The River Green

The day is upon us. Time for turkey, mashed potatoes, friends, family, beer and Marieke’s sweet potato oranges. Unlike last year, we are hosting this time around and are welcoming eight people to our ginormous table.

Part of the reason we opted out of hosting last year was because we didn’t have the energy to clean. Having to spend most of our physical and emotional strength dealing with our friend’s accident meant that we just could not hack hosting. The decision did not go over well with our normal crew- one person in particular responded to our decision with static. I did expect a little more understanding, but I knew it was just expecting too much.

Our day began with some coffee and planning. My first task was to make room in the former Gecko room, for all the stuff that doesn’t belong where we plan to eat dinner and socialize. Marieke’s first task was cleaning the bathroom. An hour later, we seriously considered cancelling. Aunt Flo paid us a three-day-early visit, so that wrenched up the whole works.

It is a mystery to me, how, in under twelve hours, the house looks like a palace- granted a small palace. Maybe a gnome palace, but a palace nonetheless. Speaking of Kabouters (Dutch for gnomes), the vacuum we had to borrow from mom was made for use in only the residents of gnomes. This is the only possible conclusion to draw, given the ridiculous angle one must stand in order to operate it. My mother is what I would call average in height for a woman in her demographic. Marieke and I are what I would call above average in height. I can see over everyone’s head on the bus and in crowds, I tend to be the first to know when it starts to rain. So maybe it’s a matter of perspective.

In digression, I’ll say this: the turkey looks quite defrosted, having spent the last five days sitting in the fridge. Our prep work for tomorrow- food wise- seems like it will be smooth sailing, since we have a CuisinArt hand-me-down that slices carrots faster than the speed of lightning and chops onions like nobody’s business. I’m sad to see our ‘manual’ chopper go, but I won’t miss nursing the wounds suffered to my knuckles from the mandolin slicer that it doubled as. Also gone will be the nearly ninety minutes of slicing four pounds of carrots. It’s a tradeoff, but those things were invented for a reason. Now I can sleep in.

My cousin, David, shared a quote from Melody Beattie that I thought appropriate:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Melody Beattie

Have a good Thanksgiving.

Labels: family , friends , holidays , house , Thanksgiving

When Marieke came home, I was in the middle of the annual ritual of evacuating the water from the hose and winding it into its little house for the winter. Of course, this also includes cleaning the area of the outside where the hose usually sits during the warmer months- along the side of the house, precisely forming a line from the front of the house, where the water spout is, to the back of the house, where it is needed and used most often. Over the course of the warmer months, the area becomes overgrown, spider ridden and otherwise swarmed upon by whatever other examples of life exist along the side of the house.

This year, it was far more complicated since the two-paned crank window decided that we only need one pane of glass during winter and broke. Not completely, but enough to leave room for a steady breeze. Having cranked the window closed, substituting a paper bag for actual insulation, but not delusion of insulation, my task was complete.

While washing my hands of residue that my twisted mind thought of as ‘Summer’s Corpse,’ Marieke said, “I have a thought about dinner…”

To which I replied, “Yeah, I’m hungry for Hough’s too.”

“I wasn’t thinking Hough’s, I was thinking Eat & Park because we have to go to Target.”

“Oh. Ok,” I offered, somewhat dejectedly.

“We’ll have plenty of beer for Thanksgiving,” I sometimes wonder if she harbors a deep-seeded fear that I’ll become an alkie. After eleven years together, I would hope that she knows the answer already.

Mom and her friend, Joe, were pitching in for a case of beer. Our choice. We picked a “Variety of Victory,” one of our favorites.

I supposed I could wait. My inner frat boy grumbled at not being gratified instantly.

Labels: Hough's

I’m not sure how I feel about not having posted a weird, random event in a while. They happened more before we quit smoking. What’s that about?

Having put the porch in proper winter order, we weren’t too concerned with the warning of excessive wind by the 11:00 news.

At 2:34am, I was startled awake by a terrible noise that could only have resulted from a dumpster falling down the steps. I imagined one of the dumpsters in the alley behind the house shaking free of its moorings, only to have plummeted into the shed in the back, which was now at the bottom of the hill in the back yard, pressing against the dining room wall.

The cat was sure we were being invaded, so under the bed he went. Since the dogs didn't seem at all impressed and Marieke was snoozing away, I guessed that it was a dream and Manfred was only disturbed by my reaction. Upon roaming the house, clad only in my skivvies, brandishing a plumbing wrench and flashlight, I found nothing amiss.

Since the front porch is so wide, I was not able to see the front steps from the front door.

The sidewalk, which is where one end of the gutter is resting in the picture, is about 30 or so feet below the porch. The porch is on the first floor, the bedroom is on the second floor. It was hanging above our second floor bedroom windows.

We estimate that it must have fallen about 60 feet. At 2:34 in the morning, I in my drawers, going from window to window in search of the mysterious noise. What a sight that must have been from across the way.

This is the same gutter that came loose during the snow storm last winter. We managed to control that situation by tying string to it and anchoring it to the roof until our capricious landlord remedied the issue. It seems to have suffered some buckling upon landing, so perhaps it is beyond repair at this point.

At any rate, another weird, random event goes into the books.

Labels: house , random events

Even though I’m having a crisis of mammoth proportions in school and I’m behind on e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, I’ve come into some really awesome music by way of iTunes radio. This website provides the best continuous music heard in quite some time: http://laut.fm/alternativeworld. I’m listening to Phoenix now, but I’ve been introduced to Troy von Balthazar, The Temper Trap, The Twilight Sad, Marquis of Vaudeville- a small sample of the playlist I’m gathering.

And thank goodness… I was starting to dream in Bach and one morning woke up singing Whip It. not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that something new was definitely needed.

Neil is coming in today to get the geckos and take them to Norfolk. I’m gonna miss the little guys. Think he’s only staying the night. Luckily, we are pounding out the ‘get ready to have people over for Thanksgiving’ cleaning list, so his room is clean(er). We got the porch done last night and Marieke washed the sofa cover so that there is a spot to sit.

I’m falling ever behind and I don’t see any clear sky ahead- at least not before Christmas- which is 43 days away. Fingers crossed, I guess.

Labels: family , house