random thoughts – Day 2,322 (Friday) – adventure day 2

It felt like an ordinary morning when I woke up at close to the usual time. While the coffee brewed, there was a noise outside that turned out to be a truck from the dumpster company. The driver seemed to be gesturing animatedly and talking on his phone. He didn’t exactly seem happy, but there a lot of flavors of happy.

I texted my contractor to ask if the dumpster for my still unfinished project was scheduled to be picked up. He said, “no.” That was it. I texted back that a truck was here and it was being hooked up. And contractor responded with “No one called me.” Um, ok. Cool.

Dumpster go bye-bye.

As the dumpster was driven up the street I responded, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s gone now.” The response was, and I quote, “.late night” (with a laughing crying face) followed by “Maybe the miss you sent to me by mistake lol.” I sent three question marks and never heard anything else.

My current best guess is that the dumpster company figured three months at my house was long enough for a roof and siding job and maybe it was time to rescue the dumpster hostage. Or something. I dunno. I’m neither a contractor nor a dumpster company operator. What I do know is the dumpster was tipped to go onto the truck and the entire summer's worth of rain drained onto the large rectangle of very dead grass where the receptacle sat since the end of April. There is still no timeline for the siding portion of the project.

At least the surprises improved throughout the day. A friend I don’t see enough reached out and we texted for a bit and set some tentative plans before she headed out for the day. A few hours later, another friend I see even less than the first one texted with an invitation to meet up for a pizza supper with her and her sister. Yes, please, count me in!

Delicious pizza at Thirsty Robot.

The three of us met at Thirsty Robot Brewing Company shortly before the musicians began playing. Johnny and Noel Nickerson delivered a nonstop stream of music with something for everyone. The Beatles. Jefferson Airplane. Talking Heads. Paul Simon. Amy Winehouse. The Cranberries. And more. They effortlessly crossed genres with barely time to breathe between songs and it was good. 

Thirsty Robot is decorated with a huge mural and smaller paintings of robots. Labels from their various brews adorn the doors to the rest rooms. The pizza was delicious with bubbles in the hand stretched crust. My friends said the pulled pork is amazing, as well as the quesadilla and I can’t wait to go back.

random thoughts – Day 2,321 (Thursday) – adventure day

Today's shopping scores.

It was another Mom and Sis adventure day. Today we visited a couple antique and resale co-op malls. In the first place we visited, which carries reproduction furniture,  carousel horses, military collectibles, costume and collectible jewelry, and everything in between, Mom found a birthday angel figurine (March) that has been on her quest list for years. I got a metal flower décor thing. Sis didn’t find anything. 

The metal thing is too tall to fit over the doorway where I thought it would, so the fantasy of immediately hanging it up did not materialize and it’s on the table for now. It fits in enough other places in the house that now I need to decide where I like it best.

At the second shop, Mom found a small table and chair set.  I found a silver-tone belly dance coin belt, not that I really need one, but there is also no such thing as too many. Sis didn’t find anything. I guess it wasn’t her day for finding treasures. 

Fresh veggie supper.

Sis had a load of yellow squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and banana peppers from a friend’s garden that she shared with Mom and me. We went through Sis’s recipe box while at her house and found one for baked squash with cheese. 

Tonight’s supper featured squash baked with several types of cheese, and in a deviation from the original recipe, also zucchini, diced tomatoes, and corn cut from yesterday’s farm stand corn. I can’t wait to eat more of it tomorrow. I still have a couple more zucchinis so there may be bread in the immediate future.

random thoughts – Day 2,320 (Wednesday) – fabric and corn

Fabric and patterns haul.

Months ago, Mom mentioned she had a lot of fabric that she wanted me to go through to see if I wanted any of it.  This morning, we went through two baskets and a plastic tub of fabric. Mom kept the sports team fabrics and a fleece hat pattern for possible projects and I ended up leaving with most of the fabric and a box of 50 patterns, many from the 80s and 90s, plus sheets with instructions for various construction techniques. Mom is glad to have cleared out some stuff. 

The treasure trove includes some garments in various states of completion. A cute cotton summer top is 99% done, needing just one already hemmed sleeve set in. A tan linen jacket is half sewn. A gray lined vest just needs buttons and button holes and its coordinating jacket is cut out and partially sewn. Mom said she never mastered buttonholes and a friend used to do them for her. There were several projects started when my nieces were younglings and it’s unlikely their now grown selves will fit into the various summer shorts and tops laid out and still uncut from as long as 27 years ago. One pair of shorts is in SpongeBob fabric. 

As a sewist with a variable attention span, I understand how things get started and not finished. When I left Tennessee, I donated bags of fabric yardage with coordinating zippers, buttons, and thread, bought with great optimism and energy that disappeared, sometimes before I made it home from the fabric store. I have my own projects from as far back as the 1990s where the patterns were laid cut out, set aside “for now,” and never revisited due to lack of time, evaporation of interest, change of mood, or whatever.

Mom’s unfinished projects are fascinating. I almost began working on some right away, but then Mom invited me to accompany her to a farm stand and my energy was redirected to the thought of buying corn. The farmstand was small and busy. There was a great variety of amazing looking vegetables and fruit. I bought four ears of corn and a zucchini. Mom bought a lot of stuff.

Fresh corn.

I neglected to note the name of the farm when we arrived and forgot to pay attention along the way because we were talking, so I may never be able to get there alone. Mom is a navigation expert and I would never be able to follow the twists and turns of all the backroads we took even if she told me. Next time, I’ll pay better attention.

The corn was delicious. I shucked and cooked all four ears and ate two with supper. Then I polished off a bunch of cherries. Then I took the evening walk for the mail and had a stomach ache most of the way. There is probably a lesson in there. Let’s see if I remember it.

random thoughts – Day 2,319 (Tuesday) – weather talk

The clouds settled in and delivered much needed rain throughout the day. It hit all the shower settings from light drizzle to torrential downpour. The weather wizards and widgets noted the humidity at 96 percent at 9:00 p.m.

Moody, foggy night like a wet blanket.

The numerical designation of the humidity perfectly explained the scene outside. Heavy fog glowed yellow under the streetlight at the top of the street. It looked like the setting of a moody period piece or crime drama.

The thick, saturated air felt like a face full of Dad’s olive drab green wool Army blanket that my family used as a beach blanket every summer. It was scratchy, and when it got wet (as beach blankets do when people repeatedly leave the water and retreat to the fabric designation of the family’s beach real estate) it seemed like it took forever to dry. 

I can’t believe we laid on the beach on that wool blanket every summer (or that it was on my bed many winters). I can’t believe nature’s version of it is outside my door.

It looks like there will be more rain overnight, with possible thunderstorms, and more rain tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully this will help the very low water levels in pretty much every local body of liquid.

random thoughts – Day 2,318 (Monday) – tasks and taps

Tasks were accomplished. There was a three-ring circus of website portals and online billing documents that made me miss paper bills delivered via snail mail. One portal told me that due to privacy, info on my previous payment could not be provided. To me. The person who logged into my own patient portal using their multifactor authentication system to check the details on my own previous payment to try to figure out the new claim for payment on their stupid system. Fun time.

One document featured to phone number to call with questions, but the number led to the automated number pressing hell of a menu that just kept looping back on itself. A second number finally reached a helpful human in billing who discovered that the payment I made in March was incorrectly applied.

Another portal for another medical provider in another town was a nightmare to access on my phone but I finally succeeded on my laptop and the payment was made.

New Internet in town!

After the nightmarish fun of the medical payment portals, I called to sign up for a new internet provider. Comcast/Xfinity is too expensive, but there is a new company in town (Gateway Fiber). The recent oversized postcard mailers (official marketing lingo) with the exciting news made it sound like signing up was as simple as scanning the QR code, but that just led to pricing info. A phone call was required to sign up for the service.

The Internet provider call center person seemed to be a remote worker operating out of a day care center  based on background noise and up-close sounds of a toddler practicing newly learned speech. As if that wasn’t enough fun, the call kept cutting out so it was a fragmented and slightly frustrating conversation. I think the outcome is that the service will be available in my area beginning August 6, and I will receive an email to schedule installation. I think. It was hard to be sure with the call cutting out and the toddler shrieking.

The tap water still appears clear as expected, but it suddenly tastes like a murky pond, which hindered my hydration efforts. People on social media have been complaining about both the new pond flavor and fragrance and the absence of info from city hall. A trip was made to the grocery store for water-flavored bottled water because I don’t especially like the new city-provided dirt flavor.

Newly trimmed trees.

The weather was exceedingly pleasant and the next chapter of create your own adventure day was using the loppers to trim tree branches in the back yard. It is possible I am the only person who will notice the trimming, but that is okay, I am also the only one looking at it daily. It was done for my own enjoyment of the back yard.

The tall barrel and the giant planter were filled with cut branches that had been reaching out over the lawn. The trimmings were delivered to the yard waste drop-off area where the earthy aroma of the mountain of decomposing yard waste was similar to the fragrance of the day’s offerings from the home faucets.

The evening walk included a hummingbird sighting. It was hovering its way through a patch of flowers in a front yard two streets over. My phone was in my back pocket instead of my hand. But the time I dug it out and got the camera on, the hummingbird had flitted over to a nearby bush, so there was no opportunity to try for a photo.

I don’t know if all the day’s motivation came from some special planetary alignment, the amazing weather conditions, or the new dirt flavored water from my kitchen tap that my morning coffee was brewed with before I knew about the issue, but whatever it was, the end results were great.

random thoughts – Day 2,317 (Sunday) – family life and suburbia

Jello poke cake for the birthday girl.

The July family birthday celebration episode took place today. The honoree was my youngest niece, who turns 22 on Tuesday and I still can’t understand how that is happening because I swear it was just a couple weeks ago that she was five.

My sister did some of her fabulous cooking and we feasted on pulled pork subs and turkey grinders with sides of coleslaw, half-sour pickles, and chips. This was followed by a strawberry Jello poke cake that was requested by the birthday gal. So delicious!

Later, back at home, I was able to catch the end of the World Cup final game (Spain for the win!). I loved watching the footage of the Spanish team on the presentation stage in the stadium stage and the live shots of the thousands of fans in Madrid, both groups jumping up and down like the world was a giant dance pit. It looked like fun. If only we could all be World Cup win happy more often.

To offset the big lunch and the cake and the brownies still to be eaten later, I took a longer walk around the neighborhood. Instead of a loop that hit only two of the three streets, I walked along all three streets to maximize the distance and hit all the hills.

Streetside wildflowers.

It was quiet, breezy, cool, and a perfect evening for walking. The lowering sun shone through the streetside wildflowers and across the manicured lawns. Some birds were squawking high in the trees, but none of the other local wildlife made itself known. 

A few human neighbors enjoyed the evening from chairs in the shed attached to the rear of their carport in what looked like the ideal summer hangout spot. A lady in a purple flowing dress watered the many flowers in her front yard garden. It was as if the neighborhood was the scene of suburban calm, carefully crafted for a movie.

random thoughts – Day 2,316 (Saturday) – food and home

Cool breezes blew through the house all day.  A couple times the breezes carried rain through the screens and onto the windowsills which are all nice and clean now they have been wiped dry and the windows closed. My feet got cold early in the afternoon and socks were added, and my shorts were traded out for sweatpants. A crime series set in New York streamed on TV.

There was a repeat of the terrific earlier in the week breakfast of fried egg, cheese, and homemade strawberry jam on an English muffin. Just like a few days ago, I was full from well into the afternoon. 

Supper.

Once settled in the not-going-out-anywhere because it was raining attire, it became all about eating and nesting. A photo was chosen and hung in the living room. Brownies were baked and enhanced with not enough chopped walnuts and a few too many butterscotch chips. They are just enough too sweet that I will likely pace myself in the consumption. 

For supper, there was a repeat of Friday's meal. For the next couple days it will be all about rice with beans, corn, salsa, various cheeses, and protein crumbles. Today's version included with a sliced avocado with everything seasoning.

Kiki spent her day lounging on the living room rug and posing on a windowsill during her Neighborhood Watch shift. Large chunks of the day were spent on the bed. Every once in a while, I would pass through the bedroom and pause and pet her sweet little face, scratch her head, tell her how great she is, and feed her a few treats.

Kiki on watch.

It was a good day to hang around the house, but time was spent expanding the list of fun summer activities for future days out of the house. Sis, Mom, and I started it to avoid the time suck of trying to figure out what to do. We’ve spent entire afternoons trying to figure out what to do and ended up doing nothing especially interesting or noteworthy, so we’re trying to fix that. Options currently include visits to various ice cream stands, Bridge of Flowers, the summit of Mount Wachusett, the alpaca farm, Red Apple Barn, and a few other places.