Category: Daily Life

Thanks to an ill-fitting storm window, we have a fascinating situation developing right outside our living room. A group of wasps is busily building a nest in the upper right corner of one of our living room windows. There’s a spider with a dense web in the lower right corner of the same window.

You’d think that the spider would be all set for a wasp smorgasbord, but I’ve observed that the wasps are strong enough to escape if they become caught in the web. They’ve learned to traverse the grooves along the window frame and avoid the web on their way in and out.

The spider seems to have no shortage of victims, though.

My husband and I are finding the whole thing so interesting that we hesitate to exterminate our little visitors. It’s like having a four-foot tall, two-species ant farm.

For now, we’ll leave the wasps and spider as an exhibit. Once we can afford new storm windows, though, all bets are off.

Tomorrow and Thursday I have meetings that will require me to dress like a professional woman in lieu of the “beach bum” look I usually go for. Luckily, I have a sister with great taste in clothes who ordinarily wears the same size as I do, except that she’s pregnant right now. That means she has a huge, walk-in closet full of fashiony goodness just sitting idle.

The dress I wore to that wedding on Saturday? Hers. In fact, I borrowed the same dress and wore it to a wedding last November. I don’t remember the sleeves being quite so snug back then. Perhaps the dress shrank a bit in the meantime…

I went to my sister’s house for dinner last night, which gave me the opportunity to borrow yet another outfit (I’m keeping the dress through the weekend because I’m attending a conference and might need it for Saturday night’s dinner). That means I still have one day this week when I’ll have to come up with clothes on my own. Aaagh, the pressure!

You’d think I’d be able to take the lessons in fit and style I’ve learned from wearing my sister’s clothes and apply them when I go shopping. Unfortunately, my attention span for shopping is almost nil. Once I’ve tried on three or four items, I’ve had more than enough views of my pasty, doughy skin under the greenish florescent lights. By then I’ve realized I don’t wear the size I thought I did, I hate myself and all of the available clothing, and I really need some caffeine or maybe an ice cream cone, but NO!, not an ice cream cone because that’s the kind of thing that got me into this mess! So I go home without any new clothes and continue the “I have nothing to wear cycle” the next morning, ad infinitum.

The solution? I don’t know, maybe a patient friend with a good eye for style who can dissuade me from bolting from the store the minute I start to tire of the whole operation. Any volunteers?

This was a pretty busy weekend. I finally saw “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.” I thought it was absolutely gorgeous and technically impressive, but the story, characters and plotline were merely coat hangers upon which the “look” was hung. On the other hand, my husband enjoyed the story and hated the look and color palette, so there you are.

We attended a lovely wedding on Saturday night. The wedding and reception took place at a stone and timber park lodge that had been built as a WPA project. The wedding was outside on a natural-stone patio overlooking a lake, and the weather was perfect, except for a little too much sun in our eyes. My favorite moment at the reception was when one of the little girls asked her mother if she could have her picture taken with “the princess,” meaning the bride. Why are little girls so princess crazy these days? Oh that’s right, it’s the Disney master plan. I forgot.

I took a few hours on Sunday to go to a local autumn festival with my sister. We’d already had chili at my house, so we limited ourselves to apple dumplings with vanilla ice cream, fresh-squeezed lemonade (limeade in her case) and a bag of kettle corn each (to go). I was keeping an eye out for the bierocks I’d had the last time we went, but I didn’t see them anywhere. I guess I’ll have to make a batch myself.

This week is going to be typically non-stop. I’ve managed to winnow down my after-work schedule so that I only have one place to be each day (except on Thursday I have a meeting and then band practice). Still, my schedule feels more open now because I’m doing things I want to do as opposed to things I wish I’d turned down when I had the chance. Enough rambling, then. Have a delightful Monday.

Yesterday I finally brought my espresso maker to the office to try to save some of the money that Starbucks keeps managing to weasel out of my wallet. Of course, there’s too much involved in making the iced Café Mochas I’m fond of, so I’ve fallen back to Café Americanos (espresso shots diluted with hot water). Now I’m so awake, I’m not sure my eyes close all the way when I blink.

I used to have a love/hate relationship with caffeine. I’d give it up for a while, suffer through the withdrawal symptoms, and swear that I’d never go back. Problem is, I like caffeine. I don’t really care that it’s an addictive drug, as long as it keeps me semi-focused and awake.

I started out as a fan of strong tea (Earl Grey, brewed until it’s almost opaque), then I moved on to coffee. At first I drank coffee with cream and sugar, then I learned to love cappuccinos and lattes. Now I’m less concerned about the taste than the act of getting the active ingredients into my system in the most efficient manner possible.

Maintaining my coffee habit takes a little extra work on the weekends. I don’t brew coffee at home just for myself, so I have to make a point of procuring some elsewhere before the headaches set in. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy with the coffee monkey on my back. I think I’m going to have to start bleaching my teeth again, though…

I don’t know if it’s my more open schedule, the fact that fall is setting in, or some other factor, but lately I’ve started cooking meals at home again. This week I’ve made two dinners and a breakfast, which probably surpasses the number of meals I’d cooked in the previous two months.

When I was growing up, my mother knew a couple who never cooked. She’d say with obvious disapproval, “They eat out at every meal.” It made me feel a little smug that we almost never ate out.

Fast forward 20 years or so and here I am racing from place to place every evening, trying to think of the least evil fast food available in the 10 minutes I have before I’m due at my next appointment. We eat so much Subway that I can smell the rolls baking in my sleep.

There’s nothing I can do about band practice nights, but I’m really making an effort to stay in and feed us at home on the other evenings. It’s relatively inexpensive, potentially healthier and usually tastier than eating out. If only my husband would do the after-meal cleanup, the scenario would be ideal.

Tonight, well, we’re buying tamales from our favorite little Mexican restaurant because there’s a band meeting at our house and that’s what everyone requested. However, I’m thinking that a beef stew made in the Crockpot would be ideal for Friday night. If we don’t have to fight the rest of the metro area for a restaurant table that evening, maybe we can actually manage to make it to a movie. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Friday is payday, so I’m starting to look through the stack of bills on my desk and the news is not good. I’ve fallen behind again for no reason other than my own laziness and disorganization. Worst of all, I can’t find one of my credit card bills, so I can’t pay it even though I’m ready to do so.

You’d think that online bill paying and the other conveniences of modern commerce would help me, but they’re just not enough. A smart person would receive a bill, schedule the payment online, file the receipt and move on with life. I, on the other hand, let the bills mix with the other mail for a few weeks until I have time to shred the credit card offers, mortgage refinance come-ons, etc. Then I put the bills in their own pile for perhaps another week until I find the time to open each one, write the due date and amount on the envelope and then neglect them some more until money appears.

We won’t even talk about the first three quarters of estimated taxes for my business. It would take about an hour for me to gather the information and send it to my accountant to get that nightmare off my back, but evidently I’m having trouble locating that elusive hour. This, my friends, is why I went back to working for someone else. (I can’t readily explain why I’ve kept the business going, too.)

There was a time in my life when I thought that I might someday get organized and then everything would be all rays-of-sunlight-on-my-head, bluebirds-perching-on-my-outstretched-finger, flowers-blooming-spontaneously-as-I-pass. I call it the Disney theory of life organization. Too bad the whole idea is psychotic.

Yesterday I received the insurance card for the Insight and it came with a sheet of amendments to my policy. This one caught my eye:

The following is added to When The Physical Damage Coverages Do Not Apply:

THERE IS NO COVERAGE FOR LOSS TO ANY VEHICLE THAT RESULTS FROM:

1. NUCLEAR RADIATION;
2. RADIATION OR RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION FROM ANY SOURCE; OR
3. THE ACCIDENTAL OR INTENTIONAL DETONATION OF, OR RELEASE OF RADIATION FROM, ANY NUCLEAR OR RADIOACTIVE DEVICE.

I hope my insurance company doesn’t know something that I don’t…

Dear Sports Fan(atics),

As yesterday’s loss should have demonstrated, your contributions to the game, however impassioned, really make no significant difference. You can shout advice to the players, harangue the officials, shout expletives to the heavens without regard for the proximity of children, and still the game may not go your way.

Furthermore, despite your insistent advice, I want you to know that my friends and I feel no compulsion to join you in shouting, beating on the chairs, etc. This is especially true when we are all being roasted alive in the direct sunlight and obviously wilting like neglected houseplants.

I’m sure you believe that if the three of us had only done a little yelling, sprung to our feet every time you did, and stayed beyond the middle of the game, the outcome might have been different. I maintain that your theory is based on more mistaken assumptions than I have the time or energy to counter.

Your erstwhile seatmate,

Jane

How can this not be Saturday? I feel as though this work week has lasted about two weeks already. I’ve actually been quite productive, but I’m still ready for a break!

Yesterday was a particularly good day. I walked about 1/2 mile to meet a friend for lunch, so that meant it was okay to have chicken fingers and french fries because, after all, I had to walk 1/2 mile back to the office, too! We had a jolly band practice last night and polished up several of the newer songs.

Someone’s offhand comment about a t-shirt I wore at our party on the 4th of this month made me realize that I hadn’t done laundry for weeks. This morning I’m taking a stab at the Laundry Blob that threatens to engulf the entire basement. My husband’s poor, cheap, plastic hamper was so overloaded that I couldn’t even carry it downstairs without dividing its contents in half.

Tonight: date night. We keep meaning to see a movie and now I’m torn between “Sky Captain” and “Shaun of the Dead.” I suppose it will depend on whether my evening mood leads me toward the breathtaking or the over-the-top comedic.

On Saturday I’m finally getting my hair highlighted and cut. I actually wore a baseball cap one day this week, but then I decided nobody really cares what I look like so I gave it up the next day.

In honor of the beginning of autumn I was going to post a photo of my still-ripening pumpkin, but it turns out that the one casualty of the Microsoft Service Pack 2 update was the interface between my digital camera and the computer. At least it’s the one casualty I’ve noticed so far. I’ll show off my pumpkin pix when I get everything sorted out (meaning, when I talk my husband into getting everything sorted out for me).

Have a lovely weekend!

Yesterday: wake up, blog, get dressed, run errand, get coffee and yogurt/fruit/granola parfait, work, work, work, work, work, work, finally have lunch, work, work, go home and read for a few minutes, run to grocery store for cookies, meet up with the girls, chat, drink wine, have dinner, eat cookies, chat some more, head home, go to bed.

If I went into any more detail, it would be like one of those letters from an elderly relative that turns out to be mostly about what everyone had to eat all day long. Not of general interest.

I’ll try to work a little more action and adventure into my schedule today so I’ll have more to discuss tomorrow. Barring that, maybe I’ll make something up!