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I'm done obsessing.
I can't tell you how or why that happened, but it did and that's the end of the subject. Martin Luther King Jr day, today. The neighbors had off school. (for any chance newcomers... the neighbors are my cousins. They're 15 and 13.) I expected Henry to spend most of the day up here playing Nintendo (we've both been slightly obsessed by the Legend of Zelda lately. Don't tell anyone, though. You'll ruin my reputation.) ...but he couldn't, because their house is officially without water. It's one of the great things about living in the country- you get a well. And the thing about wells is that they don't always work, and when they decide to not work it's almost always because it's below freezing or above 100 out. So Henry was ordered to spend most of the day digging out the line while Rene was ordered to spend most of the day melting snow. Me, I hid up here until my dad got home and then went down to help. I'm not exaggerating when I say my dad can fix anything. He knows just where to look to find the problem and he always knows how to fix it. He looked at the hole Henry dug, decided the line wasn't leaking at least there, and then decided the water level in the well was low. Then he dug out an old sump pump and some hoses, took a quick trip to the hardware store to get some fixings, and then stuck the pump in the creek and pumped water from the creek to the well. And they think that fixed it. It's amazing to watch my dad do stuff like that. I've been watching him my whole life, and I've gotten better, but I think with him it's just instinct. Sometimes I think my whole life can be told by what project he was doing when, because it's always something. A couple months ago when I was baby-sitting a commercial for some new kind of insulation came on and the kid I was baby-sitting for, who was 9 at the time, started asking me questions about why the other kind of insulation would make you itch. And I was astounded that someone could get to be 9 years old and not know about pink panther fiberglass insulation. I mean, hasn't every stuck their hand into insulation to see what it feels like? Then it occured to me, that she's probably never been around when someone was putting insulation in a room, and she probably never had an attic crawl space where the insulation was falling down and you had to wriggle on your stomach to keep it from touching the back of your neck. She's probably only lived in finished houses. And then it occured to me that she's probably normal. I, on the other hand, have never lived in a finished house. I'm not sure it ever occured to me that a house could be finished. I mean, by the time you make an actual room out of the last corner of the basement, the roof will need to be redone or we'll want a new deck out back. Or maybe it'll be time to make a dormer in one of the upstairs bedrooms. My dad started this house about 20 years ago. Maybe 18, I'm never really sure. Still, when you go in the front door you're in a cement basement. Just last year he put a bathroom in back there, with tile on the floor. One of these days, he figures he'll have enough money to tile the whole floor. I'm told that when he first moved in here, if you went in the front door and wanted to go upstairs to the living room, you had to climb a ladder. He hadn't gotten around to building the stairs. There was only one bedroom when I was born... my crib was in the corner. Now there's four bedrooms. The thing about living in a house that is always changing, is that you learn a lot. You learn how to build a wall and put up plaster. You learn how to redo a roof. You learn how to fix the toilet, because if you don't learn it'll run all afternoon until your dad gets home and you'll run out of water and everybody will be mad. When it does run all afternoon, you learn that to fix it involves going outside to the pump with a jug of water and cursing a lot. I love living in a changing house. You can look at the porch that wasn't there ten years ago and the bedroom that wasn't there five years ago, and remember where you've been. And then you can look at the cement floor and the crack in the ceiling and see where you're going. It anchors you in the present. In my real life, I can never do that. I'm either stuck in the past, cringing, or I'm in the future, scared. I can't seem to stay in the present and be able to look back fondly and look forward with anticipation. I guess you can do that with a house because houses aren't as important. It really doesn't matter if something breaks, it can be fixed. My life is harder to deal with. If something breaks, you can't always fix it, no matter how hard you try. Did you notice I always say "you"? ...I mean that I can't fix it, but I always say "you". I wonder why I do that. Enough lame metaphors... please send me feedback on the new layout. If the graphic hurts your eyes, I need to know! also... go out and buy Ani's new album. Up Up Up Up Up Up. I love it. Of course, I'm very bias, but it is a wonderful album. It'll be in stores tomorrow (the 19th.) is learning what not to play and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say and she's trying to sing just enough to make the air around her move and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove She crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home and it's enough just to look around and know she's not alone ~from Up Up Up Up Up Up (the song) by Ani DiFranco |