Koroshiya rocks, but you knew that. After seeing what she did for Jared, I whined and stomped and asked whether I perhaps live in a snowshadow, thus deserving no banner? This despite her just--like, Tuesday, the last time the mailcarrier trekked to the house--sending me a mind-bending mix cd, mind-bending because the Smiths and General Public and I go way back, so to hear Love Split love and Harvey Danger do "How Soon Is Now?" and "Save It for Later" threw me. Not to mention, who the hell are these people? I am pathologically unhip.
So she sent me my own banner. Hmph.
Yesterday afternoon, after 36 hours of letting the snow tamp itself down under its own weight and a couple hours of rain, I scurried outside to get the final tally, except what with the weighing and the rain it wasn't. The official measurement for Denver was 29", though I don't know if that was downtown or at DIA.
About 5:15, the electricity wavered and came back. Two minutes later it was gone. At this point, the storm became much less fun. I don't think I've been without power in the winter. In the summer, one doesn't freeze. Previously, I haven't had a desert birdkin to keep warm. But the house keeps itself fairly warm fairly well, as long as outside is not windy or too cold, and we didn't expect the temperature to dip much below 30. The fireplace heats the living room splendidly and we would live in there. City water and a gas stove meant no worries about water or even cooking.
So the camping began. We cozied up the coffee table and chair next to the couch, to make room for the futon up from my study. This became our bed. We dug a path to the woodpile, thinking ourselves very clever for buying all that wood this fall, removed the tarp, and hauled a bunch of it inside, downstairs to drip dry in the furnace room. I was pleased with myself for actually having cleaned the bathroom and the birdcage this weekend, because I don't do those things nearly as often as I should and there's nothing like not being able to do anything about it to make a house seem grimy. I wished I had washed my hair after beating the crap out of my trees in the morning. We dug out the camping box, the box of matches, the candles, the flashlights, the headlamps. Our landlines are cordless thus need electricity, but we had our cellular phones.
As dusk fell and there was no light, Blake began to look around suspiciously. What were we doing? Didn't we know he's afraid of the dark? I lit a candle in the 5-armed candelabra and put it in the corner of the dining table closest to his cage. But he's afraid of candles too, and flashlights! I found a honeystick in the cupboard and hung it in his cage to keep him occupied.
We couldn't light the oven, which though gas has electric controls, but we could light the stove burners. We ran those with pots of water on top. After dinner (pasta with sauce out of the freezer), I washed up. So far, so civilized.
The house was cooling down, and while a fire would suck the remaining heat out of the house, there in the living room we'd be warm enough. So we lay the fire, newspaper twists like Laura Ingalls Wilder and the hay, scraps of lumber from the woodshop (!) since everything in the brush pile would have been soaked, dry wood from under the tarp. And a match.
This is where we found out the hard way that our chimney is so very old-fashioned, so wide and open, that it can get packed with snow.
About that the less said the better.
Not yet. I have read and cleaned and baked fabulous cookies and listened to music and have I mentioned that Blake is in some form of cockatiel heaven, with both parents home for three solid days? He did freak out yesterday morning when I went outside for two hours, immediately after getting up so without first properly bidding him good morning, but otherwise he's blissed out.
Twenty-four hours without outside communication just kind of worked out right now anyway. It would be clever for us to have a battery-powered radio, but this way we didn't find out that the war had begun until long after it had. I wrote to my heavies about my recent hausfrauing, whether it's making peace within myself or just ostritching. (I also decided that "to ostrich," as a verb, needs a "t" at least in the gerund form.) "Life goes on. Even in London in wartime. Especially, perhaps, in London, in wartime" (The Shell-Seekers).
I really like, in Maus, when, to his analyst, Art quotes Samuel Beckett, "Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness," and then they sit wordless for a panel before Art continues in the next, "On the other hand, he SAID it."
Perhaps because I read the form so seldom, a short story seems like something to be studied as much as read, so the absence of individual introductions seems pretty bizarre to me. There is a general introduction, though short, and the collection is arranged chronologically (I think by story publication date, which would explain the seven-story gap between the two Elizabeth Bowens, though not why there are two by her when only one by everyone else). I want some context; but that's what the web's for.
Kate Chopin, "The Storm." Less depressing than "Story of an Hour" or The Awakening.
Edith Wharton, "Souls Belated."
Katherine Mansfield, "The Man without a Temperament."
Pauline Smith, "The Sisters."
Dorothy Parker, "Here We Are."
Henry Handel Richardson, "Two Hanged Women."
Jean Rhys, "Let Them Call It Jazz."
Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the PO."
Elizabeth Bowen, "The Happy Autumn Fields."
Antonia White, "The House of Clouds."
Katherine Anne Porter, "Rope."
Marjorie Barnard, "The Lottery."
Anna Kavan, "An Unpleasant Reminder."
Stevie Smith, "Sunday at Home."
Doris Lessing, "The De Wets Come to Kloof Grange."