Social Ineptitude

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Five for Friday

It’s Friday! We are chugging right along through November. Here are five things I’m thinking about today. 

  1. Falling Back: Changing the clocks has messed me up. I hate it so much. I mean, I guess I don’t mind driving to school in the daylight again. But give it a few weeks and we’ll be back to driving in the darkness. In the meantime, I am going to bed at a NEW normal time and waking up at the OLD normal time, which means I am getting less sleep than I was before. Plus I am still waking up each morning at three or four, full of existential dread. GOOD TIMES. My poor kid is so far on the exact same page. Why could she not have inherited her father’s ability to sleep anytime, anywhere? We are both wandering around, exhausted and cranky. She keeps draping herself over furniture and moaning about how tiiiiiiirrrrred she is. I cannot stop yawning. People keep talking about how maybe this will be the last year of Daylight Savings Time! And I keep thinking, yeah, sure, whatever. But I also think it’s kind of amazing that we all collectively (except Arizona and Hawaii, I think?) agreed to just move everything back or forth an hour twice a year. That’s BONKERS. I feel like there’s no agreement on ANYTHING AT ALL, and yet we all do this???? No thank you. I would like to abstain. 
  2. Flu Shot: I finally got my flu shot. I was at the pharmacy and thought to ask if they administer flu shots; this is a newish-to-me pharmacy, and I’d always gotten my flu shot at Walgreens. We no longer live within walking distance of a Walgreens, so I’ve been putting off the flu shot until I had a reason to be near one. Anyway, I realize this is a very long and circuitous way to the point that yes, the current pharmacy DOES offer flu shots. The pharmacist came around the counter which was the first difference between it and Walgreens; there, you wait until the pharmacist calls you back, and you go into a little room with a door. This pharmacist was a cheery woman who seemed impossibly young. She was much friendlier than the old pharmacist, whose entire body seemed weighted down with regret and drudgery. And then she gave me the shot right there in the middle of the pharmacy! There was another client, sitting behind me, while I stood at the checkout counter. It was a tiny bit alarming. She was very sweet, but then asked me what I did for work. I told her I work from home and she gasped and said, “Well why are you even getting a flu shot?!” That threw me, I’ll admit. My answer in the moment was that I have a young child, but also… shouldn’t everyone get a flu shot? You can get the flu at the grocery store. She then chatted with me for a few minutes about having kids (she has a baby). It was a very pleasant interaction but also kind of weird. 
  3. Flannel Time: We have reached the flannel sheets portion of the year. I don’t normally love flannel sheets, because I sleep hot. But our regular sheets are feeling a little chilly lately. I’m a little apprehensive though because our house heats very unevenly. The house will get colder and colder until you’re shivering even under the covers – I have been wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt to bed, when I much prefer a T-shirt – and then the furnace will decide it’s time to take action and it will WHOOSH to life and churn out an intense fog of heat so that you’re kicking off the covers and stripping off layers – and then it will turn off, exhausted by its efforts, and the cycle begins again. Will flannel sheets be pleasant or unbearable? Time will tell.
  4. Forwarding: We continue to receive mail for the previous owners. It’s not quite at the level it was – at first, we got boxes and season tickets to sports games and multiple cases of wine in addition to catalogs and letters and paychecks and things. But we still get some mail. We have been here since September 1. Is it time to start writing “return to sender” on the mail we receive? Obviously the nice thing to do is to keep holding the mail for the previous owners, and texting them occasionally, and asking them what they’d like us to do with it. (They always come to pick it up, and have ignored my suggestion that we could drop it at their new house.) I keep thinking about how mortified I was to learn, from the people who bought our old house, that they’d been receiving mail for us. My husband had been so diligent about setting up mail forwarding and systematically going through all of our bills and regular mailings to make sure our address was changed. And yet some things slipped past the gate. I also keep thinking about how, at our old house, we continued to get mail for the previous owners even though we’d lived there for twelve years. Not a lot of mail, but one or two pieces a year even at the end. Is mail forwarding really that tough? Are we all really that unclear about ALL the places that have our address?
  5. Fear of Friendliness: I saw one of our new neighbors outside and said hello and asked if she worked from home. When she said she was home most days, I said I was too and would she want to get a coffee sometime? She said sure. But now that I’ve made the overture, I don’t know what to do! Do I… have her over for coffee? I don’t actually know how to make coffee (although my husband could probably teach me). And if she comes for coffee, do I need to offer food as well? What do people eat? Do I live on this planet because I don’t feel like it. Do I suggest going for a walk? What if we have nothing to talk about? What’s a normal thing for people to do when they are trying to get to know other people? While I really, truly would love to get to know my new neighbors, I am kind of berating myself for suggesting anything. I know it wasn’t, like, set in stone or anything, and we could probably just never follow up. But… I want to follow up. Even if I also vehemently do NOT want to follow up. 

That’s it for today, Internet. What are you thinking about on this fall Friday?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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Saturday Superlatives

Did you do that thing at your high school where seniors were awarded superlatives at the end of the year? We did – things like Nicest Smile or Coolest Car or Most Likely to Attend an Ivy League School or Cutest Couple. Then you got your picture above your title in the yearbook. I was never awarded a superlative; were you?

In the vein of Elisabeth’s Happy Things Friday, but also totally in a different vein because I am nowhere near as lovely and optimistic as Elisabeth is, I am going to award some superlatives today. These apply only to this week and I may never do this again. 

Biggest Accomplishment: I attended FOUR SOCIAL EVENTS this week. Four. That is too many, by the way, but I went and I endured and I didn’t die. In addition, I managed to achieve the goal I discussed with my therapist, which was to “talk to three new people.” I am going to go ahead and count “hi, I’m Suzanne, what’s your name?” as “talking” to someone new. I did try to strike up a conversation with a couple people, with limited success, so that feels like a good step. I am also exhausted. After the fourth event, I retreated to my house and had a glass of wine in the quiet dark by myself. I still have not recovered.

Most Freeing Moment: Now that there are no painters in the house, and an interval during which I have no one at all in my house during the day except me, myself, and I, I feel so much freer. But the most freeing moment was definitely when I forgot that my towel was in the dryer, after I had already disrobed, and walked across the house au naturel without a care in the world.  

Best Baking Project: This is a little bit of a stretch, because the actual baking happened more than a week ago. But I am including it here anyway: I made both pumpkin bread and pumpkin cheesecake bread, and they were both delicious. The cheesecake bread was (Mary Berry voice) a little stodgy but once I refrigerated it, I liked it more. It was not particularly breadlike… it was denser, like a brownie that hasn’t quite been cooked through and has gone all fudgy in the middle. But it was easy and tasty, if not ideal in the texture realm. What I REALLY loved was the pumpkin bread, though. The texture was perfection, with a nice tender crumb (I realize I sound ridiculous right now, but the crumb! the crumb!), and the flavor was warm and rich and autumnal. (I was really concerned about the enormous amount of cloves the recipe called for, but it did not taste overly-cloved!) I don’t really enjoy pumpkin anything, and I really liked this bread. I would definitely make it again. If you like pumpkin things, I would HIGHLY recommend it. 

This is the only photo I took of the pumpkin breads, probably because I was too busy eating to be bothered with photography.

Most Frustrating Interaction(s) of the Week: Someone from the title company let us know that they hadn’t received our final water and sewer bill from our previous house, which meant they couldn’t release the funds we’d held in escrow to pay for it. My husband dug up our last bill, I scanned it and emailed it over. We got an email from the title company saying, thanks but no thanks; this doesn’t say “final bill.” So I heaved a great sigh and called the water/sewer company. I hate calling the water/sewer company because a) the wait times are always laughably long and b) everyone who works there hates their jobs, their lives, and me. But there was no other way, so I dialed the number. My call was important to them, the water/sewer company automation assured me, after I picked from an alarming number of options offered via a very lengthy set of menus. However, there were a few callers before me, and the wait time was 137 minutes. One hundred and thirty seven minutes. However! There was an option for the company to call me back once I reached the end of the queue! So I gratefully chose that option and went about my business. The water/sewer company called me back after the time had passed. An automated voice asked me to press 1 if I was available to take the call at that moment, and then said, “We are experiencing higher than usual call volume and cannot take your call. Goodbye.” AND HUNG UP ON ME.  

Highest Volume of Phone Calls: On Monday, I made eight separate phone calls. EIGHT. I did not want to call any of these people and several of them required multiple phone calls and one will require me to do it all over again (cough cough water/sewer company), and I only managed to schedule ONE THING. This is why I hate phone calls. They are awful and they don’t seem to accomplish anything. 

Most Charming Moment: This honor goes to the adorable checker at Trader Joe’s, who, when I handed her my reusable shopping bag, exclaimed, “Oh and it’s cats! How wonderful!” She then told me that she is a “bonafide cat lady.” I said, “I love cats too. Do you have a cat?” And she said, “YES. Would you like to see pictures?” Here is where I tell you that I always want to see pictures of a cat. Or any pet. Or a baby or child of really any age. Or your granny. Or your parents doing something cute or weird or just sitting in a chair. Basically, if you thought it was worth photographing, I would like to see it. Consider this an open invitation to email me all the pictures. (Disclaimer: Aforementioned invitation does not apply to genitalia.) Then she showed me her cat, and her sister’s cat, and told me their names, and it was wonderful. Can’t do THAT at a self-checkout! 

Any superlatives jump out at you from this past week? 

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join, check out San’s blog here.

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Five for Friday

It’s not only Friday, it’s the first Friday in November. I am not ready for the pell-mell can’t-catch-my-breath of the last two months of the year (and I don’t even want to THINK about the holidays; I am pretending they don’t exist), but ready or not, they’re here. 

  • We had our first snowfall of the season! I love snow and it was such a pure delight to see big flakes falling from the night sky, and then to wake up to a good two inches of snow on all the exterior surfaces. Especially because the roads were blissfully bare and dry. I did realize that a) I’d purged Carla’s snow clothing prior to the move, because she’d been wearing them for two years straight and they were sprouting holes and showed an inch or two of ankle and b) I’d never replaced them. Fortunately, Lands End is having a sale so I was able to order her new things. And new snow boots. 
  • Speaking of Carla, and snow, and clothing: she has extremely specific fashion tastes these days. And those fashion tastes are not always compatible with the weather. But she’s TEN, and I’ve grown weary of negotiating with her about whether shorts over tights counts as appropriate winter wear. Also, at what age does a child realize that it might be wise to put on a sweatshirt if you are cold rather than complaining plaintively about it to your mother? It’s not age ten, that’s for sure.
  • Halloween was fine. There was a neighborhood gathering, at which I felt completely overwhelmed. People were nice but not friendly, and there were so very many of them. I brought the wrong thing and used the wrong container (this group seems to lean quite Fancy), but at least I know better for next time. On the good side, Carla seemed to have a BLAST. There were tons of kids. Twenty? Fifty? I couldn’t keep track of them because they didn’t stay still, and sometimes they had masks on, and sometimes they didn’t. But Carla got to run from house to house in a pack of children and that made me feel very happy and relieved. We bought WAY too much candy and now have an entire grocery bag full of leftovers (on top of Carla’s haul), which I am itching to donate as soon as Carla’s school accepts donations. I wasn’t missing candy – so why am I unable to ignore the siren song of a fun size Snickers? None of my favorites showed up this year, either in the candy we bought or the candy Carla brought home; I’m partial to Milky Way Midnights and Sour Patch Kids. But I’m making up for it with the aforementioned Snickerses and a fairly obscene number of Reese’s peanut butter cups. 
  • Do you put outgoing mail in your mailbox, or do you take it to the post office? I am having a bit of a disagreement with someone about the appropriate course of action. Some context: One of us grew up in a country area that wasn’t served by the postal service; mail was delivered to a post office box in town. One of us grew up in the suburbs of a large city and had access to a mailbox at the end of the driveway. One of us believes that you put outgoing mail in the mailbox, and, in fact, this is part of the purpose of a mailbox; why else would there be a little red flag on the side of the mailbox meant to alert the postal worker to the presence of outgoing mail? One of us thinks that outgoing mail should be handled at the post office only, or perhaps at one of those once-ubiquitous blue mailboxes that used to be on every street corner but have all but disappeared in the wake of 9/11. Who is right? Where does outgoing mail go? If a person wants to utilize the home mailbox, do they have to call the post office to make sure it’s okay, or is lifting the little red flag alert enough?
  • I recently read the newest Robert Galbraith book, The Running Grave. It was truly gripping, despite the fact that it seemed like no one had really edited the thing, and despite the fact that the will they/won’t they storyline has been grating on me for about three books by now. In fact, reading it made me want to reread the series from the beginning, so I waited until we had unpacked all the book boxes to find the first book… and it wasn’t there. Neither were the second and third books in the series. My husband thinks that I may have started reading the series on my kindle, which sounds plausible. But for various reasons, I don’t want to read it on kindle again, so I am contemplating buying a copy. But then I will want to own ALL the books in the series, and that feels like a commitment I’m not ready to make. So. Here I dither, not reading the book I want to read, not buying books I want to buy, and not complaining about it on the book blog, but here instead. What would you do? I suppose I could check it out from the library, which would address a whole host of issues, some of which I started to discuss here but then deleted. However, for some unknown reason the library option isn’t appealing to me. What would you do? Have you ever bought a book you’ve already read just to own the complete series? What if I DO buy the rest of the series and the hardbacks are no longer available so half the series is in hardback and the other half is in paperback? Will that drive me book bonkers?

That’s all I have for today, Internet. Hope your Friday is sunny and that your weekend starts early!

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join in the fun, check out San’s blog here.