up getting it) $2.58
Eggs $5.99
Milk $2.99
Sugar (Domino’s 4 pounds) $4.99
Flour (store brand 5 pounds) $2.69
A Figment Of Fitness 