“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 881 (Saturday) – procrastination and stuff

It was hot outside and wonderfully climate controlled inside, and I am still thankful that when the A/C went on the fritz Friday it was on a day when it could be fixed without delay. My luck may often be on the shitty side of the equation (as a colleague has too-often pointed out), but there is still frequently a silver lining to soften the blow.

There was a National Park Service outdoor yoga session scheduled for this morning at Boarding House Park. This had been flagged as an event in which I was interested. I was awake and functional in plenty of time to attend, but in the usual style to which I have become accustomed, I continued drinking coffee, reading news and Facebook posts, and delaying the preparations. Also, the air-conditioned comfort of home and indoor entertainments seemed infinitely more appealing than publicly sweating on a synthetic yoga mat in a park. And that is how yet another Saturday morning thing was successfully avoided with a mixture of both regret and satisfaction.

Recipes were checked for ingredients potentially needed in advance of a grocery store trip. Shockingly, Market Basket on a Saturday afternoon was much calmer than feared. I visited the much beloved (by me) day-old bakery rack and got a beautiful dark, dense Russian rye bread for the titillating price of $1.82. I may not be super keen on the Russian way of invading countries and other crap, but dang I like the rye bread and a price reduction.

The most arduous part of the shopping trip was a search for sesame seeds. One recipe of current interest calls for toasted sesame seeds and I neglected to confirm the inventory before leaving the house. After cruising the aisles and asking two grocery clerks, sesame seeds were finally located, but they aren’t the toasted variety. While placing the 79-cent packet into the cart, I remembered the previous toaster oven smoke fest that took place during a disastrous attempt at toasting pine nuts and got a bit nervous.

 Spice cabinet
avalanche wreckage.

Hours after arriving home, while gathering additional ingredients for a Smashed Cucumber Salad, the three-quarters-full jar of toasted sesame seeds was located in the spice cabinet. During the process, a jar of something that was part of the surprise spice cabinet avalanche fell and smashed the glass in a frame that shouldn't even have been on the counter, but had been set there after it launched itself off the wall in a failed Kamikaze mission a week ago. It may come as a shock, but life at The BungaLowell is not always as glamorous as portrayed. 

While I’ll never get back the time spent looking for and finally finding the wrong sesame seeds, it was still a reasonably pleasant time in the air-conditioned miracle of the modern American grocery store. And now the fridge is restocked with produce and cheeses, some of which were immediately converted to a broccoli cabbage salad for supper.

After unpacking the groceries and sitting on the couch with The Sandman on Netflix, the closet and drawers were mentally inventoried, because, well, because. That’s when the sudden need struck for new (more specifically, different than what I already have) shorts for a family cookout on Sunday. I dashed out to my favorite local thrift store.

The only good shorts, defined by me as "at least knee-length and preferably not a light solid color that will show all the stuff it is entirely possible I will drop into my lap because I can be a clumsy eater," were three pairs of amazing and beautiful plaid shorts on the mens’ rack. Mens’ tops often work for me, but bottoms are another story due to curves and thighs and such. Boo. Sadness. All the shorts in Womens were teeny tiny shorty shorts for young athletes that I didn’t feel comfortable wearing even when I was younger and active.

A glimmer of happiness was found in the form of a new-with-tags gray print pullover (full price $4.40), a black and olive silk blouse (half off at $2.20), and a two pack of new-with tags Ikea purple frames (half off at 50 cents). The few fabrics on my hit list of perpetual favorites are silk, Merino wool, alpaca, and cashmere, and I practically fall into a full Victorian swoon when I see them at less than full retail price, so the blouse elicited a dizzying physical reaction upon discovery.

Cozy nook at Western Ave Lofts.

Between the thrift store and home there was a minor detour to Western Ave Studios for the August First Saturday Open House. There was barely 30 minutes left and I headed for the much smaller Lofts building. I hoped to visit the studio of a painter upon whom I may or may not have had a pre-pandemic crush. In the before times, there had been several visits to the studio to admire the beautiful paintings for which I lack the wall space. It was realized with a jolt that was now three, possibly four years ago. 

Once inside the Lofts building, a sign on the wall informed that the painter had relocated from the Lofts Building to the much larger Studios Building. There was only 15 minutes left to the event by this point, so no effort was made to visit the much larger building. Maybe next month. We’ll see. Or not. 

Despite the absence of the crush-worthy painter, the Lofts Building was a nice place to visit. There is a lounge area on the second floor, and a pretty cool cake sculpture in a stairwell nook. An artist who creates intricate pieces with layered cutouts from other materials was busy at work. Next month, I swear I will get ther early enough to spend quality time browsing. Or not. We'll see.