Afternoons and coffeespoons
Sep. 4th, 2010 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogThis post, actually, has not much at all to do with my afternoon; that was largely devoted to gym and fitness-purchase activities, and all of it has been lovingly documented on the fitness blog for today that I'm sure you've been dying to hear about. (Yeah, right.)
On the other hand, moments this morning, and a brief one just now tied into the title of that Barenaked Ladies song, are worth repeating- as is sharing a photo from earlier in the week that we seemingly never got round to posting.
Although we knew it would be a tight fit, Emily wanted us to take along a metal shelving unit (originally used for Eleanor's plant growings) that she'd been using in her room here in recent years, to see if she could fit it into some corner of her dorm room. We decided to take it on a "see how it goes" basis. How it went? Perfectly, even before we left the driveway:
We were happily stunned by how well it worked, just as a transportation device. The shelf fit exactly the length of the truck bed, and the suitcase and storage boxes (the latter being gifts from the friend who we'd loaned the truck to the weekend before) fit perfectly in between the shelves. It all couldn't have fit in better if we'd planned it that way. And in the end? The shelving unit fit between the edge of her bunk bed and the heating/AC unit on the wall. Some of it is wasted space, but she's way better off with it than without it.
----
This morning, Eleanor and I got our first look-ins on Em's independent life- but from slightly different windows.
Mother and daughter have been emailing fairly regularly (Mr. Verbal hasn't yet- go figure), and from that, Eleanor knew this morning that Em had been out last night with some new-found friends- to a movie at the Little, our own long-time favorite Rochester arts house where we saw dozens of fun films while dating and after we married there.
Me: Oh, I knew that. And that she had coffee afterwards at Spot.
Eleanor: And you knew this how?
Me: I saw where she used the money on her debit card last night.
Wow. We have so much more potential to be in touch with their every move, compared to our 'rent relationships 30-plus years ago, where long distance calls were still a Big Expensive Deal and most of the communication was through letters and CARE packages. It's just as important, though, that we not use the informational closeness to replace the needs for emotional closeness- or emotional distance, when needed.
----
That got us to tonight- our first dinner in the re-arranged and re-furnitured greenhouse that Eleanor had been working on all day. After we ate, I started cleaning up the kitchen, starting with putting away the dry containers in the dish drainer. One of them, a round top from a tube or perhaps a Chinese food or crouton container, didn't seem to have a partner in the rack. That's when I remembered what it was.
When Em started drinking coffee in the mornings, around this time last year, she got into a morning routine that overlapped a bit with my own. One part, though, was entirely her jurisdiction: Em would spike her cup with a mass quantity of Coffee Mate or somesuch brand of flavored creamer, then add Splenda, next microwave the whole mess, and finally stir it all up with a tablespoon- that would end up, inevitably, either atop or in front of the microwave with a sweet-coffee puddle under it wherever it lay.
The compromise we worked out was for her to use an upended plastic lid, which we kept two of, (usually) me washing the alternate one whenever I did dishes and her then placing her spoon (or spoons- she rarely saw a need to re-use the one already there) on the ersatz spoonrest. While I never liked it, it never became a battle I particularly cared to fight, and those two, or three, spoons on the lid slowly became part of the Kitchen Default.
Until now. And now, dammit, cleaning the last of them, with no real place to put them away or a reason why? I miss it.
On the other hand, moments this morning, and a brief one just now tied into the title of that Barenaked Ladies song, are worth repeating- as is sharing a photo from earlier in the week that we seemingly never got round to posting.
Although we knew it would be a tight fit, Emily wanted us to take along a metal shelving unit (originally used for Eleanor's plant growings) that she'd been using in her room here in recent years, to see if she could fit it into some corner of her dorm room. We decided to take it on a "see how it goes" basis. How it went? Perfectly, even before we left the driveway:
We were happily stunned by how well it worked, just as a transportation device. The shelf fit exactly the length of the truck bed, and the suitcase and storage boxes (the latter being gifts from the friend who we'd loaned the truck to the weekend before) fit perfectly in between the shelves. It all couldn't have fit in better if we'd planned it that way. And in the end? The shelving unit fit between the edge of her bunk bed and the heating/AC unit on the wall. Some of it is wasted space, but she's way better off with it than without it.
----
This morning, Eleanor and I got our first look-ins on Em's independent life- but from slightly different windows.
Mother and daughter have been emailing fairly regularly (Mr. Verbal hasn't yet- go figure), and from that, Eleanor knew this morning that Em had been out last night with some new-found friends- to a movie at the Little, our own long-time favorite Rochester arts house where we saw dozens of fun films while dating and after we married there.
Me: Oh, I knew that. And that she had coffee afterwards at Spot.
Eleanor: And you knew this how?
Me: I saw where she used the money on her debit card last night.
Wow. We have so much more potential to be in touch with their every move, compared to our 'rent relationships 30-plus years ago, where long distance calls were still a Big Expensive Deal and most of the communication was through letters and CARE packages. It's just as important, though, that we not use the informational closeness to replace the needs for emotional closeness- or emotional distance, when needed.
----
That got us to tonight- our first dinner in the re-arranged and re-furnitured greenhouse that Eleanor had been working on all day. After we ate, I started cleaning up the kitchen, starting with putting away the dry containers in the dish drainer. One of them, a round top from a tube or perhaps a Chinese food or crouton container, didn't seem to have a partner in the rack. That's when I remembered what it was.
When Em started drinking coffee in the mornings, around this time last year, she got into a morning routine that overlapped a bit with my own. One part, though, was entirely her jurisdiction: Em would spike her cup with a mass quantity of Coffee Mate or somesuch brand of flavored creamer, then add Splenda, next microwave the whole mess, and finally stir it all up with a tablespoon- that would end up, inevitably, either atop or in front of the microwave with a sweet-coffee puddle under it wherever it lay.
The compromise we worked out was for her to use an upended plastic lid, which we kept two of, (usually) me washing the alternate one whenever I did dishes and her then placing her spoon (or spoons- she rarely saw a need to re-use the one already there) on the ersatz spoonrest. While I never liked it, it never became a battle I particularly cared to fight, and those two, or three, spoons on the lid slowly became part of the Kitchen Default.
Until now. And now, dammit, cleaning the last of them, with no real place to put them away or a reason why? I miss it.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 01:20 am (UTC)SecurityNorstarFleetBank of America)across the street closed for the weekend at 3 on Fridays. (Even worse was if you, like me, were with Marine-it had an ATM, but required a 20-mile-in-the-snow-uphill-both-ways haul to Triphammer Mall to get access to it.)Back then, a Cornell ID was a passport to check cashing, credit, off-campus connections of all kinds- and you never got a different card or updated picture after freshman year, just "S78" to "F80" stickers slapped on. Now, Emily couldn't even apply for a college job without producing either a birth certificate or an original Social Security card- despite the US government having funded more than half of her education for the year because we'd already documented her citizenship:P
no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-05 12:17 pm (UTC)