Saturday, September 10

Up at 7:30, but skipped my exercises so I could be dressed and ready when Daughter arrived. She's spending the weekend in order to be with Mother while we make a trip a couple of hours east to visit Hubbie's family tomorrow and see two new great-grandbabies for the first time.

The first thing I did this morning was bake a chocolate cake for a mid-afternoon snack. Daughter arrived as I was doing this.

Shortly after 10 a.m., we were ready for an excursion around town to visit the various antique/flea markets. We browsed two this morning before returning home for lunch. I found a couple of reasonably priced delicate glass Christmas ornaments for my "white" tree in the living room, but Daughter didn't find anything she wanted (or wanted to spend money on).

We visited two shops downtown and tried to visit a third, but a sign on the door of that one read, "Open when I'm in the mood...and closed when I feel like it." Apparently, today was one of those times when the owner wasn't in the mood. This approach tends to discourage me from patronizing the business at all. Of all the days when the owner should be "in the mood," it seems to me that Saturday would be one.

At home, Mother had prepared a pot of potato soup for our lunch (Hubbie had peeled potatoes and sliced them for her before we went on our outing). We had a choice of sandwiches...ham or hickory smoked turkey, with Swiss or American cheese, on bread rounds or rye bread, plus sliced tomatoes and Vidalia onions.

After lunch, Mother worked on her jigsaw puzzle, while the rest of us continued our tour of the antique/flea markets. Again, Daughter didn't find anything she wanted to spend money on, but I found three audio books on CD...all westerns...that I thought Hubbie would like, so we bought those. They were very inexpensive.

On the way to the stores, we stopped at a new coffee house/sandwich shop. We didn't intend to order anything, but I wanted Daughter to see an unusual part of the shop's decor...a table, with place settings and a lamp in the middle, and four chairs, all sitting on a rug, hangs upside down on the ceiling. We marvelled at this, wondering how all of it was mounted so that it is secure.

The first antique/flea market we stopped at had a sign on the door saying the owner would return in 30 minutes. We took this opportunity to visit a roadside produce vendor, where I bought tomatoes and red delicious apples.

And then we visited another flea market. By that time, the first market was open. But we found nothing we wanted in either store. One of the stores offered a signed copy of Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village," for $40. The owner declared that it's a valuable collector's item that will become more valuable with time. Maybe so, but I still didn't want to pay $40 for it.

So we went to a grocery store for hamburger buns, and on the the WDCS, where Daughter stocked up on hygiene items. Our last stop was at a gas station to fill the van for our trip tomorrow.

Back home, we enjoyed hunks of chocolate cake, with a choice of coffee or milk. My plan was to sprinkle powdered sugar on the servings of cake, but I discovered the sugar had weevils. None of us had ever heard of sugar getting weevils, but when I researched it online, I found that it can indeed be invaded.

We discovered weevils in a bag of sugar substitute a few days ago, and that's when I researched it. But I thought it was an isolated incident. When we found the pests in the powdered sugar, we spent the afternoon inspecting everything in the pantry, and found that we had an infestation. Those weevils found their way not only into boxes, but into tightly covered plastic containers and Ziplock bags. Apparently nothing is secure enough to keep them out. The infestation necessitated thoroughly cleaning the entire pantry and treating it for pests...not what I had in mind for an afternoon's entertainment.

Later, we had a choice of hamburgers or turkey burgers for supper, with corn on the cob and cottage cheese. Afterward, Mother went back to her puzzle, Daughter and I played on our laptop computers, and Hubbie watched TV.

Our favorite college football team played tonight, and I recorded it on DVR for a couple of hours, so we could watch it and fast forward through the commercials. Daughter walked Mother home shortly after the game began, and then she joined us to watch the team slaughter the opponents.