In which I’ve put the fall leaves window clings up, and am looking forward to cardigan weather!

Not much to report, really. I’m just blogging because it was on my to do list and I’d rather do this than run the vacuum.

I work, I hang out at home. That’s about it. I stepped into the Mexican restaurant last week to pick up some carry out, and stopped at the corner store a couple times, but other than that I’m only ever in the two buildings. We’ve been ordering carry-out groceries from Walmart for months.

Garden’s nearly over. Didn’t get much produce, which is okay. Three or four cucumbers, which were utterly delicious. Two I made into refrigerator pickles. A few handfuls of cherry tomatoes I’ve just used here and there, and only a couple beefsteak tomatoes so far (but there are three nearly ripe I’m looking forward to). Am planning to add a bunch of mulch to the beds and hopefully turn and mix them thoroughly after I pull out the plants after the first freeze. The soil’s packed and water doesn’t really soak in, and though the plants are reasonably healthy they don’t seem robust.

Work’s still great. The owners are amazing people, the work is fun to me (I genuinely enjoy cutting and packaging cheese, and average about thirty-five pounds a day). The staff these days is a couple of dudes and a couple of high school kids, so I get to tell people to clean up after themselves and do their own dishes before they leave, but it could be worse. People who don’t close rarely think to put their shit away without being told, it’s just how the world works.

Still utterly in love with Inland Empire weather. Proper spring! PROPER FALLL! The days are warm, the nights are cool, leaves are turning slowly, perfect sleeping weather! Minneapolis is a cool city, but my God the weather fucking sucks in comparison. I asked my better half if he’s starting to find the mild weather out here boring, and he replied that he still loves not having to drive in blizzards five months a year. So that’s good! I suppose if he gets missing real winter, we could chain up the Jeep and go drive in the Blues until he gets over it.

I turned 52 last week. Had been mentally planning a big blog post but when the day came realized I didn’t really give a shit. There’s a lot about aging-while-female nobody ever told me, sure, but when it comes down to it even I don’t want to listen to myself bitch about how weird it is to be old. Dry feet, sagging skin, aches, fat that won’t budge. All the weird menopausal atrophy is weird as hell, but other than being briefly distressing it’s just what it is: if you somehow manage not to die young, you get to witness your reproductive system shutting down. Getting uglier every day sucks, and how much stuff just hurts for no good reason other than being old is pretty shocking, but hey, it’s all downhill from here!

Watching tons of TV. Tons. Like, hours and hours every single day. Some nighttime soap garbage called ‘Chicago Fire,’ basically anything on BritBox, crap on Amazon, Netflix, YouTube. The volume of TV I’ve been watching is astonishing, and I keep buying books so I will read instead, but then I don’t read! I have at least ten books piled up, too.

I have a pair of socks and a pair of felted slippers to finish knitting, but they’re just sitting there in the basket. Haven’t touched ’em since, what, June? July?

My phone started failing to connect to wifi and cell at random but frequent intervals, so after a reasonable amount of resetting and basic troubleshooting, I bought a new one. I hate the massive waste that is the entire cell phone industry, but man, I use the shit out of my cell phone. And getting a shiny new one really is a lovely feeling.

I do my best. I recycle, I compost, I mend my clothes. I eat my leftovers. I try to buy stuff in minimal packaging where possible. I make sincere efforts to keep plastic waste to a minimum at work. But I still keep buying new phones every two years… mostly because they stop fucking working after two years, they’re built to fail.

Still in love with this house. It’s perfect, even the weird bits (like the garage built directly over the kitchen window). It’s comfortable, cute, a perfect size, clean, and everything works. The oven hood burns through appliance bulbs, but that’s really the only issue — everything else works perfectly. The kitchen would benefit from another grounded outlet or two, but it’s workable. Love the location, and the neighborhood’s quiet enough; incredibly quiet compared to the Uptown apartment!

I’d intended to have my mother, aunt, and grandmother over for tea this spring, and also to have thrown a housewarming party after we’d finished furnishing the place, but pandemics happen. We’ve been here a year now and have had a grand total of five guests, one of which was my brother’s dog. People keep making noises about gathering together, but I just think it’d be stupid. We’re all bored of not having social lives, and I’d love to hang out with people, but without rapid testing I feel it’s too dangerous. Imagine having tea with your relatives and accidentally killing one of them because you caught fucking Coronavirus from some redneck at work and didn’t know it? No thanks.

Apropos of nothing, here’s an easy and spectacularly delicious egg dish:

Baked Chile Rellenos

adapted from Lazy Chiles Rellenos

Mix together:
5 eggs
2 c. milk
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
salt & pepper, to taste

Pour into an 11×9″ casserole.

Stir in:
1/3 lb grated Monterey jack cheese
1 4oz can diced fire roasted green chiles
1 4oz can diced jalapeno peppers

Place casserole onto a cookie sheet and put in an oven preheated to 325F. Pour hot tap water into the cookie sheet until it’s full.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Serve with steamed corn tortillas, rice, and beans, or fold into a burrito.