You're Doing It Wrong

I have been wanting to do another good shop tidy and declutter for several years now.

It’s either too hot or too cold when I have time or I’m too busy or have other projects.

I didn’t do a good job but a did some light tidying and moving things around to make it easier to access the shelves.

I bought a new shop vac that’s been sitting here and I finally broke that out and destroyed a lot of spider habitat — including some scary parts.

And I went through my canning jars that were crammed on shelves and in corners in several places and centralized them.

I have more than I thought.

I canned two batches of apple sauce at the end of the summer which is twice as much as I usually do. This is just one batch.

I did one batch from Orleans apples and one batch from the local produce market. I bought so many apples plus a few other groceries (it’s an international food mart) and the whole thing was less than $50.

I also tidied up and rearranged the back pantry annex so I could fit it all in.

It’s going to be great in January when we have delicious applesauce for our breakfast.

Not pictured — I bought 2 1000 piece puzzles as well.

I think I wrote about getting more into doing jigsaw puzzles since my sister-in-law gave me a puzzle caddy.

It’s a great way for me to unwind and listen to podcasts or audiobooks. (I guess we don’t call them books on tape anymore.)

Right now I am listening to a Patreon that is like a class about writing a novel and it’s been a great way to start my weekend mornings.

But I ran out of puzzles. I didn’t have many at home. I borrowed some from my brother-in-law. I did a couple of them twice. It seems like all of his have one piece missing and it drives me nuts because how can I possibly lose a piece? We have no kids. No pets. There is no way for a piece to get lost unless it falls into a secret pocket of the universe. I have crawled on my hands and knees with a flashlight all over the dining room floor to look for missing pieces.

It’s a mystery. But I don’t feel like I can ask to borrow more.

We didn’t have much selection of good puzzles at Mom’s. The puzzles at Fred Meyer are doodoo. I was at Powell’s with a puzzle in hand. I should have got it. There is a well known puzzle seller online but OMG. There are SO MANY. And I don’t really want to do a Thomas Kincaid type thing or anything that looks like AI or something with a lot of cats.

Another non-spon — but I found these art puzzles and I bought 4! I LOVE them.

They are so pretty and nicely made. The pieces are satisfying to work with. I’m going to buy more so I can work on them all through the holidays.

One of the Social Wasps; ARTIST: David Fairchild, Marian Fairchild (1914) Book of Monsters

I’m so tired of AI. It went so quickly from fun to catastrophic.

At this point, I consciously try not to use AI for an endless list of reasons but for one because I think it makes my brain lazy.

But also it’s hard to avoid because the search engine results come out that way.

And also sometimes there is a 60 page court opinion (work) that I need to understand the gist of and don’t have time to muddle through. AI helps with that.

One day at the office, for fun, I put a work memo I wrote into an AI detector to see what it said. It said there was a 76% chance it was written by AI. It was completely and totally written by me. It was generic business style writing but even with that I often try to inject a little bit of my voice in there.

So AI can’t even tell if something was written with AI. It’s all disturbing. I am afraid to see what it would say if I stuck some fiction in there because (a) then I have fed it my fiction and (b) what if it says probably written by AI? Then what is the point of anything?

Another photo from Bob’s trip to Ireland and England. Who wouldn’t buy space raider chips?

When I was around 13-14 I started babysitting. I think I did a Girl Scouts training. Then I babysat for strangers in our neighborhood for $1/hr. If you put $1 in 1977 into the inflation calculator, it says that’s equal to $5.56 today.

Usually, the dad would pick me up and take me home. My parents supervised exactly zero. I would get the jobs when my friends who babysat or other parents I babysat for referred me. I did this until I could drive at 16 and then I started working at Jack in the Box for $3.10/hour. ($12.68 says the Inflation Calculator)

It wasn’t until fairly recently, I realized how potentially terrible this could have turned out. Fortunately, I don’t remember anything even slightly inappropriate happening.

Today, someone would probably call CPS on my parents and the parents letting a 14 year old watch their kids.

I know a young person reading this is probably appalled. But it was fine. Really.

When Bob sent this to me, he noted that we have many librarians in our life who would not approve.

Back in the olden days before podcasts and streaming services, when Bob and I did roadtrips we would burn CDs with shows we liked.

KCRW was podcasts before there were podcasts. Our two favorites were Bookworm and Elvis Mitchell on The Treatment (film interviews).

Michael Silverblatt the beloved host of Bookworm passed away earlier this year so we listened to his tribute show on our trip to California in September.

Michael Silverblatt took his show very seriously. Whoever his guest was, he read everything and thought deeply about the work. Often the interviewee would be surprised by Silverblatt’s insights. His enthusiasm was infectious. I always wanted to read as widely and deeply as he did after I heard an interview.

Also, he had a connection to Sparks (the band) and they did the theme to his show.

Regarding my reading: I’m still coming back online after a challenging year. I still buy about 5 books for every one I read. The books I read list is here. Every time I go through all my various real book or ebook piles to choose my next book, I find I am dying to read everything. What a terrific problem to have.

I read Circe last month and thought it was phenomenal. I’ve read a lot of romance. I loved a fantasy called This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. I also zoomed through a book called A Marriage At Sea which is true story about a couple who attempted to sail from England to New Zealand in the 70s and around the Galápagos Islands a whale destroys their boat and they are left in a life raft. Harrowing read.

What a terrible photo. I should take another one but you can get the idea.

Long time readers might remember the tragedy of my old teaball.

That’s a joke because that post is from 2011. Also, I think they are better known as tea infusers.

If you don’t want to click the link — I had one of those lightweight wire teaballs and it fell into the garbage disposal and did not survive.

I still use the teaball from the 2011 post that my sister got me in Germany but it doesn’t have a chain anymore. I also have a Manatea which I use occasionally but it’s too cute to use and also, not as functional as you would hope.

I did some research about getting a new teaball and all the good ones were in England. Bob also was in England on his trip and while he was there, I sent him a note as an idea for gifts for me.

He brought me three!

Bob went to Ireland for most of the month of October. He had a blast.

This is the first international trip either of us has taken in the era of the smartphone that does everything at your fingertips. He sent regular dispatches about what he was seeing or doing or eating.

I’ll post a few more before the month is finished.

They have a butter museum! Butter!

I would never leave.

He said these were stamps that they used for butter wrappers and he was having a great time but a group of kids came and elbowed him out of the way.

Image sourced from the Public Domain Image Archive / Internet Archive / University of Toronto Libraries

Often I’ll have an idea for something I want to post and I’ll put it into a note on my phone.

Then, when I’m getting ready to do a post, one of several things happen. One is that I will no longer want to write about it. Another is that I forget to look at my notes for an idea. Other times I will look at the notes and be certain I already wrote the post.

Then I end up with a dozen notes with various length ideas or cryptic descriptions where I don’t know what I intended.

This is a story from the end of last year and things have happened since I kept the note.

As I get older and deal with parents who are getting older, I find that stories about aging people are less interesting to me. I don’t need to see or read a dramatization of a situation (or worse situation) that I have been dealing with in some way or another for close to 20 years.

However, the New Yorker recently published a story from one of their writers, Calvin Tomkins, who turned 100 in December 2025. He was primarily an art critic and was first published by the magazine in 1958. (He passed away in March, 2026.)

Centenarian

I didn’t expect to read the entire article but the author had such good humor and was so candid about aging, I enjoyed the entire article, even when it was tough to read.

“Old age is so embarrassing.”

“New stuff is daunting to old guys, especially when the instructions are in small print.”

“The paraphernalia of old age piles up.”

“It turns out that in our town older people who can’t get up when they fall can call 911 for a ‘lift assist.'”

This post has been partially written for days. Every time I sit down, I get interrupted.

I figured out that, as of this month, I have been in the full time workforce for 40 years. I finally went back and dug out my journal at the time to see if I could figure out the day. Best I can tell it was Monday October 6, 1986.

(Aside: before that I had jobs like fast food and babysitting. I’ve worked in one way or another since I was about 13. Here’s a short post about those jobs.)

My journals are a terrible read. I didn’t write much about what was going on and more about how I was feeling and my head was angsty and insecure and it makes for a torturous read. But I was amused (?) to read that as soon as I started that job, I knew it was terrible. I thought it took me awhile to figure it out. (Somewhere I wrote more about this job but can’t find it right now.)

But back to the 40 years — during that time I have had a few breaks but most of them were involuntary and stressful because I needed money to pay my bills.

When I moved from California to Oregon I think the chain of events was: (1) Quit job in December to go to paralegal school; (2) went to paralegal school from January to June; (3) Couldn’t find a job interview to save my life and spent the summer in Orleans doing odd jobs; (4) Moved to Oregon in September.

Then I did a bunch of temp office jobs until I started what I am doing now in February 1992. I had one 6-week break when I went to Clarion West in 2008.

I like what I do and I’m really good at it. I’d probably hang in a couple years longer but the commute and the long days have worn me down. I keep moving the target date but the plan is to retire next year.