Category Archives: domesticity

Thirteen days

And he’s negative! Only the test could tell because he’s actually more stuffed up now than when he was sick with Covid. Seasonal allergies have hit.

This “Covid suite” aka “wreck-of-a-bedroom” will get turned back into a peaceful place today. No screens. Will run fans and air purifiers all day.

The TV was one we got for my sister. K assembled that rocker from a Shaker kit (wove the seat and back and stained and waxed the wood). That was before we got married and it’s nice to remember. Usually the rocker is hidden away for lack of a good place and if that’s a metaphor for our marriage, I don’t want to think about it.

In other news, we hired a crew to paint the house. If you knew what a DIY-household this is, your jaw would hit the floor.

We get to luxuriate in having things done for us — long overdo maintenance, at that — and to enjoy a task that gets started and finished in the same week (never mind the same season or decade). It’s also a chance to notice, not for the first time, that abrasive noise is like clutter — it bothers you less when it’s yours.

I’ll work here this morning.

A movie recommendation to end. I love stories about second chances and “I Used to Be Famous” fits the bill. Very sweet.

Kushner snuck in. Do you see his malevolent B&W eye near the left margin?

Dog walk at Wellesley

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Had I not had to pee, would not have seen

Here’s when I started to think about key lime pie

Incoming! Detoured to a sitting area outside church

How none of it seems to end

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The list of things imposing misery right now is quite long. Ukraine is never far from mind. For many of my friends, Russia’s atrocities are personal.

Things I’ve heard in the last month from people I am close to:

My mother grew up in Belarus.

My grandparents are Russian Jews, but from areas now Ukraine.

I just found out that I have a relative from Poland who died in the Holocaust. I was named after her.

I’m have very little family history, which is traumatizing too.

My grandfather grew up in Odessa.

I didn’t realize that H’s mother was Ukrainian.

Meanwhile, it’s Monday and K has gone into the office. He will travel into Boston every day this week. It strikes me as a signature Covid experience how the familiar becomes strange and the strange becomes familiar. Example: in spite of this being my husband’s commuting routine for decades before the pandemic, it now feels a little weird, a little dangerous, a little not-normal.

Also today: I get to make a friend lunch and we won’t have to be quiet because K is on the phone at his workstation (aka the kitchen table).

And, I get my second booster this afternoon.

Yea and Nay

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Yea to : hoses that spit out water, neighbors that laugh on their back patios, dogs that look but don’t bark, goat cheese/feta cheese/mozzarella cheese for summer entrees and salads, Tylenol, catching snippets of K’s calls with coworkers when the client is not on the line, writing, dianaphotoapp, color, and fall-cooled air. Vaccines. Coffee. A new fence and the money to pay for it!

Nay to : clothes in general but chafing bras in particular, yard crews that violate the city’s leaf blower summertime ban, trucks backing up (especially before 8 am), the thought of school being in session again and all those people with Cape houses coming back, lumbar pain, hip pain, shoes that don’t slide on, plastic packages that won’t open, the death cult ruining a flawed but promising country, ours.

Will my Virginia Bluebells come back? Will Dems really let an arcane senate rule take down democracy? Does Obama have to shuffle and wear rags to avoid the scorn of some white people? *

Sitting on the deck right now, I hear crickets or tree frogs, I can’t tell which. A jay calls out. And again. The schoolyard is empty but for one mother and toddler. A “knee baby” is what an enslaved woman in the 1730’s might have called the little one.

The temperature is perfect. My bra chafes anyway. The tall yellow flowers came back this year after two years of no shows!

Today I will make a tomato, basil, and mozzarella salad.

I gargled with hydrogen peroxide this morning after reading yet another description of how much more aggressive the delta variant is.

Hope you have a good day, which I mistakenly typed as “food day” and yes, I hope you have a food day as well!

What are people reading? Watching on TV?

My last input: in a British murder mystery, if a man is out clipping his roses, he is either the next victim or the murderer.

* Notes: https://www.nytimes.com/

My father was often one of the only black men at the law firms he worked at back in the day. He never wore name brand clothes & when he brought a new car, he parked blocks away from the building. He told me to never let white people have an idea of how much money you make.
— And The Tweet Goes On (@lacadri34) August 15, 2021

PS Laurence Tribe was not invited.

Collage elements include: my photo of a building at the McLeod Plantation, SC, the Paris Collage Collective prompt (man in bathing suit), clouds shot from plane during recent trip to LA, grid from an installation at Denver Art Museum two years ago, two of my quilts, another collage (that includes a photo of Italy)

Cooked gardened cleaned

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At my brother’s, I cooked, gardened, and cleaned. It was hot and dry and, unlike here, SUNNY. We watched a lot of TV, too. It’s kind of one of my jobs. Was happy to turn my brother onto Shetland and Justified. Last visit it was Vera.

He was feeling so much better than last visit that he was episodically downright chatty. The old Billy. Is it too much to hope that the fevers and abdominal pain are over for now?

The drugstore on Eagle Rock Parkway was closed when I went to pick up some meds. American life at its worst: a young store clerk tried to apprehend a shoplifter and was shot and killed. There were balloons and flowers and Jesus candles lining the sidewalk. People huddled in grief. It was hard to be too upset about the inconvenience of going to the place on York Boulevard, three miles away, with a clerk who could barely ring up items, meaning it took an eternity to get through the five people in front of me. Okay, so I got annoyed in spite of the tragedy.

Zooey, the 15 year old black dog, does not seem to be in pain but is bladder challenged. She has trouble getting up and can barely walk, so there is a constant race to launch her toward the rear door and get the slider open. She needs to go A LOT. Three times during the night, often. A whole other layer of caregiving but also a lesson in survival. She has sooo much personality.

I doubt I’ll see her again.

Delilah is the other dog, mentioned before. A right lioness. Formerly anxious (still anxious with fireworks) and now dignified and mostly calm. I’d take her home if I could!

Because of the Covid-surge, I’m not sure when I’ll be back. There’s much more to say about everything but I have other writing to get back to. I hate it when I lug my laptop on a trip and don’t even open it! This time I edited six chapters during my flight home, so at least there was that.