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!

Boobapalooza

 Whew, 5 months! That's my longest gap yet - I guess this blog is slowly seeing itself out. That's okay - everything good must end sometime.

But not yet!

I'm up late tonight because I'm not scheduled to go in for my new-boobs surgery until almost noon tomorrow (well, now that's today, really). I figure it's better to go to bed late and sleep in, rather than get up with the sun and sit around and wait and NOT EAT ANYTHING. That makes sense, right? 

Medicinal, guess why

New boobs, guys! I was scheduled for early February but lost that surgery date due to COVID, which was sort of a blow. But hey, it's warmer weather now, which means I'll be able to wear my wonderful pajamas during convalescence without freezing to death. Silver lining!

And Larry doesn't have a broken collarbone this time - bonus!

[My inner Pollyanna is obviously working overtime here. It's a compulsion of sorts, I guess.]

But enough about my boob surgery, let's talk about being unemployed, because that's fun, too. You know, you'd think it would be easy to remain detached while applying to one or two jobs a week for, oh, MORE THAN THREE YEARS, but after a while? The whole process does bad things to your psyche, zero stars, do not recommend. Still, in January, I finally landed 2 interviews, and I was all "Jackpot! Hurrah, my ship has come in! Persistence pays off!" and I was busy planning my schedule and eyeing my work wardrobe, because why not count ALL the chickens before they hatch, right? 

Dear Reader, no one wanted me to work for them [insert sad trombone sound right here, thanks]. That, plus the surgery being postponed (THANKS COVID), sorta broke me, so I've been sitting here mostly moping and knitting for, oh, 3 months now. Also, buying more yarn with all the money I'm NOT going to be earning, which makes a heck of a lot of sense, I know.

Pictured: FIVE knitting projects, all at once

But hey, it's only a matter of time before me and my new boobs will be making our way back into the job market and I'm sure we will just be killing it out there, no problem. In the meantime, I've still got my one shift a week at the Container Store, which is more like being paid to go to the gym with friends, what with all the lifting of boxes and carrying of boxes and climbing ladders and talking we do -- so much so that I pretty much forget I HAVE a job of sorts.

It really is a ridiculous amount of fun, except for the getting up at 4 AM part. Yeah, 4 AM, ouch.

So what else is happening? Well, there's a grandbaby of mine out there who is doing an excellent job of getting fatter and learning to make cute baby noises, and aren't you happy now that this blog has always had a "no personal pictures" policy? No danger of my spamming you all with dozens and dozens of baby photos, whew! 

Theo and his wife quite rudely kidnapped my grandchild to Florida for 3 whole months this past winter by using a combination of parental leave and remote work, KIDS THESE DAYS, so we didn't get to enjoy her much until they came back in March. Larry and I (thinking I'd be having surgery in February) did hop on a plane and fly down to see her for a few days in January, and as Larry buckled in he said, "This is weird - I'm not on business and no one is dying." And I said, "You know what is weirder? We've never flown together before, ever."

So there we were, Ma and Pa Kettle, getting on a plane JUST FOR FUN as though we were fancy folk or something. Seriously, it was hard to wrap our heads around the whole concept.

At least we didn't try to take the auto train, right? So that's progress.

Florida has weird signs

Florida was disappointingly chilly, but we stayed in a cute Airbnb walking distance to town and to a really good BBQ place, and we saw the baby, so we considered the whole trip worth it until I started coming down with COVID the day we flew home (apologies to the nice gentleman sitting next to my double-masked self on the plane).

Judging from the photos on my phone, it seems that Christmas did indeed happen here, complete with a tree and food (including cranberry bread, of course) and presents. I vaguely recall an unfortunate almost-incident between Anna's dog and Uncle Matt's dog, but things were otherwise festive. 

Anna has no rules against posting doggo photos, I believe

I bought a gingerbread house kit for a Christmas Day activity but no one here wanted to be fun, so I hung on to it for 3 months until I could convince a neighbor to take it. I told her that she could tell her kids it was the Easter Bunny's house. I mean, sort of, right? Just squint a little...

Throw some jellybeans on that roof and you're set

Okay, great to type at you again, but it's already 3:30 AM, which is insane. Good night, all, and see you on the other side (I hope)!

A Rather Anticlimactic Reveal

Random fall photo, why not?

For months, I have held a secret close to my (recently remodeled) chest, but I whiled away that time by devising with my writerly brain the best way to eventually tell you all about it. Bury the lead? Make fun of my age? Wonder at the passing of time? Or all of the above? 

Yeah, maybe that last one.

But then everything went sideways, and this blog was the last thing on my mind, as I was busy cooking food and taking it to the hospital for a couple of traumatized new parents. Plus? I had no energy to write, since it was taking all that energy to suppress any thought of how the heck could I comfort a grown child of mine through the unthinkable, if things continued going sideways.

But they didn't, the world (or my world, anyway) righted itself, thanks be to God: Theo and his wife (no blog name, STILL?) managed - after a harrowing 19 days - to bring home a (finally) bouncing baby girl, who has the sweetest voice and prettiest eyes and seems to harbor no ill will toward them for all the poking and prodding and other indignities she was subjected to during the first few weeks of her life.

I'm a grandmother, y'all. How the heck did that happen? 

No baby pics allowed here, so instead the blanket and hats I knit for her

Oddly enough, grandmother life feels largely like pre-grandmother life, so far, since the baby is too little to read Sandra Boynton books to or play at the park with; the most fun, instead, has been watching my own child turn into a dad who now walks around saying things like "I'm sure glad we have good insurance" and who spends all his spare time cooing at his baby and taking pictures to post on the family chat.

At some point the siblings are probably going to tell him to stop with the photos already, but not just yet - last month was too scary, so Theo gets a pass for now. FOR NOW.

A neighbor brought Larry and I a gift to celebrate our new status:

Subtle, right?

Whenever I see those mugs, I think, "What are those doing here in my house?" and then I remember. This whole thing is going to take some getting used to, folks...

And...Thanksgiving happened! Do I have photos of the entire family (minus Rachel, who went on a super-excellent girls weekend instead) gathered for the holiday? I DO NOT. Instead, mostly all I have are pictures of Brussels sprouts and pies and I think cranberry bread, because you know the first thing my grown grandchildren will say to their parents will be "Gosh, I hope we have pictures of baked goods to go in this family album I'm putting together for posterity." 

And yes, my precious (and mostly theoretical) descendants, you will - a camera roll full, it seems:

Good ol' Uncle Cranberry Bread, showed up for every Thanksgiving

Insides were disappointingly mushy, total fail, no one wants applesauce pie

This is actually an action shot, as I was cooking them at the time

And that was our Thanksgiving, with most of the kids arriving last minute (which made it more exciting but left the cooking primarily to me) and staying briefly, since they have their own lives and their own pets to get back to and all that. I took Thanksgiving Day off and let everyone else finish the cooking, so the arrangement really wasn't that bad, actually. But I've already planned takeout and cookies for Christmas, that's it, no muss no fuss. I'M DONE.

Ain't No Sunshine When I'm Gone

 Nothing more terrifying than a blank page, people, which may be why I missed a September update. Or maybe it's because nothing happened here except more of the same, so why bother? Or maybe I just misplaced my sense of humor, for no particular reason. I mean, I misplace my phone and my glasses constantly, so it would make sense I could lose other things, too.

Also managed to lose one of the handknit mitts from this set 😢

Whatever, here's what's been going on, in no particular order:

Larry and I made our annual trek up to Acadia National Park in September. We dragooned Anna and Brian (self-sufficient adults who live in a different city, so obviously they were just humoring us) into going with us, promising beautiful views and magnificent sunsets and all that.

Or...maybe not

Please understand, Larry and I have been taking various members of the family up to Acadia for YEARS now, camping, staying in rental cottages, whatever, and it has ALWAYS been pretty much picture perfect weather, no matter when we go: August, September, October, maybe a rainy day here or there, but nothing to interfere with hiking and kayaking and biking.

Not that either of us was getting on a bike this year, but still...

This year, though, was true to form for 2023, I guess, as in not quite what we expected. Yup, it was cloudy and rainy almost the whole time we were up there. The rain was intermittent but frequent enough that anywhere we would want to climb to get to a view stayed wet and slippery (it's mostly granite there). 

Wait, did I say "view"? There was no view, it was all gray sky and gray water, blending into each other in a very monochromatic way. We slogged through one wet hike near the beginning of the week and tried to ooh and aah over the misty non-vistas, but our hearts weren't really in it. 

Yes, the rocks are pretty, but still...

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot to appreciate, but the mist and the drizzle just did not stop. I mean, you see one stand of pine trees shrouded in fog, you've seen them all, I guess.

Yeah, okay, this is pretty, too, I know

Midweek, in desperation, we took a shuttle bus to the top of Cadillac Mountain, thinking we could see something even if we didn't want to risk a hike on the still-wet rocks. But the only something(s) we saw were shadowy figures wandering around the ridge in the mist, looking for all the world like ghost hikers, haunting the foggy mountaintops and searching in vain for a view. 

Hike of the Damned, amirite?

Reader, we joined them. We marched around in the misty drizzle, pretending we were having fun until it started pouring rain again and we had to share the shuttle back down the mountain with 10 very soggy and sweaty people who had managed to hike up before the downpour. Zero stars, do not recommend.

And then? Friday dawned, heartbreakingly gorgeous, bright sun and cool air and bright blue water everywhere you looked, true Acadia weather:

FRIDAY

But we couldn't take advantage of it, because we had to leave a day early to avoid 

....*checks notes*...

A HURRICANE?

Yes, apparently a hurricane was heading straight for the distinctly nontropical little peninsula we were vacationing on, so that was that. Home we went.

And the above is probably why I couldn't write in September, I knew I would just whine about our vacation plans gone awry, which sounds so utterly spoiled, I know. Also, this is why I never want to spend money to fly all the way to Europe (which, judging from Facebook and Instagram, absolutely everyone else in the world has done in the past 6 months): what if the weather is bad, or I can't get over jetlag, or I JUST DON'T LIKE IT? 

Also, I want to go see interesting places, but I also want to sleep in my own bed at the same time. This attitude presents a major obstacle to travel, I know. I'm working on it.

Earlier, in August, we held a birthday party for Rachel (Remember? Stuffed-animal decapitating Rachel?), who was turning 21 and does not seem to have retained any of her youthful terrorist tendencies. She likes dinosaurs, so we celebrated in an appropriate manner:

Filled with air, not candy - I never did like the pinata scene

Look, we tried, okay?

And at some other point in August, I gained an entire closet, because Larry loaded up the van with all of Brian's Legos that we stored for him all through college and drove them up to Philadelphia, where he somewhat unceremoniously deposited the zillions of plastic bricks in Brian's new apartment, which is very modernist in an industrial sort of way (it's in a refurbished munitions factory) and looks for all the world like he's living in a Chipotle.

When I say  "entire closet," I am not exaggerating

I managed to stick the outdoor folding chairs and some bike equipment in my newly acquired storage space before Larry filled the rest with things like kayak and canoe paddles. I didn't really want to share, but I like staying married, and hey, at least they're not lying around my guest room or laundry room.

Also in August, Susie came home from her Americorps adventure (terrific FREE experience, highly recommend) and promptly moved into the basement guest room, so she could at least pretend she wasn't living with us this year while she does community college courses and plans her next steps. This worked out great for me, since she took all the junk Larry had been keeping in the guest room closet and unceremoniously dumped it onto the basement family room floor for him to deal with, something I never could have gotten away with (see above re staying married).

Susie also went back part time to Trader Joe's, so yay, we get to use her 20% discount once more. Happy days are here again, I hum softly to myself as I look upon our bounty of seasonal butternut squash mac-and-cheese and pumpkin biscotti. Combined with my 40% Container Store discount, we are living large, people, LIVING LARGE.

And, yay, I've gotten all the way through this post without whining about the boobapalooza I've been experiencing this summer! I feel almost normal, and I can twist lids off jars and pull out a heavily loaded dishwasher rack and do all the other things I never knew I needed my pectoral muscles for. No date set yet for removing the expanders and putting the implants in, but I've reconciled myself to the fact that, what with 2023 continuing to be 2023, the surgery is probably going to be messing up one major holiday or another.

Listen to me, being all zen about things! Maybe the surgeries this year have given me a fresh outlook on life, a new appreciation of the randomness of it all, a sense of carpe diem, as it were.

Or maybe I'm just prevaricating and am not zen about this at all. 

Yeah, that's it, that's definitely it.