After an extraction and two years of orthodontics, my braces came off Wednesday. I still have 14 weeks of Invisalign and then lifelong retainers, but as of now, the metal is GONE. The Invisalign is no joke, but it’s an improvement over what was an uncomfortable and confidence-eroding couple of years. Entering my 50s and dealing with peri-menopause and its changes to my body and mind was bad enough without braces. But I didn’t do the orthodontics for aesthetics and now, at the end of the treatment, my bite is almost fully fixed and my front teeth won’t continue to chip, loosen and erode, so I guess I can say it was worth it in the end.
Today I am observing the economic boycott. (I probably can’t say the same about the kiddo who needed a Starbucks on her way to school.) This boycott seems like a small thing to protest such enormous fuckery from the regime of the Orange Manbaby and Apartheid Clyde, but I’m committed, and have also been burning up the phone lines with my 5 Calls app. I’m sure that my senators and House Rep are beyond sick of this constituent. I could talk a lot about this political timeline but that’s for another post.
So in a happier topic, this weekend begins a several-week foray into renovating our master bathroom. We live in a 1962 Colonial and while the bath may have been redone in the ’80’s, it’s still what you would expect, which is pretty bad. Brandon is doing a lot of the work himself and I’ve been of limited support (mostly just saying ‘yes that sounds fine’). He has all of our household’s skill with decor and aesthetics. I’m most excited about a trip to Pewabic in Detroit to pick out some cool accent tiles. For awhile, we will all be sharing the kiddo’s bathroom, which may result in her spending more time at her dad’s to avoid the enforced togetherness!
The kiddo has a full-day CPR class tomorrow for her EMT Cadet training and I am hoping to finish up a couple of knitting projects and get some reading done. My library haul this week included two Dune graphic novels and a historical fantasy from Francesca May ‘Wild and Wicked Things’. And lastly, on this Friday evening, I leave you with something that absolutely made my heart leap with joy. In these uncertain times, seeing all four original members of REM reunite this week at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, GA to sing ‘Pretty Persuasion’ with Michael Shannon is a light that we all deserve.
This week has been a total blur – but I look back and feel like I traveled miles. There were work complexities, three days in the office, depression and rage over the current political situation (always, now), a comparatively and thankfully minor ice storm, and an evening spent at EMT Cadet training for the kiddo. (As usual, this was the high point for me. This week our intrepid heroines strapped the lifelike dummy to the gurney and fluttered around him performing industrious lifesaving maneuvers. Then, they took turns hurtling the gurney up and down the halls, banging him around the corners, and loading him into and out of the ambulance. I’m glad that the dummy made this appearance; a couple of weeks ago it may have been volunteer moms strapped to that gurney. I speak from personal experience.)
I finished the latest Haruki Murakami book. “The City and its Uncertain Walls” was not as swiftly immersive as “1Q84”. The book felt a bit disjointed, which makes sense as I learned it was written in two different time periods of Murakami’s life. The cast of people and places include a teenage couple in love who become separated; there is a walled city with a library of dreams, perishing unicorns, and characters who become separated from their shadows. There is another library in another world, a ghostly librarian with a quirky fashion sense, and a boy with a Yellow Submarine parka. The plot and poetry lies amid those details. If you love Murakami and would read his writing even if it was on a bathroom wall in a Tokyo train station, you’ll enjoy the delicate unfurling of this book. If you don’t, or if you’re not familiar with him at all, this may not be the book for you.
In other reading news, perusing the NYTimes, I saw this starter pack of romance novels and I’m intrigued. I think the last romance novels I read were back in early high school. One summer vacation, our rental cottage had a rickety bookshelf full of old Harlequins and I worked my way through all of them with single minded determination, staying up late, gritty eyed with fatigue but determined to find out if the romance between the plucky yet wilting amnesiac with a secret twin and the arrogant aristocrat with the eyepatch and the tortured history could ever bear fruit. That led to spending allowance money on a few Regency romances at our local bookstore ‘The Printed Word’ (where I also bought my Tiger Beat magazines, horoscope rolls, and later, the biography of Ed Gein which made the clerk ask suspiciously if my mother knew what I was reading). I really only remember ‘Lady Lochinvar’, a Barbara Hazard banger (no pun intended) with the requisite strong-willed heroine and a worldly and fairly smutty viscount, but I know for a fact there were more than that on my shelves for awhile, until they became embarrassingly unsophisticated for my high school literary ambitions. One of my mom friends has a Goodreads account full of ‘new’ romance – she says she likes her reading to be “spicy”. She’s Canadian (and btw Canadians – I am SO VERY SORRY about our embarrassment of a “president” – over 75 million Americans did not choose this for you or for us) so many of these are centered in the hockey world, and have seemingly endless riffs on the word ‘puck’ in the titles. So there’s definitely a market for it and if romance is written up in the NY Times, it HAS to have an aura of respectability, right?
Several of the classic titles I may have read as a teenager, and one that I most definitely did not…
I feel like I might be coming down with a head cold so perhaps some time spent under the duvet with a couple of recommended steamy romance novels may be the best plan for the weekend ahead. I will report back.
It’s the final day of January and I’m cautiously optimistic that we have made it through what was a very long month of frigid cold, post-holiday crash, political chaos, and dry skin.
1. Dry January. For the first time in several years, my Dry January was a booming success. I made it the entire month (plus an alcohol-free NYE). For the last few years, I’ve made it for some time period (17 days; 28 days; a few years ago I only made it as far as January 6 as you may remember what happened on that date) but usually not for the full 31 days. While I felt like I flew through it without ambivalence or struggling, I did put work in – I joined the Dry group on the Weight Watchers app, which is full of some of the best people I could have hoped to connect with. I read sober curious literature and listened to several podcasts (‘This Naked Mind’ being my favorite). I think it’s the influence of our societal approach to drinking that I feel self-conscious about bragging too much on my Dry January because I worry that people will think I did it because I have a “problem” with alcohol. I could write a much longer post about this (particularly what our modern culture deems “problematic” when it comes to a highly addictive substance that is not only socially acceptable, but widely encouraged) but for now – no, I don’t feel that I have a “problem” with alcohol. I really enjoy red wine, and have a fairly high tolerance for it, but I do not categorize myself as a “problem” drinker. However, there is a preponderance recent evidence that any amount of alcohol may not be good for us. I had such a positive Dry January that I have now determined that I will also commit to being alcohol-free for the month of February and see where it goes from there.
2. Vibes at home. Emmett, who is our most loving, anxious, needy cat, had a dentist appointment on Tuesday and had two premolars extracted. All of our cats have “emotional problems” and require accommodations – two of them are on Prozac and the other is a small, cute, virulent sociopath. When one of them disappears for a day and comes home loopy and smelling of the vet, the other two become unhinged and treat the patient like a dangerous interloper. So there has been hissing, separation, pain med dosing, treats, sleeping accommodations, and general household disruption. Emmett is fine and recovering nicely. Sarge and Josie, on the other hand, are still recovering from his ordeal.
3. Journaling. One of my goals for the year is to use my physical journal more. I have used a Hobonichi Techo Cousin paper planner for a few years now without taking full advantage of all of its space and features (monthly, weekly, and daily pages). I’ve been scribbling more thoughts this month. I plan to use one of the layout pages for an informal monthly goal-set, using key words, quotes and actions, and update the bottom half of that page at the end of the month with my reflections: what went well, what didn’t, what I achieved, etc. I’m looking forward to settling in at my home office desk tomorrow morning (early, because I’ve been sleeping so well with Dry January) with a big cup of coffee, my sticker folio and my nice pen and washi tapes to reflect on January and set up the February page.
4. RTO. Next week begins the more organized RTO (“return to office”) push at Widget Central. Executives have been hands-off about office time, leaving it to managers to set their department’s guidelines. I’m usually in one or two days a week and set my own schedule for what those days are on a weekly basis. Next week, however, the mandate is for three office days for everyone with Tuesday and Thursday mandatory. This can be a polarizing issue for people but I’m fairly ‘meh’ about it. I like working from home and think I’m pretty disciplined about it, but I also like the office. I do appreciate that feeling of separation of my home space and workspace. I am productive in either space with a possible productivity edge in the office, I like my coworkers, and as an introvert, it’s good and healthy for me to socialize with people on a limited yet regular basis. I’m much more opinionated about the quality of my work experience. Trust and flexibility are key – I do not want to be micromanaged, nickel-and-dimed about coming-in times and leaving-times, I want the ability to flex my time if I need to be home for any reason, have an appointment, etc. (I think a lot of the issues that people have with remote work come down how well managers are trained to identify and handle a poor performer – if you have an employee, ANY employee, that you cannot trust to do their job and be responsive during core work hours, that’s a performance / management issue, and it’s not going to be addressed or resolved based on the location of their workplace.) The biggest issue for me is going to be organization – meal planning and prep for full days in the office with a commute, packing my breakfast, lunch, snacks, and workout clothes, and making the most of all my days, office and remote.
5. Weekend. No big plans. Babying the neurotic and recovering felines: Brandon is planning a redo of our master bathroom, so we need to go to Ikea to buy the vanity we’ve selected; the weather in Suburban Elysia will be clear and seasonal in the 30’s, so I hope to get out for at least one run. I’m working on a small secret knitting project and will likely finish up my recent read, Haruki Murakami’s ‘The City and its Uncertain Walls’ which I’ll review next week.
Hope everyone has a peaceful, healthy weekend! xoxo
Inauguration. The Trump train rolled noisily into Washington with their toots and whistles and backfiring pickup trucks and a predictably low class display of capering. Like a carnival of the bizarre and deeply stupid, in its wake it trailed a dribble of toadie weirdos running the gamut from Proud Boys to Nazi tech bro oligarchs glitching out from their boutique drugs to MAGA fembots wearing lingerie to the Rotunda. The yokels outside with faces pressed against the glass were festively adorned with their cult leader’s name and face on their polyester (made in China) shirts and hats and waving their lil flags. God Bless GW, Bill and Hillary for a few unguarded moments of uncontrollable merriment over some of the more gauche and ludicrous aspects of this spectacle (never in a million years pre-MAGA did I think that I would ever have cause to utter the words “God bless GW” but here we are). It’s going to be a long four years watching this gang of thieves mugging for the cameras while they grab all they can with both grubby fists. Luckily, if the Orange One’s prior administration is any indication, they’ll start turning on each other sooner rather than later and then there will be something to see besides bullies and tackiness.
2. Seems like a good time to pull this out of the archives.
3. To round out my political content, it feels like there are a lot of folks out there who could use a reminder about what throwing a Nazi salute actually means.
4. Moving on. In other news. Polar vortex – the beginning of the week was pretty freaking cold. The kid didn’t have school for two days due to wind chills (what do they do in Alaska, I wonder? Or Minnesota?). I got my office days out of the way early in the week and it was really good to stay in my shearling slippers and fleece leggings the remainder of the week. I usually feed the wild birds and squirrels once a day (and keep a heated bird bath full of clean water available) but when the weather is this cold I fill the feeders as often during the day as they empty, and throw out lots of peanuts. The little guys can use as much help as they can get.
(This not so little guy needs not as much help.)
5. In lieu of watching the news (see number 1) we have been diving deep into the DVR. Brandon always has a massive selection of old movies to pick from. Among other things, we watched a silent film from the great Buster Keaton, “Sherlock, Jr.” It was a masterpiece of comedy and the quality of the 2015 restoration was incredible – crystal clear. I am not usually drawn to movies that old but this one was an absolute gem and what he was able to achieve with film at that time is nothing short of genius. And while I know that his path was a difficult one, may I say that in my estimation, young Buster was kind of a hottie.
Onwards. Keep the faith and as my higher power reminded me this week in a moment of meditation, render unto Caesar.
Six Ten 