Most Ordinary in Everyday Ramblings

This probably looks like a perfectly normal mid-sized American city scape. This is right across the street from our main train station and there is something missing. That whole view has been taken up (since 1962) with our central post office and distribution center.

And now it is not.

Our redevelopment agency is working on a plan to use the site but the original deal with developers fell through so now there is another in the works.

Mr. Finch used to walk me to this corner whenever we would get together at his place to catch the bus home the first year, we knew each other, and his beloved car was on the fritz.

It’s one of those places that is ordinary and unremarkable and yet full to bursting with memories when encountered.

And now the view is different. I have moved on. The city is moving on. Change is in the air. I feel that not specifically for me but for many in my orbit this next year is going to be one of change.

I finished the live portion on my Deadlift Club today. (I have one more recorded practice to do.) I want to keep lifting, and my teacher says once a week to keep up the gains. She gave me some ideas for what I can do with the weights I have available at home. But it really would behoove me to go do this at the gym with a barbell. Squeezing that into my schedule has so far flummoxed me these last six months. There always seems to be something else to do.

Like making cookies. I am back at it. We had our monthly Discussion Unit yesterday in the League of Woman Voters and I was running it and so therefore, hostess duties, cookies. I unpacked my prep bowls and made do without my rubber spatula (that is temporarily misplaced) and made the chewy molasses spice recipe I successfully made a few times year before last.

I purchased a new unsulfured molasses, and it changed the taste enough that I was concerned that people wouldn’t enjoy them. They were a little drier and the flavor a bit darker than I remember. So much angst-ing about that ensued.

As I was running the meeting, and we were doing it hybrid with the online folks projected up on the wall and we were tasked with taking photos of us in action for our holiday card I had the opportunity to sit across the table from everyone else and see if they liked the cookies.

There is a great deal of simple pleasure in sitting there watching other people working hard to make democracy work enjoying the fruits of one’s labors. All the cookies were gone by the time I wrapped it up and came home. (Granted, Mrs. Sherlock took four for Mr. Sherlock as we know he liked them in the past.)

As my friend Angel Boy used to say all the time, “she shoots, she scores”. Yay.

Next is hanging out with the old guys and then participating in a board meeting for the other organization that is taking up my time these days.

Sadly, after days of cold clear sun, the rain is returning in the morning and will hang around for days.

I just started reading the 9th in the Christmas Cozy series about an old hotel that is the location where a little Christmas magic happens each year by our own (at least Open Diary’s own, not sure she came over to Prosebox), Forever in Motion. This one is called “Evergreen Wishes at Moonglow”. And she always has cookie exchange recipes in the back. New ideas abound.

Carlo is not a lap cat. This is perfectly understandable because his brother was a lap hog and mostly there wasn’t room for two. He will lean up close to a leg, he always sleeps next to me and if the stars align properly, he might drape himself over my legs for a bit.

Imagine my surprise then when this morning talking to my first student on Zoom, he stepped into my lap and curled up and settled down. It felt a bit like an unexpected blessing from the place where the wild things are.

That’s how I am taking it, at least.

Last updated November 29, 2023