Author: Doris

On Tuesday morning, I was just sitting down to work (feeling behind and rushed) when I got an unknown number calling on my cell phone. My usual rule is to never answer an unknown number, but this time I threw caution into the wind and answered it. Verizon, my fickle lover, was back at the church wondering where I was – so I scrambled into the car and was there in 5 minutes. I smiled and said..um, I asked that you folks call me to give me a heads up because the church isn’t staffed all the time. The person holding the piece of paper on a clipboard and kind of shrugged and said – it’s my boss’s job to make the appointments. No matter, I can roll with the random dating/courtship pattern I’ve got with Verizon contractors. Anyways, today was the big day – to see if the conduit from 1960 was still accessible from the telephone pole to the phone room in the building. If so, we can get FIOS pretty easily. If not, I would have to call in a private company to trench a new conduit. Which means a lot of moola which I do not have. I wait with tense anticipation. I thought they were going to send a little robot or camera down the tube, but no. They are working with technology circa the rotary phone. They started pulling on an old string at the end of the conduit – is that string from 1960? Maybe.

New string unwound from the pole.

And god almighty, the conduit runs true. I might have done a little dance of victory in front of three phone technicians. Praise the (hypothetical) lord. OK, so now the conduit is clear, we can run a FIOS line. There are two more random appointments to keep, from what I understand. One to install the line, one to turn service onto the line. We will see. Right now, I’m in a $580 relationship with Comcast and I can’t get out of it. I think if I start dating Verizon, maybe I can play them off each other and get a better monthly rate. You better believe it that I run when Verizon calls.

Tuesday afternoon, I found myself at the outdoor pistol range. I’m getting steadily worse which is discouraging. Even my pistol is getting worse – I’m borrowing a Ruger Mark 2 – which apparently needs to be cleaned. My magazines jammed twice during my match. OK, so when your pistol jams and you can’t complete the total number of shots, you are supposed to call something called an “alibi” which means that you get a do over while everyone else waits for you to finish. I haven’t gotten the courage up to do that yet because I don’t want to make 7 other people wait for me. I’d rather take the lower score than make people wait like….20 seconds. lol. I think I shot a total of 10 shots out of 20? I told Susan, the range officer – ummm, the pistol jammed twice, but I didn’t call an alibi because….I’m shy. I continued – I’m working on it! And she smiled said….I get it, I get it.

Yesterday, after dinner, as we were winding down chatting about nothing in particular, Elka kept bounding around us, nose in our elbow pits. Look at me! Look at me! she said. We were confused – this was unusual behavior. And then we realized that even though we had an entire conversation back-and-forth conversation about feeding Elka dinner that evening, I had completely forgotten to actually feed Elka dinner. But she had not forgotten. All these things that I do everyday and now these tasks are blended together in a mash of colorless oatmeal and now that I’m 50 and my short-term memory is going – the question – did you do X today? becomes a guessing game. Did I make the bed? Did I feed Elka? Did I empty the washer? Did I take my fiber pills? (OMG the fiber pills – my bowels certainly remember if I’ve taken them or not).

You know on youtube, there are people who celebrate not only their birthday on the actual day, but spread it out to an entire week? Or maybe an entire month? They buy themselves gifts everyday for 30 days? Could I even think of 30 things to buy myself? Maybe I could. Anyways, I don’t often buy gifts for myself (gifts: I consider gifts to be brand new things at full price, maybe useful, but more likely semi-useful, just desirous and coveted) – but I found this octopus trivet and bought it and told everyone that they bought it for me for mother’s day! hahaha.

On our 5th time through garage declutter (it never ends, really- you think you’re done and the garage looks fantastic and then three months later it’s filled with…crap again) – I’m ready to declutter my kayak. I bought this kayak after my summerlong lessons a few years ago (which I loved) and took it out on the water…maybe 3-4 times. And then it’s been in the garage since then taking up space. I considered selling it, but I’m giving it to Team River Runner, a non-profit that takes veterans and their families out on whitewater trips. I had met a few members when I was out and about. It makes me a little sad that it didn’t pan out, but it’s also ok. Out of the garage you go – take care of all your kayakers, keep them safe and have a blast.

Last night, we were talking to Vince about our imaginary puppy – it’s a lot of fun imagining that you have a puppy with needing to take care of all that extra pee in the house. He said that Dani suggested that the puppy should be named Belka – which the the 2nd half of Elka’s nickname – we go around calling her Elka-Belka. So, you know, we wouldn’t have to change any of our brain synapses, we just would continue saying what we already say all day. Elka-Belka! Elka-Belka! (our other dogs nicknames – Ruby was the Rubister, Maxi was Maximum or Maxerator, I miss them <3). The other suggestion from Dani was to continue the theme of Edda, Elka and go with a four letter name beginning with E and ending with A. Ella, Emma, Edna, Elba, Ezra, Enya, and then we decided to diverge and go to Eddie, Ernie, and hilarity ensued. Edda! Elka! Enya! Dinner!

On Saturday I stopped by Hank Dietle’s to watch Ward, my olympic weight coach, play in his band. I had to give up having long talks with Ward at the gym to do more church things. Which makes me sad. The band was fun – after I do all this church thing, which will take a few years, I’m going to lean into music and take singing lessons and try to get into a band. We’ll see. Too busy right now.

So now that I’m a board member of the church, I try to go to events that folks put on – because I support you 100%. Saturday night was Pride Prom, and I got out my pride dress and made my rainbow jello shots (non alcoholic). This took me two (!) tries. The first time I was in the midst of my illness on Wed, I got up to the middle layers and realized that I had made it in the wrong sized pan and the layers were too thin, and I also subbed milk for the recommended sweetened condensed milk and the white layers weren’t white enough. So I went back to Giant when I was feeling better, rebought all the colors and tried again. It’s not hard to make, it just takes time.

Here we are at the photo booth, Edda is slightly unhappy for this photo, but rest assured, she had, overall a good time. This is my favorite kind of party – dancing starts at 6:30 pm, all hits I loved and continuous dancing, and we went home at 8 pm – in bed by 9 pm. A good Saturday night.

I spent a bunch of time yesterday in the bowels of the church looking at architectural drawings from the 60s and the 80s. This was a lot of fun, now I understand why the buildings are so wonky and weird. I didn’t know there was a renovation in 1986 – get this, when the building was built in the 1960s, there was no kitchen built because they didn’t want women to be relegated to the kitchen. But can you imagine a church without a kitchen? Apparently, no because in 1986, they decided they needed a kitchen. It’s not like because of feminism, one doesn’t need food anymore, you can just have men in the kitchen!

I took Elka to this meeting, she had a great time – the entire thing was interesting. The plans were in the basement and we trudged down there expecting no one to be there, but it was filled with moms and kids running around, some trying to learn math, others just tumbling over one another, some running to greet Elka, others shying away from her. None of us regular congregants knew that the space was used in this way! It was fun.

I felt so much better on Thursday and so I put in a full day of patent work – still not working out (physically) yet, I think I’m going to ease into that later in the week. I’m increasingly having more and more conversations with patent attorneys about how they use AI for their work and how it helps them out a lot, saving time, analyzing charts of data, summarizing patents. It’s not that I don’t try, I try a bit here and there (kind of hoping that it’ll help me out the way other people tell me it will – like maybe it’ll cut my search time in 50%) and kind of remain unimpressed. Maybe I’m not using it the right way, maybe I’m ornery and old. It’s just..not very clever. That’s what I want – even at my regular job which is repetitive and one might say, boring – it is in finding the magic in the mundane that is human. I know AI is still a baby, so maybe it will grow into a capable adult. Or else it will just bypass that capable adult stage and slide right into all the ways in which we are terrible to each other. Anyways, the funniest part of my conversation yesterday with an attorney was not about patents, rather it was about the attorney’s children’s school which sent an email out pleading with parents to not send AI generated emails to the schools asking for stuff. I mean, does it feel good when you get an email that is AI generated – even if it says all the right things, doesn’t it feel not quite right?

In the fall, I’m going to go to NYC to see a Mozart opera with my friend Dave. Dave is a big opera fan. I’m mostly a fan of Dave and NYC and I’ll finally get to meet his sister and niece which I’m very excited about and I’m only somewhat tolerant of opera. (People are so interesting, really! I love doing things that other people love – Dave can talk for hours about opera and sometimes I let him do that to me, and I then I forget about 85% of what he says (not on purpose, it’s just because I don’t really understand/care about opera). And then I ask him again and then he tells me again, happy (I think) for the opportunity to talk about opera at length again. (I met another person who is as passionate about the movie Home Alone as Dave is about opera. The Home Alone conversation veered into how many times have you met macaulay culkin? To when did you get your home alone tattoo of mc slapping his hands on his face? Listen – AI has got nothing on people.))

Anyways, this opera chit chat brings me to my most charming find of the week on the internets. This opera clip of a song from the Magic Flute by Mozart. This couple is so cute and they are in love in real life and engaged to be married and you can feel it in the music and their joy at singing it together. To love and be loved – that is how it goes.

Yesterday, I took the day off entirely to rest and try to recover from my illness which at points during the day – I was like my head is going to split open and I’m just going to have to pick the pieces off the floor and shove them up my nose. I spent most of the day in bed reading/sleeping and scrolling. I did, at one point, get woken up by a call from Verizon (I’m trying to get FIOS installed at the church), and the technician was at the church trying to get into the phone room! I rushed over there in my pajamas and my throbbing head in drizzling weather to meet him and said – you folks were suppose to call/email me to set up a time to come over, the church isn’t staffed all the time and he sighed and said – they don’t tell me anything, it just comes up on the computer and I do what it says – it didn’t used to be like this. This is the 2nd visit from Verizon – which basically was the same as the first visit from Verizon and now some third visit is going to come by sometime from some people to do some things (hopefully different from the first 2 visits). I’m actually happy it’s gotten this far, as it started by no one calling me back for months and being on hold so long I had to hang up.

I finished Gone Girl on audiobook last week. I had read it before, but it was not satisfying this time around. I really dislike unreliable narrators. I don’t mind if you have dementia and are unreliable in that way, but if you are just straight up lying, it’s terrible to go through an entire book that way. It’s so hard for me to find good books to read, it can’t be too much like real life, full of trauma, abuse, etc. Where is the beauty? I need beauty in my life. I’m reading The Everlasting now – fantasy – time travel romance. Full of swords, love and dragons. It’s not bad.

We’ve been thinking about getting a new puppy. Jeremy spends a lot of time on instagram looking at doggies. I sigh because it’s work, but I will tell you that Jeremy is the main dog carer this time around. He generally walks Elka about 5 miles a day, I think they have a secret language together. Elka got kicked out of the coffee shop a little while ago and was nervous about being tied up outside while Jeremy got his coffee, but now she’s a champ and relaxed and often gets pets. Jeremy sidled up to me last night and said, it’s not our puppy, it’s Elka’s puppy – she wants a puppy and she’ll take care of the little one. lol.

I’m a little bit sick right now, so I’m slow moving and a little knotty in my head, but I’m trudging through the days. I’m out many nights doing things and I’m slowly getting used to my new routine. It turns out you can get used to a lot of things (not everything, but many things). I used to want to go upstairs at 8 pm to get ready for bed at 10 pm. If I was out at night (choir nights), I would get back after 9 pm and couldn’t sleep for a long time. But now I can more reliably sleep at 10 pm if I’m home at 9:15 pm. I’m getting used to being more social – I do really enjoy being by myself (amplified by the quarantine), but now I talk to people a lot and it used to exhaust me, but it’s been ok and..dare I say, fun? Perhaps.

People are messy and complicated. Feelings are hurt left and right, my feelings are hurt, I hurt other people, it is inevitable in a group setting. I understand why one might want to hole up in your own apartment with your ai friend who is always nice to you. Last week, I had an astonishing run of conversations with different people about hurt feelings and disappoints and fears and so many things. All I can say is that things are not as they seem, everything you see is complicated and has layers of stories and feelings and mystery.

I’m always happy to hold babies, and Nat surprised us with a little visit with week-old Ari. I don’t often get to hold such a new person, it was a delight and that baby was very calm and at ease in my arms. Leon is doing well, so happy for him, curious and less anxious, it’s great to see him growing up.

Friday, I volunteered to help decorate for the Roaring 20s themed vibes. There was a mocktail bar – prohibition punch. Not bad, very festive.

I collect plants from people that they don’t want. Usually there is a story behind them: this is a plant of lame apologies.

This is a plant of happy life transitions:

This is a plant of love, leisure and time together:

This is a plant of family trips:

And this is a photo of Elka!

So busy – but all fun. I have to remind myself – it’s all fun. Which is mainly is. Friday night we hosted Ben and Ali from California burrito night. They were staying in DC and Ben was going to come by himself to Rockville, but we’d never met Ali before even though they’ve been going out for five years and Jeremy sees Ben at least once a year in the Bay Area. Anyways, we told Ben about Carmen’s – our ice cream store – and Ben convinced Ali to come out to Rockville and when Ali saw how long the line was on a warm Friday night, she was delighted! Apparently nothing delights Ali more than a line to indicate the desirability of a food item.

Saturday night was a music fundraiser at the church. I will post videos of my two contributions. Please don’t make too much fun of me.

Our refrigerator broke again. I’ve known what was wrong with it for a long time, but I couldn’t ever figure out how to get to where I needed to go. So I always knew I was fixing it temporarily. But thanks to Jeremy who helped me get over a problem I could never solve, I really think I fixed it this time. Every time the fridge breaks, we need to take everything out, put it in coolers and wait for the fridge to defrost. Jeremy is very unhappy during this time. It’s the same way I feel when the washing machine or dryer goes down. But I think when the fridge goes down, I don’t even really care and I think it is also true of Jeremy when the laundry grinds to a halt. It just shows how we view the tasks in the house. It’s not only that I like fixing machines, but the fact that I’m also very comfortable contorting myself in small spaces that helps me fix appliances in the house. While the fridge was broken for about 24 hours, Jeremy looked at new fridges and there are a lot of new fridges including a delux one which was $9,000 – way out of our budget. But after I fixed the fridge, I was like – I just saved $9000 today. Not bad.

I got a little too excited last week and brought all my “Hawaii” plants outside. These plants aren’t all from Hawaii, but these are the plants that don’t do well inside the house (I mean, all plants would be happier outside, who am I kidding), but these are the plants that I hang grow lights and try to coax through winter, so they can go outside in the warmer weather and flourish. But I forgot my own rule which was that they go outside after Memorial Day which is like in 2 months! It had been so warm and, honestly, now that we are no longer tied to the school calendar in this house, I don’t know what time of year it is. Now it’s a bit too cold for these tropical plants, but I’m too lazy to bring them inside.

I’m trying to avoid putting up a deer fence to protect my flowers, but deer like all flowers except for daffodils. So here is one for you.

Each morning, I take the compost out and look at my baby trees. They all made it this year and are leafing out. I apparently have to spend more money and not just by bare root trees (the year I did this, only the oak trees survived and they are teeny-tiny. Like smurf sized right now). So I bought the second smallest size – this is a serviceberry tree which has these beautiful flowers. I was talking to Jeremy about my desired tattoo. I want to get a bird from this guy in Baltimore who has a three year waiting list. I want to get a cedar waxwing perched on a serviceberry tree. Jeremy was skeptical of this idea until I asked him to look up the personality of a cedar waxwing – social, not aggressive, sharing, fruit loving, gets slightly tipsy on fermented fruit sometimes, and has a polite courtship where the male offers up a piece of fruit and they pass it back and forth a few times and then the female eats the fruit if she likes him. That’s pretty much us. So now Jeremy’s more enthusiastic about the bird tattoo. (I’m nervous about getting on the waitlist for the artist because one of the questions is..are you local (because people fly in from all over for his work) and can you come in on short notice if there is a cancellation and … my answer would be yes and then…I would need to get the tattoo on like very short notice…so..that makes me nervous.). I’m not getting a tattoo of a cuckoo bird which lays its eggs in another birds nest and then when it hatches, the chick pushes the other hatchling and eggs out of the nest and makes its unconsenting foster parents raise it.

Happy spring. As the world spins terribly on, I rest my hope in nature and the rebirth of good things.

Last week my air pistol team won the winter season air pistol league. There was a celebration dinner – pulled pork and potato salad and delicious pudding cake. Jeremy and Edda came with as they had never seen the league’s building and met the people I target shoot with. It was fun and I got a trophy for the first time in a long time. They even typed my name on it.

This photo has the pistol unfortunately pointing right at my head, so…um, it’s the only one I have really. Do you see the wood paneling and the bar? It’s like classic old school. The bar top is made from a fallen tree on the property – it just got installed a few weeks ago. I really wanted to get the “most improved” shooter which I thought I had a good shot (hahahaha) at getting, but my friend Tim won it instead. Goooo Tim! Now it’s time for outdoor pistol league. I bought ammunition for it and ear protection. Jeremy shakes his head at all this, but is very supportive.

Kristen and I went on a long outdoor walk with Elka last Tuesday, that was glorious too. We walked 4.5 miles and talked and talked!