Late on a Sunday Afternoon

It’s late on a Sunday afternoon and there is gravy simmering on the stove and the house smells like my childhood, and if you tell me it’s not called gravy it’s called spaghetti sauce I will ignore you because you don’t have the standing to tell me what my childhood was like and you really don’t want to hear my thoughts on that kind of presumptuousness.

My computer has just finished the update to the new OS that I’ve been postponing since late April, which is admittedly several smaller OS updates ago, because I don’t trust these updates ever since one of them nearly bricked a different computer a few years ago. “Technology is what doesn’t quite work,” a friend of mine once told me. “When it works all the time, it’s an appliance.” Computers are technology and software updates are even more so and while it seems to have done its thing without creating problems I’ll believe it later, after I’ve had time to use it for a while.

The cat is staying about where we want her to stay for her weight, which is an improvement over losing too much like she did earlier this summer and weighing too much like she did for most of the decade before that and I think perhaps I could take a lesson from that except that there is gravy simmering on the stove and good food is one of the few things that can keep the news of the day from getting overwhelming. The cat doesn’t care about news though she will eat the gravy if you let her and there is nothing quite as ridiculous as a gravy-stained cat.

We thought we were done with plumbers this summer but that does not look to be the case so tomorrow will begin another round of phone calls and appointments and it would be nice if things just worked the way they’re supposed to work but it is a fallen world and the plumbing breaks down accordingly. Right now I am just glad that nothing is leaking and everything that should produce water when asked to do so is actually producing water when asked to do so. It just needs to do that better, which is one level down on the scale of tasks. My dad taught me that all of life can be divided into four categories and from top to bottom these are 1) necessary, 2) desirable, 3) optional, and 4) yeah let me get back to you about that, and if the plumber coming to fix something falls into Category 2 then things aren’t as bad as they could be.

Somehow we have found ourselves in a time of glorious weather, bright but not overly sunny and about 72F/22C, with lows that you can sleep through well enough and the whole thing expected to continue for another week or so at least, and every day that we spend like that is another day closer to November and civilized weather. It’s tea weather in August, and this is a rare and precious thing in a rapidly warming world.

I’ve gotten the websites for my classes set up and now all I need to do is get the first lectures updated for the new school year but that can wait for a few days so today is one of those restful days that get fewer and further between every year so I will enjoy the quiet and the fact that the house smells like my childhood because I have reached the age where I understand how fleeting such moments can be.