I think it would be interesting to sit down and write out ALL of my fears about remarrying. And I will do exactly that, just as soon as I have a full year of nothing else to do, pinky swear! But in the meantime, I try to keep the neurotic angsting to a minimum. Fortunately, I have two children with endless problems here to keep me focused on ACTUAL crises instead of the various ones I like to imagine. One of the things Otto and I are doing is a series of counseling sessions with my pastor. It's based on a profile we both filled out which was, admittedly, rather hokey. "I think my spouse and...
God, I am so stupid sometimes I want to just grab a frying pan and hit myself in the face. It is only slightly comforting that none of my frying pans are cast iron, but Otto says I am not allowed to live in the south without a good cast iron pan, so I had best do all of my face-smacking now before I buy something I could really break my nose with. Today I did two things with the very best of intentions, and I am already kicking myself. First, I filled out one of those ubiquitous online "Give us some basic information about your move and you'll be contacted with estimates!" forms. Within an...
It has become my favorite way to open a conversation with Otto---after our standard "well hi there" and "how was your day?"---to ask him, "So, did you sell your house today?" His home has been officially on the market for... a week? Two weeks? I don't understand why it hasn't sold yet. Clearly he's just not even trying. And it's not like it should be hard to sell a house down there, because my time on MLS indicates that most houses for sale include maybe two pictures, one from the driveway, of the front of the house, and then perhaps a bonus picture of some trees. Either the south is...
I had about a million things to get done this weekend, and almost none of them did. How unusual. I did manage, however, to get to the supermarket this afternoon. I spent most of my time there shaking my fist at the $9 gallon jugs of orange juice and crying heavenward "IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO SNOW IN CALIFORNIA EVER AGAIN." I love orange juice as much as the next person (though perhaps not as much as Otto, because his relationship to orange juice frankly concerns me a little), but I can buy wine for that kind of money. And then I don't have to share it with the kids. The groceries are now half...
Perhaps I have mentioned that I've lived in New England for the last, oh, 10 years or so. It is cold here. These are my wicked good slippers (they really call them that in the catalog) from L.L. Bean. I wear them whenever I'm in the house and not in bed, whenever it's winter. Which means that I wear them about 18 hours a day, 300 days a year. What? And they don't even smell bad. This is because they are made by wood elves in Maine who sprinkle the shearling with fairy dust. You can see that the right slipper is completely falling apart. I cannot imagine why. L.L. Bean would replace them for...
At 7:30 this morning I was down in my basement with a push broom, removing the last detritus from last year's Basementgate. Sure, it's been clean down there for ages, but I never swept out all the corners. Now I have. This afternoon I steadily filled my brain with information until I had to go curl up on the couch with the remote and a bag of chips to recover. I'm not quite done recovering, honestly. I showed the house to the family who called around lunchtime. They showed up with all four of their (adorable) children in tow, and while we attempted to discuss roofing and leech fields, the...
This morning BOTH of my children awoke healthy---if not entirely cheerful---and I sang "You are going to school to-day! You are going to school to-day!" until they both glared at me and plotted their revenge together at the breakfast table. I should probably be worried, but it's hard to take the revenge plans of people chewing animal-shaped vitamins seriously. We shuffled through the crisp air to the bus stop, amused ourselves by chiding each other for "smoking" and trying to make interesting shapes with the misty breath coming from our mouths, and then waved goodbye as the bus pulled away....
Hello! How was your weekend? Mine was just splendid. It's not like I wanted to go OUTSIDE or DO ANYTHING this weekend, so it was dandy just the way it was. I truly ENJOYED being trapped inside on the one freakishly warm weekend of the season. With no chocolate. Or alcohol. (Hold me.) Given that my weekend ended up being completely unremarkable due to house arrest, I have nothing at all to talk about except that 1) you people have some very strong opinions about pants or 2) something unexpected and really good may or may not happen soon. I am tired of discussing my ass so I figure, what the...
Thanks to the miracle of drugs, I actually got off the couch today. [Aside: Yesterday I phoned my doctor's office first thing in the morning to say, "Hello, how are you? I am quite ill and my face is about to explode, so perhaps I could come pay you $15 to give me some lovely drugs?" and I thought this was very clever of me, given the upcoming long weekend and all. Alas, if I was clever, so was everyone else in the tri-state area; I was told in no uncertain terms that they were booked solid, as was every other partnering health provider, and I should try some saline nasal spray and call back...
