her able hands

I have that interview for the job with the big toy manufacturer today, and I’m in a bit of a panic. I must be in a massive panic to have fallen back to sleep this morning instead of getting up to write like I normally do. I dreamed about being back at Big Weekly News Magazine after an extended maternity leave, and everything about the building had changed. Elevators were like a small stadium seating area with lap locks like a roller coaster, open to the innards of the building like looking at a ball game, and the banks for certain floors were no longer marked properly. I couldn’t find my ID tag, and wandered around, riding up and down on these death traps of elevators, my stomach rushing into my throat.

Anxiety much?

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Yesterday afternoon, my new neighbor questioned my spacing in my tomato bed. “Aren’t you planting those a little close?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Twenty inches.” He said.

“Well, I’ve planted them 15” for the past few years and canned over one hundred jars of sauce each year, given away bags and bags of tomatoes, and composted more than I care to think about. On top of that I sold about $150 worth of them last season.”

Raised eyebrows. Glaring at my garden bed. “I don’t know. That’s a little too close.”

I smiled as I dug another hole 15” south of the last one and pulled a Bloody Butcher plant from the bucket of water by my side. I didn’t say anything else, not out loud anyway, but in my head I told him to plant his own damned tomatoes and stop acting like just because he’s been on the planet almost twice as long as I have that it means he knows the only way to plant a tomato. “I hope you’ll want some of the harvest, I’m sure I won’t have time for all the canning I usually do.”

“Hmm.” He said, and stood at the fence watching for a few more minutes. I could feel him wanting to scold me, to tell me to listen to age and wisdom, to tell me to yank those tomatoes out right now little missy, and plant them the right way, the way he told me to already. Then he ambled off after his dogs and I planted another twenty sets at a 15” spacing, then mulched them deeply with grass clippings. Here is the offending tomato bed.

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Technorati Tags: tomatoes

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I’m up at 6 am, hoping the kids stay asleep for at least another hour. At this time of day the quiet is familiar, almost as quiet as the old house. Then again, at this time of day at the old house, the neighbor’s under-worked farm dogs are greeting the morning with their full-on yippy supplication, and I’m trying to ignore my twitching left eyelid. Oh, wait! It’s not twitching at the moment, and there are no dogs outside here yet. The only sound is the obnoxious whine of this old laptop and an occasional car going by down on the street.

Notice my use of the word street instead of road. We don’t live on a country road anymore, which is funny because the way this house is situated–up a hill and back behind the other houses on the street, with a long country style limestone gravel drive with a strip of grass growing in the middle of it—makes it feel more country and charming than our ranch set close to the road with the blacktop double driveway and the tractor parked behind the barn ever did.

Have I mentioned yet how much I love this house?

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Tuesday afternoon, Lila and I made the trek out to the old house to get another load of detritus and loose cannons with the pickup truck, and to attempt (unsuccessfully) to gather the rest of the felines. The day was hot and humid, and when I pulled in the driveway my heart lurched at the thought that I might somehow get trapped there and have to stay forever. That would suck on a thousand levels, though isn’t a remote possibility. We fed and watered the chickens and Charles the female rabbit, and while I was outside I got a visual reminder of the fact that my fat cat Oliver has opposable thumbs when he opened the sliding screen door and ran for the woods. Bastid.

Bummer for him, because I couldn’t go back on Wednesday, so he spent two nights outside. He’ll be clinging to the screen when I get there this afternoon to try again, and he’s going to get the sneak attack from behind while he’s gobbling up his kibbles like a hungry dog. He can sit his sneaky ass in the pet carrier until I’m done collecting another load and cleaning out the fridge.

When I got home (HOME!!) on Tuesday evening, Chris wasn’t back yet from his guitar lesson, and the Corvaire wasn’t in the garage. And the one cat we’d managed to collect on Monday wasn’t anywhere in the house. I cracked a Negra Modelo, sliced some lime and squished it into the bottle neck. Drank half of it, then set about searching for the whiny cat that everybody but me loves. Nothing. And where was my errant husband, due home by 5:45, and here it is 7:00? And Lila running outside and down the driveway every five minutes while I tried to make dinner? The cell rings, it’s Chris, and he’s exactly where I suspected he’d be (and on an easier day? exactly where I’d encourage him to be) at his friend D’s house in town, having a beer. This is the friend who lives right down the street from the shop, where Chris has often wanted to stop after work and have a beer with the guys and the wives, or two or three, but hasn’t because the drive home would be dangerous. Now the drive home takes exactly three minutes, and the fact that he can stop in for a beer or two or three is a beautiful thing. Except not this night.

He tells me they all want me to put Lila in the truck and come on down, and a dozen voices are howling in the background that they want to meet Chris’ Phantom Wife.

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Technorati Tags: home, Wife

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for arriving in your full humid, sweaty glory on moving day! I nearly passed out from my own stink.

Two trailer loads down, four to go. Man. We have a LOT of shit.

Too pooped for coherent thought, missed the boat on a father’s day post, overwhelmed with gratitude that we got this beautiful house where love drips freely from the faucets and vibrates from every wall, wishing I could wiggle my nose and be finished with the old, unhappy house instantly.

Life is good. My legs hurt. Substance later.

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