People are encountering harsh February, including my family in Illinois and Michigan and friends in Massachusetts and New York and Virginia and North Carolina.
Unlike about a year ago, that big Austin freeze, this time my electricity, light, and water stayed on. Fingers crossed for this month. It’s still chilly, I’m shivering, and there’s frozen something outside but the afternoon sun has come. This year for one day, probably a second day, now third day, now fourth day…gosh no complaining allowed…just stayed/will stay in at desk with paperwork and writing and some inside cleaning. All needing to be done.
(And happy surprise finding a favorite (if cheap) cardigan while organizing closet.)
(Last February, when the building lost it all, we who live here had an in-it-together yup, wandering dark hallways and stairwells with our mobile phone flashlights for four or five days. (Not like living in a cave, but the dark halls and stairwells still creeped everyone.) (Elevators, natch were out.) (Internet, natch was out.) I read by day and made salads by candlelight until the lettuce was gone. It was extremely cold but folks in the place are far younger than me, and they bundled up to grill meals by the pool during daylight. Parkas and steak, making a good time of it in freezing weather. Dogs there too. (Gosh I love the dog residents here.) During that trying week, also a friend went through a long and crappy, possibly dangerous, walk through icy streets to bring me a mobile charger, warm sleeping bag, bread and cheese.
I took one hard fall on the ice and the clothing store owner in the downstairs plaza where I live came out to help me up. People here are like that.
This February, 2022, when the roads were safe enough, very nice delivery people brought me fresh produce and cheese and thank you, thank you, viniagrette. Some of them always remember my cat Oliver who likes visitors, and the inevitable cat treats they bring in those bags.
(Update February 19, 2022.) Nice delivery guy brought me Worcestershire sauce to fix my crummy vegetable stew. Worcestershire, and Tabasco, total fixers. Also pesto, fixer. And nothing else beats horseradish.
(Update February 19, 2022.) Another really nice TaskRabbit guy assembled my little tiny storage thing. (I tried to do myself but IKEA.)
My closet still is a mess. I, myself, need to fix.
Inbox organizing, everyone knows about that. I need to fix.
Next fresh hell (to quote Dorothy Parker) (and on a sliding scale from bother to misery that I need to be conscious of) there’s now a water boil advisory here, even for the cat’s little water dish, houseplants maybe even. Boiling tap water to wash dishes. Certainly will not rinse vegetables in that mucky stuff. This in Austin Texas, one of the United States’ most growing, affluent cities. Can do highway flyovers and a boardwalk on the lake (river, actually) and real estate off the charts but tap water sketchy. Shaking my head. What a mess. “Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience,” from Austin Utilities. Miss me with that bullshit (quote credit Trevor Noah). But still it’s bother, not misery.
(Update February 19, 2022.) A week or so since the boil water ended. Dude who did run the water agency has resigned. Yeah. How about a refund for my water bill?
(Update from a few days ago, not sure exactly when. Last week sometime. Austin will refund water customers. I so would not want to be that agency person who mucked up.)
One of my favorite old books is Karl Weick’s The Social Psychology of Organizing. Lots of academic speak-slash-write, but also creative insight about how systems go awry. I should be writing more myself during Austin winter, but end up on the phone or web for such a long time fixing system problems with people who (don’t mean to insult) can not do it, when I really want rather and need to do my own work. Recovering old websites, open tabs. Replacing hacked credit cards. How can someone not help with those barely basic things after chat and phone from 7:00 morning through 9:00 evening literally, and yes literally, for days. Days. Getting a little frustrated. Bother, not misery, I do know.
I’m not a first responder but I know some who are. How many people have lost loved ones in the past two years? I have zero complaining rights. They do. Just this endless COVID and the death of my Father has worn me down a little bit.
Spring will come. Austin spring is joy, especially how it sounds outside. The finches are on the balcony this morning, the falcolns, or hawks, or whatever, and the skies morning and evening are miraculous. A personal trainer from the YMCA will help get me back running, cycling, swimming, outdoors. Outdoors, yes and yes. The walking/ running/ biking trails. Neighborhood pools, gems here. Probably only a month or so away.
Meanwhile during this cold snap my adorable cat Oliver (as anyone who knows me, knows also is the namesake of late night guy John Oliver…big funny-slash-serious favorite of mine) will not stop trying to climb the bookcases. (And now is leaving pawprints on my laptop.) Eventually he (the cat, not the late night guy) gets put into time-out because it’s impossible to concentrate while cat climbs bookcase or shasays across the laptop (opening crazy tabs…who knows where from, but definitely not mine).
And he bolts to the hallway when anyone knocks. A few times I’ve had to run down the hall to catch that little guy by the tail. Sometimes he makes it almost to the elevators but not yet…I still can outrun him.
And he thinks an avocado is a football. Hide the avocado in the refrigerator because otherwise Oliver will somehow get it to the floor and then bat it around until he smushes it.
He also so wants that balcony but he’s a strictly indoor cat. My rule. Vet recommended.
And the countertops and desk, so many Krazy Kat knockdowns. Just pick it up, some clean up, some organize back again.
But before off to detention, he always (always) drags down Mark Twain’s funny and sagacious Letters From The Earth. Oliver’s go-to pull-off the shelf…he’ll head bump other books but Twain’s always ends up on the floor. (Now he’s got into the memoirs I brought here…Patti Smith, Dorothy Day, Isadora Duncan, Mary Karr, Mary Catherine Bateson, May Sarton, David Carr…a few more, on the shelf that he wants to pull down. The two volumes of Piketty, and Hitchens, too heavy, he leaves to me).
Otherwise he’s a blissed out curl up snoozer on the cat pod or in the cat cabin guy when I’m at desk. Adorable slob.
Dayna Finet 