Getting On With My Senior Citizen Self

I'm at my Gpa's right now and I have already had a nap a day, gone to bed early every night, listened to the TV at an infinitely loud volume, and eaten at a pizza buffet restaurant.

As a "young'un", I've trimmed some major weedage bushy thing (made a huge pile of shrubbery trash), driven myself to a close-by used bookstore, grocery shopped for meals, and K-Martted.

I did three loads of laundry today and almost flooded the basement. Gpa has the washer hooked up to a hose which feeds into a big sink which in turn drains into a sump-pump. I washed a load, never even seeing this set-up. I got the second load going, first in the dryer. Went upstairs to fart around, came back downstairs just in time to prevent flooding the basement because the jerry-rigged "filter" on the end of the hose had shot off with the force of the water and plugged up the sink so the water from the washer was just about to overflow the sink when I panicked (major basement floodage flashbacks from my basement/washer incident) and lifted the lid of the washing machine and the water stopped. I went upstairs to get Gpa and he was the one who found the "filter" in the drain and then the sink emptied rapidly into the sump-pump. Thank Goodness! So while I was down there having some OCD issues, I fixed the "filter" up with a big-ass twist tie and hooked it to the contraption holding the hose in place. No way the force of the water will shoot it off again. What is the "filter" you ask? Some sort of metallic mesh tube which apparently is supposed to catch the solid fuzzy crud that comes out with the water.

I have made Gpa two meals so far... tortellinis in Robusto Roasted Garlic Sauce and fake meat (Garden Crumbles by Morningstar/side I can never remember which it is) with garlic bread and tonight meatloaf with mashed potatos and roasted green beans. This is the first time I've ever made meatloaf and it came out awesome. It cooked all the way through and tasted just like my mom makes. She gave me the recipe before I came coz she said Gpa would like some. I also made the mashed potatos homemade. Boiled up some little red potatos and mashed away with butter and milk. They rocked. Gpa was very impressed with both the meatloaf and potatos. Unfortunately the green bean adventure was a total human loss. I roasted green beans fresh from the garden last year and they were terrific. Apparently, grocery store green beans are not the same and they came out awful. At least the dogs like them. I'm pretty sure the oil on the beans is going to give them the shits. Oh well, they're Gpa's dogs. He'll do whatever he wants.

I got him a rice cooker today at K-Mart coz he gets so tired standing in the kitchen waiting for the dogs' rice to cook in an majorly inappropriate double boiler pan set he has (inappropriate coz he's used it in the past to melt paraffin and wax - eeee!!!) We tried it out today. I'm glad he didn't see the first batch cook, had me a bit worried. I'll experiment more tomorrow. It might need more water. It has this warming thing it does after it cooks all the water away and the rice got brown today. If he forgets, it may burn, so I have to fiddle with it. But he liked how the rice came out for the doggies. That's a plus.

Well, I have to go and put in my newly purchased ear plugs so I can sit in the living room and not go prematurely deaf with Gpa while he watches TV and I read. These past two nights my ears have been ringing when I go to bed.