Midwinter musings

We are almost halfway through the shortest month. February always seems to go so fast. The weather this past week was quite pleasant -- a few frigid days, but mostly warmish weather, in the 40s and occasionally 50s. Today it's sunny and 45. We've got some cold and snow coming -- Tuesday night, when Teen B of course has a band concert -- it snowed the night of his last band concert, too. But it's fine. It's February. We'll survive.

This has been a strange week, though, for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of illness. Teen A was already sick last weekend and Teen B came down with the illness on Tuesday or so. He came home from school in the middle of the day Wednesday and stayed home Thursday and Friday. He's still sick today, though I'll send him back to school tomorrow. Meanwhile, I haven't gotten sick, but I'm suspicious. I woke up with a little congestion this morning and then developed a headache. Going for a walk seems to have shaken the headache. I'll see how it goes this week.

The other thing that made the week strange was the earthquake in Turkey, or Turkiye, as I think we are supposed to say now. So terrible -- and so far away. But at the same time close, because I'd just been on a Zoom call with some old friends from that part of the world, two weeks before. They're both fine -- they live in western Turkiye, Istanbul and Eskisehir. But the devastation that a large part of the country is facing is so extreme. And then poor Syria, with aid workers not even allowed in to help. And it's so cold, apparently. 

The extent of the devastation has been kind of overwhelming to me. It keeps popping back into my mind and I just can't conceive of it.

So, kind of an odd week. Other than the illness and the terrible stuff on the news, I was productive. I stuck to my schedule pretty well. The house got cleaner -- Teen B even participated a little. The kids are VERY dismissive of the FlyLady and my love for her, making fun of her every time I mention her. This doesn't bother me at all. I know she's easy to make fun of, and I also know that she's changed my life. On Thursday and Friday mornings, after Teen A left for school, I went in my room and made my bed, with Teen B following. "Do you make your bed every day?" he asked me, in horror. "Try to," I said, spreading it up. "That's so weird," he said, helping to straighten out the sheet and blanket. It may be the first time he's ever made a bed, IN HIS LIFE, since he and his brother don't sleep in normally-made beds. They just lie on the fitted sheet and wrap themselves up in cuddly fleece throws. 

I got some writing time in almost every day, and I realized that I am actually making progress on my little novel. I am on Chapter 16 (out of a planned 22-24). I know that I will need to do a lot of revising (mysteries need a very tight plot), but the end of the first draft is in sight. That's very exciting, even though I don't expect to publish the book. We'll see. Maybe I'll self-publish. Not sure if there's really any point in doing that, but it could be fun. Anyway, I'm enjoying the writing process.

After writing (which is from 11 to 12) I'm supposed to exercise, and for the first time in months I got with it. I took a walk on five days out of seven, the best I've done since December, when there was one week with that many walks, and before that October. So I was pleased with myself.

I also buckled down and did a lot of Mechanical Turk work this week (scheduled for 1-2 pm). Some days were better than others, but in general I think it's a terrible way to earn money. I got my first "paycheck" deposited in my bank account on Thursday: $5.56! That's OK, I told myself. I made a $400 payment on my credit card on Friday, and $5 of it was my Mechanical Turk earnings. That's better than zero, which is what I earned most of the previous 150+ weeks. My goal this week is to make at least twice that much, and I have already earned about $8, with three days left. But that $8 represents hours and hours of work! Most of the surveys pay, like, 18 cents. Or 37 cents. Or sometimes 5 cents.

My understanding is that with Mechanical Turk, the pay rate gets better the more you do. There are some tasks that you don't get approved to do until you've completed 100 or 1000 other tasks. I've so far done, I think, 47 tasks. So I'll just keep plodding along for a while.  

One sweet thing: I was telling Rocket Boy about my tiny earnings, and how long it had taken me to earn them, and he said, "Why are you wasting your time on that? You should be working on your novel!" I think that may be the only time in my life someone's implied that my creative writing projects are important. I was quick to remind him that I'm not going to make any money off my little novel, but he held firm: "it's better than that stupid Amazon crap."

I also worked on the taxes for the first couple of days, but once I had Teen B at home, that got harder. By 2 or 3 pm in the afternoon he wanted me to pay attention to HIM, not work on the taxes. So I didn't get much done. But another week starts tomorrow.

I had a good week of cooking, except for Monday, which was a disaster. I made Baked Farro with Lentils, Tomato, and Feta, from the NY Times, and it was terrible. Neither the farro nor the lentils cooked properly (hello, high altitude cooking), there was way too much tomato puree, and the whole thing was awful. We ate a little bit of it and all the rest went in the compost. But the rest of the week was OK: I made a quiche on Tuesday, Red Bean & Rice Bake on Wednesday, and Cheesy Baked Macaroni on Thursday; Friday we had a choice of leftovers from all three dinners. I think the latter two recipes might actually be from Weight Watchers originally -- I used to make so many recipes from WW cookbooks. But they're not terrible. The kids ate them all willingly.

One problem with cooking: Baby Kitty has decided that the warm stovetop is a great place to take a nap! He loves it when there's actually something in the oven, but it stays warm for hours after I turn the oven off, so he stays up there, dozing. This reminds me of the story of my grandmother's wood stove, the one with two warming ovens -- which she sold to a woman with two cats who enjoyed sleeping in warming ovens. 

There is now cat hair in all the drip pans under the burners. And who (other than the fam) will want to eat anything I cook?

I don't know what I'm going to make this week. We were supposed to eat out tonight -- we were supposed to eat out last night, but nobody could come to a decision about where. So I made them sandwiches and ramen, and eating out got pushed to tonight, but we couldn't come to a consensus tonight either. So I had what was left of the leftovers, Teen A had ramen, and Teen B had nothing. He begged me to cook for him, but I wouldn't do it, so he just went to bed. Mad.

I wasn't angry with the kids, really -- I wasn't disregulated so much as fed up. I can't make dinner every night, I just can't. I work so hard to do it six nights out of seven. I dislike it so much, but I do it. But the seventh night -- or in this case the eighth night -- I need a break. You can't just keep pushing yourself forever, you have to have breaks to refuel and recharge.

But of course now I feel bad. Oh well. I guess we'll try again next week. One problem is that there aren't very many restaurants in Boulder anymore, at least not in our price range. So when we're kicking around ideas, nobody really wants to go anywhere.

***

A few days ago I finished The Warmth of Other Suns, the book that was making me so unhappy. It got a little easier to take as I went along, but still I was inordinately relieved to have it over. Then I picked up Michelle Obama's Becoming, which I thought would be totally different, and realized that it's the same story, watered down. She grew up in Chicago. Her grandparents were all part of the Great Migration. She dealt with all the issues discussed in Other Suns. Her book is written for a more general audience, so she is more gentle with that audience, but it's the same story, and I think her book is bothering me more than it would have if I hadn't read Other Suns. In fact, I realize that every book I read from here on out about any aspect of the African-American experience is going to be influenced by my reading of Other Suns. That's quite an achievement for a book.

I'm only 125 pages into Becoming, so I'll be reading it for a few more days, but I am starting to enjoy it. I've always liked Michelle Obama, what I've known of her, and it's fun to learn more about her. I didn't know she was a list-maker like me. I am amused by her struggles to live with her much-less-organized boyfriend-and-later-husband.

So, another week is over, or nearly. In the week ahead, we have Valentine's day and Teen B's concert on Tuesday, my sister's scary heart surgery on Wednesday (and Teen B's orthodontist appointment the same day), and I think that's about it. Rocket Boy sent a box full of chocolate, which we've opened already, but I won't let the twins have any until Tuesday. 

Also this week: perhaps I will finally get a bill from ServPro, who I am less and less happy with. They did finally call on Thursday, and said they were going back down in the crawl space of our rental house to check on the work (that the mold tester criticized). But I didn't hear anything after that. Maybe this week. In the meantime we've learned about several other repairs that we need to make on the house:

1. The entrance to the crawl space is collapsing and should be dug out and redone.
2. The thermostat in the hallway should be replaced.
3. The furnace's cold air return is incorrectly located in the bathroom and should be rerouted to the closest bedroom.
4. The current furnace was incorrectly installed and needs to be taken out and reinstalled properly.

But the first step (I think) is to deal with the mold. And we can't do that until we hear back from ServPro and figure out how much we need to pay them. So I hope I find out this week -- or do I? I don't really have the money to pay them. Maybe it would be better if they'd lay low for another month or so...