Soggy Thursday

We forgot to set the clock last night, so we overslept a little this morning. Still, we were up in time for me to get to Cardiac Rehab ahead of my scheduled hour. I took along an umbrella, though it only sprinkled during the morning.

Nothing unusual happened at Rehab...apparently, the new heart monitor/computer system is working well, and the staff have learned to operate it without difficulty. The new heart monitors have three lead wires instead of two, though I won't get a chance to try them until next month.

As I was leaving my parking space after the workout session, I noticed that a pickup truck parked next to me sported a bumper sticker that read: "Eat more beef...the West wasn't won eating salad." I'm pretty sure the truck belongs to the husband of one of my swim buddies, because they raise cattle. He is a Cardiac Rehab patient, and for those of us with heart disease, our bumper stickers should read: "salad...it's what's for dinner." But this man would be heartened to learn how much beef we've eaten over the past several days...as a roast on Sunday, then as leftovers on Tuesday, and finally as beef hash last night.

After freshening up for the day, I spent the rest of the morning designing a card for our friend who has terminal breast cancer. She will be honored at a gathering at the college next week, and the invitation states that gifts are discouraged, but cards will be welcome. It took quite a while for me to come up with an uplifting greeting that expresses how we feel about this lady without getting maudlin. I chose a sunflower design for the front of the card...one of my photos of a flower Hubbie grew...which I think reflects this woman's sunshiny personality. Despite gift discouragement, I'd like to pair the card with a bouquet of sunflowers in a watering can or some other suitable container, but we'll need to see if we can buy some, since the ones in our yard are gone now.

After lunch, Mother and I went to a scrapbook meeting at our local Extension Services office. Only three of us were in attendance, since one lady is tending to her ill husband, and another had car trouble today. A couple of others attend only occasionally, and today wasn't one of those occasions. We three had a great time visiting, though, and we got several memory pages completed.

Shortly after we arrived, the sky opened up, and it poured rain for a while, then stopped, then started up again. It slacked off by the time we were ready to leave, but we weren't home long before we got another soaking. And since then, it has rained hard a couple of more times.

For supper, we had 11-bean soup simmered all day with a can of no-salt-added diced tomatoes, a can of green chilies, onions, banana peppers, celery, carrots, garlic, lemon juice, no-salt seasoning, cumin, and chili powder, but no salt or ham. We had this with corn bread muffins for Hubbie, and canned biscuits for me, along with light margarine and honey. Dessert was individual serving size containers of applesauce.