• Daisies from my garden

    Here we go again

    March 28, 2022 / No Comments

    It’s still March, barely. But I managed to start my first plantings today.

    M quit his job in February when his employer decided to end the staff’s ability to work remotely. Like many Americans, his bosses were tired of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and had decided it was over, goddamn it.

    Thing is, viruses don’t disappear with wishful thinking.

    At the time his bosses made the return announcement, the efficacy of the booster shot we received in 2021 had already started to wane. A friend of ours had just died from likely complications of COVID-19. We knew that mask and vaccine mandates were the next to go. Which is why, after much discussion, we agreed it was just too dangerous for him to continue working with people who were recklessly throwing caution to the wind.

    Sure enough, another wave of coronavirus is heading our way, this time a subvariant of omicron known as BA2. It’s 30 times more contagious than the original — and that one pretty much ruined everyone’s Christmases. BA2 is already hitting Europe and Asia and has become the dominant strain in the U.S.

    At least two of my colleagues have contracted coronavirus in the past month. So has former President Barack Obama, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, secretary of state Antony Blinken, White House press secretary Jen Psaki and her deputy, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, “Bridgerton” actress Nicola Coughlan, “Rocketman” star Taron Egerton and actor/director Kenneth Branagh. South Korea has reported more than 9 million cases of COVID-19 during the course of the pandemic — 7.7 million of them have occurred in the past month. Today, China began its most extensive lockdown in two years to control a growing outbreak in Shanghai.

    Knowing all of this, M and I continue to take all the necessary precautions. We simply cannot afford to get sick, suffer from long covid or worse.

    Since the start of the year, I’ve also been beyond stressed by my own job. Adding the pandemic, the Olympics and the war in Ukraine to the grind of daily news has worn me emotionally thin. In January, I even fainted. For the second time in two years, M found me unconscious on the floor.

    Thankfully, M’s unemployment has allowed us to spend more time together. When he’s not job hunting, he’s helping me to decompress, rubbing the kinks out of my shoulders/neck or just listening as I vent. His support is a major reason I haven’t imploded. It’s also why my sowings have been delayed. How could I spend hours preparing for the future when I was just trying to deal with the present?

    M landed a new job last week and today was his first day working from home. While he was upstairs in his office undergoing the onboarding process, I trekked down to the basement to begin my new garden. I missed spending our morning together, of course, but it felt good to start putting seeds in soil in the hopes that flowers and herbs and vegetables will someday grow.

  • Haunted house

    Real estate revelations between spouses

    March 10, 2022 / No Comments

    M and I are looking to buy some property, preferably in New England. We want a detached house in good working order, 3 or 4 bedrooms, minimum 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen/pantry, at least one fireplace, wood floors and a good bit of land for beauty and privacy. It can’t be located in a flood zone or somewhere that has a high risk of drought or fire.

    Oh, and it can’t cost an arm and a leg.

    We’ve been looking for two years now and while we’ve found some wonderful properties, none of them have worked out. So, our search continues — mostly on Redfin and Zillow. We favorite the places that most appeal to us and discuss them in great detail during the times when we’re both awake. If one of us is sleeping, the other will leave short notes to describe why a place will or will not work.

    Here are some typical notes we’ve exchanged:

    “Nope, nope, nope. Flooding.”

    “Has some nice features (back from the road, overall design, greenhouse). However, the kitchen is small and the laundry is in the basement. Zestimate says it’s worth about half of what they’re asking though Redfin agrees with their price.”

    “Not as much land as we’d hoped but it’s on a dead end and the views are gorgeous.”

    “Lovely home but oh my god, that kitchen is bloody awful. So small!”

    “The kitchen looks decent. I really like the look of some of these rooms. Looks too expensive and probably too big for us but nice!”

    And then there’s the tidbit I wrote last week:

    “I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I want to move to Detroit. This place is amazing. And also, I believe haunted.”

  • Quote of the day

    February 27, 2022 / No Comments

    “My heat came from a small wood-burning stove, and keeping the tiny house at the right temperature, it turned out, required the same kind of constant low-level attention as my Twitter feed. When the fire was out, I missed it. It made me less lonely to hear it in the background: the mutter of the kindling, the sigh as a log caught, the little coughs, then quiet, as it burned down into ash.” –Lois Beckett

  • Letterpress letters

    Mark my words v.4

    February 19, 2022 / 2 Comments

    As I’ve mentioned in past blog posts (seen here, here and here), I’m drawn to certain words. The attraction is often a word’s meaning or spelling, but sometimes I just like the way a word rolls off my tongue.

    These are more of my favorites:

    Aforementioned

    Smitten

    Brontide

    Escabeche

    Whippoorwills

    Whirligigs

    Hyppolyta

    Stroopwafel

    Frass

    Bombogenesis

    Prognostication

    Schenectady

    Damask

    Fabulist

    Moribund

    Kismet

  • Secret

    Thanks for letting me in on the open secret

    January 16, 2022 / 1 Comment

    My dad didn’t read books or possess a library card and the only magazine he ever subscribed to was Playboy. I remember when it would arrive in the mail; each issue was wrapped in black plastic. I’m sure the Family Research Council demanded the opaque covering to preserve their own twisted version of “family values,” but in the end, it was that mysterious wrapping that inspired me to don my Nancy Drew hat and search for the publication in my dad’s nightstand. I just had to know what it was hiding. Alas, I was sorely disappointed to find images of naked women within the publication’s pages. I had expected the secret to be far more exciting.

    It wasn’t until I was in college that I learned the magazine’s open secret. My boyfriend’s father had died and he’d inherited his dad’s porn collection. While sifting through the boxes together, I picked up a couple of “classic” issues of Playboy and perused the pages. Still didn’t see the huge allure. Then my boyfriend explained that the Playboy bunny logo was hidden on the front cover of each issue. From that moment on, every time I came across a Playboy, I’d search the cover until I found the bunny. Doing so reminded me of my youth, when I used to spend time in doctors’ waiting rooms doing the Hidden Pictures game in Highlights magazine.

    My interest in cooking lead to another open secret discovery. Turns out that each issue of Cook’s Country magazine includes a hidden rooster. Find that tiny image amongst the recipes, taste tests and equipment reviews and you’ll be entered into a random drawing. Top prize is a year-long membership to the magazine’s website. Second and third prize winners receive the company’s latest cookbook. I’ve read this publication for years and to date, I’ve only found that damn cock once. Hat’s off to the page designer.

    Writer/director/producer Chuck Lorre is known as the “King of Sitcoms.” It’s highly likely you’ve seen one of his many shows. “Grace Under Fire,” “Dharma & Greg,” “Roseanne,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “The Kominsky Method” are just a few in his portfolio. What I didn’t know was Chuck’s open secret: He includes a message in the vanity cards during the end credits. Some are funny, some are just odd and a few have apparently been known to cause a bit of controversy. M and I recently started watching the show “Mike and Molly” and we were probably five or six episodes in when we noticed these little gems. Now I’m going to be looking for them in every Chuck Lorre Production.

    Perhaps you will too.