Ramblings

 Time for another random post.

Things have settled down from the storm, except in the areas hardest hit.  Here's the storm path.  The little red squiggle is me.

It's the area where the two converged that really got hit hard.  And a couple of hundred thousand people were without power.  Mine was out for only 30 hours, which in my mind is no big deal.  But even by that afternoon, I was reminded of Lenin's statement that "Every society is three meals away from chaos."
Most restaurants were closed. Most grocery stores were closed.  And Facebook was loaded with people panicking because they had no food!

This boggles my mind.  Not everyone is like Bob who could have survived WWIII and the zombie apocalypse combined (with maybe an alien invasion), but I can't imagine not having an emergency stash.  The panic grew bigger the next day as people believed that anything in the fridge has to be tossed after 24 hours.  I don't get it - the grocery stores are filled with aisle after aisle of shelf-stable food, cans, and pouches.  And you can eat it straight out of the can if necessary.  For about $30 you can get a small camp stove.  I don't understand a willingness to be helpless about the basics when it's neither difficult nor expensive to lay in a modest stash.  Sigh.

I'm a bit more prepared now.  I got my butane camp stove.  I've got three cases of bottled water because the distribution center was asking for people to come get it so they didn't have to pack it up again (I also picked up a case of MRE's and a big tarp.)

After all that settled down, and  had gone to the museum 5 days in a row (3 because of the storm then my regular two days - by which time we had power and water) I was sort of at loose ends and just puttered around.  A couple of smaller storms came through (which made me feel bad for the people trying to do recovery work). I just couldn't focus.  Friday I finished the book I was on (a reread of "The Last Unicorn.") and I knew there was a book that Ebaida wanted to co-read so I didn't want to start anything new, so my bedtime reading was to reread a couple of chapters of the Pratchett parody of "Phantom of the Opera."  Saturday I was still being aimless, so screw it - laid on the couch and read the entire book.  Amazing how good that felt.

I still have a bit of work to do on the bedroom ceiling, which I've ignored for the last two weeks (although I can be excused for tornado week).  I think it's because when I finish that, I need to move a bookshelf and shampoo the carpet because pulling all that stuff down made a mess.  So finishing one job puts another one on the things-to-do list.   Same goes for the chicks.  They're almost big enough to go out in the coop (knock wood - Rock and Djali have been out there for three weeks with no problems).  But when I move them I'll have to do a major scrubbing of the back deck.  Finishing one job just creates another.

One of those rainy days I did have a wave of deep loneliness.  A gray and rainy afternoon, perfect for a nap.  I found myself remembering Naps of the Past.

The problem with naps is that sometimes you lie down "for a few minutes" and suddenly it's 3-4 hours later when you wake up.  So we would have an afternoon cup of coffee, then take a nap, and in an hour or so the coffee would kick in and we'd wake up.

However, when two people who are fond of each other go to bed, sometimes sleep isn't the first thing that happens.  So the afternoon coffee would become a prelude to such activities.  I'd ask Bob is he wanted some coffee, and he would waggle his eyebrows lasciviously and ask "are you offering coffee, or [cue the Barry White voice here] Coffee?"  And the naps would be defined as little-n naps, or Capital-N Naps.  These days it's just a lower case coffee and nap, and that makes me sad.

There was a mystery last week.  I noticed something different about my car.

A distinct lack of hubcaps on the passenger side.  At first, naive me, thought "I'll just go to Honda and have them put on some new ones."  Fortunately I was talking to Gill at the time, who warned me that brand-specific hubcaps are ridiculously expensive.  I checked, and she's right - like $150 each.  I'm not that attached to the Honda logo - for that much, I'll go to AutoZone and pick up a 4-pack of generic ones for $50.  But I got to wondering why I would suddenly lose hubcaps (I never have before in my life).  And I remembered when I had my oil changed about three weeks ago they had also rotated the tires.  I checked the other two hubcaps - one is OK, but the other was fastened only about a third of the way around, and positioned so that the air valve was covered.

So, armed with evidence that at least one of the hubcaps was put on improperly, I've been having some phone exchanges with the shop manager - with a bit of "let me check the video and get back to you" which didn't happen.  But I cut him some slack - because of the tornadoes, they've been slammed with damaged cards.  The end result is that we're being friendly with each other - and I'm getting my new hubcaps for free.

But my real takeaway from this was my attitude of "well, if I can't get them to make good, I'll go buy a set and put them on."  Since when did I become the person who would just replace her own hubcaps?  (the answer - since March 30, 2020)

Impromptu quick fix.  For years now there's been a brown stain, 6-8 inches across, on the ceiling of the den.  Maybe an old water leak.  Last night, around 11 p.m., I suddenly decided that I was tired of it.  I still had the ladder in the bedroom, and a bottle of white craft paint, so now the stain is gone (I can tell where the white doesn't quite match, but it doesn't draw the eye).  Years of it bugging me, and 15 minutes to paint it (including getting the ladder) but that's how things go.

Finally, some sewing.  I have a few friends who are in the SCA, and once a month they get together to play medieval and have invited me to play with them.  I've gone once, but felt out of place in my civvies.  I don't think I'll get active in the group, but it might be fun to hang out once in awhile, so I got some linen for a dress.  Thing is, medieval clothing isn't designed the same way as modern, so I'm drafting my own pattern.  Fitting something on yourself isn't easy.  This had my mind wandering to any number of Sewing Helpful Hints which often include "get your sewing buddy . . ."  Where?  Check one out of the library?  Where is this mythical creature?  I had one once - in the 70s, when a friend and I were in a belly dance troupe and we'd get together to make costumes.

I tried to create the sewing buddy thing in the 80s when Bob and I were in the SCA group, another place where people need costumes (and before the internet and easy mail order).  My plan was to have people over, and I would go over the basics of cutting out and sewing, and then we would cut and sew together.  Alas, what often happened is that everyone else would end up wandering into the living room to chat and visit, and I'd be in the back sewing by myself, with someone occasionally coming back to see if I was ready to start on theirs (which they couldn't start on their own because they hadn't paid attention when I explained how to cut it out).  And I brought it all to a screeching halt when people would just drop by, leave an armload of fabric, and ask if I could have a costume done by the weekend.

Bob was fairly tolerant of being asked to help pin me in from time to time, although very early on I learned not to ask him if a hem length looked all right (in his defense I will admit that I had good-looking legs).  But, like so many things now (like hubcaps and ceiling repairs and taking naps) I'm doing OK flying solo.

And I think that's enough rambling for now.