How humid is it?

It's so humid that I cook my steel-cut oats outside so I don't get any extra humidity in the house. If you look carefully you can see the steam rising from the cooker. I make two servings at a time (that's all it will hold) so every other day, I hope it's not raining and I haul the steamer outside.

Here's another story of how humid it is here. We have two outlets on either side of the pass through in the kitchen. They are nowhere near water, but because they are nominally in the kitchen, they are equipped with a ground fault circuit interrupter. On Monday, that GFCI tripped. It's never tripped before so I suspect the air in our home was really just that humid.

And now to yesterday's adventure, well and today's too. Chloe cried all the way to the vet's, while Wally only cried once. Then again he was in the larger, more airy carrier. They each weigh 10 pounds on the nose. As usual, Chloe was as good as gold and even purred at the vet while getting examined. Wally was a different story. In addition to hissing and spitting at poor Dr. MacDonald, he very nearly escaped while getting his rabies shot. Bad boy. I lugged fat boy in today. Mr. Eddie weighs 15 pounds exactly and he was even worse than his brother since he hissed, spat AND tried to bite Dr. MacDonald.

Fortunately all three are in excellent health. That's a good thing because my back is a bit tired from 35 pounds of cat.

Of experiments and shortages in Boston

I use a pretty normal deodorant—Arid Extra Dry solid unscented. I don’t have massive loyalty to Arid per se but the solid and unscented parts are non-negotiable in my deodorant. Whatever is used in the clear formulas that don’t leave streaks on your clothing irritates the bejesus out of my skin. There’s nothing quite as attractive as a woman scratching her pits while out in public!

All that to say I have had almost no luck in finding my deodorant in Boston. I can find most scents and of course I can find unscented clear formulas but not the tried-and-true solid unscented kind. Well, I did find it at one drug store here in the South End but it costs $3.60 a stick. Yeouch.

So when Kent and Ben went to Wal-Mart last Saturday, Kent knew he should look for my deodorant. And he hit the motherlode! He brought home six sticks—in fact he said he bought all that they had in stock. I do wonder what the checker thought as he came through the line. Probably something like “wow he must have a real BO issue . . . “

I experimented making steel-cut oats in our rice steamer today. I do like the steel-cut oats but there’s no way on earth I’m spending 30 minutes actively making breakfast. So I thought I would give the steamer a try. The results were mixed: cooking time took an hour (I started with 35 minutes which wasn’t nearly enough). Even then the oats had to sit a bit to finish thickening up. I made two servings and refrigerated the second bowl. I’ll try microwaving it in the morning and see how that works.