Season’s Greetings From Our House to Yours!

Hail! Greeting! Mazel tov! Konichiwa! Maki leaky taco!

As you know, it’s been a busy year in the Barely Knit Together household. We finally got rid of the “rat problem,” for those of you who were praying about this scourge that we didn’t want to be specific about – THANK YOU. Like everybody else, though, we got stink bugs too; thank god I don’t have the gene that lets you smell them. Everyone was going, “What IS that stench?” when I was around, but I just sniffed and shrugged my shoulders. How was I supposed to know?

Speaking of plagues, The Good Lord should have considered sending a plague of camel crickets! Every time one of them jumps out at me from behind the couch I scream, they are just like something from an apocalyptic, futuristic, rapture alien monster movie, with those giant back legs and those fat, round bodies. When you kill those suckers it’s like stepping on a cat, or even a small dog, except for that crunching noise, but honestly, what else are you gonna do? And really, how scary are grasshoppers and frogs? Not at all, I always say.

But enough about me. We’ve been working hard on our 1907 house, and finally (after four years) removed a single upper cabinet from the kitchen we need to completely gut, re-plumb, and rebuild. Progress! On a sour note, our beautiful new fridge on which the seals work and which has (gasp!) an ice maker won’t fit up the stairs to where our working kitchen is, and since we haven’t taken the lower cabinets off, it won’t fit into the future kitchen either, which is really okay, because we have to tear out the wood floors anyway, so who wants to move it twice?

We put the fridge in the library. The room is the perfect temperature for storing red wine, and now we have a place to put it. I will let you know if the refrigerator works as soon as we get some grounded outlets in there at floor level!

We are on a health kick here, too! Working hard to get rid of the mold and mildew from the rotting wallboards in the basement, all while  praying that the radon detectors I bought two years ago and haven’t installed yet aren’t strictly “necessary.” We drink soy to counteract the cancer risk.

In an effort to reduce our carbon footprint and use less fossil fuel, we didn’t turn on the heat until December, except for Thanksgiving, so my in-laws wouldn’t complain. We have lots of space heaters, anyway, we just have to be careful not to turn on more than one, or anything else while one is running, and it limits our ability to move from room to room, as we only have two grounded outlets. Pesky UL and CPSC! If I want to get electrocuted by a hairdryer or torch my home, it’s my own damn business!

What’s great is that viruses can’t survive temperatures less than sixty degrees Fahrenheit, so after I kick this lingering cough, I’m sure I won’t be sick again all winter! I think being cold makes my kids tougher, and it makes the outside seem not so much worse when the kid with sensory issues won’t wear a coat because the “arms are too round.” Haha! Silly kids.

So that’s pretty much life in our little neck of the woods. I like to think of all this as baby steps toward a fabulous life. As soon as we rebuild the porch my son dismantled, I’ll have company and I can give you the grand tour!

Just watch out for camel crickets.

Tags: christmas, family letter, what life is really like

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Fettered

It could be in
the name…orderly…
tidy beds no
decorative pillows
drapes blinds ties
that could bind.
Every day the trays
come
at the same time.
Droning television mutes
the hum of voices real
and imagined.
There is no one
to care for but myself
so I do -
make bedbrush teethwash hair
every day, even.
What else is there
to do?
Outside
the mind must hold
tenuously
grip the edge hold up the
buttress
of Important Things.
Inside
we’re
Free.