Are we there, Red Bear?

I have moved house. I'm tired: I'm going to spend the evening watching Schitt's Creek, which bink recommended--it's a comedy about a family who loses their riches and has to move to a motel in a crummy town, of which the grown son of the family says, "I have not been able to find kale anywhere." 

It's Canadian, and Red Bear is wearing her RCMP outfit, so we're all set!
Will write more when I'm tanked up again.
XO

New Room, in Process

Patti (homeowner) and I got the last of the carpet padding up yesterday, and today Patti is sanding and sealing the floor.

She'd drawn the watering-hole on the wall in chalk pastels, she let me know, not oil. Whew.
She'd said it was fine if I erased it, but I could see she was a little sad to see it go, so I photographed, printed, and framed an 8" x 8" copy of the mural for her.

The pastels washed off pretty well--and primer covered the shadow. I left a couple of the giraffes. I love how empty the room is now. 
(It's almost 11 x 11 feet. * )
How much can I pare down my possessions? To just these two dolls?

That's Patti, in the doorway. ^ (At a quick glance, we sorta look alike.)

I hung a picture of Capt. Kirk above the closet (right). 
I have already failed to limit myself to two dolls.

* P.S. Crow asked if I have more space. Yes! This will be my bed/sitting room, but I also have the run of the one-and-a-half story bungalow, with a back and front yard. Much freer space than my tiny one-bedroom apt.

I threw out Patti's toilet brush.

Whoops.

Tip:
Don't replace people's toilet brushes without asking, even if the brush looks dead to you.

I was a little too zealous in cleaning the house I'm moving into, yesterday.

Not that it didn't need it,
but it was a little awkward when Patti came home and asked if I'd thrown out her toilet brush.

I had. I'd replaced it with a new one I'd bought.

She'd liked that old brush, she said.

Chagrined, I said I'd get it out of the garbage can, but she laughed and said not to bother.

Nobody likes a home improvement invasion. 
(Well, mostly not.)

My intention was not to improve Patti, but to start to make room for me and my ways in her house.

I had asked if she'd be OK with me cleaning, and she'd said yes.
But I know the idea and the reality are not the same (and neither are realities).

For now, I'm going to focus on making my room my own.

There's lots to do! Definitely good I officially have until October 1, though I expect it'll be ready much sooner than that.

I will finish scraping up the carpet in the closet, and Patti will sand and seal the floor;
I'll try to remove the scene Patti drew in oil pastels years ago (ideas? 409 Cleanser?), and plaster, prime, and paint the walls.

_________________________
II. Spirit in Action

Speaking of improvement invasions, I'm reading an interesting biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action (2010, Louise Knight) about the Great Improver. 
[Good overview of Addam's life in the Chicago Trib review.]
 

Coming from a wealthy family, Addams took a while to figure out that poor people don't want you to come into their homes and, as it were, replace their toilet brushes without their permission.

She started Hull House in Chicago, thinking poor people needed their spirits enlivened with Music and Meaning. She figured out that they needed self-determination and garbage pick-up.

I admire that Addams did figure that out––not everybody does. 
At the thrift store, I see a lot of policing or paternalizing attitudes. 
(I'm happy at the store because Big Boss, coming from the streets himself, doesn't think like that. I sense he's limited as a leader, however, by a lack of understanding of the rich.)

Addams wrote,"Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to lack of imagination which prevents understanding the experiences of other people."

Humorless when young, Addams loosened up. When she was almost my age,  the Daughters of the American Revolution revoked Addams' membership  because of her outspoken opposition to World War I.

Addams joked, 'I had supposed at the time that (my membership) had been for life but it was apparently only for good behavior.'"

 

The Right Tool

Blogging on my back porch, with new doll, Minnie.
I'm wearing a sweater because it's wonderfully cool. Perfect, really.

I did decide not to push for a September 1 move-in to my new place.  I told Patti (new home-owner) and J. (old one) that I'll stay where I am till Patti's place is well and truly ready--probably a couple weeks, or even three. 
Still, this is one of my last mornings on this porch. 

Mz is moving Sept. 1, and afterward I'll be better able to sit with my memories here. (The house restoration next door is quieter now, since it has a new roof.)
With all the relief of finding somewhere I'm thrilled about, I've only recently started to feel sadness about leaving. I want to pay attention to that.

I was forty-one when I moved here seventeen years ago.
If I stay in my new place seventeen years, I'll be seventy-five!
I wonder, what will I do in the coming years? 
What would I like to do?
I want to sit with that question, too.

Work on my new room progresses slowly: 
using a handheld scraper, like a putty knife, to remove old carpet in my room, HM was measuring her progress in inches.

Penny Cooper said, "The right tool for the job is usually best".  (She has a head for knowing.)
So I stopped at the Ace Hardware, and of course a tool specific to the task exists––it's called a Floor Scraper––like an ice chopper, with an angled blade. (For those who don't live in icy regions, that's like a hoe with a heavier blade, for removing ice from sidewalks.)

Thirty-three dollars! 
But my options weren't only,
1. spend the money, or, 
2. do the work by inches.
My options included Red Hair Girl's suggestion: 
3. Set the carpet on fire.

I bought the tool. And dust masks.

I put on Bruce Springsteen and scraped up half the remaining sub-carpet in an hour.   So, maybe the place will be ready sooner than mid-September, but I don't want or need to rush. I woke up in the middle of the night wondering why my ribs were sore, then remembered the work I'd done that day.

I want to wash down the place too. I keep marveling that Patti does home repairs, since I don't know how. (Though I do know where Ace Hardware is.) But she's not a cleaner, and lots of kids and dogs and guests tromp through the house. 
(Guests! I'm looking forward to having a place to be hospitable.)

I kind of like doing a Big Clean, when something needs it––it's so satisfying to see the change.

The Wrong Bus

I. In Transit

I got on the wrong bus the other day, going over to my soon-to-be new place, and ended up way off track. 
I couldn't get lost if I tried in my current neighborhood, so this was kind of fun.

The Virgin of Guadalupe blesses our progress (outside the right-hand bus window).

I was short on time, so I never did get over there. Yesterday, I biked over to get the new Orphan Red I'd had delivered there––Minnie!
Minnie Micawber, Minnie Beebe, Minnie Cooper, Just Minnie.

She is a good traveler by bike...

. . . and we stopped for a banana split at Dairy Queen, on the way home. Mostly for the idea of it, but it was surprisingly good. 
Minnie only ate a tiny bit, I had to eat most of it.

I've been pushing to move on or before September 1, but I might relax and accept that it'd work better to move a week or two later. 
I gave notice for October 1, so that's no problem. 

The place isn't ready, to begin with. 

II. I take it back, Universe, what I said about maybe wanting a sweetie.

Did I get asked out on another date yesterday?
I can't quite tell, but I think yes?

A longtime volunteer, a guy my age with whom I've often chatted and joked, said he had "an extra ticket" to go see Rod Stewart (Rod Stewart! my childhood!)--did I want to come?

The extra ticket seems to signal "this is not a date", doesn't it?
But not an entirely true signal? More like a face-saving ploy?

I was briefly tempted but answered truthfully that I'm too overwhelmed with moving--I'm not up for an evening out.

Then the guy removed any temptation, now and forever, by pressuring me:
"If you're overwhelmed, you need distraction!"

I repeated that I had too much to do, and he pushed some more, "Oh come on, it'll be fun--just what you need."

What's with it with people dictating what other people need?
Such hubris.
It's like when Big Boss told me GOD wanted me to stay on the store committee I was resigning from.

I told Mr Volunteer that piling on distractions might work for some personalities, but not mine. 
When he left the store, he did not say good-bye.
What a child.

I think of myself as safely out of the game, as an old, fat, gray-hair, but probably I am delusional.


I don't want to be less friendly at work, but I guess I'd better Be Prepared, have some script to hand for turning down offers.
Unless, of course, I'm actually interested.  
A person would have to be a better bet than a book, though---that's a high bar.

It's easy for a banana split not to exist.

"Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit."
--The Desiderata

I haven't wanted to dwell on this, but now that moving is just days away (12 or 13), I can acknowledge that a major reason I've wanted to move, besides the neighborhood, is that the husband half of the home-owners, whose house I live in, is a loud person who has become more vexatious to my spirit over time. Now I cringe even to hear him talking normally downstairs.

He means well, and often I agree with him, in theory, 
but he's bombastic, and he doesn't listen.

Every summer he goes away for a couple weeks, and the house quiets, and during that time, which is now, J., the wife half of the home-owners, and I have a nice time together.

Last night she took me out for dinner. She also feels the wear and tear of the neighborhood (and wishes she could pick her house up and move it). We talked about how to do your work in hard times--and it's always hard times somewhere. 

She told me she finds comfort in the "Desiderata", that string of platitudes popular in the seventies.
It was the sort of thing my mother would disdain, but so what if it is a string of platitutdes? So is the Beatitudes.

This morning, J. brought a copy of the Desiderata up, and it fits the noise and strife I'm in the midst of. 

I had told J. that I don't like when people emphasize the positive to the exclusion of the negative, but I don't want to encourage the negative---suffering doesn't need encouraging!

There's a line in the Desiderata that is spot on:
"Do not distress yourself with dark imaginings"
Entropy is the law. It's going to happen anyway.
Other things need imagining to come into being and to flourish.

Later that evening I gave Mz a glass dish for banana splits that I'd bought at the store that afternoon. I want to make them for us before we both move to new places in separate neighborhoods. 
I've never have made a split at home. You know, these sundaes take specialty ingredients that are unlikely to be at hand: maraschino cherries, pineapple sauce, whipped cream, etc.

"It's easy for a banana split not to exist," I said.

Two Weeks

Thanks, everyone, for your encouraging words, in comments and emails! They help.

Two week countdown to September 1.
I'm happy about it, but moving is harrying. I want to make these last couple weeks as pleasant as possible. I bought paper plates, for instance, to cut down on chores, and some nice things to eat.
Peaches!
And I've taken off work all of next week.

The cognitive load of sorting things is heavy, making decisions about little but weighty things.

How many years of IRS returns should I save?
I have them back to 1985. One article said, save them all.
I shredded them. 

What about the eighteen world geography books I wrote between 2003 and 2014? (White spines, on top of bookshelf.) No point giving them away: Libya ends with Ghaddafi "bringing Libya back into the family of nations"... 

I'll save a couple representative ones––Zimbabwe, my first African country, which won an award. And Finland, written with the help of The Finnish Friend. (Hi, Mortmere!) I made and photographed pulla, cardamom/cinnamon rolls for that book. 
That's a good span.

(Some of this ^ ––the pair of roller blades––belongs to Mz.) 

And the jam jar of my father's ashes?
Low, the doll who likes dirt, is keeping them company on my bookshelf, third shelf, right. 

Low will come to the lake with me, to place my father's ashes at the Jim-Jim Tree––the flowering crabapple tree where bink and I put some ashes of our friend Jim, when he died of AIDS in 1995.
Since then, I've added ashes of my uncle Gil and my mother.

It's been a harassing summer here, and I've been rushing too much. 
Mz used to call this apartment the Castle of Peace and the Treehouse. Even though some trees got cut down, I want to tap into that. 

If I don't sort through everything, so what? I'm going to take more time to sit and remember the life here.

I think it's going to be OK.

Dog sitting at my soon-to-be new home, I took Principessa (Prince) for a walk yesterday. When we came in from the alley, I saw the little Orphan Reds on the picnic table, resting after having cleaned  their new dollhouse.

On our walk, I heard people laughing on the patio of a neighborhood bar; I saw three black guys chatting in a barbershop whose window advertises FADES; someone was mowing the lawn with a push mower; I tried to get keys made at a hardware store four blocks away, but it closes at 6; and two middle-aged women sitting in their yard said hello to me.

I slept fitfully––new noises (but no one yelling), smells, not my bed––and woke this morning to hear children playing outside--something I never heard in my old place. 
Geese were honking overhead too--fall is coming. My favorite season.

The little reds slept in the dollhouse, and I heard them talking and laughing for a long time, but then... silence. 
I guess it's going to be OK here.

Designed to Move

It's finally hitting me that I'm leaving this place where I've lived 17+ years. I felt like a zombie yesterday--drained of living emotion, even walking felt like enormous effort.

I feel better this morning, just a bit stunned. 
One of the astronauts said that traveling between Earth and Moon, you see nothing but empty space--no way markers--so it was weird that after a couple days of feeling like you're going nowhere, all of a sudden, boom, you're there. At the Moon.

It's like that living in one place for so long---of course there are markers, but staying in place smooths out time. Preparing to move, I feel all that time hitting me at once. Well, not all, but definitely a lot at once. For instance, I'm remembering my mother being alive when I moved in here (she died some eight months later), and many people I've known as an adult, some of them since gone, one way or another, have passed through this apartment...

I have NO regrets about moving.
If I did, I'd only have to look at the yard outside my window--which I can hardly avoid, since they cut down the trees. 
Here, a quick laptop shot from the porch: can you see, it looks like a tornado has hit?

And I wake to the sound of power tools. That's not improving my mood. Nor is reading the Economist--I practically had a panic attack, reading about the state of the world--it's like that yard next door--except some of it's not going to be put back together again. 
I thought about canceling my subscription, but decided that I'll just not read that newspaper for a month or so, until I'm settled.

 I'm looking forward to house/dog-sitting my new place tonight!
Though the house is chaotic at the moment, it's a friendly scene. 

I'm taking my laptop and the Orphan Reds. If my old place were to burn down while I'm gone, I wouldn't mind.

I'm off to work in a few minutes. 
It's BOOK'S ONLY DAY! Yay. I like cashiering, but it means I work with only books for two days. (The other days I sort books after I cashier, which is OK.)

I'm going to sign up for a First Aid class, because I think I might need it at the cash register.
Turns out, the guy I sent to the ER was only having muscle spasms, thankfully! 
He came by and said thank you to me. I was so relieved to see him alive and well, I came around the counter and hugged him.

The medical people told him to start exercising. (He is middle-aged and overweight.) That happened to my mother too, toward the end of her life: after years of almost total inactivity, her back went into such bad spasms, she could hardly stand.

We are designed to move.

ooh, I did a google image search for "designed to move" and found it's a Nike campaign (of course), and also this cool photo of seeds!
From Arizona U.

I used my new address

I haven't moved, and I haven't sent out these cards (from the store) yet, but I used my new address today:
I ordered another Orphan Red, to be delivered to my new place.

I'd thought six little reds was the maximum, but these ones want to share their upcoming doll house, if a suitable doll could be found. 

I looked on eBay, and there she was.

Obviously a rapscallion.
Could her name be Minnie Micawber? 

I'm excited: 
I'm going to sleep at my new place tomorrow and watch the dog, Principessa, while Patti is out of town overnight. 
(Principessa's real name is Prince, but he seems like a princess to me.) 
The place is a mess because Patti has been sanding the floors and moving rooms, but it'll be great to get to know the place a little, on my own.

II. Change is in the air.

A customer asked me on a date yesterday. That hasn't happened in quite a while––at least not in any real way. A chronically drunk guy did propose marriage a few months ago, but I couldn't take it personally. Working with the public, that's something of a job hazard. (Remember the "your barista is not flirting with you" clip?)

This guy was not a psycho pest or anything like that––he was funny, with wire Harry Potter eye glasses––and his offer was slightly flattering. Not as flattering as it would've been if he knew my name, but not unpleasant.

I have been thinking it might be nice to have a sweetie again one day, maybe. (I don't know, it's hard to imagine. . .)  At any rate, though, since my favorite thing is to read side-by-side with a sweetie––reading in bed before falling asleep is the brass ring––I imagine a compatible person would not only ask my name but would shop in the BOOK's, which this guy doesn't.
Still, being asked out felt like a little sign of life.

Packing It In

I've taken the last week of August off work (a couple weeks away) to paint my room and clean at the new place, and to do the final move. There's plenty to do beforehand, here in the place I've lived for seventeen years.  
Mz has found a little studio apartment of her own for Sept. 1 too, so it's quite a whirl around here.

I spent yesterday evening after work going through my things, throwing many away and setting some aside to give away. 
The activity made some of the girls nervous, so I set them all on the "TO GO" shelf. (Red Hair Girl is still at bink's. She's never nervous.)

Now they are happy––listening to Bounce (in gold): she and Sparkle are the only ones who've seen the new place with its doll house. 
Penny Cooper is holding her blue jacket, to make sure it doesn't get left behind. 

I was surprised at how easy it was to get rid of things.
If I felt a tug, handling a thing, I didn't toss it.

But I didn't feel even a tug as I put old journals and calendars in the recycling. 
A lot has changed since I last moved, in 2002, that makes these things inert: both my parents have died; no nieces or nephews have been born; I'm much older, of course, and know who I am (without visual aids); and––key? the Internet has become a storage bin.

I know that technology will change, platforms will disappear (I keep expecting Google to announce the closing of Blogger), and, who knows, maybe we won't always have this seemingly free energy to run these machines . . . but, then, everything is temporary.
For now, it makes it easy to feel at home anywhere, with just six little dolls and a laptop.

Hello, Shoppers!

Meanwhile, I'm settling into being a cashier at work, three short (four-hour) shifts a week.
It's a wild scene.

Yesterday a big, middle-aged, black guy dragged two rolled-up rugs to the register, to decide between them. It didn't take long.

"I'll just take this one," he said. "I don't feel well."

Sweat was rolling down his face, and he looked nauseous.
"Your stomach?" I said.

"No," he said, gesturing to the left side of his chest, "I feel like someone's grabbing me. Been feeling that way all morning..."

It was eleven a.m.
"For god's sake," I said, "you're having a heart attack! Do you want me to call 911?"

No, he didn't. This guy, who didn't own a car, was going to drag his rug two blocks to his apartment and then walk or bus to the ER. 

Luckily, Big Boss came by at this moment.
"Take this man and his rug to the ER!" I said. Big Boss said he would. 

The man was still a little reluctant.
"Go!" I said. "You're going to take your rug, get down the street, and die, and then I'll feel guilty! So go!"

He did. 
I keep sensing that being a grey-haired older lady is a secret super-power:   because I'm not threatening, I feel I am listened to in a different way.

I'm still pondering this. I think it has to do with the sexual power of youth (a side-effect of simply being in a young body) giving way to the unexpected power of being invisible (reproductively nonviable) and socially/politically unimportant.

And I guess it maybe helped that Big Boss is black man, like the shopper--no loss of face.

Front of house is dramatic like that, a lot.
A rough-looking young woman was throwing a fit the other day because she'd set her little plastic shopping bag down somewhere and couldn't find it. She was rude and crude, attacking the staff. (I wasn't at the register.)

Later, after she left, we found her bag.
It held a couple needles and vials of naloxene, the stuff you keep on hand in case of opioid overdose. One of the managers thought you could get high on it, but I looked it up, and no. It's not fun, it's just a life saver.

Go Home, Make a Home

Every so often I listen to Neil Gaiman read his poem "Instructions"--what to do if you find yourself inside a fairy tale.
Different lines pop out--this time, at the end, 

"Go home. Or, make a home."

This evening I'll go home from my house-sitting gig, which has been an unexpected resting place. Often I feel uncomfortably displaced when I house sit––so much so that I mostly gave it up––but this time I'm between homes anyway, and it was a respite to have this temporary quiet place. 

Lighten the Load

I want to move on September 1 with very little––as if I'm going on Camino with what I can carry––so over the next two weeks, I'll give away most of my things.  I simply don't want them.
I've already started--gave the big, mid-century sunburst clock to a friend who will fix the clockworks, some family things to my sister, art works to bink...

If there's anything of mine that you'd like, or anything you've given me that you want back, let me know! 

I'm keeping my laptop computer of course; all the Orphan Reds (six) (of course); my art-making and sewing supplies; and many of the SNARP (stuffed needy animal rescue project) toys--many of whom still need more repairs or embellishments.
I keep saying this and not yet doing it, but I want to, I intend to write more--including fiction.

My dolls and toys are avatars of me, and my computer and art/sewing supplies are my tools of expression and communication. A whole lot of my life is recorded here on my blog, so it's not like I'm losing all records.
I'll have what I need.

Someone advised me about giving things away:
Don't touch them.

Yes! Things get coated with invisible "stay in place" stuff, so even if you want to let them go, even though they want to go, there may be emotional resistance when you handle them.

Luckily, other people are immune to the sticky stuff of your things.
I asked Mz to put my remaining books in Little Free Libraries when I was gone, and she has. She snuck some of the littlest toys who wanted to head out in LFLs too. 

I feel lighter already. 
The other night I had a dream of peace between me and my former married lover, Oliver.
That affair had dragged on and on and ended badly, as it was always going to, in mutual humiliation, around the time my mother died in 2002. Since then I've never had a good dream about Oliver. This was the first.

I'm doing something right, stepping away from the stuff of the past.

The past, of course, comes with me.

Books. Books are good.

When I was a teenager, I told my father that I wouldn't need to work a lot when I was grown up: 
as long as there were public libraries, I would have access to books, and I could always scrounge paper and pencils.

This is one of the few times he looked at me with approval, which no doubt firmed up my intention. (In theory, he could have given me a different perspective on "work", but that wasn't his world view...)

I was right too--I've managed to live well without full-time, professional work. I couldn't foresee this, but the Internet made my scheme even better. It's a 24/365 super-library, and publisher.

I hope I didn't sound all preachy in yesterday's post. 
Every so often, I stop to think over what's right for me, re applying for government help. 
Living the way I do, I mostly have to figure that out for myself... on a case-by-case basis. I don't have a lot of role models.

Recently, for instance, the city bus set up a program for low-income riders to ride for $1. You have to apply, and I did, with no hesitation.
Public transport is good in so many ways, I want all US cities to subsidize free public transit for everyone, in fact, like in some cities around the world. 

[Cities spend an enormous amount of money on cars--traffic control is one of the main things police do, for instance. The more people use public transit (or bike/walk), the less cars on the road--it's a virtuous cycle.]

That's different than accepting food stamps, which are a limited resource. Even though I qualify, I don't really NEED that help. Maybe when I'm old I will, and I'll reassess. 
I'm 58... say, in twenty years, if I'm alive? (And who knows what the state of the world will be by then either. )

In the meantime, I'm enjoying life. 
Cashiering is a mixed bag. Naturally--working with people is, and standing behind the check-out counter, I'm trapped with them. It's worth doing, but it can be a real pain...

The BOOK'S are nothing but good though. 
Well, except for human factors, like donations of moldy books. Also, books are heavy, and my coworkers are mostly in worse shape than I am, so I don't like to ask for help moving boxes. 

I need to move more slowly--Mr Rogers is my new role model.
I never watched him, growing up. I didn't realize he does toys!
Must look further.

Side-by-Sides

A few more I set up at the thrift store. 
I don't know how many people notice the books talking among themselves, but someone did tell me my posts on the store's FB are "witty"... (The bar is low on Facebook, but I'll take that.)

stuff in space

I finally filled out the form for my 2018 renter's property-tax refund this morning (one week before the deadline), and then I read the fine print:
You don't get a refund if a relative provided 50+ percent of your income.

I could lie about it, but before I got the job at the thrift store, for half of last year, money from my father's death did pay my bills. It seems fair that I therefore pay my share. Property taxes pay for schools and other important stuff.
I tore up my refund form.

While I have no trouble accepting state health care (because there are no affordable options), I don't take food stamps and most other government programs, because there's not enough for everyone who needs it and who is not poor by choice, like I am.

"Poor by choice" is a weird way of putting it...
I'm not like Saint Francis, who sees Sister Poverty in herself as a Good. It's more that poverty tags along with other Goods I want, most especially free time.
(Hm. Actually, Francis would agree--poverty in itself is not the point––God is.)

And yet, Sister Poverty does benefit me too, and she fits my philosophy that it's good to be aware that we humans share limited resources. ("Take care of library books." "Leave some for the others.")

She serves my laziness too--or, my sense of what's worth expending effort on. That does not include cleaning multiple, futzy kitchen gadgets.
Just give me a knife and a pan.

I've enjoyed house sitting in this expensive house, because it's quiet. (Freedom from noise is among the best things money can buy.)
But, mygod, the work of taking care of all the stuff? 
What a boring waste of time.

Of course you can be poor and own a ton of stuff--this is America--but still, this house comes with so much space, the stuff that fills it needs a lot of attending to: 
You have to take the lawn-furniture pillows in at night; water house plants on two floors, and the porch plants, front and back; stock four bathrooms, etc. 

I understand that some people love all this--including, presumably, the house-owners I'm sitting for. But I don't.

I'm excited about getting rid of stuff as I prepare to move at the end of this month.
I'm even jettisoning family history stuff. My parents are dead and my sister, brother, and I have no children, so I'm not hostage to the future in that "must save these photos" way.

I threw away years of my mother's letters a couple weeks ago. (I saved one representative one.) 
That would have been unthinkable in the past... but now it's  a relief. 

It's not like we're ever free of history, anyway, no matter what we own: I carry my mother in my genes and my memory. 
That's good enough. 

A word modern people use for this choice isn't poverty, it's simplicity.
But I cringe at that word––a magazine called Simple Living is among the mail that has arrived here where I'm house sitting--so much mail, it fills a laundry basket.

Anyway, I do have riches and clutter--it's just in space!
Blogger won't be around forever, but for now, my history is recorded here. I didn't think of this in 2007 when I named my blog l'astronave––starship in Italian (I was thinking at the time of Star Trek)––but it does carry my story in space. 
That's good enough too.

The Striped Pair of Pants

Sparkle & Bounce seem to be into accumulating possessions, after a lifetime on the streets of Las Vegas.
They are collecting clothes––Sparkle is wearing a new striped pair of pants––and now they have a cedar chest of drawers to put them in.

(I'm still house sitting--this is on the front porch.)

What I'm Reading

1. The Longfellow volume contains "The Courtship of Miles Standish," which I want to read because I'm moving into the Standish neighborhood (near Minnehaha Falls).

2. I took home The Jane Austen Book Club, expecting to be disappointed and return it the next day, but I'm pleasantly surprised--it's a series of essays about Austen's novels disguised as fiction, but the stories about the members of the book clubs are engaging me too.

3. Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks with the Sanitation Workers of New York City Up
A topic close to my heart! I'd started writing on contract a book for teens about trash, and I gave it up because the research was so distressing
(e.g., we in the US selling our electronic trash to Nigeria and other places, where children sit in smoldering dumps buring the toxic plastic off wires to salvage the metal below).

But working in thrift is all about trash;  I'd like to write something organized about thrift--(funny, too, which this book is not, so far). I should do that...

 4. nothing was the same--I'd dated a guy with bipolar disorder who said KRJ's memoir, An Unquiet Mind, was the best thing he'd ever read about living with it.
Nothing Was the Same, about KRJ's husband and her grief at his death, is not the equivalent for grief. It's a lot of abstract description of how great her husband was, "so kind and caring"... 
I feel for her loss, but I didn't finish the book.

(Come to think of it, none of the famous books about grief that I've read have caught me. Joan Didion, C S Lewis, etc.)

5. Excited to read the chapter on the Doll Festival in the Shinto Shrine.

6, 7. Haven't started these next two...

8. Thank You for Being Late
Not sure I'll finish this but appreciate his reminder that EVERYTHING IS GOING REALLY FAST AND YOUR BRAIN CAN'T KEEP UP . . .  but it's OK. 

9. I keep wondering if I should cancel the Economist (it's expensive), and I keep not. 
The home-owners where I'm sitting have a subscription, and I'm enjoying reading it here. 
Sometimes it's more frightening to read this newspaper's calm reporting about things like death from climate change (the heat waves this summer kill as many but get less press than fast-and-shorter events, like hurricanes, but are just as bad)--and sometimes it's more inspiring, that thoughtful people are on it.

Pronouns!

bink's coming over for coffee on the front porch soon, and this afternoon, Amy, a college friend who teaches Latin in VA is coming by.

I like having a place I can invite people---my new place has lots of space to host people too.

Having mentioned pronouns yesterday, I laughed to see this come up on my Instagram feed. From madminds

While I'm sympathetic to the liberating possibilities of the gender revolution, I don't care for its "no criticism allowed" aspects––so common to revolutionary movements.  (I know it's more complicated than that, but that's part of it.)

The New Place

Sparkle & Bounce have never had a place of their own. (They were street urchins in Las Vegas.) They were fascinated to explore the doll house at what will be our new place (Sept. 1).

No one has lived there for many years, and Patti says the Reds can make it their own.

  
And I'm excited to have a backyard. And a dog! 
I'm not a big pet person, but I do like Patti's dog, Prince––a mellow, seal-like creature. Plus, there's nothing for getting to know the neighbors like walking a dog.

What Penny Cooper Said

Mz, who is living with the original Orphan Reds while the Las Vegas branch house sits with me, said that Penny Cooper told her, 

"A balanced approach is usually best."

And I thought, yes, that's very Penny Cooper, and it's reflected in her choice of plaid dress, for instance--plaid is balanced.

Seaweed Words

I have two hours this morning until my sister comes over for coffee on the front porch where I'm house/cat- sitting (for twelve more days), and then I'm working this afternoon. Busy!
But I really want to try harder to blog every morning--days go by, and without it, I feel drifty, unmoored. 
Also--sorry, I've been slow responding to comments.
(I LOVE comments, so please don't stop.)

Yesterday was a day off, and I spent much of it reading on the couch. I looked up, and there were the girls, Sparkle and Bounce, leading their own lives on the porch:

Sister only lives five houses away, down the block, but since her wife, Sarah, and I had a screaming fight three years ago, I have not been invited back.

I could probably mend relations, but it'd be like mending an item of clothing you never wanted to wear in the first place, something that had been foisted on you.
So, why?
Sister doesn't seem to mind, either.

It'd be nice if family were a resting place. My sister and SIL never were.

I was talking recently with someone who is always hosting family from out of town, and I said it must be nice to be on good terms with family.

"Oh, they're all distantly related," she said. "Cousins and things. None of us siblings talk to each other."

Pretty normal, in my world.

Coded Language Is Kelp

More often than envying friends with family, I think of many friends, WHY are you tolerating family members who are chronically unkind to you?  
"Break up like lesbians", I think. 

Lesbians are––or, used to be––known for staying friends with their exes, so the community was a web of women who had intimate histories with one another. Lots of drama, but it was a fairly elastic web, and it kept people connected, who otherwise might have few bonds.

I don't know how that goes anymore though. I haven't been a close part of that community in ages. (Not since I came out as straight, but even before...) I'm not sure it still exists, except among the older folk. 

The new generation has grown a different culture. 
I see it from afar, and it reminds me of the lesbian culture I lived in in my twenties in form, if not in content.

The form is... um . . . a group of people toward the edge of cultural norms, connecting themselves with codes and in-language.

The codes, the scripts––
for instance, 
"what are your pronouns?" 
and all the names for gender identities––
"cisgendered", etc.––(and god help you if you get it wrong...)
––these function like the seaweed and hand-holding that anchor floating sea otters.

My generation had scripts and codes too. 
Any group does, right? Burgundy was replaced with Merlot, then Cabernet, "Cab".

BOOKS ARE ANCHORS

I didn't realize until I worked in BOOK's how much popular books, too, are cultural anchors of their times. 
Obvious, huh? 
But I missed it!

I rarely read bestsellers when they're bestsellers--because I don't buy new books (expensive), the hold line for bestsellers at the library is always too long to bother joining, and I've never joined a reading group. 

But working in BOOK's, I get old bestsellers in bunches. 
Mostly they're like leftovers past their due-date.
Books such as The Divine Secrets of the  Ya-Ya Sisterhood, The Devil Wears Prada---don't sell. 
But people do buy The Shipping News. 

In fact, the other day a woman said, "I just bought these, new!" holding up two copies of that title. She and a friend read books together, and they'd started that one.

Which gave me an idea for my next display--books we have two copies of (sometimes three), with a sign:
"Start a Two-Person Reading Group".

First I moved the remaining Space & Moon books. (I love being at the cash register and seeing what people buy, and hearing their comments--one man bought Space, Atoms, and God (1959), saying, "When you made that display, you were making it for me").

This is one of my favorite displays--not so much for the books, which vary in wonderfulness (from the New Testament to A Man Called Ove...), 
but for encouraging people to read together.