Monday, May 04, 2020

Looking At Life Through Red-Colored Glasses

That peaceful nap on the couch? Hasn't happened yet. One blessedly uneventful day continues to blur into the next, so I guess it's like being at sea for a month or so, right? Only with Netflix, of course...

So I thought, Hey, I'll just look at my camera roll on my phone and see what the photos tell me we've been doing! You know, all those photos I've been taking?

There were three since I last posted. THREE. Here's one:

Larry bought me flowers, cheeky devil that he is
That's on my desk. I spend 40 hours a week there. I don't mind, because I get paid and hey, what else am I going to do? Also, it gives me an excuse to go into a room by myself and shut the door, because OMG I was not made to interact with people 16 or more hours a day.

But I lose my office in another week, when Brian comes home. I also have to move a lot of the yarn out of there, since I assume he won't like having his nightstand drawers filled with my collection of fingering weight yarn, and I'm betting the bookshelf loaded with bags of unfinished knitting projects won't exactly be his idea of good interior design, either.

See that plastic tumbler up there? I wrote about buying 6 of those from the clearance shelf at Target 6 1/2 years ago. Last time Benjamin was home, he managed to get 3 of them stuck together and someone ended up throwing them out (not me, I was waiting to figure out how to get them apart). The other three have become oddly misshapen and the only thing we can figure is that our new dishwasher runs hotter than the two previous ones on the drying cycle and is melting them when we put them in the bottom rack.

Normally, I could count on finding some more on the clearance shelf during my regular trip to Target, but that's not how life works now. In fact, I can't remember the last time I was even inside a Target. So the fact that these tumblers have been ruined is all mixed up with the fact that EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT from the time a younger, more carefree version of myself plucked them off the shelf 6 1/2 years ago.

Which explains how I can possibly feel weepy over 3 plastic tumblers that cost me 50 cents each...

Another picture:

Fancy lunch one day this week
Food is all we think about. Not because we're starving or anything, but because it's the only interesting part of the day. We talk about plans for lunch and plans for dinner. It reminds me of when all the kids were little and we couldn't afford activities for them, so cooking was our main source of amusement. Anna made a roasted eggplant and pepper salad for dinner tonight. I marinated steaks and chicken and Larry fussed over his new grill as if we were an old retired couple with nothing else to do. Susie made guacamole for appetizers.

It's weird, all right? Also, over the course of the past year or so, I finally weaned myself from having a month's supply of food at the ready, because, hey, the grocery store is right down the road and I can go there anytime and pick up anything I need, right?

Apparently, WRONG. That's not how life works now.

Larry's excited about the grill, because it is the first one we've owned that we actually bought new. The others were all old ones either left by the side of dumpsters or gifted to us by departing neighbors. So, yeah, new dishwasher, new grill - we're trying to help the faltering economy. I also almost got a new vacuum today, but unfortunately Larry managed to find the sock that got stuck in the one I have, so I missed out on that opportunity.

Vacuum cleaners sound really weird when there is a sock stuck in them.

I'm glad it's working, though, because otherwise I don't have anything to chase centipedes with. Usually I'll send Larry after them, but not if he's already asleep, so that's when I need the vacuum. We did have to wake Larry up this evening, however, because a wasp showed up in Rachel's room and we all immediately started yelling "Murder Hornet!" I mean, it's 2020 - what else could that thing be?

Maybe just a wasp, but he chased it around and it sounded like quite a ruckus in there, because the room was a little chaotic to begin with, and it didn't get any better as Larry tripped over stuff in an attempt to get at the wasp, and it reminded me of the scene in Annie Hall where she calls Alvie over at 3 AM to get a spider out of her bathroom:


Larry didn't manage to get the wasp/hornet/whatever, so now Rachel is sleeping in my office/yarn room, and I'm thinking maybe I'll just look up the prices of studio apartments in the area. A room of one's own is starting to sound pretty darn appealing to me right about now. I mean, as long as there are no bugs...

Third photo - can you guess? Of course you can:

Not tired of it yet

I wonder if we'll still like homemade bread after this whole pandemic/social distancing/shelter in place thing is over or if it will just remind us of this weird, weird time. Like the smell of Lysol, maybe...


10 comments:

  1. I'm impressed you managed to blog! I've had so little to say (maybe because my husband does all of the shopping and most of the cooking these days). I have to ask, though, who is Abigail?

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  2. I thought not knowing Abigail was just me. We had a set of clear plastic tumblers for a few years. Bit by bit they broke or went missing. There was one that was a weird shape. I usually claimed that one each morning so I would know which cup was mine. Coach gets grouchy when people use several cups a day - with 8 of us living here it makes for an overflowing dishwasher. So, everyone is supposed to use one cup ONLY. Guess how often that happens?

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    1. For a long time, I color coded the kids (we had the plastic IKEA cups, 6 different colors). Now, when the older kids come to visit, they each get a different-colored rubber band on their drinking glasses. They're so used to it, they usually pull a rubber band out of the drawer as soon as they take a glass from the cabinet!

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    2. Brilliant. I did finally buy a set of 6 different colored tumblers and they each have an assigned color. This works great until they grab an extra clear cup for a different beverage. Makes Coach come unglued. The man has stacks of paperwork on either side of his recliner but clutter a kitchen with excess cup use and watch out. We were definitely not meant to all be home in each other's space constant. Sigh.

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    3. I force my children and husband to use water bottles--even though they're all well past the age where they need the equivalent of a sippy cup. But it saves my sanity. I use one, too--though I ripped part of the lid off so it doesn't close tightly so my husband doesn't steal it and take it outside (never to be seen again) for a workout.

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  3. I thought I was on the cusp of breaking The Husband's food stockpiling before this all went down - all that progress down the drain in one fell swoop.

    I know it's not the same as wandering through Target - but their delivery is awesome if you don't mind wandering on the website....

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  4. Your food sounds delicious. Luckily, in the past year, we managed to set up a 12-mo pantry system in our basement so my husband could stock up on food when it was a good deal and it also helps us rotate stock. It's been invaluable during this shopping challenged period.

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  5. I've been killing spiders upon request, although there was a separate ant-spraying task force that may not have been activated - if all areas of the house had not become home offices.
    Do you have a cyberbreach reporting obligation to the totally paranoid but cute privacy officer (TPBCPO)? Or just seeing if he catches up on the comments.
    Does Brian need nightstand drawers as much as fingering weight yarn does? Or the Gideon Society?

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  6. We used to fly by the seat of our pants, grocery wise and just shop each week. No more! This pandemic has taught me to stock up and also to learn to improvise in recipes because it's not 2019 anymore when I could just run out to the store real quick for an onion. And wasps - We had an issue with wasps flying in our kitchen and come to find out, there was a small nest on the underside of a chair cushion on our back patio and the little suckers were coming in through an opening in the doggie door. Fred was very brave and rehomed them by flinging the nest over the back wall. I should add, there's no neighbors behind us. We hosed the cushion off and put it back and a couple weeks later, they built another one. I had to remove the cushion altogether and so far they haven't come back. All your creative meals sound delicious!

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