The Students Return

It's a college town, and I knew that when I moved here.

But JESUS, this first weekend they're back is a nightmare.

Traffic like you wouldn't believe, which would be horrible even without the record-cracking heat we're having; and all the restaurants (except the one we took the kid and his husband to for lunch) are just jammed.

The restaurant we went to, known as the Bloom Cheese collective, is tiny and services mainly cheeses and cheese boards, as well as sandwiches with things like fig jam on cheese; and also we got there around 1:30, so there weren't that many people there. The food was fantastic. I had the fig jam one. Amazing bread, and of course great cheese.

10/10, will go again, hopefully on some weekend when the traffic doesn't give me a migraine.

Shamus the Wonder Dog

Shamus has figured out how to get his collar off. I've never seen him actually do it, so I don't know what he's doing -- he just shows up with the collar in his mouth, looking very pleased with himself.

Soon he's going to figure out how to open doors, and then I'm really fucked.

Crystal Bridges 2026

The kid and I had a fine if exhausting time at the museum. Here are my favorite works of art:

A Tiffany window

A George Ault I love to pieces

My favorite Will Barnet

We ate at the museum, which had excellent food -- I had a burger and the kid had catfish with purple rice, which was beautiful to look at, and he said it was delicious.

Then we went to William Sonoma. The kid loves William Sonoma. I got some linen napkins and he got a kitchen scale.

It was so hot, but we had a good time nonetheless. We rode the shuttle bus from the parking garage to the museum, and the kid got up to give an old lady his seat and all the old ladies cooed. "Oh, how sweet!"

Encounter

So I was walking Shamus home from the dog park the other day and an immigrant gentleman was walking there as well. He stopped me and politely asked me to define a word -- he had a whole bunch of English words written down in a little notebook, so he was clearly working on learning the language.

"Coincidence," I read when he pointed at it. "Boy, that's a hard one. It's...like when two things happen at the same time, but no one planned them to?"

He stared at me, clearly not understanding. "Can you give an example?" he asked after a moment.

"Maybe," I said, thinking about it. "So, for example, I'm going out a door at a store and a friend of mine is walking in the door, and neither of us planned to see each other? I might say, What a coincidence!"

I'm still not sure he understand, but as I was walking home I was thinking to myself that maybe I didn't understand what 'coincidence' means either.

The dictionary says it's when two things happen at the same time but there is no causal connection. Too bad I didn't have a dictionary with me at the time.

This reminds me of when a student asked me to define irony, and then how irony differed from sarcasm, and then what sarcasm meant, exactly.

That was an adventure.

My garden

I'm growing herbs, a fig tree, rose bushes, and a watermelon in my raised bed garden. Some of these are in the plastic crates that were formerly used for recycling -- when the city gave us wheeled carts instead, they said we should repurpose the plastic crates. The rest are a DIY wooden beds I filled with dirt bought in sacks from the local Harps.

So far the rose buses are doing wonderfully, as are the herbs.  I have some tiny watermelons on the watermelon vines.

Tomatoes don't do well here because the squirrels eat them off the vine before they can ripen. I'm hoping that won't happen with the watermelons.

I've always wanted to grow peas. Maybe next year!

My first watermelon!

Fig Season!

It's fig season again!

(In the background, the teapot my kid bought me, which looks like the Frog King)

Wait, I AM an Adult

I just re-read yesterday's post and realized something even weirder than my kid being an adult. 

I'M an adult.

Like, I do the things I'm supposed to do. 

I pay my bills. I walk the dog. I do the laundry every Monday. I have this rule I follow, which is that I always leave a clean kitchen before I go to bed -- that means all the dishes in the dishwasher, the sink scrubbed out, the floor swept. I take out the trash and recycling, and I put the bins out on bin night. I compost.

I practice my piano every day. I write every day. I go to the library every Sunday and take all my books back on time. I go to bed at a reasonable hour and wake up early every morning.

I even eat salads! Like an adult!

How did this happen?

Considering Piano Lessons

Apparently I have decided not to study the classics after all. So now I am considering taking piano lessons.

When I was five, my neighbor advised my mother to get me piano lessons, since I had been messing about on her piano and I was picking up playing it quickly. "What would you rather do?" my mother asked. "Piano lessons or art lessons?"

I picked art lessons, but now that I have a lot of time and money, why not piano lessons, I'm thinking. There's a place in town that gives lessons to adults.

What do you think? Yeah or nay?

A Day in the Life: Being Retired in Arkansas

I've been retired exactly one year today. What's it like so far?

Spoilers: I love it to pieces. Was it worth working fifty years* for this retiree life in the Boston Mountains? 

I'd have to say yes, mostly because most of those years I was a professor, which was a job I liked a lot. (There were some bad years, and I never quite made enough money, which was pretty stressful.) If I had been working a job I hated for all that time, maybe not.

What do I do with my time all day?

Well, I get up at dawn and take the dog to the dog park. He runs with other dogs and brings me balls to throw him. Then we come home and he goes out into the yard to make sure nothing has been stolen, and I make tea. While I'm drinking tea, I do several puzzles and my Duolingo. This caffeinates me enough that I can start working. Right now I'm working on book reviews for Asimov, so I am either reading for those or writing those.

Around noon, I eat something. Usually a bagel, sometimes a cheese sandwich. I also make lunch for Dr Skull, whose hands still don't function well enough to make his own lunch. (The pain doctor has recommended a neck surgery which might help. We're thinking about it.)

Then I take the dog to the dog park again. He needs to run around with other dogs at least twice a day. If you're considering a border collie, keep that in mind.

In the afternoon, I do things. Like, some days I go to the library. Some days I buy groceries. Once in awhile, we go to the bookstore or Walmart. There's also this cool store in town that sells Japanese imports, or I can cruise the thrift shop. If I don't do any of those, I might make bagels or flatbread or lie on the couch and read. Maybe I do laundry concurrently, or set the Roomba to vacuuming.  (I have to make bread a lot because there is no eatable bread in Arkansas. It is all as sweet and soft as cake.)

Around four, I start supper. If there are leftovers, I can keep reading instead. Or maybe we order in. We have enough money to buy dinner from restaurants! It's great.

After dinner, I do the dishes and then I take the dog for a walk -- either the dog park again, or just around the block. More reading at night, or occasionally television, though right now I seem to have lost interest in watching TV shows.

Sometimes the kid comes over and cooks dinner for us, or we take him and his husband out to eat somewhere. Every Friday we have lunch together at a local Greek place. 

One day this summer we will go to Crystal Bridges and maybe another day to the Botanical Garden. And the kid wants to learn to drive, so we'll have to pencil that in. And there are always medical and vet appointments. Also, I'm growing a tiny garden of herbs, watermelon, and a fig tree.

It's a great life. If I could have one wish, I'd like the dog to get used to sleeping past dawn. Please.

Anyway, retirement for me is 10/10, highly recommend. It really helps that we have money now, though. I wouldn't have been able to retire anywhere this soon without it. People who say money doesn't buy happiness have never been poor, if you want my opinion.

*I got my first 'real' job at 15, working in a snack bar; before that, I had lots of little jobs, mainly babysitting but also delivering papers, my first 'job,' at age nine. Between then and when I started working as a baby professor, I worked in delis and at McDonalds, in a library, and managing that same snack bar, summers, from age 18 to 23. Doing that made me enough money to pay for my undergraduate education, by the way, though I also lived at home most of the time I was in college.

My Kid Does Art

This is a picture of me driving around mourning my beloved 1989 Fayetteville:

My Actual Birthday

It's today! I can't believe how old I am. Or rather, I can't believe how young being 66 seems. I remember at 16 thinking 33 was old. Ha!

Anyway, here is an update on what being old is like:

Every day, something new aches. Right now it's the tendon I bruised during the snow storm and also my spine. ("My spiiiine!" I cry often.) A week ago it was my hip, after I slept on it a little too long one night. Sleeping! Sleeping gives me injuries now.

I wake up early now. Not at five a.m. as I was when we first moved here, but I'm up and dressed by 7:30 most days. Partly this is the dog, who begins demanding his walk around 7:00. But also it's because I'm in bed by 9:30 or ten most nights. Me! Who seldom managed to sleep before 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.!

I'm eating a lot more cake than I used to. I'm sure this isn't good for me, but on the other hand, who's going to stop me?

I spend a lot of time in doctor's offices. Mostly this is for Dr Skull's appointments, but some are also for me.

I take exercises as seriously as I did when I was 30, when I ran a couple miles every day and also took my dog for a three mile walk most days. Some of my aches arise from this, but most are because I'm ooooold.

I love being retired. Day after day with nothing planned. I lie on the couch and read books. I take the dog for at least two walks a day. I go to the library. I write whenever and as much as I like. I never have to teach composition again. There's plenty of time to do laundry and the dishes. (It's amazing how much less annoying dishes and the laundry are when you aren't exhausted and also you have plenty of time.)

I am extremely glad I don't have to depend solely on my social security. Medicare, on the other hand, is wonderful. I got a lengthy statement in the mail yesterday for all of Dr Skull's home health care, and the big news was on page one: "Amount you may owe: $0.00."

Granted, this is only because we can afford to pay for Part B and Part G, but still.

I'm liking being 66 a lot, I guess is the conclusion here. May it long continue.

He just wants to sit in my lap all day long, is that so much to ask?

It's My Birthday

 Well, not until tomorrow. But we had a party yesterday, with order-in Italian and this:

A leaning-tower of carrot cake, which I made my own self, since Dr Skull cannot make cakes at the moment. I am not a fifth-generation baker, as you can probably tell. Still, it was tasty. The cream cheese frosting was especially good.

The kid and his husband and one of their grad school friends came over; also Uncle Charger. We had a good time. Next week is the kid's spring break and he and his husband are flying off to Maryland to visit friends. Maryland is where the kid plans to move if the situation does not improve in Arkansas.

The kid painted this for my birthday:

Jasper and my little cat Junti, may her memory be a blessing, cuddling together for once.

It was 20 degrees and wimdy when I took the dog to the park this morning. There were two big dogs there so he had someone to run with.

Bagels in Fayetteville

When I first came to Arkansas, back in the previous century, you could not get bagels here at all, not even the terrible supermarket kind. Later, we could get Lender's at the Walmart. When I returned to Arkansas, in 2002, even Fort Smith had (fairly terrible) packaged bagels. 

When we moved to Fayetteville in 2024, there was an Einstein Bagels. They're acceptable bagels, but still not great.

Last week Benny's Bagels (which is apparently a Dallas chain) opened here. It has been non-stopped packed ever since. These are real bagels, y'all. Dr Skull even approved of them, and he is as judgy as any Jew who grew up running a bakery could be.

So far it's so busy all the time that it's hard to get in there and it sells out regularly, but I'm assuming eventually it will calm down and we will have somewhere to go to get bagels when I don't feel like investing the hours it takes to make them at home.

Photo by Randi Mendolia

Photo source

Life In a Socialist Hellhole

One thing I have noticed about Fayetteville in 2025 (as compared to essentially everywhere else I have lived since about 1995) is that there are kids everywhere. I'm not saying kids with parents -- these are kids from about the age of ten on up to their mid-teens running the streets and parks in small packs or on their own. No adult in sight. 

(And before anyone clutches their pearls, these kids are almost universally polite to any adult (me) who they intersect with, though in general they do not interact with adults unless one of them (me) gets in their way with my dog.)

It makes sense that so many kids here would be out on their own -- we have free public transportation (though its range is limited to the university area and areas where most students live -- but that's also where many of the parks are) and free bikes and scooters that anyone can use and miles and miles and miles of bike trails they can range through the city on. 

In Fort Smith, on the other hand, there weren't even sidewalks in most places, and anywhere a kid might want to go (a park, a theater, a library) was distant enough that they had to be driven to it. There were public buses, but they cost $1.25 each way and only ran from 8:00 to 5:00, and also only went to places like Wal-Mart. In the parks, there were small children at the playground with their parents, but any age from five to twenty might as well not have existed.

Also, in Fort Smith, everyone hated kids, from what I could tell. At least on the local FB page, everyone was always complaining about children doing horrible things like playing outside or riding their bikes in the street. (See above, no sidewalks.) 

Here in Fayetteville, people seem to like kids, though also they don't pay them a lot of attention. Kids are yet another group that lives here, is the attitude, and isn't that cool. It really improves the experience of living in the city, though I'm not sure why. Maybe because they're part of humanity, and it's nice to see a full range of humans? Maybe because it's how a city should be, and the life of children should be.

Anyway, 10/10, all cities should be like this.