"Hypertension in the Key of D"


Sometimes, if your house is already in chaos due to a kitchen remodel, and then a new crew comes in to start refinishing your floors (one half of the house at a time, which means all possessions in two rooms get shoved into the other two rooms, and then the next week, everything from that side gets shoved back over to the side of the newly-refinished floors), you hit Maximum Chaos and Crap Overload. It ain't pretty. In fact, I feel like I'm actively restricting my drinking this week (what with classes starting back up, too) so that I don't just sip from a flask--delicately and discreetly, mind you--from the moment my eyes open in the morning 'til the moment they slam shut at night. Under my current plan, I'm not allowed to have twenty beers until after 8 p.m.

We have so much stuff. Usually, we can pretend there's a place for it. Not this week. We have not place.


...except out on the curb. The case with this spinet is that it's untuneable unless we shell out about $600.

Not gonna.

So we listed it on Freecycle and Craig's List and got no bites. We put it out with "Free" signs all over it and got some. Our neighbor said she'd take it. Woot-woot! We turned away all lookers after that.

She called this morning and said she can't take it. (good thing she's a lovely woman otherwise; I've never seen Groom, who makes Gandhi look like an a-hole, contemplate violence before)

It's supposed to rain tonight.

We can't find enough tarps to cover it adequately. The other tarps are already covering a kitchen table that's living outside.

We can't pay to buy anymore tarps because--WERE YOU LISTENING?--we're already paying mounds of dollars for a kitchen remodel and floor refinishing.

So there sits the piano. Forelorn.

Come and take it.

Should you arrive, I'll make you pie. It's raspberry season, you know, and I have cream cheese.

All right, so bummers aside, the kitchen is getting prettier. Getting the cooktop in has been transformative. We eat pasta and beets now.

The oven's been in for a couple of weeks. Look what it did for us last Sunday morning! Oven must've known we had a big week coming up, one with new students and no access to the kitchen during the floor business.

Oven likes skillet pancakes (aka "Dutch babies").

Jocelyn likes Nutella.

Jocelyn also wonders when someone stuck her mother's hands onto the ends of her arms.

For the first time since we moved into this house, our recipe books are in the actual kitchen and not out on the back porch.

Of course, I still go out on the back porch to look for them every time I need a recipe. Why can't I just holler, "Dutch baby recipe: come to Mama!" and have it gallop right to me, to save some of this annoying rustling around, looking confounded? That's exhausting work, the Rustle and Confound.


Miss Silvia and some still lifes (yea, I know it's "lives," but humor the English teacher who knows all the rules so well she has license to violate them) have come aboard, too. See how much our floors needed refinishing?

It's proven confusing, as well, to have the food IN the kitchen. I still am wandering around the living room, calling out to my Triscuits. Now I hear their muffled cries coming from inside this pantry.

I've made two good choices in my life: 1) the man I live with; 2) the transom window above the door there. Both are transparent.

A shot of the dining room, after we cleared it out on Sunday. Note the refrigerator on the left. I like a fridge that serves as maitre d' to everyone entering the house.

Because this is a high-class joint, we also have a hostess, Sideboard, to greet you on the porch.

The living room, all this past week, has been JUNK, JUNK, JUNK. Just typing about it makes my blood pressure skyrocket.

Dining room table in the living room.

Have to stop typing about this now. Need my meds. Pressure is spiking...


Every now and then, though, the crap and junk come together in a queer synergy.

And it delights me.

If I stare at Maestro Monkey Love long enough, some nights I can wait until 8:18 p.m. before cracking the first two beers.

And then I stare at the dramatic dark vs. light of our half-re-finished floors (plus Paco doing the hula), and I can wait until 8:49.