Miss Philomena

Saturday and Sunday were devoted to getting MOAR shit done around the house.

This weekend I tried to do at least one 20/10 in each room of the house (that's another UFYH trick).

In the bedroom I took down the Christmas lights in the sunroom, because someone complained about them (technically they’re illegal, but other people have way more fugly illegal junk on their balconies and decks, it’s just that my simple white Christmas lights are at eye level as you walk into our building. Then I weeded the T-shirt drawers, because I’d gotten to the point where I have too many t-shirts to be able to fit them in the dresser and they’ve been piling up on my bedroom chair. Then I weeded the bra drawer, and got rid of anything that I don’t wear or is too stretched out. Then I weeded the underwear drawer and tossed a couple of pairs where the elastic was starting to fail.

I called Mom around lunchtime on Saturday to tell her really quick about an article I’d read that I thought would interest her. We only chatted for a few minutes, because they were busy with their after lunch card game. But then she called me back around 3:00 to let me know that they’d had an offer on the condo they've been trying to sell for months now. And mom accepted before dad could dither too long about it. So yay, the second condo is finally sold!

After mom called me the second time I realized that I was pretty tired. I started exercising this week, and between that and all the housework on Friday, my body was pretty cranky with me. So I had a snack and sat in the Comfy Chair for about two hours. Then I had a long shower and washed my hair, because I wasn’t fit for polite company at that point. The hot shower also helped loosen up my tight back.

I threw in a load of laundry and decided to pretty much call it a day once I got that all folded and put away (which is why the t-shirt drawer got weeded).

Sunday I tried to fix the vacuum, because it’s been clogged and wasn’t sucking. But it turns out it wasn’t clogged, it’s just on its last legs. I ordered a new vacuum, but it won’t be here until Wednesday at the earliest. And my carpets are just grotty, and now I have to wait a couple more days for the new vacuum to come in (and for me to make time to assemble it) before I can do the Hoovering. BAH! I might have to vacuum every day for a week once it arrives, just to see how much dirt I can get up before I pull out the steam cleaner and tackle the stains.

Not being able to vacuum really threw me off, and I can’t say that I got as much done as I’d hoped after I discovered that I wasn’t going to be able to fix it. But I did spend a lot of time just putting random things away, trying to clear some surfaces. Hanging up clothes, shelving books, putting things back in their cabinets or drawers. And things are starting to look SO much better around here. I’ve been slowly getting caught up on tidying, but this weekend was a big leap forward in that I got through enough tidying to actually get to do some cleaning before I ran out of steam. I wouldn’t quite call the house “clean” right now, but the kitchen and bedroom are SO MUCH better than they were at the beginning of the weekend. If I can get in a couple more productive weekends this summer, I will be quite pleased with myself.

This week (month?) I’ll be taking a crack at the books and papers in the living room. I’d really like to move down at least one more photo on the hoarding reference scale. Just to be clear, I don’t think my kitchen or bedroom has ever been worse than a three, but the living room? My living room is probably about a five right now. And I’d like to get it down to a three. But that means purging boxes and papers and books. So purging stuff out of the living room is going to be my ongoing project for the rest of the summer.

Today was all about getting shit done around the house.

I washed two throw blankets/kitty blankets
I walked all the broken down shipping boxes out to the dumpster
I replaced two burnt out lightbulbs
I walked around the house with a trash bag and just picked up trash (this is a UFYH trick). And then I made sure that bag made its way out to the dumpster, because I didn’t want it sitting around the house.
I tried an internet hack that I saw somewhere. Of course, now I can’t find where I saw it, but whatever. I used four tension rods to create a shelf in the hallway above the doorway to the sewing room where I can put my stash of TP, paper towels, and Kleenex. I rather like it, and it helped clear some of the stuff that I’ve had stored on top of the dryer for ages.
I washed a ton of dishes. I’ve almost finished washing all the everyday dishes. Saturday I’ll wash the pots and pans and then start on the other things that have been sitting around waiting to get washed (the cat feeders and fountains, so I can finally put those away, some ceramic planters from my dead plants, a bunch of holiday cookie tins, etc.).

The nice thing about today is that it sets me up nicely for things I want to do tomorrow in the kitchen. Like clean the counters and kitchen sink (have to deal with the dirty dishes first) and cleaning the stove top (need to clean the pots and pans first).

Just link parking this here, but it might be interesting to others too.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-ancient-greek-dinner-parties

Andrew: The whole book is written in Greek. So Deipnosophistae in Greek can be translated as “the philosophers at dinner” or like, “the wise people at dinner.” One scholar that I spoke with had a kind of funny translation. He translated it as “banquet wits,” and he said he likes this because it sounds a little bit like “twits.” And there is like a bit of irreverence or humor in the text itself. So, he thought that that was a funny way of translating it.

Dylan: Yeah, I mean it shows you something about the culture, that there was so much kind of fine dining and social maneuvering happening in this space that someone would go to the trouble of producing a text, which was actually quite a lot of trouble back then, to be like, here’s kind of what you need to know.

Andrew: It’s a very rambling book. The format is hard to pin down. The framing device is that it’s a bunch of people talking at a dinner party. So it’s kind of structured that as the courses of the dinner are coming out, they see a dish and it inspires them to talk about that ingredient. Like the food itself is inspiring what they’re talking about. And they’re telling stories and they’re quoting a lot from other authors. That’s what makes it such an interesting and important text is because it preserves the words of all of these earlier writers. And in some cases, you have writers whose work doesn’t survive in its entirety, but the little piece of it that’s quoted in Deipnosophistae is what we have that survives.

Dylan: It’s like super meta because it’s like in the format of a dinner party conversation, but is also like a great quotes book so that you can reference it for your future dinner. So, Deipnosophistae contains these quotes, it contains these kind of philosophical tidbits, but it also seems like it also has real recipes in here.

Andrew: Well, one of the most significant things is it contains the oldest recorded known recipe in Greek. During this time, especially the Greek cities in what is now Sicily, were known for kind of fancy haute cuisine. And so the recipe that we have in Deipnosophistae is for a grilled fish. It’s a type of fish called ribbon fish, and it’s topped with grated cheese and olive oil.

*****

Dylan: That’s amazing, because there isn’t actually patent law for recipes now. I like the idea of it being a one-year patent on a recipe because it’s kind of like, okay, you get a year to be a really hot star chef, and then everybody gets to take a crack at doing the thing. I kind of feel like that would be a good thing to bring back. So, this book’s fascinating because it’s so many things. In a way, it just reminds me of what I sometimes call a tidbits book, which collects a lot of little stories or a lot of quotes or just this and that. It reminds me of the books that people sometimes put on the back of a toilet, like the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader kind of thing. The thing that you pick up and you sort of browse through it, it’s not really meant to be necessarily read in a go. You kind of open to some pages and go like, ah, interesting, very enlightening, and then you close it and you put it back on the back of the toilet.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eat-like-a-greek-philosopher-oldest-fish-recipe

Whelp, Congress went and passed the First Felon’s Big Bastard of a Bill. So now what?

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what-next-no-kings-movement-protest-boycott-organize-1235367077/

Those next steps include a new national protest, dubbed “Good Trouble Lives On.” That protest is scheduled for July 17, and honors the anniversary of the 2020 passing of Civil Rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, who called on Americans fighting for justice to create “good trouble” in the name of redeeming the soul of America. The rallying cry for the march is “March in Peace. Act in Power.” The protest already has dozens of planned demonstrations.

The other action announced on the call is called “1 Million Rising.” Organized by Indivisible, the progressive grassroots juggernaut, the initiative seeks to harness the energy of protesters to build long-term political power. One Million Rising describes itself as “a national effort to train one million people” to become pro-democracy movement leaders, with “the skills to lead others.” The initiative aims to “build people power that can’t be ignored” and has as its mission statement: “1 Million Trained, Millions More Empowered.”

Mark your calendars!

Indivisible - https://indivisible.org/

Good Trouble Lives On - https://goodtroubleliveson.org/

1 Million rising - https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/803953/