News you can use
News you can use
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The New Year is when we take stock. In some cases, like my husband Peter’s, this is literal. He keeps an inventory of our canned goods and chastises me if I mess up his inventory. “Did you mark off the black beans?” “Um, no.” “You have to mark it off on the list or I won’t know how many I have.” “Oh. Sorry.” I am less concerned about our supply of canned goods in the New Year and more concerned about stockpiles closer to home — on my hips, for example. I had gotten out of the...
My Uncle Andy recently turned 90, and it was hard to imagine what a guy would like for his 90th birthday. At 90, getting a lot of new stuff doesn’t sound very appealing. Andy is in the process of getting rid of stuff, a job made more challenging by the fact that neither he nor his wife, Bea, have any children to fob the stuff off on. Andy and Bea live in the farmhouse where my mom was raised, and we were stumped when the subject of a 90th birthday present came up. “What does A...
I walk around my neighborhood later in the evening these days, mostly so I can see the lights. There are some impressive houses just a mile or so away, and I walk down the sidewalks and see what has appeared on the lawns and in the windows now, right before Christmas. Some of the houses clearly had outside assistance. There are lights hung in places that only a cherry picker could reach. One house had four such enormous trees in a row, all in uniform white lights, until the...
Yesterday I bought a Christmas tree at the hardware store. I thought it was a good day to do it both because I'd heard the rumors of Christmas tree shortages and because it would keep me away from my email for more than an hour — a near record in the last two weeks. No one tells you, when you start writing, that it involves a lot of waiting. I have sent the manuscript of my first novel off to someone, and it feels as if 30 minutes or so should be plenty of time to read 300 p...
“It’s not about luck,” my friend Andrew insists, “it’s about gratitude.” Andrew is not some sort of New Age guide, in case you were wondering. He is a slightly curmudgeonly tax preparer and not given to feel-good platitudes. He was refuting what I had said, which was that luck has played a significant role in my life. When good things happen to me, I don’t believe it’s only because I worked hard. “Lots of people work hard,” I told Andrew. “Not everyone had the head start I...
My husband, Peter, is a man of few colors: black and gray, to be exact. He has always been this way, as far as I know. Peter is not opposed to color, but I think it makes him a little nervous. He worries that one color might not go with another or that there might be too much color in one place — especially if that one place is on him. So he goes the other route and opts for no color at all — unless you call 50 shades of gray a color, which I don’t. We’ve been remodel...
My mother sent a photo of a huge female turkey sitting on her bird feeder. The giant, ungainly creature looked ridiculous, perched on the little wooden roof of a feeder intended for chickadees and nuthatches. “She has been hanging around for two days now,” my mother wrote. “Maybe our Thanksgiving dinner?” Even before my mother sent this, I was thinking Thanksgiving looked a little strange this year. I’ve heard the complaints, year after year, about how we’re rushing the...
I used to have a friend who lived in Paris. Paris is expensive. Angel bought the largest apartment she could afford, and it was tiny. But, because it was in Paris, she had a lot of visitors. Friends and family came to see her and in order to get to her place and back they would take the subway. In the subway are photo booths; they have been there for many years. Angel loved the photo booths, and she would drag every person who visited into one to have their photo taken with...
I have been studying up on frightening holiday rumors and found some surprises. There is apparently no evidence that any child has ever been poisoned by a Halloween treat. This is according to The New York Times, which investigated it. There was one case of a dentist in California who handed out laxative pills as Halloween candy. That was certainly a terrible thing to do, but not life-threatening. There was a single case of a razor blade found in Halloween candy, but it was la...
I spent yesterday with old friends. It used to be that I would follow the use of “old friends” with the disclaimer that they were “not really old!” This no longer feels necessary. If they are old friends of mine, I now have to say, objectively, they are pretty old. The “occasion” (if you want to call it that) was finally driving my oldest friend, Andrew, to his colonoscopy — which certainly sounds like an old person’s activity. I had been badgering him for months. After h...
I am a person of generally good habits, which is why it is puzzling when I acquire a bad one. Habits are probably the most important thing when it comes to having a happy life. I eat things that make me feel good and are good for me. I take my long walk every day. I do daily push-ups (even though I hate them). I go to the doctor on a regular schedule, sleep a good amount every night. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I was in my 20s, when it seemed like fun. I stopped drinkin...
There are few things as daunting as buying jeans. I don’t buy jeans frequently enough to buy the same kind twice. By the time I’m ready for a new pair of jeans, whatever I’ve been wearing is unavailable, out of style, or both. Of course there are sizes on jeans, but the sizes mean nothing. They are only intended to provide some sort of rough orientation. It would be like saying you know how to find your grandmother’s house in Texas because you know how to get to Texas....
“We are cleaning up our stuff,” Meschack, the tile layer who now more or less permanently resides in our home, informed me. “We are giving you more space.” “More space!” I said in mock amazement. “Why would I need more space? I see at least three square feet over there by the closet and another four feet behind the dining room table!” Meshack squinted his eyes and looked at me seriously, as he does. He was again accompanied by his assistant, Yusefu, a recent immigrant from Ken...
We were supposed to get the tile backsplash installed in our kitchen yesterday, but my husband, Peter, said he needed to use the kitchen so he could bake ginger cookies. “Can you work in the bathroom today instead?” I asked Meshach, the talented tiler from Kenya, who has been here so long by now that he feels like part of the family. “Peter wants to bake ginger cookies.” Meshach has now been joined by a second Kenyan, who is assisting him, named Yusefu. Yusefu and Meshach...
My husband, Peter, and I are at my parents’ cabin in the woods. The weather was perfect for a bike ride so we took a long one. We had not all been riding together in almost two years and I am not an experienced rider. So, in order to prevent my butt from getting sore, I have a big, soft seat on my bicycle. My mother, an avid cyclist, does not approve. “You wouldn’t need that big tractor seat if you had padded shorts!” she always tells me. “I’m thinking this whole idea of pad...
To me, “the farm” has always meant the farm where my mother grew up, one of 11 children. Every book I ever read that was set on a farm, and many other books as well, all took place in my imagination at my mother’s family farm and the surrounding woods. The farm seemed enormous when I was young. There was a barn full of cows and a coop full of chickens and a granary full of all sorts of things we weren’t supposed to climb into but did anyway. There were lots of feral cats an...
We are reaching that point in remodeling where we seriously question whether we will ever be done. After we finally found a plumber, we thought our worries were over and progress began briskly. Our plumber had a delightful and exceptionally competent young fellow from Kenya, named Meshach, doing the tiling. We were all set for him to begin on Thursday morning, but he did not arrive. This seemed rather out of character, but we weren’t too concerned. Then he failed to show on F...
I met my former mother-in-law, “Mama Lou,” and my former father-in-law, “Poppo,” when I was not yet 20 years old. I hitched a ride to meet them, terrified because I’d spoken to my future mother-in-law on the phone and she sounded exactly like Lauren Bacall. I arrived at their home in Wisconsin and my future father-in-law threw open the door and said, “You must be Carrie! Can I get you a drink?” In the more than 20 years that followed, I never felt anything less than welcome...
My husband, Peter, and I have matching folding chairs. Every Thursday evening this summer, we have attended the outdoor concert held in a local park. The music is usually good, but the food trucks are undeniably the center of the experience. Our favorite is the “Tot Boss” that sells tasty, hot tater tots out the window of the truck. Peter and I bring our own chairs. We get comfortable in our folding chairs, eat our tater tots, listen to the music, and watch the people and dog...
“I’m tired of living in exile!” my husband, Peter, exclaimed as, for the second day in a row, we packed up everything we would need to be out of our home long enough for the floor to dry. Michael, the floor sander, is in our apartment now, buffing the penultimate coat of polyurethane while Peter is moaning about his exile status. We have evacuated to the party room in the condominium while we wait to have a floor we can walk on again. There is internet and a refri...
The renovations to our new home continue. We didn’t expect to be refinishing the floor. But when we tore up the flooring that was buckling and warping in the summer humidity, we discovered the original parquet, spattered with paint, underneath. A man named Michael showed up with the biggest floor sander I have ever seen, looked disapprovingly at the paint sprayed all over the parquet, and declared that it should sand clean without a problem. My husband, Peter, told Michael h...
I have never been a gardener. This makes me feel like a misfit in my family. My mother is a wonderful gardener. She had an enormous vegetable garden in the suburbs before it became fashionable to do so. Her mother was also an avid gardener. She escaped the demands of 11 children by spending time with her flowers. There are photos of my grandma in her garden and she looks as if she is having a wonderful time, but I figure any activity that would allow you to escape the demands...
The dogs are missing me. My husband, Peter, predicted this after we moved. “All the dogs will miss you!” he said. “They are going to be looking for the Treat Lady. Don’t you think that’s sad?” I did not. First of all, I didn’t believe it. Just because I passed out treats for a couple of years to the dogs didn’t mean they would expect to see me again. Just because they remembered me when they saw me didn’t mean I would ever cross their minds if they didn’t see me. But yesterday...
Years ago, I had trouble with my septic system. If you’ve ever had that kind of trouble, you know what kind of trouble it can be. I was living in my old farmhouse out in the middle of the woods and had no idea where the sewage went until it suddenly went nowhere. That’s when I called the septic guy. The house (and presumably the septic tank) was 100 years old, and I had never had occasion to get overly curious about where the septic tank was or exactly how it worked — until...
I’m not sure when a house becomes a home, but I don’t think we’re quite there yet. My husband, Peter, and I have moved into the new place. All our stuff is here, but that doesn’t mean we know where anything is. “Have you seen the strainer?” “Which strainer?” “You know, the fine one.” “No.” We have about two dozen conversations like this every day. We got rid of a lot of stuff and now it’s hard to remember what we kept. Then I unpacked by myself, so Peter had to go on a scaveng...
