random thoughts – Day 2,342 (Thursday) – birthdays and such

My birthday has been dealt with in a number of ways over the years. My family has always acknowledged birthdays, no matter what. When we were little, my brother’s birthday (July) and mine (August) were celebrated together with a family party, often on a Sunday afternoon at Mummu’s apartment, with cousins from Mom’s side.

Significant birthdays got some drama. When I turned 13, I was visiting at Mummu’s until Mom said it was time to come home. It felt weird that I was at Mummu’s and I couldn’t just go home, but once home, I knew why. When someone finally picked me up, there was a surprise party and a ten-speed bike that was assembled while I was at Mummu’s. 

My Sweet 16 fell on Friday the 13^th. The plan was a pool party at our house and painting “The Rock” at the granite quarry where, in a tradition started in 1936, the senior class would traditionally paint their graduating year in red and white paint on the granite face of the big hill facing town. My friends and I would start our junior year that fall, so it was essentially an act of sabotage to go paint our year.

My parents weren’t fans of the rock painting idea, but somehow caved and bought some red paint for the job. My friends came over. There was a huge thunderstorm and my party became an indoor event with Dad, who was a freelance DJ, playing all the hit music in our dining room.

When I was 30, another surprise party was planned. At the time, X1 and I lived around the corner from Mom and the house I grew up in. X1 and I shared an office in the house and he used the big desk for work stuff, I used a smaller table for sewing. Usually, the only thing on the top of the very tidy desk was a phone and a calendar. On the weekend before my weekday birthday he had written “surp party” on the calendar which, of course, I saw. I finally asked if it was required I act surprised. It was supposed to be a cookout at Mom’s, but it poured and became another indoor house party.

Cake and ice cream, round two.

There were no surprises this year. Mom and my sister chatted in advance about going to lunch and then filled me in. We no longer ask “what do you want to do on your birthday,” because none of us want “a fuss” and will answer with “nothing!” The current (successful) system is to formulate a loose plan and then tell the birthday person, “we were thinking of X and/or Y for your birthday, unless you want to do something else.” Doing nothing is forbidden.

Today’s weather was sunny and warm and thunderstorm free. We decided on lunch at Gardner Ale House and then walking around downtown a bit, followed by cake and ice cream and Yahtzee at Mom’s. (Later, for supper, I had a second round of cake and ice cream.) 

The Ale House has a couple non-meat menu items which is twice as many as some places so I was afforded the luxury of being torn between the veggie burger and a veggie quinoa bowl instead of settling for the lone item on menus elsewhere. Mom had a burger, Sis had a roast beef sandwich, and everyone was happy with their food.

New tree in the kitchen.

After lunch we crossed Parker Street to visit a new shop featuring local artisans that opened about a week ago (TejvaB’s Treasure Chest Boutique) and another shop nearby (Happy Trails Natural Foods). They are both great little shops with lots of interesting stuff including décor and gift items. Need local honey or honey pollen? They’ve both got it. Cool decorator items? Covered. Jewelry or maybe some natural supplements? On it.

I bought a tree of life hanging piece with bells and now I have a lot bordering on possibly too much stuff hanging in the kitchen. We’ll see. Things can easily be moved.

In other exciting news – turkeys of all ages and genders paraded through the yard this morning. Also, there may be bear poop in my front yard (discovered this evening on a walkabout). Earlier in the summer there was definitely some in the back yard. Today’s suspicious material looks the same but is smaller.

random thoughts – Day 2,341 (Wednesday) – reach

Tendrils reaching out.

There were weird dreams this morning (again) which is usually the signal that I have slept too long. Sometimes the editor/narrator in my brain thinks “this is weird, it must be time to wake up.”  

Some of the latest weird morning dreams before waking have included themes and imagery from previous dreams. I’m trying to pack for a trip and my stuff has gone missing. I’m moving into a dorm-type building and can’t find my room or I find it and somebody else is already set up in my space. I'm at a big hotel with a maze of staircases, storage rooms, cafes, and lounges and can't find my way back to my room. I’m standing alone in the center of an empty room with beautiful wood floors and large windows. Some day I'll figure out what it means.

When I checked the time, still groggy with sleep, it was 8:12 and I thought, “hmmm 8:12 on 8/12” as if it was still a dream and this information was supposed to be significant. And I got out of bed.

There was a delicious fresh eggs and cheese breakfast burrito, followed by a shopping trip with Mom to Kohl’s. I found three purses I liked there and none of them had a price tag. It didn’t feel worth the effort and I put them back. I ended up getting a Cuddl Duds base layer shirt on clearance and using two Kohl’s cash certificates.

This afternoon I learned about the desire of the spaghetti squash plant to reach out and climb. The plant grew across the dirt until it reached the fencing intended to prevent me from accidentally mowing it down. Now, several dainty, curly tendrils have wrapped themselves around the garden fencing. In doing so,  the blossoms seem to now be more elevated from the ground. I should have done some research before plunking it into the ground and might have known a trellis or a plant cage would be helpful. Now I can't get one in place without ripping the tender supports.

random thoughts – Day 2,340 (Tuesday) – eggs and containers

Pretty colored egg shells.

A friend gave me a box of 16 fresh eggs the other day with shells in pretty shades of tan, pale green, and white. Today, I used half of them to make baked egg and cheese with broccoli and tomatoes.

Fresh eggs laid just a couple days ago crack so much easier than grocery store eggs laid who knows when and trucked in from who knows where. And they are so delicious. 

At least half of the transformed into a baked dish product will be set into containers and frozen, ready for the next cycle of I’m hungry, I don’t feel like cooking, and I need food now. At those times, the lifeline to sanity is usually a plastic container of deliciousness from the freezer. Within three to five minutes (depending upon contents) the frozen block has been returned to a hot and ready-to-eat state and peace settles over the land. It’s a wonderous thing.

Eggs transformed.

Most of my current freezer containers are reusable black takeout containers that were sent home with me from someone else’s home after a dinner. Once upon a time, my containers were fashionable and colorful collections of Tupperware, invented by Earl Tupper in nearby Leominster, MA. To some degree, the colors kept up with fashion and decorating trends. Mom’s Tupperware pieces, bought in the 1970s, were collections in olive, tan, orange, and gold and coordinated with our Corelle dinnerware in Spring Blossom Green (aka Crazy Daisy).

My Tupperware, from the 1980s, was a disjointed mishmash of the 70s sunset colors and 80s blue, gray, and mauve. During a divorce, we split up the Tupperware, even though I was the one who endured the sales parties at the homes of colleagues and paid for the stuff. Like with everything else I walked away from, I told myself it was a small price to pay to be free. I got two of the square sandwich keepers with aqua lids, he got the other two. We split up the drinking tumblers, the hamburger patty holders, and the storage sets. I still have some of it, all these decades later. None of them are the correct size for the rectangles of my baked egg and cheese, but the recently acquired take away containers are.

random thoughts – Day 2,339 (Monday) – circles

The cycle of laundry and household chores chugged along today. It is mystifying to me that, despite weekly vacuuming, I am still finding sewing pins in the rug. I’ve been plotting a couple projects in my head, but I haven’t pinned and sewn anything since before the show in June. Even so, two more straight pins were picked up today during the vacuuming. Another mystery is how there are what appears to be several bleach spots on my sheets, yet I don’t use bleach.

Genuine fake stone circle.

The circles and cycles of time and life took literal form after a trip to WalMart. I have been looking for garden bed edging and today, the website indicated there was some in the store near me so I took the one-mile journey to explore. I checked the outdoor outdoor section last week and found none. 

Today, armed with a product screen shot showing edging and the status “in stock” in case I needed help from a store employee, I started in the in-the-store outdoor section. After aisles of planters, hoses, and tools, I hit the jackpot. In an aisle shared with pool supplies, several styles of garden edging were found. Even better, several were marked down.

I bought two boxes of genuine fake plastic stone border section with stakes. Back at home, I set to work immediately and fashioned a circle of hollow plastic “stones” in a circle under the tree. Forming the circle was harder than I expected. The first effort was lopsided and looked more like an egg shape. It took a couple tries to even out the circle. I need to pull out some more grass.

While I was toiling, a couple neighbors paused to chat. It was fun, and also the most social activity my yard has seen since move-in day just over a year ago.

Imposter carrot cake.

After the yard labor, I set my sights on other circular items from WalMart. One was a tiny sweet potato pie in a brown box. The other was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. I love carrot cake. In recent years, I’ve been buying one during my birthday week. 

Tonight I learned that WalMart may choose to call it a carrot cake and bury it under icing with a frosting carrot on top, but the flavor is 100% spice cake and there is but a single carrot flake of texture in the thing. I will still eat the imposter carrot cake, and now I feel compelled to have a taste and texture comparison of the so-called carrot cakes from Hannaford, Price Chopper, and the not-so-nearby Market Basket, but that might just be the nerd in me looking for another way to make a chart.

random thoughts – Day 2,338 (Sunday) – roof and books

Finally, the roofer.

The contractor for my roof and siding project, in response to my messages about two known incidences of the bathroom ceiling leaking during/after rain storms in the past two weeks, had said he would be over last Monday. At 5:00 pm on Monday, the contractor texted that the roofer would be here on Tuesday, but "the time was still being worked out." I don’t know where he came from, but the roofer and his chariot finally rolled up this morning, four days later than expected. I'm glad I wasn't holding my breath. 

After he leaned a ladder against the house, I went outside to show him the end of the house experiencing the issue and took him inside to show him the exact location. I don’t think there would have been any communication with me otherwise.

I also showed him the front section where the water flows off the roof at an angle and runs down the bedroom window and literally into the bedroom when the window is open. He said some metal piece up on the face of the house is warped and recommended gutters. I guess I shouldn't have tossed out the mailer from a gutter company that came a couple weeks ago. Oops.

Roofer guy went onto the roof with a tube of something and I could hear him walking around. There was some banging. He cast a shadow over the kitchen skylight that I could see from the couch. Whatever went on up there didn’t take very long and then he was gone without a word. There has been no follow up from the contractor since the text last Monday.

My summer 2026 salvation.

I spent the day finishing reading a John Grisham novel (A Painted House) I got it a couple days ago from the Little Library Box. It is some quality storytelling and I really enjoyed it. I returned it to the book box today, along with The Great Gatsby, which I read last week. The book box is so full I had to take two more books out in order to fit my returns in. That book box is turning out to be my summer of 2026 best friend and has turned the past couple months into the best staycation ever. It's exactly the sort of summer activity I loved when I was a kid and have been wanting to relive for ages. So far, so good.

random thoughts – Day 2,337 (Saturday) – day watch

Prepping for action.

There are some days where the turkeys are the most exciting thing going in the neighborhood, but this morning offered up some larger action that was interesting. 

The snow-blowing guy across the street from Mom had a digger across the driveway and a dump truck rumbling in the front yard at 8:30 this morning. The noise was just loud enough to be too much to ignore during the coffee drinking hour so of course I watched out my living room window. Whatever was happening looked expensive with two drivers and two rigs.

I called Mom for an unrelated topic, and she said she had something for me so I went next door right away, coffee cup in hand. The view of the heavy equipment action was better and like the couple of covert snoops we are, we watched out Mom's laundry room window as the equipment was put to work. At first, it was hard to tell what was the object of the activity and I thought maybe the driveway would be attacked by the digger thing, but the digger moved to the other side of the truck. As huge blobs of dirt with roots sticking out in every direction were lowered from the digger to the dump truck we saw it was the removal of the root balls of the previously chopped shrubs/hedges/green things that once stood in front of the house.

I imagine that is what I would be facing should I decide to rid myself of the overgrown greenery in front of my own house. It looks expensive, but I don’t know the neighbor well enough to text and ask how much it cost. I might, however, inquire about the contractor so I arrange to get my own price. That seems less invasive/nosey, and is the real reason I want to know.

random thoughts – Day 2,336 (Friday) – talking turkey

Two turkeys and a bunny.

Weeks of evening walks have revealed the patterns of the neighborhood. Between six and seven in the evening, the four male turkeys congregate in the yards two streets over from mine. The last few times I’ve seen them has been in the same section of the street. They are usually in a cluster, pausing in a yard, before moving on to the next one, but tonight, there were only three of them clustered in a yard.

As the three began to spread out across the yard, I noticed a little brown bunny, frozen still under a bush in the same yard, as if in a game of hide and seek. I wondered what would happen if the turkeys spotted the bunny. 

One time last year, a cat was lounging under a bush in my back yard along with a group of turkeys and none seemed bothered by the presence of the others and I am curious if the bunnies and turkeys share the same camaraderie.

The turkey and the chrome.

I kept walking and finally spotted the fourth turkey in a driveway across the street from the rest, near the back of a silver-gray Tacoma. It seemed to be admiring itself in the shiny chrome. It took a step or two away, then returned to the chrome corner. As I got closer, it pecked its reflection in the chrome. There were a couple more sidesteps and pauses at the reflection and then it sauntered off, away from me and towards the direction of its friends.

Meanwhile, the other three turkeys had gathered on a hill across the street and seemed to be watching the whole show. It seems, even in the turkey social world, there is always that one weird friend.