Disappointments

April really is the cruellest month this year.

The rains came on election day, Tuesday. I watched it just sheeting down from the windows of the polling place. It changed to snow just as I was leaving. It was wet slushy stuff, and made it very hard to see when driving. And also hard to tell exactly how slippery the road might be. I had been going to go buy catfood and do a few other things, but it didn’t seem worth it given the weather. So I went home where I shop vac’ed up probably six gallons of water from the basement floor.

There was enough snow on Tuesday to pile up in people’s yards, but really, we’ve had three days of the most useless precipitation. Snain, or something. It comes down wet like rain, and makes you wet. It’s cold like snow but it doesn’t brush off like snow. It was still falling on Thursday morning. You’d walk out the door thinking “it doesn’t look so bad out there”, and it would hit you in the face  

The basement kept seeping. It didn’t really dry out until Thursday.

It’s not only the weather; the week’s been rife with disappointments. Two disturbing referendums passed on Tuesday, one regarding the use of private donations during elections, and the other on who can be an election official in Wisconsin. The Republicans in our state have never quite gotten over the grant money that was used in 2020 for get out the vote efforts. Since some of it came from Mark Zuckerberg they snarkily call it Zuckerbucks. They’d prefer an election like 2016 when basically no Black people in Milwaukee voted and Trump won. I mean it wasn’t only the lack of grant money, there wasn’t really a good candidate for them to vote for, but still. And the other one is amending the WI constitution to say that only election officials appointed by law can work on elections. It’s really unclear what this means for people like me, who are election officials. We are appointed by law, trained, paid, sign an oath of office.

Wednesday I made these strawberry muffins and they were kind of disappointing, too. Probably needed more strawberries.

Wednesday overall was a bit of an off day. Jasper was supposed to only be here until Emma picked him up about 12:30 for a pediatrician appointment. It was too cold and rainy and windy for stroller walks so we drove to the bagel store and the co-op and then to the library, and I let him snooze in the car. We got back home and Emma let me know she’d moved his appointment so it wouldn’t be during nap time and was going to get him about 3:30. But we’d kinda blown nap time already by then. So we made the muffins and he played with utensils and ate strawberries. Eating was probably the thing that went best that day, actually. Turns out you can share a banana with Jasper now, he can bite off pieces and chew. We split a banana at home right before we left and they gave him another one at the co-op. Actually the co-op trip was what lead to the strawberry muffins – strawberries and blueberries were on sale and Jasper thought the strawberries looked good so I bought some only to find we still had the better part of two boxes already at home. Disappointing.

Jasper likes bagels, too, and you can give him a hunk to chew on. Of course this was fresh bagels, when you buy them at the bagel store, before they’ve been frozen. And he can say bagel.

So we made the muffins and he played and he got a little tired and he had a bottle, but didn’t go to sleep. We watched a Go Dog Go, and then we piled into the car again to get gas. I drove a little farther than I needed to to make sure he fell asleep, then looped back to the gas station. Then sat in the car in the garage with him for about 15 minutes until he woke up, not nearly as happy as he would’ve been after a real nap, but at least he slept almost an hour. And we had just enough time to go in and get him into a clean diaper so mommy could take him to the pediatrician.

On my gas station nap loop, I stopped and took a few pics of this forsythia bush that just seemed the symbol of our spring. Blooming in the snow surrounded by slush. And the grass is actually still green since the ground never really froze this weird winter that wasn’t.

Wednesday was off-kilter, but Thursday took the prize for disappointments. And busy-ness. I started the day going out in the useless precipitation, driving to the food pantry to volunteer. I left the pantry at 11:00 and came home to eat: half of the last apricot scone (see below) and one of the strawberry muffins and a banana with peanut butter. The bananas were a bit of a disappointment too. When I stopped at the co-op with Jasper I didn’t have the extra small Art Institute bag with the frayed handle that I always put the bananas in to keep them safe. The bagger put them in the bottom of the bag I brought in from the extras in the car, and they got kind of bruised. And oh yea, I remember now – the co-op trip was unplanned. Jasper & I went from the bagel store to the library but I forgot that the branch we were at that we went to because it has the magnet wall doesn’t open till 10:00. We got there at 9:47 and standing for 13 minutes in the cold windy not snow not rain stuff falling from the sky didn’t seem all that fun. So we went to the co-op. Hence no banana bag and overbuying on strawberries.

After that I changed and walked to campus to help move some film fest equipment from campus to the Barrymore Theater. Things didn’t go quite as planned and we didn’t have room in the van for all the volunteers so I got a ride back home and drove to the Barrymore to unload. I was supposed to stop back at Vilas and pick up the 2 volunteers who wouldn’t fit in the van but we realized we didn’t need them so I went straight to Barrymore. We got done fast so I went across the street to Monty’s Diner and had a bowl of soup and a roll. Monty’s is one of the first Food Fight restaurants, a company founded by Monty Schiro (among others). Monty ran the front of the house at the Ovens of Brittany east when I worked there in the ’80s and I always feel like I still see his food tastes and ideas in some of the Food Fight joints. In this case real diner stuff like coffee in a thick white mug, all the condiments and menus in chrome on the table, squishy white rolls. The soup was couscous and vegetable and in the continuing theme was ok but not great.

All this meant I only walked to campus and not home too, so got less walking. So I went and did the e-gym at the Y, and that was disappointing, too. I had to do strength tests at the beginning of each machine and I must’ve been weak because it was later in the day and I’d already done a bunch of lfting at the pantry and Vilas Hall. All my weights seemed lighter and I didn’t feel really exercised after. The app said I only burned 166 calories instaed of the usual closer to 200.

I kept putting little chores like de-lime the electric kettle on my calendar and then pushing them back a few days. I did make a good dinner Thursday, chicken divan, that might be my recipe for the month (remember that? I’m behind). Butter swim biscuits. Salad with cheaters Caesar dressing, and I grated a bunch of Parmesan to top the salad, because I thought Pia would like it, though I didn’t make either croutons or toasted in garlic butter breadcrumbs to top the salad, which was my original vision. But Pia came in late for dinner and didn’t have any salad, and the last of it went in the compost Sunday morning. And no pics of the divan. But we can still have the dressing on future salads maybe with those breadcrumbs or croutons.

Backtracking to Easter, and April Fool’s.

Crash cats on Easter. I should really learn how to relax from my cats.

My favorite April Fool from Giuseppe Dell’Anno, Great British Bake Off winner. It sorta reminds me of Johnny Depp and Dior Sauvage.

And moving forward to the last couple of days.

Yesterday, Saturday, was lovely and sunny. We walked to Union South to see a film fest movie, Janet Planet, that was a little disappointing, very slow, but beautiful to watch and with a captivating young actor playing Janet’s daughter. Last night I did my only late shift at the fest at Barrymore, and it was kind of fun, and much less stressful then working at AMC where we had 3 movies playing at once.

Ah, well. These are obviously all first world problems and my own personal aches & pains. Boring, except for the food & baby & cat pictures, right? It’s Sunday, that I count as the last day of the week, so that means disappointment week is over and we can move on.