random thoughts – Day 1,784 – (Monday) – snow and annoyances

Fresh snow.

Winter is happening this year, in small measurable doses of plowable snow, which is probably better than the avalanche we’ve received some years. There was another snow shoveling workout to relocate the light fluffy stuff atop some ice chunk remnants from recent days. It was pretty easy and probably burned zero calories. I didn't even break a sweat, but it felt nice to be outside for a few minutes.

While shoveling, there were thoughts of the gym membership I used to have which expired in July and wasn’t renewed. I even imagined sitting in the massage chair for ten glorious minutes after walking on the treadmill or doing the 30-minute circuit, which is how I usually tricked myself to go. It’s about the 1,000th time the gym membership been thought about, and the 1,000th time I didn’t go and get a new membership. Maybe later this week (thought for the 1,000th time). (Over)thinking about it is probably the first step.

The tax return, begun last week because I like to get it done and over with early, is log jammed thanks to a delay in a dividend statement due from the organization that the account platform was moved to in the fall. The form that is usually sent out on January 31 will now be issued in March. What in the actual h-e-double-hockey-sticks? I am 100% not impressed with this new platform and 100% annoyed at the delay. Among other things.

There is also a corrected form needed from another institution that took dormant account fees out of an old Health Savings Account from when I lived in Tennessee. The account has been nothing but a headache. This year’s issue is a form showing a distribution amount from the account, but it was really dormant account charges that were reversed.  I’ve called the bank three times to try and get a corrected form and still haven’t reached anyone who has a clue. It’s less urgent now that the whole filing is delayed due to another form. Apparently, ‘tis the season for annoyances. 

Swordfish, pasta, and veggies.

At least supper wasn’t annoying. Chopping, cooking, and eating took my mind off the tax filing delay annoyances, at least temporarily. Sword fish chunks were sautéed in butter with lemon pepper seasoning. There was pasta with onions, broccoli, and carrots on the side, and it hit the spot. Mom used to broil swordfish steaks topped with butter when I was a kid and I loved it. I don't even know if my stove has a broiler, so I stick with a skillet and my favorite stovetop burner (right front).

random thoughts – Day 1,783 – (Sunday) – sunday shakeup

There was no dance group scheduled today, and initially, the plan was to do nothing. A luxurious day of lounging about, like a Saturday v.2 was the loose plan, until an invitation arrived for a coffee meetup at Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to shake things up.

Overhead at the MFA.

The driveway, cleared of snow on Saturday, was slick with ice this morning, but the roads were clear and dry. The traffic was semi-annoying, especially when I let a Ride Share bus into the lane ahead of me, and it stopped in the middle of the street a block later. After a few seconds, a smartly dressed older lady with a cane emerged from a building, slowly walked down the stairs and across the sidewalk, and stood near the bus waiting for the door to open. It didn’t. 

After a while that felt like forever, the driver climbed out of the bus, walked around the back and opened the door from the outside to let the lady in. By this time, cars were piled up behind us, snaking around the corner, and drivers were tooting their horns. I cursed my random act of kindness a block earlier, because I would have been ahead of the bus and wouldn’t be sitting behind it grumbling.

Hanging out at the MFA.

When finally extricated from the time-consuming traffic cluster, I parked the car in the pricey garage across the street from the museum, and speed-walked to the museum entrance. My friend was sitting on a wall waiting. We had a nice chat over coffee, then my friend needed to dash out at noon for another commitment. 

I wandered the museum alone for a bit and looked at some photography, then speed walked through a room of Egyptian stuff before throwing myself back into the traffic and heading home. I would have stayed longer, but I wasn’t prepared to take out a second mortgage on the house to liberate the car from the garage.

Driving in Boston delivered a reminder, not that I needed it. I like being in Boston, but I’m less keen on the part where I’m driving there. Future visits may include an advance study of nearby MBTA commuter stations and public transportation. In any event, it was a great shakeup to the original non-plan for the day and the usual routine.

On the way back to Lowell, Waze navigated me through Tewksbury and I pulled in to Stadium Plaza to visit Market Basket, another stop on my MB World Tour. I was flying with a gift card and without a list or even an inkling of what the pantry is lacking. But now there is more pasta, rice, and cheese in the house. I can survive for another few weeks and will not starve.

random thoughts – Day 1,782 – (Saturday) – halfway

Depending on which source is consulted, February first (or second, or third) is the halfway point to spring. Kind of the hump day of the winter. In my mind, it is like the tallest peak on a roller coaster and now it’s just a thrill ride to the finish, in this case, spring.

Emails from seed and plant catalogues arrive all year long, and I look at them all year long, even though I don’t buy anything. In winter, I look at the growth along the fence line that wasn’t trimmed and is thought of of as my “winter garden” which makes it feel more deliberate. It’s really just the fallout from reading about leaving seeds for birds and ground cover for critters.

Winter garden.

The catalogues are an opportunity to wonder what might complement the tricky rose bush, the irises, and the day lilies, Wildflower gardens and walkways are imagined to replace the lawn, established as a status symbol in the 1700s and still in play today, for reasons I don’t understand.  But researching plants, ordering, getting them into the ground and keeping them alive feels like work, so it stops with the fantasy.

Snow arrived Friday night to mark the midpoint of winter and more flitted in the air today. Lines of small bird tracks crossed the backdoor landing and the driveway. A quick shoveling session cleared the heavy, wet snow from the driveway and stairs, which revealed the slick asphalt. The downspouts were frozen solid, and the heating system was plugged in to attempt to deal with it.

Bird tracks at the back door.

Beyond the shoveling and a load of laundry, not a lot else was done. Events including the monthly open studios at Western Ave Studios were considered and overruled. There was the potential for artistic inspiration, but there was also the potential temptation of spending money on art pieces that there is no space to display. There are already several drawers and shelves heaped with art in need of wall space. 

Even if every room in the house was hung salon style, it wouldn’t accommodate everything and would probably feel too busy and drive me nuts. Collecting (hoarding!) books, artworks, and art and craft supplies is real. It is also different than reading books, ordering from plant supply catalogues, and using said art and craft supplies.

random thoughts – Day 1,781 – (Friday) – gray with pastries

Gray morning downtown.

It was grayish when I got up and drove to work. Gray has been a popular sky color recently and I barely noticed. It's also a popular color in my wardrobe.

The streets and ground were wet. The temperature was above freezing, so there was some melting of what remained of the snow from the other day. For some reason, the morning routine was slightly “off.” The showering and hair washing, drying, and styling took place, but I almost forgot to play Wordle while drinking coffee. I almost forgot to check my email.  At no time before leaving the house was the weather forecast checked. I just put on the coat that was on the kitchen chair since Wednesday and left.

 During the day, the sound of rain pinged on the skylights. Or did it? Was that today or the other day? Or both? It’s hard to keep the days straight sometimes. What was a certainty was that for most of the day, I was the only occupant on the fourth floor. It was peaceful. A Teams chat message alerted me that there were leftover pastries in the fridge that a colleague had brought in on Thursday. It’s pretty easy to guess where that information took me.

Pastries!

The Purple Carrot pastry box was extracted from the fridge. A cup of coffee was brewed. A layered brownie treat was cut in half and eaten. Then half an apple berry pastry. A colleague came and had a small bit. Throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, the pastries were eliminated a fraction at a time, mostly by me. It was an effort to exercise restraint, but I’m not very good at that where pastries and candies are concerned. Besides, at 5:00, I would be chucking them into the trash. They would turn to rock over the weekend.

At 4:15, it was extra gloomy. The pavement and concrete sidewalk crossing the frozen canal were glossy and wet. The weather widget on my work monitor showed 36 degrees with a raindrop and a snowflake. A “snow statement” special weather advisory had been issued at 3:22 pm. Snow is expected between 6 and 9 pm north of route 2. A map put Lowell in the “mild” range and southern New Hampshire in the “light to moderate” range until 8:00 and the time scale ends.

It was raining on the ride home, but a couple hours later, the snow arrived on schedule with fat, fluffy flakes. They got smaller and steadier and piled up. In a couple hours, a couple inches of wetter heavier snow were on the ground. There might be a beach body shovel workout in my morning, which might help counteract the pastries and the pizza had for supper.

random thoughts – Day 1,780 – (Thursday) – sharing space

Twice in my life I have shared longish-term living space with someone to whom I wasn't married or who wasn’t a family member. Both times, there were some challenges that, to this day, make me glad I live alone.

In my college years, I spent one semester at Chamberlayne Junior College in Boston. I lived in a dorm on Commonwealth Avenue (“Comm Ave” to the locals), in a building that was a converted hotel. There was a marble lobby and a sweeping marble staircase, and some of the rooms had closed up beautiful fireplaces with gorgeous mantels.

I shared a room with Monica, a classmate from Colombia, South America. We were each initially assigned to other roommates. I never even met my original roommate, who, before I arrived, moved in with her boyfriend who went to Emerson College. Monica decided after a couple days that she didn’t like her assigned roommate, Janet from Cape Cod, because she had blue streaks in her hair and Monica said she was weird. Because I was paying for a double room, I couldn’t refuse when Monica asked to move into my temporarily single room.

Monica drove me nuts. She would wash her underpants in the sink in our room (not a problem), and hang them to dry in the room (not quite a problem) and leave them hanging, adding a new pair each day (a problem for me), until her drawer was finally empty and they all came down. Her friends were worse, though. I would arrive at our room after classes or my job and her friends would be sprawled on my bed and sitting at or on my desk, usually doing lines of coke (which Monica often complained was far inferior to what she was used to in her home town of Cali). Meanwhile, Monica’s bed and desk were pristine and unsullied. By mid-semester, things had gotten pretty tense, and Monica had actually befriended her original roommate and moved back to her original assigned room.

My new dorm roommate was Liliana, a new student who arrived at mid semester and was also from Colombia. She was studying English for the remainder of the semester and tried to teach me Spanish (unsuccessfully). We got along great and it was a much better situation than with Monica. We were both quiet and respectful and my desk was no longer covered in drug residue. Liliana made me sing "La Cucaracha" every night before bed.

My Tennessee house.

Decades later, in Tennessee, I had a house, and a year or so later, a housemate. We were dating, and he asked to move into my house after a change in his housing situation. He suggested a rent amount (which he often failed to pay) and I rearranged some of my stuff for his stuff to fit.

Tennessee dude had the idea that what was mine was his for the taking and one day, the hand mirror that I used every day disappeared from the bathroom. He had taken it to (and left it at) his art class because, in his words, I “never used it,” which he probably thought because after it was used each morning, it went back under the sink. 

Other things disappeared during the time he lived with me, including a couple of the good knives, likely left in discarded pizza boxes; my silver skull ring with yellow citrine eyes, which he had often admired and playfully (or maybe not) said he would steal; and my favorite sweater that Mummu had knit for me which was in the laundry basket awaiting a special hand wash (I am still peeved about that one after all these years).

While doing his laundry, he spilled a bunch of bleach on my favorite jeans that were in the laundry area and left them there, never mentioning it. I discovered it after the bleach had eaten holes in the denim, and I ended up cutting them into shorts.

More than once, the doors were left open on every kitchen cabinet. The first time it happened, I thought the place had been ransacked. He would often leave the front door unlocked, and one day, I came home and the door was open. Not open just a crack, but wide open and visible from the street, and he wasn’t home. Afraid I was walking into a robbery situation, I braced for the worst, but luckily, it was just another case of his carelessness.  

It was a relief when we broke up and he moved out. My stress level went way down, along with the electric and grocery bills. Since then, I have joked that my ideal cohabitation situation would be either separate wings of a large house, or separate houses. It's probably not a joke, though. 

random thoughts – Day 1,779 – (Wednesday) – snow and pizza

Downtown after the snow.

Wednesday arrived with more snow and after I brewed the coffee and dressed, I went outside to rearrange it. It was a couple inches, but it was the light fluffy stuff again which was a blessing. It took only 15 minutes to clear the front steps, back steps, and a path to the car.

The drive to work featured trees and the steelwork on the Bridge Street bridge edged in snow. The streets downtown were sort of cleared and slightly slushy. The sidewalks were cleared and slightly slippery.  

The sun played hide-and-seek throughout the day and the temperature climbed to the high 30s, so much of the new stuff melted away. A quick walk outside at noontime was effective for clearing the head. 

Lunch was BiBiGo microwave steamed dumplings, tossed into the work bag before realizing it is Lunar New Year today. It’s a pretty good lunch for under $4 and ready in under three minutes. And the plastic tray inside is great for art and craft projects that need small amounts of paint or to hold small quantities of beads. Double win!

Pizza party for one.

After work, there was a bankers meetup at The Old Court. It was nice to be out amongst colleagues and be able to talk in the shorthand that comes with the shared experiences and environment. 

At home afterward, Kiki greeted me with meows. She either missed me and was greeting me, or was annoyed with me and scolding me. Or a combination. She's been becoming more vocal and regularly graces me with her running commentary and narration.

There was a pizza delivery from the preferred pizza purveyor to use the $4 off coupon that was expiring today. It was a hot, fresh, delicious pineapple and black olive pizza for the win. All for me. And still lots more of it for the rest of the week. 

random thoughts – Day 1,778 – (Tuesday) – windy and nameless

This is not an official report on the wind, just my potentially distorted perception, but it seems that January 2025 has been the absolute windiest month I can recall. Today the wind seemed extra blustery. Mid-morning, it was accompanied by blowing, swirling snow.

The roar of the wind, almost always accompanied by the rattling of storm windows, was enhanced by some new sounds. There were hours of the sounds of various neighbor’s trash bins rolling and crashing. At one point, one of the recycle bins from the house next door hit the side of their house several times before it pivoted and rolled a third of the way down the paved driveway. Later, the wind blew it back up the driveway and into the yard. When it crashed into an overturned metal can, the big green bin tipped over and spilled its contents all over the yard. In front of the house at the edge of the road, two empty red trash bins were blown over. Across the street, three more trash bins, were blown over on their sides. I guess it was a good thing that trash was picked up Monday. Surprisingly, my own bins managed to stay put.

Inside the small home office, the constant wind, along with a couple other things also beyond my control, was grating on my nerves. An old song says “They Call the Wind Mariah,” but I was calling it lots of other things.

Soup with no name.

The wind and stress called for comfort food, which today (like most days) is soup. As I was combining a couple frozen blocks of brownish soup in a pan to heat for lunch, I wondered if it was vegetable soup, or chicken, or ham, or something else. None of the soups I make uses a recipe and they lack names. If anyone asks, it’s usually a list of ingredients. Today it was mystery soups with rice and beans and veggies plus fresh shredded cabbage and broccoli. Nameless and delicious. 

And suddenly, my head was dancing around with “soup with no name” to the tune of “Horse with No name” by America. The earworm of the day was one line, “I’ve been through a winter with a soup with no name.” Not my favorite songs by any stretch, but it beats the windy Mariah song.