Category Archives: odds and ends

Down Day

housework, odds and ends, quotes

A nearly sleepless night following an exhausting day yesterday, made for a day where I felt dreadfully slow, and sickly in various ways, and wore my dunce cap all day, too. I lack good judgment when my body is this tired. That is, I can’t think well enough to know how to minimize the bad effects of extreme fatigue, and decision-making is a challenge. Last time this happened to me I went shoe-shopping because I had a birthday discount coupon at my favorite store, and I ended up spending a lot of money on the wrong thing, and could not get it back.

So at least I knew enough not to go to any stores. But I didn’t take a nap, because I thought, “Naps don’t usually work for me.” Now I think it would have been worth a try. I didn’t spend any money online, either, so that was good. I managed to come up with some short comments on other people’s blogs, but I couldn’t write anything long and thoughtful, so as to make progress on my book reviews, for example.

I accomplished about a tenth of what I’d put on my to-do list yesterday. I stayed home and did a little laundry, a little sorting of this and that, and I deadheaded the tea roses. I also picked a couple of rosebuds to add to this bouquet I started yesterday, from some of the things blooming in the yard.

Now I have taken my Benadryl, to make sure that I sleep deeply. I had to take it early, because it takes a good twelve hours to get out of my system. Tomorrow has its own long list of projects and I don’t want to risk another day down. Thank God I can afford to have a surprise slow day and not make a lot of people suffer for what I didn’t do.

If this quote from Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is true, “God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die,” then I will wake up again tomorrow and be delighted to see that my dunce cap is no where to be seen. 

Streets of the Modern Wild West

history, odds and ends, the language

In my neighborhood there is a residential street named Filament. When we were first house-hunting here I thought how humiliating, to have to have one’s address be on “Filament Street.” That is not bad at all, I have now discovered.

How would you like to live on Deny Court? I’m not sure if I’d prefer to live there rather than on, say, Pretentious Way. I’d like it better if it were Denial Ct–that is something I can get my mind around, and most people who live in houses have to be personally familiar with the attitude.

In any case, I’d consider it risky to look for a house to buy, in some of the areas of Greater Sacramento where these and other strange names for streets are found. I might fall in love with a house on Elude Ct., and if it were a bargain, I would feel a lot of pressure to sell my literary soul for it. Do good deals tend to come up more often on streets with names like Image, Essence, Adorn and Agree? Perhaps if the quality for which the street is name is positive, like Esteem Ct. or Acclaim Dr., the houses cost more, not less.

Are the houses on Pretentious Way really so? Or are the people who live in them? Perhaps the residents are only illiterate foreigners. Forgive me, but I really can’t imagine. Many questions present themselves, such as, What sort of qualifications does one need to be a street-namer? I suspect that the naming agency nowadays pulls words out of the dictionary by means of a computer database.

As I think about it, many if not most street names that we are used to are concrete nouns, or common or proper names after plants and people, places or events. When you start having words for intangibles, or verbs and modifiers, it is bucking the sensible tradition and causes confusion in the mind every time you turn into your lane.

I didn’t like it when streets in new developments were called “Mountain Ave” or such like, even though there was no elevation even in sight. But at least we know what a mountain is, and it is a simple concrete and neutral thing.

But to live on Proper or Refined or Benevolent: it does sound as though the street, or the houses– or the people?–are being described. I don’t like that. These are all the true names of real residential streets I am listing!

Streets with number or letter names should be considered more, if they are running out of ideas. The picture is of the road on which my childhood home was located, and it had a number for a name. But this is the age when a lot of people make up new names for their children, and perhaps that is the next thing to look for in street names. It will happen in California.

There are also streets named for general categories. The typical School Street or University Ave usually refer to a specific example that is nearby, but one doesn’t usually run across Savant Drive any more than you would see a street named for houses, students, or cars. We might just as well have a street named Avenue, though I didn’t see that one. I did see Component Way, which goes into the same pocket of my mind as Filament Ct.

This aspect of our culture is so vast and jumbled, I am getting more confused and bored as I ramble on. Let me just say that if have to move to Sacramento, the street I will look on is Clarity Court.

Cubbies and Holes Question

odds and ends

When we were at the furniture refinishing shop the other day the owner showed us this piece that he is currently working on for other customers (who, it turned out, are members of our family!). No one knows what it was designed for. The holes in the bottom of the compartments are too big for shot glasses, and I think too big for egg cups, also. When it was found, some of the cubbyholes had labels attached in front, listing some of the United States. But you will notice there aren’t enough spaces for all 50. 

Does anyone out there have an educated guess as to the intended purpose of this furniture?

A Mystery of Cherries

odds and ends, travel

Two days ago I set out on a journey, perhaps even an expedition. I forgot to bring my camera cable so I can’t start posting my travelogue. Unless…Unless I tell about something that happened before I started taking pictures, something that may not be related to anything else I’ve been doing.

I was not an hour from home, driving through a little rain, twisting and turning on a road that winds along the slopes of a volcanic mountain. Coming around a curve, I spied at a turnout a gallon jar that I am fairly certain was full of maraschino cherries. It was just sitting there neatly upright in the middle of the wide flat area of dirt. Of course my resourceful self said, “Stop! Someone has left a treasure for you.”

That thought was just a flash. There was no way to safely stop, and anyway, I certainly don’t need those confections, even if I could know they weren’t poisoned or something. But for miles and hours I kept returning to those red cherries in my mind, and wondering how their random appearance might eventually tie in to this whole trip. I normally like to see how everything does connect.

It might not be random; I looked that word up, because I rarely use it. Random means “occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.” I don’t know the story behind the event. Did someone have a reason for stopping and dropping off the jar? If it had simply fallen out of a vehicle it couldn’t have landed upright. I can be reasonably confident that there is no pattern to be discovered. Unfortunately my mind doesn’t naturally imagine stories to explain odd occurrences, so I can’t make use of this sighting in that creative way. At this point it doesn’t look like I will be able to fit an out-of-place jug of cherries into the flow of my journey. But there it was.