Friday Randomness
Just some random thoughts that have nothing to do with the heartbreaking fires in Southern California. I don’t know what to say about the fires except that it is shocking and horrible. Lives lost, homes lost, communities destroyed. This drone footage reminds me so much of the fires in Paradise and Santa Rosa from several years ago. I am shallow enough to be specifically sad about the homes that I visited 5 years ago that were prominent in the TV show, Beverly Hills, 90210, which are about 1/2 block from each other in Altadena. I cannot tell you how stupidly happy it made me to stand in front of these houses. (I have not seen any confirmation that they are gone, but I cannot imagine that they are not.)
UPDATE: As of Thursday afternoon, Casa Walsh has survived, though the house next door did not. Looking at my old pictures from the day I visited, they were very similar, both Spanish, both with tile roofs.
I am also shallow enough to laugh at this fake news in The Onion, poking fun at our Governor. In the fake article, he is forced to apologize for dining in a very trendy, expensive restaurant while it is on fire, which is a dig at him for attending a birthday party at a very expensive restaurant in Napa during the lockdown phase. Restaurants were open for outdoor dining, but the pictures looked like it was indoor, and it was a bad look for him. I remember being really angry at him for not knowing better.
Moving on to our regularly scheduled post, mostly written before the fires.
In Which We Discuss the Price of Eggs
The avian flu epidemic has hit California hard. Eggs are especially expensive and sometimes hard to find. I am picky about my eggs, I like pasture raised, which are more expensive than cage free or free range (the only 3 options available in California). The chickens have a healthier life, and the eggs taste better, with rich, orange yolks. Whether the eggs are more nutritious is up for debate. I can sometimes find pasture raised eggs for as little as $7.50 a dozen, but they are often $10 – $12.
We haven’t seen pasture raised eggs in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if our favorite egg farms have been hit by avian flu (they seem more susceptible to me to avian flu, since the chickens spend a lot of time outdoors, and wild birds carry the disease) or if the demand for all eggs is so high that they are being snapped up before I can get them. So we recently paid $13.69 for cage free eggs, and we were glad to find them.
UPDATE: I found my favorite pasture raised eggs for the regular price of $9.99 yesterday – YAY!
In Which I Tell You That Directions are Confusing
I love our new washing machine, but wow, computers and instruction manuals are flawed. Periodically, I like to run a load of white towels on the ‘sanitize’ setting, and I put some bleach in the bleach compartment. I am hoping to maintain the pristine rubber seal on it, as mold and mildew tend to grow there and are difficult to eradicate. (I also dry it after each use, and leave the door open to dry completely.) Guess what? The bleach dispenser still has bleach when the load is complete. What? Why? I am not sure that this has been the case 100% of the time, but I finally looked it up the other day. It turns out that our washing machine has two settings for adding bleach to the laundry, Yes and No, and the default is No. So you have to program it to use the bleach that you have added to the bleach dispenser. I am not going to waste my beautiful mind on trying to figure out the logic on that one. I did waste quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to change the setting, however.
The instructions say that to change the settings, you need to press the ‘Start/Stop’ sensor button, with the door open. My washing machine does not have a ‘Start/Stop’ sensor button. It does have a ‘Start/Add laundry’ button, which is only visible with the door closed. Could that be what they mean? Surely not, as on the very next page of the user manual, they reference the ‘Start/Add Laundry’ sensor. They must be two different things, right?
OK, I’ve decided this topic is far too boring to continue griping about. Here’s the resolution. In order to program the washing machine to transfer the bleach you’ve put in the bleach compartment into your wash, you have to push the spot on the panel where the ‘Start/Add laundry’ sensor WOULD BE if the door were closed. Hold it, and close the door, at which point the ‘Start/Add laundry’ indicator lights up and starts blinking. Continue holding it until it stops blinking. Then pick your code and change the setting. These instructions could have been more clear, is what I’m saying. I did a load of towels yesterday with bleach, and it worked! YAY! Thank goodness for people posting videos of themselves doing stuff on YouTube.
What’s in a Name?
Kyria had a post of 24 things she learned in 2024, one of which was how we pronounce our daughter’s name, which she learned when we met for breakfast and a walk last month. I guess this is a good chance to tell that story. 99.99% of people pronounce Maya ‘My-uh’, but we pronounce it ‘May-uh’. She is named for my sister, who (clearly) pronounces her name ‘May-uh’, or as she explains it, ‘like a New Yorker saying Mayor’. The story behind it is a song (described as an extended tone poem) by The Incredible String Band, Maya, which my dad and my sisters’ mom loved. Is it a good song? Let’s just say it’s very late 60s. When Ted and I were discussing the name, we considered pronouncing it the more traditional way, My-uh, but decided to stick with the familial pronunciation, thus dooming her to having her name mispronounced EVERY DAY OF HER LIFE. When she was born, one of the nurses at the hospital tried to convince Ted that he was pronouncing it wrong. When she was 2, the director of her pre-school asked if she could pronounce it ‘My-uh’, an interesting question from a woman named Shashi, who surely had her name butchered on a regular basis. She asked me, “Do you mind if I call her My-uh? That is how I think of her.” Had I been quicker, I might have replied, “Do you mind if I call you asshole? That is how I think of you.” But she was the director of the school, that would have been very rude, and I wasn’t that quick. So I didn’t, I just said no, her name is pronounced the way it is pronounced and we would prefer that you say it correctly. (I mean really, how confusing would it be for Maya if this woman pronounced her name differently? Then again, when there were substitute teachers who called her My-uh, a classroom worth of 2 or 3 year olds would helpfully correct them, so perhaps the director would have learned anyway.) The song is almost 10 minutes long and really pretty bad. The ‘Maya’ part comes in at about 3:53, and again at the end. All I can say is there were surely drugs involved.
Snail Mail
Look at this awesome box of postcards that I found in Berkeley at Moe’s! (Moe’s is a landmark bookstore that has been a Berkeley institution since 1959.) I’m thrilled. And I have postcard stamps. Watch your mailboxes, friends.
My Tree is Thriving
My avocado tree continues to recover from almost dying of heat stroke this summer, and remains unmolested by that asshole squirrel, George Bush, thanks to the mesh cage I have built. (Also! My predictive text tried to change ‘asshole’ to ‘assholery’, and I FEEL SEEN.)
One Line a Day
What else. Maya gave me a One Line a Day 5 year journal for Christmas, and I’ve started using it. The first few days were pretty good, thinks like, “Went to Berkeley with Maya, Ethiopian food for lunch”, “Went to Berkeley with Ted, Moe’s Books”, “Saw live music with Ted”. But now the holidays are over and we’re back to real life, and it’s more, “Weights, Yoga, Walk, soup for dinner.” Am I not using this to its full potential? If you use a One Line a Day journal, what sorts of things do you track? Can you tell I’ve never had a diary?
In Which I Complain About Losing a Perk
Speaking of back to real life…after 2 1/2 glorious years of 3 day weekends, my company has ended the ‘Fabulous Friday’ perk. This perk started in July of 2022 (likely as an employee retention thing because the labor market was so tight), and was originally supposed to be for 2 months. They kept extending it, first for another month, then to the end of the year, then the next year, etc. We’ve all gotten quite used to it and have been thoroughly spoiled. Of course, we have gotten no official announcement informing us that it has ended, just no announcement saying it is continuing, and our boss said that since we had not received any notice, we should plan to start working 5 days a week. Muh. I am trying not to complain too much. I still have a job (which wasn’t certain a couple of months ago), I do not have to commute an hour each way into the office (which was supposed to happen and was cancelled), I like my job and my teammates. But I’m going to complain a little bit. The silver lining (and it’s small) is that I will no longer have to see people write Fabulous Friday’s on their out of office email replies.
Any silver linings in your world these days? Do you use a Line a Day journal? Are eggs stupidly expensive and difficult to find in your neck of the woods? Anything else you want to share?
44 Comments
AC
Now, I don’t know for sure which way I was saying Maya. I think I was saying it your way. As for eggs, they are still fairly plentiful here, but not cheap. However, as you incoming president continues to lay eggs, perhaps that will become inexpensive and ubiquitous for you.
J
LOL! I would NOT eat those eggs!
nance
SO much great stuff in this post, J. I loved all of it.
Those postcards! I’d for sure frame the Woolf one and put it in my office or room. It’s awesome. They’d make great additions to a gallery wall.
The whole thing with Maya’s name is spectacular. Could have been its own post. The nerve of that preschool director! WTF. And yes, there is nothing like the chorus of righteous toddlers correcting anyone about anything at all.
My grandfather had the equivalent of a Line A Day Journal. He was a very terse diarist. All of the grandkids used to laugh when we read his past diaries, especially on our birthdays. I think mine read “Took pies to Sr. Center. Patsy had baby girl. No Sunday School today.”
J
Oh Nance, your grandfather didn’t even put your NAME in his journal? That’s AWESOME (and weird).
nance
My grandfather had 7 kids. Once they all started having his grandchildren, it was a lot. They had dozens of them, and the age difference among them was such that there were also had great-grands at the same time. None of us were named in his famous diaries. We all found it hilarious and so, so typical.
Grandpa was notorious for being a man of very few words in his speech as well. Grandma took up his slack quite nicely. Theirs was a seamless union, and the complemented each other perfectly.
J
I too would have found it hilarious. And yeah, it’s a lot to keep track of, with the children of your 7 kids. Ted’s family has that age gap as well. His uncle has aunts and uncles that are older than he is (he was the youngest of 15 kids, I think..maybe it’s 12? Anyway, a LOT.) So Ted’s cousin that lives near us is just a few years older than Maya.
Maya
Shashi is my aunt’s name–haha. My aunt is lovely though, and would not have made that weird and rude request!
Your opening illustration made me chuckle (I needed one today) and I smiled to see your postcards! We have those postcards at work for when we send snail mail to our literature alums 🙂
Boo about your Fab Fridays, Julie! (But like you, I’m glad to have a little more solidness about my job relative to a couple of months ago).
Onward!
J
To be fair, Shashi is not that difficult to say, but I suspect to a lot of people it is complicated and they want to say ‘Sushi’ instead. Your aunt could commiserate with Maya, who used to get ‘Mayonaise’.
I’m glad that we are both gainfully employed, and that the illustration made you smile. 🙂
Sarah
LOL “fabulous Friday’s”
I love Maya! I always said my-a in my head, but Maya is just lovely.
I paid $15 for eggs this week too **sob**
J
I just got back from the store and they had THE GOOD EGGS for only $9.99! Hooray!
Karen Meg
First of all, Happy New Year!
So much to comment on here, Julie, and the fires are top of mind for me too. I’m safely here thousands of miles away from – can you believe it- my boy who just moved to LA on Saturday! He’s ok but talk about stress.
I’d just heard about the egg situation in the US – I guess my $7 Omega 3 eggs are a steal in comparison.
I have been pronouncing Maya wrong, I love the actual pronunciation. My friend’s daughter is Maia and pronounces My-uh, my daughter’s friend is Mia pronounced Me-Ah. Funny about pronunciations -when our daughter was born I really wanted to name her Siobhan as I love the way it lilts, but thought that would be a constant challenge for her ;).
Your washer is so high tech! And boo on the loss of your long weekends.
I used to try to bullet journal, then mindful / grateful journalling (5 minute) but so many journals, not enough time especially with blogging and now maybe a memoir?
Ok all caught up 🙂
J
I love a catch up type comment! I hope your boy is staying safe and out of the smoke. I have a friend who has 2 daughters, and in one year both were in harm’s way from wildfires here…one in Sonoma County, one is San Louis Obispo. Both when they went away to college. Both are fine though!
Margaret
I love eggs but understand why they’re so expensive and hard to get. I’m sure they will drop to $1 a dozen soon, right? (eye roll) I didn’t realize that your daughter’s name was pronounced that way but I like it! I made a point of pronouncing my students’ names the way they told me to although they each chose a French name so that made it much easier. I know how to say those! No offense, but your washer terrifies me!!!
J
LOL on the eggs. No, they will never be $1 a dozen. I mean, maybe in other states, but never here in CA.
Alexandra
That’s quite the rambling post touching on a lot of topics. We know what it’s like up here, in Quebec, come fire season. And, I believe, we’ve sent a handful of waterbombers down to CA to aid in the effort. Such heartbreak every time this happens.
As someone who cannot eat eggs, I don’t have to worry about the rising prices. Unless humans start thinking outside the box about farming and so much more, we’re going to hit the proverbial brick wall at a 100 miles an hour. I think the wall will win.
Other than us V nature. We had the pest control person in today, in the apartment spraying for ants. I don’t think we’ll win that war either. *sigh*
J
I suspect you are right about our farming practices. We are depleting the fruits and vegetables of their nutrients, and if the bees all die we won’t have to worry about that anymore because we won’t have any. And factory farming of animals is horrific.
Alexandra
We try to do our best within our own household and buy sustainable food where possible. But supermarket practises make it hard. The bottom line is, it’s always about profit. Until that changes, nothing will change.
J
Sadly, I think you said a lot there. Nothing will change. Our world has always been this way, profit comes first. We can make changes, we can improve it a bit, but it’s always going to be a battle.
Lisa's Yarns
OMG that daycare director! What in the world. I love your internal monologue response. That is just so very odd, though. Get with the program lady. It’s pretty basic to expect people to say your name correct. I have a coworker Kari but it’s pronounced “kahr-eee” not “kair-ee” and wow does that throw people off but how hard is it to commit something to memory like that?!
Oh wow, those are some expensive eggs! Dang! We get eggs from Phil’s coworker during the summer and they look so much better than what we buy. So I am going to assume they are better for us, too. The yolks are such a deep, marigold kind of yellow; store bought yolks are such a buttery yellow.
Those washer instructions are terrible! A lot of the instructions for things we buy for the kids are clearly written by people whose first language is not english so it takes some critical thinking to figure out what they are trying to say.
I’m so glad you plant is thriving!
J
These directions were written first in German I think, but the problem in this case is more that they changed the wording of the sensor in the new model, and they only changed it in some places in the manual. Sigh. VERY confusing.
Elisabeth
I have one place I buy eggs and they have a sale each Saturday so I always stock up! They’re local eggs and I can get them for $3.89/dozen! Everything else costs a small fortune now in Canada, but our eggs are reasonable!
I am on my 4th year of the One Line a Day Journal. I just write down – in shorthand usually, so not complete sentences – what happened in the day. Tidbits about anything that might be memorable. For me it is 100% facts and I never write anything startling or profound. It is so much fun to look back at all the previous years entries when I’m filling in the current year.
Your May-uh, reminds me of my friend Eva in university. Most people would call that pronunciation Eve-ah. But it was actually Ay-vah. She was named after her mom’s best friend, how was also calle Ay-vah and also had it spelled Eva. It was no end of frustrating for Eva. She HATED people said it wrong. I have to admit I love the sound of Ay-vah a lot more than Eve-ah, so I loved the combo for her.
J
I love your egg connection. Occasionally we get eggs at the Farmer’s Market, but it is no deal, they cost more than the grocery store.
I’m glad to hear that you enjoy looking back at your journal. I’m going to keep at it, since I have it, and hopefully it will bring me joy. 🙂
Nicole MacPherson
I have long thought the egg industry is terribly cruel and I’ve always tried to make good and educated choices when buying for the guys (I personally don’t eat eggs as a general rule, although sometimes they slip into a cake that slips into my mouth, you know?). But this year we started an egg subscription with a local chicken farmer – he’s literally on my walking route! – and they deliver eggs to our house every two weeks. The cost is $7.50/ dozen which is exactly the cost of the “free range” eggs at Superstore, so it seems like a massive win to me. The chickens are happy little gals and I am so thrilled to have found a good solution to this problem.
I have a line a day journal, a five year one, and I love it. I find that most of my entries seem boring but I love seeing them later on. I usually record a brief “what I did, what I ate, what I read” or something like that, unless something exciting happens (first kale harvest, Christmas baking, went to Italy). I just write down the facts, ma’am, unless I want to note that I had a sad day or a happy day.
May-a – I had never heard it that way before! My cousin named her daughter Mara, and it’s MAR-a, not MARE-a, and I feel like there will be a lot of explaining for her down the road. I went to a school with Tara who was a TAR-a, not a TERR-a, and boy oh boy, she was always correcting people.
J
I love your egg solution, it’s perfect. I have some coworkers who have chickens and get their eggs that way, though they don’t lay in the winter so I guess they have to buy eggs then.
I love your line a day too…chuckled that ‘went to Italy’. I mean, sure, but I think I would write ‘WENT TO ITALY!!!
I hiope your cousin’s daughter doesn’t get Mar-A-Lago. Blech. Mara is a pretty name though!
Ernie
Can I call you ass hole? Killed me. I think of those great lines after the fact. Always. I have not had to go to the grocery store much in recent weeks, thank you college kids. So I am unsure how much eggs cost here, but I am confident it is not $13. The fires are just dreadful and hard to fathom how widespread they are.
J
The fires are horrific, you are right about that.
College kids doing your grocery shopping is a definite win!
M
Hi, Julie! I found you through a few other blogger sites (like Nicole’s and Kyria’s) and have read here and there and enjoy your blog….so I finally decided to comment! 🙂
Man, that washer — that’s crazy! Why do they make things so hard?? Glad you were able to figure it out. And yes, thanks for those who put videos on how to do certain things and help a lot of people; we certainly have benefitted from many!
Eggs — yikes! $13 for a dozen? I had to look at the eggs we buy from Costco — I thought they were pasture-raised but I doubted myself when I realized it’s so much cheaper than your prices. I’m in San Diego county and we can buy the 2 dozen pack of organic pasture-raised eggs for about $9. But now that I’m thinking about it: how do you ensure what they eat is organic if they’re pasture-raised? I guess they’re still controlled to some extent and are getting fed whatever feeds they give to chickens?
I love the pronunciation of your daughter’s name. I have never heard of it pronounced that way! So unique and even more special because it’s shared family thing!
J
I sometimes think of getting eggs at Costco, but I never feel like we can eat that many. They last a while though, I should probably reconsider!
Thanks for coming by, and for commenting to say hello!
M
Ah, yes. It is a lot if you don’t use eggs often. There are 3 of us at home, too, and we can probably go through the 2dozen pack in 2-3 weeks, mainly for boiled eggs for snacks and/or egg salad sandwich or breakfast items. I see a lot of people buying the bigger packs and I can’t imagine going through those quickly enough!
J
I suspect we could go through 2 dozen in 3 weeks…I’m going to check them out next time I’m at Costco…I didn’t realize they had pasture raised eggs actually.
Daria
Great post!
Names… My daughter’s name is Lyra, pronounced Lee-rah, and very often people say Lai-rah but she has gotten good with correctlng them politely. I just had an “are you an asshole?” situation with a Russia friend of mine whose son attends jiu jitsu with my son. Her son’s name is Nikita (a popular boy’s Russian name) and the instructor goes, “can I just call you “Nick”? AGHHHH. On one hand, you don’t wanna be an asshole but on the other hand, the name is the name!! Nikita is Nikita and not Nick. Ugh… I am passionate about this topic. My other friend’s name is Nastya – pronounced Nah-styah so she always gets “so, it’s Anastasia, right? No. It’s Nastya). Or- my friend Svetlana is now Lana. Anyway, I’ll just stop here.
Sorry about the Fridays situation. Silver linings?…R had a very small, very tiny birthday party, talking like 4 friends, and it was the best! We ordered two pizza pies, some juice boxes, and soft drinks, and at first, I was disappointed, but then it turned out to be the best. Like, he is preschool, he doesn’t need 20 people at his party. And that’s what he wanted.
J
I’m glad the birthday party was just the right size! I remember hearing that the right number of guests for a kids party is their age. So if they are 4, 4 guests. If they are 6, 6 guests. It can be pretty overwhelming otherwise. Having said that, we didn’t really stick to it. Sometimes we had more, and sometimes fewer, and it seems to me that for our daughter, the magic number was always 4 – 6 kids, even when she was a teenager. Too many meant too much stress for her. I guess you just need to know your kid, which clearly you do.
The names…Nikita is not Nick, just as you said.
coco
I used one line a day for few months and also wasn’t sure what to write. I had 5 years’ journal and committed to resume this year. I plan to write either an event, or feeling of the day.
I also hate reading manual instructions, prefer someone explain to me, so ask my husband to figure it out. hehe
J
I’m going to give the line a day a chance, since my daughter gave it to me. Might be fun for future me to look back at. I know I like looking at my Facebook memories.
Diane
OMG – your bleach saga made my head hurt! I swear, when I can’t figure out the maual, YouTube comes to the rescue. I’m glad it came through for you. You can find so. miuch. there.
I don’t have a line a day journal, but I do have a five year journal. Usually I write down what I did, sometimes I write down what I’m stressing about that day. I find when I’m looking back, I’m most interested in teh minutiae of the day. Reading about whatever i’m raging about at the moment makes me feel petty two or three years down the line. I have a friend who has a line a day journal and she writes down one thing she is grateful for every day.
My brother in Berkeley raises chickens. I feel like that might be the way to go for eggs these days.
J
Oh, maybe I could write one thing I’m raging about, and one thing I’m grateful for! I love that idea.
Yeah, some of my coworkers have chickens. We live in a townhouse, so probably it would be frowned upon. Maybe not if we handed out eggs, though.
NGS
Our fancy schmancy eggs have not changed in price or in availability and are now cheaper than the eggs in styrofoam. I don’t know what to do with this knowledge.
POSTCARDS!! I love it so much when I see other people sending snail mail. Let’s all try to personally save the USPS!!
J
Save the USPS! Indeed. I’m glad that your fancy schmancy eggs are still affordable.
Jenny
Hmm! Your bleach story reminds me of the issue we just had with our rental car, a Dodge Durango. Do you think you would specifically have to set it so that the taillights go on when you turn the headlights on? Well, you do! If you didn’t know that you would be driving around for hours in the dark with no taillights. Like we did.
I also just learned how to pronounce your daughter’s name! I can see how it would be confusing, but hey, it’s her name and it’s pronounced the way YOU say it’s pronounced (not to mention that “Maya” should phoenetically be pronounced with an “a” sound, so there!)
J
That’s a very strange feature in a car, and not safe, so why design it that way? Occasionally I see cars on the freeway at night with no taillights on, and I always assume that their lights are out. Now I know, maybe it’s on purpose! Wow.
Stephany
OMG, $14 for eggs makes my brain hurt. I haven’t seen eggs that high just yet but we’re getting there. And those prices are definitely not coming down, I don’t think. Argh.
I’m on my 4th year of my One Line a Day journal and it is just SO MUCH FUN to see what I chose to write about in the years before. Sometimes it’s “took a great nap” and sometimes it’s all about my day. I also like to write about mental health struggles because I always hope I’ll read it back a year from now and recognize I’m doing so much better!
Ugh, that daycare director. That’s really annoying. I have a problem with people misspelling my first name and mispronouncing/misspelling my last name, so I am very sensitive about name stuff!
J
I am getting the idea that the 5 year journal might be fun in coming years, but just yet it’s not terribly exciting. I have to do it for future J!
Our last name is complicated too, so poor Maya gets it both ways. Sigh.
Tobia | craftaliciousme
Wow your egg prices are tough. I only buy organic eggs and they are often about 1€ more but they range around 4€ for 10. When I am at the country home I try to buy some directly from the farmers across the street or some other older couple and they want 2€ or mayb 2,50€ which is so so cheap. I often forget or dont want to bother them on Sundays though. I should make it a priority though.
Thank you for the grafic what each label means. I wonder if that is universal or each country has own definitions. Need to have a closer look.
As for the one line a day diary. I have one but have taken a break after two years.
I tried to write some gratitude things. Things I laughed about. Things i observed to not only include ordinary things. However reading back on it it is also interesting. I sometimes wished I had included book titels I was reading and not just say read in the garden. Hope that helps.
J
Interesting…I was toying with the idea of including my books, maybe I will. 🙂
I suspect the egg terms are a US thing, and that you likely have your own categories in Germany.