I know you're not in the city, but for goodness sake, you should be able to get a good Ruben where you are.
Earlier today my dog Tia had a seizure we believe it was triggered by the fireworks. She was extremely nervous just prior and her eyes were like sauces. The seizure lasted about 5 minutes during that time she vomited, fortunately we had saved some medication from the last time this happened, it was for nausea and anxiety. While my wife and daughter we're trying to calm her down I headed for the local PetSmart to see if they had some kind of hat to cover her ears to block the sounds of the fireworks. I was surprised when I got there that they were open, being it was the 4th. They didn't have the Hat but they did have something called Thunder shirt which was supposed to relax a dog with anxiety from assorted noises including fireworks. By the time I got back she had come out of her seizure and they gave her the medication we had, it's calmed her right down and she was walking around better than she had for the last hour. We put the Thunder shirt on her as an added precaution. The fireworks had gotten to be a lot louder and a lot more so far Tia had no reaction. I've been holding her most of the time and put my hands over her ears to reduce the amount of noise she hears. The medicine is good for at least till 12:00 a.m. Hopefully by then the fireworks will be minimal.
My daughter has been cleaning out tubs and boxes that were stored under our carport. This was stuff we saved after the fire, this past week we've been going through it most of it was either tossed or donated. This morning she brought out a tub of filled with old newspapers. One stack I saved was from the Centennial July 4 1976. After a quick peek I tossed the stack. The remaining papers we're from the house I cleaned out back in the '70s, back then I was in lawn maintenance and during the offseason we did clean outs of homes. One of our customers when her husband passed she asked us to clean out his stuff from her addict. He was a doctor and a military man, there was a lot of medical journals, School journals and newspapers most from the 50's that I never heard of. There was also old letters with old stamps on them and old postcards, a few photos of buildings I didn't recognize. I tossed everything but the letters and postcards, & photos. Not sure what to do with this stuff but I'm not ready to toss it right now. It was like going down memory lane going through this old stuff that was stored in our attic and basement, it was hard to depart with some of it even though it was ruined. Onwards and Upwards!!!
My dad's company was affiliated with Scott Stamp and Coin company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_catalogue Are there still stamp collecting clubs or maybe you could start one?
I know nothing about stamp collecting. When I get some time, I'll check into that It's a good idea, because Not only do I have the envelopes and post cards, I found a loose leaf book with a lot of stamps in it, some in bags, some sealed.
Some used to be worth money although some recent ones I thought would be, like the start wars sheet, won't be worth any more than a forever stamp.
In with the stamps I did find one of those Lincoln pennies with Kennedy's head stamped next to it. It's it's probably all going to be donated to AmVet we've been donating stuff there that we don't want to store anymore. My daughter just recently brought a van full of Housewives, dishes, toys Etc.
I am obsessed with bargains, spent a lot of time going to garage sales, flea markets, wherever there was a deal. There was a time I became crazy with purchasing cookbooks. I remember I joined The cookbook Guild because you got 12 free if you signed up to buy 12 more during the year. They also had monthly specials, of course I had to take advantage of them. Then I found a better Outlet to get books at a ridiculous price, the library. People donated their books and the library would sell them 25 cents for hardcover 10 cents for soft. There were many times I would walk out of there which 15 to 30 books, especially cookbooks. My wife and I would review them, if we didn't like them we just donate them back to the library. Before the fire my wife said enough no more cookbooks at that point we had counted I had purchased over 200. While the cleanup crew was cleaning out the house after the fire I did dump a lot of cookbooks as well as other books. My daughter did pull out two tubs yesterday of cookbooks, we went through them and decided to keep three or four, our granddaughter will look through the remainder to see if there's anything she wants, the rest will be donated. Cleaning up after a fire it's like you're prior life is just flowing away, and you have to find newground to start over, at my age I don't know if it's worth it.
I am also a cookbook hoarder and former hostage of the Cook's Illustrated cookbook scam. (Once they get your credit card info you are "done" for.) I finally escaped by sending them a fake death certificate. I figure they will make good fire starter material for the fireplace when Houston has its next freeze-related power outage.
We were just discussing while there are probably hundreds of thousands or even millions of recipes online, There are some in cookbooks That are not available anywhere online. I don't think there was one cookbook I had that I didn't at least like 1 or 2 of its recipes, I would like to say I tried all the recipes I liked, but it never happened. We got into a rut were we stick to the 20 or so recipes We are comfortable with, especially with the price of food today.
I'll jump into the Cookbook Hoarder meeting. I love them, although I save a lot of online recipes in Word documents. That lets me edit them for putting the steps & ingredients into a more logical order. It also lets me make tweaks to them, often from Comments section tips. I've mentioned before I have some number of hardback cookbooks I got for free by mailing away for them. I got a Land O' Lakes Butter cookbook, a McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce recipe pamphlet, one from Lea & Perrins, one from Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk, etc. I also have some cookbooks published by church ladies dating back to the 50s.
I have accumulated lots of cookbooks over the years too. I have gotten rid of many over the years by donating them to the library. I do still have several old church cookbooks, 4-H cookbooks, special organizational cookbooks, and some old edition of Betty Crocker and Cooks Illustrated cookbook. I started sending away for all those free cooking pamphlets and paperback cookbooks when I was a teenager; some of those I still have also. I love reading the old church cookbooks recipes. The recipes are written assuming everyone knows how to cook, bake, and preserve food.
My absolute favorite cookbook is the JOY of Cooking. My daughter got me a new copy a few years ago because it was so "dirty". It was not dirty, it was well loved. The new edition had some new info in it with the old. Now that one is getting kind of dirty too. I have a few others with sentimental value.