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Friday, April 30, 2004
In Which I Am A Grown-Up
I went to a high school play tonight -- it was written by the new drama teacher to commemorate the career of the retiring drama teacher, who was not only the new drama teacher's drama teacher, but also mine. :) (follow that?) It was a funny production, well-done. What was more fun, though, was the mini-high-school-reunion going on at intermission. I ran into the following people:
- At least half a dozen people my age I've known since I was barely out of diapers, and dozens of other people I went to school with. Now they're all adults. The nerve!
- Younger siblings of said contemporaries who are likewise adults.
- Members of the youth group my husband and I taught as newlyweds, also now adults.
- Several kids I babysat, who are now old enough to have boyfriends and stuff, some of whom are about to leave for college. ack.
- The girl who was the flower girl in my wedding, now a senior, who had a part in the play.
- My first serious boyfriend, who, what, fifteen years later? is, albeit quite a nice guy, probably the only man west of the Rockies still sporting a mullet, and who was the only person I saw all night who looked exactly the same as he had when I knew him better.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
what does "party" mean to you?
I was just musing, as I sewed interfacings together for the three summer blouses I'm making for C, about the way my idea of what a party is has changed over the years. When I was a really young child, I don't know that I thought about parties much, but if I did, I probably thought of classroom parties, with Room Mother cupcakes and holiday-appropriate decorations and crafts, and that "school day but not REALLY a school day" kind of feeling. In early adolescence -- say, from fifth grade through junior high, I never actually HAD parties, or went to any that I remember, but in my fantasies, they were frighteningly like something out of a 1950's teen novel. I always envisioned soft lighting, and slow/peppy music, and slow dancing with my head on a boy's shoulder (preferably the boy would be taller than me so that I didn't have to stoop over like an elderly woman to do this, but this was about as likely as the rest of the scenario -- that is to say, completely and utterly improbable). Pitifully, I did actually plan a few parties during this time but they never materialized.
Then in high school, I actually did have several parties, and they generally went as follows: Friends, generally of both genders, would come over after school or in the middle of an afternoon; we would have pizza and Pepsi, maybe watch a movie, and generally end up going for a walk before everyone left, sometimes at midnight or two a.m. Occasionally there would be a bit of drama at a party -- a couple would be made or broken, for example. Once I was sitting by the road and got a foxtail in my ear -- THAT was pretty dramatic. (just in case you ever wondered why country people have a reputation for being simple.)
Early in my marriage a party generally meant a church group or a group of women, over at someone's house for a baby shower or a birthday party for anyone in the congregation whose birthday fell in December, or some such thing. White elephant exchanges. Highly competitive games involving leg-crossing and safety pins. (for some GREAT baby shower ideas, check out what Dawn did for her sister's shower. Wish I was so creative.)
And then there's the past eight years or so. The word "party" instantly brings to mind the following: Crepe-paper streamers, of which we always buy far, far too many. Balloons, and if we really splurge we get the helium setup from Costco. An innovatively-decorated cake (today's depicted the Battle of Hoth; in the past we have created army battles, horse corrals, Blue and Steve, a lunar landscape, and various other kid-related scenarios with frosting and toys). A similarly innovative piņata. A crowd of children running wild. A lot of stress, and a lot of fun, and that moment when I finally abandon my mental image of what was supposed to go on, and enjoy the event for what it is.
And of course there's the realization that I have progressed past another milestone on the way to watching my children become adults and drive away, one at a time, to make their own lives wherein I'm just an accessory. We always spend the last few days before each birthday emphasizing the fact that the child hasn't passed into the new number quite yet -- so, although his party was today, our boy won't actually be eight until Wednesday, and we're holding on to every last minute of seven as hard as we can.
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
life is better
Why can I never think to make sure that my husband has a supply of clean white v-necked t-shirts BEFORE ten o'clock at night? I ask you. What I should really do is take about $50 of our grocery budget, go to Wal-Mart, and buy about eight three-packs of shirts every month. These will live in the top of our closet and he can simply pull one shirt out every morning and throw it away every night. Simple!
Oh my goodness that actually sounds tempting, except that it would involve a trip to the city which, at this point in time, I feel like I never. ever. want to do again.
Has anyone here ever been to the Bay Area? WHY IN THE NAME OF GOD is the traffic on the 580 freeway east through Livermore ALWAYS ALWAYS so terribly screwed up, EVERY SINGLE DAY, even at 3:00 in the afternoon? There's no accident! There's no lane closure! Precisely how many incapable drivers does it take to turn four lanes into "stop-and-go, and stop, and go just long enough to make you start to think you can actually accelerate, and then STOP and cause everything in your trunk to ram into the backseat so that you don't rear-end the person in front of you who has likewise had to throw his passengers and belongings to the front of the car to avoid hitting the person in front of HIM, and so on"? EVERY SINGLE TIME I ever travel that road! WHY? I took the kids to pick up some telescope accessories for T today and they wanted to see the windmills on Altamont Pass on the way home so I took the circuitous route. Never. Again.
Bad things about today:
- The weird nameless dread that sometimes comes upon me at bedtime is back. It's not that I sit and worry, I just feel that awful pit-of-the-stomach something is wrong feeling and I have no idea why. Is this what an ulcer is like? I wonder.
- The aforementioned traffic which made my shoulders so tense that I wonder if they will ever relax. I feel like a cat with my back permanently arched.
- T is sick and we don't know what with, and if we spend the money to go to the doctor, he'll just give us either the "I dunno, beats me, let's run some meaningless and expensive tests so that at least I look like I have some sort of thought process going on here," or he'll give us some pat and incorrect answer which has nothing to do with anything he learned in medical school except that The Patient Expects You To Have A Clue. It's probably some sort of virus, but it behaves really strangely, with only very occasional bouts of fever. Anyway. He has to work anyway because they are in the middle of some huge project at work and I hope he sneezes directly on his boss's computer keyboard and his boss is debilitated for weeks -- that'd teach him to have a little compassion and let a guy actually use his sick leave without getting an enormous guilt trip laid on him.
- The t-shirt/laundry thing, which is why I am here with you tonight instead of SLEEPING OFF THE TRAFFIC THING like I'd love to be doing.
- Cleaning the fishtank. Apparently, judging by the smell, the bacteria inhabiting the gunk that gets around the rim of the aquarium are the same as the ones in human intestinal tracts. In other words, it was not a pretty smell at all. eew.
- nothing else, today was actually pretty good aside from the above.
- The reptilian THING is a little less alive today than it was yesterday; it's been dying slowly ever since Saturday morning.
- The smell of eucalyptus in Capitola and Santa Cruz.
- The blue, blue, BLUE blue of the Pacific Ocean today.
- The moment when I was standing outside the car near sunset at a gas station, waiting for the tank to fill, drinking a can of diet cherry coke, and I felt like I stepped outside myself and looked at myself like I was a woman in a book, having a quiet moment to myself in a surprising time and place and really enjoying it.
- My daughter singing along with Alison Krauss' cover of "When You Say Nothing At All," which is her "VERY fav'rite" song.
- Cloud shadows.
- Whatever tree or bush or whatever it is that makes twilight smell so good right now.
- Feeling like I'm really living my life again, instead of just looking at it through glass, like I had for days. Yay for living.
Friday, April 09, 2004
short survey
I nicked this from the wickedly humorous Kristin and I can guarantee you that it won't be as funny as hers.
1: grab the book nearest to you. turn to page 18, find line 4. write down here what it says:
"overnight guests. The bedroom she shared with her son was di-" (this is actually from a REALLY GOOD BOOK called A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman. I just finished it yesterday.
2: stretch your left arm out as far as you can.
and...? Thin air. (?)
3: What is the last thing you watched on TV?:
The opening days of the Iraq war, more than a year ago. I mean it.
4: WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is:
Um, 10:30?
5: now look at the clock, what is the actual time?:
10:08
6: with the exception of the computer, what can you hear?:
My kids playing a game
7: when did you last step outside? what were you doing?:
About half an hour ago, and I was going down to the tire place to deliver some tires to have them balanced. (it's a beautiful, beautiful day)
8: before you came to this website, what did you look at?:
mom-on-roof's diary
9: what are you wearing?:
My Eddie Bauer jeans (most comfortable jeans in the WORLD), a pink ribbed tank top, a white button-down blouse, unbuttoned
10: did you dream last night? what about?:
I don't remember
11: when did you last laugh? why?:
A few minutes ago, because my daughter was being silly
12: what is on the walls of the room you are in?:
This is shameful. We have lived in this house for, what, eight years almost? And one wall has built-in shelving which is cluttered up with DVDs, videos, pictures, and stuff, but the rest of the walls have NOTHING. We even own prints which we want to put up but we never get around to getting them framed. Because we are lame.
13: seen anything weird lately?:
Just the guy across the street -- it's possible that he's totally normal but I get a really WEIRD creepy don't-trust-him vibe from him every time he talks to me. He said hello to me when I walked out the door and I said a very quick no-eye-contact hello and got in the car.
14: what do you think of this quiz?:
It's more interesting than a lot of quizzes. And I love quizzes.
15: what is the last film you saw?:
The Passion of the Christ and The Return of the King on the same evening in the theater.
16: if you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?:
Property and a house.
17: tell me something about you that most people don't know:
Well, my life is pretty much an open book, except for some things that most people don't know because I don't WANT most people to know them -- which means I'm not going to post about them here either.
18: if you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?
I am torn between being sincere or smartalecky here, so I'll do both. Sincere: Everyone would consider each other's needs and be courteous. Snotty: Nobody would automatically go into squeaky-voice mode when talking to children; that drives me utterly bananas.
19: do you like to dance?:
Only when I'm alone.
20: George Bush:
...is a good man whom I admire who has also done some things I'd rather he hadn't.
21: imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?
Well, my first child wasn't a girl. My second child was, and her name was Natalie. Or if I had another girl (which I never will) I'd name her Elizabeth Anne after my two favorite Austen characters.
22: imagine your first child is a boy, what do you call him?
My first son was a boy, and he has a name so unique that I'm afraid if I put it in this diary you'd be able to track us all down and stalk us. So I'm not going to mention it. Sorry. :)
23: would you ever consider living abroad?
Maybe in the short term.
24: will you pass on this survey?
Well, I'll post it in my diary, which is pretty much the same idea.
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
the first part of my day
Courtesy of Diarist.net:
What is the first hour of your day like? Does what happens then have an effect on the rest of your day?
I am blessed to be able to be a stay-at-home homeschooling mom, so the first part of my day sometimes varies, but here's as close to a "typical" one as I can get.
- 5:00 a.m. T's alarm goes off. He shuts it off and then lies in bed snuggling with me (which generally also includes groping on his part, not to be too graphic...) while I try to simultaneously be glad that I have such a loving husband AND avoid waking fully. Eventually T gets up to get ready for work, sometimes has to ask me which laundry basket has the clean t-shirts, and then comes in just before he leaves to give me a kiss goodbye. Again with the mingled attempts at enthusiasm and unconsciousness.
- 7:00 or so Between seven and seven-thirty, C wakes up and comes crawling into my bed with me. Sometimes she goes back to sleep but usually she lies there and sings songs, pets my face, hugs me, pets my hair, and tries to converse with me, while I again try to seem cheerful when really all I want to do is sleep ... a ... few ... more ... minutes. Also, this whole time I feel awful because this is such a sweet moment, and I should really and truly be enjoying it and savoring it, and in a way I do, but definitely not as much as I should. At some point I become (regretfully) fully awake, kiss C all over her face, climb out of bed (to C's immense joy), pull on some clothes, make the bed (oh, spreading up those blankets when they're still warm from my sleeping self is so difficult! I just want to burrow back in...), and go out to the front room. Then I fix C's breakfast and turn on the computer to check the email, read my comics (For Better Or Worse, Rose Is Rose, 9 Chickweed Lane, Luann, Agnes, Get Fuzzy, Barkeater Lake, and Pearls Before Swine) and any diaries/journals which may have been updated by that time (with an actual occasional squeal of glee if I see that porktornado, mom-on-roof or sundry have updated). LT doesn't generally stumble out of bed until 9-ish. He sleeps like a teenager. Then he has breakfast and we head to the schoolroom for the rest of the morning.
reliving your youth 101
Yesterday was a rare thing: I had the house to myself (yes, MYSELF) from about 9:30 on. That's when my parents came by to say hi, and I nearly begged them to take the kids because T and I wanted to go see Return of the King at the "old" theater in the next city over in the evening while we still could. See, a big new megaplex came in downtown and now the theater by the mall is reduced to the level of a dollar theater, with second-run kind of movies -- is that what second-run means? Movies that are no longer in the little top five box at IMDB and are only a month or two from coming out on video? I am definitely not fluent in film-ese -- except that it doesn't COST a dollar, it still costs EIGHT FREAKING FIFTY. ANYWAY. I found out on Tuesday that ROTK was playing there, which it hadn't been on the weekend so I don't know how that happened seeing as theaters generally only change their movies on Fridays, right? But whatever. Anyway. I just read the trilogy for the first time, having been a loyal C.S. Lewis acolyte for years, but having never been able to "get into" Tolkien until this year, and T and I had rented the first two movies on DVD and enjoyed them a great deal -- me in spite of all the STUPID CHANGES they made.
Good LORD I am straying off topic in every direction here. Breathe, Rachel. [pause]. OK.
So we wanted to go to the movies so I begged my parents to take the kids and they DID, they went and had a marvelous time helping Dad cut pipe. And while I was lonely (I really honestly do enjoy my own children's company -- so sue me), I was kind of looking forward to a day of, oh, reading, and relaxing, and going to the library, and maybe getting a little housework done. But here's what happened instead. Right after the kids left, the pest control guy called about the enormous seething mass of carpenter ants which is trying to eat the underside of my house as I speak. He said he would be by "sometime after noon". I mopped the floor and cleaned the kitchen, realized I had fully missed my library window since I had to be back by noon, thought, oh no, what if the man needs to look INSIDE the house, dashed around cleaning, folded some laundry (watching Pride and Prejudice, of course; my hands don't know how to fold laundry if Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy aren't on the screen in front of me. Honestly I tried using "How to Lose A Man in 10 Days" [which is a vapid but funny movie, rented not owned] and it just didn't work), and then I finally at least had a little time to sit down and read. Which was nice. But my days-to-myself never end up quite like I think they will. At least I did relive my youth a bit while I tidied up -- I was listening to Tchaikovsky. I played "1812 Overture" and "Marche Slave" twice each, complete with goofy ballet moves and multiple breaks to conduct the parts that you just simply HAVE to conduct. Or I do anyway. Romantic-era music is just perfect for those hormone-laden teenage years, what with all the passion and agony and ecstasy and the drawn-out-ha-you-just-THOUGHT-it-was-over-but-really-we're-going-to-drag-out-the-beautiful-agony-just-a-little-bit-longer endings. I spent half my time when I was seventeen, it seems like, lying on my bed in my room conducting Tchaikovsky and Rossini and even the occasional bit of Beethoven and Schumann even though they were Classical rather than Romantic (but oh, the pain! the beautiful pain!).
ANYWAY again. Eventually T made it home and we made it just in time to the theater, and check this out: we had the whole place to ourselves. Well, not the whole BUILDING, I'm sure there were people in there watching, say, Scooby Doo or Hidalgo or whatever, but the whole, what, auditorium? (again with the lack of film-ese fluency). It was like being in our living room, except the screen was oh so much bigger, and of course the diet Coke cost $4.50. But we had comfy chairs with chairholders and we could sit there and talk out loud to each other about the movie, and I could narrate what was going on for T while he had his eyes covered because of that HORRID HUGE CREEPY WRETCH of a spider -- who belonged in the second book anyway and what was UP with that? I liked the movie better than The Two Towers -- fewer changes from the book, and more understandable ones. I am such a book-to-movie-adaptation snob that sometimes I think I should just put myself under a moratorium and just not watch anything I've read the book for; it would keep me from throwing things at my TV nearly so often. But I can't. And Gollum was worth it, just perfect, he compensated for everything.
So at the end of THAT movie, just as Bilbo and Frodo were about to get in the boat with the elves -- whoops, hope everyone's seen that by now -- we realized that if I just told T the rest of the story, we could JUST make it in time to watch The Passion of the Christ. Being good Christians, of course we were feeling all guilted out (actually, the Christianese term is "convicted", and yes, there IS a language where I'm frighteningly fluent -- I don't know what "second-run" means for sure but I can use words like "Christophany" or "apologetics" or "koinonia" in a sentence...) for using our sitter-tunity to watch ROTK instead of The Passion -- our reasoning being that The Passion would still be available for weeks or months but ROTK wouldn't, but that felt like, you know, leftovers instead of firstfruits or something. ANYWAY. T dashed to an ATM (no we did NOT theater-hop, I know you were thinkin' that) and we bought two tickets for The Passion and for the first time since I was maybe nine I watched two movies in a theater in the same day. (the last time was Gremlins and The Neverending Story in a double-feature, just so you know). And for the first time since the incredibly lame Body of Evidence (which I watched on a date with an equally lame guy), I watched a late movie. Oh my, when I woke up this morning I had all the convincing I ever needed that I am not as young as I used to be.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
my skin is still crawling
My skin is still crawling. We were walking back at dusk from the street where the kids ride their bikes (we live in a hilly neighborhood and this is the only accessible level street; it also has minimal traffic) when we noticed a veritable swarm of huge carpenter ants on the rail fence around our front yard. Carpenter ants are bad enough singly -- when they are seething, oh eew. I mean, it could be worse. It could be centipedes. (oh no it couldn't, no no no, banish that thought, the nightmares! the horror-movie-worthy nightmares!).
Anyway, this is another Good Time To Be Renting -- I called the landlord and he'll be sending the Orkin man around to our carpenter-ant smorgasbord of a house as soon as possible.
Oh eew.
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Wednesday, March 31, 2004
long rambles about many assorted unrelated topics
My research has proved successfully that clumsy people are normal, and people who never make stupid physical errors are a bizarre anomaly who should be psychologically examined. Or at least, that's how I am choosing to interpret the results of my in-depth unbiased survey conducted earlier this week. Thank you to all who participated and hence made me feel more at home in this huge cold cruel world full of things for me to stub my toe against or hit my head on. Clumsy people unite! Perhaps we should make tomorrow National Stand Up Into A Cupboard Door Day to celebrate.
Oh wait, I forgot, tomorrow already has a holiday. Ahem. Nevermind.
Which reminds me that tomorrow is also the 30th birthday of the second serious boyfriend I ever had. Even when we were dating I found it appropriate that his birthday was on April Fools' Day. Ahem again.
I have always wished I was better at April Fools kind of things. Beyond calling my parents the first year I was married and telling them I was pregnant, which was pretty obviously a sham (and not only because I'd only been sexually active for twelve days at the time and twelve days is Too Soon To Know) I've never done much for it. I know people who hatch elaborate plans and pull them off successfully on large groups of their friends and I'm always a little bit envious. I lack the devious creativity to come up with things like that. Now my husband -- he is ALL THE TIME doing that sort of thing, but never on April Fools' Day, I think because he thinks of that as a silly excuse for a holiday. You know how there are people who are into things like school spirit and small holidays, and people who aren't? He's one of the aren'ts. But he'd be very good at it.
On a completely, totally unrelated note, I saw a whole flowerbed full of tulips exactly like the one on this page while I was on a walk today. It gave me a diaryland-addict kind of glowing feeling of rightness, and I narrowly escaped exclaiming aloud about it, which would have been stupid since I'd then have had to explain to my parents (who were walking with me at the time) what an online diary is, and why they can't read mine but the entire remainder of Western civilization is allowed to (although there are certainly other people who I hope never stumble across it, that's for sure).
Yet another completely, totally unrelated note (OK, if you must know, it came to mind because I was trying desperately to figure out if that last parenthetical statement should use who or whom. I think who is correct but I wouldn't stake anything on it): I was reading an article about that "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" book yesterday and I have found a kindred spirit in its author. I have got to feel fond affection for anyone who is as angry as I am when Hollywood misplaces or leaves out an apostrophe. I'll bet we could have a nice bitter vindictive ramble together about the way the English language is being dismantled and destroyed. She probably cringes whenever she sees "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids" at the video store, just like me. We should get together for coffee. I hope I could keep her from finding out about my parentheses addiction, though.
Friday, March 26, 2004
places I've called home
Because I lack the creativity, wit, cleverness, and motivation to do a real post, and have suffered from this lack for quite some time, here is my response to today's spark from diarist.net, just so I don't forget how Diaryland works.
What are the different places you've called home? Be it specific buildings and rooms, or cities and towns. Which was your favorite, and why? Did they each signify a beginning, an ending, or growing? Would you, or could you, ever go back?
1. The first place I remember living was "the yellow house." We moved in when I was three and moved out before I started kindergarten. This was probably actually the sixth or seventh house we lived in but I don't remember any of the previous ones. It seemed like a normal house to me at the time, but in retrospect I think it was quite small and old; you might even call it ramshackle. It had a big porch (at least it seemed big then), and a front yard with an old pump in it (I cranked the handle once and a bee came out and stung me). I learned right and left in the yard of that house and for years -- until I was at least ten, I'd guess -- anytime I needed to remember which was which I'd have to mentally put myself back in the garden, facing the bean-plant teepee, and remember that left was toward the house and right was toward town. I remember at least one Christmas here, when my dad built my brother and me a house out of our new Lincoln Logs -- and I got a doll crib, and my brother and I also got a typewriter. Almost as soon as we moved out of this house, the owner painted it dark gray, almost black. It looked like a haunted house for years until it was painted white with green trim (and black undertones). It was demolished five years ago or so, which was sad.
2. We moved from "the yellow house" to "the Plant", so called because we occupied the apartment above the garage at the sand and gravel plant where my father worked. We lived there till I was ten. Again, this apartment was really small, I guess (the property was sold a few years back and the ad mentioned a "possible upstairs apartment?"). And I suppose to most people it was a strange place to live -- but we loved it. We played in the rock and sand piles, and floated our decrepit old boat on the pond, where we also raised ducks. We started out with a few of our own and our flock grew effortlessly, because people would drop off ducks in the night once they knew this was a decent place to leave those ducklings which had been so cute at Easter but which had quickly become annoying. This was the best place in the world to ride a bike.
3. The summer before fifth grade we moved in with my maternal grandparents. I was excited about the move, and enjoyed living there for a while, but then two things happened: 1) I became painfully conscious of what other people thought, and realized that to an objective observer, the house was old, and... a little strange. (Pink, with a mint-green tin roof, for starters, and my bedroom had once been a breezeway and then been enclosed; much bare concrete was involved, and the chimney from the fireplace stuck out into my room) and 2) I became a teenager and had daily conflicts with my grandmother, increasing in intensity until I was fifteen and we moved out. Looking back, this was a wonderful place to live. Acres and acres of nothing around you but grass and cows -- which of course was another problem when I was a teenager and wanted to go go go and see people. But my brother and I had a wonderful time there, riding our horses from breakfast to supper in the summertime. This is the ranch where I would love to live again someday.
4. Next we lived in "the blue house" -- a new mobile home on my paternal grandparents' property. This was also a fun place to live -- I spent three years there and this was where most of my teenaged shenanigans with friends took place. It was the first place where I had a bedroom I could really personalize, so I had the stereotypical teenaged girl's wall covered with scraps of everything that had sentimental value to me -- dried roses, greeting cards, photographs, pictures, posters, banana stickers, and a strip of adding-machine tape going around the ceiling with socialist, falsely-deep quotes written on it in black Magic Marker. ("Man was the pariah dog, the moral leper...the muddier of crystal waters, the despoiler of forests, the murderer of the innocent" was one of my favorites at the time). I loved that room.
5. When that grandmother died and her will was a mess and her property got sold we moved back out to my other grandmother's ranch, except in our own house this time. I loved living there this time -- I was eighteen and appreciated everything (including my grandmother) much more. I only lived there a year before I got married and moved in with my husband into...
6. ... his little apartment over a garage in town -- the first time I had ever lived "in town" -- although the yellow house was pretty close. This place was a great little love nest and of course I have hundreds of happy memories centering around it -- the little bitty alcove of a room which we used for our books until we made it over into a tiny nursery -- the garage where where our cats had kittens and where we set up our computer, so that our mouse hands reached absolute zero when we played a game late on winter nights -- the little kitchen with its obligatory landlord-furnished glass-topped octagonal dinette table -- the nifty and ingenious built-in cupboards in the hall between the living room and the bathroom, which were practically responsible for the place being habitable at all. We lived there together for over two years, until our son was six weeks old.
7. Then we moved into the house we're in now, which is the "main house" about fifteen feet from the garage/apartment in #6. Anyone who saw it before we lived here would hardly recognize it on the inside -- when we moved in, it had new linoleum in the kitchen, but the bathroom was really bizarre, and the flooring throughout the house was in very sad shape. Not to mention the irregularly-shaped patch of orange, yellow, and brown shag carpet in the living room, which harmonized in a very 60's way with the dark knotty pine walls and wall sconces (these last two items are unchanged). Then it went through a wall-to-wall-carpet stage (meanwhile the bathroom got remodeled), until two years ago when the landlord (bless him!) paid to have the hardwood floors in the whole house refinished. yay, I am still besotted with them even today. :) We never thought we'd live here this long, and this was the year we'd planned to buy a house outside of town, but our housing market has gone completely insane so we decided to stay here where the rent's really reasonable and wait a while to see if the real estate bubble bursts, before we lock ourselves into a mortgage. In keeping with that decision, when the most recent tenants moved out of our little love nest next door, we started renting it also, so as to have a garage and a LOT more space. Now our son has a bedroom instead of an alcove in our school room, and we have space for guests and an amazingly cool, large, storage-bliss schoolroom. Aren't we lucky little homeschoolers. ;-) Meanwhile over the course of the almost eight years we've lived in this house, it's become "home" in a big, big way. All of our family's memories of home involve this little piece of property. Secretly I wouldn't mind buying it, but T's car hobby does not lend itself to permanent residence in town, so we have to at least hold out the possibility of buying a place with space around it.
And there you have it, whew! Maybe now that my fingers remember how to type I'll manage to post a "real" entry this weekend. ;-).
Sunday, March 21, 2004
camping questions and observations
I just finished a very nice weekend. T totally surprised me with A CELL PHONE for an anniversary present ("Welcome to the nineties!" was the greeting I got from my best friend when I told her) And yes, I'm so cool and thoughtful that I didn't get him anything; we've never done anniversary presents before, however, to be fair. We went on a little date on Saturday, and then the whole family camped overnight with my parents at a lake near here and had a good time. And since I am an official Diaryland Addict, you know I've been thinking all weekend about a few questions and observations to put in this entry:
- I spent most of today hanging around in the semi-shade outdoors, wearing shorts, not wearing sunscreen. As a result I am really pink around the neck and face but my legs are still fish-belly white. WHY IS THIS?? It is patently unfair.
- Good way to get lots of exercise: Have the worst 24 hours of your period whilst camping three or four hundred yards from the nearest bathroom. Walking back and forth every hour is great for your legs. Also a good way to practice women's safety tactics, since it involves walking said hundreds of yards at least a few times in the wee hours of the morning, when almost everyone around you is asleep but those few who aren't are certain to be highly intoxicated.
- I don't think there's a spot on my daughter that was both clean and un-scraped by the time we left. (note: she had a shower last night before going to sleep in the tent; I had to tell you that lest you think I let her -- eew -- go to bed filthy). Even though she fell asleep in the car on the way home, we simply had to wake her up for a bath before we could put her in her bed tonight, poor girl. She is a dirt and injury magnet (yes, we're talking about this little girl; it's like she has a split personality; her "Pig-Pen From 'Peanuts' With A Side of Accident-Proneness" self alternates with her "Fairy Princess of the World" self in a shocking manner). At least she didn't get sunburned.
- There ought to be a law whereby fish have to bite on a boy's first fishing expedition. But there isn't. :(
- Inline skates work a certain set of muscles, very very well. Overall, what with the period and the skating, my poor lower body is feeling so abused that I couldn't even read the title of Mom-on-Roof's entry from Friday (it involves magic fingers and hot lotions) without having a momentary massage fantasy which almost took my breath away. I think I'll have to get as close as I can with a heating pad and a few Advil.
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