Hints and Guesses

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There are many things to like about the new job I begin tomorrow.

The hours, for starters: M-Th 11-7 and F 11-3. The world is run by morning people. I am not one of them. To be offered a job with these hours is a gift.

I also live close enough to the new job to walk to work. It’s 13 minutes one way. And the sun is returning, and spring is on the way.

It would be simple enough if I just wore my work shoes to walk to work. I tend to wear comfortable shoes for work, but they’re not really intended for that kind of walking (on the road part of the way), and I can pretty much guarantee that my feet would be hurting after a couple of days of this.

I don’t want to wear my real walking shoes. For one, dress pants are too long to wear flat shoes. In addition, they’re just ugly.

You’d think this would be easier, but I’ve tied myself up in knots over less.

Any ideas?

My primary housekeeping project for this month is to declutter, clean, label, and inventory our laundry room. The room has held much clutter but no surprises until today—a nearly full one pound bag of dried shiitake mushrooms. No idea where it came from or how long it’s been there.

I can’t imagine that they could have gone bad (although I trust my readers will tell me if they think otherwise), so I aim to make a small batch of cream of mushroom soup tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.

We’ve had a great time already in the day and a half I’ve been here in Arizona. Yesterday there was some juggling and balloon-animal making (I am clearly better at making balloon swords) and two episodes of Series 1 of Doctor Who. Today, a holiday, there was more Doctor Who, The Princess Bride (new for both The Girl and The Boy, and it was a hit), and later a late afternoon visit to the Desert Botanical Garden, where the sun set and the moon rose before we left the owls and jackrabbits behind.

However, as exciting and fun as all of this was, nothing can top something The Boy casually tossed off. Farts are funny, you know, to children, and after The Girl let one off in the car, I (for no good reason) suggested that they learn how to say “fart” in several other languages.

“How do you say “fart” in Spanish?” I asked her. She began to tell me how she didn’t know, but then a small voice piped up from the back seat.

“Fartita,” The Boy said, thereby creating an instant classic.

For a more uplifting take on the day’s events, visit Thursday Drive, where she is too hoity-toity to talk about fartitas.

My house is not a haven of peace and order. “Whose is?” you ask, and I nod my head in agreement. But I’d still like one. At every turn, there’s some reason why I can’t move forward with my plans.

The piano stands in for a number of obstacles. When we bought this house, the previous owners left their piano behind (the house was previously owned by the mother of my stepchildren). At the time, the boys were still taking piano lessons, and she got another piano for their new house. So wherever they were, they could always practice.

Well, no one’s taken piano lessons for the last three years, and it’s only been played a handful of times in that time period. The more time passes, the more I want to get it out of the house. It dawned on me this year that I own bookcases that could occupy the piano space, and since I still have books in boxes, I really wanted to set up those bookcases.

Have you ever moved a piano? It’s not such an easy thing if the piano is up half a flight of stairs in a split-level house. We’ve had numerous conversations about moving it. We even have someone who wants the piano. Unfortunately, no one is as motivated to move this piano as I am. I told my husband that I wanted it out of the house by the end of September. I don’t think he believed me, until yesterday.

Yesterday I rolled the piano out of the way, vacuumed the floor, set up the bookcases, and unpacked fifteen more feet of books. Then Stepson #2 rolled it back to sit right in front of the bookcases. My husband came home, took a look, and then tested the weight of the piano. “That’s about half as heavy as I expected it to be,” he said. “I think I could move this down the stairs with one other person.” I rolled my eyes.

Now that the bookcases are out of our bedroom, I can put a dresser in there that we’ve had sitting in the garage for the last couple of years. It’s mostly refinished, but I can assure you that the longer it sits out there, the less likely it will be to ever get finished. It’s going in this weekend.

This leads to further reassessment of our bedroom. I don’t know whose idea it was to put in the pink carpet, but it was not a good one. We’re not going to be able to replace it anytime soon, so I will continue to pretend that it’s not there when I make decorating decisions. We’ve got a nice Heywood Wakefield headboard, along with the aforementioned coordinating dresser. That, and the custom Elfa closet configuration are the best things about our bedroom. The carpet has to be replaced, I want to put in new window dressings, and we’ve got to replace the ugly ceiling fan. And then I might paint and try some wall decals.

At 8:15 this evening Dr. S called to put me out of my misery. The training thing didn’t work out anyway, she said, and in the end they went with the candidate with academic experience, which I don’t have. However, the assistant dean of the college of arts and sciences is actively looking for a new assistant and she’s passed my resume on to him (at his request). She was complimentary about our entire experience together (which began last week when I went over to introduce myself since she didn’t know me from Eve and then spent an hour in conversation).

So tomorrow morning I’m getting up bright and early to go over and do my networking thing again. All is not lost, and this might even be a better position for me.

On the corner of our lot sits a large beech tree. Since we’ve owned this house, we’ve had four incidents in which large branches broke off the tree. The first was during a storm (two large branches came down that time), the second was a calm, sunny day (I happened to see that one fall), the third was in light wind conditions, and the fourth was during a big storm. The fourth incident took out a power line, and our neighborhood was without power for several hours. It also almost hit a passing minivan and would have hit the firstborn’s car if his brother hadn’t ditched it in order to take shelter in the house (he parked around the corner instead of the driveway, and that saved him).

I like trees, but I have never liked this tree. It leaned over the street in front of the house and I had visions of it crashing on top of a car or two. Taking it out, however, was out of our budget, and so branches continued to fall, miraculously never hitting either a person or a vehicle. Still, I called it the Death Tree.

Until the power company decided to take it out, after the last incident. They’ve been on a tear around town lately, taking out way more trees than I thought necessary. Today they finally got to ours.

Here’s a before sequence, starting from the base (note the power lines in the first photo, and note the lean, which is worse than it looks in this photo):

Here’s what’s left of the top:

And this is what’s left of a once-mighty tree:

Negotiations are under way for how we’ll design that area of the yard.

Congratulations! You scored above average on 1 of the 4 elements of the adult fitness test.  Your score was average or below average for your age on 3 of the 4 tests. You may wish to talk with a fitness or exercise professional about activities you can do to improve your performance on these tests.  Keep up the good work! Remember to be active every day and work to maintain a healthy weight.

Does scoring above average on 1 of the 4 elements of the adult fitness test merit a “Congratulations!”? Does an overall score of 28%ile deserve applause? “Keep up the good work!”? Is that code for “that chair suits you”? Because this last week, it did, every day.

It’s been an uneven week. Having a big crowd of people over, while enjoyable, takes a lot out of me, and I’ve done little around the house. I haven’t exercised at all, and my last shower was Tuesday morning. Both Tuesday (after the job interview) and Wednesday I left the house only to drop off a Netflix DVD in the mailbox and pick up some Taco Bell.

I did have a job interview Tuesday morning, which was apparently another good practice interview. Some Saturdays are involved, so that seemed to be the dealbreaker for her.

I’ve done some reading, and some Torchwood and Sliders (thank goodness the Sliders days are over!), and completely overhauled a web site that’s been giving me fits for ages. It’s got only one fit left in it and hopefully that will be cleared up by the end of the day.

The first wife is annoying me these days, and I’ve tried hard not to be annoyed. She is a nice person and a good mother, but she’s in a crazy mood.

We’re out of granola, and there are banana muffins to be made.

• A box of things from two jobs ago. The mice had a big party in there, even managing to chew a small hole through the metal lid of a tube of lipstick.
• A box of books. I thought I’d managed to get all the books in the house (where many are still in boxes but are not subjected to the ravages of temperature change).
• A recipe card for the legendary Poppy Seed Bread, stamped and written by Louise but handed down from her mother.
• An old will

I am exhausted, but my house is clean. It would be a shame to miss this experience by leaving the house.

In the end, thirty-five people came over a three-hour period. Making 24 biscuits out of a 12-biscuit recipe turned out to be the best option; I made three batches, which was a bit more than enough. We used forty peaches (almost half a bushel) and five pounds of blueberries, which was about a pound and a quarter less than needed. We ended up using most of four batches of the sour cream and whipping cream topping. I talked more than I’m used to.

The big surprise of the evening was sixteen-year-old Stepson #2, who volunteered—volunteered, mind you—to peel and slice peaches. Not once, not twice, but five separate times throughout the evening. While he has many good qualities, volunteering for work is not usually one of them.

And sorry, but not a picture the entire evening. I was either too busy talking, slicing, or eating.

Inexplicably, I am already thinking ahead to my next social event, which will likely be nothing more elaborate than Saturday lunch with a handful of friends.

There will be Peach and Blueberry Shortcake at my house on Sunday, 5-7 pm, come and go. The three of you and your families are all invited. And if C is still reading here, you’re invited, too.

Each recipe is supposed to make 12 servings, but one of those biscuits is really a lot of biscuit for one serving, so I am going to make 16 biscuits in one variation and 24 in another. And I’m going to use small custard cups for some servings and cereal bowls for others.

Hopefully there will be enough people to eat all of it.

• A picture from Louise’s first wedding
• Ticket stubs from a trip to Gyeongju
• My first passport
• My alien registration card from Korea
• Lovely messages from some of my Korean students
• A glass painting project from elementary school (and if you were there, you probably know which one I mean)

I love this part!