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Desperate for Decent Reading Material
Submitted entry: I’m having a short lull before I can work (waiting for some information to be sent) so I’m going to take the opportunity to write a bit. Work is still going steadily though we’re coming to the end of the project. We’ve got a fair amount saved up, though which is helpful in the case that there’s time before the next paying job (Sage’s or mine) comes in. We did wind up spending a lot of what we made on this job already though. But, Sage reminds me, we spent it on things that we needed for a while, and will either last a while due to how they were built (handmade shelves for Paul’s playroom, for instance, or new flooring in the playroom and bathroom) or have warranties like our new stove (the old one died last week - it started making very bad popping sounds that dimmed the lights in the house when I’d turn on the oven) and stereo. We should also have quite enough to buy Sage’s dentures this winter. There may be a short wait, however, before we can get the new engine for the car.
The car still is working wonderfully in town - runs great in fact. However, a friend has diagnosed it with agoraphobia. Back in the summer we went to a yard sale way out of town and didn’t quite make it because the car started sputtering and backfiring when it hit this one hill. So we turned around and made it home just fine. Then we had the spark plugs changed and it ran great. Well, except I couldn’t get out of town very far with it - I tried one and it didn’t sputter like it did but wasn’t happy about it.
Anyway - this Sunday we were really desperate for decent reading material so I woke up in the morning and Sage and I discussed that perhaps we were mistaken that the car wasn’t having problems at all and that I was being overly critical of how it ran after it was fixed. So I took it for a ride up the same road I tried it on the last time and it ran great. So we packed us all in the car and headed for Springfield. We made it ten miles and were quite confident at that point that we were going to make it all the way to Springfield. Then Sage and I each did a stupid thing. First I said, jokingly, “Sage, do you see that Plexiglass wall up ahead?” (we’ve been joking that we’re either in the Truman Show or in the Twilight Zone episode where people couldn’t leave town and it turned out in the end that it was because they were in a model railroad). At about the same time Sage starts being a little concerned - mostly in a joking way - what all our friends will think given that we’ve been telling them that our car couldn’t make it out of town and here we were off to Springfield. Well, our car obliged us at that point and started sputtering and we had to turn around. And interestingly enough, the closer we got to home the better the car ran. See? Agoraphobia. Our car’s a homebody.
Tonight we’re doing our first trick-or-treating time with Paul. He never was interested in previous years (okay - this is only the fourth Halloween he was alive for). This year he has been so excited about the holiday. It started back when we were snowed in at the yurt with an audiobook of “Scary Scary Halloween” by Eve Bunting. He was fascinated with the whole thing then and the more decorations he saw recently (as far off as August) the more he wanted to celebrate it. So now his playroom is decorated, he’s got his witch costume and he’s really excited to go out this evening. We’re going to go to several houses in town as well as the businesses on the square. There’s also a costume contest and parade that we might go to.
We’re also giving out treats this year. No, nobody ever came to visit us at the yurt and we never gave treats out when we lived in the city before. So this’ll be a first for us. Sadly we’re going to be that house that nobody’s very interested in, I think. Why? Raisins, that’s why. We’re giving them out - we’ll be the disappointing new age family whose treats we were disappointed with as kids. Of course we understand now. We’ll have enough candy to deal with (and live with the results of in terms of sugar highs) without leftover candy from our own giveaways. With Paul we’ve figured out that he can have three treats tonight and then one per day thereafter. Given that he gets a bit crazed with raisins or fruit, this is not only us being concerned about his health, I think it’s a self preservation move!
Oh, and just a note of advice - you can make up the story as you like around this one because I’m not going to stoop to the level of giving details out. Don’t give your child a bag of dried apricots without supervision just a few hours before bed. You’ll wind up with rather a larger and more distasteful cleanup project than you want to take on at 11:00 PM.
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