Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Not surprisingly, I’m tired.

Near the end of April, we flew to Tenerife North Airport in the Canary Islands, spending just over a week at a resort in Puerto de la Cruz. It was fabulous and I have some lovely photos to share here… but not today.

The day after we returned, we had ten yards of mulch delivered shortly before we left to see Cats. On principle, I immediately grabbed a couple buckets, so I could say I had started it on it the same day it arrived. One of our neighbors immediately popped out to offer a loan of his wheelbarrow, because our neighbors are awesome that way. I assured him I had one, and sure enough, by the time he stepped out for his newspaper the next morning, I had made a significant dent in the pile using our garden cart. By the following Sunday – Mother’s Day in the United States – the pile was down to about half of its original size.

The remainder of the 10 yards of mulch that was delivered - slightly over half of it is left.

And that’s about where it’s still at today. We spent a good chunk of Mother’s Day helping out in someone else’s garden – enough that even with sunscreen and a hat, my face was a bit pink in a photo taken the following evening. The fact that I wasn’t near home for that photo added to my tiredness – I flew out Monday morning to attend a conference in Washington, DC, and flew back Wednesday afternoon. Alas, there was no time to be a tourist on this trip, unlike last year’s visit for the same conference, and the conference was just as full an experience as it was last year, ranging from breakfast hours to team dinners.

I took this morning “off” to recover – which really just means I didn’t launch straight into early morning mulching again, opting instead to deal with unpacking and laundry. And since my weather app says it’s 94 degrees Fahrenheit outside (the forecast was for 88 with some rain, and it hasn’t rained), I will certainly not be moving mulch this evening. Especially since I am still, not surprisingly, tired.

The Paramount Theatre presents Cats: Le Cirque du Chat

I was surprised when the Paramount Theatre announced that Cats was in this Broadway season; Cats was part of the first Paramount season we subscribed to (2014-15?), and we’ve been season ticket holders since then. In fact, it was the first show of the season and the smoke effects set off the fire alarm that fall afternoon. The decision made more sense once they announced that it was a different interpretation – the classic music from Cats combined with a Cirque du Soleil style presentation created “Le Cirque du Chat.”

Cats playbill image, featuring the silhouette of a person with cat ears and a tail balanced in an acrobatic pose on a ring hanging above many other cat shapes and the word "Cats"

Your typical Cats performers are already more flexible than the average person, with assorted flips and balancing acts across the stage stretching the imagination as to the trouble cats can get into. Le Cirque du Chat adds gravity-defying acrobatics to the mix, with various characters twisting precariously above the stage, sometimes cavorting in pairs in displays of both trust and skill.

This is, of course, in addition to the singing and dancing on the stage; it is, after all, a Broadway show. As always, the Paramount shines in their selection of talented cast members; this would have been a fabulous show even without the circus re-imagining. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend seeing this distinctive rendition of Cats at the Paramount.

Melting! Melting! It’s how old?

There was, alas, a casualty from the power outage I mentioned last week. The following Monday, we realized that the large freezer in the garage, which came with the house, was clearing experiencing a meltdown. Not a minor one of the “oops, I left the door cracked open” variety which causes a build-up of ice… the previous build up (from one of those incidents) was clearly melting over the entire contents of the freezer.

An inside view of a large freezer with one shelf encased in ice

At a pause in the mad scramble to squish the contents of a larger freezer into a smaller – and not empty – one, I paused to Google the freezer model, on the off chance that it might be reparable. I haven’t located the serial number, so I don’t know the exact age… according to the search results, the Sears Coldspot freezer model was replaced by Kenmore in 1976.

Needless to say, I was flabbergasted, and have progressed from wondering at its sudden demise to appreciating the quality and extended lifespan of this freezer. We will certainly miss it.

I didn’t realize the power was out.

I realize, even in the United States, this is a privilege. But even this privilege has quirks.

You may recall that we had solar panels installed last summer, including a backup battery. (I did incorrectly say we weren’t pushing power back into the grid.) On Saturday morning, as I lay in bed cuddling the cats and scrolling my social media feed, I heard the power go out, and immediately kick back in. As is customary when our power flickers noticeably, our 2.4 GHz network dropped, sending a notification from our thermostat app that it couldn’t communicate with the thermostat. (The thermostat and printer only work on the 2.4 GHz network; almost everything else runs on the 5 GHz.) When I eventually got up, I knew I’d need to reset it through the admin portal.

When I did get up, my first responsibility was to feed the cats. This is where I noticed things being weird – one of the lights in the kitchen weren’t working, others were fainter than usual, and on one, two of the three bulbs weren’t lit. I wondered what sort of power outage would knock out some – but not all – of the light bulbs. This was before caffeine and it didn’t click yet that the power was still out.

While taking my morning shower, the water pressure dropped. That worried me – the well circuit was supposed to be on the battery, so why hadn’t it come back on? (Noting that the circuits were supposed to be accurately labeled shortly after I bought the house; now I’m fairly sure the “well” circuit is actually the water softener’s outlet.) After my shower, I scrambled to check the circuit breaker and the reset by the well. You may recall I gained some experience with our water pressure about a year and a half ago, when a pipe rusted through on Christmas Day. All I was sure of at that point was that the water pressure was really low, and it was way too early to call anyone to help troubleshoot it.

The display on the solar battery, showing a green power light and a blue electrical plug or something similar.

Eventually, I looked at our solar battery and realized that the blue icon I was seeing was not its normal display. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find anything online explaining what the different icons are. That display combined with having to manually light the gas stove are what made me realize that our power was still out and the solar battery was working as designed.

I made myself a micro breakfast to minimize water usage – I had water in the kettle from Friday and grabbed a snack bar. About twenty minutes after I finished, the power kicked back on with all the normal beeps and clicks that come with a power flicker. Including the need to reset the 2.4 GHz network again.

Spring 2025: fruit trees!

Shrubs, bushes, trees… whatever. We thought it would be wise to grow more food in our garden, so in addition to the vegetable beds (which we are not currently planning to expand), we added several fruit-producing, well, twigs at the moment. Except the peach, that is almost as tall as me, and we have an American plum that just arrived today that is taller (and not pictured, since it’s not in the ground yet).

A blueberry surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
The other blueberry, also surrounded by leftover bits of a holiday tree.
A hazelnut tree
The other hazelnut tree
A peach tree, with the mulberry tree behind it.
A shrubbery! Wintergreen, to be specific, with a fingerful of pink berries.
A red currant bush

The holiday tree remnants around some of the twigs are to increase the acidity of the soil… yes, we deliberately saved pieces when we discarded the tree in January. Where there are two of something – hazelnut and blueberries – it’s because that’s needed for cross-pollination; otherwise, we’d just have a couple sad bushes with no fruit. And now we return to the bit where gardening is built on hope… and patience.

Tiny Art: Weaving on a toothpick loom

What the hell was I thinking?

Tiny sculpture of a woman (made from black foamy stuff) with white hair (also foamy stuff) weaving on a toothpick supported loom, supported by a tiny brown (painted) post.

When I started the sculpture for this year’s Tiny Art Exhibit at the local library, my intention was to use some of the clay to make something that looked like weaving. As I started assembling the pieces, I changed my mind – the instructions said we could use other materials besides the ones provided, which in this case were white and black foam clay, and tan (normal?) air-drying clay. I’ve never worked with the foam stuff before, it was weirdly poofy, and I didn’t think I could replicate a weaving pattern with it. Shaping a human-ish body was difficult enough.

‘Ah-ha!’ I thought. ‘I have toothpicks and embroidery thread! And I did take like two weaving lessons in middle school.’

I was already committed to this plan before I remember that my weaving lessons involved the actual weaving rather than setting up the warp to work on. And my goodness, toothpicks are tiny. Setting up the warp was a bit aggravating, the weaving less so once I found a rhythm to it. Since my intended title was “Weaving her next story,” I knew when I started that I didn’t need to fill the entirety of the warp, just enough to show some color variations… you know, show that it’s actual weaving.

I love how this turned out and have dropped it at the library already. That said, I do not recommend weaving on a toothpick loom… pick a large template.

Temperature Blanket update

47 days of a temperature blanket - 3 rows of 15 squares, all connected, and 2 squares separated from the rest.

45 (connected) days in, I effectively have a usable shawl as I work on my temperature blanket.

I’m actually 47 days into it, but as you can see in the photos, 2 of those squares aren’t connected to the rest. I connect each square to the previous day when I finish it, and when I complete a row of 15, I connect it to the other rows.

You may be wondering why a couple of the squares have more than one color. I decided at the beginning that I wanted the blanket to reflect where I was – rather than my home address – for each day. The multi-color squares reflect the highs for travel days, where there was a difference between my starting and ending locations, with the added bonus that one of them ended up with my university’s colors. Specifically, those are for our trip to Florida for a cruise at the beginning of March. I suspect travel in winter or summer will have less temperature variance than our spring trip did.

Margaritaville at Sea Paradise

We recently flew to Florida for a short vacation, spending a couple nights in Palm Beach and a couple more on a cruise ship, Margaritaville at Sea’s Paradise. It was refreshing to step away from the early spring weather in Illinois weather for a few days, digging out shorts and sandals that sit unused for half the year in our climate.

The layout and size of the Paradise was similar to the Alaska cruise from last summer, which made orienting ourselves on the ship fairly simple. We had an inside cabin again, and as luck would have it, it was at the end of a hall and the three cabins around it were being renovated… no neighbors!

A photo of me, still carrying my purse and backpack shortly after boarding the ship, in front of a trio of palm tree and sky photos with these lyrics split across the three: "Nibblin' on sponge cake, watchin' the sun bake, wasted away again in Margaritaville."

Given the name of the cruise line, there was no real surprise at the extensive Jimmy Buffett music, vibe, and decorations to the ship and its events. One of the drink packages (not sure which one, as I didn’t buy into it) had blender-shaped cups! There were parrots outlined on our sheets, painted on some of the ship’s walls, and a parrot on a directional sign near one of the pools, among many others.

The theme just about made up for the terrible website interface, lack of an app, and what felt like imperfect communication efforts – largely due to the poor website and no app. (The contrast was stark given last summer’s Alaska cruise.) The shore excursion information in particular was barren, including enough information to entice a purchase (with a 10% discount for booking ahead), but missing key details such as the departure time – we had to stop at the Shore Excursions desk after boarding to get that. Alternately, it would presumably have been on the tickets delivered to our room’s mailbox with the daily newsletter around bedtime… except our guided sea kayaking excursion (and a couple other options) were cancelled due to high winds. More annoying, from my perspective, was the lack of disembarkation information on the website; it made selecting our return flight difficult since we didn’t know what time we’d be getting off the ship. In fact, we didn’t receive that information until around bedtime on the second night. (Yes, we probably could have asked at the Information Desk. But we shouldn’t have to, it’s as important as the embarkation details.)

A sunrise photo on the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise, displaying the stylized name with parrots and palm trees near the top of the ship. A railing is visible with a glimpse of the stairs down to the next level.

That said, the overall experience was good. The food and entertainment were top notch, particularly the live show we attended on the second night, which was a non-stop 45-minute musical tour of the Carribean. While my nighttime photos weren’t great, the clear sky and visible constellations were a lovely experience. And our alternate to the cancelled kayaking turned out to be a relaxing day at a delightful location. If we land on another Margaritaville cruise in the future, I would lean towards their longer cruises (4 or 10 nights) instead of hopping down to Florida for the two-night cruise.

Taking the week off….

Have a cat photo. Because who doesn’t need a cat photo during a dumpster fire period of history? Also because Arwen is adorable when she’s napping.

Arwen, curled up on the entry way bench, partially under a fleece blanket with a space design.

Coming soon… our recent trip to Florida and the Bahamas, and seeing how travel and Midwest spring weather has affected my temperature blanket.

Frankenstuffies!

A white teddy bear with red Xs and pink Os wearing a read bow with pink hearts. In place of one arm, there is a multi-colored wing.

This is Calvin. Calvin’s transmogrifier experience did not go quite the way he expected, resulting in his current bear shape with one dragon(?) wing.

Calvin is a “Frankenstuffie,” a result of a recurring event in Capricon’s makerspace using donations of damaged stuffed animals. By the time I arrived midway through the event, the rest of the winged creature was divided between two other Frankenstuffies. Coincidentally, the only damage to this bear was one missing arm – which was actually in the tub next to him – so replacing it with the (conveniently correct side) wing seemed both logical and absurd.

The naming of plush – like cats – is usually a difficult matter, but I happened to attend a Cheshire Moon concert that evening, which included a performance of Calvin’s Girl, inspiring an easy and obvious choice for the name.

Have you ever made a Frankenstuffie?