Blue-Footed Musings

• One evening we decided to go to my favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner, but it was closed when we got there. As in permanently closed. Apparently the owner hadn’t bothered to pay his taxes and the government seized the property. Wow. Fortunately Google was able to point us to another Mexican restaurant in the area. The food there was fantastic. The restaurant itself was far too busy and loud for my tastes, so I doubt we’ll ever eat there again, but I would totally get take-out. In the same general area there were some other restaurants that looked interesting. We may have give those a try someday, too.
• At work the new schedule finally came out. My part of the schedule was little changed except that I’d lost some time previously allotted to documentation. The final project assigned to me was still slated to end in September. Meanwhile, several other people’s schedules had been extended into 2027. I wasn’t sure if I could read anything into that, but for a moment I got a little teary-eyed thinking that it might really be the end. I sent an e-mail to my boss asking if I ought to be concerned, and I later found out that one of my coworkers had done exactly the same thing at the same time (her schedule ended in November). We were both told that our schedules would be extended soon. Whew.
• It doesn’t take much to make me smile or laugh these days. It could be anything from the sight of violets in yard to a video of Obama and Mamdami singing to children. Still, if I’m honest, there don’t seem to be enough smiles to make up for all the awful crap going on in the world.

Livia and her friend were supposed to get together last week to bake a cake, but their plans fell through. I invited Livia to bake with me instead, and she said yes. We decided to try Vóvó’s recipe for biscoitos. Vóvó had given the recipe to me over the phone some time ago. She just called me up one day out of the blue and told me to grab a pen. She said she knew that she wouldn’t be around forever, and she wanted to make sure we had her recipe.

I was never certain I’d gotten the quantities right, so I didn’t know how well the recipe would work. At first we followed the recipe exactly, but we started tweaking it along the way. We found that the oven temperature was too high, the cooking time too long, and the dough a little too dry. We adjusted the temperature and timing, and for the last batch we added more milk.

The end result was a perfect biscoito, just the way Vóvó used to make them. And in tweaking the recipe we’d adhered to Vóvó’s own philosophy. She told me repeatedly that adjustments might be needed. As she put it, “We have to learn these things for ourselves.” She had the best attitude about cooking.

Vóvó doesn’t bake anymore. She is very old now, and her mind wanders. She is not the person that she used to be, and that makes me sad, but it helps to know that her recipe, her cooking philosophy, and her love will always be with us. I just wish she could know that we’d tried her recipe, because I think it would make her happy.

I’ve had several MRIs in the past, including one of my head, so I knew it was confining, but my recent shoulder MRI was the worst. They bundled up my arm to immobilize it, then they added padding on my other side to immobilize me. I am not claustrophobic, but being wedged in there like that was almost enough to make me so. They’d asked what music I wanted to listen to through the headphones. I said, “Classic rock or pop.” What I got was a bad collection of 80s metal. Fortunately I could barely hear it over the MRI’s racket.

I won’t know what the MRI revealed until my follow-up with the doctor, which is scheduled for this coming Friday. In the meantime I’ve been thinking about how I might respond to whatever she tells me. Months ago, I felt I’d probably get surgery if it were an option. Now I’m less sure, because my shoulder has been feeling better. I think that’s due to weeks of propping my arm on a pillow while sleeping and being careful about how I move it while awake. I don’t baby the shoulder per se, but I don’t go out of my way to exercise it, and I try to avoid movements that I know will aggravate it. Every once in a while I’ll walk my hand up the wall, just to make sure I still can, and I don’t shy away from tasks that involve lifting and carrying, because those typically don’t cause any pain. Now my shoulder doesn’t hurt nearly as much. I’ve also regained some range of motion. Hooray!

That said, it’s certainly not fixed. I vacuumed the living room yesterday and that did hurt. So the biggest question is, can I live with the way my arm is now? Another major question is, can I find a way to exercise it that won’t cause another flare-up? I’ll need to build up my arm muscles if I don’t want to face more trouble down the road, so that’s an important consideration.

Marshall is home! He spent his April vacation in Spain and Portugal. I am proud of him for going, but I am even more relieved that he’s back.

• Yesterday I went looking in the yard for violets, and I found about a dozen open flowers. That means I missed the first of the year (oops!), but it couldn’t have popped too long ago. Today, only one day later, there are already at least three dozen open flowers. The thing about violets is, once they get going, it’s like bam! VIOLETS EVERYWHERE.
• If I were to make a list of all the things I’ve forgotten, screwed up, or failed to understand lately, it would be rather lengthy and perhaps a bit alarming. I haven’t been entirely with it. Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’ve been stressed. That must account for some of the problem, but all of it? I wonder. There’s not much I can do but keep going and hope for the best, though.

• This morning I had been dreading writing a blurb and dealing with an unrelated issue that required immediate attention. But then both problems were solved for me without my needing to lift a finger. That’s two totally unexpected gifts from the Universe on the same day. Love, love, love that!
• I checked on my 401(k) today, and it was doing fine. That’s good. But I don’t like the way the economy’s looking. While no expert on anything to do with investing, I can read, and all I seem to read about these days is trouble: layoffs, businesses closing, the U.S.’s unsustainable debt, rising oil prices, rising interest rates, farmers facing massive losses, shakiness in the private credit industry, and so forth. I figure that, should it all go south, my 401(k) will recover before I retire, so maybe I don’t need to worry about that right now (and it’s not like I have a ton of money in there anyway, TBH). But what about the shorter term? Are there things I should be worrying about? Things I ought to do to prepare? Something to consider.

In most of my work projects, there is one page for which I must write two single-paragraph blurbs on subjects of my choice. I have to choose the subject early on, because each gets an art spot, which I have to request from another department. But I hate writing the blurbs so much that I put them off for as long as I can. They’re almost always the very last thing I do before handing my projects in.

For years and years, I’ve wished for someone to come along and take this task from me. I’d be willing to pay. No kidding. I’ve even mentioned it in meetings, hoping some other editor might accept the offer. But no. So I’ve had to write them for myself every time.

But now, ironically, my prayers have been answered–by AI! AI could bang out those blurbs in no time. Not only am I allowed to use AI for this task, I’ve been encouraged to. But I can’t do it. To use AI for writing would be to cross an ethical boundary. Darnit.

So, on my latest project, after dragging my feet for as long as I could, I finally, grudgingly wrote the two blurbs and handed the project in. Then, last Friday, just one day before the project was scheduled to go to Typesetting, the art guy contacted me and said, “Art for one of your subjects is not available. Sorry I waited so long to look for it. What should we do now?”

Grrr. The guy had months. Months! If he’d just contacted me a few days earlier, it would have been fine, because I’d postponed it so long myself. And the answer to “What should we do now?” is that I’ll have to choose a different subject and write a new blurb. And I’ll have to do that very quickly, because the thing will be, come Monday, past due.

And I know it’s silly, but I can’t help but feel on some level that the Universe is mocking me with AI and punishing me with this little work snafu, as if it’s saying, “Time to get over your issues with writing.” And the Universe would be right, if that’s the message it were attempting to convey. I don’t appreciate the method of delivery, though. No, I do not.

As I was headed downstairs to get my coffee this morning, I noticed two packages sitting on the front porch. I brought them in, and they were both for me. Hooray!

One was obviously, almost glaringly, a box of Grove soap. I buy soap from Grove because I like the quality, but they make a big deal out of their supposed sustainability, touting it all over the box. It says things like “Earth win,” and “Most sustainable home on the block” (LOL–“most expensive soap on the block” might be more accurate!). I’m a huge fan of sustainability, mind you. I’m just not sure how big an impact I’m making with my choice of soap.

The other package was from Amazon. Having ordered several items from them recently, I couldn’t know exactly what was inside until I opened the package. It turned out to be a keyboard pedal. Yes!

See, last night my keyboard’s sustain pedal died. It had been giving me trouble for years, but last night no amount of prodding or twisting the cable would make it work again. When I pulled the cable out, the plug came apart, apparently broken in some way. I put it back together, tried more prodding and twisting, but nothing worked.

In fairness to the pedal, I should say that it was probably close to 30 years old. I’d certainly gotten my money’s worth. But its demise really sucked, because I can’t play the keyboard without a pedal. If a piece of music doesn’t require any sustain, it’s fine, but when you need the pedal and don’t have one, its absence feels like missing a limb.

So I went to the Amazon website and ordered the first universal pedal they offered, which was from M-AUDIO, a real brand that I knew I could trust. Its arrival today was earlier than expected, before I’d even had the chance to miss having a pedal. It’s already plugged in and good to go. There are a great many terrible things one could say about Amazon, but today they did good.

• The daffodils have started to bloom.
• Yellow is the happiest color.
• I was kind of annoyed when Netflix brought back The West Wing after I’d struggled to watch the entire series on the public library’s decrepit DVDs. If I’d just waited a little longer, I could have streamed it with ease, and I wouldn’t have missed any scenes due to disk damage. <sigh> But there is a pretty big bright side. Having watched the series before the accusations against Timothy Busfield came out, I was able to like (and root for) his character. I doubt I could do that now.
• We got a home heating oil delivery today, and the bill breached the 4-figure level. I’m not going to name any names, but we all know who’s responsible. That’s all I’m going to let myself say. Ranting won’t do anyone any good.

• I often go through periods when my temper seems to be under control. I don’t rise to the bait of people deliberately trying to get under my skin. I am unbothered by the things that normally irritate me. I am forgiving, and I laugh a lot. All seems well. That’s exactly the moment when my temper comes roaring back, as it did today. I am always sorry afterward, and I will do what I can to atone to the person on the receiving end of it, and/or to the Universe. But what I never seem able to do is to either continuously keep up my guard against it or to finally banish the anger at the source of it. I think the anger will always be a part of me, thanks to the way I was raised, and that the anger will always be simmering, thanks to the way the world is going and the feeling of nonstop heartbreak that it causes me. That constant heartbreak makes it so hard to be happy.
• Perhaps related: I woke up to Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “All My Trials” playing on my mental radio. I’m not sure exactly what prompted it. I haven’t heard the song in a long time, perhaps not since childhood. It’s a very sad song, but at least it’s also beautiful.
• I went for a walk on the driveway yesterday. I was surprised to see a few lingering patches of snow. I was also surprised to see that the crocuses had already started blooming. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, though, given that spring had officially begun the day before. The peepers were out a few days ago, too. I bet they love all the rain we’ve been getting. Me not so much, but I am thankful that most of the snow had melted by the time we started getting so much rain.