Tag Archives: work

Peas and Cookies

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Trellis for Peas Woven from Saplings

Trellis for Peas Woven from Saplings

I have been jonesing for cookies or pudding or ice cream or some sweet thing. I was going to make some pudding, whip up some cream to plop on top. But my wife made cookies. A local teenager is going to watch my daughter after school so I can go to a meeting tomorrow afternoon. So my co-parent whipped up some chocolate chippers. I went with those.

Also, I spent this weekend in the garden. I dug and prepped and then planted. I can’t say I planted because my children were right there with me. I set aside a chunk of the garden just for them this year. They planted peas, carrots and (early) pumpkins. I hope the pumpkins do OK given that it is so early, but we can always replant them. In the larger garden I planted peas and carrots.

That is the game we often play in the winter when we are waiting at the end of the driveway for the school bus–Peas and Carrots. We jump up and down and someone shouts out a number and you have to get in a group with exactly that many people. It has limited usefulness as a game when there are only four or three or even two of us, but it keeps us warm. Anyway, we kept singing the little ditty as wel planted–“Peas and Carrots, Peas and Carrots, Peas and Carrots.” We had a good time.

I ate one cookie but I could use another. Tomorrow I have a busy day. I get my daughter on the bus, drive my son to school, go to Burlington to work with three groups of students in a row, head to the office to get as many tasks done as I can, drive to Milton for a faculty meeting at the high school, head home to meet my daughter at the house of the aformentioned teenager, drive with her to get my son, get home for dinner, then head up the road for T-Ball practice. Then home in time for bed.

Knowing that the garden is doing its silent job of growing will help me mentally once the day begins. And that extra cookie will come in hand, too.

One More Snowman

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Born at the End of the Day

Born at the End of the Day

At the moment, water drips from the eave onto the deck.  It almost sounds like it is raining.  It is, however, snowing.  It has snowed for much of the day.  It was coming down thickly when I left for work this morning and it was snowing heavily again when I came home.  It comes down now.

The children made a snowman with their mother after I returned from my grueling labors attempting to educate high school students.  “It was the easiest snowman I have ever made,” exclaimed my spouse as she returned from the sculpture project.  Apparently, the snow was perfect for such activity.  The children stayed outside for a while after this.  When I went out in my tall black boots, the wet snow covering my bare head, to gather them for our evening meal, they had started on a “snow wall.”  This was a series of large snowballs, such as the ones one might use to create a snowman, lined up next to the driveway.  Their art knows no bounds.

We may get more snow.  March is fickle that way.  Two days ago we were out enjoying the warm air, a sweater more than enough.  Today we have snow.  Since we still have the majority of the month left, I imagine we will get some spring and some winter before April comes around.  This could be the last snowman, however.  Perfect snow like this doesn’t come around every day, even in March.

Must…Stop…Working…

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I had the day off today.  It’s President’s Day.  I get it off, paid.  Why work on a day like that?  But I did.  Not much, but I did.  I needed to send a bunch of appointment reminders on Friday but I didn’t have time to do it.  So then I should have done it Saturday.  Or Sunday.  And then it was Monday.  I had to get it done this morning.

I sent the reminders by email so of course I noticed, when I opened my email program, that I had a couple of messages that needed immediate responses.  One was from a student who has a looming deadline.  Another was from a parent I should have called on Thursday.  Crap.  So I answered those before sending the messages I needed to send.

I have a series of workshops tomorrow and, due to the aforementioned busy Friday, I did not plan for them completely.  I had to find out exactly when I need to be there and to confirm the agenda.  So that meant more work today.  Not much, but more.  I can’t get away.  That is part of the deal with my job, I guess.  I have a flexible schedule but I often can’t just leave it at the office.  My office is at home.

I did get out and about today.  I was in search of a pot lid.  It is from a Williams Sonoma pot that we got a dozen years ago.  My wife pulled the lid from over some boiling water and dipped it under the faucet flowing with cold water.  It was a glass lid, but it shattered when she did that.  She was distracted.  For a while we just went without a lid but for the past year I have been half-heartedly searching for a replacement.  When I called the company they told me I need to go to a store so someone could look at it.

At the store they told me that no replacements are available.  No lids from current pot designs will fit and they literally cannot get me a lid to an old pot.  They don’t make them, they don’t stock them, they can’t get me one.  No can do.  I was a little dumbstruck.  I asked if this was part of a conspiracy to simply get me to buy a whole new pot.  I got no verbal response to that question.

So I will hunt for one online and elsewhere.  I must be able to find one somewhere.  I know I can find a lid of some kind that fits.  I could get a universal lid that would work in a pinch, but I want another glass one that fits.  My wife promises not to put it under cold water again, unless the lid is already cold.  So my search is on again and I am more determined than ever.  I will show Williams Sonoma that a lid can be found, despite their buy-it-don’t-fix-it policies.

I will start that search right away.  As soon as I fill the bird feeders again.  And wash those dishes.  And close my email program.

Ready to Burst

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Heavenly Beverage

Heavenly Beverage

I drank a lot of coffee this morning.   I whipped up a cappuccino, since I had a little more time this morning than usual (plus it was 0 degrees while we waited for the bus to pick up my daughter; I was chilly).  Then I had another couple of cups of regular coffee.  I mean, it was there.  I didn’t want to waste it just because my wife only had one cup before she left.  That would be irresponsible of me in this bad economy.

Then I drank a bunch of water.  That is important.   Dehydration causes more headaches than stress.  That is a fact.  I want to be healthy, don’t I?  And after all that coffee, which is a diuretic, I had to hydrate.  So I chugged away.  Then I started meeting with students in back to back meetings.  Suddenly a couple of hours had passed.  And I needed to find one of those little rooms with the plumbing.

So I walked over to the faculty room.  I ran into a friend, we’ll call him Chris, who I hadn’t seen in a long time.  We caught up a little.  We chatted.  It was good to see him.  But I still needed that plumbing.  Finally I excused myself and took care of business.

I find myself in this situation more often than I would like.  But at least I have a place to go.  A friend of ours teaches kiteboarding.  She spends literally all day out on the frozen lake with visibility measured in miles.  It is great for business–everyone can see all those people having fun.  But she doesn’t drink coffee.   Or water.  Or anything.  Things are just easier that way.

I made it through the day, of course.  I will face many others like this one.  But what is one to do?  I want to drink coffee (warm, tasty, hearty, comforting), I need to drink water (hello, you can die without water) and I have to work.  I suppose if I were a lumberjack I might match all of these things a little better.  Or a park ranger in a remote place.  But no, I had to switch from outdoor education to indoor boy.

Such is the price of the professional.  I wonder if Chris ever has to deal with this?  I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.

Home With the Kid

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My daughter was up most of the night with a fever and a cough.  I stayed home with her today.  That wasn’t too big a deal, in regard to my other obligations.  I managed to reschedule some meetings and I got some of my tasks completed.  It wasn’t bad spending some time with the kid, however.

We watched Shrek the Third, which my wife had rented on a whim yesterday.  That timing worked out well.  We played out in the snow in the afternoon, when she felt better (my daughter, not my wife), we ate lunch together, I helped her with some word activities that she brought home from school.  It was some quality time.

She doesn’t have a cough anymore.  Her fever is gone.  She fell asleep fast.  She was tuckered after little sleep last night.  She considered taking a nap but just couldn’t fall asleep this afternoon.  Who could blame her?  Think of all the daylight she might miss.  She came with me to pick up her brother and was the helpful sister, carrying all his things for him and greeting him with a grin.  Those two love each other.  I am fortunate there.

Tomorrow she will be fine and I will be back to working a full day, rather than piecing together what I can while tending to a not quite healthy child.  Hopefully the cough will pass me by.  She won’t be taking care of me if I crash.  She’ll be off to school whatever happens to me.  If I get sick I will sit home and try to work but get little done and feel bad about that as well as feel bad physically.  That would pretty much suck.

So no sickness for me.  I’ve got my wolf bane and my vitamin C and my early to bed.  I’m off to work in the morning.

Fourteen Below and Thinking About Gardening

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Garden Beds Waiting for Spring

Garden Beds Waiting for Spring

That was the temperature this morning–fourteen degrees below zero. You might say it was chilly. I wimped out on going for a run. I had planned to do so today but I stayed inside, stoked the fire, got some work done and even read a book. So much for training.

I have been thinking about the garden lately. January is the month to plan it out, to figure out what to plant, how much of it to plant, and where to fit everything. The corn can’t go where it went last year, but it can be planted with the squash. I look forward to sitting down with the legal pad and sketching out the garden plan.

Of course, it is way too cold to do anything with the garden at the moment. It sits under the snow, waiting for spring. I am glad we have snow cover. The blueberries and strawberries will fare batter with the insulation. And the snow adds an element of beauty.

The circle I carved out of the lawn for our garden feels like a work of both labor and art. I want to grow food that is fresh and tasty and that I can’t get elsewhere (Striped Zebra tomato anyone?), but I also hope it adds some pastoral artistry. I want it to be beautiful. That takes work and luck and a willingness to let things grow as they need to grow. Seeing what the plants will do with what they have gives me joy.

So I wait it out and dream of warmer weather. I love this cold snap we are having, even though I chickened out of running today. Winter just isn’t satisfying if we don’t have some days below zero. I have seen the mercury rise to six degrees today and now it is back down to four. Once the sun goes down, I am sure it will break through the zero mark again.

Maybe some of those cucumber beetles will take a hit from the cold. I won’t count on it, but since I am imaging a perfect garden, I might as well dream that too.

Inside All Day

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Left the house at 8:00.

It is almost 8:00 again and I have yet to get home.

Long day.

I am out the door as soon as I shut this little black book type computer thing.

Said goodnight to the kids via telephone.

January is a long month.

At least tomorrow I get to head to town for a couple of hours for some surprises for my spouse’s birthday.

I have gone outside today only to walk across parking lots.

That ain’t right.

Consider my time card punched.

Back in the Saddle

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So today I hurried back to the grind of working a job after a couple weeks of holiday vacation.  It was, as they say in the taciturn parts of this state, not a bad thing to be off for so long.  While it wasn’t bad to get started again, I hopped into the saddle with some trepidation.

I don’t mean trepidation as in “It’s been so long I am a little scared I won’t know what to do or where to go.”  I mean it more in the “Dang it is awfully nice not to have to work for someone else or really to have to work at all and boy wouldn’t it be great if I could keep all this material greatness and quit the day job?” sense.  That is the kind of trepidation I mean.

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to fit one long, uncommonly uttered word into just a few sentences of something more than one person will read at least three times.  Check that off my list.  If we can jump to the meta-cognition level here, when except over the holidays, when I can sleep in until 7:30 (7:30!) for three days straight, would I ever have the idea encompassed in the previous sentence?  See what I mean?  Not working means thinking deep thoughts, thoughts that can only come when one truly relaxes.

Alas, I was back to the work thing today.  I did watch it snow from the warm side of the window.  That was, and I’m not afraid of being called effeminate or even (heavens!) a pansy if I use the word, lovely.  Then I drove home on the icy and slippery asphalt, hands clenched on the wheel, sweating in the down jacket I both didn’t need and forgot to take off in my haste to get to the post office, slowly.

The saddle in which I returned my physical self was metaphorical, of course.  I’m no wrangler.  I’m no jockey.  I can’t even really call myself a desk jockey anymore, although I did spend way too much time sitting today.  My saddle was a chair in this case.  At the end of the day I rode off into the screen saver sunset, bouncing along peacefully on the pneumatic riser of the padded office seat.  It was a lovely way to end the day.  And a lovely way to start the week.

Second Christmas

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We just came back from a trip down south, to Connecticut.  I grew up there and my parents and some siblings and other relatives live there, so we visited for our second Christmas.  Every year my parents host Christmas the weekend after the “real” Christmas.  This has several benefits:

1. Those of us with various family wings can worry less about the conflict of who to see.  In our house we have decided that Christmas Day we do not travel.  We stay at home, share gifts, have a fine dinner and play.  We do not, however, have to worry about a long drive, so Christmas Eve we can see my in-laws.

2. Those of us who work where there are no true holidays (my mother and brother work for a nursing home) can offer to work so someone else can take the day off.  This feels pretty good and is a great gift.

3. We can do things for others.  My sister, for example, volunteered at a homeless shelter on Christmas.

4. If we have procrastinated, and we have enough of a buffer, we can get some steals on post-holiday sales.

I admit that I have not taken advantage of this last one, but still, it could happen.

We had a good long day for our second Christmas.  It felt like a major bonus for our children who got more gifts from Santa and all their various relatives on my side of the family.  We ate together and laughed and had a generally grand time.  Three of my four siblings were there (the other lives on the west coast) so it was a full house.

But wait, there’s more.  On Sunday we made another full day of it.  We took the children to the museums in Springfield, Massachusetts, just over the state line.  Somehow we managed to hit it right and got to wander the science museum just before a puppet show began.  It was put on by a traveling performance group and was targeted at children.  It was a hit.  We had time to check out the Dr. Seuss sculptures (he was born and lived in Springfield) one more time before heading home.

We had some time before heading out to Friendly’s for dinner.  This was a treat for the children, really.  They got to eat french fries AND ice cream sundaes.  What could be better?  It was actually the same establishment where I had my first paycheck job (I had paper routes before that), flipping burgers and manning the frialator.  Ah, the times I remembered.

Then, the finale to the day, we went to the Connecticut Trolley Museum for their winter fest event.  The place was decked out in holiday lights, including lights across all the power poles on the trolley lines.  Four trolleys ran the out and back route, under the lights.  It looked like a tunnel of color in the darkness.  When they switched the power pole on top of the trolley to go from one direction to the other, we were all in the dark.  No one working said anything about this, at least not right away, so everyone was quiet.  It was peaceful, fitting for the season.

My son was a huge fan of the exhibit hall, where two trolleys are indoors and a dozen or so electric train and trolley sets zoom in their loops.  There were trains of all sizes and they were dressed in holiday garb.  One train looped through Santa’s village with elves and snow and workshops and all.  Sure, I was pretty into it as well.  And it was festive.  A woman with a guitar sang carols, lights decked the hall, and several Christmas trees glowed in the corners.  There were kids all about and everyone seemed to be having a blast.

Back home today, after a long drive, we have to settle into post-Christmas.  We have some things to put away, some things to assemble, and some things to recycle.  We have a task list for the rest of our holiday break, and some good friends on the way in a couple of days.  Lots to do, lots to enjoy, lots to think about.  Both Christmases were as good as they get.  And two is enough.

CTD

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That is the way I felt a couple of nights ago.  As I spent some time preparing details for my school trip the next morning, my gut started to speak to me.  It wasn’t providing a soliloquy on the merits of the meager dinner I had just consumed.  It wasn’t philosophizing on my eating habits.  It was poking me with a stick and shouting obscenities.

After I went to bed I did not stay in it long.  I rolled around and rolled around.  Eventually I was up and emptying my innards.  I got to know the plumbing fixtures, at least one of them, quite well.  We had some conversations, the toilet and I;  first I made some rather loud utterances, then it responded with a rather consistent flushing sound response.  It was civil, if not gentlemanly.

I spent yesterday in a weak and achy stupor.  Wasn’t that a good time.  It gave me time to reflect on how healthy it is to purge one’s system occasionally.  I was purged.  I was as empty as I could get.  My painful belly gave me pause.  Was I about to continue this process?  Or was I just hungry?  It turns out I was hungry.

I was not alone in my experience.  My wife and my son enjoyed the fine winter evening as well, out of bed often to check out the night’s wonders.  They, too, enjoyed the benefit of indoor plumbing.  My daughter did not have quite the same experience, but she was a witness, even crying in distress at one point, wondering if we would all be OK.

That next day we all stayed home, although my daughter never did get sick.  Lucky her.  She might as well have taken the bus, but neither of her parents would have been up for collecting her were her body to opt for the purging plan.  She was fine today as well, it turns out.  She is a healthy bugger, even without the cleansing.

Today I was home again.  As late as 2:00 I debated whether I should keep a meeting I had set for 5:00, but it wasn’t going to happen.  Too dizzy.  I still don’t feel 100%, after a day rest that included a two-hour nap, although I feel like I should fake it a little so my wife doesn’t think I am a total wuss.  Food has helped.  Lots of water has helped.  Hopefully another night’s sleep will do the trick.  I can’t miss another day of work.  It is way too much of a hassle to miss even one, and I’ve got three missed days under my belt this month with last week’s snow day.

No more circling the drain for me.  I am rising to the top now.  Soon I will swimming about, flush with health.  So to speak.