Blue-Footed Musings

• Marshall’s Covid test came back negative, and he can return to school tomorrow. Yay!
• My husband got our well pump replaced today, and for soooooo much less than the price he was quoted the other day (good job, Honey!). Unfortunately the well had to be chlorinated as part of the pump replacement process, and the system must be thoroughly flushed before we can start drinking the water again. So, for now we have to use bottled water. But, on the bright side, we’re ordering out for dinner.

I could forget that it’s 9/11 and make it through the entire day without being sad, if the country would allow me to (it won’t). But, at least the front page of the newspaper is devoted to that old psychic wound and not a new one. That is to say, no news is good news. Or as Gary Gnu used to say, “No gnews is good gnews.”

• I found out today that my new neighbor went to Boston University and graduated two years after I did. It’s not unusual to run into another BU alum (it’s a large school), or even that unusual to meet one who was there at the same time, but it is always nice to find things in common with other people.
• I woke up (and got up) before my alarm went off this morning. That would suggest that I’m adapting to the new morning schedule. But, I neglected to eat until 2:00 in the afternoon, which would suggest that I’m not adapting well.
• I wrote a couple of pages for my novel today. It wasn’t deliberate. It just sort of happened. I noticed that there was a file on my computer called “So-and-so’s death seems a bit sudden and cliche.” The next thing I knew, I was writing a less sudden and (I hope) less cliche death for her. She doesn’t have to die, but she has to leave, because her absence is necessary for the development of another character. Trying out different ways for her to leave is a good writing exercise, whether or not it yields any good writing.

I haven’t been getting any new e-mail from one of my e-mail accounts. My husband says it’s because the e-mail provider has changed servers and my e-mail settings have to be updated accordingly. That makes sense, but can he explain how I am traveling backward in time? Suddenly I’m getting e-mails from 2019, and oh no! The summer camp color run has been canceled! As a traveler from a dark future, I can’t help but laugh at the people of 2019 and their little disappointments. How naive they are, like country bumpkins who have never been to the Big City. Their innocence is unspoiled by any hint of what’s coming for them in 2020, when everything will be cancelled, not just the color run, not just the summer camp, but all the activities and all the social gatherings. Honestly, the summer of 2019 didn’t seem so great when I first experienced it, but it feels different on this second time through–safer, kinder, easier. I almost wish that I could stay, but there’s all that unread e-mail waiting for me in the future….

We bought a Powerball or Megabucks or something like that while we were on vacation, and we still haven’t checked yet to see if we won. To go by past experience, there’s a strong possibility that my husband will bring the ticket to me after it expires and ask me to look up the numbers to see what we would have won. His theory is that we’re winners until proven otherwise, so he’s disinclined to look up the numbers, and sometimes he takes it just a little too far. I don’t think we’ve lost any money this way (except by having purchased the tickets to begin with, of course), because the odds of winning anything are so low. But, having publicly stated that, we absolutely need to check this particular ticket before expires, just to thwart Murphy’s Law.

Update: I actually wrote the above paragraph a while ago, but neglected to publish it. I only remembered it when I spotted a pile of old Powerball tickets among my husband’s things. I checked the 2021 tickets, and the one from VT was a winner (hooray!), though only for $4 and only redeemable in VT, of course. There were, as predicted, several expired tickets. My husband thinks I should look the numbers up, but I’m hesitant, because I don’t want to even think about how I’d feel if there were a big winner among the expired tickets. Lucky for me, the Powerball website is currently down, and since that’s the most reliable site, I can postpone looking the numbers up for now.