Carol Archives - Page 10 of 18 - Ramblin' with Roger

Roger answers Chris’ questions while on drugs

They managed to even make it into the freezer section of the fridge, where, hopefully, they died horrific deaths.

This is the first blog post attempted since I had my hernia operation. Everything else I’ve posted recently had been written before, partially in anticipation of feeling unfocused now. Well, at the time of this composition, I was home, and still on Hydrocodone. But I couldn’t just watch TV all day. I had to write something. Whether any of it is coherent…

Chris:

Haha! Internet is finally working at my new house.

Congratulations.

– if you could have anything, what would it be? (We just did this as an icebreaker at my foster parent class. I’m curious if you’ll give the same answer I did)

I want to be around long enough for The Daughter to talk about some of the things I wrote about in this blog. And especially things I haven’t written about in this blog, because they’re too personal. (Yes, there are such topics.)

I think I’ve gotten to that point that there aren’t that many THINGS that I want. Oh sure, in some idealized world, I’d still like a place to watch movies, a dark room with cushy seats.

Or is this the question I’m supposed to say “world peace,” which, of course, is true?

– what endearing trait of your wife did you notice in the first year that you still love about her?

Hmm. I think I most was impressed that she owned her own home as a single woman. She was confident and strong and intelligent, and almost certainly more rational than I. Still is.

– do you consider yourself at all handy?

No, not at all; if there are four possible ways to fit something into a space, I’ll come to the right solution no earlier than effort #3, so it’s exhausting. This is why owning a home, in some ways, is such a drag. We were talking about the recent renovation of our bathroom. When you get an estimate for work, it’ll usually end up costing 15% to 25% more. This is why our kitchen, which has needed updating since we moved here, looks pretty much the same.

Well, new flooring, new refrigerator, and dishwasher, but the layout and the cabinet space – it’s still has that same 1970s look.

– what did you consider the best thing about being a new homeowner?

Well, I’ve been here for 15 years. Often, in my renter days, I had to move because of the whims of various homeowners, who wanted to renovate, move in themselves, and/or sell the place.

– if someone made you eat an insect, which insect would you pick to eat?

Fruit flies. They’re small. In fact, I probably already have. We had this rare infestation this summer in the kitchen, and some managed to even make it into the freezer section of the fridge, and the ice cube tray, where, I’m hoping, they died horrific deaths.

My first instinct, though, was a grasshopper, probably a response to watching the TV show Kung Fu, a few decades ago.

– what character have you most identified with that you’ve encountered in the last year? It can be in a book, TV, or a movie

I assume you mean a fictional person when you say “character.” I suppose Scott Lang in the Ant-Man movie, who had the social conscientiousness to do the right thing, more than once.

Matt & Sweat, and derecho anniversary

The Wife went to college in the North Country, and taught school in the midst of the Adirondack mountains.

Once upon a time, I used to complained that The Wife did not follow the news enough, mostly because events I thought were commonly known, she was unaware of. She does pay more attention now, checking out 5 minutes of the NPR news each weekday morning, plus catching news at other times of the day.

There was one recent story for which she definitely took notice, which was two convicted murderers, Richard Matt and David Sweat, breaking out of prison, the Clinton Correctional Facility at Dannemora in (WAY) upstate New York on June 6. Truth is that it would have been very difficult to have avoided, with the local cable news station using special dramatic music frequently while the men were loose.

The prison break ended with Matt being shot and killed, and a few days later, on June 28, Sweat being shot but captured alive. It was such a great soap opera that people were casting characters for what seems to be an inevitable TV movie. Some folks were sad that the situation ended. The Wife was NOT one of those people, and she was a bit bummed that Sweat was brought to Albany Medical Center, only a couple miles from our home, for treatment.

She seemed to relate to the vastness of northern New York. She went to college in the North Country and taught school in the midst of the Adirondack mountains. Part of her interest was her concern for those isolated folks in their homes and summer cabins, some of the latter of which Matt and Sweat did break into.

That said, she was bemused by the saga, which involved one prison employee, Joyce Mitchell, who was apparently romantically involved with one or both of the prisoners, procuring tools for the breakout. Mitchell put them in some ground beef, froze it, and then gave the meat to another prison worker to give to the felons. Both employees have been indicted.

True: the Daughter knows more about this case than either my wife OR myself.
***
I should also note that this is the 20th anniversary of a derecho that started in the Midwest and eventually struck the Adirondacks and Albany. A derecho is “a line of intense, widespread, and fast-moving windstorms and sometimes thunderstorms that moves across a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.” Those 70+ mph winds rattled the windows and woke us both from a sound sleep a little before 7 a.m.

It tore up some trees in nearby Washington Park. But a member of our church had dozens of broken bones when a tree fell on her up in the aforementioned Adirondacks.
***
Happy birthday to my bride. I love you.

The rambling, largely unfocused, sanity report

I have noted that this past winter was tough. The cold. Attending four funerals in the first ten weeks of 2015. One of my library buds leaving work at the end of January. Black History Month stuff. Friends of the Library stuff.

Plus the family sickness chain. The last week in February – the Daughter, the week before her church play. By March 1, she was better, but I felt awful. Yet I had an adult education class to teach, scripture to read during the service, and needed to attend that aforementioned play.

I said, OUT LOUD, that day, “If I didn’t have all these things to do, I would have stayed home.”

So you would think I’d have listened to myself and stayed home the next day; I did not. But I felt so miserable, I left as soon as I could, which was two hours later because the buses out of Corporate frickin’ Woods run infrequently in the middle of the day, then I stayed in bed the next couple days.

Why on earth did I go to work? Because we were shorthanded at work. One of the librarians was on maternity leave for December, January, and most of February, which, I rush to note, is a good thing.

The weekend of my birthday, March 7, I was better, but my Wife was definitely becoming ill. Then the next week, the Daughter.

The week after that, my lungs felt as though they were underwater. I went to the doctor’s and got some meds, but the situation was slow to clear.

I went for a massage several days later, and she pressed my back; the noise from my lungs sounded like the special effects sounds of a horror movie. It was actually quite entertaining to listen to – I wish I had recorded it! – aside from the fact that it was emanating from me. I missed choir for three weeks during Lent – my favorite time of the church year – during which both the Wife and the Daughter got sick AGAIN.

I missed seven workdays in March, five of them sick days, two vacation (one of which involved going to the fourth funeral). Plus, in April, some weird thing was wrong with the Daughter’s foot.

But now it’s May. It’s warm (or hot, or occasionally a bit cool.) We can ride our bikes. Everything is both hunk AND dory. Well, almost. There’s the live bat we found in the house, the first in several years. And the noisy neighbors: after telling them to keep it quiet at 11:30 Sunday nights, I called the cops on them a few hours later when their volume returned.

Work still is a slog. Trying to get done with four librarians what we did with five is difficult.

Almost the whole staff statewide attended the annual training meeting in mid-April, where the librarians talk about things we can do for our colleagues. Every year, this has inevitably meant a spike in the number of questions that come into the library, and it was true again, especially the last three days of April. We had traditionally offered a week’s turnaround time, but we didn’t finish the April questions until May 13.

There’s a part of me that says that I oughtn’t to take time off. But a greater part says that I NEED to. I have a couple of weeks of vacation, and close to six months of unused sick time.

Here’s something that is more than a rumor: we may be moving out of Corporate (frickin’) Woods by the end of the year. One unit on our floor, affiliated with SUNY Albany, is moving in September to a building near Stuyvesant Plaza, which is also close to the campus.

A woman from another unit on our floor, affiliated with SUNY Central, as are we, says that her group is moving somewhere downtown, once parking issues are resolved. I assume the same will be true for us as well, though we’ve heard nothing official.

If we were in downtown Albany again, which we left in May 2006, I would be SO thrilled. Access to restaurants, stores, the post office, my bank. I could attend events, such as the weekly talks of the Friends of the APL. Plus, there’s a Farmers Market every Thursday for at least half the year. In other words, there’s a THERE there.

In the winter, I could take one bus to work, and one bus home, rather than two each way. I’d have the flexibility to take one of at least three buses that would get me home, and I’d get there sooner. Plus both my dentist and my eye doctor are downtown, so when I need an appointment, it’d be a quarter day off, rather than a half-day.

In fact, the ONLY downside is that I’d have to go to Corporate (frickin’) Woods every 28 days for my allergy shots, but I could still get to work by 10:15 if I take the usual two buses to CfW that I take now.

Well, there IS one thing I’d miss if we move downtown. There is always a cadre of new folks coming out to CfW , having difficulty navigating the buses. Having the need to be useful, I’ve helped more than a few people out.

Recently, one of these twentysomethings was texting his 10-year-old nephew and was puzzled by a question he received: “When is a door not a door?” Heck, I knew that, straight off. My daughter would know it. I was glad to help.

You do know the answer, right? “What is ajar?”

Anniversary # four squared

The Wife is NOT the easiest person to shop for.

Some totally random stuff re: My Spouse and Myself:

The first movie we ever saw together was Speed, probably the least representative of the films we generally see together.

Our anniversary is roughly halfway between my birthday and hers.

There are relatively few pictures of us alone together. Quite a few with her and the Daughter, usually taken by me.

Every year around St. Patrick’s Day, she reminds me how she had me cook corned beef for hours, at her house, and then we didn’t even eat it.

I was overwhelmed by her extended family, especially meeting them at the Olin family reunion in 1995. Her mother had seven siblings, so my wife had about 35 first cousins. MY parents had zero siblings, and I have zero first cousins.

She does the REAL cooking, and all of the baking. I do the stuff that you can make with a mix, or things that can be cooked on a stove (eggs, e.g.) or microwave, so I usually do more of the kitchen cleanup. Though, occasionally I’ll make a ton of lasagna.

I suppose the first TV show we watched together was Gilmore Girls. The only thing we watch together now, and only occasionally, is Who Do You Think You Are. Everything else either has been canceled (Boston Public) or we gave up on it (American Idol) or both (Glee).

It’s probably my influence whereby she realizes the value of seeing the movie in the cinema, rather than on DVD.

My favorite place we visited together is probably Niagara Falls. The first time was right after her last class one semester in grad school. I went to a conference, and she went along. The only expenses were her meals and incidentals.

I used to give her a lot of grief about being unaware of current/recent events. That happens far less often, which is one part her being more aware, and one part me being less of a pain about it. She is a WHOLE lot more politically aware than when I met her, and surely is less likely to believe that right usually wins out. Oh, dear, she’s more cynical, and it’s probably my influence.

She is NOT the easiest person to shop for. She doesn’t hint, only makes lists when I beg her to do so.

It still makes me crazy when she moves something from point A to point B, making a need to “put away” stuff at the latter location. It was FINE behind the sofa…

Our single most source of disagreement has to do with lights at night. I like to keep the hall light on downstairs, in case I get up in the middle of the night, because I’m really night blind. She finds even that amount of light problematic. We had the same problem on vacation this spring, with the light in the bathroom on, but with the door closed, was too bright for her and too dark for me. (One of our church choir members recently broke a toe ramming into a dresser in the middle of the night; that could be me!) The solution was a little flashlight that the Daughter has borrowed, and I can’t find anymore.

She continues to be late more often than she’d acknowledge, usually because she squeezes in some last-minute task; I’ve learned to have reading material for such inevitability.

This is strange, even arcane. There’s a couple who got married six months before we did, and another couple who got married six months after us; we went to both weddings. All of the couples are members of our church, but NONE of the couples were members when they got betrothed.
***
Love to you, dear.

The Lydster, Part 133: In someone else’s blog

When the project was just getting started, Lydia would scour the neighborhood to find bottles and cans to bring to school.

On Saturday, March 14, I briefly went to this pancake breakfast, but I had an all-day meeting involving the Albany Public Library to attend, so I needed to leave.

Later, I discovered that my wife and daughter had been interviewed that morning by a College of Saint Rose student named Molly-Kate Webster for a blog in the Times Union.

I found this all mildly amusing because I too have a blog for the TU and I almost NEVER mention them there, mostly out of a sense of their privacy.

Anyway, the story ran a couple of days later in the Pine Hills blog.

A pancake breakfast and garage sale to raise money to build a well in Tanzania, Africa took place Saturday morning at the Pine Hills Elementary School…

Students who began the project came out to support the pancake breakfast. Fifth grader Lydia Green said that she was the first group to work on the well project. Back then the community didn’t know as much as they know now and they are excited about where it is going.

“It is pretty amazing that little kids could raise this much money,” said Carol Green, Lydia’s mom. They enjoyed hot pancakes and Lydia even picked up a play horse from the garage sale.

When the project was just getting started Lydia scoured the neighborhood to find bottles and cans to bring to school, her mom said. If students brought in 10 bottles and cans they received a homework pass. The project teaches kids to learn more about others, she said.

Now, I DID write about the Daughter vigorously collecting bottles last year. But I was not aware of the Tanzania well angle. This puts the homework tradeoff in a whole new light.

Oh, and she really loved that horse, washing, then brushing her mane in the week after she bought it. (It IS a she horse, I am told.)