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The kitchen sink has been clogged since Sunday. Blah-blah to getting home from work after 11 pm to a night that went into the wee hours and then carried over into early Monday spent plunging, liquid Roto-Rooter blah, Drano blah-blah, a bottle of something else, blah-blah baking soda and vinegar trick, boiling water, salt, more boiling water, blah-blah, dish liquid and more boiling water, blah. Snake #1 didn't work. Snake #2 didn't work. 'Easily $40 wasted at this point, and so my day off Monday became more of the same and then cleaning the apartment to get ready for the building manager to come over--for the first time ever, so what a lovely first experience in our home. And the wall I painted 1/3 black (BLACK!) and ended up not liking (not enough natural light for it, a story for another day) but haven't painted it over yet is--well, it just "is," and how wonderful that he got to see it in all its 1/3-painted (and-with-pink-roses-Wallies-pasted-on-too)! Gah! He worked on the sink a couple hours yesterday and got nowhere. A plumber would be here "tonight or tomorrow." Backing up: I gave up on my day Sunday at 1 pm and let myself just sleep to escape. I awoke at 4 pm Sunday to the news that Stuffed had fallen off his perch in his sleep "but seems okay" and did I know that while carrying containers of the stinky-not-draining-chemical-filled-water back to the bathroom sink to dump it into the sink there (since I was sick of the smell) that some of it had dripped and I had left a trail of bleached-out spots on the carpet leading through the kitchen, living room, and hallway? (Well, I knew then!) And it has been 80° inside the apartment even with our window air-conditioning unit going. I'm not a heat person. 'Am mildly nauseous in it. But windows open for fresh air while the sink is full of chemicals, especially for Stuffed, was my thinking Sunday and early Monday. Gah! 'Decided Monday that obviously, we would still have our planned holiday meal, but what I cooked that I had loved so much New Year's Eve didn't taste at all the same to me Monday, and it involved both frying and baking in the ridiculous heat and humidity--and for nothing. ('Not "for nothing": Mike liked it, but this is a story of my trials and tribulations, so let's focus on me.) ;) 'Decided later that what I really felt like was the rest of my endive with a simple oil and vinegar dressing, salt and pepper on top--yes, a lovely bowl of greens--but who was the dolt who used up all the vinegar on her read-about-online "no-fail" clogged sink remedy?! So no endive. And the store was closed, of course. Dishes being washed in the bathroom sink. Husband cutting himself doing the dishes. 21-year-old Stuffed peed on the living room floor yesterday for the first time ever. 'Such a worry anymore. Will this ever end. And in the midst of all this, to know that it's not only Memorial Day, but also Memorial Day during a pandemic and that that should be enough to keep it all in perspective for me and I should be grateful and happy for all that is safe, healthy, and good--and I *am* grateful and happy for all that is safe, healthy, and good--but it's still been a rotten few days, but that mental wrestling match keeps happening in my head anyway. Bleh. 'Still waiting for the plumber, and I'm leaving for work soon. Work is its own story, and it's one I won't tell, but as we all know or can imagine, days--now months--of masks and goggles are wearying. I bought myself a big bouquet of coral roses yesterday before work, though, and that is a good thing. This saga being what it is, though, I will also report that I didn't budget correctly and forgot that the bank was about to debit the electric bill money, so I now have $5-something in checking until I'm paid and another bill about to be debited from money-that's-not-there. But. . .roses! The ones out front are blooming too. :)
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'Surreal days, all of them anymore, but a new year begins and I face it determined to focus on kindness and goodness and gratitude and beauty as always. My seemingly-adult-life-long fight against depression rages on daily (hourly!) these days, of course, but I can lose a few of those battles and still win the war. I have little concentration for writing or reading the past couple months, but I journal a bit, at least, and I can get through about a chapter of a book before finding myself reading more news stories again instead. I usually write a dozen pages a week and am such a fast reader, but not lately. (What's turning into this spring's--and at this rate, maybe this summer's--books, then: Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand and The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson.) The lost time between loved ones is what makes me saddest. I know you know. I have been writing and rewriting this paragraph off and on for three hours. Ay yi yi. 'Alternate blog post title tonight: The Pandemic: I Know You Know.
As in my last post, almost every picture I take anymore is taken on my walk to work or my walk home from work--Essential Workers, unite!--as the only other place I've been since March is the grocery store weekly and the post office once. From what little I see of it on my walks to/from, though, this has been a beautiful spring. I've missed seeing and smelling Lilacs this year, since there are none along my to/from work-route and I've been skipping longer walks until it feels safer to be outside, but all the other spring blooms have been lovely, and I've appreciated spring--both the fact of it and the specifics of it--more this year than any other. Birdsong, for example, is especially lovely and welcome in the wee hours when I'm either still struggling to fall asleep at all or awake too early after another night of nightmares. I have somehow always loved birdsong but never truly appreciated it until this spring--so now, I suppose, I can say I'm truly loving it for the first time. It is one of the good things I will likely most vividly remember about this anxiety-filled time, the tender sounds of the birds breaking into the darkness. There have been more than a few days this year I've gone to work on no sleep or two-or-three hours of sleep. On my days off lately, I sometimes relax enough to fall sleep only after the sun's come up for the day. Maybe I'd never truly loved mornings until now either. Maybe even I, then, ever-determined to live looking for the pretty in the rough patches, will now learn right-down-to-the-bones-and-beyond levels of gratitude.
Take care of yourselves and of each other, Friends. If we can't be kind to ourselves and to each other during a PANDEMIC, though, really. . . Heaven help us. And I do think most people are rising to meet the moment. ♥ I leave you now with not only a flower petal heart,
but also--and this year would be the year I find one--a heart in a roll of toilet paper. :)
Well, how are we all doing, I emerge to ask. ♥ 'Not even four full months into it, but this has been such a trying year in my own little world, every month a new heartache and stressor, and now all this. . .in the larger world for us all. Ay yi yi! We focus on the positive as much as we can, though, don't we, and we plod on as always. 2001 still holds the record as the worst year of my life--24 was a humdinger--and I never think of it without remembering that a couple weeks before it finally (Thank God) ended, I was stunned to find myself getting excited about painting pink snowflakes onto my Christmas cards' envelopes before I mailed them: If I could still get blissfully lost in creativity, even in a project as simple as painting snowflakes onto my outgoing mail, then obviously, this sometimes-devastatingly awful world hadn't beaten me. My heart may have been broken many-times-over that year, I realized, but it was still there and still a good one, and I would be okay. These silly bunny-shaped dinner rolls this Sunday were the 2020 version of 2001's hand-painted snowflakes.
"Next time, I'll knead the dough a little longer," I told Mike as we sampled a couple Easter afternoon. (Why? I think they're good, he responds.) "Maybe I'll scratch on some whiskers with a cake-tester or toothpick next time so they look more like bunnies." (He nods while he eats.) "And I think I'll pinch little puffs of dough out of the backs for tails." (More nodding and eating.) "Anyway, they have potential, but they could be cuter." If I'm already looking forward to the next batch of bunny rolls and to future Easters that will find us sharing our meals with our families again, hope is still alive and well here, despite furloughs, family layoffs, face masks, and the seemingly-constant BREAKING! NEWS! that mark all these spring days. I keep you all in my heart and wish you your own dinner roll revelations, whatever it is you need to keep yourself going.
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| ♥ Love to you all. ♥ |
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