It’s “Hey Rene J” Today!

We celebrated the holiday weekend in the bathroom. We are renovating….aka…recitifying the disastrous and unfortunate choices the builder made. Additionally, we are providing ourselves with a distraction.

“I’m not great at plumbing.” This is really not what the assistant to the self-designated contractor wants to hear. Yet, that is what started my day after the holiday, and made me ponder life. ?????? (Those question marks refer to far earlier comments made regarding hiring someone for this endeavor. As in – over a year ago?)

Fortunately, I have dealt with this dilemma before, having completed a deck and pergola, which looks fabulous. I stood careful watch, critiquing and providing guidance the entire way. (I invite you you to see the finished product.)

You may not be invited to the bathroom….for various reasons. However, it will be better than its predecessor, and it will be something we did ourselves, so hopefully will be able to be forgiven in its skewed measurements.

And, I personally think this is going to be gorgeous – and I shall sing of my spouse’s skills forever – as long as the tub doesn’t fall to the office below.

The headline a few days ago in the “Living” section:

Actually, I have spent a good deal of time learning to substitute and “wing it” when I was in a bind! To me, that is a valuable skill and one that took me years to acquire. I used to be stymied if I didn’t have the ingredients or the proper equipment, and I would bail.

“Independent Living,” the renamed “Home Economics” class of the 70’s, taught me to measure perfectly. Use that flat side of the knife to properly skim the flour – after slicing through the measuring cup for air pockets – to get the EXACT amount you were providing for the recipe. I was attentive in class, and I followed directions well. Once upon a time.

All it takes is some time in forced feeding of the masses, aka making dinner nightly for the family, and you learn the fine art of substitution. You also learn that sometimes, measurements are actually suggestions. And if you deal with a high altitude climate, you additionally adjust in other ways. And if your oven is tricky, you adjust for that.

There is no way that anyone who cooks or bakes frequently can exactly follow a recipe, unless they are professionals in the professional kitchen. (As the author of that article is.)

It’s a bit of pleasantry to adjust and make something your own, especially when you neglected the grocery shopping.

Yes, I entered the “rolling cart of uncertainty.” Since schools were closed last spring and book fairs were canceled, my little survival cart for setting up the fairs had been in the garage, collecting dust. And spider sacs full of babies. And dead moths. Yesterday was the self-proclaimed D-Day.

The first order of business was to bring the cart into the kitchen and empty it on the floor for pestilence mitigation. The warmth brought out the little spiderlings quite nicely, and I was able to peacefully obliterate them, sans icky squishing sounds on the bottom of my shoes. Hosing down the cart, I resumed sorting and tossing the miscellany.

There was enough junk in there to help me survive a year underground in any unfortunate emergency. I don’t think I used anything I had in there for seven years, other than the extra plastic bags for books. Oh – and the scissors embellished with my name. They actually were lost for a year, but faithfully returned the following year when I visited the sight of the unintentional theft.

Thus, I’m donating a bag of office supplies somewhere, as well as the nine pads of sticky notes, and keeping the rolling cart indoors. I’m thinking of wearing my previously misplaced photo ID tag out in public, just to give people an idea of what I look like without a mask.

Maybe we should all wear a photo ID? And if we do, we can choose a photo at least ten years old for additional ego boosting benefits. Brilliant idea #117.

…of January. Temperatures approach 60 degrees. Grasses begin greening, trees budding. Gale-force winds howl and mangle leftover strands of Christmas lights…

Yes, ‘tis an interesting pre-Spring ritual here. Now begins the tricky chore of weather forecasting. When shall we drag out the hoses and being watering the trees in order to prevent stress to them? Will the flowering trees actually do so this year. (They did NOT do so last year in this micro-climate.) Do I need to revive the deer/squirrel repellent this week or next? So many tasks related to the lack of assumed-winter conditions here in the metro area.

All of this to say that I did not sleep until the wind stopped its relentless work last night, and I will grudgingly be watering trees for the next week. Happy days are here again – the skies above are clearer again!

The weather was so temperate yesterday that I decided it was Stir-Fry night. Years ago, this genius-of-a-chef realized that the electric wok worked outside as well as in – if you had a long enough extension cord or an outlet – and that the grease and fry smell would permeate the outside atmosphere rather than the kitchen and bedroom above it. We have never made stir fry any other way.

Yes, it was 47 degrees last night at 6 pm as I stood outside in my Crocs, without socks, at my wok. I enjoyed the stars, reveled in keeping my yesterday-cleaned kitchen spotless, and then realized I was going to make the potstickers on the stove and destroy my cause.

Oh well. Dinner was great. And what’s a kitchen for, if not to continually clean it?

Perusing the music and cleaning up my mess in there – lots of strewn pieces from various books and copied church hymns – my eyes lit upon this wonderful book, “Harvard Dictionary of Music.”

This tome has been sitting on the floor for a year. It was booted off of the end table when I rearranged things in January of last year. It never had a proper home. Perhaps the donation bin would work?

I opened the book to the page with, “Freistimmigkeit.” ‘Tis a modern German term, (surprise!) sometimes translated as “free voice-leading,” for a pseudocontrapuntal style in which there is no strict adherence to a given number of parts. Who doesn’t know that?

The publication is 51 years old, previously owned by JoAnn O’Neill, who proudly inscribed her name in the front. Free to a good home.

…went through the ‘hood twice in two days! I didn’t know we had a fox cruising our yard, but he sure took a tour yesterday, out in the bright sunshine of the afternoon. I guess he assumed everyone was napping in between football games? He was at it again this morning chasing something. It wasn’t the squirrel in my driveway though.

Nat Geo would be hard-pressed for a story here, much as I am! Happy Monday!

Fourteen years ago, in a tiny seaside village along the coast of Spain, a colorful broom sat in a housewares shop, promising the user joy when sweeping the floors. I had not seen any cleaning utensil this gorgeous in my homeland. Never mind that a broom does not pack easily in one’s luggage, never mind that it’s an odd souvenir to acquire, I just knew my daughter would love it and would want it when she had a home of her own! (My lame justification.)

Well, the broom traveled in my husband’s golf bag. My daughter loved it – although it’s seen fourteen years of use and she no longer wants it. And you can now find these colorful brooms here in the USA in many stores. No need to travel overseas with a golf bag.

Sometimes you have to open the cupboards and closets and clean the cleaning supplies. It was time. Since Thursday was the cleaning day of yore, I decided to reinstate it as major chore day once again.

I found four cans of window cleaners, none of which I purchased outright. Two were from replaced windshields – a promo gift? One from the window guy, Alberto, and one from my sister for a Christmas gift. So, I decided to use them. Everything is super sparkly now! Imagine that?

Apparently you are supposed to use the cleansers rather than dust them off? Moving on to the broom. Now there’s another story!

For two nights, I sat facing the jigsaw puzzle, trying to finish the bottom quarter of darker pieces and foliage. It was painful. I just couldn’t get anywhere.

I awoke yesterday, sat down on the opposite side, and finished the bottom third of the puzzle in short shrift, viewing it upside down. Then I realized I had completed the entire sky the prior evening, viewing it upside down. Epiphany on the Ephiany!

Directional dyslexia. I don’t know if it’s a thing, but I sure have it. (And no one needs to chime in on my seeing things upside down, by the way.) Thankfully, my sister is great with directions and kept me going the proper direction in NYC many moons ago as I attempted to show her the sights. I would walk out of a building and turn the exact opposite way we needed to go. She got us home. My daughter got me home in England when she was about 12 years old, after driving through the countryside roundabouts and getting totally turned around. Perhaps that’s why “tour guide” never made its way to my bag of tricks.

I do ascribe to the mantra, “Not all who wander are lost,” even though I seem to be lost regardless of wandering.