Everyday Life in Middletown 4/27/18
I wake about 3:00 and am unable to go back to sleep until, of course, right before the 5:30 alarm goes off. I notice the train horns. I think of nothing else as I nearly fall asleep and hear the next train horn, repeatedly. I consider tweeting the Mayor to ask about the status of getting the rest of the trains to stop blowing their horns in the quiet zone. The railroad crossing down the street was blocked off permanently to create a quiet zone with the trains agreeing to not blow their horns yet the rumor is one of the railroads didn’t agree and continues. I normally don’t notice but I am tired and irritated. I would also like to tweet a picture of the aesthetically pleasing white and orange signs permanently installed in front of the closed railroad tracks. I don’t, of course. I know they have many important things to be concerned about.
After the alarm, T. gets up, ready, and heads to work. He drives his semi on Fridays each week and heads out early to keep the timing right on pick up and delivery of three loads in order to get them done within the driving time allowed. I fall right back to sleep fortunately and wake to T.’s call at 6:50. He asks me to get the case number for IKEA and text it to him. The kitchen cabinets and appliances delivery last week had a few items missing and he wanted to call to check on their delivery.
I text respond a friend about common friends seen the prior night at dinner. The father and daughter are the husband and daughter of a friend who passed earlier this year. She learned of her illness and passed in about 3 months. It continues to be surreal almost, nearly unbelievable, yet very real when I see them out.
I text respond to another friend whose son is moving in with her for a couple months and they need someone to keep his dog during that time with a couple other family members allergic. I am considering it and ask about connecting over the weekend.
I stayed In bed a while longer and finally emerged about 7:30. I email the office and let them know I am going to work from home some this morning. I have already put in a full week and I know I will be much more productive if I have a good morning at home before going to work.
I shower and after go to fill the tea kettle but the filter pitcher is empty so I fill it to begin the filtering process. I continue getting ready for work, eventually fill and turn on the stove for the tea pot, and begin making breakfast. I try to connect to work via VPN however am unable so I get some work done via emails. I cook an egg and heat up my greens which I would typically use for a smoothie but I have no blueberries or pineapple and really don’t want a straight veggie smoothie. I add about a quarter of a grated frozen lemon to my hot water and fill my tea thermos with water and add a tea bag.
I watch emails and read a book while eating breakfast and drinking hot lemon water. I am not in a hurry to get to work. I had a major project to get done and put in long hours all week until about 4:00 yesterday when I checked out of the office to begin winding down and getting refreshed for my Friday work day.
I also take a moment to log the name and brief summaries of books I have read to see if I am on pace. I am reading and sometimes listening to 52 books this year, or at least that is the goal. I love to read and learn, and go to the world the author is offering. It’s like this insatiable appetite sometimes and I am taking this empty nester opportunity to make that commitment. I follow Gates and his 52 books a year effort on Twitter to keep up and sometimes choose a book he recommends. I am a 3rd of the way through book #17 which is to be finished this week. I feel pretty good that I am close. I have had to put in some strategy to choosing the books to reach the number and am not going to allow that to reduce the worthiness of doing so. I do have standards. This book is by Stephen King, “Sleeping Beauties”. A good friend recommended because of my interest in understanding gender equality and effort to further gender equality in my little world. The length is not going to keep me from adding it to my list. However, I did a search for books that could be listened to within 3 hours to help me use my drive time when traveling for work, house cleaning, and yard work time to get through value added books. “Tuesdays with Morrie” has been the highlight of that search. Another book was an hour long poem about a young lady’s thoughts about the poor treatment of girls and women by men in their lives. The third was a great zombie book, and only zombie book ever for me, on racism from the viewpoint of a teenage child of a racist, and the desire of the child to not be a racist but to also behave in a manner to make the father proud “by faking racism” but doing it enough that it becomes real and very hurtful not fake. I also discover the teenager is a girl at the end of the book, not a boy which I had assumed. I loved that part being a female aware of biases and make the same biased assumption I am trying to avoid.
I begin to head to work at 9:30 however I can’t find the IKEA packet with the case number to send to T. so I call him. The packet is on the refrigerator. I text him the case number and phone number.
I leave, drop off a check to pay M., who mows the lawns of our rental properties. I am delighted to see the street crew finishing up the sidewalks in front of three of our rental properties. And, they are concrete. The real deal. The walks were promised long ago and T. finally built enough of a relationship with someone to get it done. He talked with two people within the past month that he stated were really good conversations about getting permits to tear down a rental that was damaged beyond good financial sense repair by a fire. He spoke with someone about the walks and those same people were involved with getting the sidewalks done. I am appreciative of the walks and note the good positive decision to not tweet about the train horns.
I head downtown, drop mail in the mailbox, and park at the office. I walk across the street and recognize the Marine license plate and walk into the branch to hug my Mom and say hi, and then walk to my office.
I text my daughter and congratulate her for making it to Friday. She replies excitedly with everything printed and almost organized. It’s not quite 9:00 her time and she has been working hard to get all of her work done for school.
I get through my 10:00 meeting with a vendor. Their behavior reminded me of a conversation we just had in the office about our job is to listen to what our clients need and help them rather than talk about us. The vendor kept talking about what they could do without asking about our challenges. I even politely responded twice opening the door but they kept going back to their sales pitch. The ironic part is they have a solution that we need to be considering and we didn’t even talk about it because they kept rambling on about other solutions. I cut them off in the end unintentionally. We were on a webex and I called in using my phone. I closed the webex and it hung up the phone. Haha.
I had a few people walk in for help, and called or emailed teammates to talk through emails from yesterday afternoon. I was able to get through most of it before I headed to a noon lunch. I am a treasurer of a local non-profit and I meet with executive director a couple times a month to talk about immediate challenges, goal reaching strategies, and today included the budget. We met at the Caffeinery. It’s close for both of us, it’s a good atmosphere for talking, and I like to try their Buddha bowl lunch offerings occasionally which they change frequently, maybe daily. I head back to the office for a 1:00 meeting which was rescheduled. That gives me the time to check on everyone and finish up work I need to get done before a 3:30 meeting. I don’t normally have all these meetings. We finish up the meeting and I head back to my office to get through a few more things.
I leave about 5:15 and head to the library which closes at 6. I ask the librarian if I can re-check the Stephen King book and am delighted that I can. I will get to read this weekend. I search and check-out our book club book. I am looking forward to this book too, a non-fiction, “Devil in the White City” which is about murder, magic and madness at the World’s Fair of 1893. On my drive home, V. calls to tell me our garage is open and T.’s truck isn’t there. But, the semi is there and he’s driving that today. She is the mother of a high school friend and lives near. She watches out for us and we do the same for her. I get home about 6 and spend a few minutes vacuuming and cleaning our house, or rather our small apartment. T. arrives and we go to Lahody’s to get some meat for the weekend. We see a friend who works there and agree to meet at Savages Sunday evening for dinner. We then go to Payless to get a bottle of wine, organic smoothie power greens, and a pineapple. We see our insurance guy and he says, “I should have brought the paper work with me.” He waited for me to come to his office until 5:15 but I didn’t stop by nor did I know he was waiting. Ah, the miscommunication. We go to the liquor store to get Yuengling. It’s surprisingly cheaper at the liquor store than Payless. The convenience of having all these places on the road and less than 10 minutes from our house. That’s a big deal given we moved downtown and Marsh closed all the stores in the city. We lived in a food desert and had to drive 20 minutes from downtown to get to a full grocery store. We pack clothes to head to the farm for the weekend and decide to leave the cat, R., inside the house for the weekend. Ra., our dog goes with us. I will have my niece neighbor let Rafael out and back in if needed.
We arrive at the farm and we stay in a living area we built within the barn. It’s not quite finished but close. The important things are done, bathroom, bed, laundry, kitchen appliances, sink, and table. We need to get the flooring and cabinets in place. We talk about the cost to finish the flooring and consider moving that up in the priority list. We are also renovating an old farm house but it’s not going to be done for another 6 weeks or so. T. lights the grill and we begin making dinner. We consider building a fire to spend the evening outside but decide not to. We finish eating and cleaning up and walk across the farm to the old farmhouse. The moon is big and bright and makes a beautiful night time sky. T. wanted me to see the progress and talk through the next decisions we need to make, finalizing our decision on paint colors, flooring, and lighting fixtures. The drywall is going up and should be completely done by end of the week.
We walk back to the barn and go to bed. T. goes right to sleep, of course. I leave the lights dimmed and use my cell phone light to read Sleeping Beauties. I have no idea the time when I go to sleep, the luxury of the weekend and the plan to be at the farm all weekend, but probably not too late.