April 24, 2005

I think we're finally starting to get the hang of this thing. I've been in the school for about 5 weeks now, and Ron's been here about three. We've each set up a room or two, and Dick's been sprucing up all our floors, and we even got plumbing and electric run to the old coal room for our future laundry. But it wasn't until I came out from vacuuming the boiler room (yeah, I know, sounds crazy, but sweeping just kicks up a fuckload of questionable dust) to find Ron ripping out all the old kitchen cabinets with a prybar that I thought: Now we're talking!

Today we went to Lowe's and bought most of what we'll need for the kitchen and laundry. We've got to pry up the tile, strip the adhesive, stain and seal the kitchen floor, strip and paint the cabinets, paint the walls, install the cabinets & appliances, and scrub the laundry walls and floor and seal the concrete in there. Once we have those rooms set, everything else will unfurl like a beautiful dream. I'll be able to unpack my 50 boxes of kitchen crap and move all the dreamy commercial appliances over from Eskridge. I'll be able to set up my pantry and cook my ass off again (right now we're cooking some pretty involved meals with a tiny microwave, a toaster oven, and a hot plate from the science room). And I'll be able to clear out the ever-growing, ever more stinky pile of filthy clothes from my bedroom closet and put some shelves in there.

So far, we've had 3 visitors (my mom, Brian & Noah), gone fishing at Harveyville City Lake (well, Brian & Ron fished; Noah and I drank beer and I knitted), gone to a demolition derby, met the inimitable Otis May and took a tour of the Pea Patch, ate a scrumptious steak at the Flint Hills Steak House on beautiful Lake Wabaunsee, spotted buffalo, llamas (or alpaca?) and pygmy goats, learned that certain cows give up to 6 gallons of milk a day (a day! can you believe it?, although most give around two or three), took in a hilarious Lions Club dinner theater/drag show performance (apparently there's a long-standing tradition of men's clubs performing in drag, as witnessed by an ancient and sensational picture we found in one of the little town histories in the Harveyville library), feasted on Easter dinner with the Anshutz family and had coffee with the Riggins (plus I have outstanding invitations with Dorothy Masters, JoLeta Weems, and there's a church luncheon I've been invited to despite my lack of interest in actual church attendance), witnessed scores of pasture fires, soaked up many super-starry nights and one creepy horror movie fog, discovered new weather words like "thundersnow," picked the crispest, dreamiest asparagus at a pick-it-yourself farm that has sour cherries in June and apples in the fall, contemplated buying a pig for meat and wooly goats for wool, and met more nice people that I can count.

My sample chapter is coming along swimmingly. I'm knitting my ass off day and night, spending hours on the front steps in the sunshine with the dogs (now dog, singular, sadly) and so far the patterns are delicious and the yarn samples I've gotten are absolutely scrumptious. Oh, that's right! I never said! Back in Texas, I sold a book & I'm working on it now. It's a knitting book. Hence the knitting my ass off.

The only sad part is missing Kiki. She had a really good last day, a day of doggy smiles and sunshine and wind (that big picture was from her final afternoon), just the way any good dog should go out, but I can't help running over potential mistakes I may have made in her care. She was 15, though, for crying out loud, and we had some times, so I'm trying not to second-guess myself into agony. But still, I miss my sweet girl. She was my constant companion my whole adult life. She was my friend longer than any of my human friends, and she was always with me. So it's a heartbreak, losing her. And poor Herman has become increasingly clingy and nervous since poor Kiki died. Some times she's crazy happy, tearing around the gym while we play HORSE, but mostly she just makes alarming tortured banshee wails whenever she's left, or when she settles down, she curls up in her bed and eyes me accusingly. We want to get a fence as soon as possible so we can get her a new companion before she goes totally off the deep end and becomes irreversibly needy. If we can keep Herman from eating it, we also need a cat, a good mouser. We've only seen one live mouse, but we figure it's only a matter of time before word gets out that there's food up here again.

In a couple of weeks, I'm going back to Austin for a spell to get my house all sorted out and gussied up and listed, as I'm pretty well fundless until it's sold. Oh, man. I'll bet the lawn's a wreck.

2.27.05