We have enough snow to make us happy

Life here in Enoughsville continues to be rich and full.   This has been the week that I did not fly to Seattle for the big math meetings, because they are not happening (except maybe later, virtually), and the reason for all the "not"s is because of the infamous Omicron blowing through.   And sure enough, it's blowing.  Our college, in spite of having vaccine/booster mandates and mandatory masking, has declared that the first two weeks of the semester will be held remotely.  Area schools have had a few closings.  The local hospitals have record occupancy.  And here are four emails I got this week:

My boss: As fate would have it, somewhere during the last week I contracted COVID.. . .  Given that much of what I wanted us to discuss during our staff meeting dealt with our staffing during the two weeks of remote teaching, mine is a case in point of why we want to try to avoid increased transmission during the post-holiday period.

My running buddy:  Hey! I'd love to join but am going to skip this one. After waking up and not being able to smell Sunday morning, I took an at-home test and tested positive for COVID. I'm technically clear since it has been 5 days but I'm feeling a little cautious about breathing heavy on all of you ... just in case. 

A co-worker on a big project:  I've had Covid this week and today is the first day that I have felt human, so between that and the holiday, I'm a bit behind.

My pastor: I tested positive for Covid on Thursday afternoon and [associate pastor], who has had extended close contact with me (mostly against his will)*, will also isolate this Sunday out of consideration for the rest of the church family.

* This is my pastor being funny.  Our denomination does believe in free will,
but no associate pastors have been coerced. 

My husband didn't send me an email to say so (since we have an in-person kind of a relationship), but early this week his Garmin warned him that his heart rate overnight was higher than usual, so he visited his doc, who confirmed that Omicron is a guest in our home.  Somehow, in spite of all of this, I seem to be completely symptom-free (so far).  And Prewash?  she lost her tennis ball under the radiator.   

It's just that kind of week, I'm tellin' ya.

The radiators, by the way, have been cranking it out.  Early in the week, my guy taunted our Minnesota-based kids:

OfSnough:  Highs this week here we're mid 30s. Sun bathing weather!!!!

And then the snow blew in.  Here's the frost on my window this morning.

And the Snoughlings are similarly blanketed:

Gos-ling:  RVA is a low of 21 and high of 42

Siz-ling: Minnesota low is -9 and high of 9. Another balmy day up north, Dad, sad you're missing the beautiful weather!

Nelson: [adds a correction] Low is -18

Inkling:  We have snow here in our city! Enough other closed school today

OfSnough:  I did not go to school today.

"If I found a radiator,
would there be a tennis ball under it?"

Kinder-ling didn't chime in; she's worked some 36-hour shifts, and so is understandably otherwise occupied.  It's on my to-do list to check in on her.  Me, because I'm not at the math meetings, and also because of hunkering down at home waiting for Omicron to blow its way through and gone, I'm NOT putting in 36-hour shifts.  I've mostly been trying to plan for the semester and to do a bit of reading.  (Oh, reading, I love you; I miss you.  When I'm done deaning, I'll spend so much more time with my nose in a book).  At any rate, I have enough to do right now, and another week before (remote) classes start in which to do it.

That's the news from our family, who continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

Enough with the resolutions

 I almost didn't make a New Year's resolution this year.  

But it feels so, so (so) strange to me NOT to make one.  That's not peer pressure speaking, it's totally a core part within the deepest parts of me that always wants to plan things out.  In fact, I just this year wrapped up a 10-year plan I'd started (not surprisingly) a decade ago, and I was kind of astounded by how amazingly well I'd adhered to it.   A book I'd contemplated writing happened a year later than expected; a triathlon happened a year earlier.  The calendar ticked over to 2021, and my plan said, "retire or become dean", and I checked off "dean", and the plan clicked shut.

I am such a planner that I tend to make New Year's resolutions not once, but twice each year: once as we begin a new calendar year, and again as we begin a new academic year.  I love making resolutions, and I love carrying them out.

But this year, I've felt adrift.  Maybe it's because the 10-year plan snapped together so neatly, and I really don't know what will happen as my dean years bounce along the ruts of the academic avenue and turn hard left into the Retirement Road.  Maybe it's because the usual resolutions (get in shape! eat well!) have already been nailed so firmly into place in my daily habits.  The truth is, I really haven't been sure what -- if anything -- I want to try to resolve.

And yet, and yet.  And yet.  I love pointing my head in some direction and having the rest of me follow along toward some new territory.   Being resolution-less has made me a tad antsy, and by "tad" I mean "extremely".  I found myself mulling this over while walking with my daughter, while running with my friends, while meditating, while getting ready for bed, while planning out my daily tasks, . . . and I finally figured out a resolution that makes me very, very . . . um . . . curious.  Resolute.  Reso-curious?

Experts say a good resolution is "SMART" (Specific, Measurable, And Random oTher words I forget).  Mine is kind of the opposite of all that.  Here's my 2022 resolution:

Avoid solutions that are in search of a problem.

I'm not entirely sure what it means, and that's kind of why I like it.  I first said it to myself when I was boxing up some packing paper and finding a place for it in a storage closet, because (?) maybe someday I'd need to pack something in paper (?).  And then I started trying to imagine what kinds of things I might mail, just so I could use this paper.  And then I realized I was making space for this paper (a solution), and using this to stash to try to drum up a problem I don't have (packing and mailing stuff).  So I moved the whole box down to the basement, together with other packing materials that we share with a church rummage sale or that we give away on Freecycle.   I'm going to avoid keeping this paper that's a solution to a problem I don't have and don't want to have, either.

I'm not sure what else my resolution might apply to, but it sounds so right.  To say it another way, just having the resolution, knowing that it's mine, makes me feel less rudderless.  This little sentence ("avoid solutions that are in search of a problem") reminds me somewhat of the mantra I often use when my to-do lists get long: "people are more important than things".  It's a way to make sense of and value of the choices I need to make.

But because that 2022 Res is also so very . . . inscrutable . . .,  I think it'll be a great resolution for me right now when I really don't know what exactly I want to happen in my life in the next 5 years.   A "SMART" resolution would have the most chance of success at moving me from point A to point B, but I'm ready for a resolution that allows me to open the front door at point A and then just go exploring.   

It's enough of a resolution, and so I like it. Happy new year to us all.  

Ten years of trash, a retrospective

Tuesday last, I put out the fifth and final trash can of the year.   Then I hauled out the sewing machine, and I stitched together two empty dog-food bags to make the garbage can liner for the first trash can of 2022.   (If our current pace of trashiness continues, that first trashcan will head out to the curb sometime in March).

Landfill-bound garbage cans

In one sense, 2021 saw a huge (66% !!!) one-year increase in garbage production in Chez Enoughing-It.   But, eh, a year ago we had the choice of timing on a December/January trash can, and we January-ed it.   If we'd decided the other direction, both 2020 and 2021 would have seen four trash cans at the curb.   In other words, we seem to be leveling off, finding our garbage equilibrium.

The early garbage-reduction techniques were of course the most powerful.   A biggie was realizing we could recycle corrugated cardboard on our campus.  (Nowadays, we can curbside recycle it).  Moving the kids out of the house helped with our personal tally, too, although I guess in all fairness this means that there's a lot of garbage production that used to come from the Snoughlings that I no-longer measure, and so the drop in that graph above isn't anywhere as individually impressive as it might seem.  But my own lifestyle and buying habits have certainly changed in the past decade, and some of the drop-off in garbage production is a result of me living differently than before.

 The change in my purchasing habits has rippled out to affect not only what I buy, but also what other people buy for me.  This past Christmas, my friends and family got me things like . . . 

• bamboo toothbrushes packaged in cardboard,
• homemade cookies delivered in a wide-mouth canning jar,
• cast-off clothes ("hand-me-ups") from the more fashion-intensive Snoughlings,
• chalk-board canning jar lids, in cardboard boxes,
• a ten-minute sand timer (like an hour glass, but instead a 10-minute glass),
• a cutting board, packaged in a burlap bag,
• a hand-made, hand-warming mug, 

. . . and then also a few plastic-y things wrapped in plastic, because after all I do live in the world with regular people.   The first entry in the 2022 garbage can is, in fact, a plastic Soda Stream machine I nabbed many years ago off of Craigslist, but that no longer works.  The repair folks I chatted with on the phone assured me that their machines are recyclable, but my local waste management people don't have the facilities to deal with this (and recycling plastic is a lie anyway).  

What other things can I say about trashiness (or lack thereof)?  I remain intensely grateful to my next-door neighbors, who let us use a corner of their yard as a compost pile.  (That is seriously nice of them!)  I'm an on-going fan of "Free" piles, of yard sales, of Freecycle and Craigslist, and even occasionally of so-called Thrift stores, where we can get new-to-us items that come with no packaging.  I'm grateful for local merchants who let us bring cloth bags, pyrex containers, and canning jars for collecting more food.  

But even so, we still have a 30-gallon can in the basement (lined with dog-food bags stitched together), that will eventually fill up with plastics and a few other non-biodegradable, non-recyclable objects that nobody wants, not even us, and that we'll put at the curb, and pretend it goes "away".