“Remoted” – Day 545 (Sunday)

The Sunday weather was beautiful – sunny, breezy, and perfect for outdoor fun like hiking and communing with nature. I didn’t do that.

Noodles and meatless meatballs
and gravy, oh my.

It was a mostly indoor day, spent doing exciting and glamorous domestic things like normal laundry with water and detergent and special at-home in the dryer dry cleaning of cashmere sweaters. Noodles were cooked with plant-based meatless meatballs and creamy brown gravy. Finally. This dish had been craved earlier in the week, then strategically delayed to be available for Monday's lunch carried to the office. 

There was a deep dive into the bottomless black hole of Prime Video and specifically the series Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton. Large chunks of the weekend were invested in this gritty, violent, and sometimes too-graphic series. People get killed or drugged or dismembered and it is the polar opposite of a Hallmark movie where people cheerfully and cleverly negotiate their way through business goals and misunderstandings and there is always a happy ending and everybody wins.

It’s a bit of a mystery why I keep watching it, but it’s probably some deeply rooted psychological issue worthy of professional help.

I had imagined mowing the lawn most of the weekend and several days during the week. I imagined mowing the lawn as I sat in the living room folding laundry with Goliath on TV, but at first it was too early or too sunny or too some other excuse.  

Finally, after 4:00, I somehow convinced myself to get up from the couch, get outside, and mow the yard. Just like most of the grass cutting efforts this summer, the mower wouldn’t start, but unlike the past efforts, adding gas didn’t help. Neither did checking and adding oil. The only sign of life during multiple efforts with the pull cord was a puff of black smoke. Don Draper was coaxed out of retirement. Sometimes a crappy result is better than none at all and you just have to take what you can get. The back yard was cut. Much sweat was involved with the 100% person powered mower. The next logical step would be raking the yard for yard waste pickup on Monday, but at 7:00 the light is already dying and looks like that isn’t happening. With any luck, yard waste collection will follow the pattern of most of the summer and be two days tardy, and I can get the raking done after work on Monday. We’ll see. Monday is the first official day back in the office under the new hybrid schedule. There’s no telling how draining that will be.