random truths – Day 1,033 (Saturday) – stores and stuff

The grocery shopping hobby seems to be in full force again. Or maybe the hobby is closer to food hoarding, but whatever it is, in two days there have been three trips to two grocery stores in two different cities.

The first trip was on Friday after work to Market Basket to look for stuffed grape leaves for an art reception today. For years, they lived in a refrigerated end cap near the produce department in the store closest to home, and I would often buy them for reception food tables and for my own fine dining.

In the past year, the stuffed grape leaves become scarce. On Friday, the case was filled with containers of soup and some prepared meals. Near the deli, there were jars of just grape leaves for the real do it yourself types, or a 70 ounce can of stuffed grape leaves fit for commercial usage. I bought the fallback item, two boxes of Little Debby cakes. Because no trip to a grocery store for a single item is ever limited to the target item, Friday’s trip also yielded a roasted chicken, Italian anisette cookies, sliced mushrooms, and bananas, “to make it worth the trip.”  

Freshly trimmed.

Today’s itinerary included a trip to my friend’s hair salon in Worcester. There was a trim and freshening of the layers and the chunk of hair that keeps falling in my face was trimmed and the professional blowout is smooth and shiny. It won't be long before it's back to the wavy on the bottom and straight on the top average daily 'do. 

After the salon, a stop was made at Aldi, a couple miles away, to look for the ginger and turmeric tea I like from there. Not knowing where the tea might be located, all the rows were visited, which is basically the kiss of death to sticking to a list. The stop for a single box of tea ended up being 19 items, with two of them being the tea.

Because Aldi is across the street from Savers, it’s pretty easy to guess where the car drove itself next. The plan was to look for a very specific style of soup bowl that seems to have gone extinct and café curtains for the window over the kitchen sink. There were none of those items, but I left with a merino wool quarter zip sweater and a cashmere vee neck. The last thing I need or have room for is more sweaters, but they are merino and cashmere! And to my credit, I put two other cashmeres and a merino back on the rack. There was a time I would have bought all five, so I it felt like progress. My wallet can thank the removal of the dressing rooms and my inability to try on the three where the fit was questionable for the restraint shown.

Back in Lowell, there was another visit to Market Basket in the hope that stuffed grape leaves had miraculously returned since the night before, and if not, a savory option for the reception. No miracles had occurred, so it was Club Crackers and artichoke and spinach dip for the reception plus some for home, and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. The dip is delicious, so it will probably never be found there again.

Supper!

Grazing was done at the reception, which served as a light lunch after a breakfast of the last two anisette cookies. Lobster ravioli was one of the off-list purchases at Aldi, and all afternoon I imagined preparing it for supper with olive oil, capers, parmesan and whatever else hopped into the pan. 

By the time I got home, the ravioli was forgotten. Supper ended up being a small plate with Club Crackers, artichoke and spinach dip, and pepperoni slices. It was like I was still grazing at an art reception, and it’s one of the perks of being an alleged grownup. It’s certainly more fun than the other adult crap like snaking the bathtub drain, paying bills and taxes, and worrying about retirement savings.

random truths – Day 1,032 (Friday) – songs and cookies

This morning’s WUML commute soundtrack featured a song in French. It had a dance beat and I could imagine being at a party or in a club where it played. My four years of high school French fled my brain long ago and I could recognize only every 20^th word. The next song sounded like more of a dreamy Latin  sound, but I couldn’t be sure of anything because the artist names and song titles don’t display on my screen when listening to WUML like they do with the Emerson College station.

For a couple minutes, I sat in the car in the garage and listened to the dreamy instrumentals while willing my phone to charge faster on the car charger after finally noticing it was getting low and the charging cable was at home. I neglected to charge the phone overnight and then forgot to plug it in to charge during the ride to work, which is usually enough time to power it up to a reasonable level.

Queenly cookies.

While catching up on emails and the Facebook feed after a workday plagued by numerous pesky software issues, one message popped out. Man Ray, the Cambridge nightclub popular in the 1990s and early 2000s is coming back. There was a time when Friday and Saturday nights were designated for dancing and drinking followed by eating in late-night diners. This is not that time. 

Thanks to the wonders of technology and the Internet, while quietly dining like a queen on Italian anisette cookies and ginger probiotic tea, I pulled up the show from WUML's website. There was an archive of the entire show and I was able to learn who the artists are and hear the songs again. The first song was “Sante” by the Belgian singer Stromea, and I liked it as much the second time as the first. The other song was “Tres Hermanos” by the band Hermanos Gutierrez.

Good times. For real. Kicking back for a quiet night at home with a few minutes of some cool music and a tasty treat are about as far removed from the Man Ray nightlife scene as I can imagine. That's okay, I'm much more well rested these days.  

random truths – Day 1,031 (Thursday) – pretty girl pearl

Pretty Girl Pearl.

Pretty Girl Pearl was a white and brown dog that landed on my doorstep ten years ago. It was a cold and rainy Tennessee night, and Pretty Girl Pearl was skinny and wet. She had come to the house the night before and as I wondered what to do with her, she left. The second night she stood on the porch, I let her into the house, where she made herself comfortable hanging out with Moose and Winston. 

Pearl was a leggy gal who thought she was a lap puppy and got cozy on the couch and my lap. I called her Pretty Girl Pearl because she didn’t have a collar on and I needed to call her something. 

She settled in pretty quickly. Pearl would counter surf the kitchen, where she got hold of my leather gloves and chewed off the tips of the fingers. She was thin, so I bought high calorie puppy food for her. She ate her food, anything left by Moose and Win, and anything of mine she could snatch.

After a week or so, on a weekday vacation day, I was walking with Pearl in the neighborhood. Pearl was practically dragging me down the street when a soccer-mom mini van drove past and came to a quick stop. A woman leaned out and asked if I that was my dog or if I had just found her.

By then, as I recall it, Pearl had been with us for over a week, during which time I posted on Facebook, ran a classified ad in the local paper, contacted animal control and friends who had rescue contacts, taken her to a vet to be scanned for a chip, complained about owners who don’t put collars with info tags on their pets, and other things I don’t remember.

It turned out, Pearl had been in the woman’s yard just a couple doors down from me before coming to my house. The woman had taken off the leather collar with a plate permanently attached that had a name and phone number on it. Then Pearl bolted from her yard, and she didn’t want to call the number to say that she had the collar but no longer the dog. 

Later in the day, after the woman finished the errands she was on her way to do when she drove past me and Pearl, she came to my house. Together, we called the number on the collar and made plans for the owner to come to my house. 

Pretty Girl Pearl’s name was actually Belle, and she was a purebred hunting dog that lived a few streets away in a pen she had figured out how to open the latch and escape from. As she dragged me down the street on the walk, we were approaching Pearl's house, but I didn't know that, and after meeting the woman in the van, we went back home.

Pearl/Belle and Winston.

Her pet dad, an older guy, didn’t use social media or read the newspaper, so he hadn’t seen my found dog ad or posts and pictures of Pearl or thought to post his own lost dog ad. As Pearl hung with Winston and Moose in my house during the day while I was at work, her pet dad  was driving all around the neighborhood looking for her.

He was glad to get her back. She was glad to see him. I was sad to see her go. The timing of her stay was stressful, with me trying to get rid of things and arrange the house sale, giving notice at work, and getting ready to move, but it was still fun having her around. 

random truths – Day 1,030 (Wednesday) – wicked good

The current preferred radio station in the car is WUML, the station at UMass Lowell. I like the Feature News with the newsreaders with the British accents at 8:00 am, and the huge variety of music is impressive. This morning, after the news and as I turned off Bridge Street onto French Street, the familiar notes of a long-ago song from a once beloved band came through the speakers.

Ahhh.... The 'Mats.

It took just a few notes to recognize it as The Replacements. By the first line of lyrics I knew it was their song "Answering Machine" from their 1984 album Let It Be. The song had already been around for several years before I knew about the song or even the band, but once aware of the The ‘Mats, I was hooked. I liked the song “Answering Machine” enough that part of it was recorded as my answering machine message back in the olden days of answering machines.

Much effort was expended starting and stopping the tape in the cassette player to try and record a spot in the song that included the line “I hate your answering machine” to be in my answering machine message. Damn, I thought I was clever.

This morning, I found a parking spot, and sat there listening to the rest of the song. Then, the day got even better. There were donuts at work to celebrate the birthdays of three colleagues in January and February. A colleague brought leftover pizza from an internal meeting. And to top it off, it was “snack and share” Wednesday, when we rotate turns bringing in our favorite snack. Today it was Goldfish. 

Talk about a wicked good day – a song from the 80s that hasn’t been heard in ages, then donuts, pizza, and goldfish. The only thing that could have possibly made it any better would be hearing the entire album. It's been ages since hearing "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" and "Gary's Got a Boner." Tonight's going to include another walk down memory lane with Paul Westerberg and the the rest of the band.

random truths – Day 1,029 (Tuesday) – failure

There was a meeting after work. In preparation,  Winston was fed, put outside to potty, and rewarded with a cookie upon reentry to the dwelling. My own supper of vegetable, bean, and barley soup with a sprinkle of shredded Italian cheese blend was exactly the same thing as lunch.

A notepad and pen were set near the computer, along with the board reports that had been provided in advance. The email was opened with the Zoom link ready to be clicked for entry to the cyber gathering.

The human said it wasn't my fault.

Board business was conducted, and I scribbled notes in the role of secretary. About halfway into the meeting, Win could be heard in the dining room, barking near the front door.  It was his kind, gentle, bark which changes between the very polite excuse me please “oof, oof” and the slightly louder hey, I need help “arf, arf.” 

I heard him, but I was in a meeting and taking the notes and couldn’t stop just then. When it seemed I could step away to jog the 20 steps to Winston, I turned up the speaker volume and turned off the video, and bolted from the desk. Winston was slowly heading back into the kitchen, and there was a big wet spot on the wool rug in the dining room behind him. Big, as in about 12 inches long and three inches wide. And it wasn’t his fault. He had stood at the door and barked to go out and I ignored him because it wasn't convenient. Multiple times. So he did what he had to do in the absence of the potty pads on the floor and the diaper wrap around his body that are usually present when I leave the house. I failed him.

Paper towels and the red plastic spray bottle of Nature’s Miracle to neutralize the odor were grabbed to address the mess. The nearest issue of Worcester Business Journal was grabbed to set under the rug under the wet spot (sorry WBJ, it was handy). Then, I bolted back to the meeting. 

Poor Winston slunk to the kitchen. I gave him a cookie. And another. And another. He gets lots of cookies when I feel guilty about leaving him and tonight, for ignoring his request for help because he lacks the resources to turn the doorknob and let himself out.

After the meeting, I finished cleaning up the wet spill in Aisle One. The apologies to Winston began with me telling him he is a good boy and it wasn’t his fault. That’s when I couldn’t remember if I gave him his insulin with his dinner. I remember chopping the chicken, mixing it with the pricey prescription food he hates, nuking a cup of water and adding it to warm the chicken and soften the kibble. I remember setting the bowl on the mat near the water bowl and Winston eating it. And maybe the insulin was taken from the fridge, shaken and nine units measured and given. Or maybe that was this morning? Or yesterday. 

There was no way to tell if the dose was done or not, but it is better to miss one than to double dose the insulin. So, I’ll just worry about it all night, but chances are very good it won’t be forgotten at breakfast.

random truths – Day 1,028 (Monday) – alpine stress

Thanks to my previous watching of several foreign shows, mostly crime dramas, my Netflix recommendations are heavy on foreign series and movies, and by “heavy,” it’s currently about 75% of the suggestions. Weeding through selections to find an English language show to have playing while simultaneously doing other extremely important things like playing Wooduko, reading email, scrolling Facebook, and writing is becoming frustrating and time consuming. 

Curvy road in the Alps.

I prefer to run the foreign shows in their native languages with English subtitles to get the sound and pacing, so I need to be in the mood to want to read a movie under this preference. Tonight’s series is Woman of the Dead, chosen for the interesting title and brief synopsis of being about a woman who can talk to dead people and before I realized it was in German. 

The show is set in the mountains of Austria and the scenery is spectacular, but the driving scenes, with the main character usually on a Ducati or in a hearse (business vehicle), stress me out. There are frequent overhead shots of a hairpin turn near the main character’s home, which eventually expanded into a shot of a series of switchback turns, and it set me on edge, even more than the crimes happening in the series. I’ll stick to the local hills when I need a scenic drive and leave the Austrian Alps to the experts and the shows. 

random truths – Day 1,027 (Sunday) – Winston-versary

On this date in 2012, Winston was officially living with me and Moose. For real. Forever. There had been a successful weekend-long test run several weeks earlier where the two dogs had a chance to meet and Win spent the weekend. 

Moose and Winston,
January 8, 2012.

Unfortunately, unlike Moose’s arrival which was announced with the equivalent of a full corporate press package with photos and Facebook posts and much heraldry, Winston's arrival was quieter. As the second fur baby, he did not receive the full benefits of royal proclamations, decrees, and individual photo shoots. 

This follows the pattern of the photo documentation of the kids in my family. As the firstborn, there are countless photos of my every move, breath, blink, and sleep position for the first 11 months of my life. Then my brother burst forth into the world, and there are lots of adorable pictures of the two of us, but not many of him alone. My sister, the youngest, is accompanied by a mob scene in nearly all her photos and there are close to none of her alone.

If not for mentions in Facebook posts that appear in memories, the anniversary of Winston’s special day might have escaped completely unnoticed and that makes me feel like a terrible pet parent. According to a post on January 8, 2012, “So far, life with two fur babies is kind of lame. Now there are two dogs moping and sleeping on the couch ignoring me. What's a gal gotta do to get some attention in this house?!? Maybe Lady GaGa's meat dress would help.”

The lounging period ended, things got lively, and the next post, later the same day, reads: “HOLY CRAP!! Suddenly the fur baby boyz have sprung to life! They are running all over the house and acting like derby girls in a bout -- hip checking, positioning, moving fast! Winston's tail is wagging, and Moose has never moved this fast in my presence.”

That’s pretty much how the next decade went – periods of leisure alternating with spells of frenetic activity. Now, with just Winston in the house, it’s a lot more of the quiet and lame level of things. The absence of the third personality really makes a difference. Plus, we aren’t as young as we used to be.

Winston and me, January 2023.

This 11^th anniversary of Winston’s arrival pushes him into record-breaking territory as my longest relationship, having surpassed Moose’s milestone record. If only I had this kind of patience and longevity with human relationships. Cripes, I haven't even been on an actual date since 2017, which was memorable mostly because it was awful. It's clearly Canine Overlords for the win.