Tag Archives: home

Brief Christmas musing…

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In the post-plague era, it feels like some of the old traditions have fallen away. In fact, since 2019, I’ve only been home on Christmas Day two out of the last four years – either avoiding the illness of others or not wanting to spread my own across the state. 

I made it home for 2023, though. Still not feeling at the top of my game, but at least I can’t blame this one on the Great Plague. So we muddle through, enjoy some rare true down time, worrying that what the cats are up to in my absence, hoping that the dog doesn’t demolish my childhood home, and hitting most of the usual high points – even if doing it with less vim and vigor than I’d like.

It’s always good to be home, sleeping in my old room, and at least for a few hours not finding myself completely tied to day-to-day normal. That will start again soon with the drive back out of the mountains towards the shore. 

For the moment, though, I’ll soak it in – all the more aware of how fragile and fleeting can be these days.

To those of you reading along, I wish each and every one a very happy Christmas. I hope you got exactly what you wanted.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. COVID-19. I’m well into my second week of the Great Plague now. The worst of the symptoms have slowly resolved, though I’m left with some nagging sinus stuff and the fact that the least physical effort leaves me something between worn out and exhausted depending on how long I’ve pushed myself. I know there are plenty of people, some of whom could be reading along now, who cling on to the notion that this plague is “just a cold.” Bullshit. It didn’t hit like any cold I’ve ever had over the last 45 years. It didn’t hit like the flu, either. This bitch was decidedly different and uniquely unpleasant. I’m just glad I ducked it until the third year of its age, when I the medicos had lots of research, a pipeline full of antivirals, and real treatment protocols to call on.

2. The House Republican Caucus. I’m sorry, I know many of my friends are dyed in the wool Republicans. I was one for a long time… but the Republican members of the House of Representatives are, if I can sum it up in a simple phrase, a bunch of absolute chucklefucks. They’re chowderheads. Asshats. Week after week they’ve proven themselves unfit for service in sustaining the world’s oldest republic. I wouldn’t trust them as a group to house-sit for a weekend, let alone run the United States House of Representatives. I don’t know what other message we could reasonably be expected to take away from their utter failure to do so much as select their own leader over the past three weeks… and then when they managed to get this basic function done, they selected an election denying, religio-extremist, insurrection cheerleader to carry the Republican standard. Jesus wept.

3. Self-realization. I love being at home. There’s virtually no place I’d rather be at any given time than hanging out here with Jorah, Anya, Cordy, and George. Nothing new there. In the last two weeks though, I’ve learned that my love comes with an unexpected caveat. While I’m happy enough being at the house when I’m doing it of my own free will and accord, when I’m doing it because I’m participating in a period of quarantine, I’m thoroughly annoyed by it and my mind regularly wanders to things that my quarantine is preventing me from doing. Seriously. I have a running list of places to go and things that need doing that I haven’t been able to farm out or have delivered. I don’t suppose I should really be surprised that I like doing things on my own terms and chafe when doing them under the smallest amount of duress. It’s practically one of my defining character traits. Still, this minor discovery was somehow surprising.

Getting pumped…

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Living in town isn’t without its conveniences. Someone else handles the details of getting water to your house and getting waste water away from it. Here in the woods, though, I’m on the hook for making sure those things are happening from day-to-day. 

Incoming water was a major project last year – dealing with sand intrusion and raising the well pump, swapping out the filtration medium (twice), and battling an insect infestation. Today, I’m tackling a bit of preventative maintenance on the outbound side. Of course, by “tackling,” I mean I’m writing a check while someone else pumps down the septic tank and inspects the works. 

Growing up, “drain fields” were exactly that – large open stretches of ground where the drain tile was laid and we were strictly forbidden from planting anything other than grass or driving over with anything heavier than a lawn tractor. The drain field was sacrosanct. As a kind, I remember endless conversations about where, exactly, the boundaries of these fields were located. Here, though, the drain field runs directly out into the woods. According to the paperwork it’s eight feet down and all on the up and up, but I live in a constant state of paranoid that tree roots will invade the system and trigger the mother of all repair and replacement projects.

Of the many random tasks that go into keeping a household running, the triennial pumping of the septic tank is absolutely one of my least favorites, if only because of the nightmare projects it could trigger.  

My way of life shouldn’t be putting any strain at all on a system designed to accommodate a household of 3-5 people… but it’s now 23 years old, which puts it on the low end of the average septic system lifespan.

As my brain thrives in a world of worst case scenarios, I’m always expecting the worst possible news when they pump down the tank. Getting pumped shouldn’t be terror inducing, and yet here we are. 

Condition, normality, and the first binge of summer…

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Without consulting the database, I can safely say I have about 1650 real paper books stashed here in the house. It’s an approximately equal division between what I’ve read and what remains in the to be read stack. By the time you pass 800 volumes, calling it a to be read “pile” feels somehow dishonest.

I pulled my copy of Flight of the Intruder by Stephen Coonts off the stack last night. Second edition. Nice clean jacket. And for some reason a strongly penned “x” right there on the half-title page. It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder what the previous owner was thinking when he did it.

With a handful of exceptions, I don’t tend to have pristine first editions that look precisely as they did when published. I’ve got loads of firsts. Most of them show various and sundry problems. Creased jackets. Bumped boards. Maybe even a bit of water staining for some of the harder to find books. Even so, they’re delightful objects, but often the $20 version of a $200 true first in “like new” condition.

Sometimes I have to remind myself I’m not building a showpiece. I’m building with the intent of actually reading what ends up on my shelves. A library to be used and not just observed. More power to the people who put those together. I don’t have the budget to justify being a collector at that level. A bunch of near fines that I’m not afraid to touch is my sweet spot.

At best I’ve got 25-30 books that should fetch enough to make it worth hauling all the rest away when the time comes. If you’re not approaching the semi-professional or elite levels of collecting, having the whole thing pay for itself is probably just about as good a return as one can reasonably expect – especially when most of my high points have come out of the $2 bin. rather than an auction catalog. I’m sure I still have a few big scores left in me as I paw through thrift shops, charity sales, and the occasional proper antiquarian bookshop if they have something I can’t resist even at full retail.

The three years of COVID slowed me down a bit. So many used book sales were cancelled or postponed never to rise again. Shop schedules shifted to make them harder to get to or closed up altogether. The desire to not deal with the general public in large or small groups was even stronger than usual. Slow rolling my acquisition process isn’t something you’d notice from looking in the stacks. Books have been coming in more or less at the same pace I’ve been reading, so it has been a kind of homeostasis. Next week is the first round of my long awaited summer buying binge, so all bets are off once that gets underway. If the pre-COVID past is prologue, it’s the kind of thing that happens immediately before I start complaining about needing to lay on some new bookcases.

I’m cautiously optimistic that this will be the real summer of “back to normal” for me. I am, of course, using the word “normal” here very loosely.

I’ll never be accused of wanderlust…

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A million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I would burn off vacation time to go places and do things. It could be as simple as taking an extra-long weekend at the beach or as involved as heading to the Caribbean or spending the better part of two weeks knocking around Europe. It’s been a decade at least since I used my vacation time to really “go away.”

There are lots of factors intervening. Buying the house put a real stretch on finances there for a couple years. The idea of finding someone I trusted to take care of the various dogs, cats, and tortoise in residence for more than a day or two away was always daunting – and often nearly as expensive as the trip itself if I opted to hire it professionally versus relying on the less budget busting kindness of local friends. Added to that, the recent experience of returning home to find Hershel unexpectedly hovering just short of death’s door despite all reasonable precautions and care has left me more than a little angsty every time I need to leave the house to get groceries, let alone think about being away for days or weeks at a time.

The other insurmountable problem with going places is that when you arrive where you’re going, they’re inevitably filled with people. I can muster up the patience for dealing with the masses in small doses – perhaps the length of a concert – or a bit longer if really pressed. Contending day after day with long tourist lines, jostling for every meal, and a sea of people milling around oblivious to everyone and everything around them simply doesn’t sound restful or relaxing. Maybe I’ll be motivated to do that kind of travel again someday, but 2023 doesn’t feel like the year.

I’ll be using my upcoming time off to launch some strategic day trips to a few of the Mid-Atlantic region’s great used and antiquarian bookshops, get some vetting done for Anya, and otherwise just knocking around the house a bit. It’s not a plan smacking of wanderlust, but it feels like precisely the level of peace and tranquility I need at the moment.

I love them for it…

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Every morning, beginning Monday of this week, between the time my alarm goes off and I flop over to turn on the lights, a certain gray kitten has taken it upon herself to jump up on the bed and give me a headbutt and demand about 45 seconds of ear scratches before she hops down and goes on about her day. Given the trials and tribulations of the last two months, it ranks well up on the list of best possible ways to start the morning.

On Wednesday evening, for the first time, Cordy found the courage to jump up on the recliner to join Anya, who was already well practiced at keeping my legs warm. Through my own twitching, and Jorah’s close quarters investigation, she stayed put until it was time for me to close down the house for the evening. It was a big day for a kitten who was so recently content to spend 95% of her waking hours holed up under my bed.

That this week, among the 51 other weeks of the year, is the one that’s most filled with utter bullshit, it’s been entirely fortuitous that they’ve decided to really make the effort to settle in as full members of the household. Unsurprisingly, they’ve made Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday bearable – and I love them for it.

On promise and disappointment…

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I went to an estate sale over the weekend. I just happened to see the signs while on my way to do other things and dropped in. It was promising. The big house, fairly modern, with its rolling green lawn overlooking the Elk River should have been a good buying opportunity. It was about as picturesque a scene as you could want in a region that prides itself on sweeping water views.

Everything inside, though, was entirely forgettable. Architectural Digest prints on the walls and expensive plastic as far as the eye could see. Literally not a thing you couldn’t find new from your local Target or Pier One or Wayfair. At best, there were a few obviously modern pieces doing their best to imitate antiques.

At the risk of sounding judgy, if the house ever had any soul, it was gone long before its most recent resident shoved off. Not a bit of it looked in any way lived in – or really even lived with.

Someday, inevitably, my household will be shut down and the collections of a lifetime broken up. I can promise you, though, the house will look thoroughly lived in and the objects within will have some flavor of personality beyond the fashion of the moment. Every bit of it will be there not because it “looked good,” but because it recalled a time or a place or a feeling.

Gods preserve me from ever worrying about what looks fashionable or from ever leaving something that looks so promising, but ends up in such disappointment.

Lack of supervision…

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Today was the kitten’s first full day at home unsupervised. I was pleased to arrive home to find things more or less in one piece. I was almost expecting furniture to be destroyed, shelves emptied, and every exposed wire in the house chewed through, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. A few things are askew and that seems to be the limit of their adventures today.

Based on the film, I’d guess they spent most of the day loitering under my bed since they didn’t turn up in any of the camera-friendly rooms for large swaths of the day. That’s almost assuredly a harbinger that sometime around 7:30 tonight, one or more cats will go batshit crazy and race through the house periodically with little or no notice.

It occurs to me that living with these girls is a lot like having a new dog in that a tired critter is often a good critter. Since I wasn’t available to make them tired, I’ll pay the price overnight while they entertain themselves. It is, of course, also hard to tire out a cat who isn’t particularly interested in doing anything much beyond laying under the bed keeping an eye out for any unwelcome approaches.

I’m not at all sure I did the right thing by giving them the run of the house. Between Cordy’s determined hiding and Anya’s increasingly determined resistance to being caught when it’s time for her medicine, I wonder if it would have been better to leave them confined in the bathroom. At least there they were easier to corral and handle as necessary. While they’ve proven, so far, to be non-destructive, having the freedom of the house has simply made working with their various needs much more challenging.

As an animal person, I’ve often found myself challenged by making decisions of what, really, is the right thing to do – both in terms of their best interests and my own. Experience informs a lot of those decisions, but sometimes it too is deep, echoey silence.

Not a capital “H”, but it ain’t bad… 

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Eight years ago, I bought a house. It wasn’t the first time I’d done that, but it was certainly the nicest of the bunch. Don’t get me wrong, the condo/bunker in St. Mary’s County had a certain charm and the Memphis house had the virtue of being absolutely new, but this place has the combination of interior space, sufficient distance from the neighbors, and geography that the others lacked. 

How that happened all of eight years ago, I’m not entirely sure. It feels like it’s been about eight weeks – or maybe eight months if I’m feeling particularly generous. It’s not until I add up the projects – backyard drainage, the generator, tree removals, sod, a new furnace, and most recently the bathroom renovation. Thinking back on all of those, it absolutely feels like eight years have slid past. 

I’ve reached a happy point where there are still projects that need doing – new carpet, interior repaint, a new roof, replacing the air conditioning condenser, and a bit more tree removal – but even without these things, the place is comfortable. Unsurprisingly, I’ll take comfortable over new and flashy every single time. 

Despite what has felt like a never-ending litany of repairs and improvements, I’ve developed a real affection for the place. The longer I’m here, the more I realize how lucky I was to find it at the right time and for a greatly negotiable price.  It might not be capital “H” Home, but it certainly feels like a strong lowercase home for sure.

A rare moment of perfect normality…

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I got nothing. Seriously. It was as close to a standard day at the office as one could imagine. I answered some emails. I had a meeting. I ate a lukewarm Italian sausage from the local gut truck. I sent some more emails. And then it was time to come home.

Home, as you all know, is currently slightly more chaotic, given the medications schedule, trying to equalize what animals get to spend time in which rooms, and managing all the other basic household chores. Today, that routine offered nothing substantive to discuss. There’s only so many times I can reasonably subject you fine people to daily tales of the vaguely chaotic new normal that is this extended settling in period. 

Likewise, I know April is going to be filled to overflowing with gripes and complaints about the project I just love to hate and all the various ways it finds to try flopping off the rails. So just now, while things are busy enough, there’s not much more to say that I’ve already said. Not that this situation usually keeps me shut up for long. 

So, tonight is a breather – a mid-week chance to regroup – before launching into Thursday and whatever inevitably batshit crazy way this week decides to end.