Day Whatever of Whatever

My three days off are winding to a close. At 8:30 PM I have to pick up my son from work (at a grocery store, “essential employee.”) It’s still possible that I could be sound asleep by 10:00 PM, though my sleep schedule has become erratic during these days off. This morning, though, I woke up at 7:25 AM and stayed awake, knowing that tomorrow I’d need to be awake at 5 AM.

It’s like Daylight Savings Time beginning all over again in my body.

Yesterday I completed a sorting-purging-organizing task which involved old handwritten letters. Letters are a time capsule that I’m glad I have. I tossed the ones written by friends I could no longer remember (yikes) and relatives who are dead or dead to me. (I kept some. I’m not a complete monster.) My old letters are some of my most treasured belongings.

Last night I watched ‘The Sixth Sense” for the first time. I’ve been catching up on old movies.

Today my intention was to relax because yesterday’s task took way too many hours and I was tired. I woke up early-ish and went for a hike (seeing so many people outside exercising with their families) and then to the farmer’s market for some produce. I showered and carefully dried and straightened my hair so I won’t have to do it again for three days. (The hair, not the shower. I’m not a savage.)

Then I took my daughter and her two pet rats to the vet for their free Humane Society adoption checkup. This is “essential” according to the government (apparently).

Because of social-distancing, we had to call from the parking lot and the vet tech came out and took the box of rats inside for their examination. Maybe fifteen minutes later, she came back out . . . minus the rat box. My heart sank a little. What was wrong with the rats? They’d seemed so healthy.

She explained sheepishly that one of the rats slipped out of their hands and hid in a tiny opening between the cabinet and the wall and they’d been trying without success to lure it back out. (They had no idea the little space existed between the wall and cabinet.) She apologized and told us they’d keep trying.

Fifteen minutes later, she came back out again. The new plan was to remove the cabinet from the wall where it is attached. The boss was coming. She said we should go and they’d call when they retrieved the rat.

An hour (two?) later, she called and said they were unsuccessful and that they intended to set a humane trap to capture the rat. My daughter headed off to pick up the one rat while the sister rat was left at the vet until tomorrow.

So, that’s took up a good hour of my Day to Relax.

I stopped by the grocery store to get trash bags and ingredients for some fancy-schmancy chocolate chip cookies I plan to bake. There were no crowds or chaos, just some empty shelves. (Still no pasta and very little flour.)

When I got home one of my sons was making himself a late lunch before he headed off to work delivering pizzas (“essential employee”). I sat watching him and chatting and got out the bread machine that I’ve never used since we’ve lived here. I’m not even sure it’s my old bread machine. I think I got rid of the old one in Washington and bought a new one at a thrift store here.

Anyway, as I was lugging a 25-pound bag of bread flour (only slightly past its “Use By” date of 11/2019) into the kitchen, something crashed. I thought for a moment that I’d tipped something off the bread machine shelf.

Then I looked over and saw shards of glass beneath the pantry door.

I opened the pantry and saw this:

My son had warned me yesterday that a wire shelf on my pantry shelf was unstable. I pooh-poohed it but today he was proven correct.

A giant bottle of barbecue sauce mingled with sliced olives, whole pickles and maybe more sliced olives. If you’ve ever had to clean up a glass shards mixed with liquids, you know. You know.

The clean up took another hour. (Two?)

I finally got my bread ingredients into the machine.

I gave up my plan to mix up those fancy chocolate chip cookies.

I began cooking dinner (chicken curry and coconut quinoa, yum).

Thus, my Day of Relax ends. Wow, I feel so refreshed.