random thoughts – Day 1,888 – (Sunday) – workin' it

It was a full day. Before heading off to dance practice, I laid down a coat of paint on the threshold between the enclosed porch and open deck. I swept the driveway, which was full of sand left from the winter storms, thousands of dried twirly helicopter things from the neighbor's tree, and an unacceptable amount of large metallic confetti that mysteriously landed in my driveway and yard last Sunday while I was gone and did not magically blow away, despite my wishes.  

Future irises of The BungaLowell.

After dance, there was a weather-dependent plan to take the exterior photos of The BungaLowell. It had been tentatively scheduled based on an earlier in the week forecast for sun today. Instead, it was cloudy and sprinkling as I drove back. The photos were pushed out a couple days. By the time I got back home, more helicopter thingies had landed in the driveway.

There was time spent going through the clothes in the cedar chest to consolidate the vintage items and hopefully soon find a someone who buys vintage so I can sell it. I never wear it anymore, and unless I choose to resume my college-era starvation diet, it likely won’t ever fit me again. As part of the clothing review, a bag of tee shirts, skirts, jackets, and sweaters was filled to be donated to a charity, and then I drove the bag, plus a box of books and home décor items to St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Shop. I popped into the store for a quick visit and the place had more merchandise than I have ever seen there. Miraculously, I managed to buy nothing. I came close to buying a camo pattern hoodie for a costume component for an October performance, but the zipper was problematic and I passed.

Rhododendron.

From St. Vincent, I headed to Lowe’s for some bark mulch that is on sale at five bags for $10. There was a large number of bags that were ripped, spilling mulch all over the place and it was like a treasure hunt finding intact bags. 

Waze took me to and from Lowe's through neighborhoods I had never explored, which was interesting and also depressing. For as long as I have lived in Lowell (nearly nine years), I have spent a shamefully small amount of time exploring anywhere outside downtown. 

At Lowe’s, while being mindful of my still quirky wrist, I managed to wrangle two unbreached bags of mulch into a cart, then into the car. The bags were heavy and my wrist reminded me it is still tender. I kept waiting for it to snap all over again. With any exertion, the scar turns bright red, which is also unnerving.

Weeds were pulled and the mulch was wrangled out of the car and then spread in the front yard flower beds. The bleeding hearts are fading a bit, the irises are sending up buds, the rosebush has tiny buds forming, and the rhododendron is beginning to flower. The weather delay may result in better photos with flowering plants.

Possibly more mulch
than grass out front.

The front and back yards were mowed. It’s only Mid-May, and the back yard is thick and has been cut twice already. When it comes to mowing, I  think I like a drought better than a rainy season. Last week, the back yard was so dense and overgrown that it took about 40 minutes, but today, I was able to get the front and back yards mowed in less time. 

The front yard is pretty scrappy, so there isn’t much to mow. There is almost more mulch than grass out front because it's still the early, crappy lawn season. Usually, some form of greenery creeps into the yard in early summer, so in a few weeks it should be filled in. Or maybe I'll just get some spray paint.

As if all that wasn’t enough activity for one day, the litter box needed to be cleaned out, which Kiki supervised from her perch on the staircase. The week’s trash was bagged for pickup and the bin was rolled to the curb, and I could finally think about supper. The house is full of ingredients, but not any prepared food, so it was cereal with orange juice because I already had pizza for lunch and the rice I wanted would take too long to make. The various types of rice in the cabinet take from 15 to 40 minutes to make, and even 15 minutes was too long.

random thoughts – Day 1,887 – (Saturday) – salon, kitchen studio, pizza

It was time for my hair trim. When I moved from Tennessee and was living with Mom in Fitchburg, and then for the whole time I have lived in in Lowell, I’ve been going to my friend’s salon in Worcester. For a while, the appointments were every six weeks for color touchup, but since letting it go gray, the intervals are closer to 14 or 15 weeks. If not for my bangs in my eyes and some split ends, it might have been pushed out by another few weeks.

Freshly trimmed.

Very often, the trip to Worcester includes stops at Saver’s and Aldi, and sometimes the Habitat ReStore, but today, I had things to do in Lowell. I left the house at 8:45 to get air in the driver front tire, then had to navigate some extra traffic due to UMass Lowell commencement exercises. I arrived at the salon around 9:50, which is when I learned my appointment was actually at 10:30. Oops. It was a nice chance to sit in a lovely and quiet space and relax, and not be looking at all the stuff around the house I should be dealing with.

After the salon, the plan was to drop off a bag of books at Pollard Library for the annual book sale. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to park and I continued home. It was the last day for drop off, and now there is a tote bag of books in my car until I figure out where I want to donate them.

The afternoon was blocked out to work on choreography with my duet partner, who has more experience with creating choreography than I do and thank the gods for that. We made great progress refining and adding to the choreography in my kitchen after relocating the table and two chairs. As a studio, the kitchen is a pretty good space, except for the absence of mirrors. 

Later, after all the dancing and my friend had left, I realized how hungry I was. There was a green pepper and onion pizza delivery from the preferred pizza purveyor. So tasty. In some fluke of my normal pizza consumption pattern, I hadn’t had a pizza delivered since March 25^th. Unbelievable! Orders in April and earlier in May had been for a burger, quinoa bowl, and beef gyro dinner. 

Pizza supper.

I had been temporarily burned out on pizza after several consecutive work meetings that had pizza for lunch. As a little life lesson, I learned there is such a thing as too much pizza, and the necessary break from eating it really messed up my food planning for a couple months. With no slabs of pizza in the freezer, packing lunch for the office required thought. Planning. Assembly was required. I’m glad the pizza aversion is now over and food planning can resume it’s normal procedure.

random thoughts – Day 1,886 – (Friday) –a long day and a what if

Fridays usually have a vibe that I like. The traffic is generally a bit lighter, the parking garage is less full, and the mood in the office is breezy. The time often passes quickly and then boom, it’s the weekend.

Except for today.

The morning traffic featured an extra special dummy in front of me. This driver in an SUV pulled onto VFW and took a wide left as if entering the far-right lane to take the right onto Bridge Street. Instead of entering the right lane, they chose to overshoot the lane to go straight and then stop in the intersection, blocking access to the far right turn lane and screwing up the flow for me and the several people behind me. I was the a**hole blowing the horn for them to move. They didn’t move, but they lowered the window, tapped the roof of the car, and raised the window, whatever that meant.

We finally got out of the intersection and cleared the way for the drivers from another direction who had had a green light for several seconds and couldn't move. Vehicles flowed down the lane, around the corner, and over the bridge and I was able to shake it off. Kind of. I focused on the latest display of brightly colored dresses in the shop window just across the bridge.

The rest of the day dragged butt. I was hungry and thought it was time for lunch, but it was only 10:00. I made myself wait until 11:00 to eat my lunch of rice, black beans and salsa, which I spilled all over my desk with an errant hand movement.

Kitty Yoga!

I took a walk to enjoy the 80 degrees and sunshine, and made it into the Lazy Cat Lounge to check out the cat-related items. The cat room was closed for their nap time but a Tuxedo kitty let me admire it in the glass doorway. It was too late in the day for coffee, so I bought a brownie. On the way out, I noticed the board with events listed -- like Kitty Yoga!

At 3:00, a colleague and I were on Teams Message bemoaning the glacial pace of the longest Friday in the history of Fridays and work. It was brutal.

The ride home had light traffic and the annual scenes of UMass graduates posing for photos near the stone sign for North Campus. From across the intersection, I could see this year's crop of graduates rotating in and out of the annual coveted photo spot. 

I don’t remember taking photos on the Fitchburg State campus when I graduated, but I was a commuter student so there wasn’t exactly a bounty of special campus memories for me. I attended class, went to work, went home to my family, and hung around with the locals I knew in high school, so it felt exactly like being in high school. If I could do it over again, I would go away to college for the full experience of learning independence and who I was.

If there was a time machine and I could have a do-over of a single chapter of life, I would probably redo college. The only other school I had applied to was UMass Amherst, and I often wonder what my life would look like had I gone there instead. I didn’t go because I was p*ssed I didn’t get into the dance program (for reasons I never questioned), and instead of choosing another major and auditioning for the dance program again as suggested in my letter from the school, I scrapped the dream and went to Fitchburg State, my default school. I wonder what direction my life would have taken had I gone to school in Amherst with the reputable English program and dance programs. I’ll never know.

random thoughts – Day 1,885 – (Thursday) –flying solo

Rolling out to Nashville
to see Jack White 5-15-12.

On May 15, 2012, basically a million years ago at this point, I was living 45 minutes outside Nashville, and Jack White was playing a show at Ryman Auditorium. If you haven't been, the Ryman is a great place to see a show. The sound is wonderful, the seats are all decent. I had been to the Ryman to see Chris Isaak, The Raconteurs, a Grand Ole Opry show, and probably some other groups I have forgotten, and always liked the venue.

I wanted to see Jack White, but was a super single singleton with a very small friend circle and didn’t have anyone to go with. I hadn’t bought a ticket, but in the days before the show I started checking Stub Hub. The afternoon of the show, there was a ticket available for a great seat at a good price and I pounced on it.

After work, I dashed home and changed out of my marketing agency office clothes and dressed in some going out for the night clothes. The night’s wardrobe choice was a short black skirt, tights, and boots with a black satin embroidered jacket. Off I went, on my solo concert mission. And it was great.

I had never gone to a concert by myself. There hadn’t been anyone I wanted to see enough to deal with going alone. But Jack White and the familiarity of Ryman Auditorium got me out of my bubble and into a concert alone. And it was fun. 

It was hard not having anyone to whom to say “that was amazing!” or “whoa, those costumes!” A couple people complimented my clothes and the people seated nearby were all very cordial. Overall, it was a positive experience. Flying solo definitely beats attending something with someone who doesn’t want to be there, can't wait to be out of there, and is making sure that I know that they are doing it "for me." 

random thoughts -- Day 1884 (Wednesday) -- writer talking

There were a couple days of feeling rested and pretty okay, but those seem to now be historical footnotes and I’m back to tired. Or maybe it was the mostly quiet and extra low-key office vibe that sucked the life out of me today. 

Whatever the cause, the result was me fighting to stay awake in the space between work and an author event at Pollard Library at 6:00. I was very close to putting my head down on the desk and taking a nap at 5:00 but I was afraid the cleaners would arrive and I'd be embarrassed or they would think I was deceased.

An option for the time gap was to walk to the parking garage and drive the car back to park the bank’s lot. It would put me closer to the car when the event at the library was finished, but it would also mean dealing with Merrimack Street traffic in the thick of the after-work volume. The event was having hors d’ouervres, so going somewhere for supper seemed a bit extra.

I walked over from the office, pausing for a minute or two at the small grassy island loaded with American flags fluttering in the breeze in preparation for Memorial Day. It's more than just a grassy traffic island, it's a war memorial and the gravesite of Luther C. Ladd and Addison O. Whitney, two of the earliest soldiers to die in the Civil War.

Flags for Memorial Day.

The event at the library featured author Casey Sherman who talked about his many books exploring true crimes including the new book Blood in the Water: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy. He started as an investigative journalist before beginning to write true crime books. He's written about The Boston Strangler, Whitey Bulger, and the Boston Marathon bombing, and several of his books have been made into movies.

It was a great presentation with lots of stories and interesting questions from the audience. The library has many amazing stained glass windows and the sun was really letting some of them show off. One window in a corner was glowing with golden light but I thought it would be really rude to being taking lots of pictures of windows while sitting a few feet away from the guest speaker and only got some of the window above where the speaker was standing.

Stained glass in Pollard Library.

I was very tempted to buy books, but decided to wait until after selling the house and relocating. I must stay in downsize and declutter mode.

random thoughts – Day 1,883 – (Tuesday) – filling time

The view from the dental chair.

After being rescheduled three times, today I finally made it to my dental appointment in Fitchburg for a filling replacement. There was a hairline crack in the old filling, and it had been recommended for replacement many times before I finally scheduled it. 

The first time it was rescheduled was because I never received the insurance estimate and it was pushed to last December. In December right before a stretch of frigid weather, the furnace died. The replacement was scheduled for installation the same day as my appointment, and heat felt more critical than an optional filling replacement. The next available opening was in early March. When the date rolled around, I was sidelined with the broken wrist and couldn’t drive. The next available date was today, and thankfully, the stars and appliances and bones aligned and I was able to finally get there.

The view from the dental chair is the parking lot across the driveway and the entrance to a cannabis dispensary. They seem to have popped up everywhere. 

Why Fitchburg? Well, 8.5 years ago when I moved to Lowell, I never changed dentists. I don’t need to go that often, so changing just didn’t seem worth the effort.

After the filling, I took my numb-faced self to Forest Hill Cemetery to pay Mummu a quick visit. The sun was shining and it was a pretty day. The Bleeding Heart we planted at her headstone is blooming, just like its siblings in my yard.

The next visit was to Ocean State Job Lot to check out the grocery section. The big scores were mini panettone, Bengal Spice herbal tea, Las Vegas chips, and laundry detergent.  

I landed in Hudson early for dance group which gave me a chance to take a walk along Main Street. After the walk there was a review of dance videos on my phone. Technology really is handy. 

Dance practice was good. We ran through the group dances for the show, and there was time to peel off to a separate room with my duet partner to work on our choreography. It’s approaching crunch time with the show in five weeks. Oy. My muscle memory better hurry up and kick in to fill in some dance gaps.

random thoughts – Day 1,882 – (Monday) –aggravations and rewards

I had not even logged in for work this morning and was already receiving work-related text messages on my cell phone. Not for anything time-sensitive or critical, just some bullshit stuff that could have waited until at least the start of the work day and been delivered via a work communication channel. If I didn't need my personal cell phone for login tasks, it might have been in another room and I wouldn't have seen the message for hours. 

Eight minutes into the workday and I was already quite annoyed with putting out simultaneous brush fires. I couldn’t get logged into the program needed to perform a morning task that involves multiple departments doing a sequence of various reviews before account statements go out. It took about a half-hour to sort out. When it goes smoothly, the step is annoying, but when there are glitches it is just pure punishment. Guess what I won't miss for one single second after the merger? 

At the same time I was fighting with my login for the one task, random questions were coming in from colleagues about other projects that seemed on track but were now fishtailing. I was glad to have at least enjoyed a nice little breakfast before logging in and meeting the many little annoyances. 

The morning’s sustenance was raisin bran with orange juice. Not everyone’s cup of tea so to speak, but I like OJ and I don’t like milk, so it works for me. Today’s breakfast was made possible by the craving for orange juice that hit hard last week and prompted me to visit the grocery store. 

By lunchtime I was starving (right on schedule), but the other recent craving of rice and black beans was available for a quick reheat in the microwave. It really makes things easier when I don’t have to think about food. Supper was some of yesterday’s leftover rice and veggie salad, with the addition of canned tuna to change it up a bit.

Ice cream with crunchy
chow mein noodles.

After pulling some weeds under the 5:30 sunshine and then bagging and boxing donations for a pickup tomorrow, there was a reward for making it through a Monday that was a bit too much Monday all day. There was dessert, and it was another delicacy for my highly elevated (bizarre) palate – mocha almond ice cream with chow mein noodles on top to add some crunch. Delicious! It’s almost as good as caramel swirl with potato chips. Next time, maybe I'll add salted pretzel sticks.