Reading: The Bottle Factory Outing

Moving: scraping windowsills and scrubbing staircases

Listening: KBCO

Watching: Those parts of "Illuminata" for which I was not asleep last night and the end of "Sense and Sensibility" today.

31 December 2000: Windows

I took a scrub brush and hot soapy water to the front staircase today. The treads had bootprints from our running up and down the stairs when we moved in seven months ago. The white paint gleamed afterward, at least until RDC returned from Home Despot with a router (three days after I expected him to buy it) and some lumber to rebuild the moldings on the living room windows. I refuse to be Mrs. Cleaver or Martha Stewart or the Anal Retentive Chef or the mother in Deenie or whoever. RDC said, "But I'm wearing sneakers!" as if the uppers being white means anything. He turned up a sneakered foot to see the sole. Black. "Oh."

The Bottle Factory Outing feels like it's set in the '20s, but then someone mentions the love song from "West Side Story" or refer to the oil crisis and it's very jarring. It's a fast read, at least.

In the winter of 1995, I temped a lot, and for two weeks I was at St. Joseph's College in West Hartford, in their admissions department. I spent a few hours early one Tuesday afternoon standing filing, particularly over the second drawer from the bottom. Late that afternoon, sitting was uncomfortable; that evening driving home, I had trouble using the pedals and wished, for the first time in my life, for an automatic transmission. I actually spent Wednesday at home.

That was the first undeniable physical sign that I was getting old. Oh, I had three fine lines across my forehead and I had thoroughly scowled my intereyebrows furrows into permanence, but to have put my back out by leaning over the wrong way or at a bad angle or for too long was function, not appearance. I was decrepit.

On Thursday I could touch my toes and put my hands flat on the floor, just as I ought to be able to do, and I haven't had problems with my back since. I also know to be careful.

Today I scraped the left living room windowsills. There are four layers of paint: the thick gunmetal gray that was on all the trim in the bedroom and dining rooms and remains in the living room, beige, tan, and cream. The paint came off the windowsills in large chips this summer when I tried to open the windows, replacing the storm windows with screens. Now we dig through those chips with a putty knife before power-sanding down to wood.

Our trim is fir and poplar, not oak, so we'll paint over it again, but the gashes in the paint make scraping and sanding necessary. They're big windows: the bottom sill is a couple of inches over my knee and they reach within a foot of the 9' ceiling. So I was leaning over the sills, putting my back behind the strokes of the putty knife. Ow.

I spent the later part of the afternoon watching the end of "Sense and Sensibility," since goodness knows that movie could have changed since I ironed the curtains Friday. Then I checked out the DVD menu and lo and behold, there's a version with Emma Thompson's commentary and another with Ang Lee's commentary. So I started watching it again, with the commentary. I want Emma to talk about how she cut certain characters and scenes. Mr. Palmer is enough comic relief that Lady Middleton would be too much, and I like that Margaret has a speaking role, and Anne Steel is unnecessary....but what of Willoughby's midnight ride, and how Elinor finally understood and loved Mrs. Jennings?