Category: Daily Life

I know it's been spring for a while, but it hasn't really felt like it until now. As soon as I opened the blinds this morning and sunlight flooded in, I knew it was time to get some yard work in.

Naturally, I didn't get started right away. I lazed around with the pets for a bit until I got hungry, then I went out to breakfast and treated myself to pancakes and coffee. I'd brought a magazine to read, but I ended up spending the whole meal chatting on Facebook and Twitter.

When I went to pay, I discovered that my debit card was missing. I called the restaurant where we'd eaten dinner last night and they had it. I put off my chores a little longer so I could drive out and retrieve the card.

Finally it was time to get serious. This year I'm putting in a couple of small raised beds for vegetables, but I decided that I would save that for tomorrow and do some other yard maintenance first. I still need to decide exactly what I want to plant.

First on the agenda was a trip to the local hardware store to drop off my loppers for sharpening and purchase some grass seed. Last fall I tried to grow grass in the area where our big, dead locust tree had been, but nothing ever came up. I figured it was worth raking and sowing seed there one more time to see what happens. If it fails again, I'll consult a master gardener. 

With the lopper in the shop, I used a small handheld pruner to trim back dead fronds from last year's peonies, snip off the first shoots from our chronic volunteer trees, and remove the dead parts from last year's mum plants. All of my mums are coming back, which is great. I gave them a little drink of Miracle-Gro to encourage them further.

Being outside gave me the opportunity to talk to my next door neighbors for the first time in a while. Turns out they have a baby now. I am a terrible, terrible neighbor, in case you hadn't figured that out.

My last accomplishment of the day was to take my big tub of recyclable glass and drop it off at a Ripple Glass bin. Then I went to the liquor store because that tub isn't going to refill itself.

Our lawn guy hadn't been by yet this year, so I texted him and told him we were ready whenever he was. By the time my husband and I got back from supper, the lawn was mowed. All the better for my raised bed project tomorrow!

I'll be spending my evening playing canasta, which will be a lovely way to cap off a day of light manual labor. We'll see if I can be equally productive tomorrow.

My Howard Hughes-like germaphobia and Lady MacBeth-style obsessive hand washing finally let me down and I caught a cold a couple of weeks ago. All things considered, it's been a pretty mild cold, but for an asthmatic there's really no such thing.

Band practices are the hardest. I struggled through practice last weekend with vocal cords that were only nominally under my control. We actually auditioned a new keyboard player that day and it's amazing he decided to join the band considering what I must have sounded like.

My singing quality was considerably improved this weekend but I am having a lot of problems with coughing. Even though I'm already using pretty much every remedy my doctor generally prescribes, I may find myself having to go see her if this doesn't let up soon.

Last year when I got my annual case of bronchitis, I happened to be booked to speak to a professional organization while I was still in the throes of all of the coughing and throat clearing. This year—guess what?—I'm speaking at a luncheon in a couple of days. It's a good thing I have an ample supply of cough drops.

In the meantime, I've let my house fall into a state of disarray and I'm spending more time in pajamas than is strictly appropriate. I'm sincerely looking forward to going back to being a hypochondriac instead of an actual sick person.

Photo credit: Robert Francis

The last few times I've used the oven, I've noticed that it started out a bit smoky. I figured there were enough pieces of food flotsam at the bottom that it was time to run the self-cleaning cycle, so once I got finished washing the pots and pans tonight, I set the oven to clean.

Then it started to smoke. Quite a bit. It always smokes a little when it's in cleaning mode, but it was getting rather alarmingly thick. So much so that I opened a couple of windows and turned on the attic fan to clear it out.

Still the smoke kept pouring from the vents around the stove and then I had an awful thought.

I went upstairs and asked my husband, "Did you ever take the pizza out of the oven last night?"

The answer was, "No."

My plan to wait out the smoke was suddenly unfeasible. I shut off the clean cycle and waited for the appliance to cool down enough to remove the offending food item.

It had been two pieces of Papa Murphy's pizza on their cardboard baking tray. When the oven finally cooled down enough to unlock its door, I removed what remained: a charred, curled wisp of what had once been the tray, held down by two charcoal briquettes shaped exactly like olive-studded pizza slices.

Remember that scene at the end of Time Bandits with the evil in the oven? It was a lot like that, only with regular grey smoke instead of yellow.

I've finally gotten most of the lingering smoke out of the air, but I'm sure it will be clinging to all of our textiles and hair for some time to come. I think the only one who enjoyed the experience was Dr. Jones because it gave him the opportunity to fluff up his coat and sit in an open window.

The good news is that it didn't end up setting off the fire alarm, which is hard-wired into our home alarm system. It was embarrassing enough to fill the house with smoke under such stupid circumstances without having the fire department bear witness to my stupidity.

The takeaway is, of course, always check the oven before you run the self-clean cycle. Duh. Now I can no longer make fun of my husband for the time he once did something similar. 

And with that, I think I should probably turn in for the night before I do any more damage. Sheesh.

I have to say this for the current state of meteorology: they called this week's storm pretty much down to the hour. We'd been warned all week that a blizzard was coming on Thursday morning, so I made a special point of stocking up on groceries before my evening meeting on Wednesday.

When I first woke up to take the dog out on Thursday at 6:30 a.m., it was only misting lightly. I went back to bed for an hour and woke to find that it was snowing like mad.

I'd already planned to work from home and our CEO sent an email that advised not to come into the office unless you were within walking distance. The snow kept coming down for most of the day until there was about a foot of it at our house.

This guy tried and failed to drive up our unplowed street. He ended up making it another ten or fifteen feet further and his vehicle is currently stuck in our yard. (I might want to shovel out the gas meter just to make it more visible. Seeing it mostly buried there makes me nervous.)

This how our invisible driveway looked last night before I went to bed. We won't be able to leave until someone comes with a plow blade. The driveway is just too long, wide and slanted to shovel by hand. I've done it in the past (to get out at Christmas, for example), but the incentive is not there right now.

Last night I cooked a turkey breast, resulting in an abbreviated version of a Thanksgiving dinner. Tonight I'll make a turkey pot pie with some of the leftovers. I've been having my usual health shakes for breakfast and so far I'm still not burned out on sandwiches and chips for lunch.

The main problem with the snow is that Toby doesn't want it to touch him. That makes his bathroom breaks an ordeal for us both. Let's just say I did some floor cleaning yesterday. Today he was willing to give the outdoors its due on his first trip out, so I'm hoping that continues.

On today's schedule: work as much as possible (I have an article to write), shovel the front sidewalk, wash the pots and pans from yesterday's cooking extravaganza, and think of something to make for tonight's dessert that carefully shepherds my remaining egg supply (when I got home from the store, the bag with the eggs in it fell off the counter and six of the dozen broke). 

I don't know when our street and driveway will be plowed, but we have more than enough food to get through the weekend. However, it won't be long before cabin fever sets in, so it would be nice to have the option of getting out sooner rather than later. I guess we'll see how it goes!

The last time it snowed, I wore an outfit that seemed appropriate for the weather: jeans (as always), boots, a thermal shirt and a hoodie. When I looked in the mirror, it occurred to me that although I was headed to my office, I could just as well be going out to a barn to shovel out a stall.

Fashion and I inhabit completely different planes of existence. I'm sure it didn't help that I grew up in the '70s, with all of the riotous polyester ugliness that suggests. Once I started choosing my own clothes in the '80s, I did enjoy a decade of minor mall-oriented trendiness, which was good timing since I was young and thin then. By the time the grunge era arrived, I was ready to embrace the XL flannel shirts and comfortable hiking boots, and I've really never recovered.

Fortunately, I can wear pretty much anything I want to my office. When I have a client meeting, jeans are still okay and I just dress things up with a slightly better top, shiny shoes and an accessory or two.

Wear-and-tear is my biggest problem right now. Last week I threw away two pairs of jeans that had gotten so thin in the seat that it's a miracle I hadn't had a major wardrobe malfunction. Sadly, I discovered that another favorite pair of jeans has reached the same stage.

I've been throwing out a lot of clothes lately. I did an underwear drawer purge and mercilessly culled every pair that I had been accustomed to pushing to the back of the drawer. Then I went to Target and bought two enormous packages of replacements in the correct size. It was one of those little things that make life better but often get put off for far too long.

Next on the list is my sock drawer. I love my Chuck Taylors, but they're not kind to socks. Almost every time I get dressed, I discover either a thin patch or a hole in one of the socks I'm putting on. I'm big on mending the holes, but only once.

As much as I am loath to admit it, it's time for a Day of Shopping. Usually these involve my sister, who is also a hater of shopping, but is very good at helping me find flattering clothes without wasting a lot of time.

I'm always impressed with people who know how to put together an outfit and always look great. I just don't think I have it in me. The best I can hope for is to have a consistent style that fits my personality. That, and clothes with no holes in them.

I think I saw a guy who's been breaking into cars near my office. I was walking to lunch and there was a man standing outside the restaurant where I was headed, leaning against the wall. He was dressed in dark clothes and wearing a backpack. More significantly, he was holding a huge chunk of asphalt in his hand that would make a very handy window-shattering tool.

I noted all this as I walked by, although I tried not to look too intently because that asphalt chunk would also be handy for braining someone. I had a fleeting thought that I could call the police. But what would I tell them? They already know that car break-ins are rampant in the area. When we had the rash of them in the garage next to my office the day my car stereo was stolen, several people saw the thief and were able to describe him to the police. 

Of course the police know that this guy (assuming he's the only one, which may or may not be the case) is in the area and continuing his ill deeds. I figure they're either stepping up their patrols or they're not. Probably not, considering that I recently read in the police chief's blog that their goal is to limit homicides in the city to 80 this year, which indicates that they have much bigger concerns.

So we crossed the street in opposite directions, me to get a slice of pizza and he to do whatever it was he was going to do with a giant, jagged hunk of asphalt. 

Should I have gone ahead and called the police or would it have been a waste of everyone's time? Was I too cynical or just realistic?

Photo credit: Paula Bailey

Aaagh, I've been so terrible about blogging lately that I'm probably just talking to myself at this point.

Between work, volunteer work, reading lots and lots of books, being in a new band, and trying to remain a good friend/wife/sister/pet owner, I'm finding myself with a lot less time for composing coherent blog posts. Thus, I'll be inflicting another less-than-coherent post on you.

At work, I'm on a week of rotation with our Innovation Lab. That means that I've been grouped with three other people from different parts of the company and, aided by two of our techie bretheren, tasked with coming up with a technology-based solution to a client need.

In addition, we're also being taught some basic technical skills. One day at lunchtime we learned to use an Arduino and a breadboard to make LEDs blink.

It turns out that my ability to follow directions is questionable, but I got it to work after a little correction and then managed to add a second LED and get it to flash at a different rate than the first one. Today blinking lights, tomorrow the world. Or something.

I got a cool shot of the building across the street from my office while I was heading home the other day. It's a map company and they had a guy handpainting their new sign onto the brick:

On the volunteer front, my husband are having great success with improving the foster cat, Tinkerbell. She's gotten to where she greets us at the door when we come into the studio and she has a lot to say. 

If it weren't for the huge menagerie we have downstairs, we'd be tempted to keep her. I hope she finds a good home soon because I don't think she'd be happy back at a pet store.

The band is coming along nicely. We have more than three sets' worth of material selected. It seems likely that we'll have everything polished and ready to play out by early spring. (Keith – I think I've gotten the band to agree to do a Slade song, by way of Quiet Riot.)

On the reading front, I've made it to the fifth book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. They're quite a bit more romance-y than my usual fare, but I like the historical fiction aspect and the fact that they involve time travel adds an extra dash of interest.

I took a little break in between books four and five to read Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story. It was the first biography of his that I've read and although I found it interesting, a lot of it felt awfully speculative. I also wished that the biographer hadn't brushed off all of the books that followed "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" because I was a fan of the entire series, not just the first book. 

And that's what I've been doing with my time lately. How are things with you?

I don't mean to get too Deep Thoughts-y on you, but I've been reflecting a lot lately on just how fortunate I am. It's not as though I go around most of the time wishing for more, but a couple of recent events have brought things into sharp focus.

The first was a visit by one of my husband's friends, who was in town after an extended absence during which we weren't sure what had happened to him. While we were talking to him, it became evident that he has spent a lot of time homeless over the past several years. He told us he was renting a room in the city where he's been settled recently, but my husband and I suspect that he's sleeping in his car while he's in town.

This is a guy—I'd guess he's in his mid-sixties—who doesn't drink or take drugs and has no obvious mental illness. In the past he's been a business owner, but a divorce followed by several bad entrepreneurial situations left him in debt with minimal possessions. He rations his money very carefully and does what he can to save up, but often that's just not enough.

Of course we offered to let him stay at our house while he's in town, but he wouldn't hear of it. All I had to offer was the coffee and cookies we served while he was visiting and I sent him off with a handful of free coffee and doughnut coupons, which he gratefully accepted.

I've been thinking about him a lot because he's just one of many of our friends who are in bad straits. So far the rest of them all have places to live, but the list of looming mortgage foreclosures seems to grow every day. It's so hard to know how to help. All we can do is offer to be a safety net, even if it's likely that none of them will ever take us up on it.

The second thing that happened is that my dad's last sibling passed away on New Year's Day, two years to the day after his wife's death. When he called to tell me the news, I asked if he'd like me to go with him to her funeral, and he seemed very appreciative of the offer.

We took the train to St. Louis, Missouri, and that's where I am right now. One of my cousins and her husband picked us up from the train station last night and today we'll be spending the day at her house as the other cousins come in (my aunt had seven daughters), and the memorial service is this afternoon.

When I look at my 569 Facebook friends, I wonder how many will still be around when I'm my dad's age? Can social media help encourage and maintain more ties so that people don't get as lonely when they get older? I don't know the answer to that, but I suspect that even if Facebook is long gone 35 years from now, the Internet will make a difference in keeping people connected. Still, as with the first situation I described, how much of a concrete effect will it have in people's lives?

So that's what I've been musing about lately: poverty, mortality and loneliness. Let's all go hug some people today.