I'm old, but evidently haven't made the proper application for my porch rocker

We've had a few exciting days, in the landlady community, by which I mean me and the tiny rental condo where there's Always something.

As you know, I've been quoted a wildly expensive dryer for the condo, and a wildly expensive installation fee for removing the old wall mounted one and stacking the new one.  No longer is installation part of the price. It's a separate career path now.

So far so, if not good, at least okay.  Then friend came over to see the outlet that the old dryer fried when it died.  And concluded that it looks bad, burned, etc., but in fact is sound and perfectly safe now that the sparking dryer is not plugged in.  We tried plugging in the washing machine, no problems. But he would still replace it for me.

He then went to find new bits for the outlet just to make it look better, and found that Home Depot, in the place on the shelf, where they would have had them, had a space, and nobody knew if or when they would restock.  The supply chain has a lot of broken links these days.  

So he came back and said, never mind, I'll try again, meanwhile I'll leave my current tester thing here, and I'll use it when I come over after I get the doings.  After he and I both left, Handsome Son thought good, now I can continue loading the washer and get my laundry done.

Next morning he texts me to say, um, did anything happen to the valves and knobs last night?  This is very characteristic, that when he's stressed he hits on fairly obscure terms to describe a situation. Turns out he meant the shutoff, which was now in the usual off position, he does this as a safety precaution (advisable for everyone to shut the washer shutoffs when it's not in use, as you would know if you'd ever had a hose burst unexpectedly and an instant serious flood under way, which I have, in that very, upstairs, condo) where was I, oh yes.  Then he said he'd tried to turn it on as usual.  And the shutoff had come off in his hand.

Now I know this can happen, flimsy plastic stuff, I've done it myself.  The good news was that it was broken in the off position.  I've had the experience, in this  townhouse, of a shutoff in an upstairs bathroom breaking off in the on position.  

This resulted in a Three Stooges type scene, water following the line of least resistance, the electrical channel, through the ceiling, and filling the dining room chandelier with water before I could hurtle down the stairs to the whole house shutoff.  Modern building gives you a lot of plumbing experience.  I think the builders and plumbers are hand in wrench, if you ask me.

So anyway, I said well can you just do the laundry with whichever shutoff works, cold, hot, whatever? I only use one,  ever, for my machine.  Whereupon he breaks it to me that this fancy machine I installed there, the only one that fitted in the space, is so high tech that it will not fill unless both hoses are engaged and supplied with water, even if you're only using one of them.  Oh.

So he ended up spending his day off bring his laundry over here, doing the lot, and we had the last of the plum torte and tea. That part was good. The torte went over great.  Then I had him to a small job of chucking for me from the patio, rotted wooden chair needed to go.  And the next door neighbors were out, potting up seedlings and labeling and generally going at it with the fervor of the first warm day.

Then followed one of those characteristic neighborhood conversations, which intertwined plumbing questions and answers with gardening questions and answers. Friend was the plumbing answerer, I was the gardening answerer. Other friend was the commiserator about the cost of every little plumbing job.  Son was valiantly trying to distentangle the plumbing thread since that was the one that interested him. It was a wholly antiphonal experience, very funny, and probably unintelligible to anyone not from around this street.

So friend said he would go over today, not wanting to waste the sunshine yesterday, since it was to rain.  I was out all morning, getting my Annual Wellness Check, is what Medicare has started calling it, complete with new forms to fill out. Sounds like an HVAC idea.  Anyway, he would come in the afternoon with me to the condo while Handsome Son was at work.

That was before his own life got incredibly even more confused with various real estate lawyers and daughters and all kinds of things suddenly totally tying him up on the phone all the afternoon. By the time he was free, I was about to be in several meetings.  So he figured HS was home, he would go over there and just get in and check the shutoff to buy the right one for me. Never occurred to either of us to give him the key.

But HS was out food shopping, so there was a whole round robin of texts, where are you now, can I get in, no, hold the fort I'll be there, but I'm not there I'm in meetings online at my house, etc etc etc.  Finally, later in the evening, they landed.  And now Gary knows what to buy and will do so, tomorrow, or maybe Saturday. Joy, it's not one of the welded on shutoffs that only a plumber can repair. Then we'll know if the machine only needed that adjustment or if something more ominous is at work. 

I took a brief rest before my planned meeting roster started up, all good stuff I'd been waiting for.  One from Princeton U. Art Museum on Chinese bronzes of the Qin or maybe Han dynasty, that was the research, anyway, 2,000 years ago, a bit too centered on the construction of the works for this artist's taste, looking more for the history, but they're excellent researchers anyway.

And there was another Zoom, on the White House gardens under various presidents, which would have been much better if the presenter's voice had not been so muffled as she peered down at her keyboard, that it was almost impossible to decipher.  She was lovely and so were the photographs, though.  I especially like the sheep introduced to mow the grass during WW1.  No pix, since my computer was in breakdown mode, and I was busy just trying to access.  And you've probably seen pix of the White House gardens before, I rationalize.

Along the lines of things yesterday that could have been a bit better, but eventually improved, here's rigatoni with a cream mushroom and scallion sauce.  Which was okay, plenty of grated parmigian, good milk, excellent mushrooms.  But in the end I found I really like rigatoni best smothered in tomato stuff.

So the next day I did so.  Got the container of tomato/sausage sauce from the freezer and improved this dish quite a bit, a good rescue.  Rigatoni needs a lot more sauce than the original recipe offered, is the main thing.

However today, a fraught day, what with the physical this morning, complete with being hurled from here to yon getting every part of my bod counted and assessed and stuck with needles and sensors, and then the excitement of the afternoon, I thought I needed a treat.

Which see:

Medjool dates, pitted and stuffed with yogurt cheese.  Three is plenty, these things are filling.

And, just to show there's hope everywhere, here's the base of the recent Misfits romaine lettuce head, started in water, and leafing out nicely. Two days.  So I might have a bit of lettuce before the next Misfits box arrives.