“Night was a very different matter. It was dense, thicker than the very walls, and it was empty, so black, so immense that within it you could brush against appalling things and feel roaming and prowling around a strange, mysterious horror.” ― Guy de Maupassant
Just up the road is a really great little church. Built in 1923, it has no parish now and it’s locked, but it’s kept in good repair by someone. Frankly it looks just like what you expect a country Prohibition Era southern church to look like.
Cute, huh?
Drive past it at night, though, and you get the distinct impression of something sinister waiting just beyond the treeline to do something nefarious. It’s delightfully creepy!
“Hands up if you’re ready to do something you’ll regret this weekend. Go forth! You have my blessing.”
― Florence Welch
Ah summer.
My work pace has been frantic the last week, minions. Traveling to Virginia, doing last minute reporting projects, trying to cram in months of advance work for one client before I take August off for the move, and so on.
And this coming week we have to redo some travel plans because the first phase of our visa application has been approved and came with specific travel dates for us to use (which of course everyone refused to tell us before so that we could plan accordingly). I may have to fly back at some point so because J. and I will probably have to make our biometric application together. It’s never ending.
Peaches and cream pies ready to go.
But I like the busyness. On top of work and moving I’ve been keeping house for Mum, doing my level best to get into jogging (so far sticking with it but hating every second of it), missing J., and planning adventures. Marie and her husband are coming down for the weekend (huzzah!) starting today, so I’ve starting cooking up a storm to keep us fed and make sure all we’ll have to worry about is deciding between local summer weekend festivities, or going someplace like Charlottesville instead. We may even start harvesting some honey this weekend – Dad’s beekeeping has become prolifically successful! I might be an average housekeeper but I am a pretty impressive hostess when I put my mind to it.
Here are your links, tell me what you’re getting up to for the last week of June – and where is the year going, by the way?! My neglect of you is ended and I have all sorts of Virginia backwoods posts coming your way to keep you entertained, so stay tuned.
So, how accurate? Mine said I like rocky relationships and tend to end up with disastrous boyfriends. Nope! One “bad boy” boyfriend in high school fixed that, and I married (as you know) a pretty awesome guy. On the other hand, it said I love problem solving and projects. Check and check (as I plan my house deep cleaning schedule for the week…).
“Don’t you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?” ― D.H. Lawrence
Some of the local fauna we ran across on my latest walk/jaunt/jog/amble with the dog:
Racoons.
Rabbits – which the dog was practically foaming at the mouth to chase.
Goodness knows what this is – either a groundhog or a beaver. Whatever it was, it was as long as my leg and could scuttle like lightning! I barely snapped a shot before it took off through the fence. Mika just about lost it over this one, the rabbits were as nothing to it!
They were highly suspicious of us and moved immediately to the other side of the pasture. I am not from around these parts and the cows are snobs who declined to make my acquaintance.
“Oh thank goodness…tomorrow’s Sunday, not Monday!” “You forgot what day it is?” “We’re lying about in pajamas watching PBS, it’s a totally plausible mistake.” – C. and J.
“You need to see this puppy rescue video.” “No way, those make me cry. Besides, I’m watching a murder mystery, those are much less upsetting.” – J. and C.
“Pride is still aiming at the best houses.” – Alexander Pope
This time of year gets a bit tricksy with the budget, after all presents must be bought! But I had an interesting moment yesterday whilst writing out a check for December rent and simultaneously bemoaning car maintenance (new tires) – I realized I’m only going to be writing (probably) two more rent checks to our current landlord. Part of our contract involved paying first and last month’s rent up front, and I’m currently working on the theory that we’ll be leaving the area sometime in March. Thus there’s only January and February to go
Just like that, a rather hectic day improved. London is very close.
Mum rather blew the fairy dust off of my first grown up/married flat when she came to visit this past summer (her exact words were, “Well, this is a bit grim, huh?”), and I like to tease her for it, but it’s true. Our little flat is old and cheap, there is no dishwasher or laundry hookups, the furnace is a couple centuries below code, but it works. It’s been good to us. And the chances of us getting another two bedroom place in London for such a ridiculously low price are so infinitesimal as to be laughable.
I’m not sad to be moving on to new things, and I’m not sad that I have only two more rent checks to write here, but I’m always going to fond of our little place.
(Work’s still ridiculous, so posts this week are going to be blurb style. I mostly write this blog to keep my hand in, and I’ve been neglecting it. For shame, C.! I could be lazy and wait for the new year to make a resolution, but I think that procrastinating resolutions rather defeats the purpose, no? Prepare yourself for stream of consciousness, links, and ramblings!)
“I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn’t explain away afterwards.” ― Rudyard Kipling, Under The Deodars
We pretend to be all put together and grown up. It’s a front. A sneaky, lying, cheating front.
Ducklings, our house is a disaster zone – I can confess this and you won’t think badly of us. J.’s suitcases are still spread everywhere, sweaters are piled on the couch, we still haven’t folding the load of whites we did before we left for Arizona, and we just barely got around to doing dishes last night. At which point J. requested cookies so we made a mess of the kitchen and stayed up late with cookies and milk watching Dr. Who, refusing to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Adulthood and responsibility, fah!
However this current state has side effects. For example, with all this travel (not to mention a trip to London upcoming during the Summer of the Jubilee/Olympics) our finances have sort of fallen over wheezing and begged us to stop. We’re allowing ourselves the chance to eat out once a week, although we’re choosing not to exercise this privilege currently, and restricting entertainment to Redbox and card games. Of course, I’ve been mostly cooking for one for the past nine months and am remembering exactly how much food the guy I’m married to consumes – woof.
So, in an effort to make a lot of good food at one go to give us lunches for a few days, I whipped up a crockpot full of chicken fajitas. And you’ll excuse me for patting myself on the back when I say that they were delicious. Minions would have wept in joy to have tasted them. However we waited for the food to cool a bit before putting it away – and then forgot about it. J.’s first words to me the next morning when we woke up were, “Did we put dinner in the fridge last night?” My first words were, ah, unfit to print here as I scrambled for the kitchen and discovered I’d manage to waste a ton of food.
My brain is clearly having trouble reengaging after all my bouncing around and living out of suitcases. Tonight, though, it’s getting a break as we say farewell to J.’s old flatmate as he and his wife head off to grad school – and that means a barbeque! One more meal I don’t have to cook, and potentially ruin. Even I can manage to whip up a communal salad without incident.
“It’s the friends you can call up at 4am that matter.” – Marlene Dietrich
“Why are you still up?” Margot demands.
I wave a frustrated hand at my laptop, “Because I’m working on this cover letter. My resume’s in working shape, thanks to Peregrine, but this is the first time I’ve had to write one of these. I’m making a pig’s ear out of it. Wait…why are you up this late?”
“Wedding stuff. My wedding planner came by and the meeting took three hours. We’re not seeing eye to eye on the color of the cake. I also had to strip down in front of a strange man.”
My eyebrow inches up. “I imagine that wasn’t nearly as fun as you’re making it sound.”
“Nope,” Margot yawns, “gown measurements. I only sound perky because of the chocolate I’ve been scarfing down to get by. What time did you get home?”
“10:30. What time is it now?
“12:30. Yikes. How’s work?
“FBI’s coming to town, I’m organizing the event. You?
“Parent Teacher Conferences. Any development on the cover letter?”
“Not much. Made a decision on the cake?”
“Lord, no.”
[Pause]
“We,” Margot strikes a pose, “are warrior poets.”
“Damn straight.”
“Never go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.” – Phyllis Diller
I’m grouchy, I’m tired, and I’m going to overshare some more. Brace yourselves.
You can always tell who is new to our apartment building.
If only...
The astute learn early that the walls are paper thin and everyone can hear everything that is going on next door (or above, or below), and most moderate their behavior accordingly. The newlyweds learn quickly that the whole building may be treated to their sexcapades if they aren’t careful and move their bed away from the creakiest of the floorboards and try to somewhat muffle their, ah, enthusiasm. Families learn to keep their fighting relatively civil, lest the whole building hear their business. The Girls Next Door have learned that not everyone appreciates their impromptu dance parties – especially the couple beneath the with the new baby.
But because the frequency of tenant turnover is so high (we’ve been there nearly three years and we’re ancient by lease standards), no one stays for long. The Beepingtons were replaced just a week ago by a newlywed couple who, I suspect, are going to take a while to learn the ropes.
Sunday night Margot was out of town visiting her fiance and I was still doing battle with the never ending cold, so I’d turned in blissfully early. Only to be woken up by the new neighbors going to bed. Angry.
It was 1:30am, and apparently the perfect time for a fight. And lucky me, I got to listen to it as it got more and more heated. They slammed closet doors and banged dresser drawers as they traded accusations. Not really knowing them, I assumed that reason would reassert itself, they would realize the time and that their altercation was probably at a decibel displeasing to most and leave it till morning. I was wrong.
Half an hour into it my inner monolog had been hijacked by the feuding couple and I found myself thinking things like, “Be fair, that’s not what he said at all!” and “Leave her mother out of it,” and “Now now, she has a valid point.” After about ten minutes of that, though, I’d crammed a pillow over my face and was sending hate-filled thoughts through the ceiling and contemplating the ups and downs of charging upstairs an banging on their door with demands that they shut up.
Really, propriety? NOW?!
Believe it or not, I have a very well developed sense of propriety – kept in a functioning state mostly for the malicious glee of doing exactly the opposite of what it tells me to do. But unfortunately this is the time it chose to assert itself.
“C.,” it said forcibly, “as aggravating as this is, there is nothing in my playbook for this scenario. If they were flinging artichoke hearts at you across the table at a really good dinner party I might have something for you. But 2am shouting matches on the part of perfectly nice but socially unobservant neighbors is, surprisingly, a new one.”
I was going to have to wait it out.
At about 2:30am, the conversation turned weepy with many protestations of change and improvement in the two parties’ attitudes and behaviors. ” Bully for you,” I sighed, and hoped that such talk meant an end to hostilities.
It did.
After a couple of minutes of lovely silence, however the sounds of, ah, vigorous amorous activities began. “Sex isn’t going to solve your problems, kids,” I thought nastily and dragged my blankets over my head.
I hear you asking, “Why didn’t you just go sleep on the sofa, you complaining idiot?” Two reasons. First of all there was the principle of the thing: I was not going to be forced from my bed simply because they were using their for acrobatics. Second, and more importantly, another of the fun features of our building is that in addition to thin walls, all of the heating and cooling elements are connected. Through which sound carries. The acoustics of the living room being what they are, things were actually louder out there.
The show ran for an encore last night, at about the same hours. So now I’m horribly tired and more grouchy about J.-being-in-London-enforced-celibacy than usual. Never say I don’t tell you everything, kittens.
Small Dog Syndrome 