Coming Up: Flashbacks of monster trucks and tyrannical toddlers! August and all its anomie is nigh! The Falconer's brood flies East with a shriek. Will Auntie Adella foist supremacy from Fitness Instructor Adelia and Associate Thompson? Goodbyes wrestle with halloos between office emergencies. Will Aunt Adella and Gramma Pam keep the SS Office afloat o'er Sponge Bob's Sea of Phantasmagoria? Survival as much an eternal game of fruitless checkers than the tumultuous chess board's sweep of strategy. Will Uncle Andrew ever come home from his fortress of giant robotic toys? Will compost showers bring bathroom flowers? Will more blood be shed in the name of the almighty barracuda??
Relocate your earplugs, double check those plastic bags, and batten down your windows with the nearest supply of cardboard and paper scraps! A storm lies below...
Bright Shadows Early-Mid-Thirties Milestones Loom in the Friends and Family Frenzy
Oooooooh, did I get an envelope yesterday! From across the seas and literally leaking sparkles... Now, this is pure conjecture of course, but considering the the sparkly confetti that did seep out seemed to be glinting out a chipper "Happy Birthday" I'm realizing "holy crap, I'm about to have one of them there birthdays!" Technically I pass from 31 to 32 in just about 2 weeks. Mentally, of course, such numerical tags are fantastical frippery. The maturity fairy has missed me every single time that these milestones come around. I suspect that's because I'm usually out at a playground wearing a tiara and pretending I have a little toddler somewhere in the play structure so nobody looks at me too suspiciously.
I'm trying very hard to resist opening until the 18th. Anticipation is sweeter than honey and far less likely to render bee-stings in the gathering.
But regardless, by god by gum and by August 18th there shall be tiaras and nibbles of cake (probably selected and extensively sampled for quality by manic nephews in a battle for ultimate cake supremacy... hopefully spiderman will feature heavily). Let the anomie ensue!!!
Actually, I have no idea idea what I want for my birthday or what I want to do on or around my birthday. The Glass-half-full-of-plague-water side of me is convinced that Screwpocalypse Part II will explode just in time for Andrew to be MIA. If it isn't the extraordinarily late machine that they broke a while back, it will be the older machine that the clients in the midwest just broke. My bonny boyfrianceband is already eying his luggage and considering flight plans... just in case (I think he's just fantasizing about avoiding too much consecutive time with the nephews at full blast).
Don't get me started on Mom-boss intentionally scheduling a difficult mediation for the day after my actual birthday. Thus ensuring a lot of running around and tense voices before noon the day before said mediation (a/k/a my birthday), as is customary in getting a mediation letter out.
Last year, I requested a "quiet night with my husband" on my actual birthday. I did this in part because that's what I most wanted and in part to tamp down the mad nephew related insanity inherent in a family celebration (fifteen fights in five minutes over whose cake is best, who gets to give the gifts, where the hell did the cake go? Why are we playing hide and seek with the cake and where did your brother get that awful bruise on his eye... is that frosting in your hair??). We did have our little jaunt to the fair to watch the Monster Truck Show with my elder nephews as well.
I haven't really planned that much this year. The weekend adjoining my Monday birthday, I'll be dj-ing a tango event, I suppose. And with family in town, this part of August often becomes a merry mix of mischief and treadmill triage.
But me oh my, I usually plot up something just for myself! How did all this get past me? Clearly my next steps are a long maunder through amazon before the antediluvian wishlist gets taxed, but there must be more.
But as I await my software upgrade to Adella 32 (hopefully this doesn't require too much rebooting and searching for appropriate drivers), life goes well. I continue to foster fathoms of appreciation for our air conditioning unit, and my current ability to retreat to a single cooler room during the oppressive crush of afternoon sun.
As I've perhaps mentioned, our bedroom is half-windows and they all face the setting sun. This makes for lovely views on seasonal days and hellish heat in the summer afternoons. It's quite extraordinary really: the room will remain breezy and pleasant well into the early evening. Probably until 4:00 p.m., merely having the windows open suffices to create a windswept seaside paradise. All of the sudden - around 5:30 at this time of year - the breeze turns torpid and the temperature leaps several thousand degrees until all oils and unguents left on the nightstand set aroiling!
Windows and angle of the sun. You can actually feel the heat between the shades and the window. Pure conjecture, but I believe I could probably crack an egg at the top of a window and have a scramble by the time it oozed to the bottom.
Anyways, we have one anti-glare shade that can be drawn between the two panes that make up our double-paned windows. The hope is that this reduces sunny coruscation without obstructing view. And the glare shade helps... a bit. I only know it helps because we have one window without said anti-glare feature and this window glows several times brighter and hotter than the de-glared windows.
We also have blinds behind the window panes on the bedroom side of things. These fall pat in the better than nothin' category. They do thoroughly obstruct the view, so at least they do something! But they don't block out too much light so much as diffuse it to a murky milky glow veined with string and slats. Given that we live in theoretically overcast PNW, who'd ever stock a house with such features as functional blinds? Additionally there's a little extra little window with the glare shade, but no real shade. This perches atop our large oriel and seems mostly like a lazy skylight that's slipping a touch.
All in all, with one or the other or both little curtains, quite the olio of insufficient heat blockage.
So yesterday, I was stewing in the bedroom with a/c on low (eco-guilt remains strong with this gumless lady of the contagious compost heap), and set to 73. Erma the Embonpoint Airconditioner had chugged along in stalemate with the summer afternoon at a balmy but tolerable 76 degrees for quite some time. As punctually as a German clockmaker at the Dresden train station, the temperature began to rise at 5:30. Subsequent measures with increase air conditioning settings stood only to hinder the inevitable yawn into the 80s.
After several weeks of speculative fancy on increasing the energy efficiency of our room and its fenestrated greenhouse tendencies, I finally buckled, grabbed every scrap of magazine and cardboard in the house, and duct taped the crap out of things. Decorative duct tape, though! With moustaches! The window without the glare shade ate up the rest of the cardboard and magazines (downside of having such frequent recycling pick ups, I suppose, is that we actually hadn't much to work with).
The upper little portico window just has a cardboard box jammed into it. Light seeps around the sides, but it's still something of a blocker.
I have no idea how much if any assistance this provided to Erma A/C's epic struggle. As happens every night (so far), the sun eventually set and then the temperature plummeted snappily enough. Plummeted, at least, in the absence of light but with the a/c on full blast. Let's not fool ourselves and think that the a/c does nothing.
And of course, as also always happens, the breeze from outside proved more than sufficient to chill the bedroom into blanket-burrowing territory by midnight.
I am thinking about breaking out the nails, as hanging a dark sheet would be the quickest solution to the heat seeping in through the largest window of the room. Plus, nails around the window would allow for some holiday decorating on more ambitious scales than last year's "hang lights off of anything that kinda works, like door jambs and shoddily tied knots around door knobs" approach.
By god, I shall create a solemn and bleak gusty abbadon of a cave yet! Probably just in time for the pleasant autumn breeze and earlier sunset...
In the meantime, I'll keep my very first birthday card atop my desk and smiling at me, so that I can at least celebrate a little anticipatory aging hereabouts!
Rip-Roaring Dromedary Day Detente The Eye of a Minor Pre-Mad August Tempest
In scheduling terms, today is the "normal" day in an otherwise mad week. No family members requiring excessive entertaining and/or epic shuttling involving rental cars and several varieties of different booster and/or car seats (mom-boss excluded). No wild and crazy personal health appointments. No rushing home in the middle of the day to squeeze a little bit of quality time with the Father of the Pink Beard in the midst of scheduling chaos and a sense that "this should just be easier to arrange given your free schedule and my usually flexible schedule!" No horribly lingering guilt that our other mutual friend in town and I have apposite schedules and have thus taken to taking shifts with Mr. Pink Beard and continuing our trend of never ever seeing each other (thus suggesting that we are one and the same person, which would explain how we were flatmates for a while and saw a shockingly little amount of each other during that whole time).
Today, Father of the Pink Beard is in Seattle. The family arrives tomorrow. My volunteer shifts flank today on either side. My medical appointments dot the celestial horizons but fall not on this pleasant little humpday. It's work as usual. Errands as usual. And date night as usual. Respite from the pleasant distress of a schedule in tailspin. By which I mean, all the usual madness and appointments and obligations and catch up etc. of the week condensed into a single day.
Yesterday was a thoroughly swiss cheese working schedule. I came in for a while. I ran back to my house to meet PB for a long lunch hour viewing of Resident Evil: We Make Sci Fi Zombie Films and Screw This Plot Nonsense, Now Chill While We Show Pretty People in Fetish Clothes Running Through Various Elaborate Sets Killing Things to Kick-ass Techno Music (or whatever the most recent one is called). Dan was far less enamored with this film than I had been. I enjoy the shamelessness and honesty of it all. There's so little pretense at plot and a high capital on style, like a long music video. Pink Beard was more nostalgic for the straight up qualities of the first. But I say he'll come around when he watches the commentary. Because, it's not about the movie. It's about the commentary with Milla being her awesome whacked out self that ultimately sells this movie.
After finishing up that movie, I rushed back to work for an hour and a half. Then off to the DRC. I get the sense they're still not 100% sure what to do with me yet, but I did have a bonafide project to keep me busy this time (tracking down the school year schedules for the seven school districts in Whatcom County, and making three very pretty binders with tabs and an index because I can't help myself).
And of course, I then returned back to work to finish out the day with another mini-sprint of projects. I guess they do say that we're most productive in 90 minute intervals, so I'm taking that work-concept to the next logical level: Several in-office spells of 90 minute intervals followed by vanishing for 2 hours. Sure, makes my day longer but those 4.5 to 6 hours I might actually "work" would be turbocharged. If I weren't spending some of that time booting things back up, hanging my purse up, changing my shoes, and getting ready to leave etc. Ah well. Nice in theory.
Tomorrow, I have a visit with the regular doctor (after all my nesting referrals and specialists, I figured it's time to return to the Ground Zero of it all and at least have the non-endocrine part of my body poked and prodded a little bit too, lest it get jealous and start acting up). I've got forms to bring to him!
TMI Lady Stuff Paragraph Having secured my referral to specialist ^ specialist, I now have a minor mountain of paperwork for the filling. Some of it is a little personal. Some is both personal and raises the questions "why would anyone remember that?" (what age did I start growing armpit hair?" Probably after the first time I tried to "shave" with my older sister's razor and nearly killed myself, but before I discovered Amazon has subscribe and save options for my razor heads). There are also several medical releases that will allow them to mine through all my prior information in search for nuggets of medical meaning or juicy gossip. And some forms for Andrew to sign, because Reproductive Endocrinologists usually work for Fertility Clinics where couples are a little bit further along and actively "trying" the conception thing instead of lurking at the doorway to the grand conception olympics arena.
Recommence Usual Blathering - Also tomorrow, the family arrives. Since I have a regular doctor's appointment and a volunteer shift to handle, I'll probably miss some of the intensive quality time we always try to jam into this single evening before they head up to join Papa T at the remote Canadian Island fortress. But there shall be some no doubt
And with Father of the Pink Beard departing on Saturday, there's got to be some rearranging of schedules to see him on Friday! Of course, I'm also making a darned concerted effort to make a meeting of the mediators that has been in the works for nearly 8 months of mishaps and misunderstandings. Seems like jiggling that even an eensy bit could send everything awry.
And back to today. Today I shall work doggedly and determinedly. I shall help family prepare for other family. And I shall go to dinner with my husband! And by gum, it shall be gloriously banal! Exquisitely ordinary! And spectacularly prosaic! In all the right ways.
Happy Ho-Hum-Dinger of a Dromedary Day all!
Come Post-Compost Crazy And the Auntie in B'ham Gets a Prolonged Prologue
The nephews are coming, the nephews are... HERE! Mom-boss and I got our wires crossed and somehow tangled ourselves into the belief that sis & brood were flying in yesterday and immediately heading out to the Canadian Gulf Islands today. As such, we'd sort of shoveled out a nice vacant scheduling hole on Thursday, by piling up professional detritus on either side. As it turns out, they're here all day today, so all that Friday lawyerly loam needs must be handled expeditiously. Mom-boss panicked late Wednesday after I discovered the discrepancy (several conversations with Papa T and some disparate concepts of scheduling later), and rapidly started off-loading obligations.
I didn't quite go that far, although I've had my share of shakes and shimmies. I'm still meeting with two other mediators in town for the long awaited mediator brain meld (or whatever this is theoretically supposed to do other than involve coffee and conversation). I'm still planning to meet Father of the Pink Beard for a final send off at one of our many fancy little microbreweries in town (the supply of these can never keep up with our yippee kayeee wealthy-enough twenty-to-thirtysomething low-grade alcoholic). But in between, Associate Adella pops back into the recesses of Id, and Fitness Instructor Adelia is there in staple wardrobe of activewear only. Bring on Auntie Adella and lets get to shrieking over spongebob!
Or something.
Yesterday was not a particularly office-intensive day. I had a doctor's appointment in the morning. Yet another, yes. But with the normal doctor who mostly thinks I'm obscenely healthy and should just eat all the time, even if he does keep me going through the regular blood tests just in case something's been missed. I am the just in case patient extraordinaire. He can be loquacious, but it's not bad for a check up when you aren't in a hurry. I try not to stoke the pullulating palaver too much, of course, though I too have opinions about parents who force their malnourished children onto fad diets and/or about the general unhealthiness of over-training endurance athletics or supposedly "healthy" processed corn and soy oil. I won't argue about the wretchedness of many divorce cases, or the need for a female body to stock up nutrients before turning itself into a suicidal incubator for a little fetus for nine months (I'm living proof that the body at least anticipates these things and takes preemptive protective actions on that one).
Having landed upon an unexpected spot of free time, I managed a shockingly spontaneous meet-up with Father of the Pink Beard for a caffeinated slurp or two paired with subsequently peppy perambulation.
And then the family had arrived. Actually the family arrived a bit earlier, but mom-boss picked them up in Seattle. Things were a bit garbled since swype is never a friend and it's very hard to (1) focus on a phone screen while running triage with three highly mobile grenades, (2) do anything while running triage with three highly mobile and pepped up poppers like the kiddos. I gleaned that they had crammed themselves into a small tank (Chevy Tahoe was no match for a family of five with luggage), driven to Red Robin with only some vomiting involved. And were now at a park somewhere.
Except Grandma Pam was at the Rental Shop returning the car she'd rented to pick them up to take them to another rental place for their rental car. Don't ask, just go with it. And I was invited to pick her up after work. I had two main priorities for my post-work time: (1) taking the office FoodPlus home, and putting out our FoodPlus! Bin for pickup with all relevant food stuffs, (2) buying some milk. One of these happened. It was the one that involved a compost-friendly bag bursting dramatically and a fair bit of rolling around in coffee grounds, paper towels and the occasional egg yolk! I can only assume that this is some kind of beauty treatment in the nicer but edgier spas of Northern Europe.
The battered bag and its regurgitated contents went into another compostable bag, which (due to some gun-shyness about compostable bags all of a sudden) went into a regular garbage bag. Save the planet!! All of that went into my trunk for several additional hours. Or two hours, but in kid-time, that can feel like anything from "two minutes" (if you're trying to get out the door on time), to "two ice ages" (if you're just having a nice little visit in a public area near jet-lag bedtime at a restaurant with shiny things, quarter machines, and flashing lights).
By the time we sorted out our pizza order and thoroughly ground cheese into the carpet, I was back out with two pizza boxes for the bike-and-chain (who apparently could not magically teleport home from work at 4:45 p.m. when it was declared that dinner had 'better be soon") and was soooo not in the mood to go to the store. I did, blessedly remove the compost from the trunk. I'm heartened to find that the second compost bag had not disintegrated yet, and I was thus able to save the plastic garbage bag for future use. By the time the husband was home, I'd reheated most of the pizza in the oven, and just come down from what was rather a tiring day, despite the dearth of work!
I am now back at the balancing act for one more day before our week of work-as-almost-usual. Emergency clients that we couldn't slough off to next week to begin the day. Intermittent mediator professional meeting nonsense. Intermittent fancy beer that costs more than my dinner likely will. And intermittent every single vibrant and vivid emotion in the human repertoire (and some variations of pure animal) embodied in the teeny bodies of my darling little nephews.
Gonna take a cape and a cowl to get through this day, but I think I've got enough coffee to claim that I'm almost up to the challenge!
Flight of the Family And the Petulant Passing Respite
They're all gone, baby gone! Sis & Brood, Inc. crammed several additional tons of crucial Trader Joe's groceries on top of several weeks' of matching children's outfits and some sunscreen into a car and took off across the border around 6:35 a.m. Father of the Pink Beard is en route to the airport. My mediator friends are wherever they are (asleep?), resting off the sheer exhaustion enduring my fiercely fulgent presence for more than twenty seconds.
Mom-boss is sleeping in before fleeing to some other islands in Washington State. And bike-and-chain might as well be several planets away what with bike things calling and his belly already full of food.
Whew! That was quite the day yesterday. We toured several parks. Witnessed some intense games of chess and one tediously eternal death march of checkers (Ian may not be the checkers god, but he is stubborn enough to keep moving pieces around the board until his opponent gives up and walks away, prompting him to chant "you surrender! I win!!!"). Avoided any major injuries or full-scale meltdowns. Redecorated Gramma Pam's downstairs with a little more of a RETRO TOY-JUNKYARD theme. And in between, I tried some fussy Pilsner with service from the world's most disturbingly chipper waitress.
I don't know what tired me out most, but I was feeling decidedly drained and lightheaded all day. Aaand the scale is already inching downwards just at the thought of the boys' returning next week (in time for some high intensity birthday hijinks perhaps). After not quite recovering from my June visit, I'm down a few more pounds this morning, which I attribute to dehydration. This would explain several other general lurgy-type leaden-legs and half-breath yawning but never feeling fully oxygenated symptoms experienced yesterday.
So, between mainlining half-to-quarter-caff coffee (because I'm tired, but also a wuss), I'm trying to make extra sure to get some extra water in.
...So I can slosh through our upcoming run like a water bed on wheels! Naturally! That'll be fun!
Whether it be my ooooooh barracuda hormones, the introvert's exhaustion of a day spent roiling in social stimuli, or just a minor summer illness, I am grumpy today. Intermittently, which makes it far worse for every one involved. Sometimes I'm fine to chipper, and sometimes I'm suddenly sent into a sotten snit of a something for a few minutes and catching myself slamming cabinet doors and storming about for no identifiable reason. Lord knows. Maybe, it's just my charming capricious self.
At any rate, I'm more than relieved to have a day more or less to myself. I'll no doubt rampage through the groceries and kitchen with elan, and maybe end up with a little bit of downtime... maybe... if I don't need some kind of emergency room intervention from playing with sharp knives in an intermittent dither! I'm optimistic... that the ER Docs will get to me eventually.
Hope all is well all about and the kitty cats purr extra soft for you today.
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