We met the new neighbors on Tuesday. After more than six months of intrigue, random realtor showcases where carloads of strange people showed up to the house and wandered around the neighborhood shouting (yes, this did actually happen) and long periods of inactivity, a very quiet couple moved in soon after we got Hazel. Jen met them one day when she had a stoned dog out in the backyard after she’d been hit by the Prius, and couldn’t really talk to them much. She resolved to properly welcome them to the neighborhood with some flowers. We walked over after dinner and rang the bell; they invited us in and we stood in the foyer of the house and talked to them for about 20 minutes. They are lovely people and we got along very quickly. We agreed to organize a dinner with them after the holidays and get to know them a little better.
Renie was in town on Wednesday courtesy of the FAA, and she was able to get a hotel very close to the office. We met up and got some dinner at Union Station on Wednesday night and did a debrief from Thanksgiving; it was great to get some quiet time to catch up with her where we weren’t making food or driving somewhere or cleaning up something.
Carni, my lead designer, left us on Friday after over five years with WRI. Back when I was the whole design department, I knew I needed to hire someone to help with the rapidly increasing workload. After looking at a pool of over 200 applicants, his work stood clearly out above the rest, and I was lucky to get him. An incredibly capable designer, I leaned on him a lot for many different things while I was focusing on the larger picture and learning how to be a manager. As he grew into a larger role, I made sure to get out of his way and let him run with the things he wanted to tackle. He’s moving to a local studio that focuses on data visualizations, which is where his interests have been for several years, and I couldn’t be happier for him. But now I’m scrambling to find someone who can do a quarter of what he could, and I’m going to have to fill in for the rest.
One of our awesome Advent activities this year was to meet up with the Morrisses and make sock monkeys at the American Visionary Art Museum. The girls did this two years ago when I was laid up in the hospital, and they had a great time together, so we put it back on the calendar. At the top of the back warehouse there’s a huge open room where the staff had set up scores of tables with basic necessities—bags of stuffing and some directions. You are expected to bring socks and scissors, and they supply thread, buttons, and other decorative elements. We found a table and got to work, making friends with a young woman who was sock monkeying solo. It’s incredibly satisfying to sit and stitch something together with friends; I can almost see the allure of a quilting group (but there’d need to be copious amounts of alcohol). I chose a striped sock and used the most basic of stitches, while Jen used a hook-and-loop and made hers more professional. Three hours later we realized we were all famished (somehow it got to be 1PM without us noticing). We packed up our monkeys and drove down Key Highway to Little Havana and chowed down on delicious cuban-inspired food. It was great to hang out with them, and I have to say, my sewing skills were not too bad!
Sunday morning I spent tinkering around the house getting small tasks done; I ran the Scout up and realized the 11-year-old battery is probably due for a replacement. I straightened up the backyard and cleaned up the garage, then went downstairs and organized a bunch of stray boxes. It’s at the point where I need to put proper shelves in along the wall in the ice room, because we’re out of wall space for racks and there’s no clear floor space. Another holiday break project will be building a longer laundry sorting area and organizing the shelves on the west wall.
I’m sitting on the couch next to a snoring Hazel on Sunday morning, pleasantly full of warm Texas tamale and coffee. It’s gray and rainy outside. We’re getting the warm edge of a winter storm that is now dumping ice and snow on upstate New York; Finn and I hit the road yesterday, a day ahead of plan, to avoid lousy roads and ice through the elevations in the middle of Pennsylvania, and I’m glad we did.
Thanksgiving was great. Sadly, Finn and I left Mama here with Hazel, who is still not prepared to travel long distances or deal with cats she doesn’t know. We drove to Mom’s house on Wednesday and had Thanksgiving at Renie’s house in Ithaca, which was cozy and fun. The food was delicious, the beer was cold, and the football games were entertaining. We went back down for brunch on Friday and took a long walk out in the woods to work off some of the food. Then Mom and Finn and I headed back to Syracuse and a screening of Frozen 2 at a bistro movie house, where I was able to enjoy a beer with my movie. My verdict: definitely not as good as the first one, but still entertaining.
Saturday I helped Mom reorganize her garage to take better advantage of storage and the new door she put in, and just as we finished Renie and Tony stopped in with a cooler full of leftovers for lunch. Then we hit the road ahead of the storm.
Today’s agenda is pretty light; I’m enjoying not driving, and especially not in this lousy weather. I just bought a bunch of Christmas gifts on Amazon, so that’s checked off the list. I’ve got a carful of slide carousels that I need to hump into the basement for future archival. We’re headed to the church across the street for the advent feast later this afternoon; at some point I’ll need to shower and organize all of my gear for work tomorrow. There’s football on at 1, and I have some painting and other housework to take care of.
The house is quiet. The kids are watching some TV while the adults wake up slowly in the living room. We’re all sunburned and sleepy from yesterday’s four-hour beach time. The weather has been brutally hot and humid since before last week, and it included the coast of Delaware. There was also no wind to speak of, so the horseflies swarmed us unless we were in the water (our panicked escape from the beach back to the house must have been hilarious to anyone watching from the neighboring houses). Monday wasn’t as bad as Sunday, though, and the water was cool and refreshing.
Our house is spacious and modern, and we’ve all got enough room to move and not be on top of each other. While it’s not set up quite the way I’d prefer, it’s directly on the beach and only three houses from the end of the row. And there’s an outdoor shower. And air conditioning.
We’re getting our money out of the pool membership so far this summer. We brought Christi and Glenn and the kids on Friday and had a hard time getting them out of the water. Finn went off and swam with her friends while Bear floated around the pool on a trio of noodles, and Ruby splashed in the baby pool for most of the morning.
In the late evening the skies finally darkened and we were chased out of the water by some thunder, but we hung around and got another 20 minutes in with the lights on until they started closing down. We were the last families out the door and had two very tired, very upset kids to say goodbye to in the parking lot.
Saturday morning my neighbor stopped over and we spent three hours sweating in the new bathroom; he got the rest of the electrical work completed and I hung the new closet door. At this point it’s roughed into place—I still need to drive the nails in all the way—but I need some more shims to make sure I’m not bending the casing halfway up the sides. I also got the floor heat computer initialized and programed for basic morning heat, and then copied that to the rest of the week. I can’t tell you what a big achievement that feels like; the door looks good in place (and when I get the casing installed it will look even better) and it’s lovely to have a working light in the shower.
After that was done we headed back to the pool and met up with a number of friends from the neighborhood. It was the perfect way to spend a brutally hot afternoon: floating in the deep end with a bunch of adults, listening to the kids splash around on their own, sipping on an illicit beer.
Jen and I binge-watched the first four episodes of Stranger Things last night until 1:30AM (!!!) and we are enjoying the new season immensely. The writers acknowledge that their characters are getting older and are using the idea that some aren’t growing up as fast as their friends in the storyline as well as some unusual character pairings to shake things up. And the 80’s fashion callbacks and music cues are spot-on. I think we would have stayed up later to watch more but wisely went to bed much later than either of us is used to.
With the introduction of a pool membership, the 5th of July got a lot cooler this year. We woke late, scratched some food together, and broke down the remainder of the parade gear outside. The prehung closet door for the bathroom arrived at about 10:30 and I had them lean it up against the front porch until Glen and Christi stopped over, and then he and I horsed it up the stairs and into the bathroom with only a few dings in the wall.
After some pizza we mobilized to the pool through some spitty rainshowers, and apart from some dark clouds here and there it didn’t rain in earnest until 8PM or so. The impending threat of rain and the holiday weekend made for a smaller crowd. We all stayed in the pool as long as possible, and the water was warm and refreshing. Our neighbors had a bunch of leftover food and invited us to help them eat it, which was lovely, and we were the last folks out the door at 9PM.
Saturday was a pretty boring day of working around the house (getting stuff hauled to the dump, running errands, cleaning up the yard, using the chainsaw to cut up the rounds in the backyard, sweating our butts off, etc.) and at about 3PM or so I crashed hard. I’ve got a lot less stamina than I’m used to, and that’s taking some getting used to. I actually napped for about a half an hour in the afternoon, which is pretty rare for me.
Sunday we continued cleaning up the yard, adding mulch under the swingset and to the bed next to the driveway where the rhododendron used to live, cleaning the house, etc. At about 3 we stopped and headed to the pool, where we met up with Christi and Glenn and the kids and got in the gloriously warm water. Later, we talked with a bunch of different friends who dropped in to cool off, and Finn had a new set of kids to play with. The evening was cool and slightly breezy, and as dusk settled it thinned out. We stayed until they started turning the lights off at 9 and said goodbye to a tearful Bear in the parking lot. I’d say that pool membership was money well spent.