Sawdust pie. And other imponderables.

I found my first reference to it. Here’s his home page. You have to read the about us.

None of those exactly tell you what sawdust pie is. Easier to tell you what it is not: a thin veneer of pecans just barely touching one another above an insipid, gummy custard. Picture the best pecan pie you’ve ever eaten. Silky, rich custard. Fat, sassy pecans. Now picture the deliciously edible equivalent of asphalt, or high-quality particle board: coconut, chocolate chips, pecan chunks, all snugly bound together with impeccable custard, but only enough to serve as mortar.

It is almost a religious experience.

Stopped at Whole Foods on the way home last night and got a quick chair massage, as my neck was feeling achy-breaky. And this time I drank lots and lots and lots of water afterward. My ankles are extremely grateful, as is my neck. My innards, not so much. I woke up three times during the night to slosh down the hall.

Alison, I am taking very good care of myself. I finally connected with the massage therapist I saw a few weeks ago, the one who is so hard to catch. I asked her to call me back when she had her calendar in front of her, and I’ve booked appointments for next Monday night [oh, what a treat we have in store!] and successive Mondays at four-week intervals. Which will take me into late October, when I should know whether I am staying put or merging households. I am also getting a haircut on Wednesday.

When I left the dealership on Tuesday, I was sad and frustrated, almost to the point of tears. I have worked so hard to get out of debt, and now I am going to have to max-out my line of credit to pay for the compressor, related parts, and labor, and then for the timing belt and its labor. And motor mounts. And, eventually, a catalytic converter. I called the new guy and vented, and he listened wonderfully and did not try to fix anything, other than offering to call his mechanic. I need to set up a spreadsheet and compare numbers, but it looks like it’s going to be six of one and half a dozen of the other. I would save considerably on the AC work if I went to his mechanic, but I would spend more on the timing belt, and who knows what on the motor mounts, which they would have to see before they could give a rough estimate. (I asked for worst-case scenarios.) I am already more or less committed to using the dealership for the AC fix, as I gave them a $300 downpayment on the parts when I left the dealership on Tuesday.

Later that day I called Secondborn about something unrelated and vented to her as well. She had a different perspective. She said that, rather than looking at this as an undoing of all my hard work to get debt-free, I might want to consider it a validation of it. I have funds available to take care of this. It’s not as if I had all this stuff that needed doing, and was already maxed-out. I have options, even if I don’t like them.

Thank you. Deep cleansing breath.

I was about three-fourths of the way down the first row on the stealth project when I realized it was going to be too long. So I tinked back for a few inches and frogged ten of the pattern repeats. When I went to bed last night, I had completed the first row and a couple of inches on the second. I won’t know for another couple of rows if this experiment is going to be successful, but I like what I see so far.

Time for a bite and a quick sluice and then out the door I go.