Marginalia, Trivialities & Suchlike
I would like to thank each and every one of you good readers for giving us a lovely set of California olive oils and vinegar. I need to thank everyone, because it shipped without a note to tell us who’d sent it. So thank you all! Especially you. Yeah, you know who you are.
It seems like Thanksgiving was maybe a week ago, but here we sit, everything Christmasing around us. This is the first Christmas that Kid No. 1 has been out of school, and she and her beau decided to split the holidays— Thanksgiving here and Christmas at his parents’. If it was my choice, I’d have chosen to have it the other way around, but I guess I didn’t get a vote. Anyway, we had (a) Christmas here on Saturday. To quote the Man In Black, “I don’t like it, but I guess things happen that way.” We had scads of non-traditional foods and exchanged gifts and all that. And it was nice to be with family in front of a warm wood stove. Dr. Evil and I decided that our big gift to each other would be a fancy new water heater, so as you can see, the romance between us remains en fuego.
But now it’s actually Christmas and . . . well, nothing. No stockings, no making of the merry. Even our egg nog turned out to be “spice” nog. It’s not bad, but it’s not egg nog. Our favorite Chinese restaurant isn’t open today, so we can’t even do a Jewish Christmas.
I suppose this, or some variation of this is how it’s going to be from here on, so I’d better just get used to it.
Kid No. 2 will be staying with us, presumably through New Years, so that’s pretty nice. She came bearing all of her laundry, So I guess I’ll have to buy more detergent soon, and give the septic some time off. So. Many. Clothes.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas, and I really, really hope for a better 2019 for our country.
It’s exactly one month late, but construction of the garage began on Monday. The worker bees swarmed the old structure and had it stripped and torn down in one day. I worried when no one showed up early Tuesday morning; a favorite tactic of contractors is to begin work, then wander away, insulating themselves from fraud claims because technically, they’ve started the job. Around mid-morning, though, they showed up to retrieve the scrap metal. Wednesday dawned to the sound of a skid steer zooming and forms getting built. I was, however, a bit concerned when the contractor came up to the house to basically ask to be reminded what exactly they were building. Uh oh.
But it seems to be working out. They poured concrete yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day floating the surface. By close of business, it looked like a frozen pond. Speaking of freezing, the weather gods are favoring us; it’s been durned cold, lately, but this week warmed up right in time for the pour, with overnight lows not even hitting freezing for a few days. It’s Friday now, and they came to cut relief lines on the pad. It’ll continue to cure over the weekend and I hope to see framing start on Monday. Next potential hiccup: trusses. They haven’t been ordered yet.
I know this is about as exciting as hearing about someone else’s dream, but it’s damned exciting to us, so please forgive my prattling.
Has everyone seen The Ballad of Buster Scruggs yet? If not, get on it!
We finally have a promise date from our contractor to tear down the old, tired outbuilding and replace it with a viable garage, so I’ve been laboring over the past few days, working to empty the existing structure. We have of ton of our own stuff in there——mower, tiller, chainsaw, garden stuff, but the in-laws also left stuff behind. I summoned Dr. Evil’s father over today to sort through the contents. Turns out he didn’t want the various flat tires, nor the gigantic camper cover, nor the 15 or so binders filled with research material, circa 1990. Among the various items I heaved down from the loft was a simple brown old-school suitcase. When it landed, he chuckled and said that it was the suitcase his parents sent him off to college with in the sixties. He didn’t want the it back.
I climbed down from the loft and tossed out various items, and committed others to the uncaring flames of the burn pit, but the suitcase remained. At the end of the day, as I was pulling the door shut, I spotted that old brown suitcase sitting upright on the floor and realized that I’d never toss it in the garbage, nor into the burn pit. I don’t know what will happen to it, but I’m not going to be the one to trash it.
***** UPDATE *****
