June 2023 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

Exercising indoors in the summer

One of the joys of summer is being outside, whether it’s gardening or visiting the zoo or having a picnic with friends. Some of that is outdoor exercise – in my case, mulching or walking through the neighborhood, which are both easier to do in the summer. So far, this summer has been a little different. First we had a couple warm, dry weeks, where we avoided going outside after the early morning because of the heat. Now we have air quality concerns in Chicagoland because of smoke blowing down from wildfires in Canada: the last three days have had an air quality index over 200 (the annual average is 23). I’m a huge fan of breathing, so I’ve been staying indoors as much as possible.

The remains of my mulch pile sits on the driveway, waiting for that number to drop. My Pokémon Go mileage has dropped, though not all the way to zero because I do have some indoor options that involve the right type of movement for my tracker. Those are options I usually reserve for colder weather: Beat Saber on my Oculus, using the treadmill or elliptical (which help my Pokémon Go mileage), or a Centr.com workout. They’re all valid options year round, but I hate to waste good weather by being indoors.

That said, I know I have to move; I know from experience that sitting all day for work causes my muscles to tighten up, and the pain from that is comparable to the hip pain that sent me for an MRI earlier this year. I need to stick to low impact exercises, which still means doing some kind of exercise. And I know there are many unexplored options online still that would serve me indoors.

Cooking like a pirate

When you learn to cook, you typically follow recipes – whether in writing or instructions from someone else – usually as precisely as possible. I recall a kids’ cookbook growing up that included basic recipes for things like scrambled eggs and grilled cheese sandwiches, and I do mean basic: bread, American cheese slices, and butter (for the outside of the bread). As I grew more comfortable with each recipe, I began to alter it. The American cheese became a combination of cheeses (typically Havarti and Pepper Jack), I stopped buttering the outside of the bread, and began adding vegetables or even sandwich meat. Yes, you could argue that it then becomes an “[insert sandwich meat] sandwich” instead of a “grilled cheese sandwich,” but the important part isn’t the name… it’s the fact that I enjoy eating it.

Rice buried under sauteed shrimp, asparagus, and a yellow bell pepper, garnished with feta cheese and a sliced lemon-stuff olive. The olive is only there because we haven't found any other way we like that particular stuffing option.

Now, when I find a new recipe, I treat it more like the pirate’s code in Pirates of the Caribbean: “the [pirate’s] code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.” This shrimp bowl, for example, is very loosely based on a shrimp bowl recipe from Centr. (To be fair, I have made their recipe as written.) Theirs is almost certainly healthier, deliberately balancing the appropriate carbs, greens, and protein. My approach was more cobbled together with ingredients currently available in the house, including leftover rice. Thus the recipe became simply guidelines.

Ultimately, my goal when cooking is to make something we enjoy eating and that we have the ingredients for. Not every meal has to be a fancy attempt to follow a recipe precisely; it’s more important to have a fairly balanced meal that can be assembled in a short period of time.

Well, that’s not good…

When I was in high school, my father attended the curriculum night every year, meeting my teachers and getting an overview of what I would be studying that year. My last year there, I signed up for the Introduction to Poetry to class. I’ll be honest, I’ve never enjoyed analyzing poetry, but the teacher, Mr. Dan Bowden, only taught that and AP English. Mr. Bowden was a distinctive figure at my school, popping his head into our English class to ask a question, then reciting from whatever Shakespearean play we happened to be reading at the time, or stepping into the auditorium and joining the girls’ gym class for a minute or two as we attempted aerobics. After two years at the school, I knew I wanted to take a class with him before graduating.

My father, as I mentioned before, had a degree in English Language and Literature. It was still a bit of a surprise when he handed me a book of poetry the next morning with a page marked to show to Mr. Bowden. The brief poem was Lord Finchley by Hilaire Belloc, who seems to have been a fascinating character, and reads as such:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

Water near the base of our new water softener, a black cylinder next to our blue water tank. And, of course, a cat - Arwen - checking on the situation.

While I am by no means wealthy, I have kept this poem in mind mainly in the last decade as I’ve navigated home improvements and repairs. And so this morning, when I walked into the garage and found water emerging from the newly installed water softener, I immediately rushed to fix it. And by fix it, I mean call the water softener company to repair it… you did just read Lord Finchley, didn’t you?

While there are some projects I’ll handle inside the house, I have a strict rule about not messing with any appliances that integrate with the utilities: water, natural gas, or electricity, and the water softener touches two of those. For now, I have a towel down in case it leaks again – it appears to be related to when it cycles, which is about once a week. The towel is dry enough that Zuko sat on it for a while.

An overdue mulching

I never got around to refreshing my mulch last year; my last mulch delivery was in May 2021 (as mentioned here). It looked great at the time, but mulch gradually decomposes (that’s kind of the point) and needs to be replaced. I had another 8 cubic yards of mulch delivered last weekend and, while I’m definitely making a dent, between my hip issues and air quality concerns (due to wildfires in Canada), I’m having to take it a little slower than last time. Admittedly, I’ve had the mulch for less than a week at this point; this is what it looked like Saturday afternoon, after filling just one bucket:

Sunday morning, I switched to using a wagon to haul mulch to a few spots in the backyard. I could tell I had made a dent on the pile when I headed in for a shower and work on Monday:

8 yards of mulch minus a chunk a couple days after delivery

I’m deliberately not cleaning up the scattered mulch that I missed while shoveling; it gives me an idea of how much progress I’ve made. Of course, so do the results, like our herb garden out front after I finished placing mulch Wednesday morning:

fresh mulch around the star-shaped herb garden

I’m mostly done with the front at this point, leaving some sizable areas in the back and along the edges of the house still to do. All in all, it’s good progress.

A new sofa was needed

Creak went the sofa, again, as I sat down on it. Clink when I leaned against it while sitting on the floor. I had found a metal piece on the floor a while back, and only recently noticed another one on the side table. Sitting down on this old sofa – and it was old, a hand-me-down from family with both a scratchy fabric and pattern that made me wonder which decade it was from – was making me nervous. I placed an order for a new sofa online and moved the old sofa, then removed the cushions.

The wooden frame for our old sofa with some detached metal support pieces. And, of course, a cat.

I don’t know a lot about furniture design, but I’m fairly sure the metal supports aren’t supposed to be curling downwards. The pieces we found on the floor were those round bits at the end, which the supports hooked into.

Pieces of the new sofa waiting to be assembled.

The new sofa required some assembly. Honestly, this was a relief, as I was concerned about getting a sofa into the house; taking the old frame out was challenging enough. The packaging was quite clever: box 1 held the base, with all of the vacuum-packed cushions, the back support pieces, and the legs tucked inside the base itself; box 2 held the essentially armrests. The legs screwed in with simple twisting, and all of the other pieces simply slid together.

The assembled new sofa featuring, of course, a cat.

The sofa was, of course, cat-tested (and approved) immediately. Actually, there was some cat testing during assembly, but I was too busy to get those photos.