Fordham Miller Fare

upstaged

i was walking home the other night, after our first significant snowfall, and came upon our neighbors, three young female undergraduates, trying to get their car unstuck from a small snowbank (you know the snow bank at the intersection of the driveway and the road that gets formed when the plow comes by?  yeah, that one).  i offered to help, and went to get some cardboard for under the tires, and some sand, and a shovel.  when i came back, i asked if they had tried rocking the car, or if they even knew how to rock the car (forward, then reverse, then forward, then reverse).  really they only had to get unstuck and then take a wider turn into the driveway, and i think they would have been fine.  i was all set to teach them a few things about how to get yourself out of sticky snow situations, when an SUV pulled up behind us, and a guy popped his head out the window and said, 'i've got a strap, you want me to pull you out?'  they were delighted, of course, and the kindess of strangers is certainly a good thing. but all my hopes of teaching these young women a little self-sufficiency went down the tubes.  ah well...

in other snow related news, i love my ergonomic shovel.  it took a little while to get used to, and it's no good for digging out a tire, but as a back saver goes, it's awesome.

This (Wretched) Old House

It is daunting being a homeowner.  It is further daunting still being a homeowner of a 150 year old house.  And it is most daunting of all being a landlord to an apartment which is half of a 150 year old house.

Actually, most of that isn't true.  Because mostly, I just ignore the seventeen million things around my house that need fixing that I will never get around to.  Or least not until the kids are in college.  Which is why we've had a closet door collecting dust in our garage for 7 years, and a porch in need of refinishing for 4 years, and the garage window that's been dangling precipitiously out of it's frame for...well, ever since we moved in.

But I have tenants, and they, rightly so, do not have to ignore what is wrong with their/my house.

So, it was pointed out to me that it might be slightly inconvenient to have a thermostat located in one's bedroom when two other occupants of the same apartment might need to tip the heat up a bit at 3 or 4 in the (cold New England) morning.  And so that was how I came to add 'relocate a thermostat to opposite side of wall' to my skill set.

I was all ready to hand the job over to the plumber, but the fact that the plumber usually takes several months to make it over here (by which time it will presumably not be winter), combined with some advice I got about how EASY it would be for me to do myself, led me to give it a shot.  No problem, this person said, all you gotta do is drill a hole in the other side of the wall, and pull the wires through.  But after I got through taking off all the thermostat-y parts, this is what I had to contend with.

It looked sorta like the box for an outlet or a light switch, but it wasn't (I don't think!), and it had me very confused.  Where were the tiny, easy to maniuplate, color-coded wires I was told to expect?  This all looked so...menacing.  I was filled with trepedation...but after 10 minutes of mumbling to myself (and realizing that if I gave up now, I'd still have to put everything back together again AND pay the plumber to do it the right way), I decided to ditch the box, pull the wires through, set everything up again, and hope for the best.  And it worked!  I think!  And I feel just the teensiest bit proud of myself, and just the tiniest bit less resentful of my wretched old house.

And what did my daughter tell me this evening, after my small but significant handywoman victory?  That she wants to be a cheerleader.  And when can she have a credit card.*

*Please blame the book 'The Accidental Cheerleader' for these comments.  And please note that I refused to BUY this book from the Scholastic flyer sent home from school, but the darn thing showed up at a recent book swap and I missed my chance to make it disappear.

en garde, existentialism! take that, nihilism!

on passing the hospital where he was born, morgan remarked, "it's a good thing i got borned, because [if i hadn't], how would i love you?"

oh, and speaking of getting borned, congratulations to our cousins/friends/new parents wendy and jonathan, who welcomed their first child, a girl, on march 23rd.  welcome, little anya.

Blood is Thicker Than Water

the whole family had blood tests this week.  i took morgan on friday, and he screamed absolute bloody murder, the poor thing.  as hardened as i've become to these visits, i was again weepy clutching my child and hoping it would be over already.

today bill and maddy and i lined up for our tests, but first morgan got his flu shot.  he was scared, and screamed, but it was mercifully short.  he has this habit of DEMANDING A BAND AID at the top of his lungs, which i think he developed when he got his (and our) first stitches.

the phlebotomist took bill first, which i was afraid they might do.  i wanted maddy to go first, to get it over with, and though i thought seeing bill be brave might ease her anxiety, it only brought tears to her eyes.  but when it was her turn, she ended up doing a great job.  she listened to me and turned her head to the fish-motif wall, and i counted the seahorses while she just barely whimpered and asked if it was over yet.  not looking really helped.  she didn't cry a bit, and i recalled the first time i didn't kick and scream when i had a blood test, sitting backwards on my mom's lap and staring at the wall, realizing it didn't hurt nearly as much as it seemed like it should.