A Caveat, Plus MORE CHAIRS

 Oh, hi!

Really? After a 6-month absence, that's how I'm starting out?

Give me this, it's been a whopper of a 6-month period, okay? And I'll confess, part of my absence has been because it's been hard for me to balance giving cheerful little accounts of our family's day-to-day doings while also experiencing (along with everyone else) the societal/political turmoil and chaos that is affecting a lot of families, including ours. It just felt a little tone deaf, you know?

Flower box arrangement by Susie, who is glad she's in college right now and not looking for a job in this market

Still, I don't want to lose this record of our daily lives, either. I love looking back and remembering all the things I've jotted down over the past (OMG) 18 years. How do I keep that while not seeming oblivious to everything (waves vaguely) out there?

What did the 1930's Germans do about their blogs, I wonder? LOL, ROTFL, see it's just not funny, ugh

So I am back with my stupid, inconsequential stories, because skipping them isn't going to help anything or anyone. Hopefully they'll provide some respite from the horror, I dunno. 

Am I mentioning this just so readers won't think I'm totally shallow and annoying? Probably.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming!

If you recall, last time we spoke, Larry and I were suffering a deficit of dining chairs (2 tables, 6 chairs), with Thanksgiving becoming a BYOChair event. Now, if you will believe it, we are the somewhat flummoxed owners of 16 (COUNT THEM SIXTEEN) dining chairs. 

It started in February, when I took matters into my own hands to procure some used kitchen chairs that provided my long-desired pop of color:

Can't really explain the teddy bear as a centerpiece, oh well

They go well with the dilapidated chrome padded chairs and are a cheerful powder blue, which makes me happy but probably bothers Larry no end (remember, he doesn't believe in fun-colored furniture). We moved the 4 black kitchen chairs to the dining room, which really didn't look too bad with the wood table, but really, I just never wanted to think about chairs again. Ever. Larry also seemed to be happy not discussing this stupid topic anymore. 

Total number of chairs? 10, a somewhat reasonable number -- not quite enough for holiday dinners, but hey, it was only February, we had time.

Fast forward 5 months (and really, where DOES the time go?!?): I came home from work (more on that later) last Sunday to find what we can only describe as The Miracle of the Chairs in my dining room:

Free table, $30 chairs, that only took 8 months

That's right, folks - Larry finally found the long-sought-after but discontinued West Elm chairs on Marketplace at a low, low price and brought them home. He is very happy with himself, even though we now own too many chairs, and I can tell he is eyeing my pretty blue ones as the ones to go.

SIXTEEN CHAIRS, that's ridiculous

In January I started a new job:

Susie worked at our local Trader Joe's for two years before selfishly going off to college and living her own life, and I really missed that 20% discount we used to get. Also? I was sitting around all day scrolling the internet (not good) and waxing maudlin while gazing at pictures of my kids when they were little (downright pathetic, okay?). NOW, I work about 30 hours a week and get a ton more done around the house, because I have less time to do it in, and there's a psychological term for that but I've forgotten it.

Also, I get paid. I like having money, because I get to spend it on my grandkids.

Was that plural? Why, yes, yes it was - Rachel (RACHEL) gave birth in February to a very cute baby girl and OMG I had completely forgotten what a trainwreck those first few months could be. But we're finally at the point where she (the baby, not Rachel) does all the cute baby stuff, giggling and blowing raspberries and snuggling, and seriously, I have no memories of my babies before 5 months, apparently. NONE. 

  

Our empty nest has a bunch of this stuff in it again

Rachel and the baby stayed with us for a few weeks in June while her husband was away on TDY and Larry and I helped out (minimally) with the baby and were COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED. I have no idea how we did all that SIX TIMES.

This cutie joins her 21-month-old cousin, who has adorable little pigtails on top of her head (that droop in the humidity, and really, aren't we all just like those pigtails?) and I have never so badly wanted to post people photos on this blog, but Larry's rule holds firm (also, my kids wouldn't let me, either, oh well). 

Let's start calling the older grandbaby Olivia and her little cousin can be Sissy, since I can't just say "the grandbaby" anymore. Wow, I haven't had to make up blog names in a very long time, that's weird.

This isn't the beach, it's THE SHORE, because New Jersey

Earlier in June, Larry and I rented a beach house for a week on LBI and several adult children consented to join us, including Rachel and spouse and newest grandbaby, and it was actually pleasant because I wasn't responsible for anyone's happiness but my own (which, after all those years of vacationing/camping with kids, still feels quite novel and refreshing). Also, adult children on budgets naturally tend to appreciate a free vacation more than dependent children/teens do, so that's nice

Obligatory sunset-over-the-bay photo

Next week? We are flying to the Seattle area and visiting Olympic National Park. This is happening because during one of our heatwaves in June, I pretty much snapped and dropped a boatload of money on airline tickets and an Airbnb, and I'm glad I did, because it gave me something to look forward to through all the subsequent heatwaves in July. 

I cannot wait to leave this weather behind for a week, I feel as though I am living in the armpit of hell. Predicted weather for our vacation is 50s and 60s, so I guess I'll need to bring a parka or something, which is fine by me.

David is meeting us at the park, but we will NOT be doing the mountains with him, having learned our lesson last year. We're hitting the beach trails instead, and - considering the West is definitely another planet - I'm sure we'll find those challenging enough. Wish me luck!

In Which I Say "Chairs" Way Too Much

 Ah, let us chat once more before we close the books on this stupidly crazy year! Let's see, there was a plane trip, and COVID, and lots of failed job interviews, and new-boobs surgery and recovery, my discovery of the West, a typically humid summer, a trip to Acadia (wait, did Larry and I actually travel 3 times this year?), Rachel's wedding (still can't quite believe that one), and the advent of our empty nest.

Folks, it's been a lot, really. And to usher out the year in the appropriate fashion, some rogue virus decided to try to finish me off, so I ended up in bed on Christmas Eve, shivering and ache-y and coughing, while the merriment continued unabated below. A shout out to my girls, who stepped up and made sure breakfast was prepped and dishes were cleaned, etc., all while I lay upstairs and prayed I wouldn't die on Christmas Day, because wouldn't that be sort of a bummer?

What Santa brought me

I'm still coughing and trying to make sure this thing doesn't turn into pneumonia, but I'm doing better than I was. I'm disappointed, though, because the week between Christmas and New Year's is supposed to be fun, and all I have done is lie around and take Mucinex and Sudafed and cough a lot. No cold weather hikes, no trips to the movie theater, NOTHING - just me and my bag of cough drops watching Nobody Wants This on Netflix and scrolling through Instagram. Oh, and I read a book, so I guess my brain isn't totally gone yet, yay.

Also, the house is full of holiday cookies and candy and I don't even feel like eating them. If that's not alarming, I don't know what is.

*coughing break*

Halloween happened, do cast your eyes upon my Candy Charcuterie creation:

In November we found a beautiful (and free) dining room table on Buy Nothing, so we gave away our pockmarked old IKEA dining table and its five remaining rickety chairs to someone else and I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a pang of regret watching those decrepit but well-loved pieces of furniture being carried out my front door. 

So many Thanksgivings and Christmases and birthdays celebrated at that table! I had to bid a fond farewell to the firmly entrenched family ritual of checking the chairs before everyone sat down - you know, to make sure the rungs were firmly seated and wouldn't give way? It was a treasured tradition, and honestly I sort of missed it this past Thanksgiving.

Of course, that left us down 5 chairs, and we were already short 4 chairs in the kitchen. You see, we had given away our other IKEA set (a black round table with self-storing leaf and six black chairs) to Theo and his wife last June, because I was tired of all that black in the kitchen and a neighbor had offered me her round white table instead. So we have the new (used) white table in the kitchen (with a leaf we have to lug upstairs from the guest room closet), along with 2 chairs that I got for free that are a style I adore (chrome with padded seats), only the padding is ripped on the sides.

I LOVE it, but yeah, the stuffing is coming out

Larry was probably wondering at this point why I had traded down on the kitchen furniture, and I really don't have an answer for that. Except I was tired of all the black, did I mention that?

Anywhoo, there we were, with 2 tables and 2 chairs, which wasn't an ideal situation, especially 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. So we started looking for chairs: Craigslist, Marketplace, all the online stores. But here's the problem - it turns out that Larry and I have very differing expectations for chairs. To sum it up, he likes ugly ones, and I don't. I could go into more detail, but really, that's it. 

So, in the interests of preserving our marriage, we narrowed our search to chairs we could both tolerate (in the meantime borrowing a couple of chairs from Rachel to tide us over, chairs I found for her on Buy Nothing last year that just happen to go PERFECTLY with my new dining room table, but I digress). We did manage to find four bucket chairs locally, used, that we can tolerate for both the kitchen and the dining room:

And yes, they ARE black. I really wanted bucket chairs that would provide a fun pop of color, but it turns out Larry isn't a fun pop of color type of guy. Who knew?

Feeling sort of desperate at this point, we decided to bite the bullet, as it were, and buy brand new the same chairs Rachel has, but it turned out West Elm had stopped selling them. So we bought something somewhat similar from Wayfair and they arrived and neither of us really liked them and we sent those back (because when we're paying full price for chairs, we are way pickier than when they are free). Hey, at least we agreed on something, right?

What I am trying to say is that this stupid chair search CONSUMED us for two solid weeks (again, Thanksgiving was approaching and WE NEEDED CHAIRS), and we got sort of nowhere. We ended up borrowing the rest of Rachel's chairs and telling our neighbors that Thanksgiving would be a BYOChair event this year. They totally rolled with it, God bless them.

We were having 16 people for Thanksgiving, and I did my typical slow-roll holiday prep for the holiday, so things could be nice and relaxed and we could all enjoy ourselves, even if we didn't have anywhere to sit. I took it one step further this year by buying PRECUT bread cubes at Whole Foods, so prepping the stuffing was a breeze, comparatively speaking. 

Best thing since, uh, sliced bread 

Things were looking good: I got the desserts and cranberry sauce done on Tuesday (no apple(sauce) pie this year), and I rose bright and early Wednesday to tackle the stuffing, secure in the knowledge that only a natural disaster could wreck our holiday at this point. Planning is important. Planning prevents chaos. I'm a planner, and I had this down, chairs or no chairs.

So tell me, dear reader, does a broken dishwasher count as a natural disaster? Because that's right, THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, my dishwasher decided to stop draining. Larry - who's usually the "call the repairman" type - spent 2 hours watching YouTube videos in an attempt to fix it himself, because we both knew we weren't going to be seeing a repairman until after the holiday. But the dishwasher refused to yield to Larry's desperate ministrations, and we had to face the fact that our nice relaxed holiday was going to be replaced with one where I was haranguing the kids to wash dishes and not use any extra forks. Not quite the laidback vibe I was looking for, you know?

As a result, I'm not sure our neighbors will want to come back next year, even though I DID return their chairs. We've still got a couple of Rachel's, though. You know, just until we find something else. Yeah, that's it...

It's Finally Fall, Y'All

I do not understand how we can be closing in on the END of 2024. I mean, what the heck?

Gratuitous Acadia picture, why not?

July and August here were typically humid and hot and full of mosquitoes and OMG someone shoot me if I don't come up with a plan to get out of here for at least 3 weeks next summer, okay? There's nothing like having to put on mosquito repellent as soon as you get up because a mosquito that sneaked into the house last night is still there somewhere and IT WILL FIND YOU while you try to eat breakfast and make some tea and just generally start your day.

September was less humid but still filled with mosquitoes, but that didn't stop us from holding a lovely and very lowkey outdoor wedding (YES A WEDDING) for Rachel, who - if you will just glance over at that sidebar there - is 22 now and legally allowed to get married, although I know you all will agree with me that that is just ridiculous because wasn't she just 9 or so? 

Wedding cake, yum

Luckily, she grew into a young woman with a very sensible take on weddings - she opted to rent a local park pavilion and have food catered by a BBQ truck owner and order a reasonably priced dress online. Susie did the table decorations (flowers from Trader Joe's artfully arranged in mason jars) and created a playlist, and we dug up a working bluetooth speaker and ordered tablecloths/paper plates etc. from Amazon. Even more astonishing than the fact that Rachel has become a married woman is that absolutely EVERYTHING went as planned and the weather was lovely and all the siblings managed to show up for the occasion.

Seriously, where is the blog material in THAT?

Before the wedding Larry and I headed up to Acadia National Park and camped for a week on that lovely island or peninsula or whatever it is and hiked and biked (which was hell, because I hadn't really biked for two years, what with surgeries and such) and ate doughnuts and generally acted like the carefree empty nesters that we now are.

Another Acadia view, we had to work for this one

Empty nesters?  Why, yes, yes we are - Susie (THE BABY) transferred to a state university this past August and left Larry and I sitting around our (now) reasonably spacious townhouse wondering what the hell happened to the last 32 years or so. Folks, it is simply shocking. Also? A relief, because honestly we are feeling quite old and tired at this point. 

The house being full for the wedding mid-September, the delightful empty-nestedness of our situation did not hit us until a few weeks ago. And then I got to go cat sit for Brian in Philly, which was also delightful, because I essentially had a free Airbnb complete with HBO Max; and because I hadn't paid any money for my lodgings, I didn't feel as if I had to make the most of my time by seeing all the local sights. 

Instead, I spent a few of the most deliciously carefree days I have had in over 3 decades, hanging out with a cat and knitting and (finally) watching Hacks, all while NOT feeling like there was something else I needed to be doing at the moment. Is this how everyone else feels on regular vacations? I'm jealous.

Everyone meet Truffle, my grandkitty

I also met up with an old college friend who lives in Philly and whom I hadn't seen in 36 years. Now, this could have gone sort of badly, so I braced myself for the awkwardness of meeting up with someone who could essentially have become a perfect stranger. But instead? It was a perfect afternoon, one where it felt that no time at all had passed since 1988; and it was made even better when he pulled out a photo album full of pictures of us and our friends from our college days.

People, I have absolutely zero pictures of myself between the ages of 15 and 27. Nothing. Zip. Nada. I didn't own a camera, most of my friends didn't, either, and also, in case you don't remember, people back then just didn't take a heck of a lot of pictures, not unless they were on vacation or at a special event. Seeing these photos was like meeting an older version of myself, someone I had pretty much forgotten over the ensuing decades. 

Naturally, I scanned in some of the photos and sent them to the kids with a "See? I had friends and we all had FUN" comment; but truth to tell, our version of fun looks rather antiquated compared to what my concert-going, air-travel-savvy offspring are doing today. I mean, there were pictures of us dressed up for Halloween while serving food at the university dining hall (I had cat ears) and pictures of a birthday party we held for my friend one year, complete with a homemade cake and balloons and not much else. In my kids' eyes, we might as well have been having a taffy pull or riding horse-drawn sleighs, I guess.

What my kids picture my youthful fun to be like

But it was OUR fun and I am so glad to remember it, because sometimes I get too focused on the immediate present (essentially jobless, empty nest, getting older - have I ever mentioned I'm sort of negative?) instead of pulling back and getting a bit more perspective on my life as a whole. 

(Anyone else mentally flashing to Clarence the angel saying, "You really did have a wonderful life, George..."? No, just me? Okay, I'm a bit obsessed with that movie, just carry on)

So yes, this month I went to a new city where I enjoyed a smashing do-nothing vacation AND reclaimed my youth. Pretty good for just the price of a train ride, isn't it?

Travels With Old People

Well! I seem to have inadvertently taken the summer off from writing, but I blame the humidity. I've been blaming the humidity for pretty much everything the past few months, come to think of it. 

For my birthday in June, however, Larry and I got on a plane (AGAIN) and flew to Seattle to visit newly retired friends and also to see David in his natural habitat. 

I had THE nicest socks in the TSA line, thank you

Now, we all know that David is a typically taciturn engineer (although with a smashingly deadpan sense of humor, I must say), but he outdid himself this time. I carefully selected an Airbnb and sent him the location to see if it was a safe area and he texted back yes, that it was a decent location to stay in, and AT NO POINT in our discussion did he mention that it was a mere 3 blocks from where he lives. There was no "Yes, that's perfect, you can walk to my place!" or "Yes, totally safe, I LIVE RIGHT THERE," nothing like that.

So we were pleasantly surprised, is what I'm saying, when we reached our lodgings and figured things out.

But first we rented a car and drove west and north from Seattle to see our retired friends, who live in a place that felt as though it were at the northern reaches of the world. The air was so clear! The pines smelled so...pine-y! The snowcapped Olympic mountains loomed in the distance while water surrounded us on the other side! Having just escaped a typical DC heat wave, with its concomitant humidity, Larry and I kept exclaiming in wonder, "The sun is warm, but the air is cool!" over and over, like the pathetic climate refugees that we were.

Mountains! Water! No humidity!

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having friends who retire to marvelous places.

We sat on their lovely deck, where we were NOT swarmed by mosquitoes, and they drove us to beautiful views of water and mountains, and we ate at a marvelous lunch stand that sold only hotdogs. It was as if we had escaped from the circles of hell (forgive the hyperbole, but OMG have you been in DC in the summer?) and found ourselves in the Elysian fields. 

Confluence of Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in case you couldn't tell

After a few days, we joined David in Seattle. David had planned a hike on Mt. Rainier for my birthday, which entailed our getting up at 4:30 in the morning -- on my BIRTHDAY -- and driving 5000 feet up to the visitor center starting point. 

"Where's the trail?" I asked, getting out of the car and praying I wouldn't get a migraine from the altitude. 

"There," David said, pointing.

"Um, where?"

"There, under the snow," he explained.

Snow. On my birthday. Which was sort of neat, considering my birthday is the first day of summer, but OMG have you ever hiked in snow? Luckily, David had some spiky things I could fit on the bottom of my boots, without which I wouldn't have made it more than 10 yards; still, I couldn't help concluding after an hour or so that he and his siblings had decided that 61 was old enough and it was time to just leave me on an ice floe somewhere.

My ice floe - at least it's scenic, right?

Also, apparently mountains out west are VERY HIGH. Even though we set out at 5000 feet, we still weren't going anywhere near the top. There were ridiculously majestic views everywhere, so I guess that didn't matter, but there was also nowhere to really sit down on our hike and take a break while enjoying those views. "Where are the rocks?" I kept asking, "I need to sit DOWN," and finally, about halfway back down, David explained, "They're under the snow," as though I should have known that all along, and then, seeing my confusion, he explained further, "The snow is VERY DEEP."

Folks, I thought we were walking on maybe 8 inches of packed-down snow that hadn't melted yet. But David took out some handy dandy hiker's measuring tool and demonstrated that we were walking on top of about 7 feet of snow and I cannot even describe what that did to my brain.

"So, there are BIG rocks under here?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around this new info and also trying not to panic at the thought of all that snow.

"Yes," he said, and then gestured to what I had been referring to as the tiny trees all around us. "Those are treeTOPS," he said, and then stared quizzically at me as I sort of flipped out. I swear to God, the West is simply a whole other planet.

Typical majestic view, ho-hum

So that was my birthday, and I survived, but I felt about 80 years old by the end of it. The next two hikes David took us on were progressively shorter, thank goodness, as he gradually realized that he had aging parents visiting him. Still, shorter is a relative term. First we hiked 2.5 miles UP (which means we also had to hike 2.5 miles DOWN) to see a mountain lake shrouded in fog and surrounded by snow-covered pines and looking exactly like the place Eustace turns into a dragon in The Dawn Treader (sorry, folks, IYKYK). Another day we hiked 2 miles UP (AGAIN) to some famous falls, the last part of the hike being about 9 flights of stairs, essentially, and even all my years of townhouse living did not prepare me for that sort of a test (see above re feeling 80).

Here there be dragons...

We also ate ice cream and wandered around Seattle and I did my best to act like a carefree tourist, but that really doesn't come naturally to me. Also, I needed naps. So it was more like Larry was hauling around a cranky 3-year-old half the time. Or a cranky 80-year-old, really...

The trip was marvelous and exhausting and went pretty much according to plan, which is a real shocker, actually, and boy we hated to leave that gorgeous weather and boy did we need to come home and just lie down for a spell. I think I like traveling, but it sure is exhausting.

And I'll leave you with that, even though there is more to tell (like all of July and August, but hey...), because I am currently suffering from a sinus infection and the medicine they gave me is making me feel puke-y and I need to go email the doctor and try to get something else, good Lord I sound old, don't I?

Checking In

Many thanks to those of you who reached out wondering how things are going after my surgery! The procedure went smoothly, although the nice young medical tech who took me back to pre-op and asked me what I was going into surgery for looked a tad taken aback when I announced, "I'm getting new boobs!" in a manic sort of way.

Strawberry season! Takes the sting out of post-op, it does...

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of thinking this wasn't "real" surgery, because they were adding something, not taking something away like the last two times. This, my friends, was a really dumb assumption. Granted, things didn't hurt for as long as they did after last year's boobectomy, but I still couldn't use either arm to push myself up from a lying-down position, I couldn't knit for long because somehow that irritated the stitches, I couldn't do DuoLingo on my phone without ending up in pain, and - quite frankly - there isn't much else to do when you are supposed to be lying around and convalescing.

So I was pretty cranky for a while there. Somewhere along the second week post-op, I sat up most of the night crying because I was doomed to spending the rest of my life in unceasing discomfort; but then I went to sleep around 5:30 AM and woke up at 9 feeling just fine. It's always darkest before the dawn, I guess.

The week before the surgery, I intuited that our washer was about to break (something about the fact that we had to keep nudging it along during the wash cycle and it was taking us hours to finish a load), so I expeditiously ordered a new set from Home Depot to be delivered the Saturday before I got my new boobs, so everything would go smoothly. And I decided to save money: electric dryers are cheaper than gas dryers, so I ordered an electric one this time. 

Sure enough, the next day our valiant washer gave up the ghost, as it were, but there was no need to panic - we could surely manage 2 days until the new one arrived. Good thing I was so proactive! Yay, me! Proactive and thrifty!

After 48 hours of my patting myself on the back, the delivery guys arrived with our new appliances and informed us that they couldn't hook anything up because they weren't authorized to disconnect a gas dryer. They also told us we needed an electrician to put the right type of outlet in for the new electric dryer. 

In short, things were NOT going to go smoothly, after all.

Laundromat-core, it's our new vibe

So then we had to pay for our HVAC guy AND an electrician to show up, which means I was not really seeing those anticipated cost savings of going with the electric dryer. I'll give Larry some credit here, he has said NOTHING, but this whole situation? It is costing me an untold number of marriage points.

Theo and wife and baby have been here for the past couple of weeks, because they are between leases, and it has been fun to have a baby in the house again, especially when I am not the one obligated to get up all night to feed and change her. The baby does insist we pick her up and keep her on the move, though, as she cannot quite get around on her own yet. One day, while her parents worked from our house, I racked up 24,000 steps BY NOON, just walking her around and around the neighborhood, which excess of activity almost killed me.

Babies are adorable but exhausting, is what I'm saying, and I have no idea how I managed to raise 6 of them. I feel very, very old.

In other exciting news, I completely remade my bedroom by buying a new duvet cover and pillowcases. Cheapest makeover ever, highly recommend. 

Colorful! Cheery! 

Coming soon: Susie (MY BABY) will be leaving for college, making us officially empty nesters. Larry and I will fly to the Pacific Northwest to see David in his natural habitat. Peach jam-making is also planned, which I know makes for riveting copy. Stay tuned!