Home Posts tagged "random"

Tag: random

Meandering in Not-My House

I am a good provider. I don’t know exactly when it became a big deal to me. Well, yes. I do. It was probably hanging around before the pandemic, but when COVID hit and nothing could be counted on, when I couldn’t even reliably find toilet paper—that brought it to the front. I needed to make sure I was providing for my family. And I have, I do. Probably more than I really should, but hey. We all have our hangups, and there are worse ones. For instance, Christmas dinner. Child 1 wanted ham. Child 2 cannot eat ham. Did I override child 1? Did I just get something small for child 2? No. No, dear reader. I got a ten pound ham, and an eight pound rib roast. For four people. And dessert? I love pumpkin pie. It’s necessary. If it’s available, I’m having it. In order to take it easy on us in a strange house and awkward kitchen, we decided we’d get dessert from Costco. But child did not want pumpkin pie. They wanted Costco’s wonderful tuxedo cake. Fine, then—I would get both. Only when I got there, all the tuxedo cakes were gone. So I got a cheesecake along with the pumpkin pie. And a chicken pot pie for Christmas Eve dinner. Can you say “leftovers?” One advantage of this house is that the fourth bedroom is part of a mother-in-law suite. So it has its own refrigerator. Thank goodness. It’s been such a plus that…

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No More Mugs

In a tragedy that would hurt me daily if I didn’t work so hard at not thinking about it, I’m not allowed to buy more mugs. Not one. None. That’s been the rule for years…and yet, somehow, more creep in. I don’t know how. I follow the rules! Don’t let that rule make you think we’re a houseful of mug-haters! On the contrary! We drink a lot of tea. And coffee. Hot cocoa. And we love a good soup. So naturally we love mugs. Tall and narrow, short and fat, big or small (but not too small,) we love them all. And I mean, all. Let me explain. When I need pans, I buy them new—when I need pans, that means non-stick pans, because otherwise I have my glorious will-last-a-lifetime All-Clad scratch-and-dent from my wonderful father, which you can have when you pull them from my death-stiffened clutched fingers IF my roommate isn’t already there to defend them. I’m always down for a new kitchen gadget, and those I also acquire new. For reference, see my Instant Pot, my multi-cooker, the air fryer, the stand mixer, the spiralizer, my beautiful Vitamix… But dishes? Variety is fun, and also dishes are transient. We tend to be clumsy, you see, and we don’t really care. I figure there’s enough guilt in the world—no one needs to feel bad because they broke part of a fancy set of dishes. Chips happen. So in my house, the cabinet is full of thrifted dishes. Thrifting…

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I Am Not Prepared

Tell me I’m not the only one who lands in this boat every blinking time I/they turn around. I had every intention of being prepared. I like to write my TDP post on Sunday, edit it a bit on Monday, and go through it once more quickly Tuesday before I post it. Alas, that didn’t happen this week. I blame the shingles vaccine. Don’t get me wrong–I’m very glad to have the shingles vaccine! I’ve heard shingles itself is horrible. But I hadn’t planned to get the vaccine on Sunday, and then I did, and I hadn’t planned for it to knock me on my butt, since vaccines rarely slow me down–but this one did. I started dragging Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning I could barely get out of bed. I told my boss if the zombies had come that day, I would have blended in just fine. So anyway. Not prepared. I didn’t prep my food for the week either, or get water and now I have to go tonight and it’s storming, and… Anyway. Speaking of boats, I’ve been watching Drain the Oceans on National Geographic. It’s more fascinating than I expected, though I’m not sure why I’m surprised–it has shipwrecks, secrets, archeology, and history. What wouldn’t I love about that? Last night’s episode (watched twice because I fell asleep watching it the first time, see above re: vaccine) was especially good, as they were searching for slave ships and other wrecks that illustrated that dark time…

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Bloomin’ Hell

Well, not so much hell, really, although it is August and one could certainly be forgiven for getting the two confused… Anyway. This is an orchid. I never had an orchid before, but this one seems pretty happy. This is a Christmas cactus. It is Very Confused. It’s been suggested that I take it outside and wave it at August to try to get some cooler weather, but I am not confident it would not take harm in the effort, so I don’t. I have a green thumb. Inside, at least (no, I’m not linking the mostly-dead garden, go find it yourself if you want.) My mom was the same. We had houseplants all over the house, and everything grew like it was safe in the wild wherever it originally came from. Friends were envious, as she grew things in tin cans and coffee cups if no other pot was available, and they couldn’t keep pothos alive. Pothos are supposed to be THE easiest plant to keep alive, for the record. They die slowly if you forget to water (and a few leaves at a time, so you have warning signs if you look) and they don’t mind low light nearly as much as some. The plant in my pic is one of four that I care for, the littlest one because it’s in a pretty dark place. I want it that way, as I want it to stay small. Outside of my tried and true houseplants, though, I don’t…

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Slumgullion

According to my research many moons ago, “slumgullion” is a stew kept on the back of the stove in a military kitchen. All the leftovers are tossed in, and someone who misses a meal because they are out on patrol or whatever can always be sure of a hot, if somewhat mysterious, filling meal. At least, that’s what I remember. I’m not looking it up. My point would be, oh look, KD is late posting again. Also, KD couldn’t think of anything to write about. So you get a slumgullion of hopefully tasty pictures from my phone to show you some of what I’ve been up to lately. (Except none of the work pics, because honestly, you don’t want to see the dripping ceiling or the broken door or the window or the wall or the–) So. I found this book at the library! It’s an Obama-Biden buddy mystery! The acknowledgement page said, “Thanks, Obama.” Heres a baby swallow who was hanging out at my work. He just decided he didn’t really care for this flying business, he was going to hang out in the shade on the ground, thank you very much. Eventually his parents did persuade him to try again. We can’t have a catch-all post without cat antics! Cat in a bag on the sin bin. Cat in the sun, like the glorious creature she is. Cat awaiting the Opening of the Door. It’s so cruel–she was locked out for perhaps two minutes while her human got…

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New Year, New Filing System

I’ve been editing forever. Seriously. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t editing. So when I finally sent the last of Hiro II off to the marvelous Erin Zarro for copyediting? It was time for a celebration. It was time for some fun, and time to accomplish some of the stuff I’ve been putting off while editing forever. So I did some dishes. Enforced the taking down of the Christmas tree. Took a friend to lunch. Rearranged my files. I’ve been meaning to do it for YEARS. Why Sunday was finally the day? I couldn’t tell you. But I did it. I already had five different colors of file folders. I also had the same five colors of hanging files, coincidentally enough! So I dove in. Stuff that’s personal to me, I filed in blue folders. “Certificates.” “School Stuff.” “TDP.” For my daughter (who creates a TON of paperwork with every step, holy smokes) red. Labels include “Health,” “School,” and “Trouble.” Things owned like the car, the house, appliance manuals, receipts–those are in yellow. Pet paperwork, general family stuff, that’s orange. Then the financial stuff, naturally, is in green. Taxes, pay stubs, aaaallll that stuff that comes up… At the very front of the top drawer, in easy reach from my desk, I have six files labeled for the months. January/July, February/August, and so on. Those are my “I don’t know what to do with this, do I need to do anything with it?” files. So instead of letting…

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Adventures in (Avoiding) Editing

Friday I stayed home from work. I had a touch of a stomach bug, enough that I definitely needed to stay home, so I wasn’t ditching work–I was just really glad that I needed to be home. I needed the day to edit. Edited all day Saturday, excluding a grocery store run and probably some time wasted at some point. By Sunday I was getting tired of editing. So I made a deal with myself–twenty minutes of editing, ten minutes of break. There’s a lot of stuff I’ve been needing to do for a while, and I wanted to get some of it dealt with. The first break, I cleaned the litterbox, then decided to light a candle to deal with the residual smell. I grabbed a candle holder, took an empty tealight shell out of it and crunched it in my hand, then dropped a new tealight in and lit it. Then I touched my face or something with the other hand, and scratched my freaking face deep enough to draw blood with a tealight shell. I went back to editing. Next break, I decided to see if switching the light bulbs in the track lighting in the kitchen would help anything. We hate the track lighting, but we’re not ready to have it replaced. Anyway–took a little longer than ten minutes, but I got the bulbs replaced and the kitchen is 3x a bright as it was, yay me! I went back to editing. But before very long…

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Serendipity

Almost fifteen years ago now, I was a brand-new attendance technician/registrar at a middle school. There was a young lady, early in those middle school years, who wasn’t very good at getting her backside to school. As was my job, I stuck my nose in and tried to help. I remember I cajoled, I bribed, I threatened sternly with “you need an education to get anywhere!” We talked. She would tell me her problems, I would point out boys were not worth missing out on school and she was already beautiful so she didn’t need to be late because of her hair. She would blush and thank me and try a little harder. I’d tell her she was smart, and she just needed to show up to see a change in her school life, and such things. When I did see her in school, I made sure to say hi and encourage her. Eventually, as happens, she made it out of middle school and went on to high school. Sometime after that (or perhaps during, my memory is not good at timelines) she dropped by the middle school to introduce me to her baby. A few times she came by to pick up her youngest sibling, on his way through my school. I was always thrilled to see her. But then I changed jobs, and we didn’t move in similar circles anymore. This morning for some reason I was thinking of her as I unlocked the doors at my new…

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Life’s a Strain

I’ve pulled something in my back. I have this spot–it’s on the right side of my back, not quite in “lower” back territory but not much higher–and from time to time it gets aggravated. Every six months or so it gets really bad, like “can’t stand up straight” sort of bad. Muscle relaxants and pain killers have little to no effect, and even massages haven’t proven terrible useful in fixing things. It’s very fun, let me tell you. Especially when one has to pick 20 and 40-pound wiggly things up on a regular basis. It started hurting last Wednesday-ish. It peaked Friday/Saturday, and now is on its way back to normal, though it still hurts. I did manage kickboxing this morning, though it hurt more for a while. My internet searches tell me back pain is the most common pain experienced by adults in the United States. 80% was the stat I saw, though I don’t know how scientific that is. Bad posture and too much sedentary time at computers and watching the TV and what have you. So what do you do when your job consists of you needing to be on the computer for significant lengths of time? Sitting is definitely a problem right now. I’ve switched my computer chair out for one of the hard, straight-back dining room chairs, which has helped some, but even as little as 15-20 minutes sitting at the computer causes everything to flare again, even if things were feeling pretty good. It’s…

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Hey Hey, We Won the Super Bowl

In a break from our normal subject matter here, I’m going to talk about football. You can’t escape it around here these days. You see, we (meaning me, Kit, and the rest of Colorado) won the Super Bowl on Sunday. Well, the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl. I did very little to help. Super Bowl 50! I don’t want to tell you how old I was when we last won in 1999.

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