random thoughts – Day 1,757 – (Tuesday) – back to routines

As much as I love holidays, the recent midweek Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays really messed me up. The weeks that felt like they had two Mondays were disorienting, and it’s feeling pretty good to have a week start off with the normal time stamps. Sunday – dance class. Monday – remote work day. Tuesday – dance class after work.

Tonight’s dance class was good. It’s a different challenge than Sunday's class with a different instructor and location, and different styles of choreography and music. We cover a lot in an hour, and it's fun. 

Coin belts and veil.

At the designated hour, we tied on our coin hip sashes and pulled out the veils for a warmup. I probably couldn’t repeat any of the veil sequences exactly now that a couple hours have passed and I'm in cramped quarters, but I did okay with them in the open space of the class. The polyester veil caused a comical amount of static in my hair, and I felt like a cartoon.

The rest of the week is expected to follow all the regular, previously established routines and patterns with work as the dominant occupier of quality awake time. I am more of a creature of habit than I ever wanted to admit when I was younger but gladly embrace now. Some people prefer a freewheeling, improvisational approach, but I find comfort in structure and choreography.

random thoughts – Day 1,756 – (Monday) – monday energy

Monday often has a certain energy about it. Sometimes it’s kick-butt productive, sometimes it’s aggravating, sometimes it’s downright terrifying. Today began in a relatively mild manner, and moved into a comfortably productive energy, making for a reasonably satisfying work day.

After work, the next step of the winter nesting project was planned. In an effort to block some of the winter chill that seeps through the walls and windows of the home office and makes it feel like a refrigerator, an idea had developed.

Heavier office curtains.

The idea was to take down the lightweight, summery sheers from the office and replace them with the curtains recently removed from the living room. The living room summer curtains are heavier than the office curtains, and in one of the several colors in the black and floral rug. The 15-minute task of swapping curtain panels took longer due to the decision to also dust the wood paneled walls and ceiling, during which I banged my head on the ugly ceiling light that I've casually thought about changing out for the past eight years. No big deal, really. My head is hard like concrete. I think it's a Finnish thing.

Removing the purple sheers and installing the teal panels and valances into the four office windows required climbing up and down the stepstool eight to ten thousand times. The climbing re-triggered the sciatic pain that kicked in yesterday and kept me awake much of the night. The Monday energy was shifting. 

The next step in feathering the winter nest was to change the couch cover and toss pillows. Pale green with a white and tan pattern was exchanged with solid tan. The pale green and teal patterned pillow covers would be swapped for reds and navy.  

That is when the Monday energy shifted again. I leaned over the back of the couch to tuck in the cover and saw that the new-ish blinds bought in the spring were no longer inhabiting the window, but were in a heap on the floor. A piece of one of the slats was broken off. There were some exclamations of puzzlement  and wonder of the Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot flavor.

The curtain rod over the window was suddenly hanging precariously, supported by only one bracket. The right side bracket was on the floor. The screw that previously held it to the wall sat on the window sill.

It took several frustrating attempts to set the blinds back into the mounting brackets. The curtain replacement wasn’t as expedient. The left bracket, still attached to the wall, is bent. There is a hole in the drywall where the screw to the right bracket used to live. Something needs to happen before the bracket can be replaced, but it will take some YouTube research time before I know what that is.

So much for trying to ride the Monday energy with a couple household tasks. Maybe there is a limit and I bumped into the boundary. Now I sit on the couch in the living room with a nearly naked window. A cold pack is calming the sciatica and nearly freezing off my butt and thigh while thoughts of curtain rod brackets are heating my brain. Fun energy.

random thoughts – Day 1,755 – (Sunday) – weekend watching

Dance group is back in the studio for the winter session. For a split second, I considered skipping dance to stay home and binge-watch shows on the free weekend of Apple TV, but that seemed like a bad choice. I went to dance. 

The stretching felt great, moving felt great, and thank goodness for muscle memory that stores the choreography when my brain shuts off and blanks out. My lower back was sore by the time I hit the car to leave. Hours afterward, muscles large and small, from neck to toes were reminding me of the effects of a month of inactivity. Oy.

My boss is watching.

After dance, I went to my sister’s house. Mom, Sis, the eldest niece, and I sat around the dining room table snacking on grapes, cheeses, pepperoni, and crackers and working on a jigsaw puzzle. The niece returns to Vegas in a couple days, and it's anyone's guess when we might see her again. The puzzle, with large solid areas in shades of purple and black, is probably one of the hardest ones any of us has seen in ages. We laughed about it a lot. The afternoon blew by as fast as weekend time tends to do. 

It was nice to hang out with family, and it was also nice to get home to Kiki. Little Miss Boss of Me has taken to sitting on the arm of the living room chair designated as hers. She packages herself neatly on the narrow-ish arm and surveys the living room and dining room. And me. Sometimes she seems to be staring at me in a nonchalant yet judgmental manner as I while away my time staring at the TV screen. 

Kiki's handiwork.

It’s adorable, the watching, judging, and meowing, but I would think that because I had already decided the day I met her that she can do no wrong. Even though she refuses to use the scratching posts and chooses instead to claw the corners of the ottoman and the edge of the chair. I know darn well if a human housemate willfully ruined my furniture I would have declared war, but animal companions are different.

The free weekend of Apple TV dominated most of my time since Friday night. After Shrinking, it was straight on to Severance, and then Bad Sisters. The bad news is, there is no way I can get through season one of Bad Sisters before the clock runs out, never mind season two. This is starting to feel a lot like how I ended up joining Prime many years ago just so I could watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

random thoughts – Day 1,754 – (Saturday) – shrinking

After several work team conversations about shows that we liked, a colleague thought it would be a good idea if we started a list of said titles. So far, there are 15 titles on the list, many with support checkmarks from other colleagues who also liked the program.

Noting that a few of the shows are on Apple TV, a colleague shared the news earlier this week that Apple TV is free for the weekend. It’s probably easy to guess where this is headed.

Shrinking on Apple TV.

Friday night, after the drinks and dinner after-work outing, I started checking out Apple TV. The series I landed on was Shrinking, listed by a colleague and with two “also loved it” checkmarks. This is a great series. There are lots of familiar faces, likeable characters, and relatable situations. It turned into a late-ish night watching Shrinking.

Saturday morning rolled in and I rolled out of bed tired. During the coffee consumption attempt at waking up, the show was turned on again. This was several hours earlier than the usual TV turning-on time. And any potential inklings of ideas of plans for the day were sent packing. 

Kiki, ruler of my universe.

I seem to be embracing winter this year by shrinking the amount of time spent outdoors. Past winters held the joys of hiking, snow shoeing, skiing, and even the gym, but so far, this year it’s been food, books, streaming shows, and hibernation. And my determination to someday get Kiki to be a purring, content lap kitty.

Kiki is becoming incrementally more affectionate. By affectionate, I mean demanding more frequently that I pet her. With one hand only. If the other hand so much as twitches, she runs. Maybe in her experience, two hands led to being picked up. We aren’t there yet. But someday.

Someday, I will wear her around my neck like a fur collar. She will sit on my lap and be the excuse for me to not get up for hours. But for now, I will admire her from afar, a gap which shrinks by a smidge each week. And the affinity for hibernation will be cast in a positive light as my own training program for when Kiki is a lap kitty and I can't leave the couch. Hope lives.

random thoughts – Day 1,753 – (Friday) – questions

Some days deliver weird things. Little oddities that lack explanation. This morning, while getting into the car to go to work, I noticed something white in the rhododendron in front if the house. It piqued my interest enough that I got out of the car to look more closely. It was a roll of paper towels. This led to many questions including:

Is that really a roll of paper towels in the rhododendron?

Where did it come from and how did it get there?

Who did it belong to?

Why is it there?

How long has it been there?

On the drive to work, the questions floated in my head like dandelion fluff. Then I forgot about them.

Supper out.

Every few weeks or so, a friend and I go out for supper and drinks after work. Tonight, we went to Warp & Weft, conveniently located two blocks from work. We ate and talked. It’s been a weird two weeks with the Wednesday holidays splitting the weeks so that it feels like there have been two Mondays. Four Mondays in the space of two weeks is too much. 

After a couple hours, we headed back out to the cold, crisp night. The sky was clear, with a shining silver crescent moon sliver in the sky and a bright star (planat?) nearby. The air was cold, but the forecast is for potentially colder, so there is that to look forward to. The Wannalancit smokestack tree shone bright green in the dark sky.

Clear night in Lowell.

Back at home, the paper towel roll still sat in the bush. I couldn’t reach it from the driveway and the gate on that side is hard to open and close ever since it magically and mysteriously went out of alignment so I went into the house and came back out the front door to fetch it. It was flattened and lightly frozen to the branches. As it finally released from the branch, a bird squawked and flew out of the bush, startling me probably as much as I startled it. After a quick "oh shit!" there was an apology to the bird and I went back inside. 

The flattened, dirty, half-full roll of lightly frozen paper towels now sits on a table in the front porch. For now. It will go into the trash tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll keep wondering how it landed in the rhododendron and when. Seriously, I need some answers.

random thoughts – Day 1,752 – (Thursday) – holiday purge

The post-holiday stretch of time usually means one thing. It’s time to purge. Not belongings or items, although that should probably also be done. It’s the holiday snacks and chocolate gifts and that need to go. And by “go,” I of course mean, “eaten.” By me. Preferably as soon as possible.

Instead of baking a finite quantity of cookies like I usually do, this year I made five types of chocolate dipped treats. Then I made a couple more types, extending the quantity to near infinite. Then, I didn’t see as many people as usual for whom I had prepared containers of treats, so there were a couple left over. Plus the stray odd counts of treats that hadn’t made it into any containers. 

Thursday's Supper.

Meanwhile, several gifts that included chocolates were received at home and at the office. Lest the tasty tidbits go stale or turn the way that chocolate sometimes gets weird, it seemed they should be consumed. Consequently, I have been eating chocolates every day since mid-December. None of my dress pants currently fit and most of my jeans are too tight. This does not seem to be a deterrent to the obsessive need to purge the sweets by consuming them.

On some (many) of the chocolate consumption days, there were chocolates for breakfast and lunch at the office. On remote workdays, there has been chocolate after lunch, including pretzel bark, chocolate covered potato sticks, chocolate coins, and saltine bark. A couple butterscotch haystacks were found and devoured. Later today, it was chocolate for supper, specifically, the last of the saltine bark, presented in multiple courses of two pieces at a time. Thank goodness that is finally gone.

There are still some chocolate coins to be dealt with, and several boxes of gifted chocolates in varying sizes including Belgian chocolates, Finnish chocolates, a big Ferrero Roche chocolate ball, and a dish of Hershey kisses. Oy. Looks like there is still some candy consumption to be done. I should just go buy some bigger pants.

random thoughts – Day 1,751 – (Wednesday) – new day, new year

The alarm went off at 6:15, just like on a normal Wednesday workday morning because I neglected to turn it off for the holiday. As the cell phone alarm emitted its musical tone, officially named “Default alarm sound: Oxygen,” Kiki was downstairs emitting her morning melodies. I wish I understood cat speak.

When I finally hauled myself out of my nice, warm bed it was 7:15. When I descended the stairs, she ran as if I were a monster. While I made the coffee, she sat in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen meowing. I would love to know what she is trying to tell me.

It was a day deliciously free of plans. Attending one of the First Day Hikes run by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation was considered, but I had seen a weather forecast of rain. The closest hike to home was in Andover, and even though it's not far away, it felt further than I cared to venture. Those two factors, plus general fatigue and blah-ness caused a purge of the idea. The morning was spent at home in pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers and not on a trail in a jacket and hiking boots.

New year, new journal.

The brand new blue 2025 journal, bought several months ago, was finally liberated from its wrapping and opened. New day, new year, new daily journal. Now the orange 2024 journal can be retired to the pile with its buddies in green, blue, red, and orange from many preceding years. Someday I will figure out what to do with decades of diaries and journals. It's not like I ever sit around and read any of the many the volumes containing the daily brain dumps. 

During the course of the mostly relaxing day, the floors and rugs were vacuumed. The activity had Kiki hiding behind her chair until I reached the living room and then she bolted across that room, through the dining room, and up the stairs to safety. Other chores were considered and dismissed in favor of watching Netflix. The day's shows were Adoration, an Italian drama series, and the movies A Little White Lie and Love Actually. Busy day. If I could figure out how to monetize my viewing time, I might be rich and able to retire someday after all.

Supper for a new night.

Supper was an assortment of Aldi bread cheese (sliced and sautéed per the package suggestions) with onion, pepperoni, saltines, and dried apricots. The approaching fresh date on the cheese was the main inspiration, coupled with the minimal preparation time and effort needed. the sides were what was on hand. Easy and minimal effort was the overall feel of the day.