“Remoted” – Workday 141 / Day 205 (Wednesday)

We were promised strong winds and at 2:20 pm, it was kicking up and the tree out back was waving wildly. It eased up a bit, but came back with a vengeance at 5:45 pm. The sudden pelting rain and howling wind reminded me I hadn't checked the mail or the mum in the flower pot on the deck rail that I meant to take off the railing and either set on the deck floor or bring into the porch. The loud thud made me think I was a few seconds too late.

Dang. I liked that flower pot.

Sure enough, despite three daily alerts this week from USPS saying that I have mail coming, for the third straight day, there was no mail. Thank you Postmaster General. Worse, the mum had blown off the railing and was on the ground between the house and the trash bin. The clay pot it sat in until about a minute earlier, one of the few remaining flower pots after a string of broken pottery, was shattered. It was raining hard, began to thunder, and the dogs were in the porch looking at me through the storm door like I was totally deranged standing outside. I kind of felt deranged as the rain penetrated two layers, wetting the skin on my back and arms. If only I’d grabbed a jacket in my haste to bring in the pot. I’d still have a smashed flower pot, but at least I would have stayed dry. 

The thunder prompted me to get Moose into the Thunder Shirt, and once in it, he settled on the couch for nap #57 of the day. Black cherry tea helped to chase my chill from the outdoor adventure. Changing out of my two wet shirts would have helped, too, but that didn’t happen. The wind and rain died down and it was mostly quiet outside again, until replaced by the loud muffler of the car next door.

Napping.

I do not understand the next-door neighbors. All year long, they start their cars and let them run in the driveway unoccupied, for anywhere between five minutes and forever. That is zero miles per gallon, people! It was especially fun around 3:30 in the afternoon this summer. I would be working and the guy next door was dropped off by the big pickup truck that picks him up around 7 am. He would bounce out of the truck and start his car with the loud muffler and the exhaust would drift into my open office window. And the guy would go inside the house. 

One warm day when the windows were open, the car was running, and I was especially annoyed, I learned that crank out windows suck for expressing aggravation by slamming one shut. You can’t. You crank and crank until it’s closed. No noise. No sounds of irritation for the offender to possibly hear. There is no slamming the vinyl windows either. What is this world coming to? Can’t slam the phone, can’t slam the windows, and if the storm door closes first, the kitchen exterior door doesn’t slam either. If I was in a fight with someone, how would I make a dramatic exit? When I was a kid it was possible to slam the doors so hard the house shook. No wonder people are so wound up. There is nothing to slam. Or maybe it’s just me.

“Remoted” – Workday 140 / Day 204 (Tuesday)

On October 6, 1916, somewhere in Finland, Grandpa Ray was born. At some time along the way he landed in Fitchburg and met and married Mummu, who had been born one day before him, half a world away. Mummu and Grandpa Ray divorced when Mom was six, in a time when it was unusual. Eventually, he moved his business (“rebuilding, aligning, and scraping” machinery) from Lunenburg, Massachusetts to Fort Worth, Texas, where people called him “Yank,” and he met and married Markie, a redheaded Southern Belle from Oklahoma. 

Markie and Ray in Fort Worth, 1999.

The summer I turned eight, my family drove to Texas in a black car with no air conditioning to visit Grandpa Ray.  We stopped in Oklahoma at some sort of amusement where my sister sobbed through the pony ride and I bought a cowgirl skirt and matching vest in black fabric with white embroidery and white fringe (which I still have). At a gas station, the attendant pumping the gas said in a Southern drawl, “Ah, lookey he-ah, we got a car load of Yankees,” and I thought that was the end of us. Later family visits involved air travel. My brother spent the summers of junior high and high school with Grandpa Ray and worked with him in his business.

When Grandpa Ray bought a new car, he would sometimes drive to Massachusetts to visit us and “break the car in.” He often preferred to sleep in his car in our driveway instead of in the house. When driving on a curved entrance/exit ramp, Grandpa Ray drove in as straight a line as possible because he said turns wore out the tires. He was infamous for his shortcuts that resulted in many extra miles and being an hour late.

At Grandpa Ray’s house, there was always a lot of food. Markie was an amazing cook and sweet potato casserole, breakfast casseroles, and decadent desserts like coconut cake and Milky Way Cake, made with 10 or 11 Milky Way bars were regular fare. Each visit was good for a ten-pound weight gain.

Our first cowboy boots.

There would be trips to western wear stores where we Yankees got cowboy boots, the Fort Worth Stockyards, the Dallas zoo, and Six Flags over Texas. Grandpa Ray would pull out his vinyl record Finlandia by Sibelius and play it for us at least once per visit. We would all go to Angelo’s BBQ for brisket, Spaghetti Warehouse, and Joe T Garcia’s or Casa Bonita for Mexican food. 

At the last house he owned, he converted the garage to a pool room with floor to ceiling bookcases. Pool was played by “Ray Rules” which meant you could forget about winning, because Grandpa Ray would move the balls and lift the corner of the table. That house also had a pecan tree in the back yard, and one year he sent us all bags stuffed with shelled pecans.

He was always full of stories, pranks, and jokes from which nobody was spared. Markie, with the patience of a saint would shake her head and say, “Oh, Ray.” Wait staff were usually dragged into the tales. He once tried to get a busboy who spoke little English to agree to go on a date with me. When I was 22, he set me up on a date with the guy from the auto parts store by arranging it before I arrived and then telling me that Danny S would be taking me out.

Grandpa Ray was a talented artist, and every year on our birthdays, we received a birthday card and letter with a beautifully illustrated envelope. I saved dozens of them in a box, now buried somewhere in the mess of the spare room.

I wish I’d known Grandpa Ray better. We exchanged letters throughout my life, but they were about daily life. On his end it was about roses, opening/closing the pool, or harvesting pecans, depending upon which year and which house he lived in. On my end it was school grades, ballet, and weather. I wish I could sit and talk with him once more to know him better, but he passed away in 2008.

“Remoted” – Workday 139 / Day 203 (Monday)

On October 5, 1916 my Mummu was born. She and I were sidekicks, and until junior high when life got busier, I spent most weekends with her in her four-room, second floor apartment in Fitchburg.

Structure was key to keeping things running. Mummu worked in a yarn factory and got up at 5:00 am Monday through Friday. She never drove and walked to work for a 6:00 am start. One room was cleaned each weekday after work during the commercial breaks of the soaps. Laundry was done on weekends using the washer in the big, dark, slightly scary basement and hung to dry on the clothes lines on her porch. Ironing was performed on Mondays after work in front of the soaps playing on the giant TV with the loud remote clicker.

Many Saturdays, when we weren’t watching candlepin bowling or horse racing or golf on TV, we walked downtown to shop, occasionally taking a shortcut through Laurel Hill Cemetery, which was creepy because I always had nightmares about that place. Rarely, and only if it was raining or exceptionally hot, we took a taxi back home from the taxi stand on Main Street. 

Mummu's cups and saucers
 from Finland.

When Sunday School got out at 11:00, I would get the Worcester Telegram and the Boston Globe from the variety store near church, and try to not get newsprint on me or my clothing as I trudged up Rollstone Street to her apartment. At noon, we ate dinner, often steak and always potatoes, a vegetable, bread with butter, and milk. She washed my hair in her kitchen sink, sometimes with beer or a witch hazel rinse. There were rag curls and years of crooked and/or too short bangs. Even without hair stylist training, Mummu was a pro at giving me Rave perms in the 80s which made up for all the bad haircuts of earlier years.

Mummu wore white nursing shoes to work, which were polished every Sunday (often by me) and the laces washed by hand. She always wore a skirt, blouse and white ankle socks with the nursing shoes, and I still have the gray and white striped cotton work skirt with a metal zipper she wore for years.

One summer when I was probably eight or nine, Mummu took me to the factory to show me where she worked. There were wood floors, big machines, and dust motes dancing in the light. It was a vacation week and the shop was closed for machine maintenance. She was a union rep, and once took me to a union meeting at the British American Club. I had no idea what the room of adults was discussing and was bored out of my mind. That union meeting stands out as the only time I did something with Mummu where I wished I was doing something else. 

Mummu and me, 2001. 

After 27 years at the yarn factory, it closed just a few days before Mummu was eligible for her pension, and without it, she ended up taking a job at a company that made smocks and housecoats. Mummu loved knitting, General Hospital, and watching football, basketball, baseball, horse racing, and golf on TV. Her favorite golfer was Lee Trevino. She usually had one sport on the TV and another on the radio and kept up with both games while knitting and holding a conversation. When I worked at a bank downtown after graduating college and Mummu lived downtown in the elderly highrise, we would have lunch together at her apartment.

Mummu died in 2005. She is buried in the only piece of land she ever owned -- a plot at Forest Hill Cemetery in Fitchburg. I was living in Tennessee at the time, and flew home in time to see her before she passed away. I miss her. I think about her when I make her recipes for carrot cake and merengue cookies and avoid making the complicated recipe for the raspberry truffle brownies that I loved. I think about her when I wear the black raw silk dress she bought in 1960 for her brother’s funeral that was one of the first vintage dresses in my collection. I think about her when I see any of the many sweaters she knit for me, and when I see her green and white coffee cups and saucers from Finland in my buffet. All the time, basically.

Happy birthday Mummu. Miss you.

“Remoted” – Day 202 (Sunday)

The weekend turned out to be productive. It wasn’t planned, so the logical conclusion is that it was an accidental embodiment of the physics law about bodies in motion. On Saturday, a vegetable quiche was baked. Many, many dishes and the bathroom floor were washed by hand. It will be a grand day when the dishwasher is finally fixed. The correct part took a week to come in, and then it was another week for the service appointment. Hopefully Friday (fingers crossed).

Sunday saw the completion of four loads of laundry including the bed quilts and duvet cover. Lunch became a trip down an interesting winding road. While drinking coffee and reading social media feeds, I saw a reference that it was “National Taco Day.” This instantly had me craving tacos, taco salad, and/or quesadillas. From the couch, the pantry inventory was reviewed – there were flour tortillas and various taco-related ingredients.

Once in the kitchen, stuff was sliced. Things were diced. The fry pan was alive with peppers, onions, vegan pretend meat crumbles, taco seasoning, and salsa. The pantry was checked and more items removed. The vegetable bin was checked and more items removed. Rice was cooked. Diced mushrooms and black beans were added to the crumble mixture in the fry pan. Red peppers were topped and hollowed out. And somehow, the idea for soft tacos turned into stuffed peppers. These kitchen diversions and detours happen all the time. The original idea often morphs into a modification or a completely different dish. 

Not tacos!

After today’s cooking adventure, the fridge now hosts a container of plain rice; a container of crumbles, veggies, and beans; another of crumbles, veggies, beans, and rice; and one complete baked stuffed pepper. There is also half the quiche made on Saturday and leftover frozen pizza from Saturday’s supper.

After the planned lunch of soft tacos that ended up being stuffed peppers, chocolate chip cookies were baked. Despite following the temperature and bake time directions for dark cookie sheets, the first batch with two cookie sheets had overdone blacked bottoms. I hate when that happens. The second batch, with only one cookie sheet, looks anemic on the top, but at least they aren’t scorched on the bottom. So many cookies were consumed during the “cool on wire rack” step that there was no appetite for a proper supper of “real” food. I even forgot about the remainder of the apple fruit crisp from Friday night.

In addition to the cooking and cleaning, a photo collage from the late 1990s was randomly hung on a wall in the spare room. At this rate, in another 10 years, all the photos and artwork should finally be hung.

“Remoted” – Day 201 (Saturday)

The dogs were a royal pain in the butt on the Friday overnight shift. At 10:30 pm, I closed my eyes and fell into a blissful slumber immediately. It was destroyed at 11:30 pm, when Moose woke me to go out. At 12:30 am, Moose woke me to go out again. Then at 1:10 am, Winston took over the shift and woke me to go out. At 5:00 am, Moose was back on wake up duty. At 7:15 am, Moose woke me to go out, at which point, despite feeling exhausted, I gave up and stayed up. Thank goodness all nights are not like this.

To throw salt on the wound, as I dragged my unnecessarily tired butt through the day, those darling little brats slept. They were probably tired from being up a million times during the night. I certainly know the feeling, and once or twice it occurred to me to wake them up, just because. It’s not like they could open the door for me or get me food, so there was no real benefit to having them awake and would just be wasted energy.

While I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a quiche, they awoke from one of the many naps and hauled ass towards the sound of the knife and cutting board. While it wasn’t my intent to arouse them, it still felt a bit like payback.

Later, I was settling in for a quiet night (aren't they all?) with a glass of wine and the Netflix show Emily in Paris. The show was chosen so I could revisit my dreams of being in Paris from back when I was young and enjoyed entertaining such frivolous things. You know, back before life crushed the dreams, my heart turned cynical, and my soul went dead. Ah, youth and the good old days. 

Adorned in Eau de Pepe Le Pew ... 

Anyway. Back to today. I was warming apple fruit crisp in the microwave to accompany the second glass of wine (or was it the third?) while the dogs were outside. This was an efficient use of time while waiting for them. In an insanely short amount of time, there was an insistent scratch on the storm door and two doggy faces staring through the window. 

The door was opened and the two dogs scrambled inside, accompanied by a stench cloud. One of the boys (or both), apparently had a close encounter with Pepe le Pew. A cloud of Eau de Skunk followed them in. Much like the last encounter with Pepe, it is heavy on the mustard overtones.

It didn’t take long to determine which dog got up close and personal, and luckily, it was just one of them. Winston began running around the house, rubbing on every fabric surface available – both dog beds, the toss pillows in the dog beds, the couch, and something upstairs. As the speed trials were underway, I was checking the Internet for the magic recipe I used the last time – baking soda, dish liquid, and peroxide. 

When the speed demon returned from his frantic laps of the house, I managed to catch him at enough brief spots to wipe him down with the solution. It took a few comical minutes of Winston dashing from bed to bed to couch to rub himself all over the fabrics, and me chasing him with a wash cloth with the baking soda paste. The heavy aroma seemed under control until another trip outside. Re-entering the house was like walking face first into a wet, skunk scented blanket. Thank goodness for Febreze. 

“Remoted” – Workday 138 / Day 200 (Friday)

Day 200 of the pandemic staying mostly at home. Despite logging the count each day, it still snuck up on me. Time is marching on. And on.

It’s Friday. The day after a big, fat, glorious full moon that I witnessed only in photos taken by my friends and posted on social media. I knew it was going to be a full moon, but I was too lazy to head out of the house and up the street to the ideal point where the rising moon sits huge and heavy over the trees along Beaver Brook. It’s a precise location. A few feet off and the street dips exactly enough that the view of the rising moon is obscured by trees. From my property, surrounded by tall houses and even taller trees, the moon is visible only when it is up high and tiny. So yes, I missed the full moon, just like I missed the Neowise Comet and the Perseid meteor shower earlier this year. It's my own fault.

Apple crisp!

Autumn is in effect and it’s apple season or the end of apple season, I don’t really know, having rarely left the house. What I do know is my Misfits Market box this week had lots of apples because most of the choices available were apples. So many apples. This would be great if I actually like apples. Even as a kid, a fresh, crisp apple was a snack of last resort.

My apple disinclination mystifies me. Through Dad’s side, (the Simonds family) we have Elizabeth Simonds, the mother of John Chapman, more commonly known as Johnny Appleseed, the famed nurseryman who planted apple trees across parts of the country in advance of settlement. Because of this, I feel somehow genetically obligated to like them and also feel a smidge guilty bypassing apples in favor of anything else.

Cider, hard cider, and apples cooked into dishes or baked into pastries are a different story. My favorite high school lunch dessert was apple crisp, although it had to be first lunch apple crisp for optimal temperature, because second and third period lunch apple crisp was usually cold.

Since Wednesday when the produce box arrived, apples have overflowed the bowl on the kitchen table. All day long I was cold, despite wearing multiple layers. The two realities finally met in the partnership of a 350-degree oven and apple fruit crisp. Apples, a pear, the blueberries that have been in the freezer all summer, and some strawberries and a few cranberries, also from the freezer, were combined. The topping of oatmeal, brown sugar, and butter was spread over it. It was a delicious snack and nice way to spend the night of day 200 of being mostly at home. This weekend, it will be delicious breakfast.

"Remoted" – Workday 137 / Day 199 (Thursday)

 Today had multi-tiered fun which actually began a couple days ago when a phone call to confirm an appointment went to voice mail. The message began midstream, with “5 am appointment. To confirm, press 1.” Of course, when hearing it in voice mail, you can’t press to confirm. And my heart skipped a beat at hearing “5 am” until I realized it was in progress and chopped off the beginning of 7:45. There was no phone number in the message to call to confirm, but it reminded me of the letter from Lowell General about my appointment with an invitation to do “express registration” in advance of the appointment.

“Express registration” sounded fun, like the quick check-in process for a Southwest Airlines boarding group assignment. It was not like that. “Express” had nothing to do with the registration process. Far too much valuable quality time was spent on a website providing my life story, along with that of my next of kin. Seriously, the form was so long, halfway through I called the number in the reminder letter instead, giving me a glorious 12 minutes and 46 seconds on hold before hanging up without yet reaching a human. It was back to the web form, still displayed on my screen. 

In all, “Express Registration” took close to thirty minutes, partly because there was math involved. I needed to calculate the birthdate of my next of kin (Mom) for a mandatory field, because I didn’t know the year and I didn’t want to call and ask and feel like loser daughter of the year for not knowing. And why do they need the birthdate of the next of kin? Cripes. They already had relationship, address, and the phone number I had to look up because it wanted actual numbers and kept rejecting “Mom” like I type it into my phone. Thanks to cell phones, I don’t know anyone’s number.

Today was the appointment – a glorious annual procedure for women that is covered by my insurance. The one where body parts get brutally smashed (the tech called it “compressed”) between two plates and imaged. So, so much fun.

After scoring a parking spot right away, it was a stop at the check-in station just inside the entrance. A young attendant ran through the list of COVID symptom questions which included headache. I probably should have just shut up, but I confessed to the headaches. Panic struck and she ran to fetch backup. Her panic caused me to panic a little. Another professional appeared, ran through the list of symptoms, and after verifying that headache was my sole symptom, allowed me to pass.

At the official Registration/Check-in, the process was complicated by the sound of the loudest vacuum on the planet echoing throughout the area. The desk attendant and I shouted over the noise and across our socially distant span and then I was sent across the waiting room to radiology. The vacuum stopped briefly, but resumed as I reached the next check-in desk, requiring more shouting.

Then I got to change into the little half gown and wait for my turn in a tiny stall. I used my time wisely and took changing stall selfies. When it was my turn for the fun room, I gathered my clothes, clutched my top closed, and followed the tech down the hall. 

Feeling small in a 
small cubicle. 

The room temperature, probably ideal for the equipment, was freezing for this half-dressed person. The machine was pinchy. And the tech had a screwy way of saying when to not breathe that had me not breathing too early and feeling like I might keel over and rip off a body part. First, I have the lung capacity of a cadaver, and that’s on a good day. She didn’t say, “Ok, take a deep breath and hold it.” She said, “breathe normally” then there was a pause and suddenly, “Now hold.” And it never once synched with my actual breathing, making the 97 images more miserable because suddenly all I wanted to do was inhale. Plus, I was half naked and freezing. It was soon over, and I could get my clothes back on and get out of there.

Thankfully, it was quick. After a quick stop at Family Dollar, which had the brown sugar and Bisquick I forgot the last time, but not a roll of paper towels to be found anywhere, I was back home and online at the regular time. Whew!