Welcome Back

 Yesterday I did all of the things.

1) Went to the park with mom and her caregiver

2) Took a long walk with a friend

3) Cooked dinner for a friend who we thought would leave by 3 or 4pm but who stayed until 10:30

and I am exhausted.

Mom was funny. Lately I need to multitask when I see her because her caregiver needs some love, too. So I am literally negotiating two conversations simultaneously. The caregiver gives me the dirt on the mama and tells me things that she sees as potential problems or injustices. And the mama wants to do the usual: vaguely or outright complaining about the current moment, which she will then praise to others later.

The park was gorgeous and it was a beautiful day. A squirrel came to say hello. Mom tried to convince me to move to where my sister lives. She wants to start a board and care home in the midwest, in order to make enough money to buy a house. She has plenty of money. 

The caregiver says that mom got in trouble in the dining room at her community. She wants to sit in a particular seat, and that's not allowed. Also she called the dining room manager over and chewed him out because the tablecloths in the dining room are not ironed. Holy cow, woman! I'm mortified. She has no idea how good she has it. No idea.

Then I went to see my friend from college, hugged her for the first time in about 20 years. She was the first non-relative I have hugged in 15 months. We walked a few miles to a rose garden and took photos of all of the unconventionally colored roses, like one called Ketchup and Mustard, that has petals that are yellow on the outside and red on the inside. And vaguely green-pink ones and brownish ones. Our 18-year-old selves would never believe that our 58-year-old selves would be doing this in the future.

When I got home I was beat. And our friend never left the house so I got up the energy to cook and we invited him to stay. He was our first dinner guest in at least 2 years. I can barely keep my eyes open and am unable to leave the sofa today. The boy kitten had too much excitement yesterday, himself, and he's sacked out like a real cat in the crook of my leg. 

Buy Nothing, May 2021

A lady in my Buy Nothing group was offering a slightly grubby, slightly buggy head of cauliflower.

I'll take it, I said! When I picked up the cauliflower I gifted her some Meyer lemons.

After a soak and a dry, I made that head of cauliflower into Buffalo cauliflower wings, and they were amazingly delicious.

I made them without heat (recipes call for a cup of hot sauce and a bunch of butter (?), but used just a little butter and some fresh-from-Hungary sweet smoked paprika in the last cooking step.

So good. I am totally making this again. I even took some overripe Cowgirl Creamery blue cheese and buttermilk and random herbs and made a dip. 

Not bad for free, right?

Parrot Painting

I wish I had five of this parrot painting.

Getting Closer

I made a pie.

We are fully vaxxed.

I can enter my mom's apartment (but we can't remove our masks).

Some folks might be able to return to the factory after the 4th of July.

I like staying in my house and working from home, and am not invited to work in the factory any time soon anyway.

But I am seriously considering going to the deli and getting that sandwich I like. I've dreamed of it for over a year.

Pfizer and Cats

4/28/2021

Had our second jab today, as the kids say. Pfizer #2. My poker was named Minda, and she had great gifts in the poking. I kept waiting for her to stop fooling around on my arm and realized that she was done. I had literally not felt a thing.

The day required that I hold myself together until after a John Deere meeting at 1:30. There's a big company anniversary in a few years and we subsidiaries are all participating in the planning and execution of said exhibition. The last time we talked about it was 2019. They've made progress on their end, but had turned my 2019 keynote, containing examples of what's in our collection, into a wish list (and there are two touring exhibits, so anything we are loaning has to be something that there are two of and we have to be without for 5 years, as this thing travels.

I kinda felt like I was holding this meeting together, because my boss isn't the person who remembers things in detail for years at a time. She has other superpowers. So the only person who could bridge the gap and keep the meeting from grinding to a halt was me. At one point a wave of euphoria swept over me during this meeting and I realized that somehow, care of Pfizer, I was flyiiiiiiing HIGHHHHHH. They were digging me (undisputed) and I can only hope that I can recall what it is I said to them, so I can actually say it.

The following week, after I spent 5 days on the sofa with chills, bone ache and wooziness, boss and I regrouped and really got to thinking. In January, the company fired all of our exhibition staff except one, gave us the responsibility for continuing the 2 years of our current traveling exhibition that we have remaining (on top of our regular work), and now we have to prep all of the multimedia, artwork, photography, contracts, restoration of equipment they want to borrow two of for a new exhibition that we have to support, all while dealing with the loss of the other people that they also cut from our department. We'll see how it all works out.

In the meantime, on the home front, we're concentrating on the cats. Boy Kitten is completely adorable while asleep. But he's got problems. We hired a well-known cat authority to help us integrate him into the household because for the last year we've had the house divided in two, with the big kids having the run of the house for part of the day and the little boy having the house for the rest of the day. In the meantime, he chews and swallows anything that smells like me, and can be quite the beast if he isn't getting what he wants. With the help of the catmaster, we feel like we're beginning to turn the corner, but it's been a hard journey.

To remind myself of why I want to do this, here are photos of the wee beastie. When I'm working and he's sleeping on the bookshelf, I'm in love.

When He's asleep on the chair in the afternoon, with his rice-y toof hangingin out, I'm in love.

And any time he's acting like a regular cat, I'm in love.

He's a work in progress.