random thoughts – Day 1,644 – (Tuesday) – back at it

Life has gotten busy with a new dalliance in night classes. Nearly three weeks ago, the Thursday night five-week ballet class in Wayland began. And it was good. Tonight, the ten-week belly dance class in Marlboro began. And it, too, was good. On the drive, I got to see the shiny full moon sitting large and low-ish in the sky. I can almost never see it from the house, so it was fun when it suddenly appeared.

For several years, there were classes I wanted to take but life was kind of in the way. One impediment was the expensive health issues of my two beloved, elderly dogs. My wallet was tied up with special prescription food and even more costly medications. I really miss the pups, but I don't miss the expenses involved.

The other impediment to taking classes was that most of the classes I wanted to take were on Tuesday nights, some of which were already committed to Board of Director activities. That would have meant missing multiple sessions of whatever class was enrolled in. The board had term limits, and my term recently ended, freeing my time for leisure pursuits. A shortage of dance classes in Lowell means that as of tonight, I’m driving to Metrowest twice a week.

There was a time, once upon a lifetime ago, when I lived near the school where the newest class is located, but that does not in any way mean I could get to it without the assistance of navigation software. Tonight, I was navigated in through a back route. Then I drove around the massive structure, past an automotive building and another marked culinary.

I finally arrived at what was recognized as the main entrance from long ago classes taken there. Classes taken in the last century included inline skating, portrait photography, flamenco dance, night club dance as an aerobic sport, and a Latin dance class taken with an ex so he could know how to dance with his new girlfriend at parties. Yes, for real. The class was a public display of our former relationship with me nagging him for not doing what the instructor said and also me trying to lead because one, he was doing a crappy job of it, and two, in ballet I was usually stuck dancing the lead in partnered dances because I was taller. That class was also a demonstration of how I don’t follow weak leaders very well.

Deserted.

Anyway. I strode the absolutely deserted hallway with the shiny floors for what felt like a very long distance before finding the correct cafeteria. And there was the class. 

Several dancers stood around chatting. A table was piled with hip coin scarves for sale. And then boom, at the class start time, we were doing a warmup which was a full blown dance that everyone else except two of us knew. Then we started working on a new choreography., followed by a review of another dance the other students had worked on before, but with combinations broken down, thank goodness.

The whole thing was pretty great. It was a combination of different from the class I’ve been taking for the past several years, but familiar enough to not feel overwhelming. And the best part is, next week I get to go back. 

When the Sunday class resumes again, it will be like high school when I danced three days a week. For a week or two anyway. Sometimes, I just need to shake things up, but all the driving to all the far flung towns could be the deciding factor in how long it continues.

random thoughts – Day 1,643 – (Monday) – summer threads

The beautiful sunshiny summer weather and temperatures in the 80s are hanging in there, for another day or two anyway, before it's back to the 60s. There hasn’t been any rain for a few days and yesterday I had to water the flowers. I can’t remember them looking so parched this summer. This morning the petunias, dahlia, and the new red one and the purple one which I can’t recall the names of looked much perkier than yesterday when they were all keeling over in the blazing sunshine.

Clinging to summer.

The beautiful weather today had me wearing summer linen and cotton gauze and clinging to the threads of summer tonight. One of the last two Luigi’s Italian ice cups was pulled from the freezer. The blue one, whatever that flavor is. That just leaves a lemon one. A half hour after eating the ice, the blue color had finally left my tongue, probably due to the help of a big glass of water.

The summer of Italian ice cups will soon transition to the fall and winter of soup containers. There are enough onion skins and ends, broccoli stems, and carrot bits accumulated in the freezer over the summer to start the first vegetable broth. It feels like the perfect project for a chilly weekend. 

It won’t be too long before the stove is once again regularly hosting simmering pots of soup and the oven is roasting vegetables. Many people look forward to fall for the pumpkin spice everything, but I like it for the oven-roasted veggies, baked casseroles, and quiches, all the lunches they generate.

random thoughts – Day 1,642 – (Sunday) – panic shopping

It was another weekend of multiple competing events clamoring for attention. Saturday, in addition to the Field Day event where Troupe Salaamati performed, on my radar were the Lowell Irish Festival, the Greek Festival in Fitchburg, a belly dance workshop outside Boston with Issam Houshan, the famous Middle Eastern drummer, and Johnny Appleseed Festival in Leominster. I ended up grocery shopping and running errands.

Today’s calendar competition included a tour at Lowell Cemetery, the final StART on the Street event in Worcester, and the Finnish Market in Fitchburg. None of those were attended by me, either. I was sidetracked on a shopping excursion for vacation wear, necessary after trying on my swimwear on Friday.

Most of my swim suits are circa 2017, bought before I went to Jamaica, or, egads, even earlier. Surprise, surprise, they don’t fit. I haven’t taken a summer trip to any beaches in several years so this nugget of info was crammed into a storage bag under the bed. The one-piece suits bought from Aldi were a gamble that didn’t pay off.

Swimwear.

Panic shopping took place at Kohl’s where there are still a few swimsuits, including some on a clearance rack. It was brutal and I was in there for what felt like forever, partly due to the extra peppy disco-era music piped through the store. And I really was in there for a couple hours, trapped in the clothing department, obsessively circling racks in the hope that items I needed would magically appear. 

Some swim bottoms that fit were found, but finding tops to go with them was another story. Of course, the mission strayed and additional items including a dress and sweater were added to the cart with the justification “I could wear this to work.” 

At least Kohl’s has fitting rooms and everything actually fits, at least for the sliver of time during the try-on. There have been numerous documented cases of clothes shrinking on the drive home and suddenly not fitting me once I got home. There was none of the “Well, if I lost a couple pounds this would look great” aspirational (delusional) shopping that has frequently befallen the wallet and closet. 

Kiki!

Kiki, who seems unbothered by wardrobe issues, seems to be relaxing more. Lately, when I pass through a room, instead of snapping to attention in a state of high alert, sometimes she continues napping. This afternoon, she let me brush her silky coat for several minutes. She leaned into the brush and even let me brush her belly a bit. 

I still carry the hope that someday she will do the stereotypical cat antics like sitting in bags and boxes and laps. Her antics are limited to watching me from under a dining room chair and randomly meowing for no discernible reason. For as long as she lets me, I'll enjoy the moments of stroking her face and brushing her coat and feeding Temptations Treats to her from my hand.

random thoughts – Day 1,641 – (Saturday) – big day, big hair

Dance performance day at the Hubbardston Lion’s Club Field Day dawned with a forecast of sunny and 80+ degrees by noon. Last year when we danced at this event it was cloudy, chilly, extra breezy, and I wore several layers. Today, my strategy was definitely fewer layers than last year – no leggings under the giant skirt and just a cropped top underneath the top with the big paillettes. 

Zills = portable music makers.

My hair is usually worn down, but there was no way I wanted to deal with hair stuck to my sweaty neck, and it was put up in a bun. It was an architectural feat guided by two online instruction videos and requiring smoke, mirrors, magic, a couple prayers, and purple and black fabric flowers. It looked good and didn’t fall out, so that was a big success on the big hairdo. I was out the door by 9:50 a.m.

We met in a building next to the event to get ready. We took some pictures. When it was close to our noon scheduled time, we made our way to the field. After our introduction, we made our entrance and set our formation. The first number started and not too far into it, the music stopped. The same thing happened during the same dance at the same event last year. Last year, we kept going and the music came back after a pause. Today, that music didn’t come back on. We did the dance with no music, and just our zills (finger cymbals) to keep the beat. Thank goodness we are our own percussion section on that dance.

Big hair updo.

It turned out the power to the amplifier had blown. After a few minutes of technical work, a solution was found and we were able to dance our next three dances with the music. Thank goodness, because we can roll though the first one with no music, but we can’t do the rest of the show without music.

After the dancing, we changed back to our street clothes and scattered to the winds. My winds took me to the shopping highlights of Gardner. First, it was the magical Timpany Plaza with Tractor Supply, Five Below, Gardner Cinema, Aldi, Big Lots and more. That shopping plaza is enough to make me want to move to Gardner.

It was Aldi for groceries including this summer’s addiction, green grapes. Then it was a quick stop at Big Lots to check out the half-off summer shoes there. Not only were the sandals different than in the Fitchburg store, the furniture selection is significantly better. In Fitchburg practically everything was gray, but Gardner had a gorgeous pale pink love seat and a cool mustard side chair and everything seemed fresher.

The next stop was Ocean State Job Lot on the quest for the 2025 date book with the flap with a magnet. I’ve been buying these for eight or nine years after it became impossible to find the spiral bound books I used for a bunch of years. There were none to be found in Leominster yesterday, but the Gardner store had it in the full range of colors – orange, red, green, and blue. I bought the last blue one, because this year’s is orange, last year’s is red, and, well, it was the last blue one so it felt more valued than the green.  Sometimes that is how I roll.

Unwinding.

It was 3:30 when I finally landed back home and all I’d eaten all day was a granola bar before I left. Groceries were put away and things rolled pretty quickly into food prep. Rice was started. Onions and broccoli were sauteed and then simmered with the rice in the Tikka Masala sauce bought yesterday. So yummy. 

The day wound down with a glass of wine and the bag of Milano cookies. Yes, the whole bag, but that wasn't the intent, just the result of taking the whole bag into the living room. 

random thoughts – Day 1,640 – (Friday) – full day

The vacation day had a sort of a plan for a change. The dance troupe is performing at Hubbardston Field Day on Saturday, and we had a dress rehearsal scheduled for 6:30 in Townsend tonight, which is close enough to Fitchburg and Leominster to deal with some errands.

Before leaving Lowell, the plan was to stop at St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop then Market Basket, return home to drop off the groceries at the house, then hit the road. Planned destinations were Ocean State Job Lot, the gas station on Route 12, the car wash, Big Lots, then rehearsal.

The bag of clothes for the donation and my weekend purse were grabbed. Of course, no donation trip to St. V’s has ever happened without a stop inside the shop. Treasures were found in the half-off tags and I stood in the checkout line with a pair of Ralph Lauren striped pajamas, a pair of Jones New York blue linen pants that will be perfect for an upcoming trip to Mexico, and a gray shirt with a hood because gray seems to have replaced black as my go-to color. As I approached the checkout, I discovered my wallet was absent from my purse and asked the cashier if she could hold my items while I went home for it.

Sitting in traffic and at lengthy red lights on the way back to the house provided plenty of time to debate returning to St V’s. At the house, the wallet was retrieved from Thursday's dance bag and a lemon Italian ice and a granola bar were consumed for sustenance, then it was back into the traffic. Market Basket was bumped for the afternoon, knowing it would be possible to go after rehearsal. Or Saturday. Or Sunday. The items were bought at St. V’s and then it was off to the direction of The ‘Burg.

Ocean State Job Lot was uncrowded and I browsed the entire store like a lady of leisure on a Friday afternoon. The grocery department, which always fascinates, yielded Tikka Masala sauce, Milano cookies and smoked paprika. 

In the car wash.

The gas station was oddly empty and it was a quick in and out with a full tank of $2.97/gallon gas, then next door for the car wash with the free vacuums. While vacuuming, I was mindful of the peridot and gold earring dropped in the car a month or two or three ago. And there it was, nestled in the nubs of the driver’s side floor mat, where I have looked for that earring at least a dozen times since dropping it. Eureka! Now I can stop sitting in the driveway looking through the car, and relax in the parking garage where I would look for a glint in the cracks and crevices of the concrete which yielded a dime and a work logo lapel pin but no earring.

The traffic was heavy all through Leominster and Fitchburg, but Big Lots was quiet and pleasant. The main objective was makeup remover wipes, but the summer shoes were half off, so sparkly thong sandals were chosen after going through the entire display. While casually wandering the store without a care, I checked my watch and was shocked that it was already 6:00 and rehearsal was at 6:30.

It was a hot-footed trot to the register where the sandals rang up wrong but I didn’t notice until I was nearly at the door and reviewing the receipt. The clerk verified the price with another worker and refunded the amount of the overcharge to my debit card. Then it was onto John Fitch Highway where the traffic crawled when it wasn’t fully stopped but the minutes kept moving along.

I arrived at rehearsal barely on time which hurt because I usually arrive at the studio ten or fifteen minutes early for class or rehearsals because I hate being late. It was a rush to get into costume and everyone else was dressed and chatting.

 We danced great and finished quickly. Afterwards, I stopped at Family Dollar in Townsend where the store is always tidy and the shelf tags are correct, unlike the Dracut store which always looks like a cyclone just visited and the prices posted on the shelves are almost never correct. The mission was caramel macchiato coffee creamers which were not found at the other stores. The added bonus was coffee on sale.  

Ritzy dinner.

At home, it was time for the latest episodes of Emily in Paris. There hadn’t been any supper, so it was a snack of Ritz crackers and sliced American cheese. Not exactly gourmet, and the only thing ritzy was the brand of cracker, but it was after 8:00 and there was zero interest in cooking or eating anything heavy at that hour. It was quite a full day, even if my belly ended on a light note.

random thoughts – Day 1,639 – (Thursday) – shake-ups and footwork

It’s been a self-inflicted schedule shakeup this week. On Wednesday, after scrutinizing my calendar and verifying there were no meetings, I decided to take Friday as a vacation day. That bumped the second day in the office to today. There was morning closet heartache and angst while trying to find some pants that fit. On the Friday office day, jeans are allowed, but Thursday is a different story. Three pairs of pants hit the reject pile before I found a pair that could be zipped. Ugh.

After work, there was a traffic-inflicted headache on the ride home. So many drivers being rude and aggressive and cutting people off! all I wanted to do was get home and change for ballet class and give Kiki some pats and love, before heading back out the door. 

Waze guided me on a different route than last week’s jaunt down I-95. Tonight, it was all winding back roads past beautiful homes and for a solid half-hour I had absolutely no clue what towns I was passing through. Nothing was familiar until the junction of Route 2 near Walden Pond, and even that was more of a brief flash than a full memory. But shortly thereafter, I arrived in Wayland at the ballet studio.

There were four students in class tonight. I had new ballet slippers freshly arrived on Wednesday from the shopping jungle of the Amaz*n. They are a stretchy canvas instead of leather, and I like the way they hug the arches of my feet. It felt like magic dancing off the dust of the day, practicing at the barre and traversing the floor diagonally with various steps. So familiar, and it felt so good.

Treasures from the Amaz*n.

The new ballet slippers, along with ten lace headbands for belly dance and yoga/water shoes for vacation, were bought with credit card rewards points, making them practically free. The kicker is, the set of headbands was bought primarily for the purple one, to go with my dance skirt, but the color is darker than I thought it would be, and more of a dark eggplant color. Errr…. Oh well. 

After class, Kiki was adorably seeking head rubs. Then I freaked her out by showing her a stuffed fish toy. She hauled butt out of the living room like something was chasing her. In my fantasy life with Keeks, some day she will have a favorite toy and she will curl up in my lap with it and we will be a picture of domestic tranquility worthy of a painting. It’s important to have life goals. Or delusions. 

random thoughts – Day 1,638 – (Wednesday) – food, dramas, fashion

Wednesday means downtown to the office day, and today was our quarterly group lunch. The idea is, the whole team eats lunch together, either at a restaurant or with takeout/delivery. So far, we’ve had deli food from Lou’s Deli and eaten Greek food at Athenian Corner. Today, we ordered food from Mandarin Asian Bistro and ate at the office.

The menu there has a Chinese food section and a Japanese food section and it’s huge. Large menus stress me out in much the same way as the cereal aisle at Market Basket, which gives me anxiety. There are too many options screaming for attention and it becomes overwhelming. When I’m hungry, like I was today when scrolling through the seemingly endless online menu, it’s worse. The headache that started pounding may have been from hunger, but it might also have been from the magnitude of the menu.

Teriyaki salmon bento box lunch.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had Chinese or Japanese food, or even what I used to like. There were combos and bento boxes and sushi and all manner of dishes. I finally narrowed it down to tofu pad Thai or a teriyaki salmon bento box. In the end, the variety offered by the bento box with its miso soup and salad won out. It was delicious. And filling. 

The volume of food was much more than I usually eat for lunch and I was uncomfortably full for the rest of the day, so much so that I skipped supper. 

Tonight's K-drama   fashion item.

Back at home, it was a dive back into Love Next Door, the Korean drama I recently started watching on Netflix. This one is set in current times and I am once again sucked into the fashions and the home furnishings. This one features food, and now I’ll be dying for bibimbap and scallion pancake and all the side dishes, and searching online for the hot pink bomber jacket and the oversized gray sweatshirt with studded swirls on the sleeves photographed off the TV after pausing the show. 

A potentially excessive number of photos in my phone are shots grabbed from K-dramas with clothing, food, artwork, and even doors seen in a show that I decided I need some day. Of course, some day isn’t actually a day of the week, so I should probably get busy on figuring out specifics. The food might be the easiest. Time to make a plan.