Topsy-Turvy

So last year on this day there was snow on the ground.  It had snowed for Halloween and it had stuck. This year it's been a week of 70º or near 70º days. It's November and I have doors and windows open to let in the sun and warmth. Incroyable!

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Got word yesterday from the superintendents of schools saying that ALL elementary students will start back on November 30th. I think not. Thanksgiving celebrations are being forecast to be super-spreader events, the outcomes of which won't be entirely known until 14 days after Thanksgiving; December 10th, give or take. So no, we will not be sending our kids back to school on the 30th like sacrificial lambs to test the waters. Really, why do they bother pretending to make these plans when the science already says no.

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Aidric is taking food science this semester. Today's class consists of watching the teacher make egg noodles on his Chromebook screen. So sad!! If the kids were in school Aidric would be learning to make egg noodles, hands-on. Maybe he can retake the class at a later point. He really could have used this life skills class.

The Long Goodbye

Our dear neighbors around the corner from us/behind us are moving to South Carolina. Their house sold in under 14 days. Their house is almost exactly the same floor plan as ours except flipped - a mirror image. The one big difference in the houses is that their basement is finished and has a full bath in it, ours not so much.  They sold for a good price so, something to look forward to... someday.

Two weekends ago they had a garage sale and I went over to snoop and chat with Caroline. She had a beautiful leather armchair for sale for $15. I KNOW!! Right! I bought it for the guest room. A guest of ours once commented that it would be nice to be able to sit in 'her room' and read. Anyway, it's a lovely overstuffed chair and I'm very pleased with it. Sean and Aidric were not nearly as please since they had to load it on a dolly, walk it around the corner and then carry it up the stairs. Still, I like it.

They will close on the house on December 10th and then they will be gone. Caroline has texted me almost every day this week to ask if I wanted this or that other thing she ran across during her packing.  Blueprints for the house (albeit reverse of our house but still, useful), a bound copy of the HOA covenants and bylaws, a set of business cards she has for all the original workmen that she still calls for repairs on things (she figures if they built it they know its quirks and how to fix it), assorted odds and ends like tiles from the bathroom (exactly the same as ours), a manual for the jetted tub (same one) and a piece of wood with stain samples, with names and brands, for the kitchen cabinets. 

I'm happy to take all these little treasures off her hands, but I wonder if it's her way of saying goodbye to the place... well, and finding a way not to have pack up a bunch of useless shit.

Let's go...

In the summer warmth, everything is about the outside. The front door left open to see everything that's going on out there.  All the windows at the back of the house closed and curtained to keep out the midday heat. But once it's cooled off into fall it's the opposite. The front door closed to keep out the cold and all the curtains at the back of the house opened to let in some watery sunshine and warmth.  Ah, fall! I do love it so. Sitting on the couch reading a new book and drinking scalding hot coffee to warm myself up. 

I want to go to the orchard today to pick up a bag of Pink Ladies and some cider donuts. Maybe bake a pie or crumble, just to turn on the oven and warm up the house. But these days the thought that occurs immediately following 'Let's go...' is '...probably best not to'. I've always been a homebody but this forced isolation has me dreaming of all the places I wish I could go. 

Ah, well, more coffee and back to my book.

True Story...

If you are waiting for a phone call and you've been waiting for a while, here is my advice. Go to the bathroom.  The second you drop your drawers the phone will ring. If it doesn't, then it's safe to assume that call is never coming.

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I think that in order to avoid the political madness for the next 15 days I may just stay slightly not sober. It's the only way I'll be able to remain sane through all this insanity.

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It's snowing right now! Big, fat flakes! Not sticking though.

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Time to tighten our social circle. Smaller covid bubbles for protection.

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I voted early today!

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I'll admit to a certain amount of depression these days. In a world where COVID keeps moving the finish line, everything seems to exude bad news. The TV, the internet, and my email inbox seem to overflow with dark and sinister messages.  The political climate and the economy and civil unrest. It's like a Stephen King novel where the very air carries malevolent intent and it can't be avoided. I'll just go into the kitchen and pour myself a post noon adult beverage and everything will look a bit better.

It's all I've got today folks, sorry.  I'll perk up soon.

5 Things

Every morning I get an e-mail from CNN. It is called 5 things. It covers the top 5 stories of the morning plus a section called 'breakfast browse' followed by 'this just in...' ending with 'and finally...'. Each story is usually just a sentence and a link to the full story if you should want to pursue it.

Each heading is like a section in the newspaper. Breakfast browse includes sports news and things to look forward to. 'this just in...' usually starts with a number. But my favorite part is 'and finally...'

The 'and finally...' section is almost always a video that they've found.  These videos can be on any subject from a massive work of falling dominoes to a wildlife camera in Canada to a video on how pencils are made.

Today's video is a compilation of short videos on libraries. A collection of collections. It's 13 minutes long but watch to the end for the smell library. It doesn't even come close to being complete but it's interesting. I saved the number to my phone for the Ask NYPL line.

The World's Most Magnificent Libraries  

Just as an 'oh by the way' side note.  The CNN email features a 10 question quiz on Sunday that tests your attention to the week's news stories.  It's fun for us competitive types.

Minute Pirate Bugs

Trying to enjoy what I believe has to be one of the last 70º days of this year. However, this summer and fall have given rise to these weird little eensy-weensy black bugs.  These things are so small they actually are coming into the house through the window screens. Their bite is like nothing you've ever felt, so painful you expect to see blood. 

I was so annoyed by them that I called our pest control company to see if they could make a special trip out and do anything about them. I hate that I'm missing wonderful 'open window' weather because I can't open the windows!

The girl at Ecoshield said I should send her a photo of the bugs. So I sent her theses.

Showing the diffuser for scale.

This is the one is on the diffuser.

I found this interesting news story about the little darlings. Also, this short and informative article from Iowa State on Google. Which I also sent her. She said the same thing that the article says, there really isn't anything that works on them that would be safe to use around the house.

So I guess the comforting part is that they are neither sucking nor depositing things into you, they are in fact not even biting you. They are only probing you to see if you are food. Makes me feel so much better! It is true that they seem immune to any bug spray or repellent and that as soon as it started to warm up on my front porch they appeared.

I get mosquito-bite type welts and I have a ring of them around my wrists and ankles and some along the neckline of my t-shirt.

What a great way to ruin our beautiful last days of Indian Summer and actually have me wishing for frost.

Green light alarm!

So, in the past, I've been very kind-hearted about people who don't notice that the light has turned green.  You know, they're in front of you, the light turns green, and they're obviously not paying attention. I give them a few extra seconds to notice and then I give them a light tap of the horn to wake them up.

Well, in the more recent past it has become obvious that what they're doing is texting or watching TikTok on their phone while being the first in line at the light. That is just annoying and rude. I began to be much less patient with these fools and I began to give those people the few seconds and then a slightly more insistent blast of the horn.

But in the last few days, it has happened a lot more often. I'm not the only that has noticed either. As I'm giving these people a few seconds before giving them the blast, the person behind me has already started to lay on their horn.

Today on the way to the post office it happened again and it suddenly occurred to me.  These people aren't the least bit abashed about being honked at. They are using the car behind them as their eyes.  They are going to sit there watching their phone until the person behind them honks and signals to them that the light has turned green. They're not at all carried away by what they're doing, they're using me as their green light alarm!

Don't cry over spilled... undelivered.... milk...

So... funny story. Back in March, you know, because Covid, I decided to start getting milk delivered. Oberweis Dairy had an advert about a deal they were running. The promo said that if you order over $20 of products for delivery each week they will waive the weekly delivery fee.  Plus they offered a free Oberweis delivery cooler for your front porch. 

Ordering $20 of dairy a week was not going to be a problem. More importantly, I thought that delivery of the basics like milk and eggs would keep me from having to go to the store every week and save on my potential exposure. Snacks and non-perishables I can get on Amazon but perishables are something that I'd have to go out for at least once a week. So I signed up and we began our adventure. 

Unfortunately, I was not the only one with this idea.  

So, my cooler was delivered and my deliveries began.  I was told that my items would be delivered by 8pm on Wednesday night. That is when the truck is in DeKalb, Wednesdays. Due to the sudden popularity of this service, however,  my Wednesday night deliveries began to get later and later and eventually became very early Thursday morning deliveries. Like 2 am Thursday morning. Well, the problem was that I'd stay up, you see, to bring in the refrigerated items to sanitize them, but also so they weren't on the porch all night.  Not that that was a big deal back in March, but in April/May, it was starting to be a bit warmer and I didn't want to take a chance with my dairy products getting too warm. 

It was annoying, but mostly I felt bad for those delivery guys, they were working long shifts. There weren't enough drivers and I think more importantly, not enough refrigerated trucks to get everything delivered. Eventually, though, they hired more drivers and got more trucks and my deliveries began arriving by noon on Wednesday. That issue was fixed within a few months. 

One issue however that persists is shortages. I order at least a gallon and a half of milk a week, most often 2 1/2, plus eggs, cheese, and sometimes yogurt or granola, lemonade, butter, chocolate milk, and a couple of times bread. (The bread is preservative-free and quite delicious.  But it starts to mold very quickly.)

Almost every week something I order is not available.  A few weeks into this delivery experiment I received an email addressing the shortages. They said that when they don't have enough of something, priority is given to their long time customers over new customers.  I totally get that, seems fair. Sometimes it would be disappointing to not get half and half or cream or chocolate milk. Sometimes no eggs. These things happen and there is always something unavailable.

Today's order, however, was unexpectedly odd. It arrived promptly by 11 am. Luna was sitting by the storm door watching the guy deliver, so he even left a little milk-bone on top of the cooler for her.  So sweet! 

So I go out to bring my loot in from the cooler and there's this note on top:

No big deal, I mean, I've never gotten a note before about a shortage, but I always expect it. The notes must be something new.  I look into the cooler and notice that I did get my chocolate milk, that's big because the kids love their chocolate milk.  There are eggs and cheese and yogurt and even a raspberry danish that looked good on the website and I thought I'd try. But, what I did not get today was milk! WTF?! That had to be a mistake, right? Can a dairy run out of milk? I can't do without milk. What is happening right now?

I called the number on the note and they are delivering my 2 gallons of milk tomorrow. The driver actually ran out of whole milk. (Could he have written that on the note?) He didn't put enough milk on the truck. Yikes!  Plan ahead dude! Dog biscuits on the truck, but no milk! That was weird.

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Totally tangential to the story. Before Covid, I had read a news story about how Oberweis was going to file for bankruptcy. They were getting ready to either fold or really scale back their operation.  The milk delivery business was outdated and old fashioned and wasn't as popular as it had once been.

Oberweis has to be one of the few businesses that were not killed by Covid. One of the few businesses that were actually saved by Covid. They are actually thriving under this pandemic life we're living.

Minecraft and more...

I've been watching The West Wing. I think it's because of a subconscious desire for that. A presidential candidate of intelligence, wit, and moral substance. It doesn't seem like too much to ask... is it?

I left Facebook because of this, but can I just say one thing.  I want karma to be particularly cruel, not fatal, just damned hard.

Ok, I'm done with that. I'm not really but for here and now...

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Anyway, while I was watching one of my all-time favorite shows, my geeky son begged me to come upstairs and 'see something'. 

He made a really cool world in Minecraft and he needed me to see it.  It really was quite spectacular as far as Minecraft goes.  Labs for crafting and a quite extensive mining operation to get all his materials, both facilities powered by lava. Two beautiful villages just so the villagers can grow all the food he needs and a spectacular house.  The house included stairs covered in plants that upgrade your health and give you invincibility. He's been working on this for 4 days.

Wouldn't it be great if it were all that easy? 

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I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but... I miss book stores! I miss the smell and touching all the books and judging them by their cover.  Picking up an interesting looking cover and reading the flyleaf to see if the story sounds as good as the picture hints.

I miss sitting on the floor among the shelves and just reading snippets of everything in reach. I miss, making a stack of potential purchases and carrying them around with me until the stack is too large and I have to either whittle it down (So I can choose other likely candidates) or go buy them. 

I miss bringing that stack home and adding it to the dwindling stack on the nightstand.  

When you search for a title on Amazon you are first sent to the kindle listing, then the audio, and last the hardcover.  I friggin hate Kindle books.  Searching through one to find what someone said about something is harder than just sticking a finger in your spot and rifling through the rest of the pages. It's not user friendly and you can't dog-ear pages of special significance.

Bring back bookstores and real books!

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First fall picture, apparently fall begins on the south side of trees.

About Carla

Apparently, I wrote this entry on December 13, 2004, and never published it. 

Carla was our next-door neighbor. Her parents, Ann and Gille, thought that we could benefit from spending time together.  Carla could learn English and I could learn french.  So I would walk across the street and collect her after school almost every afternoon and spend time with her until one of her parents came to claim her again.  We learned a few words from each other, but not many. Honestly, play is its own communication and few words are necessary. So that experiment was doomed to fail from the beginning. All we did was play. 

There is a word that I will always remember though.  Dégueulasse! Carla said it one day as she watched me make Hawaiin chicken for dinner. She declaimed it more than once actually... several times in fact. When her parents got home I asked them what it meant and they were deeply embarrassed that their child had been so rude to me. I thought it was hysterical. Mostly because, despite all her Frenchness, Carla was a typical 4 year old. Once they saw that I thought it was funny and was not at all upset, they had a good laugh over it too. They threatened to leave Carla for dinner. 

The French dictionary defines dégueulasse as disgusting, revolting, shitty, swinish, putrid... so you see...

Anyway, here's the post...

Carla walks down the sidewalk in the same self-absorbed way that all small children do. She walks down the middle of the sidewalk in the manner of a child who has not yet been informed that she, in fact, is not the center of the entire universe. She doesn't even watch where she's going while she scouts for interesting bits of flotsam to pick up and pocket, I steer her by palming the top of her head and turning it gently in the direction I want her to go. Eventually, though, I get tired of trying to avoid stepping on her heels and I nudge her to the inside edge of the sidewalk so I can walk next to her. 

She keeps up a constant stream of chatter and questions, which I can barely hear, let alone understand. It doesn't seem to matter, she doesn't require any actual input from me. If she does need an answer she'll look up at me when she speaks so I know that she is actually addressing me and needs a response.

Today, in an effort to just get her out of the house and away from the TV, I tricked her into exercising by making her walk to the bakery with me. Amazing what the promise of a sweet treat can do to motivate a 4-year-old.  I realize that part of her ceaseless chatter is a dialogue in which she's wondering out loud what she'll get.

When we arrive at the boulangerie Carla walks along looking into all the counters until she comes to the patisserie counter. She stands there carefully considering all of her options. I'm amazed at how self-assured she is, how confident in her world she is. She makes her choice and then looks to me. They hand her her meringue and I ask for my baguettes de rigueur and an éclair au café for my walk home treat.

The return trip is tastier and much quieter than the trip out though much slower, if that's possible. Carla turns up her sweet little face and with a mouth full of meringue says 'sank you, Missy'. I make a face at her and say 'Carla! Dégueulasse!' We both laugh so hard we're spewing crumbs onto the sidewalk. It only makes us laugh harder as we both try to say 'dégueulasse!' again to each other.