Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Unloading. Or load-shifting.

I don't want to jinx it, but after a few months of feeling just deeply disinclined to attack any of the chaos in my house, I seem to be getting the bug again. I was waffling about whether I would try to do anything about it Sunday, so I went down to flip the laundry and then did a little bit in the basement because DID I MENTION Angus is coming home for Thanksgiving? and I thought perhaps it behooved us to fix things so he didn't have to blaze a trail through piles of stuff to get to his bed (although, to be scrupulously fair, a lot of that stuff is still baseball-related). There's a table right outside the half-walls in front of the bed that turns into a dumping ground. There is also a table beside the dryer that turns into a dumping ground. I suddenly realized that, even if I didn't have time to get down to the finer details of dealing with the pile of crap, ALL of the pile of said crap could go in the laundry room where it will not be seen by any casual visitor. I seem to have a subconscious habit of spreading the crap around so there's a little bit of crap in a lot of places, when having MOST of the crap in ONE place (laundry room, back storage room) really makes the most sense. Although I realize that 'sense' is perhaps not the best word to apply to this situation.

I did some other stuff, then came down and sorted through a pile of stuff that had collected near the coffee table in the living room, which is at the front of the house. We don't really go in there unless we have company, and Matt tends to come in from work and drop his bag on one of the chairs flanking the table, so again, stuff collects. I separated out a couple of things and photographed them and posted them on my Facebook community giving group. There was a yoga mat I bought Eve when they were doing yoga at lunchtime at her elementary school - I have since bought her a bigger, thicker one, so this one was superfluous - some stationery with roses on it that is not my style, and some clothes that seemed nice enough to see if anyone specific wanted them rather than just donating them to the thrift store.

Someone took the yoga mat almost immediately. Someone asked for the stationery, so I put it in the mailbox. She said she'd be there after 5, but it was still in there when I left for work the next day.

My mood for this kind of thing is very inconsistent. Sometimes I'm happy to leave something out for several days (it's in a bag, it's sheltered from weather, come grab it whenever). I also almost never ask for anything on the group, unless it's unbelievably perfectly something I need that it would therefore be dumb to spend money on, because I have trouble enough remembering to brush my teeth and breathe these days, never mind making any additional stops. Sometimes it annoys me inordinately when someone says definitively they will come by a certain time and they do not.

When we first started, I left a pair of kids' snowpants on my front step for MONTHS. My parents are coming over this weekend, so subconsciously I was probably thinking of my mom saying "why is something hanging out of your mailbox?' when I messages the person and politely asked when she was planning to come.

The usual response when you remind someone that they forgot to pick up something is that they breathlessly detail some crazy emergency that just happened - their child broke a tooth! their mom tripped over a feral hog and needed emergency surgery! a meteorite crashed through their roof and started a fire! And like, I get it. I do. But this person said "Oh, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot, I will come today". 

I was deep into a paragraph about how refreshing it was to have someone just admitting to have forgotten rather than making up some story fit for this year's Guinness World Records when I realized that I do not know this woman and my effusive thanks would probably terrify her to the point where she wouldn't want to come within a hundred metres of my house, so I erased it and gave it to you instead. 

Although this Facebook memory because funny Eve is funny, pretty much from her first word on.

Monday, October 6, 2025

Walking and Sweating

 I did not go for a walk after work today. It was hot out, my mom had already walked Lucy (I drop her at their place while I'm working because she is an extremely spoiled dog) and my Monday school offers ample opportunity for getting steps in.

It is quite a long walk in from the parking lot.

It is a long-ish walk from the end of the school to the front door, or from the servery door, where I usually enter, to the library.

Once I am in the library, the distance from the desk to the end of the shelves (a distance I cover multiple times during the day) is not inconsiderable.

I did not realize until today how long and flat this school and library is. 

I kind of like that the very last book in the non-fiction section is about Antarctica.


The pictures from all my other walks from October 1st until yesterday are all pretty similar - leaves changing even though the temperature remains stubbornly, stickily, dystopically warm.




At my parents' place after work I said it looked like next weekend (when we'll all be together for Thanksgiving -the Canadian version) was going to be nice, my mom said "cooler" and I said "that's what I mean by nice."

Tonight I am browning a bunch of ground beef and pork to make taco meat (homemade seasoning), beef taco skillet, (I make it with more spieces) and vietnamese caramelised pork for next weekend when the kids are home (Angus is coming home for Canadian Thanksgiving for the first time in literally years. Eve said "omg, we're getting the band back together?) 

That tweet reminds me of when we opened the local paper and saw a picture of Angus with his cooking class visiting a local butcher and getting to help them make a turducken. I was like "we asked you what happened that day and you said 'nothing' - A TURDUCKEN).

Lucy.

Friday, October 3, 2025

Friday Randoms

 I have a list of things that I thought I was going to blog about, and some of them make zero sense. I don't know why I think two words is going to make me remember what I was going to say. Someone (obviously I don't remember who) suggested in a comment that I might want to think about HRT even though I am much younger than her, and I remember thinking I am NOT that much younger, and yes, a doctor's appointment to discuss HRT is on my list. How do women with important jobs where forgetting stuff might have actual consequences manage through perimenopause? That thing where someone goes in for surgery and ends up having the wrong arm or leg or testicle removed? If I was a surgeon I would be pretty frickin' nervous right now.

The greatest humiliation of my trivia career is probably the time I couldn't remember 'Don Quixote's squire". 

The correct answer is Sancho Panza.

All I could think of was Pancho Villa.

Someone I follow on Facebook made a humorous post about their little boy looking a little goofy in his first school picture. This reminded me of how I used to get a little frantic about how the kids should dress and post for school pictures until my husband told me to relax, it was just supposed to show a snapshot of how they were that year. Fortunately this happened before the year that Angus went wearing a t-shirt we had brought him from Mexico (without paying very close attention to ALL the words besides "sun" and "sand") and the word 'tequila was prominently displayed in the picture. Also the year he wore a thrifted Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and a fold made it look like it said 'bitch'. Parents of the year over here. 

I finally made a recipe from one of Suzanne's Dinners This Week posts, after saying I was going to for let's not even calculate how long. It was this recipe I think - kind of like with this recipe that my friend Kerry recommended, I couldn't imagine exactly what the flavour profile was going to be, which is interesting since a lot of the stuff I cook is pretty standard. Another enjoyable aspect was the text exchange Suzanne and I ended up having about inch-thick pork chops, which I will not detail here (not without getting permission from Suzanne anyway). The ones I cooked were very much not one inch thick, and I did end up overcooking them a little, but they were still delicious.

This morning I got my hair done, and afterwards I walked down the sidewalk to the little cupcake place I almost never go to - I suddenly realized that I could probably get a chai latte there - I never get them anymore because Eve said I'm not allowed to go to Starbucks anymore which, fair. I had a pleasant exchange with the girl at the counter, who then whispered that she was going to give me a free strawberry coconut cupcake because it had fallen over and the icing was a bit smooshed so they couldn't sell it. I said I could pay for it but she just shushed me and stuck it in the bag. I am reminded of that time Pam and I went for lunch and were offered cupcakes instead of carrots - I am pleased both by the memory and that I managed to find the post from FOURTEEN YEARS AGO WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF.

Then I stopped by the grocery store, and in the parking lot I stopped to let an old man in a yellow t-shirt cross to his car and he yelled thank-you, and then another old man said "beautiful day!" as we were walking into the store, so then I came home high on free-cupcake-cheerful-old-man energy, walked Lucy and read in the backyard.

Wishing everybody a splendid week-end.

Unloading. Or load-shifting.

I don't want to jinx it, but after a few months of feeling just deeply disinclined to attack any of the chaos in my house, I seem to be ...