“Remoted” – Workday 106 / Day 144 (Friday)

The house was 70 degrees with the windows open when I got up at 6:00 this morning. It was perfect sleeping weather, but Canine Overlord Moose demanded food, which I need to work to pay for, so we get up, day after glorious workday. Why could I not have been born rich? Or have more to show for my decades of work? Cripes, I’ve been working since I was 15, saving for retirement since my 20s and still, there is no end in sight. At least I get to ease up a bit on weekends and vacations. As much as the Canine Overlords allow, anyway. Just not so much today.

Roasted stuff. AKA vacation
kitchen labor camp.

Work started at 8:00 and staycation began at 12:15. The first full hour resembled culinary labor camp. The cool temperatures were ideal for finally addressing the butternut squash delivered in the produce box weeks ago that has been sitting on the counter ever since. And the giant sweet potato. And the white potatoes. There was peeling and cubing and slicing and tossing with olive oil. After twenty minutes in the oven there were roasted sweet potato chips and chunks of squash and potato. Many, many sweet potato chips were consumed. Like, half the cookie sheet’s worth. So yummy.

After the productive start, there was a retreat to the living room with a fresh “Family Size” bag of Chips Ahoy cookies and “The Umbrella Academy” on Netflix. Suddenly it was 4:00. Dammit. Vacation time is supposed to go by slowly. A break from the big screen binge watching involved weed pulling in the front yard and an opportunity to meet more neighbors. I always wave to neighbors as I drive by, but I don't know any of them. 

Yesterday, a nice neighbor lady named Beverly knocked on the door to leave a piece of my mail that had been delivered to her house, and while she was in my driveway, complimented the “nice looking fence.” Today, as I wrestled with some insidious viney thing intertwined with the rose bush, an elderly woman was being pushed down the street in a wheelchair. I soon learned it was her daughter doing the pushing. The mother was narrating who used to live in each house before all the “new people” bought on the street so I heard them coming from several houses away. Meaning, I had plenty of time to run into the house to avoid being nice, but there was a conscious choice to stay outside, be neighborly, and say hello. They never said their names, but I offered mine, which needed to be repeated three times by me and finally yelled by the daughter into the mother’s ear before she got it. That explained the excellent amplification of the neighborhood history narration. They told me how nice the new fence looks, which, based on the past two days, seems to be the new neighborhood attraction. I better keep the yard looking nice, at least until the novelty wears off.