(no subject)
I'm home, y'all!
The headline on the paper proclaimed that "Oregon Climbs Up US Diversity Scale" when I got up this morning. We are up two percentage points, but are still eighty percent white. Wow. I guess that...merits a front-page above the fold headline?
Home feels odd. We have a ramp now that curls around the side of the house to switch-back up the rear of the house. The carpets are gone in the first floor, replaced by hardwood laminate. I expected that, from hearing by phone tales of the home improvements going on. Seeing it is different. The walls have been repainted and the old, unplayed piano removed from the living room. The bathroom has been almost entirely ripped out, the bathtub replaced with a roll-in shower, the counter-top sink unit replaced with a sink the size of a postage-stamp in the corner that can be rolled under.
I can remember talking about this nine months ago, sitting in that dark waiting room with the crappy overhead lighting, broken-down furniture, and light green walls. The first? second? night at the hospital in Albany, brainstorming with my father all the ways the house would have to be modified for my sister to come home. It was all a hypothetical then, despite my measured, cautious words. I was performing a thought exercise, an engineering challenge. My parents made it a stylish reality, in between traveling to the East Coast for months at a time.
The room I shared with my older sister, down in the basement, is also changed. My bed has been removed, taken upstairs to use in my sister's new ground-floor bedroom. I walk around this new space with my hands clasped behind my back, like a child walking through a museum, afraid to touch. All the outlines are the same, but the lines have been filled in differently. How disorienting.
Enough of that. I have to repack a subset of my clothes for camp, then head out following directions provided by my mother and hope I don't get lost. I'll be out of computer touch until Sunday. Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone! If anyone else comes out, CALL ME.
The headline on the paper proclaimed that "Oregon Climbs Up US Diversity Scale" when I got up this morning. We are up two percentage points, but are still eighty percent white. Wow. I guess that...merits a front-page above the fold headline?
Home feels odd. We have a ramp now that curls around the side of the house to switch-back up the rear of the house. The carpets are gone in the first floor, replaced by hardwood laminate. I expected that, from hearing by phone tales of the home improvements going on. Seeing it is different. The walls have been repainted and the old, unplayed piano removed from the living room. The bathroom has been almost entirely ripped out, the bathtub replaced with a roll-in shower, the counter-top sink unit replaced with a sink the size of a postage-stamp in the corner that can be rolled under.
I can remember talking about this nine months ago, sitting in that dark waiting room with the crappy overhead lighting, broken-down furniture, and light green walls. The first? second? night at the hospital in Albany, brainstorming with my father all the ways the house would have to be modified for my sister to come home. It was all a hypothetical then, despite my measured, cautious words. I was performing a thought exercise, an engineering challenge. My parents made it a stylish reality, in between traveling to the East Coast for months at a time.
The room I shared with my older sister, down in the basement, is also changed. My bed has been removed, taken upstairs to use in my sister's new ground-floor bedroom. I walk around this new space with my hands clasped behind my back, like a child walking through a museum, afraid to touch. All the outlines are the same, but the lines have been filled in differently. How disorienting.
Enough of that. I have to repack a subset of my clothes for camp, then head out following directions provided by my mother and hope I don't get lost. I'll be out of computer touch until Sunday. Don't get into too much trouble while I'm gone! If anyone else comes out, CALL ME.