Do you ever have one of those days where you think back and say “what the heck did I even get accomplished today?” — that is what today feels like.
Esteban had a bad night’s sleep and gave up on lying down at 3:30 am to go sit on the couch and watch YouTube videos of dudes refurbishing antique tools (which I have to admit are very soothing and captivating), so I let Ole come up and sleep the rest of the night with me, an invitation that he was thrilled to accept. We’ve had two days in a row with getting interrupted midway through the night and I rescind his bed eviction now, which is a bad trend, but also we haven’t had any potty regressions either, so maybe he’s acclimating a little. One would hope. However I would desperately enjoy sleeping an entire night without a 3:30 am interruption.
I slept a little late and by the time I took the dogs outside to do their constitutionals, the sun was well and truly up, and apparently it is getting down to business with desert summer heat. This is the first real day that the sun feels a bit aggressive instead of delightful — to the point where my fluffy white bathrobe was actually a little confining and my feet felt sweaty inside my slippers. All this before 9 am — not a good sign. I checked the weather and yes, we were scheduled to hit 90 today, so I decided to revert to my Vegas summer wardrobe plan of short-sleeve shirt and a skort. However, what I thought was my favorite skort — a flippy tennis-inspired affair with bike shorts with pockets under the skirt — was actually some kind of lesser imposter, whose short was made of inferior fabric that was both too short and wanted to roll up into my nethers. I lasted the whole of three hours with the offending skort on and then I ditched it for yoga pants again. Then in the process of changing, somehow I put my thumb through the fabric of my t-shirt, so this morning I managed to reduce an entire outfit of separates into basically stuff destined for the rag box.
I had an hour-long student appointment, and also made a strawberry smoothie for breakfast/lunch. I accidentally made it way too sweet by throwing a scoop of lemon curd in there, forgetting that I was using sweetened vanilla yogurt as well, so it tasted like letting a kid make Kool-Aid the old-fashioned way and I felt wired for most of the morning.
The biggest time suck has been the Marco Polo app — I realized today that I probably spent an hour going back and forth with friends, but at the same time, it makes me stupidly happy to see their faces so I’m not giving it up even though I hate looking at myself while I talk to them. Plus, quarantine hair, don’t care (but I do, really). I also chatted with my school bestie Linds again — she has flipflopped her schedule by accident and hadn’t yet gone to bed, so it was a weird “Are we at a Rave right now?” conversation, between her sleep deprivation and my buzzed out smoothie brain. Boy, for being in lockdown, I sure am socializing more than I usually do.
Esteban made a batch of lasagne to help support some friends of ours who are a cop/nurse couple. He whipped up two loaves of homemade bread and I improvised a blueberry/blackberry crisp from some of the frozen fruit I had purchased for smoothies (and learned that while I like blueberries and blackberries a great deal as fresh fruit, blueberries make smoothies too gelatinous for me, and blackberries put little surprise seeds in there). I don’t use a recipe for my crisps, which is definitely a problem, because this batch of crisp topping basically disappeared, which meant there wasn’t enough flour in it. Just the same, eh, it’s basically fruit, sugar, flour and butter — still delicious if not ready for a magazine cover. I made up two care packages of lasagne, a loaf of bread, and a batch of blue/black crisp and when Esteban was done with work, we went off on a social distancing drop off.
I got to see Amanda at her door, which was so nice despite being ten feet away and unable to give her a hug. And she said she was guilty because we went through the trouble (we live on the opposite side of the metro area from them) but also lasagna is her husband’s favorite meal, so she couldn’t bring herself to tell us not to bother. Honestly, I’m delighted that the food isn’t going to waste and besides, our freezers are literally packed to the gills right now so it’s not like we could have packaged it up and froze the leftovers. Plus, as good as Esteban’s lasagne is, I can only eat it for three meals in a row before I start to flag.
We dropped the other dinner angel package with Linds, and then headed homeward, but Esteban suggested we do takeout, since he was thrilled to be out of the house and he wasn’t looking forward to going back so soon. We were headed in the direction of, in my opinion, one of the best Italian restaurants off-Strip, so I suggested their fantastic chicken francese. He also noted that we were perilously low on flavored coffee syrups, and we were near the Smart and Final where I generally procure them. I agreed — it felt like a good time to try it, since the parking lot looked fairly empty. Again, I spotted many shoppers who weren’t wearing masks, but this time Esteban went inside and unfortunately, came up pretty empty for our preferred flavors, but he found some interesting non-objectionable ones, so that will be fun to try.
By the time we got home and ate our procured takeout (mmm, so delicious), I was beat, but I am so irritated that I missed updating the blog on Monday because of the stupid formatting morass with the dissertation that I have hauled myself to the keyboard like the stubborn bitch I am.
In other news, I’m participating in a literary reading via Zoom on Friday night at 7 pm PST/9 pm CST/ 10 pm EST. If you care to join, here are the details. I have no idea what I’m reading yet, but I think I’m reading something from my dissertation. That would make sense, yes?
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/99622130257?pwd=UEpsS0JJRmFkSE5RWmtxbUlTdlNjdz09
Meeting ID: 996 2213 0257
Password: 004925
