“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 854 (Sunday) – plans no plans

For the second day this weekend, I was dressed as if to go out and be part of the world. Yesterday it was pinkish-peach ankle pants, white pinstripe tuxedo style shirt with pintucks, and pink loafers. Today it was gray ankle pants, crisp white menswear shirt with tiny purple gray pin dots, and gray woven sandals.

On Saturday, a tentative plan had been discussed with Mom to maybe visit the Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls today, which we did last year around this time, but when I called, she didn’t feel like doing anything. I can absolutely understand that completely familiar feeling. Maybe it’s genetic. 

Facebook events were searched in an attempt to find something free and interesting happening. There were lots of events found for dates that weren’t today and some for several months out, and in the end, I sat around the house all day in a repeat of yesterday and countless days prior.

While eating too many raspberry strudel bite thingies found in the freezer, a list of potential activities danced through my brain, but nothing stuck as something I actually cared to do. It is clear I have perfected the art of staying home. In a reenactment of the favorite pastime of my youth, when books were the go-to, I read. A lot of time as a kid was spent holed up in my room reading, even when not grounded and confined to quarters.

When it was too hot in our house in the summer, I walked to the public library, browsed the stacks and read book jackets in air-conditioned comfort until I found the perfect books to check out. It had once been a goal to read all the books in the children’s library but I never even finished one row of the stacks. This is now repeated in my own home where the goal is to read all the books I already have.

Today’s reading was a return to the monster 700-page novel Deep River, a family epic centered on Finnish loggers in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900s. It was started months ago, and is barely halfway done. The book was enjoyed on the deck in the natural and comfortable air.

While on the deck, it occurred to me that, in addition to reading, maybe I was guarding the remaining evening primrose from being ripped out of the ground. There was hope the neighbor lady would be out so I could talk to her about it, but she wasn’t spotted. Maybe tomorrow (the daily refrain).

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 853 (Saturday) – plants and plans

The day held much promise when I got up at 6:30. The weather was sunny and beautiful. I dressed neatly, as if expecting to be out in the world before sitting on the couch drinking coffee and playing Wordle, Quordle, and Scrabble. I finished reading the book club book. I talked to Winston.

Evening primrose, 2020.

During an excursion of opening doors to let Winston out, I noticed the deck planter looked extra sunny. It took a second or two before noticing the evening primrose that grows from under my deck and along the length of the deck looked different. Half of it was gone. Ripped out. 

Because my deck runs right to the property line, it might be a gray area as to who it belongs. Gray to me anyway. The roots and the dirt they grow in are under my deck, but parts of the plants grow at an angle towards the neighboring driveway. I’ve been watching and waiting, hoping for the bright yellow blossoms like those from 2020, the last time I recall it blooming. I don’t know what happened to it in 2021. I can’t remember if it grew and was ripped out or didn’t grow at all. The plants are taller this year, reaching the top of the rail, and until they flower, they don't look like much.

I definitely don’t remember any evening primrose blooms last summer and was glad to see the plants coming up again this year. There were casual thoughts about transplanting some of them along the picket fence and questions about the expected success. Hopefully, I can catch the neighbor before she rips any more out. My preference is to leave it where it is, as the shade on the deck is welcome, but I understand the annoyance if it is encroaching on the parking and car access. Transplanting is better than disappearing.

"I can't see it, but I know
you have something yummy."

In the end of the day assessment, the tally showed the usual amount of weekend antisocial sitting around doing nothing, one Finnish lesson practiced (day 733 on Duolingo), some weed removal from the front yard flower bed, and the mowing of the yard. There was pizza for lunch and potato chips for supper, each with a side of the now routine begging from the boy dog. There is some guilt over wasting another beautiful day. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do better. 

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 852 (Friday) –ducky

Today is the birthday of X2’s father, Bob Dohner, known wide and far as Ducky. Ducky was a character. I can’t recall why he was called Ducky or if I even ever knew the source of it.

He was the king of the dad jokes, and would crack himself up constantly with his favorite one as his four offspring, their spouses, and the grandchildren all rolled their eyes. “Why don’t donkeys go to school? Because nobody likes a smart ass!” Funny the first time. Less funny the ten millionth time. There were more, but that is the one that has stuck for some 20 years. Long live the dads and the dad jokes. 

He was a whistler, and did it often. Real songs, songs he made up, always something. He would warble a jaunty snippet to signal to his wife across a store. The most memorable extended whistling session occurred during a car trip from Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania to Gananoque, Canada, when the radio stayed off for most of the trip and the whistling was in full force. It was nice for the first few minutes, but the remainder of the five-plus hours trip was a bit painful.

Before realizing it was Ducky’s birthday today, he had already been on my mind thanks to the July book club selection I've been reading. In the book, one of the characters said “Jesus on a bike” a couple times. This was total Ducky comment, which he also expressed in variations including "Jesus on a tricycle," and the extended version, “Jesus Mighty on a broomstick.”

Ducky was a police officer with Reading Police Department for 30 years, then became a detective with the Berks County district attorney’s office for another 12 years before retiring. Four years after his retirement, at the age of 69, he passed away. I hate that part of Ducky’s story. He was so full of life and after 42 hours of working he finally had time to relax and enjoy it. And, in a blink, he was gone. It doesn’t seem fair, but then again, life isn’t, so there you have it.

Here's to you, Ducky. Happy heavenly birthday.

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 851 (Thursday) – meet up. or not

The following was written in 2013 and because lately, I just can’t drag new words out of myself night after night, here it is again. 

~ ~

During one of my final days of living in Tennessee I was talking to a coworker (yes, whining) about how lonely I had been for much of my time in Clarksville, and especially the final year. There were hundreds of acquaintances I would see as I ambled alone through the monthly Art Walk, but when it came down to it, there were very few people whose phone numbers resided in my cell phone and upon whom I could call to meet out for lunch. And of the few, most were married with kids and otherwise occupied, so it felt like I had nobody available to entertain me. I even attended two concerts alone due to a lack of companions and I didn’t die of humiliation, which is good to know for future reference.

My coworker said a lot of single people he knew used the online Meetup site to find groups and activities. Well, crap -- if I’d known about that earlier, my last year in hell might have been more tolerable!

As part of my return to New England, I began pre-scouting for jobs and a social life. I looked into Meetup, checked off a bunch of preferences and quickly found a book club. Once you join a group, the system suggests other groups in your geography based on the interests chosen, so it wasn’t too long before I found a second book club.

During one week in April I had two book club meetings, which involved plowing through two novels. The first group’s meeting had great promise -- it was on a Wednesday night in an Irish Pub Restaurant and the author was going to attend. I had my first Scotch Egg, a dark beer, and the good fortune of sitting next to the author so I could actually hear the discussion over the din of the nearby diners, but the later arrivals at the far ends of the table were not as lucky. This book club was mostly couples and mostly in their 60s or older so I felt like a conspicuous misfit singleton (a common scenario for me). On the bright side, I was one of the younger people assembled at the table. 

Actual photo of most of my
social life, 2013-2022.

The following night was the other book club, which meets at a coffee house that has the good sense to also serve wine and craft beers along with the menu of light meals, pastries and gelato. This group is all women, younger than the other group, and infinitely more fun. I still don’t feel like I fit in, but at least I'm reading current books and it’s a shorter drive for me to be a misfit.

Around early June, a new local Meetup group formed -- people aged 40-60 seeking to get out of the house and meet up at various places and events. It sounded promising to me -- while not a singles group, it might be a way to meet new people including some single guys.

The group scheduled its first meet up at a bar/restaurant on a Friday evening with the instructions to meet “at the chalkboard.” I managed to convince a gal pal to come with me to scope it out. We arrived early and parked ourselves at the corner of the bar to scope out the group and decide if we would actually join them, because we were nervous about meeting a large group of new people. Heck, I sometimes get nervous with people I already know. As we sat at the corner of the bar, eyeballing everyone who entered the restaurant, we finally noticed a guy sitting under the massive chalkboard. Then a woman arrived. And another woman. And more women. The assembled group of about a dozen was finally seated at a cluster of tall tables in a corner of the bar. It looked like one guy with a harem.

We decided we didn’t really want to be part of the estrogen festival and headed to a Chinese restaurant for a pu-pu platter, chalking up a loss on the meet up thing. At least we were out of our respective dwellings for a little while, escaping an oppressive heat wave and enjoying some air conditioning.

As the summer progressed, the Meetup group posted several more events at free festivals and local fairs (which I did not attend). One planned meet up that caught my eye was for a tour of the local craft brewery. This was right up my alley -- beer! -- plus the potential to meet a man who appreciates good beer instead of the crappy yellow fizzy water bottled by too many large breweries.

I tried to wrangle a gal pal into coming to the brewery with me, but one was in Michigan, and another was in Vermont. So, on the appointed day, I managed to not wimp out, screwed up my courage and headed to the meet up. Alone. The RSVP list, which had peaked at about five people a week earlier, had dwindled to three by the day of the event -- me, another woman, and a guy.

At the brewery, I headed to the “Tour Waiting Area” where I was the only female. Instead of being thrilled at the prospect, I was too self-conscious to speak. I visited the sample window for a tiny beer glass and a taste of Strawberry White beer from the woman who would soon be our tour guide. Luckily, two more women arrived (with their significant man people) and finally, a tall guy entered and asked me if I was with the meet up. Hmmm.... I wonder if it was my obvious aloneness in the room that gave me away. At least I had now someone to chat with. And he didn’t look nearly as much like an axe murderer as his little photo on Meetup. I noticed he did not get a free beer sample. Nobody who looked like the third Meetup RSVP arrived. 

The tour began and we passed around jars of various types of barley, looked at photos from 1994 when the brewery operated out of a barn, and then moved over to the door to see more historic photos. Before heading to the bottling area, the guide instructed us to take a pair of safety goggles. As she was discussing the various sizes (child/small, medium, large), she pointed to me and said, all chipper and nonchalant, “You can probably use the child size.” Thanks for the shout out lady. I appreciate you calling attention to my tiny pinhead.

We moved into the production area, where there was another tasting sample. I tried the Nut Brown, even though I already knew I liked it. And that’s when my Meetup buddy casually mentioned that he doesn’t drink. So much for my fantasy of comparing notes over the various beers and how this brewer’s product compares to that of other breweries. Seriously? Leave it to me to meet the one guy on a brewery tour who doesn’t even drink beer.

~ ~

 And in the nine years since it was written, not much has changed. Ok, maybe a few things have. Emails arrive from Meetup about events, but I don’t sign up for any because I can’t remember my password for the site. The job search was successful – first Kohl’s and then the Bank, but I gave up looking for new friends. It was too hard, and it seems I’m probably just not friend material and better suited to acquaintance level non-relationships. I recently found a local book club, and yes, I still drink beer. No, I haven’t been on any more brewery tours. 

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 850 (Wednesday) – prep work

This morning started rough. I was out of bed 30 minutes early and somehow managed to leave the house 10 minutes late. In the parking garage, I realized I had forgotten to grab something for breakfast. Hot on the heels of no the breakfast realization was recollection that the phone charger had also been left at home. Oops.

Pre-cake healthy stuff.

The day took a quick turn for the better with the knowledge that we were having cake in the office to celebrate a coworker’s birthday. Not too long after my healthy lunch of leftover sautéed veggies with mushroom, kalamata olives, and cheese from Tuesday's supper, it was cake time. 

Cake guilt was alleviated with the reminder that there had been no breakfast, and the idea that healthy lunch offsets cake. The cake was a delicious moist, chocolate cake with light, sweet, creamy frosting. The grocery store bakeries really put out some good cakes. I took no cake photos. I’m slipping.

The day was productive. For the second day, I was deep in preparing an Excel workbook to track media planning with formulas and rollups from individual pages to a summary sheet. It’s not the most complicated workbook I’ve ever worked on, and luckily, it’s an adaptation of an existing workbook so the tedious prep work of building the sheets was already done by someone else long ago. It’s been a while since being immersed in spreadsheets and I’ve missed it.

The title of most complicated workbook was several jobs ago when I worked in corporate treasury management. We had a monster workbook with pages for each our 43 subsidiaries and a summary sheet that calculated totals from all the subs. The worst part about that old one was getting 43 offices to understand that “Do not alter the worksheet” meant just that. Month after month, we’d receive worksheets from at least one naughty manager (usually Renzo in Italy), who chose to delete rows of the sheet because that office “didn’t need to use those rows” and when the data was transferred into the workbook, the rows didn’t align, formulas would be broken, and time would be required to figure out what bits of info went where. So frustrating.

The old workbook is filed under the personal memory folder called “things I don’t miss from that old job,” and the workbooks from subsequent years are tucked away in the “thanks to that big old monster workbook, every one since then has been easier” folder.

Quick supper.

So far, the trickiest part of the new workbook is deciphering radio jargon of 2009 that doesn’t appear in any of our current schedules. That’s where the “hide column” feature has come in handy. It might eventually lead to the “delete column” command, but I don’t want to be hasty or premature.

After all the cake at work, supper was light. It was a repeat of the Scala bread, tomato, basil, provolone, and mayo of the other night. Quick, tasty, and all ingredients on hand. The weekend’s preparatory grocery shopping sure makes weekday life easier. 

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 849 (Tuesday) – books

Many books waiting
for my time.

Book Club has been great to get me reading again. In our last meeting, the question was asked about what we like to read, and my answer lately is “whatever the book club says to read.” 

Thanks to the book club, I’ve already read more books this year than in the several years leading up to it. Before this book club with the rule of “fiction, in paperback,” I tended towards non-fiction, including How to Argue and Win Every Time, which was bought during the flirtation with the idea of law school back in 2008 or 2009 and has sat unread on the shelf ever since. I bet if I'd read it, I could have spared myself some lost arguments. There are also most of the Malcolm Gladwell books, several of which have been read, and others which patiently sit, collecting dust and waiting for my time so they can be read.

Today’s Facebook memories for this date in 2012 had a post about a book and an airport. I was traveling back to Clarksville, Tennessee after visiting cousins. The airport departure gate area in California was full of people reading books. A popular title of the time was 50 Shades of Gray, and I spotted many people reading it.

One particular woman sat my departure gate reading 50 Shades. She was already there when arrived, and after I had been there for a while, she got up and made an inquiry at the desk. I heard the airline desk attendant tell her that her flight had already left. She was so engrossed in her book that she missed her flight. I didn’t find that book series to be very well written, but it sure was popular. And it’s always fun to tear into a book that can’t be put down, but pay attention to your flight announcements, travelers.

I really miss being a kid in the summer, off from school with the available time and absence of obligations to just lay around and read all day. Back then, I had a rule that the current book had to be finished before another could be started. Based on the number of half read books in a stack right now, it was a vaulable rule. 

As a kid at home in the summer, I would read in any and every room in the house and also the front porch. I would read in the car on the way to our annual camping vacation, in the tent, and on the beach. At Mummu’s, I was the queen of her second-floor porch, lying on a cot in the sun, reading a book, eating Pringles, and drinking Sprite. Those were good times. 

If only there was sufficient free time as an adult to get through the unread books pile. A couple months should do. Just like summer school vacation.

“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 848 (Monday) – leisure day 2

Reclining on the glider.

A second consecutive day of leisure was enjoyed. The morning temperature was comfortable and breezes were wafting in the front porch. The street was quiet and peaceful, and it felt like the best parts of camping on the better days when the air was dry and fresh and the days weren’t sweltering.

Quality time was spent in the enclosed porch on the glider. The morning featured coffee and a book, and in the afternoon the beverage switched to ice water. 

There was contemplation of the ceiling and the project list item of painting the paneling up there in the Southern tradition of haint blue. Panels in blue and the cross bars in white? The whole thing in blue? If the cross bars and edges are in white, which should be painted first? It’s not exactly like the ponderings of the great Greek philosophers, but it's all I had for today.

During one trip inside, I caught the scent of the basil plant on the kitchen counter. That triggered the thought of tomato which flowed into thoughts of lunch and suddenly there was a tomato, provolone, basil, and Scala bread sandwich for out on the porch. It all felt very much like being on vacation.

At one point in the early afternoon, while lying on the porch glider, a slightly familiar feeling began to creep in. It was actual, bona fide relaxation. It’s been so long since the last time I felt physically relaxed it was almost hard to identify. 

Contemplating the
porch ceiling.

The evening capped off with fireworks all over the neighborhood. One street over, across Beaver Brook, and finally in the street directly in front of my house. The Nuisance House had a party, and this year’s expenditure in fireworks seems to have been pretty hefty. There were screamers, and twirly ones, and some that sounded like distressed birds. Or maybe after 20 minutes of it, it actually was distressed birds. Winston hid in the bathroom.

Some of them seemed to fire sideways and I’m curious to see by daylight the effect on the vinyl fence along the street. I tried watching from the front door, but it was hard to see the high ones, and the volume of crap raining down in the front yard made it feel unsafe to go outside. 

I could tell from the illumination that the deck on one side of the house and worse, my car parked in the driveway on the other side, was covered in blast debris. When it was all over, the neighbor folks did the first and most neighborly thing I’ve seen them do, possibly ever. They hauled out a leaf blower and spent a half hour cleaning up the street and my driveway.

By 10:00 all was quiet again. On my street anyway. Another major round began going off across the brook in Centralville and Winston retreated to the bathroom again. Tomorrow night is the City fireworks display, which was postponed from Saturday, but at least those are sent up further away from the house. It should feel less like The BungaLowell is under direct attack.