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Chronicles of Home |
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Monday, October 31 Halloween Hijinks None of these hijinks had better occur at my house while no one is home tonight. I can't imagine anyone going trick or treating in my neighborhood anyway. There are very few children on the street, and it's not close enough or inviting enough to get kids from other streets to come down it. My own kids will be off trick or treating in another town.
I'm still not a dog person. When is this great dog intelligence supposed to shine through, anyway? This guy wants to eat out of the cats' litter box, for crying out loud. Within 10 seconds of being attached to his rope outside, he winds himself around the clothesline pole and is reduced to whining and howling for someone to come rescue him. If ever he manages to get outside without a leash or rope, he trots off down the street and ignores all calling for him. Here we've been feeding and sheltering him for the past six months and he's perfectly happy to leave without looking back? Someone has to actually chase after him and drag him back by his collar. Twice Chester has eaten entire packs of gum. He eats bouncy balls, paper plates, Christmas ornaments, chess pieces, baseballs and Barbie legs. He doesn't get along with the cats because he doesn't understand they don't want his nose shoved up their butts. He gets into the trash whenever he can and shreds it all over the house. He makes a big puddle of water on the floor whenever he drinks out of his bowl. But somehow the family still seems to love him. Thursday, October 27 Turnabout In the summertime I guess I complained too much about the stifling hot weather before we got the three air conditioners going. Now I'm paying for it since the weather has turned cold and we can't get the heater going. The house temperature goes down into the 50s at night, and the boiler refuses to kick on. I replaced the ancient thermostat (and was proud of myself for using power tools and connecting wires) but that didn't help except that now there's an easy-to-read digital display of how low the temperature is. A very expensive man from BGE will be coming out on Tuesday to look at the heating system for us. Small Successes The thermostat may not turn the heater on but it looks nice so I count it as a success. Also this week Rick successfully fixed the toilet, which had a leak that we'd been ignoring until we got this quarter's outrageous water bill. Perhaps I will also soon have good news to report about the hall floor tiling project. Foxtrot On Film For anyone who needs to see photographic proof that our neighborhood is frequently visited by Baltimore's police helicopter, here are a few pictures of Foxtrot taken from our front porch one evening. He circled around for about 15 minutes.
Thursday, September 22
This is my kitchen sink. This is how it has looked for about a week now, except for one day in between when Rick made a valiant attempt to do some dishes. It smells bad and at least one fly found its way to the delectable crusted food. I did about half of the dishes tonight. Tomorrow: The other half. Then I'll reward myself by posting a picture of my beautiful white sink, you just wait. Fun With Rotting Food While I'm embarrassing myself with stories of terrible housekeeping, here are a couple of good ones. The first story takes place in August, the day after the first mouse sighting, conveniently when Rick was not around to rescue me. On this day I canned peaches. Canning requires a whole lot of boiling water. I think I had four pots on at once. My tiny kitchen is generally very warm anyway, and with the weather outside in the upper 90s and the stove going full blast, I would say the temperature in the kitchen got to 100. As I was canning I started to smell something -- something really awful. It smelled just like a dead animal. I figured it must be the expired mouse. I looked all over the floor and in cabinets for him, but couldn't find him, so I decided that the mouse must have been killed behind the stove by some gas or fire or something. When a friend of Rick's stopped by I got him to look behind and under the stove, but no deceased rodent was found. The smell continued. Finally, to make a long story short (too late), I followed my nose to the top of the refrigerator, where I found a plastic bag containing a forgotten potato. I have no idea how long it had been up there, rotting and festering, and I guess the heat in the kitchen during the canning put it over the edge and it kind of exploded. There was a puddle of rotten potato juice that ran down the side of the refrigerator. I never knew a potato could smell SO awful. The second story is short and not as disgusting. Six ears of corn on the cob sat on the table in the kitchen for weeks, until they dried and shriveled up. Finally I decided I'd get around to throwing them out, and I was surprised to find they had all sprouted. On each ear shoots were coming from individual kernels of corn, I'd guess 50-75. They looked like Chia Pets. It was kind of cool. Sunday, September 18 A Pizza Tragedy We were saddened recently to learn that John's Italian Deli burned down. Our friend Chris turned us on to their pizza, which was the best in the area. On Fridays you could get a large pizza for $7 for takeout; it was a poker night staple. We'll miss you, John -- or, more accurately, we'll miss your pizza pies. Arrivederci.
On arriving home from the beach last Sunday night, I spotted an object in the sky. It was flashing different colors, and was moving strangely. It took us a few minutes, but we finally realized it was the Goodyear blimp circling the Ravens stadium for their Sunday night football game. Pretty cool. When the blimp got around to the north side of the stadium we could clearly see that it had a big screen on it, although I could not read what it was saying. And then when it came around again to the south side, so that the screen was facing away from us, we could see the faintly lit outline of the blimp. Interestingly, we could hear its motor humming as it floated along. Neighborly Update Someone got evicted down the road. All their stuff was tossed out onto the street so everyone could see just how crappy it was. (I shudder to think of my own crappy stuff being spread out for public viewing.) The evicted tenants were loading some things into a pickup with the help of the lesbians across the street, but they didn't take very much. Their pile-o-junk sat out there for five days until the trash men finally took it away. Interesting Tidbit: For her kindergarten homework Faith had to count all the windows and doors in the house. We started in the basement and worked our way all the way up to the attic. The final count: 30 windows and 18 doors. Non-Bulletproof Taco Bell I went into the brand new Taco Bell/Long John Silver's for the first time today. It's beautiful! It looks like something straight out of the preppy college town in California where my friend lives. (Yeah, you.) Clean, artsy. I even counted people of THREE different nationalities working there. Best of all, no bulletproof glass. I could have reached out and grabbed the long-haired guy filling the hot sauce dispenser if I'd wanted to (I didn't). But man, those employees are going to be sorry when someone walks in there with a gun. You know it's going to happen. Wednesday, September 7 characters There's a whole collection of strange characters that we see or come into contact with on a regular basis. I thought of this fact today on my way home when I saw one of them, a man who wears garbage bags. He has fashioned a whole outfit for himself, including a head covering, out of black plastic garbage bags. The Mouse So the mouse story. One night, conveniently when Rick was out of town, I was sitting in the dining room and heard a noise coming from the kitchen. I thought maybe I'd left water boiling on the stove, so I went in to check, and realized the noise was more like crinkling plastic--and was coming from the open tortilla chip bag sitting on the little table beside the stove. I only thought that a breeze was rustling it, so I reached for the bag to close it up, and a gray streak ran from the bag along the top of the table and squeezed behind the stove. I admit it--I screamed. It was close to midnight, the kids were asleep upstairs, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, and then felt much better. Except for the fact that there was a MOUSE IN MY KITCHEN!!! I saw the mouse a second time before I finally did the intelligent thing and threw out the open bag of tortilla chips. Then the mouse was not seen again... until about a week ago. I noticed little mousey droppings in a cabinet and hoped they were merely leftovers, but my brother Tom reported that he saw something "scurry" under the radiator, and then later that same evening I saw a gray tail disappearing under the sink. Friends tell me to put out a mousetrap, but I think it's high time the cats stepped up and did their job! Various Project Statuses The status of all house projects is NOT DONE. The upstairs kitchen floor is still torn up, the carpet's been ripped out in the hall and nothing else done, neither of the girls' rooms have been painted, nothing. Now that we're all busy with school for the fall, I guess nothing new's going to get accomplished now. 
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Just in time for Halloween, I was pulling weeds out of the flower bed next to the side of the porch and found a teeny snake curled up by some roots. I believe it was actually a young snake, not just a very small species. I prodded him a bit too much with a stick and he uncurled and slithered away into a hole that probably led under the porch. There could be a whole family of snakes under there. This actually does not bother me -- perhaps they and the family of mice could have a rumble sometime.
UFOs