Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Well it's not April Fool’s Month obviously but I wish it were. So now I just keep hoping that one of the television networks will tell us that the California Governor's Circus is a new pilot for a television program to compete with Bachelors, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or one of those surreal MTV reality shows. If this is not the case and Schwarzenegger ends up the new Governor of California, I'm afraid I might have to nix my plans to move back... Come on Democrats! Get off your cynical self-infatuated butts and vote!
My week’s sojourn at the B & B while the floors get re-finished is working out quite nicely. In its heyday, this 300-year-old house looked out majestically to the harbor as cod-laden fishing vessels and small trade boats came into port. As the family's fortunes took a turn for the worse (I’m speculating here), parcels of land around the house were sold off until it reached its present state of being almost completely boxed in by other houses. Nonetheless, a special charm remains -- particularly the third floor loft which my friend has transformed into a bed and breakfast suite with glimpses of water views from its quaint windows. The whole house has been completely refurbished following a major fire last year and is now an architectural masterpiece. How they got those massive tree-sized timbers down the narrow driveway, up to the third floor, and then managed to criss-cross these massive 1200 lb., 35-foot-long Spruce beams into a Swedish blond lattice of Vermont yellow pine and spruce I cannot imagine. I’m not sure that the Historical Society knows this but there are now two beautiful skylights that spill centripetal rays of warming light into the living room below. Whoever did the work was an artisan to be sure but there had to have been a fair number of expletives expended getting the job done. The plumber did an impressive job too. It is a 300-year-old house with eight shower-hungry adults living in its bowels and yet the water is always hot and the pressure amazing.
I don't dare go out at night though. Because you see in the other suite upstairs still lives my friend’s foster child. He had moved out for a while but I guess he is back. Three teenaged girls weren’t enough for my friend and so she took in an eighteen-year-old boy her eldest daughter brought home one day like a stray cat. He is adorable but TROUBLE is his middle name. I'm sure he would like nothing more than to distract daughter from her SAT studies for a few hours... Every evening his rock music pulses through the thin walls that separate our two suites. Probably it is just my protective-mother-imagination, but the rhythmic drumbeats seem to thump our membranous wall like a mating call -- our wall a condom (a good quality one I hope) protecting my daughter from the adorable trouble getting stoned on the other side. Oh please. Just let her get through all of this college-application-crap and into the school of her choice (or at least the fourth school of her choice). I’m so close to the finish line and do not need any unhappy nor unintended surprises at this point.
A girl my son went to school with died last night in a car crash. Drinking. Speeding. A car wrapped around a tree. Nineteen. Poof. Gone.
My week’s sojourn at the B & B while the floors get re-finished is working out quite nicely. In its heyday, this 300-year-old house looked out majestically to the harbor as cod-laden fishing vessels and small trade boats came into port. As the family's fortunes took a turn for the worse (I’m speculating here), parcels of land around the house were sold off until it reached its present state of being almost completely boxed in by other houses. Nonetheless, a special charm remains -- particularly the third floor loft which my friend has transformed into a bed and breakfast suite with glimpses of water views from its quaint windows. The whole house has been completely refurbished following a major fire last year and is now an architectural masterpiece. How they got those massive tree-sized timbers down the narrow driveway, up to the third floor, and then managed to criss-cross these massive 1200 lb., 35-foot-long Spruce beams into a Swedish blond lattice of Vermont yellow pine and spruce I cannot imagine. I’m not sure that the Historical Society knows this but there are now two beautiful skylights that spill centripetal rays of warming light into the living room below. Whoever did the work was an artisan to be sure but there had to have been a fair number of expletives expended getting the job done. The plumber did an impressive job too. It is a 300-year-old house with eight shower-hungry adults living in its bowels and yet the water is always hot and the pressure amazing.
I don't dare go out at night though. Because you see in the other suite upstairs still lives my friend’s foster child. He had moved out for a while but I guess he is back. Three teenaged girls weren’t enough for my friend and so she took in an eighteen-year-old boy her eldest daughter brought home one day like a stray cat. He is adorable but TROUBLE is his middle name. I'm sure he would like nothing more than to distract daughter from her SAT studies for a few hours... Every evening his rock music pulses through the thin walls that separate our two suites. Probably it is just my protective-mother-imagination, but the rhythmic drumbeats seem to thump our membranous wall like a mating call -- our wall a condom (a good quality one I hope) protecting my daughter from the adorable trouble getting stoned on the other side. Oh please. Just let her get through all of this college-application-crap and into the school of her choice (or at least the fourth school of her choice). I’m so close to the finish line and do not need any unhappy nor unintended surprises at this point.
A girl my son went to school with died last night in a car crash. Drinking. Speeding. A car wrapped around a tree. Nineteen. Poof. Gone.
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