Hum along, if you want. This is a photo of my house. My husband was just telling me that if we put it on the market right now, we'd have to have an asking price about $50,000 less than what we paid for it in 2001, despite all the improvements we've made. Guess that means we stay here till we die. Maybe the fact that two houses in our immediate area have just sold is a good sign. Or maybe it means that people are taking advantage of foreclosures and homes selling for basement prices (literally!).
A former student of mine is graduating in landscape design and is offering to provide sketches for an upgrade of our landscaping. His first suggestion was to cut the maple tree in the front yard. No way, Jose. We love our trees, and I personally appreciate the privacy screen that the maple provides for our upstairs bedroom. Even though it isn't my habit to prance around naked in front of uncurtained windows, I do like feeling that I have privacy from even being silhouetted against a curtain.
The couple who bought the house next door appear to be newlyweds, as do the couple who bought the house two doors down. I'm glad to see young people moving into the neighborhood. We old geezers get too complacent. We get too rules-bound. There's one rule I'd like to break right now, and that's the rule against having a fenced yard that prevents city workers' access to the pond. Now that the properties to the left and right of me have been surveyed, we're aware of exactly where the boundaries of our property lie, and it would be nice to be able to provide some sense of perimeter. I don't want a dog, but if I did, it would be good to be able to put it out in the yard to annoy the neighbors with barking uncontrollably, the way the other neighbors' dogs annoy me. Am I a curmudgeon, or what?
I am happy to report that Ellie is at last leaving behind the incredibly stressful world of teaching at a secondary school. If people want to be gatekeepers and prison wardens, why should their first stop be education? Yet apparently that's the way it works these days. I'm glad she'll probably be returning to college teaching. She's a gifted teacher and writer and all-around brilliant woman, and she was wasted on secondary education.
I am nearly faint with hunger. The roast and potatoes I've got cooking are smelling so good. All week long, my husband and I (in our separate abodes) live off take-out and frozen dinners, so I try to cook when I'm home on weekends. I didn't get home until Friday, a bit after 3 p.m., and was too tired to cook, so I'm making up for it today.
I haven't mentioned it, but I'm letting a former student live in my apartment for a couple of weeks, starting on May 10. He's got a two-week stint of criminal justice classes. The dorms won't be open for one of those weeks, and he doesn't want to pay for a whole semester just to be able to be there for these two one-week seminars he has to take. He's a great young man, and I totally trust him. I'm glad that someone will be there and able to take advantage of the apartment for part of the summer.
I've been thinking about replacing my desktop computer here at home with a laptop that I can take back and forth. I find myself emailing files back and forth all the time, and it would be (I hope) easier just to use one computer that I carried around with me. In Staples the other day I ogled a few of the new laptops. There's an HP I really like. It's bigger than many other laptops, and the screen would not make me feel as if I was having to sacrifice image quality and size (something we baby boomers have to consider).
We could have gotten tickets to see Elton John tonight if we'd been willing to spend $300. Sorry, Elton. I love ya, but your voice is too shaky with age for me to pay full price for the chance to watch you work. I may regret it, but if I start to feel nostalgic, I'll just play one of my many Elton John CDs.
A swatch of tornadoes has cut through Louisiana and Mississippi. I'm still trying to find out what was damaged and if anyone has been killed. Apparently a chemical plant of some sort north of Tallulah, Louisiana, was damaged, and Yazoo City, Mississippi, was damaged badly, with perhaps two dead and many injured. Thirty houses demolished. Oh, Mother Nature, when you throw a fit, you throw a doozy!
Guess I'd better go check on that roast and potatoes.
No comments:
Post a Comment