The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

I have been so productive today, I almost wonder who took over my brain. After coffee this morning, I started a cleaning fit that ended an hour and a half later with me in the (newly cleaned) shower and everything I had been wearing in the washing machine. In an hour and a half, the following got done:

- Dishes done
- Tub, toilet and bathroom sink cleaned
- Stove cleaned
- Kitchen sink cleaned (twice, because I dumped out the pantry-floor-scrubbing bucket in it after the first time)
- Living room rug, cat tree, and office rug and underneath desk vacuumed
- Last week's sheets folded and put away
- One load of laundry washed, dried, folded and put away
- Pantry floor scrubbed
- Litterboxes cleaned
- Four large potatoes diced and parboiled

After that, I dissected two bundles of Swiss chard, and turned that, the potatoes, a can of chickpeas, a block of paneer, and a bottle of TJ's masala sauce into lunch for the coming week.

After that, I spent an hour on the family Zoom for Grammie's 99th birthday.

After THAT, I went out to Trader Joe's and CVS and got all the stuff I didn't get around to buying yesterday.

I think I might be allowed to lounge around all evening. Too bad I finished the latest book I hadn't read yet last night (The Aeronaut's Windlass, by Jim Butcher; supposed to be book 1 of a trilogy, but that was 2015, and book 2 isn't out yet.). I still want to sharpen knives and wash all the blinds and try vinegar on the stains in the shower and try tub cleaner on the refrigerator door, but given what I did get done, I think I can live with the remainder of the list.

I also think I'm going to stop giving Lily the joint supplement she gets every other day. On days when she gets it in the morning, she seems not to want very much dinner, and I want her to eat above all else. I'm not sure the joint supplement is helping any more anyway.

I didn't do anything worth writing about on Friday, except stay home and cook a mediumish Napa cabbage with a pound of ground pork and a bag of rice cakes so as to have lunches for the coming week.

On Saturday I went out and bought a paint scraper and some sandpaper to get the two or three windowsills that really need it ready to be repainted later this month, when there's leftover paint from the upstairs hallway. And I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and bought a box spring cover, which I hope will work because the new box spring is split (so is the old one, but it doesn't have a cover). I had to drop it in the washing machine immediately upon getting it home, because the store reeks of potpourri and the box spring cover reeked of industrial chemicals and I didn't want to deal with waiting for either of those to fade. And I went to Trader Joe's and discovered they've got baskets out again, so I can stop being so paranoid about putting more in a cart than I can carry home.

Today I had Easter lasagna in Noank. I was the least vaccinated person out of the six of us; everyone else has had their second shots already, even if it wasn't two weeks ago. So I kept a mask on except for eating, and we all hugged each other anyway because we all needed that. And I got to see what Dad has done with the shop (including, he says, sending literally 2.2 tons of stuff to the dump) and was duly impressed. And the lasagna and blueberry pie were both quite nice.

Tomorrow the new mattress arrives sometime between 2:15 and 4:15, so I can still do laundry and watch movies in the morning and enjoy my last very-long-weekend day.

April 4. I get to see my parents for the first time since Christmas 2019 on April 4. Of the six of us who were going to have Thanksgiving in November, I'll be the only one who won't be vaccinated, so we can do Easter instead. Assuming we don't get a blizzard, anyway. I hope all that snow Colorado just got stays on that side of the Rockies.

I'm not sure I believe this is real, yet.

Quirk slept on my bed for at least some of last night. That's progress.

The latest round of CODA reports came back from Cambridge, signed. That's progress too, because it means they can come off my list entirely. I'm not responsible for sending them to CODA. And I have now, finally, set up webinars and advertising for the lunchtime lecture series for next week, which I was worried about, and can now quit worrying about. All I have to do is re-advertise it on Friday sometime and on Monday morning. (And, apparently, request biosketches from the three presenters. I want it to be somebody else's turn to be in charge of all this, next time.)

My parents had vaccine appointments at Mohegan Sun for the 11th, but managed to get Walgreens vaccine appointments for today. I heard a rumor that Harvard will be using the dental school as a pilot for getting an entire school vaccinated, but it's only a rumor and I probably still won't have a chance for vaccine before April. I'll be the last of the four people in my nuclear family to get it.

I elected not to go stand in the 20-degree wind yesterday and get a dead keyboard for Lily. I'll do it today when it's 40ish and calmer.

The Purrmaid plush toy (front half tiger, back half shark) I backed on Kickstarter in October or so is supposed to arrive today.

Cinnamon graham crackers are an OK short-term substitute for Cheerios for breakfast, but I really would rather have Cheerios.

I haven't cried since 10:00 yesterday morning, so I guess that's progress. It's been exactly a week since Snip crashed. Lily is eating like a horse and doesn't seem to mind being an only cat for now. But I did go to petfinder to see what's out there. I can't adopt another cat yet, but the all-white blue-eyed five-month-old kitten is awfully cute. She'll be rehomed by next week, of course.

I am in fact getting a ride to CT for Thanksgiving. I need to go, for my own sanity. It's only a day trip and I need to not sit here alone with a Snip-shaped hole in my heart on Dad's favorite holiday.

Ten thousand curses on ransomware attacks. They got my parents, and Dad paid the ransom. Their computer is now somewhere "getting its sinuses reamed out". When Dad called last night, I went on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Parents calling after dinner isn't good, but it was Dad so at least he's not in the hospital, but he led with "I did something stupid" and that's the phrase he uses when he's had a bad encounter with a tablesaw, but it wasn't that.

I am trying not to be annoyed with pretty much everything work-related today, but failing miserably so far because I'm caught in three separate email storms, most of which are trying to make things my problem that shouldn't be my problem.

OK. 24 emails in an hour seems to have exhausted everybody, and now maybe I can start sorting things out. Why isn't it Friday?

I finally figured out why some days it seems impossible for anybody to drive on this street in either direction during the daytime without blowing their horn. Turkeys, that's why. And the across-the-street neighbors have started blowing their horn whenever they back out of their driveway. I suspect their car is too old for a camera and they don't want to run over a turkey.

Today's definitely a Wardruna day. It's about one and a half steps up from an Easter Island day, so I don't want to run off to Easter Island without a forwarding address, but I don't want to be a useful and productive peon today either. At least when I'm working from home, I can listen to Wardruna without scaring anybody.

After Getting Things Done on Saturday, I did a fair bit of not much yesterday except reading a couple hundred pages of a book I bought after grocery shopping, and watching a couple of football games (sometimes reading and watching games at the same time, in the case of boring football). It was too humid for embroidery.

I thought we were past "this web site won't work with your browser," but I had to call Jabra customer service and clear my cache and cookies in Firefox only to find out their online store doesn't work with Firefox anyway; it wants Chrome but will settle for Safari. And then I had to remember all my various logins in Firefox again. GRR. This was work-related, so I had to do what I had to do. But GRR, anyway.

Before that, and semi-work-related, I ordered myself a kneeling chair because I've had one before and liked it, and it was the short way to end the Great Chair or Chair Cushion Quest. I threw a little more money than I really wanted to at the problem, but it wasn't very much more than I spend on six weeks of prescription cat food, and the chair will last a lot longer than six weeks.

Lily's got some sort of intermittent gait issue with her left hind leg, possibly soft tissue injury or possibly arthritis or possibly just Aging Ain't For Sissies. I'll have to ask Dr. P about it on Cat Herding Day, which this year is November 12. Which gives me exactly 13 days afterward to isolate myself before Thanksgiving, so as not to possibly bring COVID down to Noank. I wish I didn't think about that so much. I wish I didn't have to think about that at all.

Memo to self: put "flu shot" on the list for mid-October.

Sigh. TGIF, because I'm done with being glued to the computer for a while, and that includes my cousin's kid's second birthday party via Zoom tomorrow. Never met the kid, for one thing, and until Zoom comes up with a "mute everybody else only for you" option (vs. "host mutes everybody for everybody"), not really interested. I don't need to hear all the rest of my cousins' elementary and middle school kids all trying to talk at once for an hour.

The Arolsen Archives posted a new project earlier this week: registration cards from Mühldorf, which was a Dachau satellite camp. It was mostly a massive construction site, because the Nazis were trying to build underground Messerschmitt aircraft factories with slave labor even though they knew the war would be over before they got them built. Which meant it was a really nasty place to be, if you read between the lines. "Transferred from Auschwitz in July 1944, transferred back to Auschwitz in October 1944" probably means "worked almost to death and sent back to be gassed" and there are a lot of those. Mostly Hungarian Jews. I either have to learn not to think about that, or go back to the main Dachau registration cards, lots of which say "delivered from camp by US Army".

So naturally, since I'm done with being glued to the computer, along came a couple of emails that boiled down to "I waited until after the last minute to do this, so you do it for me." I hate that anyway, and I particularly hate it when there are no instructions beyond "do it for me" and it turns out I didn't do it right, so I have to do it over. Apparently the cure for being massively annoyed about this situation is to go drink a little bit of milk and come back and do it over.

Must go drop my "yes, I want to vote by mail" card in the mailbox today. My polling place is in an elderly housing complex and I think I'm probably better off staying out of their community room. Hopefully someday I won't have to run a risk assessment on absolutely everything that involves going further than the front porch.

I ordered an air conditioner because the owner of the one I was going to borrow turns out to need it after all. Oh well. All I really need is something to take the edge off the humidity in one room for eight hours, so I ordered a pretty bare-minimum air conditioner and a 15-foot extension cord. The cord is supposed to get here tomorrow and the air conditioner is supposed to get here on the 16th. Stand by, sports fans.

While I was at it, I should have ordered the rest of the list of silly things that will improve being at home all the time. If I had a keyboard stand, I might actually be able to attempt to play the keyboard that's been sitting in my living room on top of the box it came in for years now (bought to help sort out chorus parts, but not useful without a stand). If I had more than one USB to Thunderbolt adapter, I could leave various devices plugged into the adapters and stop coping with only having one. My electric toothbrush can't count to 30 seconds reliably these days and I'd like one that can. I'd like an ice cream scoop that actually gets through the ice cream. Silly things like that. And a stove burner, and igniter, and oven thermostat, although I don't think those come from Target.

I got all excited yesterday when Brookline Booksmith's door was open. No dice, though; they were only taking advantage of the weather for curbside pickups. Sigh. I did indulge in peonies, because peonies make me happy (for certain values of happy these days), and brought them home and put them in a vase on the kitchen table, and nine hours later I walked into the kitchen and thought "Why does it smell like flowers in here?" Strong like ox, smart like tractor. At least I got the groceries and kitty litter all home by 3:00.

We had a smaller family Zoom at 3:00 with my favorite aunt and uncle, my parents, me and my sister, and my two cousins and their combined five sons under the age of 12, most of whom seem to be seriously into Legos, which is cool. My parents really need a better camera, because "potato quality" doesn't even begin to describe it. At least their audio is good, and we all seem to be putting one foot in front of the other.

I do not get political on Facebook because I don't want to get into Someone Is Wrong On The Internet fights. But yes, the systemic racism and inequality and police violence and militarization in this country have got to change. But I don't think the police problems can be solved at a federal level, and I don't think the racism and inequality problems can be solved by federal fiat (e.g., tell banks to cut it the hell out discriminating against POC or suffer actual consequences), not that the Trump government would even try anyway. And I don't think state and local governments have the will to change anything. I wish I thought the protests would wake up the state and local governments.

Grammie's birthday Zoom went off fairly well, and the Franklin police and fire departments showed up with five cruisers and a tower truck beforehand and sang her Happy Birthday. There was video of that.

I also tried to take video of the Waltham American Legion post showing up and parading 15 cars past Mario's house on Friday, because it was his 90th birthday. The parade was led by a Boston police SUV playing the Marines' Hymn. The American Legion band (trombone, trumpet, sousaphone and bass drum) stood across the street and played three or four songs, and there was a cake, and I think Mario has had an official birthday party. The video didn't come out because you can't see through the pine trees on the second floor porch.

I had to do all the running around yesterday, and did, and am paying for it today. Hips hurt where the grocery bags banged into them, shoulders hurt where the bags dug into them, legs hurt because they're not used to walking that much these days. Even if I wanted to go anywhere today, it probably wouldn't be a splendid idea.

BUT, I went to Trader Joe's and got everything on the list except pistachios (expensive) and frozen veg (would have been half-thawed by the time I got home) and hauled it all home and put it away. And then I went to the pet store and got kitty litter refills. I got those as far as the front porch, turned around and went right back out to Star Market and got everything on the list including flour. I was shocked. So now I don't have to go grocery shopping for another two weeks, although the way the pattern has been going, I'll get stir crazy sometime next week and go to Whole Foods via a very long walk.

I traded a bunch of fabric I was never going to get around to using for a completed mask, and wore the mask for all the errands yesterday. It works quite well if I put my hair up, because the ponytail keeps the top ties from sliding down the back of my head. And it's easier on the ears than the bandanna-and-hair-elastics contraption. (And, on the way home from the T after Star Market, it muffled the whimpering a bit. There was definitely whimpering.)

Someday when it's possible again, I've got to get my sewing machine tuned up. It works, but it could work better, and I don't know how to make it do that.

I really worry about what's going to happen if we can't get back to campus until July (or, perish the thought, September). There's just no way to teach clinical dentistry without having access to clinics, and CODA won't be patient about it forever. I know I'm worrying above my pay grade, because I can't personally do anything about it, but I don't want to have to write another however many pages of CODA reports about it either. And I suspect the department of public health is going to open dental school clinics very late in the reopening process.

Ugh, that's all.