The Aunt Vera situation seems to have stabilized. She remains at Nancy’s home, but professional care givers are showing up and helping the family ease her misery. Nancy seems to think that Vera is mistaking the attending in-home nurse for a doctor she once had and is accepting his help more gracefully. She is also receiving meds that are to calm her a bit. Everyone seems to think she is going to die any day now. But it remains to be seen. I am mostly concerned about the stress on Nancy and Walt who are shouldering most of this responsibility. Other family members are stepping forward now. Nancy has contacted all of the extended family she can but is mostly receiving support from her immediate family.

I wanted to give myself a day off yesterday. I gave myself the small task of preparing as I usually do the final bulletin information for a week from Sunday thus keeping us a bit ahead. To my horror, I discovered that I had somehow skipped this Sunday in my final planning of choral anthems. In other words, we had no anthem prepared for that Sunday. Yikes.

I immediately began working on figuring out what to have the choir sing that day. This turned out to consume an hour or two of effort later that day. Ah well. I enjoy this work but prefer not to be caught into it at the last minute. But these things do happen, I guess.

I now have a couple of anthems prepared to add to the choir’s list this evening for a week from Sunday. I also have three Advent anthems which I can hand out and rehearse this evening as well.

I exercised before lunch yesterday, then after lunch went to church to work on finding anthems. Then I practiced organ and came home and went on a cooking spree.

I had thawed some steaks for Eileen. I pretty much followed this recipe. First I browned onions and then cooked mushrooms to prepare the pan before grilling them. I also cut up some squash and prepared them to bake in the oven. I prepared to roast delicata squash by the recipe I used before. The other large squash I had, I cut in half, cleared of the seeds and placed half an apple in each and wrapped in tin foil. I also prepared to bake apples, coring them and putting brown sugar and spices in them.

All this time I was preheating the oven. This turned out to be a fail. The oven never reached 275 degrees even though my recipes called for a 425 degree oven.  At least that’s what the oven thermometer told me.

I put the large squash and the apples in the oven while I thought it was coming to 425 degrees and waited to do the delicata squash when the oven was hot enough.

I made wild rice and basmati rice.

Eileen called and told me she had forgotten her umbrella. It was pouring rain so I went and picked her up after work, came home and made the steak and we ate what was ready.

The oven squash and apples did in fact cook. But I had to do the delicata in a frying pan to ensure they were done.

It looks like we might need a new oven. But first I thought I would purchase a new oven thermometer and see if that’s what was malfunctioning.