There were actually more interesting parts to yesterday. I just didn’t tell you about them because I had the parts that I wrote about on my mind. Also there were parts that weren’t worth telling, so I didn’t tell them. The opposite is also true.
But the other parts of the day were like this. I had to drive somewhere to return something. The recipient was not home, which was my fault. We’d vaguely said “afternoon” and that was it. So I left the thing on the guy’s front porch, just beneath his Ring camera, which I’m sure saw me walk up, press the ring button, ran a series of not-at-all-intrusive algorithmic searches and cross-database and multinational platform searches. Also, three satellites were contacted in informing the guy that a person was on the porch.
People, you can just get a dog.
It was not intrusive because I was, of course, in this person’s yard. On his porch, to be specific. I very carefully avoid the yard in case people are put off by that. If a man’s house is his castle, then his yard is his moat. His driveway and sidewalk, though, are asking for it.
So ring the Ring. Rang the Ring? Rang the Rang? I pressed the button and waited for an appropriate amount of time. Left what I came to leave, and then returned down the sidewalk and driveway to my car, and tried to exit the neighborhood in a different way, in case I just caught him off guard and he came out and we had to have an awkward yard exchange. “Good to see you, and, dude? You’re standing in a moat right now. I mean, it’s your own moat. This is embarrassing for both of us, I should think.”
I composed a quick text message apprising him of the situation his non-dog doorbell had already told him about. I complimented the holiday decorations. It’s a classic white house, black shudders style, and they have really tasteful wreaths on the windows. Nicely done. You deserve compliments even after Epiphany, I think.
Anyway, I could not exit the neighborhood the way I went. So I had to turn around and race up the street, just in case he was on the porch, or in the drive. Or in the moat. I ducked down low, holding my cell phone up, with the camera acting as a periscope as I drove by because, please no eye contact, not now. None of this will look suspicious. None of that happened.
Except the part about having to drive right back by. That part definitely happened.
An hour or two later he returned my text. He’d had to run an errand which took longer than normal and nice job staying on the sidewalk.
Part of that text didn’t happen, either.
I went to the hardware store. I had two things on my list. Two! And this is where the day gets interesting.
Oh, now, 493 words in, now it gets interesting?
Hush, you. Just read the thing. Comments go below.
I walked up the stairs of the porch to the hardware store, because it is designed in that style.
“Riveting.”
Seriously.
Walked in, and at first glance it looked like they’d taken away the checkout island. That threw me right off. Now there’s a guy there, leaned all casual on a stack of whatever and we’re doing the eye contact thing and he is not in a moat, and now we must speak.
Some warm kinda day out there, I said, because it was that precise level of mild that, standing under the sun made you feel like it was a perfect temperature.
“Wait until you see tomorrow,” he said, “and the next day. I was going to go skiing, but not now.”
Sure does look like great weather ahead, I said, or something like that. I don’t know. I wasn’t taking notes. I agreed that forecast was surprisingly wonderful for early January, and what am I even doing here anyway?
(Update: What I am doing here is shaking an ancestral fist at the forecast algorithms. Nothing of what we’d been promised for days came to pass on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. First it was cold. Then it turned gray, and also damp.)
I was there for two things. I wanted to stock up, perverse as it sounded with weather like this, on snow blower oil.
They did not have snow blower oil.
I wondered if all oil is the same? Sure, there are different weights of oil, owing to viscosity and their purpose, this part I know. But is there snow blower oil? Is that different than car oil? Does that suggest there are snow blower oil tankers? And car oil tankers? Are there snow blower oil fields somewhere? How far away are they from the car oil derricks?
So I wandered over two aisles to look for brad nails. The hardware store had two options for brad nails on their shelf. Neither of those two sizes will suffice for the intended project. (I did the math.)
So I left the first hardware store empty-handed.
(Told you this was the interesting part!)
I did the math twice because this means I’ll now have to go to a big box store. I’d much rather just go to a hardware store. But everyone’s needs are different to the point of exotic, and every store’s inventory space is finite.
Well, there’s one other ma’ and pa’ hardware store I can visit first. Its name hearkens back to a time when you went into town to pick up your order of coal and/or ice. The marquee out front, the last few times I passed by, proudly boasted of having Ivermectin in stock. Surely, they have the longer brad nails.
And, then, back home to the emails I can’t do anything about, and also the ones asking ‘Should we meet?’ And also the class prep. Most of today has been in that same vein. These are lost days, then. I’ve hit a bit of a wall, this week. I’m predicting a breakthrough tomorrow.
It’s interesting, how you can see motivation coming.
