Unplanned

Someone recently asked me how blogging fit into my daily life, and I responded with something like, "I WISH blogging fit into my daily life."

And you all know that's true, that for me blogging is mostly a way of staying in touch (though I love all my internet-only buddies here, too), and that I love staying in touch.

But also? I am just filled with gratitude for my life right now. Like, people ask how my weekend was, and I say, "busy," while rolling my eyes and almost out of breath, but the fact of the matter is, I choose my busy, because my life is filled to brimming with fun stuff and I don't want to miss out on any of it.

I've had this problem before; in college, I'd stay up late and get up early (sometimes), just because I didn't want to miss latenight conversations or shenanigans in the hallway of my dorm, and if I could get myself up in time, I didn't want to miss breakfast with a different group of amazing people.

For example, this weekend was the first in a long time that RI and I didn't have any plans — and we have a lot of heavily planned weekends coming up. In this unplanned weekend, I:

• Went to a lecture on "The Future of Truth and the Decline of America’s Moral Integrity"
• Visited with my parents and some old family friends
• Went yardsaling
• Hit the farmer's market
• Took a nap
• Started a new book (reading, not writing)
• Watched a documentary
• Had a date night out at our favorite Latin American restaurant
• Played a new game
• Set up a screen tent and a queen-sized airbed on the deck and fell asleep watching the fireflies (and woke up hearing birdsongs and the neighbor kid practicing violin)
• Went to church and heard my dad preach a really excellent sermon on the child refugees
• Took another nap
• Had a spontaneous ice cream double date with some friends
• Went to the supermarket
• Played with my niece and nephew
• Saw the very end of the World Cup final
• Read with my niece and nephew
• Had dinner with the family

I did not:

• Go to bed as early as I planned
• Get the laundry done
• Do a little writing for work
• Blog

...but I wouldn't have missed any of it. I mean, right?

Stormy weather

Today, my workplace was closed due to snow.

The highlights:

• As I am part of the "emergency communications team" at said workplace, I got up at 5:15 a.m. to share the word. Which mostly went fine.
• At about 6:15 a.m., after attempting to record the outgoing message for the switchboard about one million times, I texted my neighbor and subsequently went to her house in my pajamas to try again on her landline. That went better.
• I watched a few episodes of Dexter. Big revelation: A date that is featured sort of casually but repeatedly on that show is my exact date of birth. So that's fun.
• I videochatted with my sister and niece and nephew, which included tours of both houses, a puppet show, and my nephew's enjoyment of a toy drill for just slightly too short a time for me to come up with "that looks boring" as a clever thing to say. Those kids are very very very amused by seeing me upside down or sideways.
• I ventured out to the convenience store .6 miles away from my house on foot, both because I needed the exercise and because my driveway wasn't plowed yet. It took almost an hour round-trip because of the snow.
• My sweet friends had a temperature-solstice pot luck over the weekend that I was very excited about but then was too sick to attend, with the result that I have an excess of my favorite summer dish, which means peach cobbler, which is seriously summer in a bowl and good for the spirits of the snowbound.
• I watched Breaking Away. Golly, that's a good cast and a beautiful movie.

So, pretty much of a win overall.

How's your day going?

A brief thought on a sunny morning

I wonder if the neighbor I just caught watching me put wet clothes on the line thinks there are no undergarments out there because:

• I don't wear them, or
• I am hopelessly puritanical and New Englandy, or
• I find these particular neighbors creepy and don't want them, specifically, looking at my undergarments.

Things I learned from two full weeks of dogsitting

• The most desirable place in my yard to poop is the property line with my neighbors.
• If a dog isn't allowed on the bed, and you agree with that philosophically and also respect the dog's owner's wishes, but nonetheless aren't feeling well and would like to snuggle with a doggie, you can lie down on the couch as if it were a bed and have the dog come up there. As long as the dog is allowed on the couch.
• Dogs are better at opening doors than they are at closing them behind them.
• There is always an adult male fishing at Robin Hood Park. He may have a child or a woman or another adult male or no one with him, but he is always there. Not always the same adult male; I think they must have a schedule to be sure all shifts are covered.
• A small dog with a big-dog bark will scare mice away.
• When you return a dog to his owners, with "all his stuff," you will likely forget something. In my case, "something" means food dish, water dish, placemat food and water dish sit on, fleece blanket, destroyed stuffed elephant, destroyed tennis ball, and two sticks of rawhide. So far.

More dog days of summer

You may recall that I am dog-sitting.

The lucky puppy and I are having a blast. Once a day, I try to send a wrap-up text about him and his buddy, who's a cat, to their owners on vacation. And because they're so adorable, I try to include a picture snapped with my phone.

Did I mention he's a puppy?

Here's a small sample of photo attempts:

I did manage to get one acceptably good one:

Cute, right? And deceptively placid-looking? 

Yeah, don't let him fool you.

Things I learned from the first 20 hours of two weeks of dog-sitting

• I really am allergic to dogs. Really allergic. As much as I am to cats.
• Dogs really like to be close to people.
• Cetrizine Hydrochloride is no longer an effective allergy medicine for me. At least for my dog allergy.
• If there's one thing dogs love, it's wadded up Kleenex.
• You can't buy allergy medicine with a decongestant unless you have your driver's license.
• If you, say, forgot to bring your driver's license to the drugstore, you can't reasonably "just run in" for it if there's a dog in a crate in your house, because he will go INSANE and you will feel like the meanest person alive.
• There are many reasons I don't own a dog (like allergies and that I prefer to have the option of being irresponsible), but not-unhigh on the list is that I am worried the dog will judge me. The last two dogs I've dogsat for came from households with two adults and two interesting children. I suspect these dogs are bored to tears with me, because the parts of my life that are exciting (me being out of my house) and the parts that are relaxing (me lying around in my house) are both pretty dog-boring. 

31 Days of Secrets and Lies: Day 23

Fireworks as we know them were invented by Benjamin Franklin in France, for the express purpose of irritating his neighbors and scaring their horses.

How that party went

First things first: I went with black pants, a shiny green shirt, and heels I could take off when I got there with bare feet (since I got a pedicure on Saturday)

I left my town at about 5:45 and arrived around 6:15, planning to only stay an hour, and carpooled with a friend who wanted to get home in time to tuck her kids in. Perfect, right?

My hostess's husband was there, rearranging and moving cars, and offered to move mine.

Since I hadn't taken my coat off yet, I offered to do it myself.

He said he'd do it, that I should go in and enjoy the party. And you know, my car's really old. It's not like it'd be a huge big deal if he scratched it or something.

So I gave him my keys and headed in to talk to the five people I knew (because really, I seem outgoing, but my M.O. at parties is pretty much to corner people I know or people who look like they know even fewer people than I do and talk with them, one-on-one, until they wander off).

By about 6:45, I had talked with everyone I know, but it was obviously still too soon to leave. My hostess came over to say hello, and we talked for a bit about how beautiful her house is and what she'll do with the room we're standing in. And then she says, "[bzzzzgrrrl], I have a huge dilemma."

People who understand my neuroses better than I can figure out why my first thought was that I was about to be fired from a direct-sales job at a holiday party, but anyway, I just said, "O.K."

And then she was full of apologies, and handed me the pieces of my keys. Bear in mind, my car is old, and my hostess's husband is approximately the same age as said car. He has probably never had to open a car door with a key in his short life. He certainly has probably never seen a car where the ignition key and the door lock key are different. And so he put the ignition key into the door lock and gave it a good twist in the bitter, metal-freezing cold, and snapped it.

Also bear in mind, this party was about half an hour away from my house, and I didn't (and don't) know where my spare key is anyway. Shuttling around to get it is not an option.

Luckily, I have AAA. AAA Plus, in fact, which is totally worth it (and would be a fine last-minute Christmas gift for practically anyone, except someone who already has it). So I called AAA and tried to enjoy the rest of the party, which was lovely (though I was a little worried about my carpool buddy who now can't leave and won't get home to tuck the kids in).

What time would you guess AAA got there?

I mean, you know I'm in the middle of nowhere, so would you guess 45 minutes after I called?

An hour?

Maybe you'd guess, correctly, that they'd call back after an hour and a half to see how everything was going, and then would be surprised to learn the tow truck hadn't gotten there yet, and then would call back to say it'd be another twenty minutes. Yup.

This party, mind you, was supposed to end at 8:30. Luckily, I am not the only one who doesn't know how to leave a party, and so I was not quite the last guest in the house when the truck finally got there at 9, two hours after I initially called for it, in pretty, swirly, only-slightly-scary snow. My carpool buddy had managed to hitch a ride with someone else about five minutes before that, well after her kids' 8:00 bedtime.

You will be glad to know the couple who drove the tow truck were very nice and really interesting, and I now know a lot about their kids and also what it's like to tow drunk drivers.

I think I might send them a note.

They towed me home, and gave me a ride.

And then the fun began.

Because it took several hours the next morning to figure out how to get a replacement key for a 20-year-old car, without the use of said car.

I called the GM dealership (because there are no Oldsmobile dealerships anymore, because they don't make Oldsmobiles anymore) and asked if they could make me a replacement key.

The guy on the phone explained that GM says it doesn't do keys older than 14 years old, but sometimes he gets lucky, but before he can even search on it, he'd need my license and registration.

When I suggested that I might not want to walk three miles round-trip in the incredibly freezing cold on the off chance he could make a copy of my key, he said I could fax that info to him.

I told him I didn't have a fax machine at home. I did not say, "A fax? Are you kidding? What is this, 1992?" I asked if I could scan and e-mail that info to him instead.

He thought that would be a fine idea, and gave me his e-mail address, which was in the format [creative spelling of diminutive of masculine first name][two-digit number]@yahoo.com. I did not say, "Yahoo? What is this, 1995? You don't have a work account?"

I did (probably unwisely) e-mail those scans and wait a bit, and then called back. I got a different guy on the phone, and had this conversation.

Me: Hi, I called earlier to see if you could make a key for my 20-year-old car, and I just wanted to make sure you all had gotten my e-mail with my license and registration.
Him: We can't make a key that old.
Me: I know, I already talked to someone, he said that sometimes you can make keys older than 14 years. I just wanted to see if he'd gotten my e-mail.
Him: We can't make keys that old.
Me: I already talked to someone who said he'd see if he could.
Him: We can only go back to 1990.
Me: Excellent. My car is a 1990. [But note to self: Get one million copies of this key.]
Him: Oh, yeah, then, we can do that. We'll need your license and registration.
Me: I know. I e-mailed them to the guy I talked to before.
Him: Oh! Yeah, I'll ask [diminutive of masculine first name] if he got that. What's your phone number?

A few minutes later, the phone rang, and it was the second guy I'd talked to.

Him: I don't see that fax.
Me: I didn't send a fax. I e-mailed it.
Him: Oh! OK, I'll see if [diminutive of masculine first name] got that.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again, and it was the first guy I'd talked to.

Him: Yeah, we'll be able to make that key, no problem. But you should know, with a car that old, there's only a 50-50 chance it'll work.
Me: What?
Him: Yeah, if it's ever been broken into, or if they've ever had to replace the ignition tumbler, the key we're making won't work in it.
Me: Oh, good. I'm only the second owner, and the first owner was my grandmother, and I'm almost certain the ignition has never been replaced.

My kindhearted neighbor gave me a lift to pick it up. And it worked.

So, how's your week going?

Fairy tale

Not quite three weeks ago, the following exchange happened on my Facebook page:

[bzzzzgrrrl] loves it when she comes home to find the sweater fairy has been to call!

• [Friend1] I want a sweater fairy!
• [Friend2] sweater fairy?
• [Friend3] Is THAT what they call those moths!?!
• [bzzzzgrrrl] Ha!
  No, [Friend3] and [Friend2], the sweater fairy is a magical creature that leaves nice sweaters between the storm door and the regular door of all the good little boys and girls who are lucky enough to live next door to people who are losing weight and whose old size is similar to said boys' and girls' current size.
  I believe her to be related to the beet fairy, which is a magical creature that leaves beets (and sometimes other produce) for all the good little boys and girls who are lucky enough to live next door to people who have a CSA share but also a houseful of mildly picky eaters.
• [Friend3] Ah, I seeeeeee. I wonder if I can find a $100 bill fairy??
• [Cousin Mouse] oh, at first I read that as "the swearer fairy"

Well the sweater fairy has struck again, and this time, she's left not only sweaters but also shirts and pants and shorts and a vest, and she had to leave them in the garage because there were way too many to leave between the regular door and the storm door. I will not need to shop again for a year.

Day 28 of my month of gratitude: I am thankful for the generosity of the people around me, particularly of my kind and loving neighbor. I aspire to that level of thoughtfulness.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming

So that's what me looking for joy for a week looks like. It was fun. I'll do it more often.

But, um.

This weekend, while I was out of town, my neighbors dug up some trees they assumed I would not want where they were.

They then took them away, as they were preparing to haul some brush themselves.

I had vague notions of transplanting said trees elsewhere.

I have never, ever, met these neighbors. Still.

What, if anything, would you do with this situation?

(For context, my history with these same neighbors here and here and here.)

Extracting joy, day 2: What's in the garage

(Day 1)
(Whimsy's explanation)

A little pre-today background:

Weeks (months? I don't know.) ago, the two worst nest-builders in the world started attempting to build a nest in my garage, in the rafter right above my car door. I first noticed them one morning when I went out to the garage, and startled two blue jays, who freaked out and flew out of the garage.

When I got home from work that day, I stepped on a pile of twigs and plastic stuff on the floor next to my car.

After a few repeats of this (morning jay freakout, afternoon pile of twigs), it became clear what was going on. I did not imagine they'd successfully build a nest up there, particularly after one day when I startled the male and he crashed into the closed garage door, right next to the open garage door. But succeed they did.

And then the female just started sitting there. All the time. She was no longer freaked out, no longer even really noticed me. Which I assumed meant there were eggs in the (seriously, very poorly constructed) nest.

I finally brought my ladder into the garage from the deck, where it had been sitting all winter. I put it as far from the nest as was possible, considering that the nest is in the dead center of the garage. I climbed it a few times anyway, to look at the female jay. She seemed fine. I'd have been bored. She seemed unbothered by it.

So, today's joy:

There were babies in the nest this morning. Three of them that I could see, silently opening and closing their mouths. Their mother was still there, too, looking proud, though I could just be projecting.

I carried those baby birds in my head and my heart all day today, thinking of them about a thousand times, in meetings, as I went for a walk, as I planned for my evening.

And those weird-looking featherless aliens have completely framed my day. Made me excited. Made me want to get home, just to stare at them.

And when I did, they were still there, still opening and closing mouths, occasionally flailing a naked wing. Their mother was not still there, and who can blame her; she's been sitting there for weeks. She came back.

Seriously, I think she looks proud.

Clotheslined

This progression to country mouseness is a gradual one. At some point this June, I decided to let environmentalism and the weather justify temporary laziness. There is no earthly reason, I thought, to waste power drying clothes when I could just hang them out on the line.
Those of you who do not live in the Northeastern U.S. may not know that we had approximately a thousand days of rain up here. Therefore, I could not possibly do any laundry.
Eventually, I ran out of clothes, and did just one load with the dryer.
Then, like a miracle, it got sunny. The old joke up here is that New Hampshire has two seasons, winter and the Fourth of July, and boy howdy, did it feel true this Fourth. Glorious indeed.
So on the fifth, I did laundry, and brought it out to hang on the line.
But you know how, in the fabric-softener commercials, crisp white sheets and bright-colored shirts all snap in the breeze? Yeah, some of us separate our colors when we do laundry. And some of us, having been city mice, have a lot of dark clothing. So some of us now have the gothest-looking clothesline in the universe, right out there for all the neighbors to see, and, no doubt, mock.
"Now?" you say. "Why haven't you brought in your laundry from July 5 yet?"
Because obviously there have been enough soaking rainstorms since then that every dark piece of clothing I won has had enough opportunity to almost dry before getting soaked again, repeatedly.

Ol' Lady [bzzzzgrrrl]

It's that time of year again, when my windows are open and the neighborhood kids are outside.
Just overheard this in my backyard, while I sat in the sunroom, out of view:
(wheel grinding noise)
"Quit it! Get away from there! [exasperated noise] Do we even know the people who own that property? No. They [mumble mumble mumble]."
Indeed I do, kid. Indeed I do.

Played it 'til my fingers bled

I'm home this afternoon, for reasons that will be discussed in an upcoming blog post.

And it is a gorgeous day.

The storms that passed through last night left the air clearer, the temperature perfect. As a result, I am enjoying the deck.

And that is how I know that my neighbor has decided to teach him- or herself to play the guitar.

Outside.

With the amp plugged in.

He or she certainly is dedicated to practicing today.

Great Interview, Batman

So the premise of The Great Interview Experiment is that bloggers will interview each other, because if we have something interesting enough to say to write a blog, we probably ought to be interviewed about it. Go check it out yourself, and if you're interested, hop on board that train.
I was interviewed by the excellent, if bitterly indifferent, PMJG. He is a very entertaining interviewer, I must say; I hope he enjoyed our experiment as much as I did. I am in the middle of interviewing someone else, too. When that's done, I'll post the finished product here. Meanwhile, I thought you might like to see what it looks like when someone interviews me. Here it is, exactly as it appears on his blog.

What's your story?
I lived in D.C. for a year after college, moved to New Hampshire (which is where I sometimes grew up) for several years, and left in my late twenties because I was bored. I moved back to D.C. because I think it's a fantastic city and because I still have friends there, but after eight years, I was looking for a job and found myself increasingly drawn back north. I don't mind "bored" as much as I mind "shoved," and maybe that is the difference between my twenties and my thirties.

How did you find the Great Interview Experiment?
Through She Just Walks Around With It. She apparently did this experiment a long time ago, but just got around to posting the results.

How did you choose your screen name? How does it fit in with the theme of your blog? Are you using that spelling of "girl" ironically?
Not ironically, but maybe nostalgically. That screenname dates way, way back, to maybe 1997, when I was director of a day camp called Hornets' Nest, which allowed me to simultaneously be a camp director (which I loved) and feel like a badass (which I craved). That wasn't so long after I'd been sort of tangentially into the whole riotgrrl thing in college. I just sort of kept using it. So, you know, hornets, feminism, summer camp, badassery. All of that probably fits in with the theme of the blog, but only because it fits in with the theme of my life.

Why did you decide to start a blog?
The idea for the blog came up when I moved. My D.C. friends got very wide-eyed, asking me about all the things I'd surely miss and how cold it would surely be. I found myself e-mailing mobs of people about what it was actually like once I got here, and a blog seemed easier.

What would you say is the single greatest challenge about moving to the country?
Not knowing anything. It makes for funny stories, which is good for the blog, but the sheer amount of stuff I don't know is overwhelming. I need a roof rake? Really?
Oh, and also the move itself was a tremendous challenge. Because I hired the worst moving company ever, and the owner, who is oldish, and his daughter, who is pregnant, showed up to move me. I am not sure I am ready to blog about that experience, even yet.

How did you get such a hefty blogroll in just six months of posting?
The big honkin' blogroll is largely blogs I was reading before I was blogging (bloggin'?). And now, of course, Google tells me what to read.

How do you feel about Google, and their sinister Google Everything(tm) project?
Now you're gonna get us both killed.
I am, unfortunately, exactly the kind of person Google dreams of (That is not anthropomorphism. I actually believe that Google has a brain, and it frightens me.). I dislike everything this giantness stands for, and yet, it's so eeeeeeeeeeeasy. And yeah, parts of it suck, but, well, I'd rather do something else than think too hard. Do you hear me, overlords? I WELCOME YOUR TELLING ME WHAT TO THINK. Plus, the maps are excellent, I find.

Do you hate technorati nearly as much as I hate technorati?
I do.
As do all right-thinking folk.

Between your posts and your links to sites like the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, you appear to be a fan of punctuation and correctly written words. Do you have a literary background?
"Literary" may be pushing it. I am a writer and editor, and I'm a former copy editor. I like my language and communication fairly precise.

Are emoticons in fact ruining America?
I think it is both lazy and useful to have something to indicate, in writing, that you're kidding. I have little use for emoticons with devil horns and sunglasses, but I use smileys probably too much. Actually, now that I think about it, it strikes me that smileys are OK, but probably winks are ridiculously lazy. How little game do you have if you need a symbol to say "I'm flirting with you"?

What do you miss most about moving to the city (besides the May Day dancing)?
Specific people. I was there eight years, I made friends, and I miss them, often. But really, that's about it. Also, this is where I totally reveal my blog for the sham that it is, but country folks know that there are lots and lots of degrees of country-ness, and I am in one of the easier types to move to: the college town. So there are still lectures and sports and arts, just in a town of many fewer people (about 23,000). So that eases the transition some.

Would you describe your neighbors as hicks, hillbillies, hayseeds, or bumpkins?
Mostly, I would describe them as "professors." I might also describe them as "uninterested in meeting me."

Did it turn out that those were mice making noise in your house, or were the Agatha Christie books actually preparing you to deal with a real, honest-to-god serial killer who happened to be lurking around your house?
Oh, the mice are real, which does not mean the serial killer isn't. The problem with Agatha Christie is that all she really prepares you for is solving the murder after it happens. If you're a victim, you're doomed, and nothing can prevent that. All I can hope for is that the serial killer waits until after The Wedding.

[As bzzzzgrrrl is still alive, and The Wedding concluded successfully, we can assume that the killer is either nonexistent, or very considerate.]

Pimp your blog in 25 words or less.
Mostly, I tell stories at my own expense. Also, I'm hilarious. And in general, things are spelled right.

No, I mean really pimp your blog. Pretend you have a gold tooth, and a diamond-headed cane, if it helps. Right now that description could apply just as easily to She Just Walks Around With It as it could to yours. Make me want to pay money to sleep with your blog.
OK, first of all, I would pay money to sleep with Kristy's blog, if it wouldn't create complications with my existing relationships, so if I've given the impression that my little fish-in-different-water story is anything like that, I'm good with it.

But I'll try again, anyway:
• Hot lettuce
• David Gregory
• Cheap drinks
• Pregnant movers
• Hippie Birkenstock Silver Jewelry Guy
• Squirrel-wrangling
• Candidate spouses
• Contra dancing
• Explosive dust evaluation
• and very many bulleted lists.
Better?

Yes.