Fear of feeling fearful - is there a phobia of fear? Phobophibia.

I hope, that as I age, I maintain a modicum of fearlessness. My mom is afraid of everything - including everyday stuff - like breathing and walking and, well, everything. I don't know that I would be able to live in a such a constant state of fear...

My right ear is blocked again. Poo. I will adjust or it will get better or both or neither. Grrr.

When I first came to take care of my mom a few years ago, she was pretty autonomous. Now, I am a little worried to leave her alone for more than an hour at a time - maybe two or three depending on the day - but four makes me really anxious. And I can't really tell her where I am going as a) she just forgets and b) gets anxious if it is someplace new. OK places for me to be going are: grocery shopping and The Smith. So if I am headed out for whatever reason, I am doing one of those two things in her mind. Luckily, right now, there isn't a lot happening at the Smith, so I don't need to be there for long stretches of time. We shall see what happens come the Spring.

I took most of the day off from the puzzle yesterday. I got a couple of pieces put together and a couple of pieces added to the pieces already attached in the puzzle - but not the leaps and bounds that occurred in the past few days. Moderation and patience - always working on those two "virtues."

The Smith did get a bit of my time yesterday. One of my projectionists was really, really late. Got there at 1:45 when he was supposed to be there at 1:00. Sigh. So I got to go in and be there for a while. Which was a good thing, since it seemed like he had also forgotten how to run the movies. Double sigh.

Oh, I did get to Lake Drum's chocolate and beer and BYOV (bring your own vinyl) event. Sadly my copy of Court of the Crimson King is totally messed up. Maybe all of my records are. I don't know. I haven't actually played many of them since, well, for a long, long time. Why the heck am I holding on to them still? Silly Augustus. Speaking of which, I did decide to let go of some plastic baggage that has been accumulating for years and years (and years and years).

But I got away from my subject. There was quite a crowd at Lake Drum - especially for a Sunday afternoon. My enjoyment was spoiled a little because of my ear being stuffed up. We early muggers got a yummy taste treat as well - I think I posted a picture of it on Instagram - pulled pork plus! The taste of chocolate was pretty yummy, chocolate with bacon. I did think that there would be more chocolate tasting than just the one little tidbit, but there wasn't. The tasting of beers that Victor and Jenna shared more than made up for it, though!

I didn't end up buying any of the chocolate that was for sale. Lake Drum was out of the beer I have been partaking of there most recently, so I made do with the Smoked IPA.

Next stop yesterday, grocery store. Yippee! I love going to the grocery store. Is that acutely weird?

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. And recently on Instagram as well. And I comment and "like" a lot of posts. I do worry (a teeny bit) that people get tired of me always writing on their posts. But I like to feel like I am actually engaged in something, rather than just sitting here passively and not interacting. If they don't want their crap commented on, don't post it. Anyway...

Successful Failures?

Experiments need to happen occasionally. Lunch has been pretty straightforward here for at least a year - maybe two: whole wheat bread with salami, jarlsberg cheese and lettuce, some orange glop (sweet potato) and a piece of fruit. Yesterday, I tried something completely different. And it did not work well. First, I hadn't made a grilled cheese sandwich in forever. So I over cooked one side. Mom kept saying "What is this burned thing? I'm supposed to eat this?" She managed to choke it down eventually. Personally, I ate the crusts and thought it was delicious. Whatever. Next was the soup. I thought mom would like some nice soup. I had a can of Wegman's Chicken Noodle soup - I know it isn't mom's favorite, but I thought soup was soup and was uniformly not too bad. Well this soup was "Disgusting! It's slimy!" So I had to make two or three trips to replenish her orange glop. Sigh. Maybe if I try it again, I won't overcook her sandwich and will feed her new England clam chowder - which I know she likes.

My ear was starting to feel full, so I used some H2O2 - only to have it feel even fuller. Sigh. We shall see what the rest of the day brings.

It was a nice, relaxing day, yesterday - except for about an hour of Smith emailing and such. Yay. I tried to get mom to watch a Hitchcock movie (The Man Who Knew Too Much) that she had purchased at some point - but she couldn't follow it. So I put on Doc Martin for her. And I watched The Wolverine. I enjoyed my movie. She didn't enjoy hers. After that I put on Top Hat for her - which she only really used as an excuse to stay up later (which is fine) which gives her an excuse to eat ice cream and cookies (which isn't as fine - I think all that sugar can't be good for her - but at 84...)

Dinner was, as predicted yesterday, mostly leftovers - with yummy roasted brussel sprouts and some new mashed potatoes - mixed with the used mash potatoes from some other day. Mom got left over salmon. I had left over pork. Yay dinner! All in all a nice day. Oh, and I worked on the puzzle a bit.

Day Five - I am using the bottom of the puzzle to work on other parts of the puzzle (click on the pic to enlarge)

Just let those expectations go

My expectations got the better of me this morning. I thought I was going to watch SpaceX try to land its reusable first stage on a teeny barge in the middle of the ocean. Instead, I just got to watch a launch - which is still cool, but...finally read that the first stage hit the platform - but not sure if it will be reusable or not - it or the platform. I will have to wait to hear more, I guess.

Today is Saturday. A day of rest. Gotta figure out what we are having for dinner. I do have a few leftovers, so it will probably be mostly made up of those. Yippee!

Puzzle update - please note that I am one day behind in my puzzle picture updates:

Day four?

You can, if you squint, see the two moose making out! Just wait until you see how far I got last night! Yippee and huzzuh! Seriously, though, the rest only gets harder as it seems to be all shades of green with no straight lines anywhere. Poo.

I just read an article that reinforced my belief that love is more of a choice than it is anything else:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=2

And the actual questions: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html

Now I just need to find someone with whom I have an interest in trying this. I have at least one idea, but she doesn't seem all that interested in going down this road with me. Just keep waiting, that's what I'll get to do. Huzzuh and yippee.

Short post for now - we will see what the day brings.

Quite a Day

Most of the day was spent on Smith stuff - lots and lots of Smith stuff - meetings, meetings everywhere. When I wasn't meeting at the Smith I was working at home on Smith stuff. Yay?

Right now, I am working on trying to figure out who has the domestic theatrical rights to Arsenic and Old Lace. My contact at Warner Bros. was not very helpful. She told me that they have the rights to Arsenic and Old Lace for Canada and that's it. I asked who has the rights domestically and have not received an answer. I have tried a variety of other sources and so far, no go. I wish there was someplace one could go to find out who has what rights to which movie - a nice big database somewhere that was searchable - then when you found who had the rights, their contact information - phone number, email and snail mail address - would be right there. Wouldn't that be nice? So, I have some more phone numbers to try tomorrow. I wish I knew someone who knew the answer to these questions. Sigh city.

So, that was a large part of my day. Oh, and meetings. I had three meetings yesterday, one of which was about Arsenic and Old Lace. One was the monthly Film Committee meeting. And one was the Programming Committee Meeting. Gotta love good meetings.

In between, I kept coming back to the house. Mom actually asked to have a shower! That is weird. But good. Though she has been complaining all day that her aide washed her with especially drying soap. Sigh. I am thinking of trying a new lunch - maybe grilled cheese sandwiches with soup. Though she is eating the lunches she has currently well enough. For some reason, I get the impression that mom doesn't like grilled cheese. Does anyone know?

Dinner was from Cams. I have been jonesing for pizza for a long time. Ever since mom announced that she didn't like pizza (who the hello (sic) doesn't like pizza?) I haven't served it to her. I have eaten a little here and there, but it is infrequent. Last night, I ordered stuffed shells with meatballs (which mom ate decently) onion rings (cams onion rings are great!)(who knew?) and two slices of pizza. I ate too much and was basically immobilized for the rest of the evening. I sat in the living room and worked on the puzzle while I put things on for mom. Through two movies! One was Pat and Mike with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Um, no. Not a movie I am going to look forward to watching again any time soon (or in this lifetime). Not terrible, but not worth my time. The second movie was the 1,263rd playing (in this house) of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Follow the Fleet.

Here is a picture of the change in the alcove so far:

Recycling

Nope, I didn't take a picture. But I will take a picture of the progress that I have made in the alcove. At some point. Hopefully. Anyway, last night, in the bitter, bitter cold, I put out a tub, a small waste basket, a big garbage "can" (it's plastic) and two piles of broken down cardboard boxes. Again, here's hoping the wind didn't blow it all over the place. Still, at least it is out of the house!

The puzzle is progressing. There are, apparently, some people who really don't like doing jigsaw puzzles. Or puzzles of any kind. Weird. For me, I find it relaxing and engaging at the same time, working on a jigsaw puzzle. My father used to say it was cheating to look at the picture of the finished puzzle. Me, I look at it all the time.

The Secret to Quick Yummy Cooking is...

I had this epiphany the other day, while making my version of Tuna Casserole. I love epiphanies. They feel so good. But they can't be forced. I have yet to have an epiphany on demand. Anyone else find that to be the case? Lots of things in life can't be forced. Locks, though, they can often be forced. At various times in my life I have wanted to learn how to be a locksmith. I am sure that is a skill that would be cool to have. But where was I?

Oh, right, my cooking epiphany: Cream of Mushroom soup in a can! That's right, when in doubt, dump a can of cream of mushroom soup into your meal and voila! Instant yumminess. When I bought the cans for the tuna casserole, a recipe I ought to have halved, actually, I bought an extra "just in case." Another yumminess adder - for me at least, not being too lactose intolerant or anything, is our cream. Nectar of the gods! And the beef stroganoff recipe I use has both cream of mushroom soup and sour cream in it! Huzzuh!!

I didn't do a lot yesterday - or so it seems. One thing I did do, though, was clean off a counter in the kitchen that had gotten super cluttered. That particular counter was neat and wide open a few years ago, but over the past couple of years, stuff built up on it again. Then last night, for some reason, I proceeded to clean it off. Which is the way I seem to roll. Doing one bit of neatening every few years! Go me! (Rah, rah) At that rate, the house will be clean in, er, well, never. Sigh.

Ah, right, I did some Smith work yesterday. And I am doing a bit of that today. I need to go in and test all of the film stuff to make sure that it is happy - so the projectionist who comes in doesn't experience anything too weird to handle when they come in tonight.

Watched American Hustle last night and enjoyed it. I love Amy Adams and mostly watched it because of her. Mom didn't understand it at all.

Almost a Week!

Yes, I have almost posted every day for a week! Yay!

My nephew, Sam, told me that google has made it hard to comment on my blog posts. Has anyone else tried and failed? If so, please send me a direct message - if you don't have my email address, please find me on Facebook (there aren't that many Augustus Schoen-Renes on Facebook) and send me a message there, please. Sam would like me to move my blog to wordpress, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon...

Yesterday was back to the grind. Yippee! I got a little work done at the theatre (after running a few errands) and then had two meetings. The first, with Kelly, to go over the coming weeks and months and to talk about up coming events and such. Good stuff. Then a Marketing Committee meeting where we talked over a bunch of the stuff we had talked about but with more people. I hear to the "t" meetings! Sometimes.

Just now, though, I really enjoyed doing some of my work from home - I have set it up so that I can connect to work from my computer and do four different activities:

1) Set-up the heating/cooling schedule. We want our patrons to be toasty or cool and to not spend too much money heating/cooling an empty building.

2) Work on the Film server - for those of you who don't know, we show films at the Smith. Most of them are loaded on a server (we only show digital films currently) and playlists need to be created that show the people what we want to show them in the order we want them shown. Having the ability to do the work from home is great!!

3) Work on the pre-film slide show. I don't know how effective the pre-film slide show is - mainly because we have no real way to judge its impact (does anybody else do the his/it is thing to remember whether or not there is an apostrophe (the crux of the biscuit) in "its"?) - but I think it is a good thing. Luckily, no changes will be necessary until Thursday (after our first movie of the New Year plays).

4) The kiosk programming - last year, the Geneva Business Improvement District group got the funding to get the kiosk replaced - a tri-electric sign near The Smith that we can use for upcoming events, announcements and advertising. I don't actually do any of the programming, but I can access it if I need to remotely. Which means that the person (Amanda) doing the day to day work on the kiosk also doesn't need to be present at the Smith to do her thing. Yay!

But, once again, I got away from my narrative thread - I was talking about yesterday. Good meetings. I think that was it. We are mostly planning our Oscar Event, which hopefully will be more fully realized than our Oscar Event last year. Speaking of which, at some point, I need to see if the television antenna is working and that we can indeed show the Oscars...

I cooked a delicious, if I must say so myself, tuna casserole last night for dinner - with Salad for our veggie. There is way too much of it, so I am sure we will be enjoying it again on Wednesday night. Mom was eating up a storm yesterday - a yogurt, lunch, dinner, two bowls of ice cream (with cookies) and some marzipan - and a couple of fiber bars as night time snacks. That isn't a bad thing - just an observation.

I need an oven. I hate spending that much money, though. Oven/$$$, $$$/Oven. Hmm...But I probably will. At some point. Sooner rather than later. Maybe even today! Nah, not today - way too cold outside.

Oh, and I forgot to show how the mountain was transformed into many mole hills.

Look! Mostly folded! Now I just need to put the clothes away...

Also worked on the puzzle some and made a little progress.

Mom asked what percentage done I am - 10% maybe?

By the way, my fears were not realized. I found no trash blowing around my yard. I did find my two trash cans knocked over, one in the street - though I think that was just careless rubbish people...