You're Doing It Wrong

Portland Meadows is finished. According to the Internet it opened in 1946. I went there twice. Once I saw Chuck Berry and the Grateful Dead. (They played separately.) The other time I went to bet on the Kentucky Derby. As I recall, everything was on screens. There weren’t any in person horse or dog races. But it’s hard to remember.

A couple of days ago I looked out the window from the laundry room and saw something weird in the flower bed.

I ran out and saw a dirty bandana. I figured it must be from a pet that wandered through and I could deal with it later. I had this great idea that I would put it out front and maybe the person whose pet lost a bandana would see it and be grateful to have it back.

I don’t know why I care so much about this strange bandana. Why is someone’s pet in my backyard? It’s just a bandana. People who put bandanas on pets must expect to lose a few. Regardless, I wanted to do the neighborly thing.

Sorry these photos are so awful. I took them from the bus. Even though I never went there and don’t care about horse racing, I still feel bad that it’s gone. I’m not sure of the exact plans but some sort of warehouses.

This morning I looked out the window in the laundry room and the bandana was gone.

I doubt a person hunted around and came into my backyard to find a lost bandana.

But it seems weird that an animal would come by and grab it. “Oh look, my lost bandana.” We have raccoons and opossum that wander through our yard. Would they have grabbed a bandana for their secret stash? It’s a mystery.

Here’s where all that grumping about back in October is going to pay off. Look at all those sproutlets bursting through the ground. Prepare for many many flower photos in a couple of months.

Or sooner? This baby looks like it’s going to pop any day now.

This is the main groundhog radish area. They are supposed to loosen and condition the soil. I just went back to read the instructions curious how I’m supposed to handle in the spring. Well, if I read it correctly, the ideal situation is that we would have had a hard freeze and they would die. The tops would wither and the radish would get squishy and I would rototil and plant as usual.

But as you can see, this hasn’t happened and the plants are growing up a storm. If I understood the directions correctly I’m supposed to harvest that 50 bushels of daikon radish. Luckily I got that pickle queen cookbook because unless we get a hard freeze very soon, I’m making pickles.

In case you don’t know what you’re looking for, I have helpfully made a red arrow pointing at the radish.

I looked up the history of my (dental) crowns. I got my first one in the early 90s and then one in 2008 and this exciting 2012 pre-vacation emergency, and I guess 2 in 2016. I didn’t have root canals for all of them. For the 2012 root canal the doctor prescribed an opioid painkiller — I don’t know how many, 10? 12? Shows you how far we’ve come, this time they gave me a few of those super-power ibuprofens. I didn’t have huge issues with pain for any of them.

This is from Library of Congress free wpa posters.

Don’t be jealous but yet again, I am a queen because I am getting a crown. Well, I’ll get a crown if I’m lucky. My tooth disintegrated so thoroughly I don’t know what they’re going to do with it.

It started hurting around Christmas, as in after a sip of hot or cold you’d have to peel me off the ceiling. I was prepared to live with it until after the braces came off but the discomfort was making eating and drinking difficult. I had my braces tightened and then couldn’t chew on either side of my mouth for about 36 hours.

The dentist looked at the xray and said: I don’t even know what’s going on with this tooth. It’s like it’s imploding from the inside out.

She gave me a referral to the endontist who discussed a lot of scenarios and then told me they had a schedule change and could zap me immediately.

Hell yes! I said.

The minute he drilled into it, the inside part of the tooth flew off – which wasn’t unexpected. I guess my tooth rotted inside until it was like a tooth-shell? I don’t know. I’m not an oral health professional and am not one of those people who needs to know the life history of why my tooth failed.

He did his thing and patched it up and I can freely drink cold water without flinching which is the best part of this whole mess. I have to go back to the dentist for her thoughts on what next.

This is the living room of the house I grew up in circa 1980-ish. It’s hard to believe all that orange and green was a good idea. If you look at the house on Zillow they have hardwoods now.

We need to deal with our floors in our house. It makes me feel bad about myself every time I look at our dingy, horrible carpet and disintegrating flooring.

I’ve hated our carpet since the day we’ve moved in.

We’re just so bad at dealing with house projects. When Bob’s in school we don’t have time. When we have time we’d always rather be doing something else.

We talked about at least shampooing the carpet so it didn’t look like an accident scene but if we have to move all the furniture we might as well replace the floor and if we replace the floor we might as well get rid of the terrible wallpaper and paint. Now it’s a huge project.

I was determined to deal with it this summer but already the weekends are getting filled up with family or fun things. Seems like something we need to get on the calendar early if we have to hire people. I predict we will limp along with what we have a bit longer.

Last week both husband and colleague had the crud. They had different versions of it and different ways of dealing with it but mostly they wanted me to hear about how miserable it was to have the crud.

I understand and I did mete out some sympathy and said things like, “you should rest” and “here’s a lozenge.” But also I got to a point where I’d heard enough whining about the crud.

I knew my days were probably numbered. Monday when I went to bed and I had a little scratchy throat and I thought, “I hope it’s not my turn with the crud.”

I woke up Tuesday morning and I didn’t even know what was happening. I was trembling with a raging headache and ached all over so bad I groaned when I moved. I got up long enough to tell colleague I was staying home and cancel a dentist appointment and I got back in bed.

I then slept for about 20 of the next 24 hours. Even reading and watching TV didn’t feel great. I listened to an audiobook while bundled up under the covers. I had an appetite but nothing sounded good.

I can’t remember the last time I missed any time off from work for being sick. I stayed home for two days. I already felt a lot better the second day and I went to work on Thursday. I felt fine until the end of the day and then I crashed hard, staggered home, and went to bed really early. I’m taking it easy today. A couple of chores but mostly sitting around reading and I’m going to watch a movie this afternoon.

I think the moral is that talking about being sick is like talking about the dream you had — it’s always more interesting to talk about than to listen to.

Future flowers breaking through all over the yard.

I already told this story a few times but I thought I’d put it here, too.

I took my car in on New Year’s Eve day. The dealership had the B team on the schedule that day.

The guy that checked me in seemed like he would rather be getting a tooth pulled. I don’t think it would be possible to show less interest in me and my car while checking me in to get my car serviced.

Well, except for the actual service part — they weren’t very busy so I’m guessing that had a crew going at it like a pit stop. They finished in about 40 minutes.

I was at the office so I didn’t pick it up until later in the day and when I arrived, they couldn’t find my key.

I’m fairly confident the guy who checked me out was baked. He told me to wait by my car and someone would bring me the key.

I waited and waited and waited and finally a different kid came out and asked me which car I was waiting for.

I pointed at my car and said I was waiting for the key.

Current state of the garden. Those are groundhog daikon radishes which are supposed to do wonderful things to the soil. I have them planted in a bunch of different spots. More info here.

Finally the guy who checked me out came out and said, “Hey sister. You had your key chain. Are you sure you didn’t grab the key?”

Yes, I told him: It’s a smart key. If I had the key I could get in the car and drive away.

[It’s the kind of key that just has to be close to the car, it doesn’t have to be inserted in the ignition.]

Me: You don’t know where the key is?

He said, oh, I know where it is. It’s here. Somewhere.

I wasn’t mad. I thought it was funny. I waited some more and the finally the other kid came out with my key, kind of shaking his head. “It was still hanging on the rack.”

On Christmas Eve, barely an hour before our company was expected to arrive I heard a tremendous crash. I thought something had come through our front window.

I was relieved that it was only our Christmas tree.

Then I was in a panic about how quickly I could clean it up and restore it to its original state before company arrived which was impossible because I was in the middle of cooking dinner. Bob was picking up my dad so I was the only one home.

I picked it up and propped it against the wall so there would be no repeat performance. Then I ran out to the garage and found an empty box for all the non-broken ornaments on the floor. I blotted up the water as best I could.

Meanwhile, our vacuum motor died and the vacuum is at the shop. We do have slightly functioning back-up vacuum and I found that little stair attachment and cleaned up the strewn pine needles and ornament shards as best as I could.

I wasn’t that upset about it — what can you do? But I was bummed that I haven’t even put up a tree in years and this year we would actually have company to see it. And then it looked like a disaster.

The other side doesn’t look quite as bad. I don’t know what happened. It must have gotten bumped or settled and leaned too much. It could have been a ghost.

If you want to keep track, I will add that our exhaust heater fan in the bathroom also broke this month and we had an electrician over who was super nice but also had a sharp eye and pointed out every problem with our house that is related to electricity. So lots of fixing happening with us.

Cookie fight: Yoda v. Bat Boy.

I think I finally fixed my website so that when you comment, I will get a notification in my email. This has been broken forever but yesterday I spent the afternoon trying to fix and/or modify a few things.

My plan for New Year’s Eve is to eat leftovers and watch Band of Brothers. I just started it this week and wow — it is terrifying and really good. It originally aired in 2001 so I’m finally getting caught up.

Happy New year. Hope all your wishes come true.