random thoughts – Day 2,156 (Tuesday) – birthday chat

Pretty morning sky color.

It’s Dad’s birthday tomorrow. When I was a kid we talked about his age, and for years he would say he was 29.  When he was well past 29, he upped it to 39. I know how old he is, but I don't consciously think about it because then I have to accept the reality of my own age and I kind of like it in my little bubble of age denial.  

My sister had today off from work. She has a birthday tradition with Dad where she makes sausage gravy and biscuits for breakfast. Now that I’m local (and still unemployed) it’s a lot easier for me to be able to play, too. 

My butt was out of bed and mobile in time to see a pale schmear of color in the morning sky before I hit the shower. Before too long, I was caffeinated, dressed, and headed out to Fitchburg. I brought over the mini cupcakes with coffee frosting made on Monday night for the occasion.

Wee cupcakes with coffee frosting.

Dad, Sis, and I drank coffee, ate breakfast, and talked about a lot of random topics and it was nice. And instead of having conversational questions that linger unanswered in the air forevermore, I harnessed the power of the Internet and visited Google several times.

When the conversation was our mutual disdain for the highway robbery of cable providers and a digital antenna was mentioned, none of us knew quite what it was or how one worked. A quick Google query provided photos, places to buy such a thing, and advice on where to install one.  

Google search topics from our morning together included:

- kerosene near me (Dad has a lantern and said kerosene couldn’t be gotten anywhere – Google disagreed)

- how tall is Brendon Urie (niece has a cutout and I wanted to know if it is true to height)

- Tedy Bruschi Papa Gino’s cutout (Sis missed her chance and is still bummed Tedy landed in the Papa Gino’s dumpster before she could get it. I wanted to see if there are any kicking around somewhere)

- digital antenna (smaller than I expected in both size and cost)

- can crystal go in dishwasher (oops, I’ve been doing it wrong for decades)

- clay flower pot candle heater (allegedly, a room can be heated with one)

I love research. It’s probably not a shocker to anyone who knows me, but I was the nerd on the edge of my seat waiting to hear the details for final papers in school. I loved having to look stuff up and crank out 15 or so pages on it. Research was one of my favorite aspects of background prep for articles and interviews for the newspaper, for customer testimonials for bank ad campaigns, and for the learning center articles I wrote for the website. I don’t think a day goes by that I’m not tapping random questions into a search engine at least a couple times because it’s so easy.

random thoughts – Day 2,155 (Monday) – snow and cupcakes

Snow cloud and clods.

Friday night there was a leak in the cabinet over the stove where the vent pipe is. Sometime on Saturday the leak stopped and the thin wood material dried. It remained dry through Sunday. A roofing team arrived this morning to check it out and cleared the roof on the back half of the house. There was concern about the carport, which was bowing due to holding a lot of snow (nearly four feet of it against the peak of the house). The carport snow wasn’t light and fluffy like the rest of the snow. Clearing the carport was added to the scope of the job.  

For 1.5 hours, snow flew by the windows in clods and clouds, and the sound of dammed ice being chopped off the roof rattled the house. At the end of it, I had half a cleared roof, a massive pile of snow next to the driveway, and a bank account that was lighter by half a grand. I also have an estimate for a new roof which seemed reasonable until I saw the cost for new skylights and the total-total. Holy hell. Two skylights equal half the cost of the roof materials and replacement. The forecast is for more snow Tuesday. 

Canned frosting
obsession.

After supper, I decided to make mini cupcakes to take to my sister’s house tomorrow. I’ve stepped away from baking for the most part, and with it, the desire to make everything from scratch so it was a Funfetti box mix and a can of frosting for the win. And let me tell you, the Pillsbury “Creamy Supreme” Coffee frosting is danged good. Which means I’ll probably never find it in a store again.    

Even cupcake baking from a mix had issues. I wanted to do mini cupcakes using the three pans I have. I wanted to use the colorful mini cupcake liners to make pal cleanup easier. The cupcake liners, however, where a smidge larger than the holes in the pans, so the papers wouldn’t sit flat, and worse, the cupcake bottoms didn’t come out flat. Errrr. The high point was eating the four or five mini-cupcakes with coffee frosting that didn’t fit into the container to take to my sister’s. 

random thoughts – Day 2,154 (Sunday) – show time

Performance day rolled in with bitter cold. It was -3 degrees – yes, minus three degrees. We’re talking Siberian-type temperatures. No bueno.

Show packing. 

The time before leaving for dance practice was spent organizing for the show tonight. Costume parts and accessories for each dance in the show tonight were grouped in zipper seal bags.  Bags with hair accessories, jewelry, and various underlayers were lined up on the dining room table.

By noon when we left practice, the temperature had risen to 15 degrees. It felt like a heat wave compared to earlier in the morning. The sun was shining and the snow along the edges of the roads was turning slushy. I began worrying and wondering about the roof leak and whether the new heat wave would activate it again. Roofers are scheduled to check things out Monday morning.

At home, lunch was eaten. Makeup was applied and then the various powders, tubes, and applicators were set into the travel toiletry bag. The trickiest things to pack are the 25-yard skirt which is takes up a lot of room in a bag and the water bottle which is mildly clunky and heavy when full of ice and water.

Then I sat around calmly, trying not to undo the makeup that had already been done. I read a book. I paced. I bothered Kiki to pet her pretty little face and then reward her with treats. She is a sucker for the Temptations mixed treats.

The show was great. And despite it being Super Bowl Sunday, there was an enthusiastic audience. 

There was, once again, a variety of music and dance styles and beautiful costumes. So many beautiful costumes. The troupe dance went well. People were amazed we had nine of us on the stage, but we have actually danced in smaller spaces. And weirder spaces, like last fall when our designated dance spot at an event was on a hill. We are very adaptable. The duet went beautifully, we looked great, and we had fun.  My new hair piece stayed put and the only "malfunction" was three or four times before dancing when the sparkly stones on my mesh leggings got stuck together. Overall, a stellar night.

random thoughts – Day 2,153 (Saturday) – snow globe

Another morning in the snow globe.

I had heard it might snow over the weekend, and sort of zoned out after that. As a result, I was a bit surprised/perturbed when I woke up around 7 am and the world was once again a snow globe. It snowed heavily and steadily for about four hours. The neighborhood plow dove up and down the street with plumes of snow sent airborne from the side edge of the plow. 

In other exciting news, the drip in the kitchen cabinet over the stove was still dripping. The towels placed there last night were wet and about a half-inch of water was pooled in the plastic wastebasket that wasn’t even under the main drip. The wet towels were run through the spin cycle of the washer then popped into the dryer before being returned to drip collection service.

The house was quiet and I was on extra high alert for unusual sounds, especially of water dripping. I wandered from room to room examining the ceilings in search of signs of trouble of the hydration variety. Is that a new spot or is it old or is it just a shadow? Should I pull out the property inspection from the summer and look at all the ceiling photos?

In between rounds of ceiling critique, time was spent reviewing the troupe dance and the duet. The phone was always in hand or within reach in expectation of the promised call back from the roofing guy. At noon, having heard nothing, I sent a text to check in. 

After the neighborhood saint cleared the driveway with his snow blower, I went out to do the finer shovel cleanup. I started a path behind the house for the roof guys to have some sort of access. Luckily, the new snow and the snow from the last storm was light and fluffy. It was up to my knees as I scooped and tossed the stuff further into the yard. Icicles were knocked from the roof with the shovel. The whole thing was a good arm workout that I may regret mightily tomorrow.

The duet partner arrived for practice. We moved the furniture out of the way and got to dancing. We were great in the first run-though, then a couple spots got a little messed up the next couple times. That happens when we start getting into our heads. The roofer called while we were practicing. He could send a couple guys over Sunday morning, but I will be at dance group doing final troupe run-throughs before the show tomorrow night so we scheduled for Monday morning.

After that, I went full-on snow-day hibernation and sat on the couch to read a book.

The leak in the cabinet seems to have taken a break, and the wood that was obviously wet earlier seemed nearly dry by 8:30. The towels were washed and dried, and a couple were reset in the cabinet in case there is more hydro activity overnight. The temperature has dropped to a whopping one degree with an “extreme cold warning” in effect until 1 pm Sunday, so whatever was leaking is probably frozen again and that is okay with me for now.

random thoughts – Day 2,152 (Friday) – bangs and buckets

Back with bangs.

There was a hair appointment in Worcester today. As I left for the appointment, a guy in a bucket truck was working on a pole down the street. A sandwich board stuck in a snow bank declared that some new not recognizable brand of internet something was happening. There were too many words on the sign and they were too small to read from the car. Note to sign makers – nobody can read your novella in passing, even when the speed limit is 15 miles per hour.

After weeks of consideration and countless minutes searching for reference photos that looked even a tiny bit like my mostly wavy, partly straight, longish hair, on a person with glasses, I took the step and boldly reclaimed my bangs. When I wore contacts, I had bangs for years and loved them, except for one or two stifling humid summer days when they clung to my forehead in a puddle of sweat. When contacts finally failed me and required the addition of reading glasses, I ditched the contacts and switched to full time glasses.

With full time glasses, bangs felt like too much stuff happening on my face, even though I think other people with bangs and glasses look great. There have been brief flirtations with wispy bangs, curtain bangs, side-swept bangs, and face-framing layers, but today, full bangs and I were reunited. For a while anyway, they tend to grow fast and once they are in my eyes I feel like a sheepdog and then I get testy. But so far, so good.

In a bucket on a cold day.

The bucket truck was still on the street when I returned several hours later. A couple hours after that, it was outside my house. The truck was driven by one guy, with a second guy in the lowered bucket in the back of the truck. Bucket guy would yell to the driver when the truck was near where he needed to be, then the truck would stop and the bucket would raise. And lower. And raise. And adjust until it was correctly placed, with yelling to the driver the whole time. I felt bad for bucket guy. It was cold out. At least driver guy had heat, even if he had the window down to hear when he was being yelled to by bucket guy.

After a debate about whether or not to eat supper, and if so, what that supper should be, with contenders including yogurt, soup, pasta, and grilled cheese, a frozen pizza was decided upon. While setting the oven temperature, I noticed the top of the control panel of the stove was wet. Very odd. An amateur investigation ensued. It revealed that there is a leak in the cabinet over the sink where the range hood vents to the outside world. Water is dripping behind the vent pipe, making it impossible to get any sort of bucket, bowl, or collection device under it, so it's towels for now.

The potential spring/summer roof exploration because I really want siding and the professional guidance is to do the roof first, was near the top of the list, but not necessarily at the top-top under the belief there was plenty of time. Now it looks like roofing work is, at the very least, a more urgent winter repair. Hooray. I always love a surprise. (No, I don’t.) A roofer has been contacted. There will be a phone conversation in the morning. 

random thoughts – Day 2,151 (Thursday) – activities and practice

The days, the weeks, the months are flying by at a head-spinning pace and I don’t understand it. Not sure I need to understand it, but I do wish it would slow the heck down.

The day was spent mostly at home.  There was a trip to the mailbox and then Dollar Tree to get some dinner napkins. The Dollar Tree store overachieved with the additional acquisitions of Swiss Rolls, sugar wafers, vegetable broth, and a hook for the bathroom door upon which to hang my bathrobe.

It was sunny and around 29 degrees, so pleasant (relative to recent weather). The weekend forecast is for more bitter cold, so it felt important to get out and enjoy the civilized weather while possible.

A week ago, I noted a tai chi class on the calendar at 1:00 today. It turns out I’m better a noting events on the calendar than I am at checking the calendar to attend the events. It was 1:40 when I remembered the tai chi class. Maybe next week I’ll remember in time and attend.

Costume jewelry.

There was a duet dress rehearsal tonight, in preparation for the Sunday performance. We donned our jewelry and tights with our dresses and I tried out the newest hairpiece that arrived a few days ago. The costumes look great and our rehearsal was smooth, even when I smacked myself in the forehead with a prop. We are in the final finessing stage of presentation and paying attention to the details and it feels good to feel prepared. I might want larger, bolder earrings, but right now that is the only potential change.

After practice, the avocado that had today achieved the perfect ripeness was mashed with garlic and lemon juice and a scoop of salsa. It's always a very small window of time between the stages of not ripe enough, perfectly ripe, and then gross. The magical point of avocado ripeness usually results in the immediate cancellation of any other meal plans. Tonight, it was turkey soup that got the boot. The couch was the solo dining spot for avocado with flatbread crackers. Delicious.

random thoughts – Day 2,150 (Wednesday) – jewelry and sanity

The latest episode in the ongoing search for the misplaced jewelry took place this morning. The step stool was brought to the bedroom closets to explore the shelves. In the process, a shoe box stowed on the shelf was explored. It contained a random assortment of stuff including a Longsjo Bike Race cowbell, my roller derby armbands with my player number (813), a silver charm in a box, the fitness watch I abandoned wearing, buttons from vintage clothing items, a book about tarot, and the necklace I made a few years ago from vintage brooches. I didn’t expect to find my missing dance jewelry in the shoebox, but finding the brooch necklace was a win. I thought it was misplaced in the same bag with the dance jewelry.

The contents of the storage bag with the many troupe costume veils, hip scarves, and a top was reviewed and refolded with the tiny hope that the missing necklaces had appeared in there since a few days ago when I last pawed through it. They had not.

Reunited.

The shelves in both closets were tidied and some shoes were stowed away. As the operation was wrapping up so I could check on the soup on the stove and set the table for lunch with Mom and Sis, I looked down to the floor of the closet, and there, on top of a pair of dark colored boots, was the gray three compartment travel bag which I immediately knew contained the two missing dance necklaces. My stress level was immediately reduced and my sanity improved.

How it landed there or when I cannot guess. I can say with certainty that I didn't see it there when looking for boots to wear with dress pants just over a week ago. It's possible it was on the shelf and fell when I was looking for it in recent days. File it under household mysteries. At least this one had a positive outcome. Other missing items have never been found and still haunt me.