Sunday, November 29, 2009

Hmph. Okay. My sister thought it was funny, anyway...

Late-last-night volley in an email exchange with my sister (edited for spelling and to protect the names of the innocent):

oh, yeah, i've enjoyed the world of living alone for a long time—part of why i was sure when nobody else seemed to be that i'd be fine when my marriage crashed. i don't think of myself as being that terribly selfish (although i know i am); i just pretty much think of myself as a mole, which turns out to be a pretty accurate description.

i pretty much let the boys live upstairs and i live downstairs, but the dogs do their shedding and dirt-tracking-in downstairs (and the dust bunnies seem to party down here), so with jobs keeping me nuts, i don't have time to dust and clean as i'd like. I could probably pay a housekeeper, but i'm too stubborn to do that with live-ins who could do the job if they'd get off their duffs. I know Second Son will come through on his debts to me shortly after he starts getting army pay, and Number One Son has come to the plate for meal preparation (and is wonderful with the dogs—one of those things that really makes me see daddy in him). But neither one of them seems to be any better than the dogs at herding dust bunnies. or yard work, for that matter. i must have trained them wrong.

fortunately, neither of them comes even close to [our older brother] Bo; NOS and i were surprised by upstairs-crashing-around last week one day when SS had decided he couldn't go to houston to visit a buddy unless he cleaned (and vacuumed) his room first. never ceases to amaze me. NOS is living literally in the middle of my office—virtually all his goods stacked between the desk on one side and the sewing machine on the other—and frankly doesn't own enough stuff to make much of a mess of anything. hangs out up there more than i thought he would, but i'm more surprised by the amount of time he spends down here with me and the dogs. don't like the amount of drinking he's doing; grandmother is praying for him to get off booze and butts, but i figure out next best friend on butts will be x-ray school, if he gets in.

california is probably in my future if for no reason than that i'm prepaying my alzheimer's care by helping darling daughter w/student loans. i've got other business to tend to here for a while yet; for one thing, i sort of need to hold this fort down while NOS needs a place to bunk, and for another, i think i'll be able to snag a much better price if i wait for the market stabilize somewhat and for the university to get the new medical center on this side of town up and running—probably still four or five years down the road. unless someone comes up with a really sweet deal on the left coast or makes me an offer on the casa, i'm snug if not always comfortable here. and my next move will be to a place half this size—lord knows i don't need this much space to rattle around in alone.

DD's flame is a sweetheart, but i don't want the two of them even to think marriage until they have cohabited a while. from what i can tell, he's probably up to the challenge, and i know she's really working to remember that the advantages of having a man around the house also mean letting him be the man around the house. i don't know how hard he is to live with, but i suspect my daughter can be a megabitch, so he needs to be sure he's willing to put up with her. she is definitely smitten by  him, and from what i can tell, it's mutual. and he's funny—did i tell you about the naked ice skating? She's been trying to get him to family gigs for a while, but life so far has gotten in the way.

i suspect kids will follow wedding vows; i'm not sure whether DD needs kidlets in her life much more than arge does, but i'm pretty sure she wants them, and if she has them, she'll be as super a mom as she has been at just about everything else.

haven't heard anything about dubai weather except to know that they built a mall with a ski slope in it several years ago because, well, they could, and we drive gas guzzlers to pay for it. i know qatar keeps the air conditioning low enough to hang icicles everywhere indoors, which drives the ecoperson in me nuts, but again, we drive gas guzzlers to pay for it. (our university's building in qatar has lights on motion sensors so you can get stuck in the dark in the restrooms, but your butt could freeze off if you don't flail around enough to get the lights back on because the thermostats must be on the outsides of the buildings there—only possible explanation for that much indoor cold.)

this message brought to you by don marquis and e.e. cummings.


First line of Sis's response: "You are so funny!" 

Don't think I've ever gotten that from her before.


Moving on down the road. 

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