1. In my garbage research, these embroidered plastic bags from the corner store are the coolest things yet. Thanks, bink, for the link!
I had to stop after reading that and just sit there. And the book's full of that sort of thing--all in simple ("simple") English.
3. There'll be no new apartment:
the apt. management company stuck to their requirements that we each qualify separately; that is, that we each make 3 x the entire rent.
Not all companies are so stringent, but many are. We'll just stay here for now.
I'm a little relieved: my resentment had flared up at the building owners' greed and inflexibility. As much as I worry about my capacity for resentment, it just recently occurred to me it is on my side, even if it's annoying, and it can be a trustworthy indicator of the likelihood of future happiness.
Our landlords here are not greedy:
they're pals of mine from the hippie collective restaurant I worked at when I was 19, and it's only because they rent out part of this house that they can afford to own it and live here themselves.
They charge us as little as they can.
Alas, this means they don't put any $$ into fixing the place up, but I talked to them yesterday and said that at least the windows must be glazed this summer, or the panes are going to fall out, and they agreed.
4. Then I went to the nearby K-Mart and bought two hanging baskets of bright begonias for the little porch, and I set up my two sand chairs out there.
I usually do that as soon as it's warm enough, but I hadn't this year. When you stop putting energy into a place, it gets grim.
Now we have another room in the nice weather.
I'm going to go to the nearby Mexican panaderia and buy little loaves, and Mz is going to pick up tuna fish canned in olive oil from the co-op, and we'll sit there and eat Camino-style bocadillos (sandwiches on long, not sliced, bread).
Me and E. eating bocadillos in Spain (2011), by bink, from her blog post "Bocadillos... again" >
I feel better, too, because the next-door neighbors have been quiet after one loud night.
The caretaker next door told me they'd gotten a warning. If they're sane enough to quiet down in response, they aren't like the previous neighbors who were barking mad.
Fingers crossed.
So, I'm feeling OK about staying here. It'd be nice to have a quiet, well-kept up place, but this is not bad, and maybe if I get a full-time job we'll look again.
Until then, I'm going to make the best of what it is.
5. And finally I took my bike in for an overdue overhaul and some replacement parts, including a whole new drive train.
The young woman who took my order said, "You're going to have a new bike!"
For $200.
Hallelujah.
From "El Barrio Bodega"(series), 2013, by artist Nicoletta Darita de la Brown.
2. I reluctantly picked up Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy's Life from a Little Free Library box. Reluctant because I've already read so many memoirs of hard childhoods; but I'd heard many times that it was good. And it was free. So...
OMG, is it ever good! An example, about TW going to his first confession in the Catholic Church. Earlier he has written, "I was subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy, somehow deeply at fault."
Preparing what to say to the priest...
"I thought about what to confess, but I could not break my sense of being at fault down to its components. Trying to get a particular sin out of it was like fishing a swamp, where you feel the tug of something that at first seems promising and then resistant and finally hopeless as you realize that you've snagged the bottom, that you have the whole planet on the other end of your line."
I had to stop after reading that and just sit there. And the book's full of that sort of thing--all in simple ("simple") English.
3. There'll be no new apartment:
the apt. management company stuck to their requirements that we each qualify separately; that is, that we each make 3 x the entire rent.
Not all companies are so stringent, but many are. We'll just stay here for now.
I'm a little relieved: my resentment had flared up at the building owners' greed and inflexibility. As much as I worry about my capacity for resentment, it just recently occurred to me it is on my side, even if it's annoying, and it can be a trustworthy indicator of the likelihood of future happiness.
Our landlords here are not greedy:
they're pals of mine from the hippie collective restaurant I worked at when I was 19, and it's only because they rent out part of this house that they can afford to own it and live here themselves.
They charge us as little as they can.
Alas, this means they don't put any $$ into fixing the place up, but I talked to them yesterday and said that at least the windows must be glazed this summer, or the panes are going to fall out, and they agreed.
4. Then I went to the nearby K-Mart and bought two hanging baskets of bright begonias for the little porch, and I set up my two sand chairs out there.
I usually do that as soon as it's warm enough, but I hadn't this year. When you stop putting energy into a place, it gets grim.
Now we have another room in the nice weather. I'm going to go to the nearby Mexican panaderia and buy little loaves, and Mz is going to pick up tuna fish canned in olive oil from the co-op, and we'll sit there and eat Camino-style bocadillos (sandwiches on long, not sliced, bread).
Me and E. eating bocadillos in Spain (2011), by bink, from her blog post "Bocadillos... again" >
I feel better, too, because the next-door neighbors have been quiet after one loud night.
The caretaker next door told me they'd gotten a warning. If they're sane enough to quiet down in response, they aren't like the previous neighbors who were barking mad.
Fingers crossed.
So, I'm feeling OK about staying here. It'd be nice to have a quiet, well-kept up place, but this is not bad, and maybe if I get a full-time job we'll look again.
Until then, I'm going to make the best of what it is.
5. And finally I took my bike in for an overdue overhaul and some replacement parts, including a whole new drive train.
The young woman who took my order said, "You're going to have a new bike!"
For $200.
Hallelujah.
Always good to know what's out there, sometimes the green grass turns out to be weeds, and one's own messy garden really is better.
ReplyDeleteWe had a Crazy Apartment building across the street for a long while. After a stabbing one fine midnight, the worst section 8 offender was booted out, the rest settled down, and the neighborhood calmed nicely.
Yep. Ours was a shooting.
ReplyDeleteI pray the neighborhood will stay calmed down this summer--even tho this is a crowded block, the rest of the apartment buildings are fine.
Here's hoping!
What a beautiful bag! I think I could turn that into a pattern for a blouse. Might already have a pattern that would work. Just have to remember how to embroider those flower stitches.
ReplyDeleteYour flowered retreat sounds wonderful. I can imagine you and Marz tanning yourselves out there, iced drinks at hand. For the first time in at least 6 years, I'm gardening again - just a few things to start, but it feels good to dig in the dirt again. Good therapy to make things grow, get outside in the sun and fresh air.
What color begonias?
ReplyDeleteSalmon pink and orangey yellow. They kind of clash in a wonderful way.
ReplyDelete