Wednesday, June 8

Up at 7 a.m., and did a treadmill session and weights exercises after breakfast. While I was getting ready for the day, Hubbie went out and picked lettuce from the garden, which Mother cleaned and spun.

This morning, I made an appointment with a professional carpet cleaner, who is scheduled to come Monday at noon to clean the living room/dining room and den. These are the rooms where 17-year-old Shih Tzu has had accidents during the night. We have used several products trying to remove the urine stains, to no avail. So I decided professional cleaning is the last resort. Hubbie has been getting up in the wee hours lately to take Shih Tzu out, so hopefully there will be no more accidents.

I also took all the curtains down in the living room and dining room, and washed those windows. Hubbie washed the outsides of them. For window treatments, I've decided to stay with the white sheers, but the sheer sage colored drapes will have to go, because as kittens the cats ruined them by climbing on them. So I'm going to use only the scarves at the tops of the windows.

I washed and dried the sage sheers, but I'll wait to wash the white sheers until after the carpet is cleaned. When I wash sheers, I usually just hang them wet.

After that, I made chef's salads for Hubbie and myself, using the fresh garden lettuce, tomatoes from a roadside vendor (can't get hydroponic tomatoes until Friday), Vidalia onions, and green onions from the garden, radishes from the garden, carrots, apples, Craisins, walnuts, deli turkey, Baby Swiss cheese, and cottage cheese. Mother had the rest of the Long Soup for lunch, and we all had canned pear halves for dessert.

After lunch, Hubbie and I ran errands...to drop the word search puzzle contest off at the newspaper office, to the post office to mail a package to Daughter-in-Law (she wants an exercise jump rope, and I had one that I haven't used in years, thanks to a bad back), and to the WDCS for groceries.

When we got back home, I made a bowl of Jell-o with mixed fruit to have as a snack later tonight.

We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. Supper tonight was a pasta dish made from combining homemade tomato soup with cooked macaroni left from making macaroni salad at camp last week. We had a garden salad, cottage cheese, and slices of wheat bread and margarine with it.

Mother went home afterward, taking a helping of Jell-o with her, and Hubbie and I went shopping at one of the stores that has a sale every weekend. We had two $10 coupons, as well as a $10 rebate offer, to use.

With my $10 coupon, I bought a pair of on-sale black sandals. Hubbie bought a pair of on-sale khaki slacks and a belt with his coupon. And I chose new sets of drapery rods for the living and dining rooms, on which we'll get a $10 mail-in rebate.

Back home, we watched the Lifetime Movie Network feature, "Last Man Standing," starring Catherine Bell. A happily married suburban housewife is suddenly thrown back into her past, when a guy in her military unit dies, and her husband is kidnapped. It comes to light that she was a special-ops agent. But what happened while she was serving in Afghanistan that endangers her and her family now?

Aggravation: those darn cats! Last night I climbed into bed and soon felt something cold at my feet. When I checked, I saw that one of the cats had urinated on the bed! It had soaked through the lightweight quilt, the top sheet, the bottom sheet, and into the feather mattress.

Had to turn the mattress and change the bedding, of course, so we could rest for the night, but now we're in the market for a new feather mattress. We needed a new one, anyway, since the other is so old, but I wasn't planning on shopping for one this very week, for heaven's sake! The bedroom door will be closed to cats from now on, obviously.