Coming Up: Omens abound and cluster with foreboding - black cats croon, and witch's cackle with an unseasonably eerie July 13th on the horizon. Cases cavil, and resentments roil. Hormones surge. Will apocalypse emerge victorious? Will the death-mud-march of bike-and-chain glory be survived under the strain of the Falconer lurgy? Machines get snippy and stores turn hellish. Will Adella escape from Target with her lunchy prizes? Will she defeat the armies of unchopped produce? And will either of the (W)rights be able to breathe clearly again as the dust of a June vacation settles.
Wash down a dayquil, toss your take-out and find out below...
DINKy-Dear and Day that Just Wouldn't (But Finally Did) Go (W)right Beware the full moon, Friday the 13th Combo in B-town!
Some days you count your blessings; other days, you demonstrate your infinite confidence and trust by giving those teeming blessings some personal space and a good night off while indulging in a hormonally induced, hangry, sickly, pity party in your head. If you love something set it free.
Yesterday was just kind of a weird day. Not a bad day, mostly, but a weird one. To start shaking up the cocktail of blerg, there's that lurgy I've been lolling about with. And then there's the fact that - oh yeah - I've once again reached the hormonally induced apex of my artificial (and as yet unfruitful - but that's a whole 'nother story that only seems to mire in the sniffles and self-pity around this very time of hormonal "ecstasy") PMS cycle. So right there, we're talking a day for the metaphorical pint of Ben and Jerry's Triple Fudgemallow Krispee Irish Kreme Colbert Cookie Mocha Monster (you know you'd eat that if sufficiently hormonal or stoned) and snot-stained bathrobe.
But it didn't just seem to be me. I swear! There's something in the air and it ain't (just) love. Drivers everywhere were going kamikaze yesterday. Target was infested with a harried urgency. Fred Meyer's was crawling with saturnine and slightly senescent elderly individuals interspersed with intransigently impatient young parents. Andrew was tired. Mom-boss was tired. Leslie was tired.
And of course, there's stress at work over the usual highly triangulated cases and the impending summer vacations of several involved professionals during an urgent acme of tensions. One of the real challenges of working with people you like, especially in high-conflict litigation cases, is that the tension and triangulation can really dampen your affection. We don't like to feel "let down" by other professionals (whatever that means), but it's worse when it's people we love and we know we should separate work from friendship, but that's gosh darned hard when a case's emotional thrust keeps raising clumsily from the grave like a monster in an Ed Wood opus. It wears on one in a particular sort of way.
And, while I love my financial advisor dearly, she is exhausting. I had a meeting with her to finally pull the trigger on investing some separate pre-inheritance monies that have been holliganning about in a depreciating savings account. Despite having been pretty insistent and proactive about getting these monies some play dates and a workout program, she still seemed hellbent on showing just how much better (with several nifty charts and graphs) investing my money would be in the long run (based on a financial profile and portfolio we spent minor eons drafting a few months ago) versus leaving it idle. Some days, you just wanna nod and say "hmmm, no shit". I should add that I did get my questions answered and am happy to move forward with this financial stuff, but by then the day was feeling a bit crispy and toasted.
Anyways, as above, a day for the snot-monster B&J, but it was date night, gosh-friggin' darnit. I don't care that I was hacking up a piteous lung. I don't care that Mr. (W)right's eyes were hooded and his hair tufted with several days' exudations and the absence of a good lathing. I don't care that neither one of us was much good for more than staring. I did maybe care that the non-English speaking clerk at one of our regular restaurants got my order (my favorite steamed tofu and veggies) totally wrong, drowning my delicious comestibles in some briney brown sludge. But, it just seemed "appropriate" by that point.
Fortunately, we resisted the wallow. Or dove right through it, and went home. I made a huge bowl of hot cereal with several tons of nuts and berries. And then we engaged in a very seductive little doffing of workout watch and heavy earrings. Oh, oh, oh just so nobody thinks the romance is dead in our year-plus marriage, I also coughed into Mr. (W)right's neck several times while loosening (gasp! lurid!) the jacket I had knotted around my waist. We live life fast and hard in the (W)right household.
But all resolved well in a community crash on the sofa.
I even dared to go to sleep without my cold medicine. I was worried the cough and throat might keep me up, but I seem to have slept alright and feel a little more conscious this morning for not having the sedative hangover.
Today is my last Thursday (often a day where I've had enough work accomplished to take an early-ish afternoon) before I begin a volunteer shift at the Whatcom Dispute Resolution Center. Correction, before I become a Case Management Intern (I've come a long way, baby!), as apparently most of the volunteer programming is created with high turnout from the neighboring colleges in mind. I was somewhat hoping to be entirely well for a full enjoyment of lazing, but I intend to enjoy it regardless.
As a token #throwbackthursday , this is actually from last year when I - also having recently returned from a visit to the Falconers - also was suffering a little lurgy. Hmmmm is there, perchance, some kind of connection between the two events??
Now That's More Like June! Pluvial Pullulations and the Superstitiously Stupendous Day
As I (and probably the rest of the internet, fun news, and all your buddies) mentioned, today is a special convergence of a fully mooned morning and Friday the Thirteenth! Expect weirdness. Generally. Not specific to this date or time. Just, well, life is weird. I know you understand. But today, in particular, may be a time to keep an eye out for any little extra lunacy afoot. And what better way to celebrate than for the good old Pacific Northwest to return to its roots and release the rain!
I do like our nice weather days as well, but this rainy June is a favorite old-time comfort June. One redolent of sodden trees, campfire embers, and creaking cabin cedars (summer camp in the PNW is frequently a mildewy experience). It's a day that lets me pull on my jacket and work pants with nary a raised eyebrow. A day that liberates me from the constant waltz of the sunglasses (which refuse to perch placidly atop my pate, instead opting for more suicidal breaks at freedom just when I need them most).
In addition to adding an appreciably ominous augur to our specially superstitious day, the rainy weather provides a nice send-off to Leslie, who is packed and pre-tanned for a jaunt to Mexico. Yes, Englettlaw will be paralegalless for two whole weeks! Expect the doors to remain locked and all phones to be answered with "GO AWAY!!" in surly panicked drawls. Or at least, that's my plan. Mom-boss can adjust her approach as preferred.
We are already minimizing office operation for Thursday and Friday of next week. My cousin got herself hitched a while back in kind of a bebe-gun civil ceremony (no known infants on the way, but I'm pretty sure they'd like one ASAP). At the time, I applauded her decision to avoid the whole marital merry-go-round and get right down to connubial bliss (despite having rather enjoyed my wedding when all was said and done, and our net returns were tallied in the positive!).
Alas, the legal wedding was just a prelude. And now she and her husband are flying in for the actual family ceremony in Washington. Smelling an opportunity for alone time and free babysitting, my brother-in-law leapt on the family engagement excuse and got his folks to agree to baby-(never actually, really under any circumstances) "sit" for the nephews.
So, cousin and husband: flying out. Rachel and Ryan: flying out. Various uncles who may or may not have attended my wedding: all flying out. Adella: never needed to fly out, but also guiltily declined her RSVP on the grounds that it was at exactly the same time that the first tango event in six months that she can host (let alone attend) is happening. In an odd turn of events that one shudders to call "fortuitous" or even "convenient", my sister will be attending a memorial service for a childhood friend on the same day as the wedding. All applicable Hugh Grant jokes have previously been made.
But yes, back to the office. The "other sister" is flying in with her consort on Thursday, and mom-boss is eager to pick them up in Seattle. I've got me second day of "internship" at the WDRC, so will not be able to attend either the pick-up or the office itself. So Englettlaw is taking its own vacation. Possibly with fewer mojitos. Mmmm mojitos. Leslie is leaving. We really ought to get her a proper send-off and I'm sure a little fire-water would purge the cantankerous cough (less a death-rattle and more of a pestering-little-brother-scratching-at-a-scab kinda rattle at this point)!
Or not... either way, IT'S FRIDAY!! And signs look ominous but still good for making it all the way through to the weekend.
Bring on the black cats and let's have a snuggle fest under some ladders.
Attendant Has Been Notified to Assist You Because this machine here thinks you're an idiot and we're not sure how the assistant feels, really...
As a former produce clerk, whilom-cashier and eternally inveterate introvert, I love self-checkout lanes. With my lingering lexicon of PLU #'s, rapid fire factory reflexes, and mad packing skills, I'm faster and far more efficient than the fair majority of tellers. I also appreciate the opportunity to serve myself instead of awkwardly interacting with another person serving me with more or less elan. Also, in my observation, I'm more or less alone in my preference for self-checkout, so the lines are typically shorter.
Some days, though, the little computer gets an attitude. In its snotty Siri-lite voice it notifies me that I'm doing something wrong. Well, actually it passive aggressively implies I've done something wrong, while shutting down its operations. Usually I'm actually not doing any of the things of which I've been implicitly accused. Usually, the scale is off, or I took "too long" to move an object from the scanner to the belt by some unbroadcast computer math. Or moved too quickly. Sometimes the barcode just won't scan for anyone. Inevitably, this is when the human interaction component of shopping resurges in more or less detailed ways.
Today, I really would have been better off parking myself in line and waiting for a friendly teller to throw my produce about and battle with me for the privilege to pack my own bags. I'd say after the halfway mark, every third item stopped working and required attendant override. The attendant was nice enough, but not particularly attentive. And distracted, as all three in-use self-checkout stands were going codependent synchronously. Inevitably, the first time she offered several speculations as to what I'd done wrong (nope, I tared my bags, nope, it rang that up, nope never poured any grain alcohol into the coupon receiver...). After that, she just kind of got around to me eventually... or didn't.
By the end, the machine was telling me to remove a phantasmic "item" from the packing area and scan it. But not any other item (I tried removing several already scanned items and it told me to put those back). I guess I had been missing my persnickety and - er - assertively directive three year old nephew this morning! So thanks Siri-lite. But next time remember to start yelling "STOP COPYING ME" when you aren't getting enough direct attention, and maybe remind me that it's "HOT SHOWAH!!" time and throw a tantrum if I don't immediately pretend to be washing my hair as instructed.
I finally reached a combination of bags-and-items-removed-and-replaced that satisfied SIRI-lite, and was allowed to move forward to the payment phase, but I also had to leave behind a sale item that had just refused to scan. Apparently I am virtuous, as I chose not to swipe the $0.79 attempted-purchase into my disheveled bags (the inattentiveness of the attendant during my ransacking of previously purchased items and my incredulous gesticulations at the ongoing issues suggests this would have gone unpunished). I am apparently also lazy, as I did not alternately choose to purchase the bread elsewhere. So, idle virtue means poor Andrew won't have bread come next Wednesday or so. I'm sure he won't mind having peanut butter and chia jam slathered on portabellas, and subbing in leftover birthday cake oreos for toast!
But melee or no, I have arrived gratefully at the weekend and am ready to live it down for a brief spell. The bike-and-chain thoroughly confused my morning schedule by coming downstairs at 5:30 a.m. (his weekend wake-up typically ranges closer to 6:30, but a year and change of living with me has infected him with stringent circadian rhythms). I forgive him, as this allowed a lingering weekend morning to occur, despite his eventual departure for some cycling race or other in Issaquah. Since I missed two track-widow nights at the beginning of the month, I plan to catch up for lost time with my mad orgy of veggie prep and occasional crosswording.
The crosswords (donated daily by mom-boss's boy-toy) piled up in my absence, and my craving was equally tumid by the end. Reading while visiting the nephews is not an ideal past-time, as your attention will be demanded every ten minutes without warning or regularity, and the kind of books I prefer demand spells continuous attention to halfway-follow. I will be bringing crosswords, far more willing to share attention, to my next child-vacation. The concinnity of craving and crossword has left me ambitious to conquer them all. I'll eventually return to my first person narrative of a Japanese POW during WW2... eventually. When my brain reboots after that defrag I've been putting off.
In other news, Karl kitty is 10 years old according to the vets. I got him when I was just moving back to Bellingham, so this gives me one of those passage-of-time senses of vertigo. In other Keanu Reeves' "whoa" moments: Andrew and I are coming up on our 5th dating anniversary, meaning that he predates two of my nephews. AND, my brother-and-law has known me since I was a 14 year old purple haired adolescent endued in metallic hotpants and covered in pounds of (glow in the dark) Hot Topic glitter gel to the point where I could barely open my eyes. Good times, good times.
Ok, the fridge is about to explode with unprocessed veggies. It's time to bring it on! Let the chop-fest commence.
Blue Rooster Watoosie Adios Aunt Adella - Ms. (W)right is back in the DINK Domain!
This post officially sponsored by: ScanSnap (for all your scansnapping needs - and yes I envision an office of bespectacled tortoises here); Castelli ("our bike kits are sized by teeny Italians, so you will feel massive, American friends"); and BLUE ROOSTER (coookadooodledooo)! I forget what the sponsor "Blue Rooster" does, since it is mostly just my name for Andrew's team. But needless to say, that cerulean Chanticleer deserves some ad time on my ankles while I slalom through domestic bliss.
As promised, Mr. (W)right headed off to some bloody muddy masochistic mountain race in Issaquah yesterday afternoon. He survived in a single fairly cohesive piece (based on initial inspection, anyways) and with team socks, hats, and other goodies. I whiled my track-er-mountain-bike-widow afternoon away with several sharp objects and a small nation's garden of produce to conquer.
It has been conquered. The carnage is neatly contained in every single scrap of tupperware, glassware and any other storage we own in the fridge. And, of course, after a fair chopping frenzy, there was enough produce ort to make a good veggie broth in the slow cooker for future use. Of course again, I have used all of my storage capacity with the edible veggies, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the now cooling broth. Mmmmm broth for breakfast!!
Actually, Andrew does appear to have taken the lurgy hit after his wild ride yesterday. So broth wouldn't be totally inappropriate...
Feeling foolhardy, I attempted to search for more storage options at the Mall. My sister has a plethora of nifty lunch bags and containers for the boys. Needless to say, I've got serious storage-envy. My most coveted item is a set of reusable snack bags (basically like the little ziplocs but easily washable). I'd also like some form of clever lunch bag for the bike-and-chain.
Since taking on the food and groceries, I've been successively elaborating on the complexity of Mr. (W)right's once-basic PB&J sandwich concept (two large PB&J sandwiches thrown in a Gladware sandwich holder). First, I added little treats with his sandwich (maybe a chocolate, maybe some dried fruit, maybe a small lobster figurine... lord knows what is my whimsical wont when it comes to lunches for the loris). I'm pretty sure that the sandwiches I make are lighter than the half-a-jar-of-pb-and-a-bottle-of-jam concoctions of Andrew-yore, so it seemed like a fair swap.
Then, he kept getting hungry in the morning before lunch, so I started giving him an apple for pre-noon noshing. Feeling creative and having a large bag of extra soy nuts in addition to my usual five billion bags of nuts, I added some self-composed trail mix (pecans, hazlenuts, walnuts, soynuts, raisins, craisins, m&m's, pepitas, and cashews, oh my!) for a long day that included a workout.
That was a hit, so it's become a staple. Eventually it seemed like I'd been adding more than enough calories (even acknowledging that the caloric consumption has shifted to be more focused earlier in the day and a bit lighter in the evening), so the Brobdignagian SANDWICH twins were split into a single sandwich. Having cut back the heaping portion of double PB&J, I've added a smaller crispbread w/ cheese, sometimes veggies, sometimes little bites of other fruits and things. Anyways, a grand production out of what was once quite simply a single sandwich container. So it might be time to consider a real lunchbox.
After checking at Freddy's and finding lunch containers but no nifty reusable bags, I determined to try Target. While Rachel was angsting over the message that thoroughly BLACK socks might send to or on behalf of her son (versus gray - black perhaps being too severe), I had strayed into an adjacent aisle with several nifty lunch packs, bento boxes, and so on in New Jersey. I figured our Target would have the same. It did not. Or at least I scoured the darned thing thoroughly and success. Of course half the non-English speaking population of the Vancouver suburbs were in full buzzing frenzy there, so I might have missed the aisle, but sometimes one needs to prioritize escaping with one's life over finding the perfect item.
For full measure - and because traffic was prohibitively gnarly for attempts to take alternate routes through the freeway - I dropped by the Food Co-op on the way through town. It was also swarming, although with a very specific brand of local yippee. I found one set of washable snack bags, but they were not to my liking. Far more impressive: I managed to flush my sunglasses down the toilet!
This was not on purpose. I have no idea how they fell into the toilet. No idea. But they did. A splunk and tada, there they were. I froze for a long moment, contemplating this new turn of splooshily unsanitary events. Naturally, I took a photo (and subsequently thanked the gods that my phone did not go tumbling after). Applying what I imagined to be acceptable logic, I decided to flush, with the expectation that sunglasses would be left behind, but that the tank would be less thoroughly disgusting. I wasn't really sure that I wanted my sunglasses back, but it seemed like some effort to remove them before the next person happened into that stall was my civic duty. I had no idea that they would actually flush with the rest of the toilet bowl's contents. That is not a low flow toilet, let me tell ya!
Adios lovely lunettes. You were pretty, but I always knew you were tawdry and unfaithful. Many happy returns with the alligators. And dear Food Co-op: my sincerest apologies if there was a subsequent backup.
Having completed my snacktastic sagas, I spent the rest of my Saturday in a pleasant daze as hoped.
Now I'm ready for some Sunday somethings. The throat's still not 100%, but on the way to improvement. Let's see what mischief I can conjure to thwart that progress!
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