coffeetime

 Actually, I just had to take vacation time because I'm a WEE bit stressed out from the volume of work, but also this allows me to post while I'm caffeinated, a blessing for anyone who takes time to read. 

Last weekend I did, in fact, drive to Ohio. The trip out was unremarkable, just long and dull as usual. So dull I don't remember details. When I arrived, it was just before the DoorDash my sister had ordered - Thai food, and she thoughtfully got me non-spicy steamed tofu and vegetables since my stomach can be kind of iffy when I'm traveling. I have never ordered DoorDash...the exorbitant delivery charge, plus the generous tip I'd feel obligated to provide, puts me off. If I truly want takeout, I go pick it up. Anyway, all was fine. We watched a lot of DVRd episodes of Jeopardy and went to bed early. That's when I learned that my sister's office/guest room, which is referred to as the Hut for reasons I'm not aware of, is COLD. So cold. I like my bedroom cold, but I have a warm, warm duvet (in fact, so warm that I'm going to try switching it for something less warm, though I digress). There is an electric blanket on the Hut bed so I turned it on, but mindful of the fact that I tend to sleep hot, I had it on the lowest setting. At 4:00 I woke up absolutely freezing and nudged it up a bit, hoping to fall back to sleep, and that's when the printer on her desk went mad and started churning out pages, then displayed a bright error code that would not stop. I got up and tried to power it off, got back into the chilly bed, put on my sleep mask and eventually did sleep a little more. JEEPERS. This all was funny by the light of day, but I was tired.

We visited Mom briefly. Mom is not even 100% of her approximately 60% "normal" so she didn't mind at all that we were there only about 15 minutes. She showed me pictures she's been coloring, gossiped about the other residents, and looked on approvingly while I rearranged the ornaments on one of her two Christmas trees, as they had clearly been tossed on there hastily, probably by my sister, who is always hurrying. Mom likes when I do tasks like this for her, so she was delighted. She was a little disappointed that we weren't taking her out and about, but we assured her that it was very cold and windy and a snowstorm was blowing in - none of that was a lie. From there we went to Paris Baguette, which is a chain but okay I guess, and had coffee and goodies. Then we went thrifting and the store I'd been so excited to visit was a damned trash hole and a waste of time. Snow was starting by the time we left. The last stop was a big Asian market that for some reason my sister was intimidated by and wanted my expert guidance, so odd. It was HUGE! How happy was I to to discover they had raisin shokupan. No yuzu potato chips, though, nobody has those. My sister stocked up on soup bones. Back at home, she cooked an enormous dinner, after which all of us played trivial pursuit. My brother-in-law put my old matelasse coverlet, which I gave them years ago, on the Hut bed in hopes I'd stay warm enough to sleep.

In the morning, the storm had deposited snow over ice and the temperature was quite low, plus the wind was brisk. BIL cleaned the snow off my car while I had breakfast. Even with my down-filled mittens, 20 minutes of scraping ice off my windows left my hands aching from the cold, but it was done at last. I backed out of the driveway, flipped on my wipers and...the driver's side wiper blade flew off into the snow. It's a busy street, so after pulling into the driveway I had to wait a while for traffic to clear, but I did retrieve the thing. The two of us spent about 20 minutes taking turns trying to clip the wiper blade back on. It would click into place, but was easily wiggled off again. Finally he sent me to Advance Auto Parts, where I waited 10 minutes to talk to a clerk who walked outside with me, looked at it, and said, "These are those clip ones, I don't know anything about them, you'll have to wait for Alexia." Back in the store, I stuck my hands up into my armpits to warm them up until Alexia appeared 10 minutes later. She's a very young woman, definitely under 25, and dressed in only jeans and a hoodie she accompanied me outside and spent another 10 minutes trying to get the wiper blade to stay put. No dice. We went back inside to warm up while she watched an installation video (the same one I had watched before installing these wipers on Thursday night), then tried again - nope, it wouldn't stay. We went inside again, and Useless Guy and Alexia started brainstorming for actual garages that might be open early on a Sunday in church country. I said, "Before I do that I just want to try one more time." Went out, snapped the wiper blade into its designated spot, and SURPRISE! A bunch of plastic pieces broke and flew off. Once again I went into the store and told Alexia, "I broke it! Can you sell me one?" Another 10 minutes passed as I purchased the wiper blade, but finally we were back outdoors for the moment of truth. She snapped it into place and it held, perfectly sound. I thanked her. And in my heart I vowed I would never, ever, ever buy shitty Michelin wiper blades from Costco again. 

On the way home I ate at the most demented-looking Long John Silver's. We don't have these in Wisconsin, though every bar has a fish fry on Friday nights. Fast food emporia around Christmas are just so surreal. This one was staffed by a total of two very young Black fellows (both rather handsome 😊) and they were super kind and apologetic about my protracted wait for lunch as they were filling big orders for DoorDash. Honestly, fuck DoorDash. They gave me a coupon, which I'll mail to the family eventually. Then I got into an icy roads/poor visibility kind of snowstorm for a while, then I mistakenly turned onto 90 to go up the Skyway instead of 80 to go around, so I was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the Dan Ryan for over an hour (so dumb, I berated myself, just bedazzled by the sun's reappearance I guess) and thus I got home later that evening than I'd hoped, and the air temperature was really cold, like 7°F. But I was home in one piece, hooray.

I came in to greet my cat and the house smelled like Satan's workshop. Turning on bright lights, I observed that he had obviously vomited copiously all over the Damned Ruggable, and Jason the cat sitter had tried to wipe it up, but it was odiferous. I texted Jason to let him know I was home and asked what the heck happened. "He threw up during the night. I did my best to clean it up," Jason said. I was more despondent than mad...Nandor just loses his damn mind every time I leave town overnight. I hastily consumed some bean soup (thanks, Past Me, for putting soup in the freezer) with a little of my raisin shokupan, Venmo'd Jason for his work, and then got out the carpet shampooer to make life less stinky until I could get to a laundromat. 

The week passed in a blur because of my volume of work, which was even more insane as I'd been out all day Friday. I only made it to the gym once. Monday morning I had a telehealth call with the CPAP people, who promised to ship out my stuff ASAP. The electrician came to hear my weird tale of woe on Tuesday morning and promised to send a quote, and Tuesday night I got my hair highlighted by Chatty Pam, who wore out my patience chattering about her five-toed shoes and how they're beneficial for heart health and Alzheimer's; also she's into Hyrox and that was good for at least 30 minutes of nonstop talk. My trivia team played Wednesday night. Thursday afternoon was my team's holiday party, which wasn't so bad - the four of us went to a nearby tavern to have drinks and fried snacks, and we played Bananagrams and Trivial Pursuit.

The CPAP arrived Tuesday but I couldn't set it up - hadn't been to the store in over a week, no distilled water in the house. Insomnia woke me at 6:00 on Thursday morning so I went grocery shopping before work. That night, I tried to set up the machine, following the video instructions, and when I got to the part about the mask - there was no mask. I carefully searched all of the packaging, multiple times, and confirmed there was no mask. Friday morning I called the CPAP people and talked to a nice rep who was skeptical about a mask not being in the package, because "those orders are picked by AI," implying that mistakes are impossible. She went to talk to a trainer, and called me back, exclaiming,"So I told her your mask wasn't in the package and she said 'of course it wasn't there' and I said 'what?'" It seems that my mask is a special small size that must be ordered separately from a different vendor, and someone hadn't done that, thus the "AI" couldn't pick it. Ohhhh okay. I was relieved to hear that no, I wouldn't have to pay extra for either the mask or the shipping, which she had earlier mentioned might be on me.

After a depressing vet visit where I learned that Nandor's glucose is still high and he's probably going on insulin soon and also he's lost another half a pound, Friday was a "normal"ish workday, just busy but not horrible, and I actually made it to the gym. Saturday I wrestled the Damn Ruggable and all three sets of sheets (last week's, guest, and current week's) to the laundromat and ran errands. Sunday, finished the shopping I hadn't done on Thursday and made a pot of vegan Irish stew that was absolutely inedible - so bitter, will definitely not ever make that recipe again, had to chuck it into the bin. Also went to the gym, and skipped the solstice bonfire because each day has only 24 hours and mine were filled. And now, Monday morning, I'm just chilling as I have the morning off, mainly because I'm scheduled for a mammogram at lunch time. I'll actually do some work shortly, I'll just "appear offline" on Teams so nobody knows I'm on there working. 

These questions were originally suggested by rawee1.

1. When did you "lose your innocence"?

This week's questions were suggested by bindyree . 

I ordered some stuff from JB's House of Late Stage Capitalism yesterday, just some household stuff I use a lot of - vitamins, coffee filters I can't buy locally, that kind of thing. And as soon as it was delivered, I canceled my Prime membership, which was due to renew on Friday, because fuck that guy, and because unlike last year, this year I was focused enough to notice when the renewal date was near.

I probably can't entirely avoid shopping there (nobody else seems to sell my protein powder, for example) but I can restrict it to rare occasions.

Legs, whenever I can see hair. Since menopause I have almost no leg hair, so it's not often. Beard: I do have like 3 wild-ass hairs that want to grow out of my chin, and a couple of weird random ones on my NECK. These I remove with tweezers when I happen to notice them.  

1. Ten years ago, what did you think you would be doing now?
I had vague ideas of living alone. I actually do live alone, so that part is accurate. I imagined I'd still be lifting weights for exercise, and I do. Just about nothing else I may have daydreamed about has come to pass and in most cases, things are worse than even I had anticipated.

2. Where do you think you will be five years from now?
I've learned not to dream. I'll probably be right here doing exactly what I do now, except with more joint pain, because older.

3. Do you live life one day at a time or look to the future?
Both, I guess. I try not to think too hard about the future while simultaneously fretting about spending anything because I'll need it in the future.

4. Do you wish you could go back in time and undo something in your life?
I know the correct thing to say is "of course not, I wouldn't be who I am today," but actually I think all the time "I should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque." How might my life have turned out if I'd had even a little good advice? I have been flying blind since the day I was born, and it shows.

5. If you could send a message back in time and give a younger version of yourself some advice, what would it be?
Go to law school; you'd actually like it, and being able to pay your bills at age 59 will suit you better than perpetually struggling.

1. What is the oldest object in the room with you?
The small bookcase, which was part of a set my parents bought at an estate auction in the 1970s. The set had twin beds, a chest of drawers, and this bookcase. All the other parts are long since gone but I kept the bookcase, and I refinished it about 15 years ago.

2. What is the newest?
The cat's laser pointer toy.

3. What is your most favorite object in the room with you?
My white IKEA christmas tree lamp. From the early 1990s.

4. What is the most valuable object?
Are we talking monetary value? Probably my work laptop, but I don't own it.

5. What is the ugliest object?
The combination torchiere/reading lamp next to the sofa. If I ever move into a place with better lighting, I will happily get rid of this thing.

1. If you could live in any city in the world, where would you live and why?
I like where I live. The weather, not so much, but the city is okay. Outside of my own city, I really liked Fort Collins! If I could get paid enough to live in Fort Collins, I'd move there.

2. If you could speak any language fluently, what would it be?
If I stay in the US: Spanish. Today the gym staff guy really needed a fluent Spanish speaker to help translate for a customer, and Google Translate was failing. If I somehow get to live somewhere outside the US - obviously, whatever the local language is.

3. When was the last time you rode a ferry and where did you go?
This one is easy - the last time I rode a ferry was September 24. I went to Miyajima Island, to ride the ropeway to the top of Mt. Misen. Click for the big images.
     
The great torii gate off Miyajima Island, and the view from the top of Mt. Misen, respectively.

4. What was the longest plane ride you've ever taken?
My recent flight back from Tokyo to Toronto was about 12 hours. UGH.

5. If you discovered a country, what would you name it?
I suppose I'd call it Delulu, because if someone thinks they can "discover" a country that already exists, well -

I used to be a member of The Question Club on LJ and I do miss that, as it was once quite a lively community. There is still the Dreamwidth TQC, and I would love to see more people join up! I posted a poll there today, about rocking chairs, because I think those are completely wack.

If you're intrigued, check out thequestionclub

One of my favorite Instagram feeds is Sandwiches of History. Something I have noticed: most of the sandwiches start with buttered bread. It seems to me that my mom buttered bread when making us sandwiches (even PBJ) when we were very small, but I almost never put butter in a sandwich. Usually mustard, occasionally mayonnaise, but butter? Not since I was a wee young thing.


So, a poll. Not counting grilled/griddled sandwiches, where butter is on the OUTSIDE of the bread - this poll is about the insides of sandwiches.