On making it work

Strange days, indeed. Most peculiar mama

Nothing feels the same anymore and it gets harder every day to get my bearings and move forward with my personal goals and projects. But really, there are strange things going on all the time in nature and we humans, so constantly wrapped up in our own worries, rarely notice that this is nothing new.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m awake at 6 am from the crowing of the rooster next door.

“Seriously?” I say, as I sit up in bed. All night it was stuffy in the bedroom even though I had both windows open trying to catch the cool breeze that can dip as low as 50 at night now. My college friend Liz spent the night in the other room in one of the twin beds and I see that she’s awake as I pass by on the way to the kitchen.

“I take it that’s new?” she says. “It doesn’t really bother me, though.”

“It shouldn’t be allowed,” I say. “This is a residential neighborhood.”

Yesterday when I arrived, I was greeted by a haughty catbird while I was throwing open all the shades and hoisting up sticky old windows. The bird was in the tree by the bedroom, popping around from branch to branch and screaming her signature cat-like screech. I stopped what I was doing and watched her, the two of us looking eye-to-eye in a stare down for a few minutes until finally she grabbed one of the small berries firmly in her beak and gobbled it down as if to say, “This is my tree, don’t get any ideas.”

The house is still dark this morning from an overcast sky but already I can hear the cars streaming on the main street just beyond my neighbors house in the center of the cul de sac. We’re on the Cape for the day, waking up in Janyce’s family’s ranch style cottage, and here to grab whatever little is left of summer. We’re not alone with this idea. I sat in stopped traffic as I was approaching the bridge and called Liz from the car. “Where are you? Traffic sucks, so don’t rush. I’ll order takeout cocktails and dinner and have it waiting.” I said.

“I’ll be there closer to 6:30,” she said.

The other morning, I snapped a picture in my hometown. The sky was a strange pinkish purple and a candy colored rainbow spanned the entire yard enveloping our house and our neighbors’ house across the street in a bubble gum glow.

I’ve been reading and seeing strange things all week. Conspiracy theories from QAnon, sorting machines being removed from the post office, murder hornets, and this odd pink-rainbow in the sky.

When we were on our neighborhood walk the other day, Janyce pointed out the chipmunk-sized holes in the mulched berm just beyond the sidewalk curb. “You should see the size of the things that come out of the ground,” she said. “Are these the murder hornets?”

“Actually no,” I said. “These are cicada killers. I read a fascinating article about them in The Atlantic.”

Suddenly coffee beans spill out across the countertop. “Damn it,” I say, as I look down at the splinter in my hand, the one I got from the wood railing yesterday on my way down to the basement to check on the dehumidifier. I must have left a small part of it still in my hand and it’s now turning red.

“Janyce usually makes the coffee,” I say, calling out to Liz who sitting in the living room by the open window and keeping her distance from me with her Mac open on her lap.

“You want me to make it?” she says.

After being rudely awakened by the rooster this morning, I am noticing that I now have a John Lennon song playing in my head. I have no idea where it came from, I haven’t heard it lately, but the rooster clearly dislodged it from deep in my memory.

Everybody's smoking and no one's getting high
Everybody's flying and never touch the sky
There's UFO's over New York and I ain't too surprised

Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Strange days, indeed.

Nothing feels the same anymore and it gets harder every day to get my bearings and move forward with my personal goals and projects. But really, there are strange things going on all the time in nature and we humans, so constantly wrapped up in our own worries, rarely notice that this is nothing new. The cicada killer comes out for two months just to eat those big flies buzzing in the trees in August. Two months of life and then it dies.

Last night, as Liz and I sat in the living room discussing the renovation plans for the house to be a profitable Airbnb next summer, she said, “You have to work with the furniture that’s here.”

And she’s right. These chairs are great. They are so well made. They are comfortable. They were Janyce’s grandmother’s chairs.

“You only need to paint them, take the skirts off the bottom, it all depends on the fabric,” she said.

And in a way, the old, weird chairs feel like the perfect metaphor right now. I have to work with the strangeness of the way things are. Transform what I have right in front of me and make it something new.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Nobody told me there'd be days like these

Strange days, indeed.