Day in the Life of an Idiot

Yesterday was, as previously reported, a day full of adulting. Shawn was on the phone or email all day with nearly everyone rearranging and rescheduling,, etc.

But, we got it all done. 

In the middle of all this, our handyman called to remind us that he had this week on his calendar to finally replace the fence on the south side of our house. This was a fence that we got... secondhand, from Shawn's brother Greg. Greg, I should note, has literally sold us cars that turned out to be total lemons in the past, so why we accepted a USED fence from him, I'm not entirely certain. I do remember that we had a problem delineating our property when we first moved in, because the people who owned our house also owned the house next door (to the south). I suspect we were in a hurry, hoping to discourage all the wandering over from the tenants of that 5-plex into our gardens and garage. This, I remember as my first "get off my lawn" moments as a homeowner. Not my finest.  At any rate, the second the used fence was installed it began rot. So this thing has been moldering on its posts for literal decades. Replacing it is long overdue. Thus, despite the fact that we were exhausted from all the schedule futzing, we agreed that this Friday was a fine time to finally tackle the fence.

Shawn, naturally, tapped out (as we call surrendering decision making to the other partner) on this. This is perfectly reasonable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I am the one at home who will be doing all the coordinating with deliveries of supplies, arrivals of handypersons, and the like. But our guy, Rob, really is just a handyman. He is not super interested in being a contractor who does all the getting of supplies and organizing deliveries or even purchasing the screws, if he thinks you've got what he needs or are willing to do it for him (and save yourself his labor costs.)

We are  definitely for that last bit. This fence is irritating enough already, and so the idea of it costing more than is absolutely necessary is beyond the Pale.

This morning, I took myself over to Menards and ordered and paid for the fence panels, posts, deck screws and even the "bagster" for all the detritus.  We obviously need to get the heavy panels delivered (I do not have a truck--I know, my lesbian cred is low). So, after buying what I needed, I headed over to the delivery department.

I will say that I felt like I was watching a sitcom at the delivery desk at the Midway Menards.

It was some kind of combination of "The Office" and "Brooklyn 99." There was the overly friendly guy who really wanted to comment on the t-shirt I was wearing who CLEARLY thought that his coworkers were his Very Best Friends, though it was clear to me the jury was still out on that one as far as they were concerned. Overly Friendly Guy was the kind of guy who called his colleagues, "the boss" affectionately, but the co-worker merely rolled his eyes and said to me (as though speaking to the camera in "The Office,") "I am what they call a peon. I do all the work of the boss, but shoulder twice the blame." This being real life, I was able to respond to Peon, "Yeah, I hear you. That was always my role at all the jobs I've worked too." This earned me Peon's one and only genuine smile of the entire 25 minutes.

The comedy was that Overly Friendly Guy could not do anything without help from Peon and Hanger-On--whose name tag read "Dom," which... I understood to be short for "Dominic" but one's mind being what it is, made the whole thing funnier to me. I think, too, I might not have gone straight to the other kind of dom, had not Hanger-On/Dom's ears instantly perked up when I noted that I had a wife. He then IMMEDIATELY found a way to contrive to drop "his partner" into the conversation. We shared looks and smirks going forward.

I can't even accurately describe the whole thing because it was so surreally like wandering into a sit-com set. I am reasonably assured, however, that we eventually got my fence panels set for delivery.

I came home and ate the leftover half of a Jimmy John's sub (I had treated Shawn to lunch out yesterday since we were both so frazzled and, at that point, she still had dozens of more calls to make.)  Along with the sub, I broke into the yellow beets and made a yellow beet and apple salad from the Saint Paul Farmers Market Cookbook. 





Given all the help I received ID'd this mystery plant, I thought you all might be pleased with the report that the golden beets are, indeed, golden beets and very delicious!

 The weekend kicked off with... well, not a bang, more of a STAB. 

Before I start this story, Shawn is okay, No stitches were even needed.

On Friday nights it is the tradition at chez Roundhouse to have pizza and movie night. When Mason is off at school this is often date night. But, even when we're all together, I will either make pizza (my family really loves the deep dish I make in our cast iron pans) or we order in. When it's just us, Shawn and I will watch a movie together, but when Mason is home we tend to go off and parallel play--each watching our own things. 

( Not graphic, but still medical.... )

Even though it always feels like forever, we were only there three hours. Not bad for a Friday night! Mason, being the kind of trouper he is, had the house cleaned up and ready for us to just come home and collapse in a heap. 

Saturday we did a very truncated version of our alliterative errands: coffee, cardboard, and cardamom. For those of you just tuning in, Saint Paul provides recycling, but is very picky about only picking up "what fits in the containers." So, we have simply started reserving our cardboard so that we can take it to the citywide recycling center on Saturday mornings. Since the recycling center is near where I like to get coffee, we started this whole coffee, cardboard thing. Once we had two "c"s as part of our errand list, we now insist that anything else we do on Saturday mornings start with a c.  Cardamom is, like coffee, not really an errand, but there is a lovely bakery on West 7th that makes amazing cardamom spinners, so either when we have a lot going on (or, like this last Saturday, NEED A F*CKING TREAT) we will stop at Brake Bread (so-called because it is a kind of drive-up window.) 

Saturday night we had a lovely backyard get together with the set of friends who make us feel Very Grown-up. Do you have friends like this? Like, there's something about this set of couples that is just like Hollywood's idea of hanging out with adults is supposed to be like? There's always this food starting on their big kitchen island that migrates out to this picturesque backyard, with LITERAL fireflies, and bottles of wine.... we love hanging out with them because it makes us feel cool (and they're good company, of course!) 

Sunday we had planned to make the food of Shawn's people, fleischkuekle.  This is an ALL DAY affair. We spend several hours assembling these meat pockets/pierogi and then several hours deep-fat frying them. If you count shopping for the ingredients as part of the process (which I do!) we started at 10 am and ended at 7:30 pm. 

On the other hand, we make literal HUNDREDS of these things.


Image: A small portion of the finished, fried fleischkuekle

How was your weekend? 100% less ER trips, I hope!

 So, there's been some major development in the story of the cat formerly known as "Clover."  Let me see if I can recount all of the goings on...

Last Friday night, Shawn was still combing through the various "lost cat" sites on Facebook and came across a listing on a place called PawBoost. There was a picture of a cat in cage with a litter of kittens with the text that read: "Como neighborhood, last seen at Beacon and Shields..." Even though most people call our neighborhood Midway or, more precisely, Union Park, Beacon and Shields is the cross street that is literally on the southwest corner of our block. The post then went on to describe a cat who was two years old (small for her size,) all black, polydactyl, and recently pregnant, who had been lost by the name of Six.

It was that last bit that really struck me.

When we first approached Clover/Six, I noticed really distended nipples, but it was one of those "huh, look at that" thoughts that I kind of filed away, since there was no thought in my mind that this cat could possibly be old enough to have already had a litter of kittens. And, to be fair to me, at the moment, we were not considering whether or not we would keep her, just what we would do to get her out of our backyard and away from all the gentleman attention.

The post was very obviously the cat we have in our house. If not, the possibility was very strong. We'd already paid for a bunch of vet tests, including having checked for a microchip, but, no regrets, because we could not have brought her in off the porch if she had not been tested for feline leukemia, worms, fleas, or anything else she could spread to our two kitties. Shawn contacted the poster immediately. They only provided an email, no phone, but Shawn dropped a very happy, excited message saying, "Hey, we're pretty sure we've picked up your cat. Contact us!" She left my phone number, her email, and let them know that we were happy to keep her safe, warm, and fed until they got back to us.

It's been three days and silence. 

Shawn has left increasingly concerned emails. 

Still nothing.

We would just continue to act as foster parents, EXCEPT.

As pameladean predicted, our female cat is having NONE of this upstart in the house. When we tried to introduce the cats, even after several days of exchanging rooms for sniffs, there was a lot of hissing and Clover/Six ended up hiding in the basement. We've had a situation where we had a basement cat in the past and that's really no way for a cat to have to live. 

When we first posted about having found Clover/Probably Six, there was a woman in the neighborhood who put out a "Whelp, if no one wants her, I'd take her..." plea. She was worried about communicable diseases, but we have since resolved that issue for her. Since we don't want Clover/Six have to stay isolated forever, Shawn reached out to that person and said, "Hey, the situation is now a LOT more complicated, including the fact that this cat might actually belong to someone, are you still interested?" with the assumption that this person would come back and say, "What? No way." But... turns out she is still interested. 

We left a final message with Six's people and basically said, "We are rehoming the cat we found." 

We don't know what else to do. Given that a lot of people on the PawBoost site gave Six's owners crap for not having spayed her at two years old, it is possible that they left the site and closed accounts in order not to get harassing messages. With that thought in mind, we did put up actual, handmade signs at Shield's and Beacon with all out contact info. Six's people left no phone number on the site, however, so if our emails aren't getting through, it's possible they are still desperately looking for Six. We did make sure we updated our own separate Facebook neighborhood posts and have asked the online community to help us try to find Six's people. 

But there's also only so much a person can do. It seems as though even if Six's people are still looking, they're not desperate enough to return to their original post or check that in-box. This has been tearing us up, but the thing I keep telling myself is that we have not only done our due-diligence, but we have been honest and forthright to everyone involved. This person who is thinking about taking Clover knows that it's possible that this cat is actually someone else's, she knows that we think the cat might be pregnant, and we're going to give her all the medical stuff we were given about Clover/Six, including a final deworming med. We are out of options for reaching out to Six's people. I mean, we could continue to wait, but if this cat could have a happier time in someone else's home, I don't see why we should deny Clover/Six that opportunity.

Ugh, it's so fucking hard to adult.

Image: Clover/Six, a black cat, hanging out on a comfy bright green blanket.

 I'm trying a new crockpot recipe  I have varying success with crockpot things, but I wanted to have something going that would not require me to heat up the kitchen too much later this evening.  I had some skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts in the freezer (they were on sale) and so I found a kind of spicy Italian recipe that would only require me to make some spaghetti later to serve this over. I have no idea if it will be any good, but it's worth a try.

Shawn is home today. She woke up not feeling great--her tummy was bothering her, but just looking at her, I suspect a migraine is coming.  Unfortunately, as she's gotten older, she's been getting new symptoms for her migraines and upset stomach is now one of them.  So much for all those reports that claimed that, as she aged, migraines might become less severe. :-(

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for Mason to wake up so that I can take him off for his second driver's lesson.  We tried out a parking lot yesterday. He did actually very well, considering it was his first real time. The first few stops were panicked and jerky, but by the time we were done, he was getting the hang of a smooth stop. Turning was still a little baffling for him, until I took the wheel for a while and realized that part of the problem was that the wheel needs a certain amount of acceleration in order to turn itself back to true.  

I think that's been the most challenging part of teaching Mason so far. I have not had to articulate the mechanics of driving... ever, and there are so many things that, after decades of driving, I do completely unconsciously.  So, it's been a struggle to use all my words, as it were. Shawn found me a lovely parent guided course on-line, which has had some good ideas for how much we should try to cover in a single day.  https://www.teendriversource.org/learning-to-drive/practice-driving-lessons

The other big thing we did for Mason yesterday was get him a teen checking account. He now has his own debit card.  He'll have the ability to check his own statements on-line, etc. Shawn found him a check register, so he can keep track of his finances the old fashioned way, too.  

We are doing our best to get our teen ready for adulting, as the kids say.

I'm really glad we're starting some of this stuff now, when he'll still have plenty of time at home to work out any kinks, as it were.  Plus, I'm hoping that it will ease some of the natural desire for independence at this age. He'll have a good deal of freedom and discretion when it comes to his own money, and, eventually, he'll have the physical freedom to take the car to places.  

Oh, that reminds me. I'd better call our insurance company and get him added to our policy.  That'll be... expensive.