Category — Mental Sampler

About twelve years ago, I wrote about an electrician who brought his twins out to the house when he came out one night to fix the electricity in the house because he understood the night light situation. The four kids had an impromptu play date while their dad got our lights working.

We saw them from time to time over the years through the town baseball league, but we lost touch because they went to different schools.

We had a loose light switch toggle a few weeks ago, which felt like a fire hazard. We called two electricians — and the same guy was able to come out over the weekend. We got to hear an update about the kids, and it’s so funny to think about that random pyjamas-clad play date between the kids and how life turned out.

Sometimes, it’s nice to have a loose light switch toggle and get to hear the next part of the story.

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I learned about the musical Ride the Cyclone because our friend’s child sang a piece from it for a competition. I had never heard of it, despite it having a recent run nearby.

I listened to “The Ballad of Jane Doe” one time, and I found it stuck in my head. And a day later, I started listening to the album from the beginning to see if I would like the rest. And I quickly became obsessed with this show. Which is odd because musical theater is meant to be seen on the stage, but I was consuming it solely as a cast recording, having to imagine how it would look if it played out in front of me.

Have you heard it? And if not, start here:

Isn’t that haunting?

Apologies if it now gets stuck in your head, too.

If you are looking for a good show, we finished Bodkin on Netflix a few weeks ago. It was kind of all over the place, but I liked it a lot. And the Obamas produced it, which was kind of weird because it was a lighthearted murder mystery. Next up: excited to see The Perfect Couple.

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Note to self: Do not attempt to “fix” things when you are in the middle of doing other things. A case in point: I was heading into colonoscopy prep when I decided it was the perfect time to try to mend a tear in my iPad cover. I would just hot glue the tear closed and enjoy a repaired iPad cover after the procedure.

But hot glue didn’t work. Not a problem — I’ll just switch to superglue. The superglue also did not work, and I got it on the tips of four fingers. It wouldn’t come off. Then my alarm sounded to let me know that it was time to start the medication, and I had to go into prep with a broken iPad cover and fingers coated in a very uncomfortable film of dried superglue.

Tape held the whole thing together for a night, and we ordered an $8 case that is absolute perfection. So… yeah… this is more a note to myself to not start those DIY projects when I have other things on my plate.

To start this post, I checked the last time I did this type of post, and could not stop laughing at how much that Melissa still didn’t know what coming down the lane.

The last time I wrote a mental sampler post, the pandemic was a little under a year old. That Melissa didn’t realize that this Melissa would still be living an upside down life.

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Thank you for the birthday wishes on here and on social media. It is emotional to have people pop up and acknowledge your life. Because that’s sort of what saying “happy birthday” is, right? It’s someone saying, “Hey, you were born. And I’m happy about that.”

The festivities started over a week ago with cake, ice cream, and a paper crown made by my nieces and nephews. And we’re keeping the celebration going through next winter because big birthdays should be celebrated in a big way.

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We watched the movie Freud’s Last Session, based on the stage production and currently up on Netflix. It imagines a conversation three weeks before Freud’s death between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis.

Midway through the movie, we realized everyone kept referring to C.S. Lewis — Clive Staples Lewis — as “Jack.” We paused to Google it and learned that C.S. Lewis went by Jack for most of his life.

When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage, the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life.

File this under something I learned this year.

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My friend plays Connections in his head, determines all the groupings, and then tries to begin with the purple one. This is the opposite of how I play, which is more of a nail-biting approach of elimination when I allow the purple category to fall into place by default. I am so impressed with people’s brains.

The last time I wrote a mental sampler post, the pandemic was a little under a year old. That Melissa didn’t realize that this Melissa would still be living an upside down life.

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I was looking out the window when A FOX TROTTED ACROSS MY LAWN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. It ran as if it was on the way to run an errand, not too quick but with a purpose. And I shrieked mid-sentence (I was talking to the ChickieNob and Josh), “I love you!” at the fox, and then ran out of the room to try to see it out of the back windows.

It was up there as one of the top five most thrilling moments of my life. The twins say this fact is sad, and I probably shouldn’t share it. But you didn’t see this fox. It was gorgeous.

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For the first time ever, I was delivered an ad that I actually wanted to click. It was for a “how to” tutorial on cleaning your guinea pig’s grease gland. Is there an easier way than a bath? I clicked.

I wonder if they looked at that click in the metrics board and wondered about me. Who was this person who didn’t know how to clean their guinea pig’s grease gland? Who was this person who was so moved in the middle of the day that she clicked to learn their step-by-step process? I’m that woman, Oxbow. Me. I’m that woman.

I was equally fascinated by their social team’s UTM tagging for the link. If only we could meet and discuss and answer each other’s questions. And talk about guinea pig grease glands.

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ChickieNob and I started watching HBO’s Julia, and we adored it from the first episode. They captured her awesomeness and her sadness and her sweetness and her brilliance. It’s such a good hour of television.

Last week, I was wearing very old jeans while cleaning animal enclosures. I bent down to give a cavy’s head a scratch, and the cavy trotted away. I stood up, and as I was turning, the ChickieNob commented that the cavy changed his mind and wanted the head scratch afterall. I quickly squatted back down, cooing at the cavy, when I heard the soft swoosh of ripping material. I split open the thigh of my jeans.

I had to finish cleaning the enclosures with a gaping hole in my jeans, just south of my crotch. The silver lining of animals being unable to speak (and no humans besides the twins around) is that I didn’t need to hear all about my pasty thigh.

Unfortunately, the material is too thin to repair easily. Goodbye, jeans, you served me well. I mean, up until that last trip into the world.

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Josh and I are small town connoisseurs. I introduced him years ago to my favourite activity of driving around and exploring random towns—the smaller the better.

We found a great one a few years ago with a population under 600 people. It’s right on the water, with a more populated town across the river. It has three restaurants, a bookstore, a museum, and a few tchotchke shops. Plus, it has a fantastic public park with benches overlooking a rocky boat launch.

We’ve gone twice this fall to read outside, and it’s great because we only see a handful of people as we drive in and out. We call ahead to the bookstores and have them set aside books to pick up so we don’t have to spend a lot of time indoors, or get prepackaged ice cream containers to go from the ice cream shop. It’s getting too cold to do this many more times, but it’s nice to be able to go out a bit after a summer in the house.

Turning down random roads and finding tiny towns sometimes pays off.

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The school made us choose whether we’re sending the twins back if they test out a hybrid method in January. I wish they sent the survey to the twins—they’re affected by the choice just as much as we are—so we sat down with each kid to fill it out together.

It’s all a moot point. The case numbers aren’t low enough to start the hybrid option, and if the case numbers truly drop and stay low, they’ll likely reopen school for everyone. But, right now, we’re staying home.

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Most cookbooks have a handful of recipes I want, so it is an awesome thing when I find a cookbook where I want to try 70 – 80% of the recipes. I checked José Andrés’s Vegetables Unleashed from the library, and promptly purchased a copy the next day. (Okay, I sent Josh to Politics and Prose to pick it up, but you know what I mean.) I haven’t been this excited about a cookbook in a long time. It’s mostly vegetarian (though not exclusively) and sometimes even vegan. And everything looks so good.