Our front yard has a mass of cone flowers I planted years ago.
Jordan brought me this bit of cut blooms. I love the color.
Some folks call them echinacea, but I like the simple name.
Somehow, I have displeased
some mechanical gods. They say things break in threes, but I think I have already
gone beyond that. Last night when I turned on the HVAC unit hanging from the ceiling
in my living room, just before I went to sleep, it wouldn’t open its vents. The
power light went on and all that, but no air came out. I finally resorted to
the unit in the bedroom, which is sometimes noisy. I didn’t set it very low,
and I think that helped keep it quiet. Plus the humidity was low—I think high
humidity makes such things work harder. This morning the living room one worked
like a charm. Electronic things sometimes need time out to collect themselves.
But last week, my electric teakettle
quit. Switch wouldn’t turn on. I figured it wasn’t worth repairing, ordered a
new one. The new one is fancy—clear glass, with blue LED lights that match the
lights on my electric corkscrew—and my Blue Willow plates. I took seriously the
instructions which said not to immerse, so I stewed over how to clean a new
pot. Jordan finally rinsed it with hot water and pronounced it ready for use.
So this morning, I filled my two-cup measure and dumped it in the pot. It
worked for two seconds, flicked itself off and refused to do anything else. I
retrieved the box, thinking it would have to go back to Amazon. Jordan came
along, said it was all wet, dried it and let it sit. After a doctor’s
appointment in the late morning, I tried it again, and it worked fine.
But tonight the electric can
opener won’t work. It has to be plugged tightly into the wall—I’ve run into
that before—but just to be sure, Jordan pushed it in. I tried it a few minutes
later and nothing. So tonight I let it sit, unplugged, to collect itself.
Meantime, the touchless
garbage can has been collecting itself for two weeks with no results. When you
run your hand over the opening, the lights come on, but the lid doesn’t open.
When you open it manually you can feel some tension it the lid—it’s not just
limp and dead, but nothing automatic works. I found today that you can order parts,
but I don’t think a new battery pack is what we need. Christian has promised to
take a screwdriver to it so he can get inside to the working parts—or nonworking
as the case may be.
Funny how dependent we get on
these small appliances. I know my mother would scoff.
Not a good day. I don’t have
panic attacks anymore, hardly ever, but I had a brief, mild one today. Jacob
drove me to the podiatrist’s office. I really like him and his wife, who is his
receptionist, assistant, and all good things. But I dislike the handicapped
ramp going into the building. It’s steep and a rough texture. I especially feel
like my walker will get away from me going down the ramp. Jacob was really
good, holding on to the walker, but when we got to the bottom, he started to
walk away while I was still struggling with the change from rough ramp to parking
lot. I got into the parking lot, no more than five feet from the car, and had
that irrational thought: I can’t do this. I called to him, and he, sweet boy,
came instantly, held the walker so I could sit on it. I ended up back peddling
to the far door of his SUV, which was probably much more dangerous than if I’d
walked. When he put out the stool so I could climb in, he said, “I’ve got you,”
and I told him climbing on a stool to swing into an SUV was a piece of cake. It
was that open parking lot. Nobody ever said panic made sense.
That kind of finished my
writing ambition for the day. I took a nap, and Mary came for happy hour.
Jordan was under the weather and didn’t join us, but we had a good visit, though
both of us were a bit boring, confessing that we really didn’t know much new. I
fixed breakfast sandwiches for supper so I could use up the Canadian bacon in
the fridge. I intended to put them on croissants, but Central Market sent me
mini croissants with a sugar coating. Not the stuff of an egg and bacon
sandwich. Luckily, I had English muffins in the freezer.
So tonight, in bits and pieces,
waiting for the Burtons and then after supper, I wrote 500 words. The thing is
when I went back to bed this morning after feeding Sophie, a long, complicated
scene came clear in my mind, and I wanted to capture it. Now I’m hoping it will
stay until tomorrow, when I have, I hope, a clear day of writing, followed by
supper out with friends.
Life is sweet, but a bit complicated
some days.
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