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It wasn’t planned that way, yet it gave me a start to realize where I spend money at the grocery store.

Also, I skipped the salty snacks and pop aisle, though I always limit myself on the former, just buy the small cans of pop since I waste most of the larger sized ones. I tend to go for mineral water, an extravagance, I know, but one gets the bubbles without the unneeded calories.

Next week, the shopping list will  probably include tea, coffee beans, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups (I can’t resist) a lemon cookie from Canada (“Soarry,” but they are really lemony and good!), and maybe those frozen lime fruit bars. Ritz crackers. Yeah!

One, though, was a letter from a class of 1966 classmate.

I’m still working through the mess on my table.

(Is my cat allowed to use that tone of voice on me? Hmmm. I must check it out on Google!)

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I need a nap.

But…

…you can take lessons from your pets. Slow but safe. Safe but slowzzzzzz.

Did I take this? Must have. No one else here. 6:36 pm.

Where’s my kitty? We need kitty “stuff” in here

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This week, my almost 36 years in quality came back to haunt me. I kept seeing parallels between making hydraulic hose to given tolerances and a chore given me to measure and record amounts of drainage from my cancer surgery wound….

Henry Ford – yes, that one! – used to say that if you need a tool to do a job and don’t buy it, you still pay for it.

He meant you had more scrap, higher reworks, more employee injuries, more customer returns for off dimension or crap quality, and more with the worn tool needing replacement than the proper new one

The cup I had to measure my drainage was marked ambigously. Below 30ml, there were marks that were in lines in English units (no clue which…) AND metric, also not clearly marked. I mistook the scrambled lines for being for the metric.

My measurements, consequently became blended! And meaningless! And impossible to sort because I don’t know which lines I referenced in my notes. I became frustrated because I used to work in English units, clearly marked on precision tools that were calibrated to reference tools 10 times that precise and accuract. Those tools, in turn, were verified by master tools maintaine⁹d and used by Bell Aerospace’s calibration services. THOSE tools were traceable to the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) master references. I mean, anal obsessive level temperature, humidity, cleanliness, moon suit level master maintenance to an atomic level. They have the atomic clock in Colorado, too, so all time changezzzzzz ! Sorry. I’m endlessly fascinated by the topic, but we were talking about my experiences with more precise and accurate ways to get data compared with the poorly marked measuring cup a Henry Ford might spit tobacco juice into, then toss.

I used to have a quote under my desk cover. My job included a lot of data analysis, crushing those data to learn what they showed about a given product process, etc. (My mind went through each of these uses, intruding on sleep, food, quiet times, and more. I’m sparing a lot of reading here with that simple “etc.!”) That quote help focus me when I sat in front of my computer with a spreadsheet or apps capable of doing lots of statistical mischief to data: “Torture numbers and they’ll confess to anything.”

The data on my drainage…meh! Torture them or not, they won’t tell anyone squat. I’m ashamed to have my name attached to them! Give me a graduated beaker, a  bit of scientific glasswork, and you’ll have numbers you can make sense of!

The right tool in the worker’s hand is the start to the result you need in industry. It seems that applies to your temporary “employee” measuring drainage from a wound,too.

The nature of variation. Now there’s a topic you DON’T want me to get started on. Oh, come on! You know maths are fun! Then we can talk standard deviations; probability theory; design experiments;  statistical process control; how Shewhart at ATT developed simple statistical tools (process data collection) methodologies) that Juran, then Deming further developed and taught to the Japanese after WWII; and that’s why you may be driving a Toyota or Honda today! Yeppers! “My world, not that plastic cup one.

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He heard me over on the glide rocker, and…

GREENIES TIME!

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*(Dorothy Lynch salad dressing is made on Grand Island, Nebraska. It may be ordered online, though most likely by people who tasted it in the initial distribution area, mostly locally. It is sweet, spicey, tomato-based, and probably very similar to Russian salad dressing.)

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I emphasize, too, that I DO make sure I have secure anchors (solid objects or object with two solid anchors…) before I make a move. I think it through, pause, consider other possibilities that might give me better anchorage.

Sometimes that entails moving to a different spot the next time I’m moving onto a spot, if the anchorage or angle moving over feels more secure.

I’ve revisited every place I go to this level of thought. SAFETY FIRST!

I’m not just sitting there. If I’m in the wheelchair, the first step is to lock the brakes! You don’t want try to get in or out of a wheelchair with unlocked brakes. Believe it.

Typically, while I’m pondering anchorage, I tell meyself: “slow and steady” over and over (…the mantra of wheelchairists unless they like landing on their butts!); the attack angle for minimum air time, physical effort, or awkwardness moving from one seated place to the place you want to be seated; how would I get up in the location if I failed to transfer safely and fell; how, if I fell, would I get help if I couldn’t get up; if I fell, would I have room to get on my hands and knees, crawl over to a solid object (chair, for example) on which I could use my upper body strength to drag myself onto my feet; do I have access to my LifeAlert call items in case all else fails (probably not).

Sometimes I’ll just sit in my wheelchair, rethink whether going and doing things that passed through my head is worth the effort, decide not, and sit for several minutes to decide what to have for my next meal. 

That’s fun! By the time I eat, I have changed my mind so often, I don’t have an answer, making a what I fix interesting because it isn’t what I thought I’ d have!

I rarely make food by recipe, so every familiar meal can have variations previous meals of the same thing did not. The elbow macaroni had currywurst ketchup in the meat sauce, for example, and onion, green pepper, and chopped tomato I sautéed and added to the sauce. The potato salad got a does of Doeothy Lynch dressing because I like a slightly sweeter, spicier potato salad. I ground coarse black pepper on it all and a bit more salt on the macaroni. I don’t add much salt to food, if at all , but this time, the sauce seemed flat, needing a bit more than the pasta absorbed from the salted water I boiled it in.

Tomorrow, the last day I can tolerate more of this pasta, I’ll either add something else to it – sour cream? cream cheese? – or bag it for the freezer.

I know this has been too much on the topic of feeding myself and use of the wheelchair, but there was concern that I wasn’t ready to live alone, that I needed someone to come in to prepare meals or vacuum and clean.

My Mom taught Red Cross swimming for 60 years. My siblings and I knew that that was her priority for daytime, that we could prepare meals for ourselves from whatever looked good on the shelves or in the refrigerator. I like to eat, so I’d try different things, for example, mix Jello flavors to see what (brown) Jello tastes like. You had to be careful which color Jellos you mixed! Ha! (Answer, good, especially if I mixed shredd carrots, celery pieces, even chopped onion in it. It’s a Midwestern sort of thing, I think.

I have a couple boxes of Jello in my cupboard I probably bought so long ago but never fixed. I wonder if they ate edible! Dialysis patients have to watch water intake, though. Jello is water heavy. Grapes are, too.

I tend to sip water with bites of food because of a slight paralysis on the right side of my mouth. My shingles legacy. It helps wash food down. You probably were told not to do this. A physical therapist in Denver told me I could choke on food if I didn’t break the rule!

I rarely finish a full can, bottle, or cup of a drink, so am glad bottlers offer those 7.5 ounce little cans. Twenty ounces!! Too much, and the fizz diminishes the linger they are in the refrigerator. I order small cups of pop at fast food places, and “small” sometimes is 20 or more ounces! Gad! Large is outrageous.

Anyway, for wheelchairists, walker users, and cane people, public places and restaurants tend to be a pain. The handicap parking is far away from the entranc3 or close with a steep curb to negotiate. You get inside, and waitress is fluttered about where to put you because your mobility device is “big”. (Sweetie, it can fit in a booth with you, but she hides you in some undesireable spot, pissed you weren’t happy to be isolated from everyone else. Mi Ranchito and Ken and Dale’s, folks. I stopped going to both.) Also, mobility devices do fold, making it possible to bring them into the both with you or secure them in some small place.

If they deliver, perhaps an infrequent restaurant meal is a small indulgence worth considering. IF THEY HAVE HELP THAT WELCOMES ALL CUSTOMERS. I note that while I abhor paying tips because proprietors underpay their help, the help are charged taxes by federal and state revenue services in the USA because of the assumption they get a certain amount in tips. To help that out, no matter how I feel about stupid tips, I never go below 25% or above 35%. Could it be that’s why I expect EXCEPTIONALLY BRILLIANT, FRIENDLY Service? Damn right!!

Now I’m in a black mood! Damn it!

My mood quickly changed when Bill, my tax preparer, guided me through the process of retrieving a copy of the missing form. This extra special care is why I continue with the tax preparer I do.

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I’m not a huge fan, but I enjoy the heart and compassion of “football” – Yeah! Yeah! I know! – and am pleased more and more schools feature it in their sports departments. I think I would have enjoyed playing it back in the days before dirt was invented!

So, the February page from the 2011 calendar I had made of favorite Louie photos popped up during my tax document search.

Louie was a very Kool Kat I named after another very Kool Kat, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. What’s that have to do with “Danmark,” a Kool small European country and this business of a hint of a ginger tabby cat blocking a goal while a suspiciously laughing cat in Danish colors observes and cheers for Danmark? (Think of that French Laughing  Cow fromage.) I think it was my team of the day, and they played well, but not against any of the other teams I wanted to win, against all probability since only one…yeah! Crazy, I know! But it must have been a very satisfying game to prompt this dreamscape!

FIFA World Cup has been ruined for me this year. I may try to watch the mess tied to US  venues by US politics. Shxt. The same for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the US. I just hope the US survives the year!

I tried to. Fish tacos and a taste test on French fries of two brands of Currywurst sauce. The fish tacos need a little more thought and my “failproof” method of identifying which sauce was which (initial for each brand) got messed up in moving to the table. I think “H” is a bit more spicey and thicker than “Z”, making “H” the winner. We’ll try some future test to confirm. European ketchup is thinner than US ketchup, so clings less well to “stuff.” I’ve no strong preference either way. I do like German “Senf” (mustard) better, though all mustards in the US aren’t the classic yellow mustard typically slathered on hotdogs. Everywhere the French mustard… of course! That is, I think, the srandsrd. Why else would people try to emulate it?

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I tried the street taco sauce by dipping a knife in it and tasting a tiny bit. Classified by the Mexican producer as green Chile and mild, I won’t fall for that a second time! Ha!

A Chicago chef (Rick Bayliss) with a classic Mexican restaurant featuring cuisine usually not prepared in my country, had a television show where he made food without the so much fire, just seasoning mere mortals can handle.