After a couple of weeks of chaos and shocking mail, things are beginning to sort themselves out. I took the screen from the front door and two others Andy damaged with his climbing to the lumber yard this morning, and get to pick them up, fresh and repaired, this afternoon.

[The screen behind these broken blinds hiding Andy is also at the lumber yard for repairs.]

I picked up some cat litter. The boys go through it, let me tell you. It’s like babies: How can anything so sweet make such a nauseating pile of it?! They never learned the fine art of burying their poop from their mother, and make a half-hearted effort. If I saw it in the yard, I’d think, “The neighbor’s dagnab spaniel’s been here again! Grrr!”

Because I had to review a menacing piece of mail with the accounting person at the care center, I was there on a Wednesday at BINGO time. I used to go over on BINGO days when my parents were residents there. That gave us some family time together. It gave me another way to volunteer, too, because I’d help residents with poor eyesight or other difficulties play.

After Mom died, it was difficult to go there because I had to walk past the rooms Mom and Dad occupied to get to the activities room. Today, though, I helped an old friend with his BINGO, had some lovely conversations with old friends among the residents and staff, and cleared up a couple of issues. The menacing news from Blue Cross/ Blue Shield turned out to be stupid redundancy that serves no purpose but to alarm people not directly involved in an issue (me) with a shocking five-digit number. I hate insurance companies for this sort of mindlessness.

[A 2009 Chevrolet Impala gets me around, and actually gets the same mileage as my first car, a 1970 VW Beetle.]

I refueled my car. I remember how shocked I was the first time I had a car that held enough gasoline that (in 1973) could run up to the staggering total of $10 to top the tank. At $3.549 a gallon today at my local station, I reached $10 at 2.817695 gallons, if you want to know exactly. Topping my 2014 tank would cost $56.78!

And what about those three screens I had repaired? I picked them up this afternoon and paid $12.17 total. Now, that was a bargain! I guess I keep the cat.

Finally, now that I seem to have resolved the WordPress issue that plagued me earlier, I took some time to rewrite the awkward passages so normal native English speakers don’t report me to the Immigration and Naturalization people as an alien. Could happen in a week like this one…!