HIgh Beams? where, again??

I'm starting to get the hang of evenings, at least the two per week where lovely Helen comes to take care of HP. So long since I was able to get out after dark that I have to think okay what do people do then? starting to make plans to meet people for actual meals!! and to rediscover that shops are open in the evening. Heck, I feel like President Bush the First when he found out about scanners at the supermarket.

Last evening, I realized that it was so long since I drove in the dark that I'd forgotten how to switch on my high beams. On a country road, the nice back way home from Target, I practiced finding them. Washed the windshield, put the emergency flashers on, set the wipers at high speed, and eventually found the high beam lever.

They do say that even when you can't see far ahead in life you can still get there, like writing a novel, where the endpoint is so far off you can't see it from here. But I think it's still a bit easier if you can at least find your high beams, metaphorically as well as in my ancient Honda.

I'd had a peaceful time at the library, reading a Fay Weldon, sardonic, cruelly funny and skewering, and in the next room heard a little burst of applause, then after a minute the family in the libe cafe near me all perked up.

The father said, stop stop, pose! as a little girl appeared in front of them with an award in the shape of a horse's head, posed for his camera and both parents were making a big fuss of her achievement, lovely family. I nosily tried to find out what the award was about, horse-riding? at the library? the family was a kind of private group, not open to talking with me, but I did discover the horse's head was in fact a knight figure, and she'd won the award as a chess player!

Clever little girl! I was particularly happy, since it was a Moslem family, all in traditional dress, and chess being originally of arabic invention, it just seemed so suitable that they had a young champion in the family.

News on the kitchen front: our contractor neighbor came over and checked out the situation yesterday, all in among the medical equipment people coming to deliver a special table for HP at Helen's request, and I had them fix the hand control for the bed which sticks at just the wrong times, and to lubricate the whole thing with a special stuff they use, so it doesn't squeak agonizingly as you maneuver HP's head up in the evening after he gets in, to watch tv.

Anyway, contractor arrives amidst this confusion, and measures up the doings for the overhaul of the dishwasher place. He can easily cap off the plumbing safely, and put those little hats on the electrical wires and bundle them out of the way. That way if a new dw is in the offing, perhaps in years to come by another owner, it will be easily installed. So he can yank out the dw, since he knows all about how it was put in.

And he is going to build me two shelves on runners, that will be the width of the opening plus the side piece he will remove, and will pull out to their full extent, so I don't need to unload the shelf to get in the back. Yay. And I am having him revamp another base cabinet which is the dumbest shape in the world, just to make it more usable.

The nice part is that our house is exactly like his own, so he knows just how things are and what can be improved and why! they don't use their dw either, and I think he might be thinking, hm, I can make better use of that space...

So in the next few days it will be under way. He plans to do all the building of the shelves at his house across the street, for the least disturbance for HP here, and then come just to install them.

So yesterday was a day of getting stuff done: bed oiled, controls replaced, table delivered, dw plans moving right ahead, and I found my high beams.