Week 28 - Kansas City Fun

The start of the week did not go well. I was chatting on zoom with Cindy when someone knocked at her door. She was gone for awhile and came back in tears. Her dog, who had been having breathing issues and had been back and forth to the vet for 2 weeks, had died. Her neighbors went out to their yard and Milo was running over to greet them and keeled over dead. I felt Cindy's pain having gone through this too often myself in the past year. There was a contentious meeting shortly after that but it got better from there. 

It was a beautiful day so Nan had invited us to knit at her house instead of at the library. Since she'd supply pizza and beer, I put blondies in the oven at lunch and left for Fremont right after work, picking up Andrea on the way. It was just the 3 of us knitting but it was totally enjoyable with good food and company.

As lovely as Monday evening was, the highlight of the week was Kansas City on Wednesday with Anne and Rene. We'd planned this a month ago, inspired by a post Anne saw on Facebook for Scrap KC. It's a teacher supply and craft store full of donated stuff. That was our reason for going but there's always Ikea and a lovely yarn shop - Yarn Social. 

I drove down to Rene's for 8:00 and we left from there. Rene used to live in KC so she was driving. We stopped in St. Joseph for a potty break and Starbucks plus a couple of thrifts looking for goblets for my friend Cindy's niece's wedding (didn't find any). There was a donut shop next to one of the thrifts so we got a donut for the road. We got to Ikea shortly after noon but the donuts meant we weren't hungry for lunch yet. We shopped Ikea (found all kinds of fun stuff, as always) then went to Scrap KC. Anne was disappointed that they didn't have much cone yarn but I found some cheap good quality yarn, including 2 that looked like sock yarn and did in fact pass the bleach test when I got home. (Bleach dissolves wool but not nylon so is a great test for sock yarn, which must include nylon for me to use it for socks.) We then went to Yarn Social and bought gorgeous but expensive yarn. It was now after 3:00 and we were starving. 

The women at the yarn shop recommended a local sandwich place but when we got there, it was closed already so we got on our phones and found Gus' Fried Chicken. We had the place to ourselves and enjoyed chicken fingers with all kinds of southern fixings - hush puppies, baked beans, greens, etc. We hit 2 more thrifts that were on the way to the highway but found nothing again. It was 4 hours home with just a stop for ice cream and another for gas. We were back in Lincoln by 8:00 and I was home before 9:00. I unpacked the car and put everything away before taking a shower and collapsing into bed.

It was back to campus on Thursday and I spent all morning working with Dana on allocations before heading to East Campus for more BBQ - Tennessee this time, which featured delicious deep fried pickles as a side. After an uneventful afternoon, I had an hour to kill between work and swimming and totally scored more good quality yarn at Goodwill. This time it was a $7 bag filled with Noro (Japanese wool) and Malabrigo, which is always gorgeous. Then another nice thing happened. All 3 of us had bought little rolling carts at Ikea and it was the only thing still left in my car after I unloaded Wednesday night. Well Anne had put hers together and offered to swap it out for mine since she knew how to put them together already. We swapped in the parking lot at the pool. How nice was that!

The work day went quickly enough on Friday and I ran Wahoo errands at lunch - got my grab and go and hit the thrift shop and The Warehouse since I was out. I came back to find lemons on my bench (they might have been there Thursday night but if so, I missed them) that a friend picked for me from her brother's tree in California. There will be lemon meringue pie in Donna's future but maybe when it cools down a bit.

Because we had heat emergency days Saturday, Sunday and Monday with temps in the high 90's with heat indexes of 110, (yikes!) other than watering my plants and harvesting some of my first produce, I didn't leave the house. I made Swiss chard and Italian sausage pasta Friday night, sausage and peppers (my banana peppers in pots on the driveway are doing very well) and cut up 4 lots of rhubarb for the freezer - 3 with strawberries for strawberry/rhubarb pie and one just rhubarb for my fave dessert. Other than the strawberries, all the produce was from my garden. I also sorted the lemons and made simple syrup for lemonade with the ones that needed using. I shared syrup and lemons with Lorri when she stopped by after church.

So another week ended with a holed up in the AC weekend. I had given thought to reorganizing my craft room, which got all discombobulated after the flood, but never made it down there. Oh well. Retirement is only 3.5 weeks away. So many things can wait. :)