random thoughts – Day 2,308 (Friday) – fri-yay!

Things were accomplished. The morning included the trimming of low-hanging tree branches and the pulling of weeds in the back yard. A small trash bin, a large planter, and a bucket full of trimmings were loaded into the car and brought to the neighborhood yard waste drop off area which is a splendid feature of living here. A faded garden decoration that was once blue, green, and gold, was sprayed with fresh silver paint and set near the basil, lavender, and squash. 

Laundry was done. Food was consumed. The zipper was removed from the embroidered and sequin trimmed gown bought on Wednesday, and a plan made (and documented!) for the next steps to its transformation. A book was read (not the whole book, just some chapters). A walk around the ‘hood was taken. Several people were sitting in their yards, driveways, or under their carports enjoying the most pleasant evening air, and I was waving at people like I was Miss America in a parade. When I got back home, I noticed a tear in the back of my beloved camo print cargo capris and was grateful that the majority of houses sit far back from the street and also that most of the neighbors are elderly and probably couldn’t see my butt flashing my undies from their chairs.

Stuff got done.

There was an evening session with my new favorite household tool, the mini-chainsaw, and I trimmed ground-level branches from the overgrown flora in front of the house, still in my camo print torn in the back capris with blue underpants underneath. It felt reckless. Is anyone really watching? Can my elderly neighbors even see that far? Do I really care? Whatever. For the record, I love that little chainsaw.

A second trip was made to the drop off area with the evening trimmings and then it was time to relax with a Korean drama on Netflix and some calcium-rich cheese slices and crackers. What a day! Not exactly a day in a cottage at the beach, but still fun and fulfilling.

random thoughts – Day 2,307 (Thursday) – lunch, dice, and plants

Bacon cheeseburger with fries and pickles.

A spontaneous lunch invitation livened up a potentially dull day. Mom, Sis, my youngest niece and I, after brief discussion about who was already hungry, who likes what, and what places are nearby, chose Kay’s Dairy Bar as our target destination. It has a varied menu, and we debated sharing an appetizer and then having ice cream, but in the end, we all ordered lunch plates like adults. It was good.

After lunch, we went back to Mom’s and played Yahtzee. The dice were not favoring me today. My niece rolled a full house so many times we wondered if the Universe was sending her a message. I kept rolling crap and ended up taking zeroes when I missed required combinations, which also felt like a message from the Universe.

After a supper of grocery store ice cream, I decided to plant the spaghetti squash Sis gave me a few weeks ago. Knowing there is a ground hog that visits the yard, I checked what plants they hate to surround and protect the squash plant. I got lucky and it was several plants I wanted anyway, including basil, lavender, and rosemary, plus bleeding heart, which I planted a couple months ago.

Tiny backyard garden.

In a matter of minutes, I was in the car and headed to Tractor Supply where I bought a second pot of basil and a lavender plant. An hour after the internet search about plants, the squash was finally in the ground near the bleeding heart, flanked by the new basil plant and the one bought a couple weeks ago. The lavender is nearby, still in the original pot, while I decide if I want to try and split the plant. The plants were surrounded with wire flower bed edging to keep the lawn mower at bay.

random thoughts – Day 2,306 (Wednesday) – shopping

The weather pendulum has swung back to the warmer side of things after a couple cooler days. Mom and I went to the air-conditioned comfort of the duchy of Kohls in the kingdom of retail. My list was short – look for outdoor décor and sneakers on clearance.

Bird for the yard.

The odds were in my favor, the yard décor curse has been broken,  and I found a figurine that I liked (a bird). It was less successful in the shoe department and the other departments I breezed through. Mom didn’t find anything she wanted to buy.

Our next stop before heading home was a consignment store we both like. There were two racks of clearance clothes in the sidewalk. The pants I liked didn’t fit right, but I found a raincoat for $2 and a blue full-length gown, brand new with tags, for $1. The gown has perfect seaming to easily be taken apart and turned into a dance skirt and a top. There was another clearance rack inside and I got several items to use for head wraps, plus a pair of like-new Skechers sneakers for $10 in the not clearance stuff. Once again, Mom found nothing to buy. Usually, the roles are reversed and I’m the one leaving empty-handed.

random thoughts – Day 2,305 (Tuesday) – dark dancing

Tuesday brought rain, chill, and dance day. The ride to dance faced a traffic jam within minutes of hitting Route 2. Luckily, the backup was near the exit I had planned to take and I was able to get out of the mess.

Dimly lit dance day.

At our practice hall, there was a sensor of some sort beeping. It was ongoing and regular, like a slow metronome. And there was no electricity. Despite the many windows on three sides of the hall, the cloudy dreary day meant a dimly lit space. 

Someone had our music on their fully charged phone and someone else had a really cool speaker in their dance bag, so we chose to proceed. There were jokes about dancing in the dark.

Most of us know the barre, center work, and choreography by heart or close enough to get through it, but today we learned something new. Specifically, balancing is a bit harder in the semi-dark. The little speaker, which was actually a shower speaker, had great volume and colored LED lights and now we all want one. There is one in my Amazon cart right now.

We think Mrs. Rice would have been proud of us for not wimping out due to a tiny obstacle like the absence of electricity and the presence of a shrill beep. If it hadn’t been raining, we might have even danced outside under the pavilion, just like a core cluster of the group did throughout the pandemic (even in the winter). We are hardy stock.

random thoughts – Day 2,304 (Monday) – reading, walking, and thinking

The weather was cooler today and it was a relief. There were cool breezes flowing into the house. The air and all the backyard trees reminded me of my family’s vacation camping trips in Maine when I was a kid.

Hitting the southern Maine coastal area and living in a cloth house was a change of pace from our life in a proper building. Not completely, though. We sometimes got a site with electricity and I think at least once we brought a portable TV and electric frying pan in addition to the usual outdoor living and cooking gear. I have a memory of sitting outside our tent with a campfire and watching a TV set on the picnic table. Or maybe I dreamt the part about the TV. I’ll need to check with Mom and Sis.

The house held to the pattern of the heat wave. Even with the windows open wide to benefit from the breezes, the house held steady at four to five degrees warmer inside than out.

It was a quiet day, which is the current norm. There was reading on the couch – Mockingjay (the final book of The Hunger Games) was started yesterday and will be done by bedtime tonight. There was cooking and eating. 

Another walk,
another bunny sighting.

During the evening walk, there was the spotting of a brown bunny in a yard and one of the neighborhood outdoor cats in the street. The turkeys are still pretty scarce. The several usual neighborhood cats have been scarce and Mom and I wondered last week if something had happened to them, but the white and tortoise one was out this evening. 

I’ve been noticing people’s plantings, yard décor, and exterior lighting in search of ideas for my own house. Someone one street over has a large planter that I like in the form of a fish on its back with its mouth open to the sky. It reminds me of a much smaller similar matched set I had that I left behind in Tennessee to save space during the move, thinking I could find them again. Not the case. There have been years of regret over my abandoned yard décor which included a bird, two fish, a Buddha head, and a heart. 

Some very poor choices have been made during moves, mostly because I stupidly thought I could replace items as easily as I found them in the big box stores the first time. I even asked AI why yard décor is so frigging ugly and stupid since 2016 or so and got a very long answer about mass production and the prevalence of cookie cutter houses and people wanting to show their personality through yard décor. Ok, cool. I get the philosophy of yard decor. But why are the only things available gnomes, frogs in yoga poses, toadstools, and metal solar light flowers that look like a bad drug trip (and cost a fortune)?

random thoughts – Day 2,303 (Sunday) – floating

Today was dedicated to floating. My friends live down the road from a lake and this afternoon the three of us gathered up the floats and headed for the water. The lake was surprisingly quiet for a summer Sunday/holiday weekend. Over the course of our time on the water, there was a pontoon boat out, a jet ski, a couple paddle boards, a kayak and a canoe, a sailboat, and us with our inflatable floats in a small inlet down a couple stone steps from a small beach area.

To the lake!

The quiet was perfect. We bobbed in the water for about 90 minutes, drifting this way and that in a small area. A guy and his young daughter were there when we arrived, and there was adult conversation about the various houses on the lake while the girl used her swim mask to explore the lake floor.  

Later, a couple arrived with their two very well behaved dogs and the humans had a chat with my friends about their respective homes, chickens, goats, and the local bear. 

The dogs had different approaches to the water. The Jack Russell Terrier spent all his time swimming to fetch a ball, return it to the beach, shake himself off, stand there admiring his prize, then letting the humans know he was ready for another toss. The companion dog, a pale yellow larger dog of unnamed breed, gingerly approached the water and took a very long to time to enter it while her make human petted her head and encouraged her to come have fun. Then she walked around a bit in it before she was done.

Time was gooey. We weren't on a schedule, so we didn't need to be mindful of it. It was relaxing floating on the water, which felt smooth and silky. A perfect Sunday, really.

random thoughts – Day 2,302 (Saturday) – independent reading

It has been such a weird week that I didn’t even know what day it was today. I knew it was July 4, but I kept thinking it was Sunday instead of Saturday. I think the heat this week fried my brain. The house has offered little to no relief from the heat and held steady at four to five degrees hotter inside than outside for the past four days. It hasn't seemed to help lowering shades and closing curtains against the sun. I’m apparently living in a sauna.

Earlier tonight (hours ago!), the outside temperature dropped to a comfortable 73 degrees with a steady breeze that seemed to come from the precise direction to avoid every one of my windows. As a result, several hours later, the thermostat is still showing the temperature as 83 degrees inside as the temperature continues to drop outside. I don’t understand.

New best friend.

It may have been Independence Day with lots of activities happening, but, with the exception of a walk around 6:00, I stayed home all day inside the slow cooker. The cookout I was invited to had already been moved to Sunday due to the weather and I just couldn’t justify going alone to a parade or any other celebration full of families, couples, friend groups, i.e. crowds of people who are not solitary singletons in a long-term committed love-hate relationship with their independent lifestyle. I stayed home, laid out on the couch under my new best friend the ceiling fan, ice water nearby, and read. 

I finished The Hunger Games last night and started Catching Fire this morning. I read The Hunger Games when it first came out and didn’t remember any of it. The neighborhood little library had the entire trilogy so I snatched them all a few days ago with the intention of plowing through them quickly so I can put them back for someone else. So far, so good and I’m halfway through the second book.

The frequent library book exchanges and laying on the couch sweating and reading has sent me back to the summers when I was nine and ten years old, before we moved across town. There were no girls my age on our dead-end street and the several boys on the street were busy hanging around with my brother and ignoring me (unless they were torturing me), so books filled the gaping social hole in my life. The early social isolation training came in handy during the pandemic and again in what are turning out to be my recluse years. I’m now in a contest with myself to see how many books I can read this year.

Friends and family on Goodreads, who have jobs and spouses, have been reading impressive numbers of books the past several years and I, without any such real-world distractions and impositions on my time, have read a mere sliver of a fraction of some of their totals. It’s time for me to stop wasting so much time on social media, LinkedIn, and streaming channels. Social media stresses me out, there is nothing I want to watch on cable, Netflix, or Prime, and I’ve accepted the impossible reality of the job market for laid-off people my age and abandoned the search, so it’s time to shift gears. It’s books. For now, anyway.  I shift gears a lot, and in a couple weeks may suddenly be determined to jump out of a plane or weave baskets or start frequenting a rage room to smash stuff or something. We’ll see.