“Remoted” – Day 454 (Sunday)

Dance day!

Today featured a resurrection of sorts. For the first time since March 8, 2020, my belly dance practice clothes were dug out, dance belt and zills dusted off, and my class met to dance. It was great. To work off the rust, we reviewed the basics. There were shimmies and hip drops and chest lifts and snake arms. It is a reasonable certainty that I will be sore Monday, but it will be a good sore, not like the usual soreness of the past 15 months. Sitting in a mail order office chair not from an office supply or designed for long stints for roughly nine hours a day followed by a lumpy futon all evening and not much else was probably not the best “fitness” plan since beginning Remoted life. 

After class, my sister, one niece, Dad, and I met for ice cream for an early Father’s Day meetup. There is a lot going on the next couple weeks, especially in my sister’s world, so we needed to think a few steps ahead. This means my lunch was a small hot fudge sundae with caramel pretzel ice cream and it was really good. I feel less guilty about my ice cream consumption since my physical a few weeks ago. It turns out ice cream and cheese, which I was worried about possibly having too much of, is okay for me given my general avoidance of red meat.

It was a breezy, sunny day, and we sat under the metal shade shelter, wondering was making the sound like rain hitting the metal when it wasn’t raining. We also analyzed the various sounds and groaning noise patterns of the building’s compressor until it stopped making any noise at all and we then wondered if all the ice cream inside would melt. We aren’t totally weird, we also talked about regular things like the weather, availability of construction materials, prefabricated residential structures, and the gas mileage of luxury RVs. It was a nice visit, nice day to be outside, nice time dancing, basically nice everything.

“Remoted” – Day 453 (Saturday)

Vacuuming in progress.

Today saw some house cleaning with the vacuuming of the super annoying kitchen rug. The rug is made with rags woven in ribs. Aesthetically, it looks great, but the spaces between the ribs collect dog hair and dirt and take a solid 30 minutes to clean with the vacuum's crevice attachment. Every time I work across the rug row by row, I’m glad I didn’t buy the larger size. At least the effort shows when it’s all done. This is the same rug that was cleaned with snow in the winter, the other time I was glad it was not a larger rug.

There was a trip to the St. Vincent Thrift Store in search of my shopping Holy Grail – more 8” soup bowls in the blue willow pattern. I have three such bowls, purchased for about $1 each at Lincoln Discount back when I was married to ex-husband #1 and lived in Fitchburg. There was originally a fourth bowl that was broken countless years ago. Bowls now are a smaller circumference and deep. I want the traditional shallow soup bowl where the scalding soup cools quicker. It is a ridiculous search that has gone on for years. I found some through Replacements Ltd., but they cost about $14 each and I don’t want them that much.

Worth the $1.98.

At St. Vincent’s I found a white cotton shirt with dots and a yellow patterned cotton sweater for the delightful sale price of 99 cents each. I love the sale tags. Now I need to choose the items that will be donated out the door. 

The lingering daylight at 8:45 has me all confused with the time. When it’s finally getting dark at 9:00, my head thinks it still 7:00. Then bam! It’s bedtime. Crazy. Disorienting. I wish the light was late like this longer in the year. By the time I start to get used to it, we hit the solstice and the sun starts setting earlier again.

“Remoted” – Day 452 (Friday)

The vacation day was busy with a lot of waiting. It started last night with the continued near-obsessive checking of Jeep websites for vehicle availability. The criteria list was on the short side – sun roof, four-wheel drive, not red or white, not costing a fortune. Easy, right?

The inventory of blue Renegades with sun roofs seems to have disappeared in the past week. The 0% Jeep financing deal of late May that came and went, then came back long enough for me to learn about it on Monday, was gone again on Thursday. A person at one dealership that I had been communicating with via text for several days suddenly disappeared without a trace. 

In preparation for visiting a dealership today, credit reports had been taken off “Freeze” status a few days ago. The Honda was cleaned, just in case. Not like dealer detailed clean, but extra everyday clean cleaned. Book value had been checked, and according to the Kelly Blue Book site, the trade value could be around $1,000 to $2,000.

Inventory at local dealers was checked and two suitable potential prospects located at one dealer. Neither was blue, but they weren’t any of the “don’t want these colors” list, either. An appointment was scheduled. I was greeted and checked in by a very nice person. 

2017 Latitude dealer photo.

The first test drive was a 2021 Renegade Latitude with sun roof in some shade of gray. It was nice. I didn’t love the color, but I also didn’t hate it. The new car technology will take getting used to. The sun roof on Renegade is basically the whole roof. It’s kind of cool. The gas tank was on empty, and I worried it would run out, but my sales guy assured me that would not happen.

Anvil? Okay. 

After that, I drove a 2017 Renegade Latitude with a half tank of gas. This one has removable sun roof panels. The front panel lifts up to vent, slides back, or totally comes off. The back seat also has a removable roof panel. 

On the second test drive, I deliberately went beyond the turn I took earlier to “see what’s up ahead.” I got sort of lost, and ended up on 495, so that was actually a more thorough test drive. Not worrying about running out of gas helped a lot.

It turned out I liked the 2017 better. Nothing was wrong with the ’21, but the ’17 just felt right. I also liked the color better. The information calls the color “Anvil,” which I am fairly certain was never a color in a Crayola box of any size. “Anvil” is grayish green. Or maybe it’s greenish gray. Maybe Wile E Coyote is involved. Whatever, I like it. There are rubber floor mats which should help with the dogs. Vacuuming dog hair out of carpet mats is not so easy. That doesn’t even consider the crazy amounts of my own hair that is always everywhere.

Then the fun began. It ended up being four hours at the dealership. Apparently, there was only one finance guy on site where there are usually two. The trade offer was very much lower than the online estimate. By 2:00 I was hungry and glazing over, still hadn’t done paperwork, but had been enjoying a lovely chat with the sales guy, who was infinitely more helpful than the guy at Honda in April. The only way Honda guy could have been less interested in providing help would have been if he stayed home.

Anyway, by 3:00, the paperwork was completed. It was kind of dizzying, but mostly because spending money stresses me out. Things still need processing at the RMV, and even though the insurance rep at the auto insurer I’m moving to told me exactly what to do on Wednesday, I totally forgot and screwed it up on Friday. Whatever. There will be a new-to-me vehicle in my driveway possibly as soon as tomorrow, and definitely on Monday.

Hours later, at home, I realize there are probably a lot of things that should have been checked out, but I still don’t know what those might be. That is where having a wing person is helpful. I got the important stuff – how to open the sun roof, location of the phone charging port and the gas door, how to change the radio stations. Upon delivery, the Bluetooth connection will be set up.

There are things I will miss that are not in the new vehicle. The first and worst will be the beloved six disc CD player. That will be hard to deal with. How am I supposed to listen to my Middle Eastern music discs while driving to belly dance class, or to Latin Church Hymns while cursing my way along 495 or 128? The absence of the right-side arm rest will also take getting used to. It was realized how much I use it during the test drives when there was none. But change is good, right? It’s certainly exciting. And stressful.

“Remoted” – Day 451 (Thursday)

This morning offered perfect sleeping weather. It was cool, and not humid, but delicious sleep had to be abandoned. Dogs needed to be let out and fed, which is the driving force for exiting a comfortable bed every single day. Every. Day.

Morning coffee was enjoyed on the porch for the first time since last summer. The curtains fluttered in the windows and it felt like vacation, but it didn’t last long as it was a work day. Even still, the weather made the day seem light and cheerful. It inspired feelings of being reckless and carefree, which manifested in the form of having lunch delivered. 

Lunch and dinner and still leftovers.

Normally, delivery meals are reserved for a Friday or Saturday night. Not today. Lunch was a seafood platter from Primo. The order is huge with haddock, clams, shrimp, scallops, and a ton of fries. It’s generally good for two or three meals, so the $30 tab, equal to a week’s grocery bill, feels less painful when amortized over multiple feedings.

The carefree feeling extended to booking Friday off as a vacation day. If I could have three-day weekends every week, that would be a dream. There would be a whole lot more carefree and footloose happening.

After work, where Thursday had suddenly become Friday, the lighthearted feeling carried itself (and me) outside to the driveway to tackle another task that languished on the to-do list for a year. The car was cleaned. Vacuumed, dusted, windows cleared of the doggy-schmutz nose prints. The vacuuming was a challenge. The upright unit that works great in the house is crazy clunky when trying to clean a car. The wand and accessories are great in the house, but a real pain in a confined space. There is still a lot of hair in the car, but it’s greatly improved. My habit of setting a towel across the back seat for the dogs really helps things, but there are crevices with grit accumulated in them since 2004 that no vacuum tool can fit in and I know, because I have tried about 10,000 times over the years.

After the ninety minutes of hard cleaning labor, it was time for supper, which was, of course, meal number two of the lunch extravaganza heated in the toaster oven and accompanied by a pint of Guiness. This was followed by the cannoli that had been saved in the refrigerator all day, a true reward for the car cleaning. Maybe tomorrow I can get to a car wash to get the outside cleaned. Or if the weather is as motivating as today, I might even do it myself. I have a hose and bucket.

“Remoted” – Day 450 (Wednesday)

Today, when I took the dogs to the back yard for their first or maybe second visit of the morning, there was a dead mouse behind the air conditioner unit. It lay on its left side, facing the foundation wall, with its long skinny tail extended behind it and pointing at the air conditioning unit. It had a white belly and white legs and a gray back, small ears and teeny tiny feet, and a few small ants crawling on it. There were no visible puncture wounds or blood. I don’t know how it met its demise. Yes, I took a picture, and no, you don't have to see it.

Winston and Moose are more
the indoor type of dogs.

Luckily, the expired rodent was out of the usual dog path around the yard, and for whatever reason, they didn’t see or smell it. Or maybe they did and they didn’t care. Moose and Winston are more the dogs of luxury, lay about the house type. In Tennessee, Winston once brought home a piece of what looked like a petrified squirrel pelt, and another time, a raw chicken breast, but other than that, there has been no true hunting skill or killer instinct exhibited by either dog. This is okay with me. 

The mouse lay there on the cracked concrete all day. Every time we went outside, I saw it, but I wasn’t ready to deal with it. It’s a little bit like last year when the newborn, featherless bird lay dead at the bottom of the rain spout below the bird nest. The dogs ignored it, and I spent the day debating what to do with it.

Today, it was decided to pick up the dead mouse with the poop scoop when I cleaned up the back yard after work before mowing the lawn. That is exactly what happened. Partly, anyway. I got the bucket and the scoop tool and picked up the dead mouse. I paused to study it in the plastic bag lined metal bucket. One of the legs seemed to be screwed up – even skinnier than the other legs, and twisted.

As the dried poop landed in the bucket near the mouse, I felt bad. Last year, the tiny dead bird was picked up with the trowel and buried under the rhododendron. This year, the dead mouse lay in the bottom of a bag of dog poop and was set in the trash. I felt mean, like the mouse was less than the bird and didn’t deserve a proper burial, but I was also concerned the mouse may have died from poison, and if it did, I didn’t want it planted in the yard. So sorry little mouse. 

After that, I didn't even mow the yard. It was just some of the lanky weeds that were tall, and it seemed like a waste of gas and effort to run the mower. Maybe this weekend. 

“Remoted” – Day 449 (Tuesday)

Peonies in the morning.

Surprise was the word of the day. Moose delivered a surprise demand to go outside at 4:30, and it was quite pleasant standing in the yard in my summer pajamas and robe. There were not as many stars visible at that hour as there were at 2:30 on Monday morning, but it was still enjoyable standing there, waiting to guide Winston back inside with verbal cues. His eyesight has dramatically failed in recent weeks. 

Before 6:00, Moose was barking again, and by 6:15 when the clock on my phone was set to ring its musical alarm, I was already dressed in casual spring/summer capris and a cotton shirt that screamed “I’m not seeing anyone today,” had checked the peonies, and prepared a cup of coffee. 

At 6:30, there was an unusual text message from our department head. Our remote access was still out. It had gone wonky Monday afternoon. If we could work from our phones, it was okay (I can’t), and otherwise, we could come in. To the office. In person. I briefly considered taking a spontaneous vacation day, then decided against it. I told myself it would be good to be with colleagues. It would be an adventure. Like many adventures, preparations were needed.

There was the frantic rummaging through drawers and Space Bags in search of a non-winter work top and pants, packed away since the end of summer 2019. There was a rapid wardrobe change into patterned capris and a black top that declared, if not “I am going to work out in the world,” at least “I am leaving the house.” Surprisingly, I was able to get into the pants without struggle or tears. Makeup was applied.

The “work bag”, a heavy leather computer tote bag, untouched since March 2020, was hauled out and inventoried. Two pairs of winter gloves were removed. A notepad, a file folder of stuff, and other papers were loaded in the bag, along with my wallet, a mask, and a sweater for the chilly office A/C. The location of the building access badge and parking garage pass card were verified. Lunch was packed. The dogs were let out and back inside, diapered, and showered with treats. The usual departure speech was delivered, a mix of lies and truths. “Bye puppies, I love you!" (true). "I’ll be back in a little while!" (sort-of lie).

Stuff needed relocating.

The drive downtown was quick with no university activity. The parking garage had open spots on the third level. This was all surprisingly easy. The quarter-mile trek to the building was a nice walk and my access card worked in the elevator. 

Upstairs in the office, my desk looked like a storage unit. Everything from the floor had been moved onto the counter for carpet cleaning. Christmas wreaths covered the remaining counter space. I started relocating items. At 8:41, word was received that remote access was restored, but there was no turning back at that point. I was in the office.

Things got done. My tape dispenser and stapler seem to be missing, or maybe they are involved in their own remote work situation. My tiny cactus plant seemed to be suffering and drowning, but somehow hanging on. Water was poured out of it and it was packed to come home and recuperate. The other plant from my desk, a gift on my first day, was enjoying window light and has grown quite unwieldy and gangly. 

Peonies in the evening.

A message from HR declared that I need to use some vacation time or run the risk of losing some of it at year-end. I have no idea how this happened, but it's time to start scheduling. The day flew by, suddenly it was time to go home, and the ride back was a dream. Another surprise!

The dog’s diapers were soaked with pee, but they were otherwise okay and ready for supper. Thank goodness for absorbent technology. Another peony bloomed during the day. The dogs have napped most of the time since eating, so perhaps the surprising day was exhausting for them, too. 

“Remoted” – Day 448 (Monday)

Apparently, tall tales are some sort of a family tradition. I learned recently from relatives that Grandpa used to say that he rolled the ten-ton Boulder down from Rollstone Hill to the Upper Common and that his best friend was Paul Bunyan. One cousin got in trouble in third grade for repeating the tale that Grandma Olive came from Canada in a canoe via the Nashua River. Her mom received a phone call from the teacher about it. 

Peony opening.

At my house, dinner table conversations included occasional tales from Dad. In one, he was with George Washington crossing the Delaware River, but he’s not in the painting about it because he was out getting cigars. He was also with General George Custer at Custer’s Last Stand and escaped injury or death because he was out getting cigars. Dad was part of every major historical event – Paul Revere’s ride, the Civil War, you name it, and he was always spared injury or death thanks to his need for cigars. Never mind that the events took place long before his birth. He was there. He left to get cigars, he lived to tell the tale.

I thought the historical retellings were hysterical and would tell my friends at school and we wold all laugh at how funny my Dad was. My sister repeated these tales in kindergarten. At parent’s night, the teacher mentioned that S was telling wild stories. When Dad admitted to telling them, he got a scolding from the teacher. Oops, comedy needs a warning label. Maybe “results may vary,” or “past results are not an indication of future performance”?

In the yard, the peonies are beginning to perform with the opening of the first blossom. I hope in this case, this is an indication of future results with plentiful peonies, and nobody gets scolded for tall tales.