We've been in the new house for two weeks now, and it's starting to feel good. At first, everywhere we looked we saw something else that needed to be fixed or cleaned or organized or just dealt with somehow, and the days were exhausting. Unfortunately, the work inside has been ongoing, with one room in particular cursed: the paint job showed off how bad the skim coating underneath was, so that had to be redone, but then the skim-coat guy messed up the new finish on the floor, so the floor has to be redone. As rooms go, it's not essential—and we don't really have any furniture for it yet—but still, it'd be nice to have.
The furniture, for now, is whatever we had in storage or shipped from New York City; the effect is bare-bones. When the new stuff arrives, we'll undoubtedly love it simply because it'll be a real sofa and a full-size carpet and so on. (My nightstand is a box of books.) I have enjoyed unpacking boxes from our old house in Santa Barbara, the one we had years ago; much of it I have no recollection of, so there were moments that felt like Christmas.
The duck lamp probably won't make the final cut, but it gave me joy. The thing itself is what it is, and not without charm, but I really love it because I saw it somewhere years ago, on deep sale, and because it was right before my birthday, I made Adam go buy it for me. And now, every time I look at it, I get to imagine the purchase happening.
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Outside is another story. When you look out the living room window toward the backyard, you see red caution tape warning you about the giant hole in the porch. Dry rot remediation.
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I believe people should only hold on to books they love, and I could make a compelling argument to release those, too, except now I have a lot of bookshelves that need filling. I took a box of meh to a used book store and got $12 for a handful of them. The clerk and I chatted about what to do with the rest, and he said he generally recommends that people donate them to those Little Free Libraries you see here and there. I said that I could carry the books around in my trunk, and when I come upon a box, drop some off. "You'd be the book fairy," he said, not meanly but I scowled anyway.
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I haven't enjoyed much of anything on TV lately. We tried watching Broadchurch, but who thinks the murder of a child is entertainment? (Everyone else, apparently.) We made it through one episode of Bridgerton, a shoddy imitation of Jane Austen if ever there was one. (The race-blind casting is refreshing, sure.) And I thought Tenet was absolutely stupid. The sole female main character's only motivation was to save her child, even though the entire world was at risk of being destroyed. It was clearly a man's idea of what women value, perhaps because that's what men value in women. So we keep watching Frasier, and even the lame ones are good, although I couldn't believe that each season—and there are eleven—is 24 episodes. There are 264 total. Maybe we should consider it as research for next Halloween....
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The other evening, my phone rang. Adam was calling from somewhere in the house.
Me: Yes?
Adam: We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. It’s late.
Me: Over the phone?
Adam: Oh, it’s you! Sorry, wrong person.