Saved by the...

...salt and lemon
It was a two day effort and it’s not pristine, but it’s not bad considering the fact that it looked like a throwaway when it was filled with a black lava-like substance which had once been sugar water until I forgot it on the stove and we had to evacuate it and ourselves from the house.

I almost burned it up again in the process of cleaning it. I had it on a very low burner on the stove with a combination of baking soda and water in it. It simmered away for hours under my watchful eye. I was able to chip all but the most intractable black stuff out of the pot but then, forgetting how very slow he is now, we took Ozzie for a walk and when we came back, all the water had boiled away and the baking soda was forming stalagmites in the bottom of the pot. I ran it under cold water and, presto! The last of the burned on black stuff popped right off! I wouldn’t recommend doing this at home, since I really don’t think I could repeat it.

Reminded of a man in India who told me he cleaned his brass and copper ware with salt and lemon juice, I tried it on the copper bottom of the pot and it worked beautifully....the pot hasn’t looked this good in decades!

Not bad for a 56 year old pot that had been subjected to countless indignities. They don’t make Revere Ware like they used to...in fact they don’t make Revere Ware at all anymore. Too bad...

In a rather funny redux of the plumber blaming the last plumber for causing the problem he has been called upon to fix, the dermatologist looked at me today for 5 seconds and pronounced my rash “contact dermatitis, most likely from poison oak.” When I told her about the preorbital cellulitis episode of a couple of years ago, she looked at my eye for another 5 seconds and said, “that is not cellulitis. Most doctors are notoriously bad at diagnosing it, so you might not have had it before either. I don’t diagnose heart conditions, and cardiologists don’t know anything about skin conditions. Good thing you came here....”

Ozzie hasn’t coughed once today. Nonetheless, we left Blake by himself at his house today and I went by on the way home and gave him a walk.

It’s still raining but the sun comes out between downpours just to keep us on our toes.