Today is the first day of [meteorological] summer. I’m delighted. I love summer. I’ll also get to use this delight again on June 20, the astronomical first day of summer this year.
I also received my first StitchFix in over a year. I was delighted to see they sell NYDJ* and signed up for a Fix just because of that (and because I like surprises). I also bought a pair of NYDJ jeans and a pair of ballet slipper shoes last month. I’m sending everything except the jeans and a comfortable bra. All the clothes were adorable, just not on me.
*Funny story: I’ve been wearing NYDJ jeans for a few years. The style fit me perfectly and didn’t have a low rise. Because I’ve been wearing them daily for over two years, they are kind of falling apart. I went to the store where I bought one pair and they didn’t have that style. I went to another store and same story. Turns out that style has been discontinued. In the second store the conversation went like this:
Me: Hi, do you still sell these jeans, pointing at my leg. The brand is New York something. DJ???
Salesclerk: Not Your Daughter’s Jeans?
Me: No, New York something jeans.
Salesclerk: NYDJ?
Me: Yes. New York DJ
Salesclerk: Yes, Not Your Daughter’s Jeans
Me: Ha! And here I thought they were fancy New York designer jeans. That’s embarrassing.
Salesclerk: No problem. And we don’t have any right now. Maybe later in the summer.
I am quite the procrastinator when it comes to calling anyone on the phone. This includes calling for services such as repair. If there is an option to chat or email, I will take that any day. This week I made the commitment to contact people about various repairs. Yesterday’s connection with the Bosch people gave me the courage to contact other companies about repairs
The Floor
In the last few weeks we’ve noticed an ever-widening gap between a few of our tiles in our kitchen. I noticed a small gap months ago, but Dean didn’t think it was a problem. Now it is a problem since the gap is a quarter-inch wide. We first considered fixing it ourselves; it only required us to remove the wooden transition trim between the dining room and kitchen and push the tiles inward towards the gap. This didn’t work because the smallest of the tiles are attached to the floor with some sort of adhesive. (The tiles have a tongue and groove and are not supposed to be stuck to the floor, but in this case it was necessary because they were tiny parts of the tiles.)
Anyway I contacted the first company (family-owned since 1923) on the list of recommended dealers for this particular product and the man who answered the phone was very nice and promised stop by the next day, a Thursday. He didn’t show up (or call). I called again on Wednesday because he’d mentioned he was tied up through Monday and he promised to stop by on Thursday. He didn’t show up (or call). I called him on Monday and left a message saying that if he was not planning on helping us out, just call and tell us and we’d move on. He never called back.
I looked at the list of dealers again and found another company that seemed promising (“family and friends” was part of the name). This time I emailed with the exact issue, a photo, and a plea to let us know if they were not able to help us since I’d already been ghosted by another company. These folks immediately returned my email, empathizing with me about the no-show/no-call company and saying they’d discuss it and get back to me with a time they could come fix it. Needless to say I was relived and delighted with that response.
Outdoor Furniture
As you may recall, we bought a teak outdoor dining set in the middle of winter. Dean put the set together in the dark on a freezing night just before a snowfall. In hindsight I think waiting until daytime and warmer weather might have been more practical. Anyway, I’ve been applying a teak protector on the furniture to keep it a honey-brown and noticed that some of the chairs were not put together well — in fact some of the chairs were missing dowels. I mentioned this to Dean, hoping he’d kept some of the hardware, but he hadn’t and instructed me to go to the hardware store to buy some.
I decided to try the company from whom we’d purchased the furniture (chatting this time) and within a few minutes was told that they’d send dowels to us at no charge. I guess we did spend a pretty penny on the furniture and it is under lifetime warranty, so I should not be surprised. But I was delighted nonetheless.
Weather
The temperature this afternoon made it into the upper 70s. Glorious! Delightful! This Carolina wren agreed with me.
I still have it
I’ve not thought about, much less worked on anything related to accessibility since the day I retired. I unsubscribed from my favorite accessibility email list and uninstalled all accessibility software from my computer. I found that thinking about it created anxiety and I didn’t want any more anxiety thank-you-very-much.
Then last week Clare asked me to help out with a PDF for her second job. Since I was converting a word file to PDF file I figured I would make it accessible too. That felt good.
This week she asked me to check the website for her second job and see what needed to be done to make it accessible (its a non-profit organization, but still should be accessible). So today I spent a few hours looking at it with my long-neglected accessibility perspective and sent the results to Clare.
It felt good to know that I still knew what I was doing. I’d gotten caught up on the fact that I was not the best in my field at work and the competition there was uncomfortable, thus my decision to retire early. But with something like this, I am the most knowledgeable person at the table (between Clare and myself and maybe the people who she works with) and I feel my confidence coming back. Which is a delightful feeling.
I think this covid shit has finally worn me down. I’ve not been visited by many delights — or maybe I have and I have not recognized them. I’ve been sad and angry many of these days, although there have been a few bright spots.
In no particular order some contenders for delights:
Andrew and Alex joined us for Superbowl Sunday and a chili dinner (and a Zoom chat with Alex’s folks)
I’ve had some nice chats with Clare
We met with some friendly folks from a landscaping company about our backyard.
We’d planned on walking to the NIH wetlands/pond today because it was delightfully sunny with a high in the high 50s but I decided to take a more doable walk around the neighborhood on my own instead.
I am glad I did. I didn’t walk far, a few blocks and back, but I did it at my own pace and took some photos along the way.
I also ran into two neighbors and had brief, yet delightful, chats with both.
Getting out and seeing people make me happy so why do I dread it so?
Another delight was fireside Moscow mules made with my home-brewed ginger beer.
Labor Day has often been problematic for me. It usually meant I was either a student or teacher who was returning to school the next day or had recently returned to school. I never much liked school — it had other people there and other people scared me most of my life. More recently, September meant spend-down and many of the projects on which I worked put off accessibility until they knew they had leftover money that they had to spend before the end of the fiscal year. It was a VERY busy month.
This year I had no school to return to nor a potentially busy month, so the day was not much different than any other day, making it, if not delightful, not dreadful.
Husband went kayaking for most of the day again, so the house was, again, mine for several hours. I spent it cleaning out my dresser which does not sound like a delightful task, but it ended up being just that. Without discarding any of my clothes, I will no longer have to swap winter/summer clothes again because I organized all my dresser clothes in my dresser + the empty drawer under my side of the bed. The closet is next!
Other delights today:
It was a delightful day, weather-wise
Clare’s being published (more on that later — it deserves its own post)
I didn’t get much accomplished today, cleaned a couple of shelves in the fridge, enough to make room for groceries we needed. I did organize my Feedly feeds though, so now it will be easier for me to read blogs I follow. I also read and commented on a few entries. I thought for sure I’d be full of enthusiasm about organizing something real, like a cupboard or drawer. Instead, I pretty much lazed around.
Today’s runner-up delight was brought to us by a former hurricane named Laura. RAIN! The plants needed to be watered and Laura’s remnants did that for us. I only wish she’d not been so destructive before she watered my plants.
Today’s main delight is a vinca vine that found its way through a tiny crevice around the basement window above Dean’s desk. It’s about two feet long now and, against the white wall, lovely.
I imagine that if our house were abandoned, all sorts of vines would come in through various crevices in the walls.
When I'm Sixty-four 