Day 176: Sweater Dress

Posted on 09/05/2020 by chick

I am wearing a sweater dress. It is a soft dress, comfortable enough to lounge in, and just the right weight for this cool, fallish night. Wearing real, non-pajama clothes makes me feel almost like a normal person living in a normal world, as if I might at any moment leave the house, like normal people do. But it’s late, and the world isn’t normal anymore. Time to change back into pajamas and go to bed.

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Day 175: Chores Never End

Posted on 09/04/2020 by chick

Every day I do dishes and laundry. If I didn’t, dirty dishes and clothes would pile up all over the place, and we’d have nothing to eat off of and nothing to wear. But, as anyone who has to maintain a living space knows, that’s the bare minimum for household chores. So I try to make myself do at least one extra cleaning chore per day.

Today I dusted the bedroom. It doesn’t sound like much, but though we keep the room sparsely decorated, dusting still requires me to pick up, dust off, and dust under about a billion things, half of which are breakable and/or could damage the furniture if I weren’t careful enough. So I was careful, and now it’s done, and tomorrow I get to vacuum, because chores never end.

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Day 174: Should I Wear Shoes?

Posted on 09/03/2020 by chick

I always page through old magazines before I recycle them. I look for interesting articles that I may have missed, as well as themes and quotes to use for work. As I was looking though the May/June issue of Rhode Island Monthly, I found an article about someone doing a statewide survey of ants.

That reminded me that I had seen a weird ant in my back yard earlier in the year. I had tried to get a picture of it, but the bug moved fast, and it ran away before my camera could focus. But I did capture one shot, albeit a blurry one.

Weird Ant

Alas, I do not have a new ant to contribute to the survey. Though this bug may look like an ant, and though, as it turns out, its common name includes the word “ant,” it’s not an ant. This tricky little thing is most likely a velvet ant, which is actually a type of wasp. By my best guess, it’s a four-spotted velvet ant, and specifically a female (you can tell because the males have wings). These suckers are said to give incredibly painful stings, so I should be thankful that I didn’t step on it barefoot.

Poison ivy in the yard wasn’t enough to make me wear shoes. It just made cautious. Neither were the blister beetles, bees, or bramble. Spurge? Eh. So do you think velvet ants are enough to convince me? It seems unlikely. But yes, I probably should wear shoes!

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Day 173: Thankfully Unread

Posted on 09/02/2020 by chick

I have read most of the Agatha Christie novels that feature Hercule Poirot, but not quite all. Many times over the last few years I’ve thought about finally finishing them off, but somehow I never did. I’m glad I left a few for now. I started last night on Three Act Tragedy, and there are at least four others still unread, sitting in a neat little stack in my office. They give me something to look forward to.

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Day 172: Swearing

Posted on 09/01/2020 by chick

Sometimes when I’m surprised or angry, I say “Fuggernuts!” or “Furganots!” in place of the usual vulgarities. I don’t know where these words came from, but I’ve noticed that I’m using them more often lately. There’s a lot to swear about these days.

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Day 171: Wreck Today

Posted on 08/31/2020 by chick

I couldn’t fall asleep last night, so I was up until 5:30 a.m., and I’m a wreck today. At least I didn’t wake up with any weird dream missions to fulfill, though. Always gotta look on the bright side of things.

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SITY: Today’s Turtle

Posted on 08/30/2020 by chick

I was sitting outside, absorbing a little sun, when suddenly a turtle stepped out onto the driveway. In all the years we’ve lived here, I have never seen a turtle on our property before. I called the rest of the family out to witness this marvel. We all oohed and ahhhed, and I took the turtle’s picture.

Painted Turtle

My husband questioned whether we should take it across the road to the place where there’s usually standing water. I wondered, too, but knowing how bad humans are at figuring out animal wants and needs, I decided to let the turtle find its own way. There were several directions it could have gone to find water, including a route under the road, and that’s the trajectory it was on. I went outside later and it was nowhere to be seen. I hope it found its way home.

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Day 170: Dream Mission

Posted on 08/30/2020 by chick

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but 41% of small business owners who own a dragon have a vacation home in either Alabama or Mississippi. I dreamed about this statistic and awoke with understanding that I needed to share it with the world. I wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet, so I burrowed back into the sheets but told myself not to fall asleep again. I fell back asleep, though, and dreamed again about the 41% of small business owners with their dragons and vacation homes in Alabama and Mississippi. Clearly it was important, so I did not forget, and now I have fulfilled my dream mission of sharing this vital information with the world. Do with it what you will.

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Day 169: Turnaround

Posted on 08/29/2020 by chick

In a strange and sudden turnaround, the school committee voted for all students to start the school year with distance learning. This vote did not affect me, so it made me neither glad nor angry, just surprised. I watched the video of the meeting, because I was curious. I listened to the reasons given, and it seemed that they had acted out of genuine concern for everyone’s health and well-being. Other townspeople were angry, though, and they accused the committee members of lying, among other things.

I am sorry that my fellow townspeople had their choice taken from them. I understand their anger. Still, I wish they would be a little kinder and more understanding toward the school committee. This was a life-or-death decision, and I’m sure it weighed heavily upon the committee members, and still does.

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Day 168: Easy Sailing

Posted on 08/28/2020 by chick

This was a three-deadline week for me. It wore me out. But, having gotten through it, now my work life will be easy sailing for several weeks. I’ll once again have the freedom to work on anything I please and that’s exactly what I need.

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