Five Plus One for Friday, Edition #1

 1) CBBC readers! Don't forget to do your homework and send me a photo of your book/where you read so it can be included in next week's collage. Let's say the deadline is Sunday by 7pm central.  If you send it in late, that's fine, but it will be included in week three instead of week two.  dominique100 @ hotmail .com

2) Warning: This is the stuff of nightmares. We have a colleague who has a son with eight-year old twins. He is in his late 30s/early 40s. He got COVID and because his immune system was weakened, he then got shingles (studies do indicate that people who get COVID are about 20% more likely to also get shingles, although most of those studies were done on people who were 50 and older).  The shingles GOT INTO HIS EYE. He had to get shots in his eye, but the damage has already been done. He recently had eye surgery and the OPTIMISTIC prognosis is that he will someday have enough vision in it to read the big E on the eye chart or see light and shadows. 

When people ask me why I still worry about COVID, this is why. I don't want to be blind, yo.

3) Annoyance at work:  I'm working with a man on a project. He has shortened my name to the first three letters of my name and the presumed familiarity of the whole thing is infuriating. That is NOT my name. It's not even a nickname I allow people close to me to use. Please don't call me that. 

4) Today I learned: J posted a bunch of photos of chickpeas/garbanzo beans/chana recently and that's when I learned the word chana. Also, I am Team Chickpea, but desperately want to know the regional/world differences. What I really want is a heat map, like the one you can find for pop/soda/Coke. Does anyone know of such a heat map?

Source

5) Music of the day: I have been listening to Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust (1975) album on repeat on Spotify. When I was in college, I had this on CD and I listened to it hundreds of times. It holds up. "Diamonds and Rust," "Simple Twist of Fate," and "Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer" are my favorites, but it's a good album overall.

+1) Goodest Girl Award: Yesterday was a long day. My husband was speaking on a panel after my working hours and I wanted to go to support him. I thought I would run home in the afternoon to let Hannah out, but I got halfway home and realized that while I had grabbed the car keys from my husband, I had not grabbed the house keys. I didn't have time to drive back to the office and back home again, so Hannah was stuck. Her morning walk was at about 6 - 6:30 in the morning. 

Meanwhile, in the middle of the panel, there was a tornado warning (IN EARLY FEBRUARY - climate change is real) and we were all hustled further into the room and the sirens were going off like crazy and an event that was supposed to end at 6:30 didn't end until almost 8.  Hannah, meanwhile, was the Best Girl and didn't have an accident or destroy the house because she was scared of the storm. A tornado was reported in our town south of our house and there was lots of hail and I bet it was super scary. So, thumbs up to Hannah.

Happy Friday!

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Are you Team Chickpea or Team Garbanzo? I don't like garbanzo because I think it sounds like Gonzo, the Muppet. 

What's the last song you listened to?

4.4 Information - In the News

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the fourth day of the month is "Information."

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When I was teaching, I stayed on top of the news. I never knew when a student was going to ask me about the latest legislation or the war in Myanmar. But once I stopped teaching, I also stopped reading the headlines every morning and clicking refresh on NPR's homepage every hour. I checked in occasionally and religiously checked the local news, but I wasn't always willing to deal with the stress of the news daily.

I've been trying to dip my toes back in to regular news consumption. But today I read about how the 5th Circuit Court ruled that the government cannot legally remove firearms from people who have civil protective orders against them. So, hey, you have enough evidence that a judge granted you a protection order, but that's not enough for us to take away the guns of your stalker/abuser. Oh, boy. The legal reasoning for this relies on a court case with more logical flaws than my cat when she wants dinner an hour and a half early.  But so we go on. 

Then I read about ice storms in Texas and people without power for days on end. Mass shootings. A woman who someone thought was dead, but was not and woke up gasping for air at a funeral home. 

And then I just stopped and read a novel because it turns out I do not know what to do with this bad news floating around in my brain. 

Tuesday Randomicity

This post is brought to you by Tuesday randomicity, as inspired by Suzanne.

1) I'd like to start with the word "randomicity" which I feel should be spelled "randomocity," but is not. This is a minor annoyance in my life and I'd like everyone to take a moment to get pissy about it with me.

2) The fire station in our town has been extensively renovated in the last year. They used to have a Dalmatian dog statue in front of the fire station, but in the remodel, it had disappeared. Last week, it returned, freshly painted, and I only noticed because Hannah the Dog sprang into full pointer mode about half a block away from it. She was very hesitant to approach it, but when I went up to it and showed her that it was a statue, she instantly become uninterested. When we first got her, she wouldn't even cross our street for weeks because one of our neighbors has two lion statues in their yard, so I think this is so much progress and I'm so proud of our little scaredy dog. Also, yay! for the Dalmatian making a comeback. 

3) A few months ago, I wrote a bit of a tangent about how I have a bit of a worry that the library is going to call me out for overusing its resources. I know, intellectually, that this will not happen and that they like having repeat patrons and Deborah even commented on that post about how the library will never kick me out. Ha. So when my phone range yesterday and it was a phone call from the library, I think you will know that I absolutely panicked. 

It turns out that my email was getting bounced back (hotmail was being weird?) and Mary the Librarian wanted me to know that I had an overdue book and that I had a hold book available. I was mortified by the overdue book, but excited about the hold and told her I'd stop by later that day. What service our public library offers. 

4) My father-in-law and brother-in-law dropped off our dining room table this past weekend! It used to be the kitchen table in my in-laws house and my father-in-law and his wife didn't want it in their new house, but I wanted it desperately. Going from a table that seats four to a table that seats six is going to be a game changer.  You'll note that our dining room now has this table and the cardinal picture from my in-laws' old house. I asked my husband if he felt like he was in his old house now with all this surrounding him and he took a moment before he said it is such a different environment that it's not the same at all.

I am pleased to report that I think the rug is large enough that we won't need to buy a new one, which was a concern of mine. I am less pleased to report that this change in furniture has freaked out the dog who, as of when I'm writing this, still refuses to go in the dining room. Apparently this is just a bridge too far in her comfort level. Changing entire pieces of furniture is unacceptable. 

What's random in your life today? 

Thursday Randomicity

1. I feel a tiny bit badly about not caring more about the death of Queen Elizabeth. Everyone else is talking about Meghan Markle's bare arms, the corgis waiting for her to come home, and whether or not this is the official death of the Commonwealth and I'm all over here wondering when we can resume normal news programming. I don't know. It honestly feels unimportant to anyone outside of her family. Eh. I feel bad.

2. Some of you may recall my yoga studio situation from last year. The long and short of it is that I had a yoga studio I really loved and early on in the pandemic I loved it when the owner switched her classes to Zoom. But then she posted an anti-vax meme and I broke up with the studio. The studio has, as you might have anticipated, finally closed its doors. I have very mixed feelings about this. The loss of my business certainly wasn't the only reason, but I'm sure it contributed to the closure. I miss the studio I remember from pre-pandemic and I miss the absolute relief I got from some of those classes. But I'm also happy to see people with crackpot ideas facing consequences for them. I'm full of complicated feelings.

3. Dr. BB and I are each responsible for a bad habit one of our pets has developed. We know we're responsible and can exactly place when the bad habits developed, but here we are. When I was gone for a few days visiting my mother in the summer, Dr. BB fed Zelda the Cat tiny bits of chicken that we feed Hannah the Dog. Zelda had never had chicken before and she is an absolute addict. She has started pestering Hannah for some, jumping on the counters to get some (we had absolutely trained her NOT to be on counters!), and is just an utter brat about chicken. Dr. BB has admitted that this was a mistake on his part.

Meanwhile, over the last Christmas holiday, I noticed that Hannah the Dog LOVED to play with the brown kraft paper that came in the endless boxes we got from deliveries. Hannah rarely interacts with toys. I don't think she played with them much as a puppy (poor Hannah!) and while she'll occasionally chase a ball for two or three minutes, she's generally timid and unsure about toys. ANYWAY. She would utterly demolish the paper, tearing it and chewing it and having a grand old time, so I let her do this because it seemed harmless.

Cut to me leaving a file folder of papers on the floor next to my desk a couple of weeks ago. I left them there as a reminder for me to write up some of my notes to send to other people, but I went upstairs for half an hour to exercise and when I returned, the file folder and all my notes were absolutely destroyed and Hannah the Dog was sitting there, wagging her tail, blissfully unaware of how challenging she had just made my life. I thought it was ADORABLE and NOT HER FAULT, anymore than Zelda's obsession with chicken is her fault. We humans have made mistakes. 

She's really the cutest dog. Ignore the mess!  

4. My job will officially be over at the end of November. This is great news. The job search marches on and since this week I have sent all of two emails, there's plenty of time in the day for me to craft lovely cover letters and tweak my resume for each position. There's one on campus that I have my fingers crossed for, but I am no longer ever going to get my hopes up after the last heartbreak*. In the meantime, a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I really feel better about life than I have in years. I'm going to take a First Aid/CPR class that has been on my to-do list for a long time. I'm slowly emptying my email inboxes. I'm taking extra long walks with the dog. I'm making sure that all the chores are done before Dr. BB gets home. I think that sometimes this week I'll clean all the stuff off my desk from this job and throw it all away. It feels like a vacation that I'm getting paid for. Sure, job searching is stressful, but it's way less stressful than that job.

*The woman who got that job I really wanted is actually really great and wonderful and she'll be a good fit for the position. I am still disappointed that I didn't get it, but I do understand why they made the decision that they made.

5. Yesterday I went to Costco with eight things on the list. I didn't find three of those things, but ended up purchasing way more than the additional five things on the list. My impulse buys included additional COVID tests, an advent calendar of jelly, a giant bag of chocolate chips, and a s'mores-based snack mix. It was the first time I've ever been at Costco without my husband hurrying me along and I enjoyed it a million times more without him. Obviously. 

Tell me a bit of randomicity in your life. What's new in your life? Have you taught your children or pets any new bad habits? What's your favorite Costco purchase?

Ten Things Tuesday

1) Birthday - Today is my birthday. That is all. There is nothing else to say except that I will be getting myself a cupcake or two from the local bakery and quite possibly even a tasty coffee drink in celebration.

2) Friend with cancer update - We went to see our friend with cancer two Saturdays ago for the first time since we learned of his diagnosis. We brought a housewarming present and our dog and stayed there for a couple of hours chatting with him and his father. Then we went again on Saturday. This time we brought a kringle and our dog. We stayed and chatted for a bit, then left Hannah and ran errands, came back and chatted. I'd like to keep going once or twice a week to check in with him and I'd like to be the person that they can rely on to run errands if they need it. He also loves Hannah and has been so happy to see her.  Basically, he seems to be doing really well, is in good spirits, and it felt really good to see him.

3) Staycation - I took this whole week off and the thought of not checking my email is amazing.

4) Visitor - One of the reasons I took the week off is because one of my best friends is coming to visit me! I literally have not made a single plan for us, but I imagine there will be lots of talking about doing things, but actually just sitting on the couch.

5) Agnes update - I went and got our older car an oil change. And that's done. (I also replaced a headlight and a license plate light.)

6) Manuals gone - Pre-pandemic, I used to teach test preparation for one of the larger test prep companies. They closed the office in Madison in 2019 and my hours kept declining precipitously, but I loved that job and was good at it, so I kept on keeping on until it went down to nothing. So for the last two years, I've had two entire bookshelves full of manuals and paperwork for that job. I went through them on Sunday and recycled all of them. If I ever work for that company again, I'll have to be retrained and they'll have to give me new, updated materials, so there was no use in me keeping it all. It felt amazing to clean it all out.

7) ROTE - One of the reasons that I wanted to clean out those bookshelves was that I used an old gift card from dogsitting several summers ago to buy the entire Realm of the Elderlings saga in paperback and needed somewhere to put all those books. I think a reread will be happening relatively soon.

8) Television - Dr. BB and I have been doing a Buffy/Angel rewatch and we're on the last season of Angel now and I honestly have no idea what we're going to watch next. This is the largest cause of marital tension in our house!  Do you have any suggestions for television shows available on either Netflix or Prime?  

9) References - I did the interview for a job I'd really like to get on the 3rd. One of my references told me that someone had reached out to him for a reference last week. That's a good sign, right?  Please tell me it's a good sign!

10) Bird picture - Dr. BB was in Iowa a couple of weeks ago visiting his dad, who has recently sold his house and is looking to move at the end of the summer. All of this to say, his dad is trying to get rid of things and we ended up with a picture of a burning ship and a picture of two cardinals in a winter pine. I banished the ship picture to the office and the cardinals sit in our dining room and looks amazing. 

Five Things Friday

In the spirit of dumping my thoughts out via writing, here goes my five things.

1) I wrote earlier this week about a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer. We're going to take Hannah over to his house this weekend, but I am a person whose love language is gift giving and I was unsure about what else to bring/do when we went over there. But then I realized that this is the first time we're going to see his house because he just bought it earlier this year and I could reframe this as a housewarming visit.

So I went to the local flower shop and bought some kitchen towels, a cheese and crackers tray, and a plant. It's not a "wow! I'm so sorry you have cancer, please pet my dog and feel better" visit. It's a "welcome to your new home" visit.  I am the queen of avoidance.

2) Hannah has been feeling pretty frisky these days and we're very excited that it seems like she's feeling better. But she was getting pretty snippy about how much she didn't want to walk and even for a lazy dog, things were getting dire. So we trimmed her nails and guess who was up for a whole mile walk last night?!  Boy, we really should do a better job about trimming those nails on a regular basis. (She hates it. She fights. She squirms. One time she went to nip at Dr. BB. So both of us dread it and we tend to put it off more than we should. If we just did it once a week, things would be better for all of us.)

3) For the last two years, I've had Jaybird Tarah Bluetooth headphones. They are way better than wired headphones for my purposes, but they never fit in my left ear correctly. They just never did. We changed tips, got different types of tips, and I probably listened to the headphones without my left side in about 50% of the time. And last week the left side developed a short and then it stopped working altogether. Dr. BB did some research and ordered me a pair of Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro, which work seamlessly with my Galaxy S10e.  The problem? I still can't figure out how to make it fit in my left ear. It's popped out three times now. I've changed the size of the tips and just can't figure it out. If I don't figure something out by the end of the weekend, I'm going to have to return them and get some Apple AirPods because I've used my husband's and know they fit (I went for a run in them and did a cardio workout that involved jumping jacks), but I'm not psyched about that because you lose a lot of functionality with AirPods if you don't have an iPhone. Why is this so hard?

4) I had a second interview on Tuesday for a job I'd really like to get. Fingers crossed for me.

5) Regardless of the outcome of the job interview on Tuesday, I'm going to probably put my notice in at work on 8/22. I honestly can't take it anymore. I'm not eating, I'm not sleeping, and I can never stop thinking about how terrible it is.  

And that's that. Happy weekend everybody. Give your loved ones an extra hug!

Tuesday Randomicity: Someone Tell What To Do

Suzanne does these Randomicity posts every so often and I always admire that people can be thinking about so many things all at once. Generally, my thoughts are "I hate my job," "why does the dog need so many pills?" and "how can I fit in a workout today?" and then my internal thoughts have been completely exhausted. But today is the day! I have random thoughts. 

1) What to do about Agnes?

Agnes is our old 2010 Hyundai Elantra. She was our first big purchase together as a couple. She is, however, now a 12-year old car with more than 240,000 miles on it. Things are slowly starting to fail. The fan on the driver's side no longer works, so the AC/heat doesn't work particularly effectively. The remote locks only sometimes work. A couple of years ago, some mice died in the air filter thing and poor Agnes has had a vague smell of gross ever since. We have started to consult one another about how much gas we're putting in Agnes* ($20? $5?) and now we have to face some real dilemmas. The car is due for an oil change. Technically speaking, it was due for an oil change about five hundred miles ago. Do I take it the dealer? Just to some Valvoline place?  What do I do?  The car could use some new tires. But. Do I spend that much money on a car we rarely drive out of town?  Do I bother fixing the fan?  WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR OLD CARS? **

*We have different levels of comfort about how much gas is in the car. I really don't like the tank to get below a quarter tank. Dr. BB will let the warning light come on if left to his own devices. This leads to a bit of friction at times, although I think now Dr. BB will fill up more often than he normally will if he knows I'll be driving. I just vividly remember going to a book club  on a cold, rainy night and realizing that there was only an eighth of a tank in the car and stopping to fill up the tank on the way there and Dr. BB was utterly confused because there was plenty of gas to get to book club and back, but that's now how I do things.  Anyway.  

**We had one car for the vast majority of our marriage. It's only since 2020 that we've had a second car. And it's useful to have a second car. So I don't want the answer to be "get rid of it" because only having one car payment is nice, you know?  

2) "Ghost in This House" meaning?

Dr. BB was out of town last weekend, so I listened to a lot of Spotify as I did things like clean out my closet and make chocolate chip cookie dough*. The song "Ghost in This House" by Alison Krauss came up and I spent a good deal of  time pondering this song. Is the dude dead? Is he still there, but the relationship is in a terrible place? Is she actually in a new relationship with a new dude and she's pining for her ex? Why is it so ambiguous?  

There's a version by Shenandoah and it is clearly just a break up song. I'm not worried someone is dead when Marty Raybon was singing it, but Krauss makes me wonder. 

*Just the dough. I didn't actually make cookies. I just made a batch and froze it for future use. Also, we were dangerously low on butter, so I when I bought the chocolate chips, I also bought butter and I paid $6.49 for a pound of butter at the store and I realized that if you never hear from me again, it's because I can never leave the house ever again because I bankrupted us in order to make cookie dough.

3) Why are so many songs about sex?

At some point it has become clear to me that I have never reconsidered the real meaning of any songs from my youth. I thought "Into the Groove" was just about dancing until very, very recently.  So I was rather astounded when I realized that "Will You Still Love me Tomorrow?" by the Shirelles is about the day after they have sex. I mean, it's SO OBVIOUS if you pay any attention to the lyrics, but I've been assuming it's just a sweet little love song about teenagers. Why am I this way?  

4) Why are feelings always more complicated than you think they will be?

My father-in-law and his new wife have sold the house where my husband grew up, where I met all of my in-laws, and where my mother-in-law died. They are moving into a new house late summer/early fall. I have very complicated feelings about this. I get very attached to places and the idea of never going back to this place is painful. But it's also painful to go there now with his new wife, who is a lovely woman, but who is definitely not my mother-in-law, who was also a lovely woman and that house is so identifiable with her that it hurts to see the new wife acting as hostess there.

My mother moved out of my childhood home several years ago and it hurt to pull out of the driveway for the last time. And this feels just as heart-wrenching, but I don't feel as if I'm justified in these complicated feelings, so I'm just not saying anything to my husband because it feels weird that I'm mourning something that was never really mine. 

5) When an acquaintance is ill? 

Dr. BB's current and my former co-worker sent out an email that he has recently been diagnosed with cancer. I know very few details, only that he is currently feeling no effects of the illness, but that he is supposed to have treatments through next spring and, as we all know, those treatments are probably going to be bad. He sounded optimistic in his email, but sometimes I sound optimistic about life, too, and you all know how that is in reality. 

He's roughly our age, single, and his family lives in California. He lives in a city about 20-25 minutes away. We used to regularly socialize with him, but since the pandemic, I don't think I've seen him once. He loves Hannah and Hannah loves him. 

In general, I'm quite concerned about his lack of social support. Dr. BB and I both sent emails (him volunteering for errand running, me volunteering Hannah as a therapy dog), but I'm pretty sure that's not enough. On one hand, I'm not really close to this guy. On the other hand, he is all alone. I want to help him, not just right now, but in the future.

The advice I see online is to basically just say, hey, I'm going to bring you groceries/dinner/my dog to pet on X day, but that seems really overstepping. How should I approach this? I don't even have this guy's phone number, although I'm pretty sure Dr. BB has it.  (Update: Dr. BB and I each sent him emails and he responded very positively about seeing Hannah and giving us his phone number, so I think we'll make it a priority to go visit him with the dog in tow. "All dogs are welcome in my home, especially Hannah" is the direct sentence, so I think we'll visit, let Hannah get pets, and then figure out what else we can do from there.)

So, I'll take any and all thoughts on what to do with a car on its last wheels, how to interpret songs on my Spotify list, and how to help out a sick friend. Also, I'll take any thoughts on how to make my brain stop cycling on these topics on an endless loop.