Perspective

I've been trapped in the suburbs since Friday afternoon and unable to leave until tomorrow morning. This place is starting to feel a little more like my family's home and not my mother's former home, but it doesn't make me miss home much less. Worse, I haven't had much company this weekend since my husband had a couple of errands he needed to run and then a professional appointment this morning. 

Maybe I could have gone for a walk--but no. I was always scheduled to meet someone here at noon, so there wasn't much of an adventure to be had. But it's a nice day and between 7:30, when my sister's bus comes, and 12, I could have walked to the quaint city center. However, I got a call at 7:35 that the elusive Floor Guys would be coming over at 8:05, so after I ate my breakfast my husband and I were set to work moving furniture (and going through yet more detritus). 

I had time after they left (and someone came to check that they had indeed arrived) to write some emails. I was just finishing that up when the cleaners showed up. Always a pleasure to see them--they're one of the reasons I find the house more pleasant--but since I wasn't expecting them, I didn't plan around them (including to bring my checkbook) and then it was that much longer that I had to stay for them.

I complain to my husband about how trapped I feel via text. He kindly offers to console me with my comfort of choice when he gets home, then tells me that someone he knows just lost a family member in a way all too reminiscent of how I lost a family member last year. A little bit later, a friend contacts me to reach out because they're having health problems. I'm a poor choice to contact since I have no medical training, but there's a reason I'm one of the better options (not my story to tell).

Yeah, maybe there are worse fates than the one I'm enduring today.

I get to see my boys tomorrow, eat cake (or watch them eat cake), and sleep in my own bed tomorrow. That isn't soon enough, but in the meantime I can sit out on a deck and overlook some green. It's not what I want, but maybe it will do.

Deb in the City

First Night of Passover (Day 92)

Tonight was the first night of passover, which means I've been planning for a week and spent a couple of hours cleaning and cooking for a small dinner with my husband and two of our children. I'd have pictures except I was too busy doing things. 

We had a very brief hunger- and labor-themed seder before we ate. I had intentionally overcooked so we were all full, but now I have lentil kofta stew and kugel left over to eat as well as asparagus to put into a besan omelet, tzimmes to put into a smoothie--no, really, it's prunes and sweet potatoes--date and peanut charoset to make something Larabar-esque, and chocolate covered dates and bananas just because. Seriously, I don't need to cook for a week.

I feel humbled by my good fortune even in the throes of some stressful news. Dayenu indeed.

Deb in the City

Change in plans isn't always a bad thing (but backups aren't a bad idea) (Day 84)

The plan was that we would work in the garden yesterday and today my husband would get in a couple of hours of work. Ha. Today his computer started acting up again, so he bit the bullet and turned it in to microcenter. When will he get it back? I have no idea. 

Good thing the long-waited for elevated garden box finally appeared in the mail yesterday, and good thing we like being in the garden. He put the box together in less than an hour; I want to say I helped, but other than remembering how many screws we were supposed to use, not so much. Well, fine, at least we have the box.

This isn't a great time for him to be without a computer: there's drama with the car, there's college tuition, and there's a wedding. It's such a bad time it borders on comical. We could have bulked, but today for some reason I decided to embrace that this was an unexpected opportunity for us to spend more time together. So we went to Brookline to get some Korean food, looked at the bookstore and found George O'Connor's new graphic novel, Odin, then came home and read, worked out, washed dishes, and enjoyed each other's company. It was all in all not just a good day but a happy day.

...with one caveat: it isn't lost on me that his computer troubles began immediately after he made get out the vote calls with me on Friday. Needless to say, he can't tomorrow, but now I'm nervous about doing so. Just...the internet has not helped without exacting some costs. I miss the days when I got a list of phone numbers to call on, you know, a sheet of paper. 

In other news and perhaps on the other hand, it seems the British food writer and human right advocate Jack Monroe has fled the internet. Crazy that someone who's been bullied and received death threats with a reference to their address might seek anonymity, but here we are. Today I discovered that they seem to have shut down their website, on top of removing social media accounts. This is a huge loss, and that is a fact. They provided clear-eyed analysis of what British austerity is costing its most vulnerable people, and they provided recipes that were always easy to follow, inexpensive, and delicious. 

So here I would like to thank...Pocket. I panicked when I realized Monroe's recipes were gone, then remembered that I had saved many of them to my Pocket account. This prompted me to look through all of my posts tagged "recipes", and I got a little thrill that I had so much great stuff at my fingertips, and in a better format than simply bookmarks or tabs. I'm not going to send everyone to Pocket, but given how likely it is for material on the internet to disappear, it might not be a bad idea to capture the things you love one way or another.

Or, you know, just shrug it off and cuddle up with your sweetie. 

Deb in the City

Compost, Marathon weekend, computers, the usual (Day 83)

My son woke me up a little before 3 AM, and I have not been back to sleep, though I did try. (Yes, I say this a lot; yes, I did have a talk with him.) 5 hours of sleep is not ideal, but I decided to do my day anyway, even if it felt half-assed. 

My husband and I went to the garden to turn the compost, and oh my is it gorgeous. That spongy, chocolate cake texture people aspire to--it has been achieved. My husband finished it up while our garden partner and I went down to the wilds to talk design with a landscaper. We've wanted to turn the space into a permaculture food forest for years, and this brings us closer. I liked the man, in no small part because he recognizes the same Boston grifts that we've seen.

My husband joined us shortly before the landscaper needed to leave, then we went to pick up some miso and peanut butter. I was all set to go home after, but then I saw a message from my sister for help with an errand that she wouldn't be able to run herself. Off to Newton, through Back Bay, and my eyes widened as I recognized all of the signs that the runners were in town. We are agreed that we will not be traveling to Back Bay again for several days. 

Ran the errand, got a snack of desperation--Tatte is the nicest looking sub-par establishment in Boston--and finally got home. I tried to nap, my husband went to work out, and I took the night owl to return some books--2024 Deb does not have the same reading taste as 2021 Deb--and get him a drink. For some reason, my little part of Boston was out in droves even though we're nowhere near the marathon route. That, or everyone is *really* excited about Patriot's Day.

We washed dishes, bathed--did I mention compost?--then settled in to watch a kdrama before my husband ran into computer problems because of course he did. Fixed now--fingers crossed--and we're snacking on hummus, which I somehow managed to make along with vegetable broth and almond milk.

You know, your typical Saturday. May Sunday be just a little less eventful. 

Deb in the City 

20 calls for democracy (Day 82)

...but that is all.

I'm not superstitious--I'm really not--but I frequently feel that when I make plans and try very, very hard to stick to them, it always comes back at me.

Today was the first day that I could make voter turn out phone calls. I can't stress enough how important this is--not just to me, but in general. So much so that I drafted my husband and my son to join me. My son agreed as long as I got him fast food. I did not think this would be a problem, so I agreed.

I sat through the pep talk, the training, and made my twenty calls. By the second I realized how humbling this was going to be, but I did it anyway. And I'll do it again until I get to 1000 calls. Because it's worth a little discomfort on my part to get people out to vote.

We ordered the fast food for my son. This shouldn't have been a problem, but over two hours later, we were still waiting. My husband canceled the order, and I'm silently thinking this is what we get for ordering through that stupid server I won't give any virtual ink to. In the middle of that, his computer stopped working. Yes, obviously he's using Windows, but still. He was frustrated, so I thought it was a good time for me to drive over to the fast food place and pick up the food. I think I was back within 35 minutes. Lesson learned.

My husband's computer still hadn't turned on by the time I returned from buying groceries, so I said I'd take a look before he had to drop off the computer tomorrow and be told that he'd need to wait three days for someone to look at it and tell him he needed to wait five more days to get it back. He turned it on--it worked. He's reinstalling the operating system now, so it's entirely possible it will fail again. As I said, Windows. 

Well, my son is fed, my husband's computer may not be dead, and I still need to transcribe at least a little bit, but no way will I get to 1000 words today. Okay, fine, that's the way it goes sometimes. But I will eventually, just like I'll get to those 1000 calls.

But maybe we'll find a different source of fast food next time.

Deb in the City

Draft Day (Day 81)

Every writer's process is going to be different, but most of us agree that it's better to have a draft, even a messy one, for edits than a blank page of paper waiting for perfection. So some days, maybe, are Draft Days, in which it's better to have done something at all than to have done it perfectly.

I woke up at a decent time, after a decent number of hours, and maybe because I had enough sleep I came to the realization that I should finally have someone take a look at the foot that's been bothering for over a month. Don't ask what happened, by the way: I was literally minding my own business at home, standing up, and suddenly I felt a sharp pain on the top of my foot, toward the outside. I had not fallen, which is amazing because both of my ankles are shot and my hips and multifidus muscle (that's the tiny muscle that's right over your sacrum, basically). But, no, I didn't fall, so there was no reason my foot should be fractured, so I shrugged it off.

But not getting it looked at cost me a couple of weeks ago when the bottom of that same foot felt exhausted, for lack of a better term, and when that happened a second time, I called my husband to pick me up from the train station very close to home. Well, that didn't go well, and weeks later we're still dealing with the fallout. Getting my foot looked at might have prevented that.

(It might also behoove me to spend a little more money on my shoes, given how much I walk, but that's another story.)

So I made an appointment to get my foot looked at, but then I looked at my to-dos and realized that I could just barely squeeze in the phone calls to other states' reps to free up money for Ukraine (side note: Castro in Texas' staff isn't as nice as Pocan's in Wisconsin). Then just as I was getting ready to start cleaning up--as I mentioned yesterday, I *really* needed to clean up--a friend posted information about another set of phone calls and emails the librarian union at the Boston Public Library needed. Well, obviously, I had to get to that, but then it was a rush to clean up (even by my standards). Upshot was that not all the dishes got washed--but some of them did.

I got my foot examined, and the nurse practitioner was mystified but suggested physical therapy. She also sent me to get an x-ray. (No clue what the results are yet.) Then I walked down the street to finally get that vegan ice cream and meet my husband, and twenty minutes later I kicked myself for forgetting how not great that vegan ice cream was.

I didn't have much time between when I got home and when two webinars were going to start, but, somehow, I got in both my drafting and finished the dishes. (This may or may not have been helped by the fact that one of those webinars was subpar.)

I did nothing perfectly, and I didn't do everything I wanted to, but I did most of the most I wanted to do. Maybe tomorrow will be an Edit Day, but at least I have the draft to start with.

Deb in the City