This past week, the weather has been outstanding. Absolutely. Outstanding. The DC heat and humidity has gone, hopefully for the rest of the year. I worked outside the other day, with my lap desk, my feet up on one of the porch steps to give me some balance. I still want a full nice patio set, but they've been sold out or on backorder forever. I've been looking at the online neighborhood sales but haven't found one close enough. I also sort of feel wary of these sites. I love buying used stuff, but, I feel a level of sketchiness on Facebook or Nextdoor. Let's not even mention Craigslist. What a cesspool.
Last night after dinner, I said to Doug "is tonight a good night to have a fire, ya think?" He kind of made a meh face and I thought, oh. Okay. I'll.... just go back to working then? It's a bad habit, but after I finish dinner, I start working again.
He watched the news, got up, put his sandals on and sighed. He picked up the matches, some flyers from the grocery stores, and headed out to the pit. "I guess it's as good as it's going to get."
I finished my helpdesk ticket. I grabbed a glass of wine. I headed out to the patio.
We had been piling up kindling and loose pieces of wood onto the fire pit for weeks. Doug crammed the grocery store flyers under the wood. I said that we should take the wood out, and build an actual good pile of kindling and give it a chance to catch, we can't just expect the paper to catch ---
He lit the paper and said "It'll start!"
It took forever. I sat beside the fledgling flames feeding them smaller pieces of wood that I was breaking off from the pile. Twigs and thin branches, sliding them in under the bigger in the way pieces that were too damp to catch, and blocking too much airflow for the attempts at getting going. Eventually my corner of the fire pit began to catch, and we had ourselves a fire.
Boy Scout Mom knows what she is doing.
It was glorious. Doug had kind of a crappy week, so he has been on edge, which probably is what fed into his lackadaisical attitude to actually getting it started. Maybe if it doesn't start, I can just go back inside and watch TV. I've had an incredibly stressful several weeks and I just was relieved to set that laptop down and not work another ticket. I let go of my sense of "you have to do this... because..." and let the work/life balance thing take over my brain.
Geoff came out to sit with us, too. He had an orientation for next semester's clinical. He couldn't understand why it was so early, but didn't argue with anyone. It was in person, the first time his entire class group was in the same place at the same time since the pandemic hit, and their training had been somewhat derailed and delayed. They've had zoom classes but no one keeps their cameras on. So he hasn't been able to make the kind of connections he's wanted to with the group. He said it was really cool to see people, and his instructor said that even though everyone had their masks on, she could tell they were smiling.
He said when the program started, there were 24 students, but the group has dwindled to 17. He's not sure where some of the folks have gone. If they couldn't pass the classes, if they weren't doing good at clinical. He said it made him nervous.
He did 3 weeks at a local radiology department, now he's back at Georgetown, and then in Mid November will be headed up county to a different hospital, and in the spring, sometime, he'll be at a pediatric facility. He isn't sure where but the pediatric facility is Children's National. The program tries to get everyone exposed to as many different kinds of spaces as possible. The equipment and experiences and types of offices and facilities out there is all different. At the doctor's office where he just was, their equipment was much older and he didn't know much about it, but now he does. He also said he had a huge language barrier with most of the patients. They all mostly spoke Spanish and he speaks "Bueno. Bien. Gracias."
The girl he was working with spoke fluent Spanish, but was not a native speaker. She was a white chick. I asked what he took away from that. What should he be thinking of doing, possibly, to make his professional experience more meaningful or to make himself more attractive to employers. For the last two years I have been encouraging him to take a second language, even if he just plays with Duolingo.
You don't have to have the whole Medical Spanish thing down, but leg, arm, hand, head, turn to the left, turn to the right, sit up, thank you, I'm sorry, these things will make the patient's experience much better.
I told him when I went in to the doctor last year for my mammogram, there was a tech there who was in the waiting room talking casually in Spanish to a husband and wife. He brought me out back to get set up and I told him I was impressed with his language skills. He told me he was Pakistani, grew up near Karachi. When he was growing up, they all spoke Urdu and Punjabi, and a few other regional languages because of the nature of Karachi. He learned English in school and then went to medical school, and it was incredibly helpful for him to know as much English as he did. He came to the United states and saw the need to learn Spanish very quickly. Now he dabbles in French to speak with the Haitian patients. "There are a lot of people in our city here who are from Ethiopia so Amharic is what he'll be learning next.
I shared his story with Geoff, and of course Geoff's response was "why don't people just learn English while they are here." I said that is a good question, and maybe they should, but, if you're in a care position, you don't know how long someone has been here, how much they know, how they learn, if they've been successful in learning. Communities of people surround each other, keep their languages, and keep each other safe. The priority of learning English for a lot of people is minimized because they are doing just fine with their people.
"You should look at people with empathy, not disdain. You don't know what their journey has been. Meet them where they are, and show them you care for them."
Hopefully a year from right now he'll be hired somewhere. And he's thinking about further certification in CT scans or "flouro" as it were. And hopefully some Spanish, or something.
My son was putting out the recycling tonight. We have a milk crate inside, and a couple of times a week, because we are so diligent and it fills up fast, he takes the contents outside and dumps stuff in the actual county bin that we put out on the curb on Tuesdays.
I could hear her voice. And Geoff saying "Huh?"
I was making dinner, and could hear her rattling at him, and he wasn't answering. So I wiped my hands and went out back.
"Oh! Christine! I have not seen you in a while."
"Yes, I know. I've been busy, and haven't been hanging out outside."
"Oh! What are you busy with?"
"I work from home. I work all day. Sometimes late hours. So I'm here, I just have not been outside in the back here, mostly up front with the garden, or with the dog."
"Oh! What do you do?"
"I do technical support."
"Oh, I need technical support with some things!"
no.
She told me that she noticed Geoff was doing the recycling. She was explaining to Geoff that she was hoping we would save the pull tabs off of our beer cans. And he didn't understand what she meant by pull tabs.
I figured it out rather quickly.
"You have a lot of beer cans. And I collect those tabs for charity."
Oh we have a lot of beer cans, do we?
...Yeah, that's not a lie, I guess.
But are you saying we drink a lot?
...No you're not. You're just noticing we have cans and...cans have tabs so you're just asking.
"Sure thing, we can grab the pull tabs and save them for you. I'll do that, no problem."
Then she starts going on about the firewood. Again. That she went at Doug the other day about.
"It's been too hot to burn," I said, "and if it isn't too hot it's pouring rain. We'll get to it."
"Yes yes, your husband said that."
So what's your point, lady. What he told you is what stands. We. Will. Get. To. Burning. All. The. Damn. Wood. When. It. Is. Wood. Burning. Time.
She then went on a mystical explanation journey.
"I had my driveway redone a few years ago, and I had some concrete stacked up here, and the neighbor, he is fussy, he called the county on me! My brother, he was so sick with the cancer, he couldn't do anything. And the company was supposed to come get the concrete and they did not, for weeks! And this man calls the county... and......."
"So what." I replied. "You know what? That's your business, and no one else's. You could have a giant pile of concrete, and that's no one's business. That could be an art installation. It's not anything to worry about. It's yours. You deal with it when you can."
She started laughing.
"I'm totally serious. If it is your concrete, it's your concrete. If you needed time, that's no one's business. He could talk to you, ask you, offer help if it is something you need help with. And if anyone comes at you, you tell them you'll take care of it when you can take care of it."
I'm thinking to myself so help me God if you call the county because I have firewood for a fire pit I will lose my mind.
We exchanged some more chit chat and I went inside to continue prepping dinner.
I really wanted to go out and grill, but I had Doug do it instead because I didn't want to deal with her. And Doug understood so he handled it with no neighbor sightings.
One thing I forgot to mention in the last entry was the recycling bin that we had.
When we moved in here, every house in the county has recycling bins. There are these gianormous bins for cardboard and paper, and a small bin (should be the other way around, really) for cans and glass.
We had the one at the last house in the kitchen, but at this house there isn't enough room so we keep it under the back steps, and Geoff uses that milk crate that we keep in the kitchen to do the transfer.
The county glass/plastic bin, the small one, was cracked. It looked like it had been hit by a car. We taped it up, it was fine. It worked. You put recycling in it. It doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, a busted up and duct taped bin is kind of the definition of recycling in a way.
There was nothing wrong with the bin.
One day in the spring, I was outside with the dog and she came over calling to me.
"I called the county about your broken recycling bin. They are coming to take it away."
I'm thinking, what is your deal lady?
"Well, there's nothing wrong with it."
"It is broken," she says.
"But it works. We put tape on it. It holds garbage, recycling, it isn't something that needs to be beautiful, I mean. What?"
"You can take one of mine. Leave your broken one here by my driveway because I called the county. They are bringing a new one and they will pick it up here at my driveway."
"You have more than one recycling bin?"
"Yes, I have a basement apartment. It is totally legal. So I have two bins. Take one, and the broken one will be picked up by the county this week."
I'm thinking to myself, what is wrong with you, you old busybody. The people who lived here before us used this bin did you give them grief? Or did you wait for us to get here so you could fuss. Also, why didn't you just say something like "hey I noticed your bin is busted? Have you thought about calling the county?"
So I took the bin and walked away. Later I told Doug and he was like "what is her deal?" Both of us were dumbfounded.
Every exchange I have makes me miss our folks up the block.
Hopefully the weather will be nice and acceptable, this weekend, we burn things.
EDITED: Geoff went to the beer store yesterday afternoon, after the discussion about pull tabs.
He bought bottled beer. I don't know if he did that on purpose. If that was a deliberate shade throwing act on his part. But it sure made me laugh.
So I'm feeling burned out. Burned the fuck out. It's my own fault but also because I don't really have a clear backup for other people to actually do my job. I was telling a friend of mine that a few months ago, I got assigned a task I really actually love, very much, while a colleague was on family leave.
It takes me an hour per each task, so that can be only 3 hours or 4 hours a week. And I love doing it. I don't want to give it up.
I also host calls with stations before they launch, so that's another couple hours a week. And I love doing that.
And once in a while, we have a station that is a little extra, and needy, and I do those calls. And I love doing those.
But I also don't really want to always be doing my actual job. I have grown to hate my actual job.
When I started working here the joke was no one lasts at this job for longer than 18 months, or 2 years max. But I've been at it for 7. I believed enough in it to relocate the family.
And now I hate it and don't want it anymore. Someone, come take it.
Thankfully we've hired a couple new people, and I've been assigning tickets to other people on my team a lot more.
But the tickets don't stop coming. They just don't.
I've been kind of a pissy bitch about a few things and was talking to a colleague. I asked her if I could unload about something, she gave me the grace to do so. I was mad about someone neglecting to do something, ignoring something, and I feel that he doesn't want to do the thing because he isn't interested in the thing.
"You know," she said, "he reports to me."
Oh. No I didn't know that. Shit.
She was happy to hear this, and we talked about what we can do to get the thing the attention it needs from this person.
I said I didn't appreciate that he gives off the impression that this isn't something he values. He wants to do the other thing, or do product research, or come up with something else that is shiny, rather than take care of the thing that needs to be taken care of. I told her it makes me feel unvalued, puts the pressure on me constantly to apologize for the thing that doesn't work. I echoed the words of an old friend that I've always tried to take to heart, "no one can make you feel anything. How you decide to feel is up to you." and for a long time, I've felt really shitty about this situation.
Knowing that one of my greatest allies is now his manager, this is helpful to me.
She told me that I can read a room, and I am spot on with my assessment. She told me her idea of support is "relationship" building and maintaining, not let's list a bunch of things to do that are maybe needed, and get to them eventually.
It was a good chat. And in the end I don't feel he's in trouble or anything, and maybe I'll get some of the help I need.
I've expressed my frustration to my manager and he has asked me to hang in there. He knows I'm a tired bean.
Good things are overall my team is poised and ready to go. A lot of what is exhausting is that we have to wait on other teams. Things are broken, we don't fix them but we report to the other teams and they fix them. And sometimes not fast enough. So more things come in. And then those are not getting fixed fast enough.
Someone asked me what would make things better. The answer is, and always has been, other people not getting things done the way we need in the time we need it.
Another problem I've had is that I feel compelled to make sure all the new tickets that come in during the day are touched before I'm done for the day. And sometimes, after meetings and everything, it is 6pm and I still have to do tickets.
My company talks a lot about Work/Life balance and when I try to hit that work/life balance thing, and not work after 6pm, the next day is a total shit show.
Right now, on Thursday night, I'm kind of caught up. I'm looking to go into Friday with a meeting light day, hopefully nothing will super break (like last Friday) and I can totally catch up, and feel going into the weekend I've got a grip.
I also feel like I need a week off, with a cabin, and sunsets, and a lake, and a kayak, or a beach house, and the ocean.
Doug is feeling the same. Maybe we'll get a day or two away and not work. I'd like that. A lot.
When we moved, we met our new neighbor behind us. She's an elderly woman, and she's a little fussy. She doesn't like the dog barking. She complained that we let climbing vines grow all over the back fence, and on a section of the fence along the street. It's ivy. It's pretty. It's protective and gives us privacy.
"That's where rats live. In the vines," she complained.
No, honey. Rats don't live in vines that grow along a fence.
She doesn't like that we let our garden grow wild. She recommended her landscaping service. No thank you, I'm not interested in paying for gardening when I have a 24 yr old who likes to mow the lawn.
The first time we used the firepit, she commented the next day that the previous tenants "didn't do that."
"Do you like having camp fires?"
Uh, yes we do.
What are you saying. Do you not want us doing camp fires? Did this bother you somehow?
"Oh, no. It's just that sometimes woodsmoke is smelly. It's okay, it's okay," and she walked away.
Tonight she came over and complained about the pile of wood we have in the backyard, and the wood behind our shed, which she can see from her backyard.
"I have to look at it," she said to Doug. "It may be your yard, but it touches my yard. And I do not like to see it.
The wood behind the shed was was there when we got here. God only knows how long it was there. We obtained the pile of wood on our patio earlier in the summer, for using in the fire pit. Before it turned 900 degrees.
"I do plan on burning it," Doug told her. "I'm waiting for it to be cooler at night. It'll be taken care of. "
"Oh. in a camp fire?"
"Yes," Doug replied. "It's just been too hot to do that, and we are waiting. But I'm going to take care of it."
"Oh."
We can tell this does not please her. I emailed my property management company to give a heads up that the neighborlady was fussin' at us. Took pictures of the wood behind the shed, and our wood pile. I just told her that "we feel there's no need to fuss, but if she does, let us know. We'll deal with it."
The neighbors across the street got a new porch light this past weekend and it is the kind of thing I feel like I should go fuss.
Now, compared to the wood behind the shed that my back neighbor has to "look at," I'm dealing with this raggedy nonsense that can be seen from the international space station, shining into my livingroom and my bedroom at all hours.
I'm not fussing at them, though.
My neighbor sees the value in having a safe spotlight for his front porch (and ... the whole damn street). I'm not sure if they are turning it on intentionally or if there is a motion sensor, because it will be off all night and then turn on at 3am. And then my dog thinks it is morning, and time to eat.
We're going to go buy better curtains - it's something we've wanted to do for the bedroom anyway, since the window faces East and boy oh boy is Juliet the Sun. Our old bedroom face west and it was never a problem in the mornings because heck, no sun shining in your face through the blinds.
There are neighbor things that you fuss over, or choose not to fuss over, or fuss without like a truly valid reason to fuss.
It makes me miss our neighbors up the street, who were always down to come over for a camp fire, who have the coolest baby.
Here's to hoping it is about 70 degrees on Saturday, that Tony & Betsy are free to come over, that we can stream a bunch of JRAD, Guster and RatDog on the portable speaker, and deplete the pile of wood that annoys the back neighbor, before the light turns on for the front neighbor's sun display.
Sidenote: Several updates to the Shenanigans With Dave beer blog have been posted in the past couple weeks, if yinz wanna read about our adventures, with beer. I had decided to rekindle the storytelling there, and am enjoying it.
Today, Doug had to go to the office for a big meeting thing. In person. Everyone. Required. Presentations! Powerpoint! Suit! Tie! The whole thing! This is the first time (well, second?) since March 2020 that he's had to go in for work. He went in to get his brand new laptop and screens, and to get his first and second vaccination shots, but this is like Big Work Day vibes.
He left this morning at 6:15am, the "meet and greet" part of the meeting started at 7 and his boss' boss said they should be there. He was happy to go then, because he would beat the traffic. Good reason. I fell back asleep after Geoff's Uber got here to get him.
Since we have one car, Geoff had to head to clinical via ride share. If Doug has to start going back in regularly, we may have to evaluate our one-car lifestyle, especially if Geoff is assigned to a place where Public Transportation isn't going to get him there in a timely fashion.
Anyway. sound asleep, there I was. It might have been a good idea to just get up, but sometimes I do my best sleepies between 7am and 8:30am, when my alarm usually goes off. Today though, the trash truck woke me up just before 9am, luckily. Not the first time I've been saved by the noisy contraption and its joyous crew. I forgot to set my alarm after the one I set for Doug went off. Thank you Tuesday.
The dog and I are home here by ourselves.
For the first time.
In months.
This solitude is weird. I have not experienced this in quite some time. It used to be like this every Tuesday for me, in the "before times" when I had my WFH day, one day a week.
I'm hoping to have time in between the work things I want to do, like maybe vacuum, or do something around the house that I can't usually do because Doug is always up my butt or in my way.
Doug and I don't work in the same spaces usually. He works downstairs, has 2 monitors and a laptop all set up in a workstation. Most of the time I am upstairs. I do a lot of zoom calls and the lighting is better up here, so I prefer sitting on the couch with my lap desk.
When I have to do something that requires my second monitor, like today when I launch a station site at 3pm, I'll go downstairs.
Sometimes Doug puts on headphones (he says I talk very loudly, and I do... I know) and sometimes he comes upstairs and plays a game on his phone while he's waiting for me to clear out of his space.
Pandemic WFH life has been interesting, being together all of the time.
We're sometimes in each others' spaces, but it hasn't been too bad. We have space that we can walk away to. We also have nice times where we make each other lunch. We have a puzzle table and we'll each take turns to work the puzzle pieces as a break from work. We take turns taking the dog out. We have chats. It's nice to not be alone-alone all the time.
But I'm enjoying today and the solitude of the morning. I am going to unload the dishwasher and reload it (I baked cookies last night and all of those dishes are waiting to go in). I will get to vacuum. I will ponder dinner.
It's almost like what my WFH Tuesdays used to be like when we were still in Boston. It's lunchtime, and I may make myself some tuna fish, play some music, and work the puzzle for a few.
Here's a picture of the latest puzzle. It's actually going very fast so I'm worried we'll be done by the weekend at this rate!
Last week, I got invited to a goodbye party for a former college roommate. She and her husband have sent the kids off to their next stages in life, the house is huge and rambling, too much for them and their needs. Her parents are in need of support and care back home, he has a job here in DC. So she's moving up there, he's moving into an apartment close to work.
It was also their birthday - their shared birthday, which I always thought was cute. So they had a birthday party/goodbye party.
Since I moved down here in 2017, she and I had discussed getting together. They live over an hour west, and it always feels insurmountable with I-66 being such a nightmare to drive on. And with me working full time. And then the pandemic, like, no. I can't really go anywhere.
But with her imminent departure from the area, and uncertainty about when we'd even get the chance to see each other, I figured, well. This is your chance to go see them, and spend some time, and make up for the years since moving here in 2017 and the years since we last saw each other - at a wedding in 1993. Jess was 14 months old. I still have a beautiful picture of them playing on a blanket with the Noah's Ark little people bath toy that we brought along, sweaty curls, flushed skin, big smile.
Thankfully Doug came with me, see my feelings on driving on I-66 above. The party was at a beer farm in Virginia, and it was a beautiful setting for some fun. And there was beer. We got there late, because we both had to work, and didn't manage to get our shit together to get out the door until 5 when the party started at 4. We knew it'd be at least an hour before we got there. I warned her we'd be late and not to leave. We were coming.
She said they'd wait.
Folks were in the process of leaving when we rolled up. She was thrilled when we walked up into the pavilion to join the gathering, and he acted like we were his very best friends that he hadn't seen in forever, which is weird because in College we didn't have any connection other than the fact he was dating my roommate and would sometimes be in our room. We were embraced with enthusiasm, brought to the bar to get beer on his tab. We talked mostly with him for quite a while as she was social butterflying around people, and he was more than happy to talk about Boston and how much he missed living there.
We had a good time catching up with them both and meeting a couple of their friends. The brewery closed at 9 and I believe we were the last people there.
I don't really want to write in depth about some of the things her husband told me and Doug (which Doug could not believe he was saying). But suffice to say, it became obvious the sale of the house, and moving to separate locations isn't just them making a plan for the next stage of their relationship and family care, there isn't a relationship between them any longer.
Not only was this a shared birthday party for their shared birthday, and a bon voyage party for them moving, it was an end to the marriage send-off. This was it.
As we were some of the last people there (two other local friends stuck around to make sure they got home safe) it got teary but it never got snipey or ugly. A few burning glances across the table from her when he'd say something stupid.
But there wasn't a level of drama brought to a drunken end of a gathering that say my family would have turned up to 11. It just was. It is what it is.
Their friends drove them home, to the house they'd lived in for 5 years, where her stuff was packed in to her car for the morning departure. He was in charge of the rest of the move, and his own relocation.
They'd stay one more night before she left, probably not speaking to each other. Maybe they would have harsh words then, having kept everything from boiling over at the party. Doubtful they'd sleep together (that vibe was pretty strong) and she'd be gone in the morning.
In college, she and I weren't really close or good friends. We lived in the same room and that's the extent of it.
I am a few years older than she and our other roommate are (see the wedding above). The two of them had a tight closeness, I was on the periphery and that was okay. They were freshmen or maybe sophomores, I was a third time senior at that point.
She was an only child, her parents older than mine (for instance, her dad is about to turn 90. My dad is 81 and my mom is in her late 70s). She was spoiled, and rich. She would come into the room at all hours of the night after hanging out with friends, and her "only child" behaviours were apparent. The overhead lights would be flung on instead gently of walking over to her desk and turning on the low light. The other roommate and I were usually already in bed, fast asleep. And then she'd talk in not a whisper but a loud and boisterous tone with the other roomie, who didn't mind getting woken up as much as I did. After all, there were stories to tell about her late night shenanigans. She'd turn on music. She listened to French music, having lived in France for a while. She'd sing. Jesus, God, help me she'd be over there singing in French and I had an 8am class.
It was at times brutal to live with someone who had literally never had to share time and space with others. We would have arguments about it, the other roomie and I trying to convince her how to act like other people were on the planet too.
Eventually she started to get it, but I often was overwhelmed with the concepts of what selfishness does to relationships. The other roommate was the middle child of three girls (funnily enough, she then had 3 girls herself!) so she was always sensitive to space sharing and quiet time. We established guidelines: If it's after 11? Do not turn on the overhead lights. Try not to crank up the tunes and sing out loud and turn every light in the room on. And for fucks sake, do not sing a bunch of French pop songs.
Especially if your roommate works full time to try and pay for college, and has to go to classes, and everything. You'll thank me later when I bring home a buttload of Croissants from the bakery I worked night shift at. If you want to enjoy the things I bring back, start acting like I matter. We left college on good terms. And that was nice, because at the bottom of everything, she indeed was nice, smart, and fun.
When Doug and I got to the party, after we found out about their separation, she pulled me aside and asked me "was it weird of me to include him? To invite him to this?"
I told her that no I didn't think it was at all. It was as much his birthday as hers, as much his last hurrah as hers, and it was obvious that these were his friends too.
The most selfish person I'd known at one time had done something inclusive, for someone she probably can't stand being around at all anymore. And I thought that was pretty amazing.
So she's off. She's with her parents. She posted pictures on Facebook of taking her dad out for ice cream. It was quite adorable. She messaged me yesterday to thank us for coming to the party, apologized if it was weird or awkward for us. I told her it sort of was, but I get it and it does not diminish my love for her.
Maybe let's not wait 30 something years to spend some time together again.
Nice to see you. Bye, roomie. See you again some other time.
As promised from yesterday's post about Morning Glories. The pictures will be big because I was too lazy to do some crops and they are phone oriented, mostly. Doug needs to give that one bush by the front steps a little haircut. It is starting to look silly. But it is hot as fuck out there, God bless anyone who has to be out there working right now. Holy crap. Anyway. Here are a couple pictures.
Realizing that morning glories bloom in the morning, this picture was taken at 9am. So it just looks like a shit ton of leaves. I was sad to see how many of them were closed up so early.
I'll try and get a shot with them all open, gotta get up earlier!
Outside in front of the house where the gate is, I had planted about 3 morning glory plants on each of the posts in July. It took forever for them to grow and get to the point where I could thread them up into the chain link, but once they got going, they got going!
I had mentioned the "dead" tree trellis yesterday. I should have taken pictures of what it was doing down the base where it was trying to grow up new life and I took it away. Sorry, tree. It's not dead for sure, just this part, I guess. So we decided to let the morning glories do their thing, and they are climbing! Every day we come out and encourage the vines along the branches. It is starting to work and there they go!
As you can see here, a bunch of the vines are twined together. This all happened when I was in Denver or when we were in Pittsburgh, and this is super hard to undo. I still might undo it and thread the vines down the chain link fence to fill in the blanks down there below.
This one little flower was open, most everything else was a closed little trumpet. Bees were trying to get inside but their cute little fat butts wouldn't fit in. If they flew onto the other side of the fence though, they'd find this one and a couple others open, waiting in the shade! Or, maybe they already visited this little one and I missed it.
I am happy to see them thriving so well and looking so wild, almost feral compared to all of my neighbors yards which are perfectly kept, perfectly neat (to steal a line from Guster). We have always preferred the wild gardens, and yeah, it's nice to have the walkway edged but it's also nice to have a wall of vines and craziness. I will take that any day.
I should write about the discussion I had with my neighbor to the back of the house about wild vines. I'll save that for a fresh entry.
Last weekend was kind of a washout, but not fully a washout. Doug wasn't feeling well after getting his vaccine and usually we are driven to "do" based on his wants. I'm perfectly happy not doing things. Not going places. Working around the house and doing things instead of going places to do nothing.
He muttered and stumbled around sighing all weekend, complaining. I actually did work (I'm not supposed to work on the weekend but I did because I'm so far behind) and I downloaded pictures from the Samsung Cloud to my phone because I dunno - Samsung is discontinuing our cloud or some shit.
I then sat and uploaded pictures to Dropbox to get them off my phone. I had all the photos I'd taken that didn't go up to the cloud and then all the pictures removed from the cloud, so there were several thousand images that needed taken care of.
I tried to bulk upload all the images at once and around 4 hours later nothing was happening, so I opted to go month by month, starting with the ones not downloaded from the cloud. Worked out well but was slow going. I sat here on the couch most of the afternoon on Saturday and pretty much all day on Sunday, purging pictures I didn't want to send up to Dropbox, lots of junk, lots of pictures of beer.
Really should start posting to the Shenanigans with Dave blog again since we enjoy a lot of Maryland Beer. I should resurrect it. I use Untappd, so I do take pictures of the beers and share thoughts about them, but I miss the blog.
The work week was busy. Very busy. We have a new employee that I hand selected and encouraged to interview. So she's coming up to speed and I'm helping her every chance I get when a question comes up. We had launched 4 sites onto the new content management system and I've been doing that task, which I love doing. I love meeting with the stations, talking them through the process, and then testing/verifying/spot checking all the content. But I also have to do my own job, like the job that usually takes me a solid 50 hours a week to do. If I could not do my own job at all and only focus on the migration of sites to the new platform, I think I'd actually be very happy. I really enjoy this. I feel accomplished and successful.
I'm not sure that will ever happen.
But it makes me happy, and I get to do it because the person who had been doing it is on family leave. I'm not sure when he comes back but when he does, I'm going to dig my heels in and say I really want to keep doing this task. I am hoping he'll be more than amenable for me to do it so he can do his other 900 duties. And I'll continue to futz with my actual job at all kinds of off hours, I guess. Just to keep things going.
Doug gets mad at me and says I'm doing too much, that "they're getting way too much out of you for what you're getting paid."
I know. I am aware. I'm fine with it though for now. For Now.
Anyway.
We are watching this hurricane situation carefully to see if it was going to float westward at us but things look incredibly safe and clear here for us.
Not so much for my sister and possibly my parents. Screenshot above is from this morning. That's all subject to change, of course. My parents are South East of Providence, and my sister is kind of due south of New Haven.
With our weather being pretty much just tropical with no wind or problems, we made the best of the afternoon, as opposed to last weekend! Doug headed out to mow the lawn and cull the sunflowers as they're basically past peak here and dying. Our tomatoes are mostly done. Kind of weird because in Massachusetts I'm used to tomatoes ripening now and being available through September. But we're done. And the Cosmos are finished.
We have a small tree that is growing into the fence up front, most of it was killed by the cicadas, so Doug had done a big trim and tidy of it, thinking that we'll see what it looks like next spring to see what's still worth keeping. It started to send out dozens of suckers out of the base, so it looks like a big dumb dead tree growing out of a bush. I cut back all the suckers, and back in July I had planted morning glories on the fence on either side of the gate, and while I was in Denver and then in Pennsylvania they went crazy bananas and grew all over the damn place. I'd intended to thread them nicely all through the fence, but they blew up kind of all in one place. On one side of the gate, I'm did a ton of detangling, and am training them towards the dead-ish tree to use it as kind of a trellis and grow up vertically. On the other side, of the gate, I did some de-tangling and rethreading, and cut giant leaves back from the mailbox, so the USPS can open our mailbox and put mail in!
Note to self, next year start the morning glories on every pole along the fence and not right next to the gate.
I'm going to go out tomorrow morning and take a picture. They literally are gorgeous first thing in the morning, and by 10am they close up for the day. This side of the house faces East, so this is beautiful first thing. I love them and am already looking forward to doing it differently next year.
I also did a bunch of grass trimming along the fence, and pulled out all kinds of fun growing things that had been left to their own devices for most of the month while I was away. Everything here is very prolific, and grows very fast, especially in August. There is some really cute ground cover that I don't recognize, I may dig it up and put it in a bare patch at another part of the fence by the street.
It was hot, I was sweating and filthy. I got to be Farmer Chris again after several weeks of it being way too hot to even deal with being outside. This was delightful and peaceful.
The rain came after I'd spent about two hours out there, Doug finished mowing the lawn, and we came inside to escape the afternoon downpour. It's hot and humid and dead still out there, hard to imagine that a couple hundred miles to our east there's a hurricane churning away.
Geoff is house sitting for a friend of mine that I met at a Guster concert a few years ago. RG is in his mid 30s, and came to the show in DC alone, and connected with our burgeoning friend group. He's super sweet and I like him a lot. We haven't seen each other in person since the show back then, but he is so nice and we're connected on Facebook. He asked if anyone could take his dog so he could travel this weekend. I told him we couldn't take the dog (Phineas is not other dog friendly) but I volunteered the boy. He took me up on the offer.
Glad the boy gets to now live a bachelor's life until Monday night when I go to pick him up. He longs for his own apartment and that solo life, and maybe his own dog. Downtown Bethesda is really nice, and walking distance to restaurants and a brew pub too, so I think he was very excited about tasting what living in town would be like, since we're not walking distance from anything except a 1/2 mile walk to the metro, where you can then get out to all the fun things, but it isn't the same as living in a neighborhood like Bethesda.
So this is a good thing for him to do.
I can't believe he starts back for classes again on August 30th for the Fall semester. Next weekend I hope he can squeeze in another good thing to do for himself like kayaking or something. He's accomplished so much and this next year is going to hopefully be amazing. I believe this time next year he's done with his degree, and we'll see where he goes next.
I just talked to my mom who seems confident that nothing is going to happen for them, she's saying she's prepared. She has cheetos puffs and triscuits for food. When you are almost 80 and that is what you eat, that's fine I guess.
Anyway, it is only Saturday and I feel we got a bunch done. And I'm making up for last week. And still have a day ahead to do more. I'll take some pictures of the flowers tomorrow, and take care of them until the vine withers
We bought tickets for this in maybe April when the band announced it. Our favorite band.A headlining show at Red Rocks. Headlining. They've opened four times for other bands but this, this was theirs.
And I've always wanted to see a show at Red Rocks, so this was it. Here we go. We cannot miss this one.
Doug didn't want to go, even though I wanted him to. He isn't a big Guster fan, and I thought he'd maybe like to just go to Denver and enjoy Denver. But he opted out.
I bought the tickets for myself and 5 friends.
I bought plane tickets for Linda and me. We all made our hotel arrangements for the same hotel, coordinated schedules. Got it all figured out.
The crew, the "framily" as Sara calls us was me, Linda (from NY), her bestie Ginger (from Florida), Sara and Sean (from up the road here in Maryland), Kacey (she went to HS with Jess and lives around the corner from them up in Massachusetts), and Joe and Debs. Sara and Sean connected with me before a show in DC, and we met Joe at the same show. Joe lives in Pittsburgh. Debs is his bestie, she lives in Virginia Beach. Debs and Linda got introduced to our little growing team at the Fillmore show for Lost and Gone Forever's 20th anniversary. Linda brought Ginger to the Guster show we attended in Fort Lauderdale.
No matter what, we'll jump anyone into our friend circle and have a great time.
Once the plans were made we then just had to wait. The excruciating wait. Time dragged on and eventually we got to the week of travel. Finally.
Linda drove here 2 days before the actual trip so we started our "vacation" early. We both are working from home so we worked from the couch here. We went out to eat all together with Doug and Geoff, cuddled with Phineas, and had a lot of fun just visiting.
Thursday we flew to Denver, you can't tell in the picture because of the mask but I'm smiling super big (you can tell Linda is because she's got goot "smize"... smiling eyes).
Conveniently, Sara and Sean were on the same flight with us. We thought they were on the flight before us.
Our departure ended up rescheduled at some point, initially it was supposed to be 5pm but got bumped back to 7:30, which turned out okay since I didn't need to take half a vacation day just to go to the airport. We met up at the tequila cantina across from our gate, joyfully chatting. It had been a minute since we'd been in the same place and this was fun.
We got into Denver at about 10:30pm, got our luggage, and met Ginger at the passenger pick-up area. She had rented a "mid size SUV" but they gave her something much smaller. She argued this letting them know she had to pick up 4 people and luggage and this was not going to work but as many people know rental cars are scarce, and she had to just take what they gave her and deal with it.
Evaluating the situation, Sean and Sara were contemplating taking the light rail to get to the hotel, and we'd take the luggage. We were tired and cranky, our bodies feeling like it was closer to 1am than 11pm with the time change. We discussed it at length, how ridiculous this toy clown car was, but damn if somehow we didn't just make it all fit. I kind of wish I had video of this, or pictures, of how we did Tetris and got luggage into the way back, and then ourselves in there with more luggage on top of ourselves. With us laughing our asses off as we drove the forever long trip from the airport to downtown.
We must have looked a sight to the valet folks as we were falling out of the car, stuck under luggage, laughing like assholes.
Ginger had flown in that morning, so she had toodled aboot Denver getting to know the lay of the land. She bought the makings for cocktails and a mess of snacks, and Linda and Ginger's room was "the bar." My room was next door, and I had the room to myself until Kacey showed up Saturday morning. Sara and Sean were a couple floors above us, and the pool was waiting for us the next morning on the fourth floor deck.
We got checked in, had a couple cocktails. Sara was very hungry and tried to order Door Dash a couple of times but each time her order got canceled. Around 1:30 in the morning, she finally got a McDonalds order completed and delivered. Probably the best Quarter Pounder with Cheese I've ever had because at that time, I was also very hungry. We laughed our asses off and fell assless into our beds around 3:30am MT.
My former manager texted me at 10am ET/8am MT and I could tell she was not doing well. So instead of texting, I called her back. We talked for 90 minutes and I was up for the day. Luckily my brain thought it was like 10am just about so it felt right getting up.
Linda got coffee. We went to the pool deck. The view was lovely but everyone local told us this was horrible. Not at all what the view should be. Cloudy, smoggy, smoke-filled. But hey, I thought it looked pretty nice.
Nice little football stadium there, too. Hello Denver Broncos.
We got ready for the pool and had a lovely afternoon "bobbing like manatees" in the water. Sara ordered pizza, we gathered with other Guster fans there (from MA and NH) and just really had some fun.
Some of the details and recollections are foggy for me for Friday. I do know that Joe and Debs were on their way to Denver, and I think we went to pick them up at the airport to surprise them. They had a shit day of flight cancellations and reroutings but we were so happy to get them there in one piece. More hanging out. More fun. Kacey arrived on Saturday morning and took the light rail. We were all gathered in our place together.
Here are Ginger and Linda, chilling in front of some wall art when we walked back from dinner on Friday night.
Saturday Ginger, Linda, and I went and got pedicures. Treat yoself. They were a lot more affordable than DC pedicures, that's for sure.
Guster hosted a bingo night on Saturday, and we ended up delaying our departure to the venue which was a mistake. We didn't get in, but were able to sit at a picnic table on the sidewalk and hear the game. We were able to get in to get drinks thanks to a friend who scored us nametags (you couldn't get inside without a name tag) so we could at least hang out, see other friends and, then this happened.
That's the drummer, Brian. He couldn't get in either. Too crowded. Ha.
I ran across the street to the brewery where he was hanging out on the patio to say hi. We got to visit for a few minutes, a lot of people wanted to say hi and get selfies so I didn't want to hog him. I wished him a happy early birthday (his birthday was the day before so I was wishing him a happy early birthday for next birthday. That's a joke we had running at the office for a while. "Every day that isn't your birthday is your early birthday, Brian," I explained. He laughed and said "you're the weirdest person I know." I told him I doubt that. He has to know weirder people.
He said he said he was feeling so overwhelmed and blown away. He was shocked and amazed at how many people came from so far just to see them. "You're here from like Maryland, there are people from everywhere here, the show is sold out! The orchestra is amazing. You're going to die, Chris. You're just going to die." I told him that Linda was there from NY and Ginger from Florida, and yeah he was right. People were there from everywhere, it was a pilgrimage. An opportunity to have fun, gather, be together, finally. Finally.
I thanked him for recognizing that this was such a big deal for them as a band and for us as fans, and thanked him for making it so I'd die. I left him to go back across the street to Linda and Ginger and hang out. He came across and we had the opportunity to say hi again and we got the picture.
Then he had to go to the airport to get his family. I asked for his nametag, he laughed. Later I put it with a red rock that I got from Red Rocks.
We hung out with Joe and Debs, and Kacey, and the gang was all together. There we were. T minus 24 hours to the show.
Mind you right now the forecast for Sunday is for 77 degrees, 1% chance of rain. Keep that in mind.
On Sunday I had arranged for a meet and greet for Guster fans. There's a hotel near the venue that a lot of people were staying at the night of the show, but they couldn't accommodate us without charging us a room rental fee, so I reached out to the brewery across the parking lot to see if they could host us.
The taproom manager was the coolest guy, set us up with a side of the tasting room. Guster fans gathered, I think we had like 50 at one point, people came and went as they had time. The beer was flowing, the restaurant next door was coming over every 15 minutes to take orders to feed the people. The staff had the brilliant idea to just put on Spotify's Guster playlist and everyone was singing along. Good lord we looked like some sort of crazy cult, but everyone was just having so much fun. Good old friends, new friends, card games, lots of laughs, meeting new people, meeting kids! It was a successful and wonderful gathering of the like-minded and some joy. I asked the taproom manager at the end if he thought this was a good day and he looked at me and said "uh yeah. You guys bought all our merch. Best day of beer sales we've had in weeks." I thought it was so weird that they're so close to Red Rocks that no other fan base had made this kind of event and he shook his head and said no not really. Nothing organized like this. Sometimes a few people show up and have a beer before the show but nothing like an actual coordinated meet and greet.
Holy Cow this is a lot of Guster Fans enjoying beer and each other.
We were staying at the hotel near the venue that night (we kept 1 room at the other hotel in downtown and concierged all our stuff in that room for the night. Best 300 bucks we've ever spent for all of us to not have to worry about schlepping stuff back and forth. Linda is a genius sometimes). We knew that we couldn't once again cram all our shit into a car again. Joe had picked up a car for a 24 hour rental through some Uber driver thing. So we had 2 cars at our disposal.
I was taking a post meet and greet snooze and the sky opened up. It was POURING, thunder and lightning, and hail. Everyone was pretty terrified that the show would just be canceled. We waited at the hotel, monitoring the chat in the Facebook group from people who were already up there, waiting it out in their cars or inside the venue because they were doing show volunteer work with Adam's organization, Reverb.
The waterfalls rushing down the stairs, the absolute pooling and ponding of water everywhere. The images were kind of daunting. But then it stopped, the sun was coming out, and the show was not canceled. We made it over to the venue.
It's a complicated parking situation, and kind of a shitshow. Because we had two cars, our group got separated. I had the tickets on my phone for the 6 humans I bought for, but Sean and Kacey were at a lower gate from where we were. I should have dispersed them at the hotel before we left but we weren't thinking we'd end up in this situation.
No cel signal for either of them (I had one) so they couldn't receive the tickets.... and I was wary of trying to transfer them, and then have them be floating somewhere in the ether with no way to get them once we found what gate our friends were at.
There was some stress but I wasn't going to let it ruin anything. Sara was freaking out a little because she couldn't believe Sean might not be able to get in. The Red Rocks Staff was literally no help. We came in the north gate. But Sean said they were at the north gate. There's an upper north and a lower north but basically the lower north was marked "Coca Cola gate" according to Sean and Kacey when we were able to get them on the phone.
The staff had no idea what that meant. "This is the north gate."
No dude, up top there, that's the north gate.
"yes. Yes it is. And this is the north gate."
Jesus you people are infuriating.
In my heart of hearts I'm writing the "strong letter to follow" that Red Rocks was going to get from me for calling both of their gates North Gate instead of naming them things like Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Orange, Purple gates. Or something. Or telling their internal staff what the Coca Cola gate means. Dipshits.
Anyway, we finally find one normal human, who knows what the Coca Cola gate is, and points up to where we can see Sean and Kacey coming down the stairs toward the ticket scanner. They're about 20 people up. We run over there and try to tell security that we have their tickets on my phone. This one woman tells me "no you don't." I'm like "bitch do not try me right now." Sean and Kacey are waving to us and I point to them like "look, I have their tickets, I need to step up to that scanner lady and get this scanned, and finally someone with half a brain guides me up.
Scanned, in, relieved, somewhat pissed and angry, and realizing we've basically just missed the entire opening act, the Lone Bellow, who I really wanted to see but ... we've got our party back together.
Rule number one in D&D is do not split the party. Well. Same for Red Rocks, I guess. Lesson learned about electronic tickets too - make sure to just give every human their ticket on their own devices before leaving. And cel coverage is not universal out there - screenshot your ticket so it is an image in your gallery and back that shit up.
All together, we get to our seats. Joe and Debs had bought their tickets way after I bought ours, and they got them from someone who couldn't attend, so they were in the 14th row and we were in the 22nd. Joe offered the people next to us "swapsies" so they could go up to the 14th row and we could be together. Those folks were happy to do so, and were part of our Guster fan group so they shot a little video of themselves in their new seats being all happy. We were happy to have our party fully together.
And the show began.
This was a next level experience for me as a fan. The venue, the lighting, the stage, the crowd. I'd never seen them in a bigger venue than say the House of Blues in Boston. There were 9000 people here. 9000 people there to see Guster. And the band was absolutely blown away. "For the first time in my life, I'm at a loss for words," Ryan Miller said after the first song.
They played a few songs and then the orchestra came out. The Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Christopher Dragon. Coolest conductor I've ever seen.
And this is one of the magical results. Full screen this and love that orchestra rounding this all out and making it just an auditory masterpiece. And love Brian's drum performance when they have it full miked, because he's just the focal point of this all and I wish the camera would just stay on him from about 4 minutes in.
The entire experience was simply amazing. Even when Ryan's voice went all "12 year old puberty" in a few spots, probably hydration and altitude related. And the wind in the microphones was a bit hard on the audio.
When they performed "Hard Times" acoustic, quietly and beautifully singing at the edge of the stage holding that audience in absolute silence as they listened along, really a stunning experience. Their song "Mind Kontrol" isn't one of my favorites but with the orchestra, it was mind blowing. And such beauty with songs Adam sings lead on, like "Dear Valentine" with the orchestra. I can't get over how wonderful they all sounded together.
At the end of a lot of the shows they do a song called "Jesus on the Radio" and they usually do it without amplification, standing on the edge of the stage or out in the audience. For this they had a small stage set up in the audience, about 18 rows up, and they had to be microphoned. People had left the show already, so we were able to move much closer. And everyone close in knows - sing along. Sing loudly, you're part of this little 2 minute long song.
The show ended and they put a "Save the Date" sign up on the screens for On The Ocean, 2022. They have done this twice where they basically take over the city of Portland Maine for a weekend. That'll be August 12-14 next year and we're already conspiring on our attendance for that one.
Monday morning, Kacey had to go back home, so before I drove her to the airport, Joe and I were up early and we went over to Red Rocks to look at it one more time. The venue is in the middle of a park, so it's open every day. People exercise in their, running up the steps and using the different stages of the venue for different exercises.
We walked around and just looked at it, Hot, dry, no rain, bright sun. No Guster. It was fun to just have one more walk around.
I dropped Joe off at the hotel so he could rouse the crew and get them ready for check out. I took Kacey to the airport, got back and grabbed Linda and Ginger. We all went over to a Mexican restaurant that Joe had been eyeballing after the show but we sadly were all too tired to go out. We hit the place up for lunch, and had a great time.
We headed back to our downtown hotel, got our rooms all figured out. Ginger took the car and headed back to Florida.
Tuesday morning, we headed out to the Denver Biscuit Company for breakfast and mimosas, and spent our last moments together before we had to part ways. Joe and Debs were headed to her aunt's house, Sara, Sean, Linda and I were flying home that afternoon.
Flight was delayed by over 2 hours so I'm glad Linda and I had driven to the airport instead of having Doug take and pick us up. We got in well after midnight, and were happy to try to fall asleep thinking it was only 11pm in our bodies and brains at that point.
I keep thinking that I could have done more in Denver. But I was very happy doing pretty much nothing but Day Drinking at the pool. There's no crime in that for a vacation. I am disappointed on one hand that Doug didn't want to come with me but on the other hand, I got to do all the dumb things I wanted to do like nothing. I didn't have to go hiking and get really winded and exhausted. I didn't have to walk 11 miles all over town to go look at things in the 90 plus degree heat. I got to just hang out with my friends. And that's just fine sometimes. I had a great time. I don't regret any choices. The only regret I have is we didn't have another day or two to be there because maybe, just maybe, I could have gone to a museum or something, or more driving in the mountains. But it's okay. The focus of this trip was the band, and the friends.
Happy to have that as a memory that I'll cherish forever.
I want to write up a full entry on the Red Rocks/Guster/Denver trip. I can't believe that happened weeks ago and we're now here at August 15th. So many good memories, and such a great time. Ah me, oh my heart.
More recently though, we went to help Doug's mom with her packing and moving. We were under the impression we would be doing work.
That did not happen.
It was not a full wash out but I have feelings about the whole week we spent there, and I am kind of angry. I'm not sure who reads this journal anymore, so I'm reluctant to really to pour my heart out. Suffice to say. It was not the best week, I did not enjoy myself at all. And coming off the joy of the Guster trip and travel with friends where we all worked together to make it the best experience, man. This has made me bitter.
Pros:
Attended Doug's family reunion. It was not well attended. All of his mom's level of family/cousins are sad because of it.
Condo is really nice. Almost too nice. Kind of weird to be there.
Brought over the patio bench and chair.
Brought over 2 bookcases and a metal shelf.
Brought over several small boxes of things.
Purchased a TV, wall mount, scheduled install.
Purchased laptop (surface pro).
Got internet connected.
Helped configure her phone for better use and put all the contact numbers in there.
I made a record of all the passwords/codes, so if someone forgets they can easily ask us.
Visited Ohio for the Rogers Sale and got some things (rather than just coming home sunburned and empty handed).
Visited Home Laughlin's China in West Virginia and went into the Seconds section, and bought a ton of plates/bowls/etc to replace all the mismatched stuff we use daily.
Quality time with our niece, nephew, and Doug's sister.
Quality time talking with mom (when freakouts were not happening).
Good pizza! So good.
Cons:
Given stuff to bring back with us (It was a challenge to put it in the Jeep, lads).
Dog traumatized by kennel (injured himself, puked/shat in it 2x). And then I was traumatized by his trauma.
Cleanup from second dog explosion = not a very happy event with lots of tears and crying (not just me).
DWG - frustrated with absolute lack of progress at old house in regards to packing/cleaning/organizing, when we specifically came out there to move so many things. He vacillates between "there is no big hurry for her to move, she'll do it in her time, she has 53 years of stuff to sort through" and "oh my GOD. Why can't she just put 10 books in a box and move them?! Why has she not sorted through things? What is this pile of shit on the dining table, it's all junk mail, why won't she just put that in the recycling and move it! There are no end tables/patio tables at the new house so we can't put anything on a table. Can't we just bring something over For Fuck's SAKE!"
GWG - frustrated with lack of things to do and felt he wasted a week being there. Doesn't see the purpose in maybe just spending time. Antsy, pacing the cage, none of this is his style. Drank a lot of beer due to boredom. But bought cool sunglasses at Rogers, so he liked that.
Me - overwhelmed by how unbelievably stubborn MIL is, how no one can make decisions, how both DWG and mom say "I don't care" when it comes to decisions but it is obvious they do care. Annoyed that decisions get made but then plans change because the person who did not care suddenly has a different idea. Wanted to see my friend Joe but wasn't able to (it's ok - I saw him at the Guster concert in July)
We got back a week ago, and I basically just kind of shut down, focused on work all week. I think it was Wednesday when I finally gave Doug a full unload of my feelings about what we went through. What I went through.
He owes me.
And I told him I really do not intend to go back and "help" until actual help is needed. So go ahead, if she asks you or wants you to come up, go ahead.
Basically what it comes down to is she isn't ready to move, and keeps talking about if she doesn't like being there, she'll sell it and move back to the house. So she does not intend to fully move out. It's clear to me. She's not going to sell the old house. So why bother moving out fully. It's a game. This is dumb and a waste of my time. I'm not interested.
I'm trying to be merciful to her position but also am completely dumbfounded by it. I'm gobsmacked.
Doug has told me my mom is difficult but, to be honest, nah son - she wins.
Anyway.
One of the highlights of this trip for me was going to West Virginia to the Homer Laughlin Fiesta Tableware store. We spent a great deal of time in the Seconds section, and we put together a nice setting for 6 of the different sized plates/bowls.
Buying their stuff at market price, that blue container at the top is a dog bone container - and it is $86 retail. In the seconds? $20. Scores abound.
I've always wanted Fiestaware. It is durable, colorful, fun. I've especially wanted a pitcher for iced tea or sangria or who knows what.
They had white and purple ones of those pitchers, Doug didn't like the purple because you can't see what is inside so we went with white.
The turquoise tray is for a dozen deviled eggs. We have yellow bowls and 10" plates, 7" blue plates, some purple/black dessert plates, white coffee mugs, orange and blue deep "bistro" bowls. I wanted something red thrown in here and he said he already felt like a Crayola crayon box barfed all over the place so we didn't mix in red.
All told, all of the pieces we bought came to less than $150. Retail this would be close to $800.
We have been enjoying our plates and bowls. I have not made deviled eggs yet but we have 2 dozen eggs so hey - I can do that any time! I want to set up a nice photo shoot of all the things, because I like them so much.
Geoff asked me what we'd be doing with all our other plates, all the Martha Stewart Collection plates from K-Mart that Doug bought when he was like 4. Other bowls and things we've got. I am going to pack those up and hold them aside - he can have them for when he moves out, and they'll do him good for starter plates.
That was a delightful highlight of the trip. I enjoyed myself immensely. And I'll go back for sure.
