I bought this yesterday between swim and seeing Trish and Jared. Making sure I had time for the Tattered Cover might have been why I shortened my swim. I haven't been a regular reader of Pamie's for a while, I think since she moved to L.A., but I knew most of the entries she used in this, either because they occurred while I read or because they garnered enough attention through links that I sought them out.
I can't distinguish between my pleasure that one of us--indubitably suitably Pamie, and I don't really consider her and myself an "us," I'm not that delusional--really got published because of her journal, and the delicious pleasure of lite reading fare, which is exactly what I wanted yesterday.
One eensy copyediting error: the medium of web journaling clearly places this book post-1996. But someone gives a Hartford--an unlikely place to have a nice house with a backyard and a swingset but I'll let that pass--phone number with a 203 area code. Connecticut, minus the New York suburb of Fairfield County and New Haven County, has been 860 since 1995. (Hartford is in Hartford County. It's an imaginative state, wot? Guess what the county seat of New London County is. G'won, guess! Next try Windham County! and Litchfield County! But Fairfield County's is Stamford, I think. And there is no town of Middlesex for Middlesex County. Pity, that. Really though I doubt Connecticut has seats as such.) Anyway, should've been 860.
Today I did one of the stupidest things I've done deliberately since I was grown. Or at least since Friday, when RDC gave Shadowfax egg-beater stirrups (at my request). And not counting the rollerblades. RDC took the car to DIA for a long day trip, back and forth to Tucson, and I already mentioned going to the Dead tomorrow [except I accidentally deleted that, so I didn't, but we are], and really I should've mailed it Saturday but we went to Grand Lake instead.
I had to send it today, so I pedaled (unclipped) to the package store--I love saying that--with a care package for my sister under my arm. I was fine, and thank heavens, because if I had spilled it would have been my sister's fault (in our parents' eyes) as much as my 1992 car accident was, since it was her care package I was sending.
(1992 car accident: driving back from the surprise birthday party she threw for her boyfriend in Boston, half mile from home, passing (on the left) the braking, left-signaling other driver, passing on the left despite the left turn signal, because he must be turning right onto the residential street rather than left into the restaurant because who would be going to the restaurant at midnight, three hours after it closed? No one except its cleaner. Both of the 'rents gave CLH shit for that, like my carelessness was her fault.)
Care package: a child's jigsaw puzzle of a duckling, because it was there and a nice quiet game she probably can't injure herself with, except I forgot about Curious George eating the puzzle piece until just this moment. Plus she hates birds. A book of crossword puzzles with a rainbow cover, and a package of "pencil pillows" coordinatedly colorful.* A bag of individually wrapped Wint-O-Green lifesavers, because what is a stocking without them?** A package of Newman dark chocolate peppermint cups. Animal Dreams and Poisonwood Bible and Why Girls Are Weird, the last of whose first non-entry scenes is Anna washing Dale's hair because he just hurt his hand. CDs of John Denver and Barry Manilow because they will make her laugh and PJ Harvey (thanks Trish) just in case. Um. A tin of Before the Kiss mints in a tin with Klimt's The Kiss on the lid. Did I mention I just bought Nisou a shower curtain with The Kiss on it? Well I did. Then I saw the mints and thought that would be a good follow-up but somehow wound up with two tins. My sister gets the spare. A candle holder that, frankly, has been in my Goodwill box (along with that travesty of a jacket I foisted on Jessie some time ago) for a long time. A store credit to Bombay Company for the princessly sum of not quite eleven bucks that I scored when I finally brought two wine bottle necklaces, for chrissakes, back to that Land of the Laminate. (Both the candle thingie and the necklaces were Christmas presents. I am the regifter.)
I have not been to an interesting store since before I got The Call alerting me to the Need of the Care Package, so what she got was what I had in the house or could score at Rite-Aid when I picked up prescriptions, plus Pamie's book.
I could have found good swag at the Tattered Cover if I hadn't been scurrying. Between the Tiny Wooden Hand and the hair-washing, Why Girls Are Weird might be just what my sister needs. It will be interesting to see if someone who's not Among the Initiated likes it.
* and ** My sister just sliced her hand open, hence the care package. Her right hand. Crossword puzzles and individually wrapped lifesavers might not have been such hot ideas.
Moving on. So I need to get hold of the second Addams Family movie. They lose their house and have to move out, and there's a scene where Thing, the hand, trots down the sidewalk on its fingers trailing a little red wagon filled with one-handed thingies. I want to get her that stuff. I want to know what Ned Flanders sells in the Leftorium and get her that too. And then there's the "M*A*S*H" where Charles is so proud of his painstaking work enabling someone to walk again, even if he slacked on the hand a bit, not knowing that the soldier is actually--sob!--a concert pianist. So Charles finds him left-handed piano sheet music--amazing what you can find in a mobile army surgical hospital in the short window of time a soldier would have convalesced in one. Not that my sister has a piano or remembers any more than I do of our lessons with Mrs. McNamara ("Swans under the Willows, "My Favorite Things," and "Three Blind Mice," me).
I can say this because she doesn't read this (she tried it and stopped, disappointed that it wasn't all of the calibre of "Breathing Stuffed Animals): I boxed everything up in the box that her last year's birthday present came in, the Super Bubbler. She was really disappointed in me that I didn't find this as amusing as she did. I'm a grown-up: I'm not going to use that in the house on my hardwood floors and upholstery! Or outside, all that soap film to harm plants with? Plus the concept of blowing bubbles with a motor instead of with your breath is faintly heretical, isn't it? Like using a leafblower instead of a rake, a motor instead of a sail. Plus it's loud.
But, CLH notes with satisfaction, I have used it at every outdoor gathering I've had since. Which is two, last summer: a cookout with Clove and Dexy, who I knew would enjoy it and did, and Haitch's graduation party, when little kids ran through the bubbles and emptied the bottle into the large stockpot I'd put out as a water dish for the dogs. Dogs with diarrhea from drinking soap: just what I want in my backyard and what their owners wanted to take home with them. This year for my birthday CLH sent me a box of stocking-stuffer type stuff that was all just super, and one of the things was a large bottle of bubble juice. Ha.
So she'll be amused by the box I used. Hey, it's the only one I had in the house of the right size. Damn it.
So Ebay has this beautiful handmade Tiny Wooden Hand for $35, and frankly if she hasn't read either Pamie's site or book, would it be funny? Otherwise I can buy a gross of plastic backscratchers for two bucks. I exaggerate, but she might not be getting a TWH. Also I need to find the titles of appropriate sheet music.
But the box won't even get there until Friday. Perhaps by then I shall have completed a second box. I have already contracted to drive to work on Wednesday, after a late night with the Dead, and at lunch I plan to find one of the Other Targets. I've seen one, probably a mirage, not too far away. Ours is closed for expansion until October, and the line in our house is that that was the only one on the whole planet.
I am taking suggestions for subsequent care packages, though the hook and the pirate keyboard are probably the pinnacle of possibilities.
By the way, she says Kitty really likes the splint. It makes for good scratching. There's a cat for you, always looking out for your best interests. "Oh, you're injured? That cast looks like a good scratching post." I am not one to talk: RDC had to go around like Napoleon last winter because Blake found his cast deeply, deeply enticing. It moulded RDC's hand and wrist into the buddy-scoop position! What could be better?
Why the hell am I still awake?
Five cubic yards of fill, 2.5 tons, in three steps, 20-21 June, 29 June, and this evening.
When RDC came home the 30th, after a full week away, he asked why I had not moved all the dirt. I had blocked out my frustration with the project in the intervening 36 hours and forgotten why, exactly, I had stopped. "I was tired?" I guessed. Wrongo. I remembered as soon as I started again. I fucking stopped because there was no more fucking room on the north side of the house. I did not order five cubic yards, no. I voted for three. Three, I grant you, might have been inadequate, since all but one wheelbarrow-load that landed in the raspberry patch is in fact on the north side. But five has taken some trampling, and some gentle grading of the slope on the north front, and quite a bit of fill against non-tarred bricks, where it cannot stay.
When we started this project, you could see two tiers of black, that is tarred, brick on that side of the house, where bad drainage had gradually eroded the soil. Or, I should say, not before we started but after I had removed all the stone previous owners have tried to improve drainage with. Certainly dirt should cover those two layers, but no higher. I worry about the grading, whether it's sufficient to keep rain, should any fall again, from the window wells.
I should also say I don't know how dirt solves the problem. I understand about grading, about sloping the dirt primarily toward the property line but also from back to front. But dirt, even clay dirt like this, still is water-permeable. Water still drains down through the soil. It just has to go through more soil before eventually finding our foundation with its probable crack. Yea. If it had been just RDC's brilliant plan I maybe would have objected, but since it was the structural engineer's I credited it.
There's been no rain to test anything since 20 June. We'll see.
This might not be the final step. We still might need to dig a ditch.