Never Again Will I Ever...Or Will I?

This was the prompt:
"Think back to a fiasco—a moment when you were helplessly, hopelessly human. A mistake, a misstep, a plan gone spectacularly sideways. Write about what happened, what you were afraid it said about you—and what it revealed instead."

We were on a work assignment in Hamburg. Our project manager had quit and hadn't been replaced yet. We didn't think we could get our crates (artwork, AV equipment) past customs for no good reason other than fear, and the registrar at the museum was cackling with laughter because this was her last act / responsibility before retirement. Also she made disturbing jewelry with glow-in-the-dark rubber zombie fingers. You'd think I would like that but I did not.

With great relief, in our penultimate evening in Hamburg the bulk of our work was complete and we'd passed inspection. We went out to dinner and we / I got hammered.

A guy tossed a colorful postcard on the table, advertising a nightclub. Cool! Before the guys could stop me I walked out of the restaurant and hailed a cab. They managed to jump in with me, and off we went. And thus, at the tender age of 50, I found myself dancing in a cage at a raging gay nightclub in St. Pauli. I had so much fun until I realized that someone had stolen my purse which contained my passport and a week's per diem. My more sober companion, an air force veteran, noticed it in the hands of a woman in the parking lot. He snatched it from her and returned it to me.

The next night at dinner I apologized to my workmates. My hero responded "THAT was AWESOME", which took away a tiny piece of my mortification, which I feel even now, for obvious reasons.

What did I learn? Nothing, to be honest.

Hot Dog Diplomacy

It's week 2+ of 5 in mrguy's radiation and chemo journey. He feels like shit. Wants to throw up, or he has diarrhea or he's constipated. He's sleep deprived and angry with everything.

On the other side of the fence our neighbor's beautiful wife died suddenly. He feels like shit and is being loud. Mrguy can't sleep with him acting out. I went to the wake on Friday. It was beautiful. But it's been days, now, of lack of peace. Kinda like when [name redacted]'s sister and mom passed away in weeks of each other. He acted out, I asked him to keep it down (not knowing the context) and that made things escalate.

Six months later mrguy saw him manning the grill at our block party, and told me "I'm taking one for the team." He does not usually eat pork or beef, but he sidled up to [name redacted], started a conversation and ate a hot dog. 

Hot dog diplomacy worked. We have been cool ever since.

Right now I'm at the place where I want to protect my man, but I don't want to ruffle any feathers. And mrguy just yelled at me, which made me cry. Mrguy tries not to bother people, and [name redacted] takes up so much space, as do all of the people in the neighborhood whose sounds and actions bother him. And the things that I do that he usually overlooks have also provoked him. Poor guy. I have taken refuge in the pasha lounge with some sewing and an audiobook.

Genealogy Updates

This has been soooo interesting. I am lucky that I got my mom to do a dna test. She's that much closer to the answer of who her ancestors are than I, right?

What has been answered definitively is that she is not related to her father's side of the family. And that she and her brother have the same father. And that a fellow who shows up as her nephew is an unknown son of her brother. My siblings and I have an unknown biological grandfather who was responsible for both of my grandparents' children. We are all related to my grandmother's side of the family. And all of us look like that side of the family including, very strongly, my newfound biological cousin.

What my mom's dna tells us is that in addition to the German roots in Saxony that I already know about and have researched, there are German roots in Bavaria. Recent german roots in Bavaria. I thought I knew everything about my Germans, and I did not.

The genealogists at Ancestry looked at my mom's dna and my own and her bio nephew. In addition to the recent Bavarian connections, they found other German genealogy matches in the "unassigned" areas of my mom's matches. With great effort they found ancestors that were in this additional German line. What they are seeing is that there was only one likely man who linked those two families together, and unlike all of his family, who lived for generations in Illinois, he lived 7 miles away from my grandmother during the time that my mom and her brother were born. I determined that he was in the automobile business during this time, which makes it even more likely that he would have come into contact with my grandmother and grandfather.

I am loving this.

Project Pause

I stopped where I needed to but am happy with the progress. Most of the pots match-ish, and I have new herbs growing at the top. As things grow in I can move them to different levels. Not sure what I'm going to do with the bottom three spots.

A lovely thing happened on the way home from the movie theater the other day. There were goats grazing on the field in the abandoned middle school. I pulled over and took photos. It smelled so goat-y, and they were chewing so loudly that I could hear them over the distant freeway, passing cars and light rail. I liked it so much that I took mrguy the next day to experience it.

Such goat variety!

Vacation Wednesday -- The Project Continues

I bought this wacky plant stand several months ago. It's been harder to get pots that fit than I thought. Yesterday I went to the Home Depot near work, since I had to go that way to get blood tests. I had partial success. For some reason three of the pots that are the same size won't fit in some of the holders. And then some of the holders are sizes that aren't common. So it's a bit of a mosh.

Also I need to Rustoleum the metal, and I really don't feel like doing it. And I am now seeing that this project is going to require patience, and trial and error.

But my goal became clear this week. What I really want is to get the front porch a bit tidier and to create an herb garden in the plant stand. There is enough room for the other things that I love, like succulents, but one thing that I have felt is lacking at the Big Brown Box is herbs. Accessible herbs. During the pandemic I had them in the aku room, but they eventually got buggy, so I gave up. Right now the aku room is kinda perfect. I have some great geraniums that are flowering like mad, and some weird succulents that I decided to like because they apparently like the room. It looks so darned great.

So here's what the week looks like.

Monday. A hodgepodge of pots and plants.

This morning I had some plants temporarily in random pots.

This afternoon I found *some*pots that fit and some saucers that I could use. In the meantime I repotted some orchids that came from my mom's house that have never bloomed. Hoping to find a home for them somewhere in the garden, but the maple trees seem to have made all of the front yard un-diggable. We'll see if I can get help. Or grow stronger ;)

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, mrguy is on Day 3 of his radiation. He slept a lot this afternoon and has now gone back to bed at 6:55. I watched the episode of Dr. Pimple Popper that was recorded after her stroke. She and her husband talked about how their children are in college and these are supposed to be their golden years, wondering what comes next. I cried while cooking greens.

How To Decide, And Other Thoughts

Some writing from The Hatch.

I can't remember the prompt, but here is the output:

How to decide.

Paddle around. At an uncomfortable junction, either dig in or move on, once you see it happen. Give it a random time frame. It’s the frame that matters. And conserving the time.

Choose what suits you. Accept what suits you. But don’t only accept. That’s the rule.

How to decide. Step out. Don’t look for constraints. Choose your own. Release. Imagine what you will and will not do. Keep what you need. Keep the memories. Jettison the things. There will always be new things.

How to decide.

+++

The prompt was to reimagine the lyrics to a song, substituting word meaning or...can't recall. We had 5 minutes. The only lyrics that came to mind were for The Ladies Who Lunch, from the musical Company. I kinda went with opposites.

For you men

I cry

Running in the shoes that bring hunger

Here you go

It's for someone else

+++

This was a warm-up, suggested by Jon Batiste, who was our guest for The Hatch. Just stream of consciousness. He used the phrase "complete inevitable statement", which I loved. So that's how I began.

“Complete Inevitable Statement” that starts as a feeling and coalesces out of the filmy mists, as they say. 

Rinse, lather and repeat.

Breck, as I recall, was golden brown and pungent. Every shampoo had to have that fragrance until Herbal Essence came and made everything green, and shampoo world was broken open entirely, with man’s finest artificial scents, rooted in fruit and candy flavors. 

But the 1976 Olympics of it brought us the unintentionally cookie flavor of telling two friends "and so-on”. 

My husband wants a cookie oven for his man room. Thanks a lot, Jon Batiste.

Vacation is Delicious

Monday was great. I did laundry and putzed around on the computer and started a project -- the green pots out front. They came from my grandfather's car dealership and originally held potted palms. Then to my mom's house to hold jade plants and, on the porch to the left, big old monstera plants.

 

I was super stoked when I got to be the next keeper of the pots. Mom helped me do the original plantings. One of the things I really enjoyed doing with my mom was gardening and having her boss me around while gardening. Btw, I wish I still had lots of aeonium (the large succulent flowers).

My glow up was more modest this time around but I think I did pretty well with what we had on hand. Before:

After:

Some smaller succulents, some freeway daisies, some dianthus. I think it'll turn out ok once everything gets established. The original plants that I had in there (can't recall the name) have been gradually made into cuttings, and are rooting in water in the aku room. I have at least ten plants going. I think I've mentioned before that if I knew they could have been rooted I would have done it years ago. I couldn't let go of the original plant, so even though it's woody, I have it in some water on the porch and I kiiinda want to see if I can get it going again, just for fun.

Meanwhile, on the genealogy front, I received my research plan from the Ancestry genealogist team working on my case. They have managed my expectations, somewhat. Unless there is some documentary evidence that my grandfather was adopted, we may never know his parentage for certain.

Vacation Week

I took the week off. Because. Because mrguy is starting radiation. Because I want to retire but haven't yet.

Although I've been off for two days, it's the Monday that seems like vacation. Over there at the factory they've been working for 7 minutes! Me? I slept in until boy kitten would let me no longer. Mrguy has had his first radiation already. I hope it's killing his tumor already. Our oncologist was hilarious on Friday "Enjoy your weekend, Mr. Tumor. On Monday you're gonna die" (or something like that).

In the meantime, it's a beautiful day. Super hazy and foggy. I'm planning to go to the hardware store and buy some pots and plants and clean up the front porch. That is my idea of a good time. 

But first, some tea and genealogy. I received an email from Ancestry about some new tool, which made me want to visit the website. I clicked on Ancestral Journeys, which I generally don't do because I thought I knew every part of my family until recently. I logged in to my mom's account, which isn't linked to my family tree, and Franconia was a region that came up on Ancestral Journeys. I'm not aware of any connection there, or to Southern Illinois. For people with no family trees Ancestry relies on DNA matches and their trees to give hints to Ancestral Journeys. So it looks like I have other parts of Germany to explore at some point when I learn more about my family ties there.

That's what I've got this morning. One more cup of tea and I'll start the day. 

Small Joys

I was looking for some dust cloths the other day while helping out with an internal exhibition at the forklift factory. It's the 20th anniversary of one of our most popular lines of forklifts, so we were putting up an exhibition of designs from that first forklift. I got the delightful job of dusting a large neon sign that was going to be on the title wall of the exhibit. It's from the production office of that first forklift line, and I'm guessing it probably hadn't been dusted for fifteen years. It mostly lives in the warehouse, as a backdrop to the spot where the guys have a stage for practicing the guitars and the drums. We brought it out of retirement this week. And I like to dust.

I was looking in our hallway supply cabinet for some cloths, when I noticed a coffee mug sitting on top of the cabinet. That is not where coffee belongs, but it is where I can imagine someone resting a mug of coffee *temporarily* before entering the archives. No liquids allowed in the archives!

I can imagine the coffee drinker forgetting about the mug. And another person leaving it there because what if someone was sad that you'd taken their coffee mug to the kitchen. I can imagine this thought occurring to many people over many months, but mrsguy is a person whose curiosity gets the better of her.

I picked up the mug and was rewarded for my effort. There in the coffee mug was the most amazing-looking scum. If you moved the cup gently from side to side the scum moved as a whole. Freaky spores from the air or a mouth had bloomed into small turquoise circles and a brown one, which hadn't lived up to its potential, or maybe it had completed its journey earlier than the other two.

 

We will never know.

Summer House!!

I wish I could have those three hours back. Everybody was going crazy over the scandal happening on that show so I put in a little time watching the reunion episodes. I'm not otherwise familiar with the show. 

Boy was that dull. The people who shocked all of their friends by getting together are bad tv. They just stared blankly into space and shrugged a lot. The guy half of this couple just lied a bunch without blinking and justified his cheating on girls as "just what I do", while his beloved sat next to him impassively.

How can you make this story so boring, while spending ten hours filming it?