On my morning walk, I worked on using only my abdominals and gluts to move my legs. This leaves the legs feeling like puppet’s’ legs; they just swing. I wound up taking much smaller steps as a result. By the time I had reached the second fire hydrant, I was close to 2,000 steps. It was hard work.
Whatever symptoms I had of a urinary tract infection were gone. I decided to continue putting off using the antibiotic. What I did notice is that that my urine was almost colorless. That's supposed to happen when you drink too much water. I sipped water all day, but I definitely did not drink more than eight glasses. I suspect that it was the doTerra lemon oil that did the trick. I continued watching. Ah, I also used the infrared light last night, but I had used that before. I would be thrilled to have found a way to deal with infections that did not involve antibiotics.
Moving like that reminded me of a scene from All That Jazz, where Ann Reinking does a duet with a twelve-year-old girl. The young girl looked like she was hydraulically lifting her legs; Ann's legs looked just like a puppeteer manipulated them. It was amazing to see. This way of walking stressed my left thigh muscles.
As I was about to turn into my street to return home, Terry came from the other direction. He warned me that a big black dog was loose, and a woman was chasing him. Because of where we were on the street, I knew it was the dog who had circled my legs with his leash and knocked me over. Just then, a young woman appeared at the bottom of the driveway across the street from her house, dragging that dog by his collar. Elsa barked like a crazy dog. The other dog barked and pulled. I turned around and started walking back up the hill to get out of sight so the young woman would be free to get her dog home. When I looked back, she was having no success. The dog was a three-year-old black lab, strong, and that dog wanted to get to Elsa.
Since the young black lab was preoccupied with Elsa, I offered to walk Elsa onto their property under the assumption that the lab would follow her. That is what he did.
As we were walking down the driveway, a fairly steep decline, the dog nearly got away. The young woman hung on with her life. While she was tumbled by the dog, she managed to hold on to his collar; he didn't get near me. While the dog wasn't on a leash to wrap around my legs, I was scared that Elsa would circle me to get away from this rambunctious young dog, and between the two of them, I would go down again. It wound up that was the young woman's concern too.
I walked Elsa right up to the point where the dog's outside lead line hook was lying. The young woman secured the dog. I asked her to hold on until I got away because I saw that he might circle me with the leash, and there I'd be again.
When I made it safely up the driveway, out of the dog's way, I turned around and asked for the dog's name. Chuck. Since I knew Samuel, the dog walker on the day of my fall, was German, I asked them if they were German. No, they were Russian. Samuel and his father were just friends of theirs.
I noticed a cage of birds. People have chickens around here, but these were not chickens. The young woman, Victoria, and her mother, Nadia, explained that her father liked decorative pigeons. He bred them. He just thought they were beautiful. That led me to mention how beautiful the wild chickens are here in Hawaii.
The young woman explained that Chuck had gotten away from her that morning while she was moving him from a walking leash to the yard leash. She said he usually waits patiently, but today I caught sight of the chickens across the street and took off.
If you have never seen an image of these chickens, take a look at this. And this picture doesn't do them justice. The feathers are iridescent. This is what happens to are pale yellow chickens when they run wild for a few generations.
https://www.activitykauai.com/why-are-there-so-many-kauai-chickens
If you're wondering why we have wild chickens on this island. Easy: people leave and let their chickens loose. They go forth and multiple. But the island that has it the worst is Kauai. A hurricane hit there and busted open all the chicken coops. They went forth and multiplied, and multiplied, and multiplied, and voila, they changed from those dull, drab color to what you see in that picture. Amazing!
All's well that ends well. Chuck was back on his leash, I hadn't been knocked over, I got to meet folks who live on my block, and, as far as I know, no chickens were injured in this adventure. I also had a chance to tell Victoria and Nadia that an electric fence was embedded in their driveway. This would save them a lot of grief with Chuck. I have no idea how to reactive it. I left that to them.
When I got home, I got around to finishing my cleaning job on the stovetop. I did the last step with Dawn Liquid Detergent. I let it sit for a while. It soaks up grease like a sponge. Then came the stage where I had to get all the soap residue off, particularly off the stainless-steel trimmings. Soap is acidic and cuts into stainless steel, causing rust. Nothing needs any more encouragement to rust around here; the salt air already amply provides opportunity.
I sat down to do some more work or play on the computer. I'm setting my alarm for every 20 minutes, so I don't sit until my tush turns to mush. I got up with the plan of napping, but I decided instead to do some more vacuuming. I finished off two rugs. Every time I vacuum now, I have the image of Damon vacuuming those rugs when he was here for the internment. What a sweet image. I actually finished off the surface vacuuming of all the rugs.
Not being the domestic goddess type, I failed to realize that my vacuum, in fact, any vacuum, would do a better job on setting one than setting two. Setting two is for carpets; that's true. But, setting two raises the brush and therefore provides less suction. Since I have close pile rugs, setting one would do the better job. Oh, well. Next time. It amazes in how many things I still have to learn even at this late date in life.
For my next break, I did some reading: the book on Jung and Patchett's Dutch House. The latter got a little scary because there's this mean, greedy stepmother who doesn't care if she brings ruin on everyone else as long as she gets what she wants. I plowed through. The two orphaned children seem to have survived. Life does go on.
My next task was vacuuming up the Elsa-messes with the Rainbow vacuum cleaner. I don't use it to do surface cleaning of the rugs, only deep cleaning. When I do, I use the furniture attachment and go over the lanai carpet inch by inch. I wasn't up for that today. If you're wondering why I don't use the vacuum attachment, it doesn't work. I've taken it for repairs two times already. I just gave up.
Cleaning up Elsa-messes requires using the furniture attachment too. I poured about six cups of water on the spot and sucked it up with the vacuum. Damon watched me do this once and was gob struck to watch the color of the carpet change from dark, due to the wetness, to its original color with just one slow pass of the vacuum. I don't think I could ever bear to be without one of these amazing tools. Of course, if the world comes to an end and I wind up living in the rough, I may just have to.
At 2 pm, I had to stop because Bill McLaughlin on Exploring Music talked about Wagner's Ring Cycle. I'm not an opera buff, but he is just a pleasure to listen to. He is so excited about the music. Plus, Dorothy was singing the praises of opera the other day, and she inspired me to give opera another chance.
There were things about it I did enjoy. McLaughlin played a tape of Anna Russell's take on The Ring Cycle. Afterward, I found it on YouTube and played it all the way through. The plot of the opera is ridiculous. A little too ridiculous for me to enjoy. The mythic value of it escapes me. Except, except. The story does say when you're up to no good, eventually, everything goes back to the way it was before. I was thinking of Wagner being an icon of the Nazis. They didn't get the message. Abandon love and go for the ring so you can rule the world, and eventually, you will lose everything. You can only deviate so far from a moral center.
Right after the show, I worked on another spot where Elsa had done some damage. I had several others to clean that I discovered the other day, all in the same area. I caught sight of them because the light was just right. These are just pee stains. And here I thought she knew to use the bathroom mat, preferably the bathroom shower. Oh, well.
As you can see, I continue writing. It is good for me. Sharing my writing comes from the encouragement I got, particularly from Sandor. That's why I set up the blog. Trust me, I'm not competing with any Kardashian. Still, I keep writing for some unidentified audience. When people tell me they are reading it, I am surprised and thrilled. I don't know if I would follow it if it were someone else's. I keep at it because it is good for me. I love figuring out how to put things into words, and it makes me feel like I'm doing something.
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