The Resumé Of Eternal Youth

 Oh, look, it's spring! Sort of...

Poor things will have snow on them by Saturday

The weather can't make up its mind, which is standard for March around here. I do not want to leave February behind without giving credit where credit is due: Larry (unlike last year) absolutely won Valentine's Day 2022. I don't have photos, so you'll have to just believe me when I say that he planned ahead, going to a specific deli in town to pick up authentic New York Italian bakery cookies, a box of fancy wrapped chocolates, AND (believe it or not) a Valentine's Day card with a camping theme, into which he glued a picture of our camper he had printed.

I KNOW, right? This all made me look particularly bad, since - even though I had picked up some sweets for him way ahead of time - I was reduced to rummaging through the junk in my desk the night before to find (amazingly enough) a Valentine's Day card (unused) from ALDI last year. Oh, he was smug! And I don't blame him.

Unfortunately, we've still got this going on, SINCE JANUARY:

Dishwasher remains broken

Home Depot has offered to buy me out (i.e., give me the original purchase price plus tax of my dishwasher), since one of the parts they ordered isn't expected until April and who knows if that will ever really show up, global affairs being what they are, and hey, I am NOT going through WWIII without a dishwasher, dammit. 

...to buy a dishwasher

So I looked up what dishwashers cost now, and - even if I buy the cheap Best Buy house brand - I'll still be out about $200 anyway, once installation and haul away and a new protection plan are purchased. This is, to be honest, discouraging, but I guess I'll end up paying it. SOMEONE's got to keep this economy going, and it looks as though that someone? Is me.

After a month of handwashing dishes and trying to convince my kids that one of them should accompany me in the camper van to visit Uncle Matt in Florida, I set off on my own (with a promise from Anna that she'd stay at our house a few days to make sure Larry ate something other than roasted peanuts for dinner), and you know what? It was really fun! The camper is cozy to sleep in, and - since I can just lock myself in for the night - feels super safe, even when I am alone.

Woke up to a marvelous South Carolina sunrise

I haven't gone away in February since, oh, 1988, when I went to Florida for Navy basic training. So I knew intellectually that things are warmer down south this time of year, but somehow I was still pleasantly surprised to arrive in Georgia and see people wandering around in shorts and eating ice cream outdoors and generally enjoying life. IN FEBRUARY.

It's enough to make me a southerner, I'll tell ya.

I visited my brother's new house and marveled at the palm trees and exotic wildlife and went biking with him on the shore road that he swore had no traffic (but it did, PLENTY) to the park that he said was only 6 miles away (more like 10, I quit at 8.5 - I just wasn't used to the heat). I used the (blessedly car-free) sidewalk to bike back to our parking spot, a sidewalk populated by many geriatric pedestrians you couldn't just yell "PASSING LEFT" at without giving them a heart attack, so it was slow going, but I made it. Barely.

Susie calls these "Dr. Seuss trees," and she's right

And then I drove even farther south to visit some friends/neighbors who had moved to the Miami area a few years ago. The husband showed off his nifty solar system he'd had installed on the house, and I showed off my nifty camper van, and we were both suitably impressed by each other's new toy. They drove me to Key Biscayne, which was beautiful (do I have any good pictures? NO) and only reinforced my newfound notion that people down south really know how to live (at least, in February).

Also, their house was adorable and surrounded by the local wildlife:

Peacocks, loose, in the street - it's insane

All of this visiting and seeing new places was fun. The trip home? SO MUCH DRIVING. True, it wasn't any more driving than I had done on the way down, but somehow it seemed longer heading back. Maybe because I had no time left to stop somewhere else warm and fun. Instead, it was just a slow (and expensive - those gas prices!) slog back to the wintry north.

The most notable occurrence during the return trip was that I ended up in an RV park the first night, parked next to a miniature horse named Flash. I don't quite understand it. Georgia, I guess.

Luckily, you don't smell manure when you're inside a camper van

The second night I picked a nice quiet campground in North Carolina (with heated bathrooms, thanks be to God, because temps were dropping, and no livestock), and everything was perfect until the Boy Scout troop showed up. Still, I can't complain, as it was another comfy night in my camper van (have I mentioned my camper van?), with me all snuggled in with my heated mattress pad and my cozy blanket. Especially since there were those heated bathrooms...

My cozy nest (forgot my pillow, though)

I came home the next day to find the house still standing and Larry well fed, with leftovers in the fridge, so apparently I can get away with leaving home again. Which I might, since the dishwasher is still broken and prospective employers continue to not hire me (or even respond to my applications).  

In an attempt to remedy the unemployment situation, I spent this past Sunday revamping my resume to remove any hint of my age, so now anyone reading it would guess I'm maybe 35. What's silly is that I FEEL younger whenever I look at it. I'm an honest-to-God millennial, now, albeit without the typical millennial problems, I guess.

Larry and I aren't far from looking like this, actually

So now I am busy reapplying to a bunch of jobs and planning my next getaway should I (and my millennial resume) remain unwanted. Not sure how I'll pay for that gas, though...

Even Rice Krispie Treats Can Turn On You

 Hi! Not sure what happened to January - I guess I spent the whole month still learning to cook for two and doing my daily exercise videos (because, sorry, I don't jog fast enough to stay alive in 20-degree weather) and scrambling frantically to find a new plow guy for our neighborhood (signed the contract at 10 AM the morning of our first snow, if you want to know how close I cut that one). 

Seriously, I don't know why anyone lets me be in charge of anything around here. 

All my snow pictures came out really Ansel Adams looking

Oh, and I've been washing dishes, because guess what? The dishwasher (you know, the one that is less than 2 years old?) is broken. I'll give it credit - it kept going for 15 whole months after the previous repair, through a houseful of people and multiple holiday gatherings (including 2 Thanksgivings and Christmases). It waited until a celebration-free month with only 3 people in the household to conk out on me again, and for that I will be forever grateful. The bar is really low around here, I guess.

Luckily, we had bought the protection plan (because, yeah, we've been down this road before) (MANY TIMES) and the service people told me that it should be only a week or so to get the parts they think it needs, which sure as heck beats the 6-8 weeks it took in 2020, so I can't find it in my heart to complain about that, either. Maybe I'm just getting mellow in my old age. Or beaten down, really. It's like raising too many teens. The first one you're all "You're not leaving the house wearing that!" By the last one, you're just sending her internet memes making fun of her pants.

And I just got lost down memory lane by searching on "dishwasher" in this blog and looking for the right posts to link to in that last paragraph. Turns out, I have practically an entire book's worth of essays detailing the havoc wreaked on this household by malfunctioning appliances. Appliance stories - is there a market for that? Maybe it could be a subgenre of romance novels? Lord knows my heart has been broken multiple times by the shiny false promises of these unpredictable machines.

Or maybe I should just get a real job. Lord knows I'm trying, but no one wants me. Which situation is particularly demoralizing in a time of record low unemployment, etc. I mean, they must REALLY not want me. I even persevered and earned the Google IT Support Professional certificate, which I found doesn't so much qualify me to be a true IT person as it makes me someone who can almost understand what the IT guy is trying to tell me. But it does look nice and new and shiny on my resume, so there's that.

I am most certainly NOT competent

We had an unfortunate incident with Rice Krispie treats recently, wherein the marshmallows congealed too much and we ended up with an inedible mass shaped strangely like West Virginia. Susie insists that this was due to the fact that she had to use the regular-size marshmallows and not the mini ones. I informed her that in my day we only had the regular-size ones and we had to melt them while walking to school uphill in the snow and they still came out okay. Susie was unconvinced, but what does she know?

Gen Z'ers can't HANDLE the regular-size marshmallows

Oh, and a bunch of you had questions about our new camper van! It's made by Recon Campers, which is owned by a guy who is trying to replicate what is apparently quite common all over Europe - a small van that will fit in a city parking place or a garage but which can also be used to travel and sleep in. I guess Americans tend to go for the larger type of RV, but he is still finding quite a market among US urbanites who can't park a bigger vehicle or a trailer anywhere.

One owner called it the "Swiss Army knife of camper vans"

There are some videos on the website, and here is a video made by a Recon Envy owner that is pretty thorough. I do wish I could tell you how it is to camp in it, but it's been pretty darn cold ever since we got it in November, so we haven't had a chance to do that yet. Larry and I take day trips in it on the weekend, just to break it in, and sometimes I'll park it in the sun somewhere so I can watch on my nifty phone app as the solar panels feed into the house battery. 

Hey, everybody needs a hobby.

I'm hoping to take it south in February to visit my brother and am unsuccessfully trying to convince one of my grown children to accompany me. I mean, why would they not want to telework from sunny Florida for a few days, right? I'm trying not to take it personally that so far no one has taken me up on that offer. Trying.

Because COVID

New Year's Eve can be a sort of introspective time, but all I can think tonight is WTH were those last two years about? Was that even real? 

Susie's having some friends over for a sleepover, which was my counteroffer to her suggestion that I drive her to the high school homeschoolers' superspreader NYE party that is 45 minutes away. Larry and David are already asleep, as they have to get up at 3:30 to drive David to the airport. He was supposed to have left at 6 this evening, but there was a cancelled flight and all that. Because COVID.

Rockin' that interfaith vibe, as usual

All the kids were here for Christmas (David missed last year, because COVID). It was really nice, especially since everyone is old enough not to be crying all the time. (That's a low bar, I guess, but that's what having a bunch of kids will do to you.) We just sat around and traded presents and ate things and argued over whether the snickerdoodles tasted funny (they did - rancid flour). We're sort of a boring family, I guess.

This year I asked Larry (AGAIN) if he'd be willing to try an artificial tree so I wouldn't worry about the house burning down, and again he looked sad, so I said never mind, a real tree it is. 

But THEN I happened to score a 7.5-foot prelit artificial tree on our local Buy Nothing Group and set it up (all by myself, because it's EASY) and reassured Larry that if he didn't like it, we would go out and buy a real tree and give this one away.

Reader, the tree stayed. It makes me so happy, because I don't lie in bed envisioning its going up like a torch while we sleep. Also, we don't have to turn it this way and that to hide its bad side. And we don't have to string lights on it. It's awesome.

And free! Did I mention free?

The only thing we missed was that magical pine smell, so I ordered something called Scentsicles from Amazon. I was out when they arrived, so Susie followed the directions and hung all 6 on the tree. When - an hour later - I walked into the living room, it smelled as if a balsam bomb had detonated. Poor Larry was lying on the couch, looking somewhat dazed. "Get up!" I yelled, shaking him. "Get some air!" 

He threw open some windows while I focused on removing the skinny green scent bombs from the tree. I couldn't find them at first (skinny, and green) and had to throw on the KN95 mask I happened to have handy (because COVID) to continue searching. I found 3, which we sealed back up in their container and then in a Ziploc bag and threw outside, to be dealt with later (preferably by a professional in a hazmat suit).

It only helped a little, and it took the rest of the week to locate the remaining balsam bombs and dispose of them. Larry ended up buying a little wreath to put near the tree that would impart some (nonlethal) pine scent into the air.

Better than a Scentsicle, and YES the snowman is still there

Everyone but David was here for Chanukah, and Thanksgiving, too. It's all a blur. There were latkes and soofganyot (doughnuts) fried by Theo, and a guest at Thanksgiving (friend of Anna's) who was into Trivial Pursuit, so we were briefly a fun family that actually plays games when we gather. Miracles do happen. 

But the big news was earlier in November, when Larry and I welcomed our new bouncing baby camper van. Oh, yes, we did!

Small enough to fit in a townhouse parking space (and drive around town)

Big enough to camp in

I present to you Midlife Crisis (MC for short). Something about the past 2 years (hmmm, could it be...COVID?) brought home the fact that life is short and unpredictable and maybe we should get something like this now, instead of waiting until we were old and doddering or, uh, dead. It didn't help that while I was working the handicapped section of the vax centers earlier this year, I kept noting that the birth years of many of the people hobbling in with canes or walkers weren't all that far behind mine. I'm closing in on 60, people.

Absolutely no idea how that happened. 

So I won't get a remodeled kitchen (hey, the 1969 cabinets are old enough to qualify as chic vintage now, anyway), and there will be no new car (this will replace the 12-year-old minivan once it gives up the ghost). We thought long and hard before we ordered this thing earlier this year, but I was still shaking when I took delivery of it and drove it to our local garage for its inspection sticker. Should we have spent this much? Had we lost our COVID-addled minds?

The (habitually jaded) mechanics at the garage absolutely flipped out over this van. Every few minutes, another one would come up front and ask, "Is that yours? It's a camper?" The look in their eyes reminded me of the music critic who reviewed Bruce Springsteen back in the 70s by saying, "I have seen the future of rock and roll!" The jaded old guys at the desk went back to see it, too, and returned with the same look. So that was reassuring, I guess.

The kids still think we are crazy, though. But we don't care. Because COVID.

Kids These Days

"Oh, look!" I said to Susie, as I reached into the mailbox on our way into the house. "A postcard! What fun!"

"What's a postcard?" my formerly beloved youngest asked as she squinted at the rectangle of cardboard I was holding.

[She's gonna write a book someday: How To Make People Feel 100 Years Old in 5 Seconds Flat]

"It's, um, a picture you send in the mail! And you can write on the back, see?" I said, flipping this apparently archaic piece of correspondence over with my wizened 20th-century hand. "They're on vacation in Hawaii, and they're just saying hi!"

"But they can TEXT you a picture," Susie said, frowning in puzzlement. "Why didn't they just text you something?"

"Well, but this came from Hawaii, isn't that cool? Look at the postmark, it took nine whole days to get here! Gosh, I used to collect these..."

"Nine days? That's dumb - if they texted you a picture, it would get here in a minute. And it wouldn't cost anything," said Susie, shaking her head and proceeding through the door. "That doesn't make any sense."

Yeah, well, it USED to...

The Calm After The Storm

 Uh, anyone still here? Let me just brush these cobwebs off my chair here...

Gratuitous picture of homemade hummus

When last we chatted, 3 months ago, my area was suffering the 17-year cicada plague, which  IN THEORY should now be just a dim memory that - like all trauma - will hopefully fade with time... 

But it's NOT. You see, although the cicadas went away, their nymphs hatched in July, which thankfully I mostly couldn't see -- well, except for the ones covering my car windows, ugh -- but still, they were all going to burrow underground and THEN it would be over, right?

Wrong. It seems that the abundance of cicada nymphs leads to an abundance of microscopic arachnids called oak mites, who feed on the nymphs and then (here's the fun part) feed on people. And when they bite you, you get a huge red circle around the bite, which itches for a week. Even Larry, who seems largely immune to mosquitoes, is walking around sporting multiple red spots and slathering himself in Benadryl gel and hydrocortisone cream. 

I know, I had most of you at "microscopic arachnids."

These creatures bite through clothing. They bite you on the neck. I am currently sporting a lovely bite on my face and praying it goes away before I actually land a job interview. These oak mites seem to be here until the first frost, which now occurs - thanks to climate change - sometime in November.

So, yay! Hot and humid DC summer, now with oak mites! Come for the monuments, stay for the pestilence!

But the big news here? The really big news?

Everyone moved out this summer. OUT. Except Susie of course, who is still the baby, but even she had the temerity to turn 16 and get a job (at Chik-Fil-A, complete with cow mask). 

Sigh. I'm not allowed to post a picture, but I want to.  Here, have a pic of our new collection, instead:

These seem to be piling up in our house now

Anna, who came home in June to get immunized, managed to land a job in DC, so now she is living the young DC professional life (which means sharing a townhouse with 3 other young and underpaid DC professionals). Rachel moved out in July to a nearby apartment and is working full time. Brian went back to college last week.

So I am actually typing this from AN EMPTY HOUSE. It feels marvelous. But weird. 

The best part about this almost-empty nest? Loading the dishwasher. Folks, I never realized how much of my mental space was occupied by dishwasher calculus. Think about it: I had to figure out what would fit, what I would wash by hand, WHO USED ALL THESE GLASSES, etc., once or twice a day for years. 

That doesn't sound like a big deal, right? And it was just second nature for me. But now? Why, I just toss whatever's in the sink in the dishwasher, pop in the detergent, and start that thing up, no thinking required! 

I feel so carefree. Is this how it is supposed to be? And nobody told me?

My container garden on the back deck has gone absolutely insane. I am deluged with basil. Usually, half the plants die by mid-July because of fungus or rot or some other botanical nemesis, so I bought extra plants this year.  EIGHTEEN, to be precise. I wasn't messing around.

Is this real life? Or is it just fantasy?

I've lost only 2, however, which means I've ended up with a freezer full of pesto. And there is still lots of basil on the deck waiting to be transformed into pesto. My kids (remember, they all moved out?) are sick of my trying to force jars of frozen pesto on them. I also have 3 plants full of hot peppers and cherry tomato plants that just won't quit. I have NEVER been this horticulturally successful. 

It's as though I've turned into an old lady overnight, with my cute little deck garden, cooking cute little dinners for just me and Larry (Susie makes her own, unless I make something vegetarian). I've even got a floppy sunhat (mostly to fend off oak mites, but still...). 

Quiche - I'm cooking quiche now. Weird, right?

Is this how it ends, all the craziness and all those years of kids and vomit and mice? With quiche and sunhats and me sitting on the couch in the afternoon, basking in the peace and quiet? It feels like the end of a wild carnival ride, where you suddenly slow to a stop and can stop gripping your partner in sheer terror. Oh, it's over? Wow, that was fast. But I'll take it.

I guess I need to change my tagline, though...