I have a deadline but am going through my usual pre-writing ritual of not being able to focus on my assignment AT ALL. The best thing, when that happens, is to lean into it. Completely ignore the work, and do something else. Probably I should attack the literal mountain of clean laundry I have been avoiding for two weeks now. I just keep… washing clothes and then heaping them on the guest bed and not folding them. Carla and I have both worn some things we would normally avoid simply because it is impossible to find something in Mount Laundry. It is at a very dire point indeed, and also my family owns way too much clothing.
While I discover which Important Task I am willing to procrastinate more, I will write a blog post.
A Thing I Am Dreading: I am scheduled for jury duty soon, and I have known about it for months (and delayed it twice), and at this point I just need to get it over with. Jury duty would be so interesting, I think, if I didn’t have to worry about Carla logistics. Once this current project is done, I have a break from paying work, and the idea of listening to a real, live legal proceeding sounds kind of cool. Not to mention all the people watching I could do while I wait to be called! But even though I have arranged before- and after-school care for Carla, I am still stressed out. The court is in the middle of the city, and I have to drive on the freeway during rush hour, both ways, and it’s far enough away that I am stressed I will be late dropping Carla off or picking her up. My husband will try to help where he can, of course, but his work schedule is too unpredictable for me to count on him. The last time I did jury duty, I remember being SO stressed about the exact same things. I was there for an entire day before I got called into a courtroom to be screened for that case’s jury. I can’t remember exactly what happened – maybe they filled the jury before they got to me? – but I was sent home at the end of the day and didn’t have to come back. Here’s hoping something similar happens this time, too! [Semi-Related Tangent: When I searched my blog to see if I had already whined about jury duty (I had, right here), I came across this post and wow, I can really work up a good froth about bureaucratic BS, can’t I?]
A Thing I Need to Buy: Carla is doing a school project on Eleanor Roosevelt and will need this month an Eleanor Roosevelt costume. Does Eleanor Roosevelt have a Signature Look? Not so far as I can tell! Mainly dark, severe-looking clothing, furs, long strands of pearls, a wide variety of hats. I am… not having much luck finding anything in a child’s size. I think I can cobble a few items together (maybe this WW2 dress? (Which… why is that a costume???) And this fur shawl? And this hat?) but it’s not an insignificant cost when you add everything up, plus Carla says that the hat NEEDS FEATHERS. I feel like maybe we could put together something from things we own, although Carla would prefer to use this as a Buying Opportunity, but I am afraid that the few things that we have that are even adjacent to looking like they are from the right era won’t look Eleanor Roosevelty enough. Surely most parents aren’t going to buy a full-on costume (like one of the moms I know is doing) and are going to slap something together at the last minute, right? The whole thing is making me grouchy. You don’t happen to have an Eleanor Roosevelt costume lying around in your closet, do you?
A Thing I Recently Made: My husband and I ate this balsamic chicken and mushrooms dish last night. (I made a half portion and used goat cheese instead of feta.) It was a little bit of a hassle because the recipe required that I brown the chicken and mushrooms before putting them into the casserole dish. However, it was quite delicious and just 5 net carbs per serving. I did feel a little weird not having anything else to go along with it. I’d planned to do a side salad but it just didn’t happen. (“Is this… all?” my husband asked when I plated it alongside a big empty slice of plate.) But it was yummy and very filling. Definitely something I will make again.
A Thing That Went Well: I had a work meeting this week, and five minutes before it started a bunch of workmen started unloading a big digging machine into my yard. They are doing some sort of work for the city, I think, and I panicked. My office is on the front of the house and I don’t have any other Zoom-appropriate backgrounds in my home. So I ran outside in my bare feet and begged the workers to delay until the end of my meeting. AND THEY DID. The meeting went really well and it was very quiet and once it was done I went back outside and thanked the workers. They got started and I was VERY GLAD I’d asked them to wait. You’d think all the rain we’ve been having would have made the ground nice and soft, but it sounded like they were clanging metal directly against rock the entire time.
A Thing I Have Been Thinking About: For some reason, I recently found myself reading a couple of old blog posts I wrote right around the time of Carla’s birth. And I realized I have never posted her birth story. Now that it’s almost nine years later, it’s too late, right? Or maybe it isn’t? I don’t know. Now that I have some (a lot) of distance from it, her birth seems like not that big of a deal. But at the time it was so traumatic to me, and dredged up so many intense and complicated feelings that I couldn’t even THINK of it – for years! – without crying. I am pretty sure I’m past that now. I have more perspective. Time really does heal. But it might be fun to have a record of that time, even if the record is being made now, from memory? I don’t know. We’ll see.
What influential dead person would you dress up as, for a third grade social studies project?
Now that I have read your post, 100% certain I would choose a person based on the ease of finding a costume! I’d still probably end up buying something, but choosing from available options is much easier than using my non-existent imagination.
Yes, post her birthday story now. I am always down for reading a good birth story.
I read your old post about the bank and the hours and that they would only speak to your husband and I can tell you that in nearly two decades of marriage and many bills in my name alone because I often set up the accounts when we move, they have refused to speak to my husband exactly once. They refuse to speak to me all the time without his permission though. I WONDER WHAT MYSTERIOUS FORCES ARE AT PLAY HERE.
Wow, I didn’t think I could summon up any more anger at the patriarchy and yet here we are.
I recommend the thrift store. Whenever we have had to do those awful “dress like you’re 100” days I have gone that route. It’s much easier to “hem” a dress by cutting off half of it when you haven’t paid much. Plus the styles are often….dated at a thrift store. In show of solidarity, my third grade son told me literally (like, for real literally) three minutes before we had to leave that he promised his teacher he would dress up like a farmer for their Charlotte’s Web themed Open House night. I scrounged up a plastic bucket, old cowboy costume hat and a pair of *my* leather boots for him to wear and he contributed a stalk of grass that he picked on the way to stick in the corner of his mouth. Someday we will be rewarded for all this. Right?
I would also choose a person whose outfit I could easily find. The chicken sounds delicious! Whenever I have some empty plate to fill, I cut up raw vegetables and call it crudite, makes it sound fancy. Would love to read Carla’s birth story. It would bring back memories of my own although they were nearly 36 and 32 years ago. 🙂
I actually DO have part of an Eleanor Roosevelt costume tucked away in a cedar chest – I played her in some 6th grade thing or another, and my mom let me take her royal blue wedding hat (WITH FEATHERS and net veiling over the face) to school to wear. It was very precious to me then and it still is 45 years later!
Oh how neat!!!
My first grader required a costume to look like a lady from the 1840s (I think that is the right decade, my brain is already shutting it out). My child was upset that I provided a people dress for her to wear, rather than black. I told her that all of the pictures from back then look like black dresses since the photos are not in color. I “bustled” the front of her dress over a long skirt and stuffed a couple of dress-up tutus underneath for volume.
I second the thrift store for any costume related shopping.
The gardeners for our duplex come usually at the exact time with their obnoxiously loud leaf blowers when I am on a conference call – good for you for asking the workers to wait until after your meeting and how nice of them to comply!
Jon and I love mushrooms, so I’ve bookmarked this recipe. Thank you!
I’ve only been called to jury duty once since I became a citizen and ALMOST ended up on the jury… for a MURDER TRIAL. Jon kept joking beforehand “what if it’s a murder trial”… and I was like “nah, no way! Probably just petty theft”…. but OMG, I am so glad I wasn’t picked as a juror, although I ended up in the juror box for a short while.
Regarding the dress up. Take it from someone who has been there – all that is required is something that feels like a costume to the child (hat with feathers? Buy a hat at a thrift store; hot glue some feathers on it; throw a necklace of fake pearls on her and call it a day). The teacher doesn’t actually care if the “costume” resembles Eleanor Roosevelt to a tee – her plan is to get the kids excited with the costume aspect of it so they actually retain some of the material she/he is trying to teach.
Jury duty – OMG. For me, it always sounds like it might be interesting – until I’ve been sitting in that room for a couple of hours – never getting picked to go in to be questioned about whether or not I could be impartial – and then I am OVER it. And there is the hassle about getting downtown and parking (well, to be fair downtown here is a cakewalk; it’s the parking that’s the bear). So you have my sympathies there.
YAY for asking the workers to wait and they DID! Miracles happen every day.
Happy Mothers Day, Suzanne!
Oh, I aspire to Gigi’s casual confidence with the costume suggestion – it is perfect, and I would never have taken that approach when my kids were young. I would’ve blown the whole thing out of proportion and stressed myself out. I wish I could go back and shake some sense into my young self!
The one time I got called for jury duty I had to ask for CART (Computer Assisted Real-Time Translation). Because I’m deaf, everyone offers a sign language interpreter – but I went deaf in my 40s, and don’t know sign language. CART is when a person sits next to you and types what is being said (real-time) into a machine so the text can be read (usually on a laptop, although CART for a meeting of deaf and hard of hearing people is usually projected onto a screen in the front of the room).
As you can probably imagine, I was excused from duty. I’ve requested CART a few times for things and never actually had it provided; the closest to accommodation I ever got was having a sign language interpreter mouth the words while they were signing, and I read their lips as best I could. (This was at my kids’ graduations – my daughter graduated 8th grade and son graduated high school in 2008, the year I went deaf and before my cochlear implant surgery.)
Speaking of kids – yes on the birth story. It’s never too late!
Oh Wendy; I have the casual confidence about the costumes NOW – back when mine was small; not so much.
I REMEMBER THAT THING ABOUT THE BANK AND NOW I AM ENRAGED. The only thing similar to me is that my husband is our primary Costco membership, because when we got the membership the boys were little and I never went by myself. Now, of course, he never goes and that’s not a problem except when we get our rebate cheques and I CANNOT USE THEM BECAUSE I’M NOT THE PRIMARY CARDHOLDER. So he has to go, which is a pain. I could get this changed, of course, but that would mean standing in the customer service line which goes out to the parking lot on a good day.
I think jury duty would be fun and interesting if it didn’t interfere with regular life. I had a call to jury duty in the fall of 2020 and I was so stressed out about it. But then I got excused. The thought of finding someone to cover my classes, which I had just gotten back to, and then the whole pandemic, it was so stressful. But I think it would be interesting as long as it wasn’t something in which you got sequestered or was really violent and horrifying. Woooo I am probably not making you feel better about this. Anyway, my grandma always wanted to serve on a jury and she never got that chance, but I do think it would be interesting for retired people like her.
*has our primary Costco membership, yeesh
Those elementary school costumes take me back, although because Noah was in humanities magnets, he had costume assignments through middle and high school, too. The last one I remember was John Calvin. I think North’s last costume was for a “wax museum” in which they portrayed Mozart. That was 4th grade so the end might be in sight for you.
Even though I am the main cook in my family (4-5 days a week), I am often glad not to be the only cook because when everyone cooks at least some of the time no one ever says something like “Is this all?” to the cook.
Jury duty can be interesting but it almost never seems to be a convenient time for it.
I’m nervous to even write this out of the fear of jinxing myself, but I’ve never had to do jury duty and it’s something I’d prefer to avoid for the rest of my life if at all possible! I would fear I’d get put on some major case and would be stuck there for weeks on end! Hard hard pass!
I would totally mail it in on the costume assignment and just find something that I owned. Like for Eleanor Roosevelt, maybe a button down, cardigan and some sort of necklace, like pearls? That’s what I envision. If I didn’t have anything, I’d ask people on my block/people in my group of friends!
I’ve only been called for jury duty once and I always try my best to get out of it. Not because I don’t want to do my civic duty, but I am just way too anxious about courts and jail and stuff like that and I don’t think I could be very impartial. That sounds bad, I know, but it’s just a stressor for me.
Your whole Eleanor Roosevelt fret is reminding me that we had to do these crazy monthly assignments similar to that in 3rd grade, and it annoyed my mom so much. Mostly because she had to do most of the work! And we didn’t really have the kind of money to spend on fancy stuff, so we slapped things together and it all turned out fine.
That’s amazing that you thought to even ASK the workers to just stop what they were doing for 30 minutes (or however long your meeting was). I wouldn’t even THINK I could ask someone something like that, haha. But just goes to show that it doesn’t hurt to ask!