Reading: Sons and Lovers

Moving: House- and yardwork

Listening: "Gabriel's Message"

Watching: Nothing yet, but it's only 4:00

24 December 2000: With wings of cloud and eyes of rain

On Thursday I talked to my father's girlfriend, whom I prefer to call my notstepmother because "girlfriend" sounds too whimsical and notstepmother clarifies the relationship, and gave her an email address. I had just got off the Nordic Track, showered, eaten dinner, and bundled myself on the couch with a book and wasn't about to get up, even for her, even to get a pen for her address. I should have though: three days and no email yet.

This morning I discovered a gray chest hair on RDC (not on me--that would be freaky). He wanted me to yank it out. I remember swimming with my father the summer after fifth grade and realizing for the first time that his entire chest pelt was gray. At ten, I was frightened that he was going to be all old soon. I have long remembered the shock and fear of that moment, but I never extrapolated it to my husband. Perhaps because I figured out in the intervening 22 years that gray doesn't equal dead.

I puttered for a bit this morning, then attacked the coal and furnace rooms. I hauled all the nasty window treatments (chintzes I wouldn't insult a chair with) out to the garage, but to get to them I had to paw through and organize all the flotsam--Brady's-era ceiling fixtures, fake brass wall lamps, beige switch plates, sections of molding, drop cloths, wainscotting--that had accumulated on top of them for the past seven months. Among the drapes and curtains I found some white ones to replace the uglier things currently hanging. I know the best thing would be to make my own drapes, at least for downstairs, but ahaha, whom'm I kidding? I removed the tan gingham from my study and the two beige pillowcases tacked to the south windows in the family room, and the replacements are in the wash. If it took me seven months to root through what was already here, I shudder to think how long it will take me to find a permanent solution.

The yard's been needing another raking since successive snowfalls finally took the leaves off the tenacious cherry trees, so I did that, stuffed the leaves into the composter, finally coiled the hose into the garage, and washed the glass I found in the garage rafters several weeks ago that I thought belonged to the front security door. It was only after I chapped my hands with Windex in the freezing cold and tried to hang the suckers that I realized they were too narrow. My mistake, but their fault of course. So I painted the wall grates in the dining room that go to the old heating system--the gas furnace has floor registers--and decided we should have just patched the wall and molding in the dining room, as that would have been more work for RDC and less for me and more aesthetically pleasing. Meanwhile RDC put another coat of sage on the dining room walls--the dining room that we allegedly finished Thanksgiving eve, as I juggled painting window trim with peeling apples for pies. After this additional coat, you can't see bits of dingy white through the sage. We still need to do detailed work along the trim border, so that there's neither sage on trim nor white on walls.

Our neighbor came over with her baby to thank us for the cookies. She admired the tree (without prompting, though my thanks were effusive) and we admired the baby, whose bedroom walls are just about the same color of green. The baby admired the bird, who was unimpressed and retreated into his box to sing.

And then our work was done for the day, because it's Christmas Eve!

I made peanut butter toast--with butter and peanut butter, because I'm right--shared a corner with Blake, peeled an orange, shared a wedge with Blake. Toast is commonplace and he squeaked once to thank me; but he hasn't had a bit of orange since last winter and squeaked with every bite, so appreciative was he. Such a good boy.

Meanwhile RDC was out at SPM's to feed and water three cats, a six-day obligation. I was really hoping that in that length of time, the cats would require the litterbox to be cleaned, but apparently they're not that fastidious. Humph. I wanted this to happen because I don't understand how any human can get to be 33 without changing a diaper, and a litterbox is close enough. But not this time.

This year, I tacked lengths of ribbon to the living room walls and stapled our Christmas cards to them. Next year, there will be no such wanton tacking. I guess I'll use the mantel then, which is what most people do, right? LEB enclosed photographs of a new cat I hadn't heard of, Miss Chief. The Vs' card had all four kids, and I am so in love with the only daughter. They're all charming but it was she whose back I got to rub this summer and whose smile is the winningest. Everyone is doing those long cards built out of a photograph with a bit on the bottom for a preprinted message--my cousin's three sons, TJZ and Soulmate, PSA and his wife, and a scarry photograph of a charming little girl in shoes too old-fashioned to have belonged to ALN. Nisou told me yesterday that's ALN's mother as a toddler in Germany.

RDC suggested working down from the living room, through the front stairs, into the family room and thence to my study. Since, realistically speaking, we won't have the living room done before spring, by the heat of summer we'd be working downstairs where it's cooler. The front upstairs landing is primed but not barely painted, which is a fine thing because what little was painted--the ceiling was edged--hints that the gunmetal gray inflicted on the upstairs trim was intended for that stairwell. Ooof.

The staircase has no railing but a bit of floor on the right side and a jut of wall on the left, also at floor level. The theory is to paint the upstairs bit, floor level and above, something respectable--either the white of the bedroom ceiling or the cream of the rest of the upstairs ceilings. Below that, we could do something more interesting. We can't get Blake to fetch a newspaper or pour a glass of water or anything really useful, but I bet he would be an inventive faux-finisher--or that we could faux-finish with him. This is only an idle threat, though, since we don't want any faux finishing.

We overbought the lavender for the bedroom. RDC campaigns for my study to be lavender as well. Anything has got to be better than this Air Force blue I've got in here now, but for me, a lavender study would detract from the perfection of a lavender bedroom. Plus this hideous green carpet would clash even worse with lavender than with pale blue. I wouldn't mind new flooring throughout the entire front half of the basement. The tiling the previous owner had laid in the third of the room nearest the television shrine is freezing, and the swirly forest green carpet is swirly and forest green.

Which leads us to our plans this week: an area rug to cover the tile downstairs and a ceiling fixture, curtains, and rug for the dining room. Finally.