random thoughts – Day 2,327 (Wednesday) – rainy day entertainment

Some days, like this morning, I am very glad for my daily 1440 news email and the opening sentence with the day and date. Some mornings it’s hard to hard to tell one day from another so it is nice to have the clarification. Once the day of the week was sorted out, I remembered the weather forecast for heavy rain. It was cloudy and gloomy and the perfect plan for the day shaped up immediately. It was to make the chocolate zucchini bread with the recipe found the other day.

Chocolate zucchini bread.

By 10:30 a.m. I had grated, whisked, melted, folded, and spread batter into pans. I didn’t have the loaf pan size recommended in the recipe (11” x 6”) and winged it with the mini loaf pans which meant I needed to guess on the baking time. At the pan size noted in the recipe, the bake time was 45 minutes, followed by another 20 minutes covered in foil. There was guessing and checking on the baking time and it came out pretty good.

The kitchen was cleaned up of the baking mess and then immediately messed up for lunch. Then it was cleaned again. Then it was mussed up a little bit again for supper and cleaned again. It’s the never-ending cycle of the kitchen. If you cook, you know.

The rainy afternoon was spent reorganizing fabric and patterns. The partially sewed projects from Mom were reunited with the pattern instructions and segregated from the other fabric. The patterns from Mom were sorted into women’s, children’s, and home décor, and stuffed into the drawers of the sewing desk with all the patterns I already have. Pattern tissue and brown paper to use for patterns were consolidated. The gowns to be repurposed into belly dance skirts were refolded and stacked together in a quilt bag. “Out of sight, out of mind” is at play – I had forgotten about most of the gowns already.

The rain fell all day. It started with a vengeance – pummeling rain and wind. It blew in through the windows that hadn’t been closed yet. Throughout the day, the rain switched between slamming against the house and light and gentle. In other words, the perfect day for streaming Prime Video. The series Wild Cards was finished. It’s pretty stupid, but I’m not a quitter so over the past couple days I watched all the available episodes. Next up was Boomers, a British comedy with one season available free on Prime. Then it was Benidorm, a British comedy series set in a resort. I saw it several years ago, but sometimes it’s easier to rewatch a series than to find another one. 

random thoughts – Day 2,326 (Tuesday) – gamified learning

The streak continues.

The morning began with the usual phone games and Duolingo bestowed upon me a badge for a 2,200 day streak of lessons. My current gamified-educational focus is chess, which I am enjoying, but I doubt I would be able to play a game in real (non-digital app) life. The app prevents illegal moves by not moving the pieces, which is good, because sometimes I space out a little and start trying to move a rook on the diagonal like it’s a bishop or misjudging the spaces of the knight jump. 

The online game prohibits incorrect moves, but in a live game in the manual world, my opponent would probably need to keep me straight and who would want to play with someone who needs babysitting to prevent accidental cheating. Who would even believe it’s accidental? That is why I like digital chess and one of my favorite things is when I beat Oscar, the Duolingo character chess instructor. I tried the feature when you can play another human, but too many people left the games partway. Oscar never bails.

Oscar may never skip out on a match, but has had some recent personality changes that are kind of disturbing. There have always been comments, some of which are cute or funny, and others are odd. Oscar has always referred to “Mother” with comments like “Mother wouldn’t like that” or “we mustn’t tell Mother” when he loses a key piece, but the tone of voice has slipped a few notches away from nerdy and closer to Norman Bates territory. He sometimes belittles his captured pieces (“I never liked that pawn anyway”). A new addition is comments like “you are an awful person” when Oscar is behind. Thanks, dude. 

Anway. It’s been 2,200 days of online learning, some of it with an occasionally judgmental cyber tutor which tracks to a couple teachers I’ve had in the real world. The app includes challenges done with another human player, such as earning a certain number of combined points within a defined timeframe. The worst challenge is getting a set number of perfect lessons in a designated time. I could have a run of perfect lessons on a normal week and then that challenge pops up and I can’t get a perfect score to save my life. The workaround I developed is to bounce over to math. So far, math is still at a level I can handle, like exponents and fractions, but I don’t know how long the math module is or how complicated it will get. There will likely come a day when I run out of math I understand. But for now, I’ll enjoy the ride.

random thoughts – Day 2,325 (Monday) – new fixations

Meowdoku
fixation.

The latest game obsession (time suck) to hit my phone is Meowdoku. My cell and I have weathered dalliances with Pokemon Go, Woodoku, Words with Friends, and Arrow Puzzle, but right now I am sucked into the game with the little kitty faces that meow when you get something right and look very disappointed when you don’t. 

The problem, like with all free games, is the ads. Each game comes with an ad break, and if you make three errors and run out of fish, you can watch ads to stay in the game (instead of restarting). Some of the ads are 30-seconds, some are forever-long. When between games, it can be faster to close the game and reopen the app than to wait out the ads, but when seeking forgiveness for errors mid-game, one wrong tap in an ad screen restarts the game. Errr.

Out in the real world and away from Meowdoku, today’s yard fixation is planning plantings under the front yard tree. I read in the past that, despite its popularity in yards across the country, mounding dirt and/or mulch around the base of the tree trunk is a bad idea and can harm the roots. So it’s been lots of Internet reading about the best way and what to plant under a tree. One article said ferns do well under trees, so I can relocate some from the back yard. A sketch was made to calculate how many plants are needed. It reminds me a little of cramming for a test in school.

A trip was made to a couple stores that sell plants, but they only had full sun varieties. Quite a few people had plants on the free stuff Facebook group for my town in the past couple weeks, but that was before this morning when I made a plan. Hopefully, someone else will thin their Hosta plants this week and I can grab a couple.

Planning to plant around the tree.

Armed with info, a plan, and a few gardening tools, this evening the labor began. A circle was spray painted one foot away from the base of the tree with the interesting curly bark. Grass was raked and pulled out by hand between the line and the tree, with efforts made to keep the clover and other little flowery things. I still need a plan to handle grass regrowth close to the tree. According to several articles, fabric weed barrier, a thick layer of dirt, and/or mulch mounded up against the tree are not recommended.

A second circle was spray painted one foot from the first. This ring is where the plants will go once the grass is pulled out. Ideally, as in, if I can find any, edging will define the planting ring. The same stores that didn’t have shade plants today didn’t have flower bed edging. I don’t have a stash of interesting rock lying around and waiting to star in a flower bed. Yet. 

random thoughts – Day 2,324 (Sunday) – summer travel

It is horrifying to me that this is already the last Sunday in July. Where did the month go? Or the summer? Or the entire past seven months? A much as I love summer, I really seem to fall apart when it comes to planning activities for it. The doing of activities is fun, but planning and then paying for them is painful work. It’s just so easy to lounge around the house reading, cooking, and eating.

A couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to go somewhere not my house and started to explore travel. I saw a listing of group tours that sound fun, but they are several months away and the markup for a single booking for most of them was an extra $500 punishment I don’t want to spend. Being a singleton has enough punishments already. And I really wanted something for now, not next April.

I looked online at packages for something sooner and spent several days looking at destinations and flight schedules and hotel packages until my head was spinning. And then I gave up. For now. We’ll see. So far, there have been several flights of fancy but no solid plans or air travel.

Mowing and meditating.

Tonight, after an exhausting day of watching British crime dramas from 25 years ago while also playing games on my phone, I mowed the yard and mentally zoned out for close to an hour. I admired the ferns and avoided some of the clover and little wildflowers, thinking of the pollinators.

I find mowing to be meditative, at least until the extension cord for the mower comes unplugged and I start swearing. When the task was done, I sat on the couch with a bottle of chilled water, my feet up on the hassock and two tennis balls in a bag between me and the back of the couch. It reflected on my daylong budget version of a restorative retreat that I didn’t have to drive to or pay money for. Maybe tomorrow I’ll imagine myself in San Juan or Saint Thomas.

random thoughts – Day 2,323 (Saturday) – summer squashes

It’s that magical week where everyone’s zucchini and summer squash are suddenly ready and I have been the lucky recipient of some gorgeous produce from the gardens of two friends. The weather has been beautiful and civilized and respectful and I have been enjoyed being in the kitchen without danger of suffering heat stroke.

The first thing made with the first wave of squash was a summer squash, zucchini, and cheese casserole that came out even better than I thought it would and has provided a couple hearty meals. Tonight, it was combined with ditalini pasta to mix up the textures a bit.

Fun with zucchini.

While at my sister’s on Thursday, we were talking about chocolate zucchini bread, and yesterday I was gifted a comically large zucchini. This morning, I woke up with chocolate zucchini bread on the brain. At least an hour was spent going through various cookbooks, the recipe card file, and websites in search of a recipe.

There are shockingly few recipes for anything zucchini related in my collection of church compilations and vegetarian cookbooks but there are many online. After reviewing online recipes and ingredients lists for what felt like forever, it was obvious a trip to the grocery store was needed to make chocolate zucchini bread because I ate all the semi-sweet baking chips from the baking supplies months ago. While preparing for departure, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to make the chocolate zucchini bread today and I could make the regular flavor version for which I had everything needed.

The recipe in my file that I would have sworn on my life was for Mummu’s regular zucchini bread turned out to be for zucchini boats which are not the same thing at all. Thank goodness for the Internet.

Mini breads from a
giant zucchini.

I got busy making a huge mess in the kitchen and baked four mini-loafs from the one giant zucchini which yielded 3.5 cups of shreds. I ate most of one loaf while it was still warm. A few slabs were with butter, and then a few more with cream cheese and it was all good. One loaf was delivered next door to Mom’s house. The other two are in the freezer.

There are still three more zucchinis ready for action. These will be plenty for the next batch of mini breads as soon as I get chocolate baking chips. I now have assembled a decent collection of zucchini recipes including grilled cheese made with fried zucchini patties instead of bread and a zucchini and cheddar frittata. It will be a great zucchini season.

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.