Sky. Bed. Phone.
Today is the perfect autumn day, crisp and bright. The sky is bleached at the edges with milky, almond -colored pollution but is such an expansive, formless blue; a blue anyone can identify but can never imitate with crude mineral paints. It’s a blue without memory, a blue that threatens to absorb you into its forgetfulness, mute in our minds only until it is obscured for a day or two by a sheet of dull cloud cover.
It was suddenly cold; there was no warning. Summer was blown away by a few days of rain. Within those days of murk and gray lay the hope of the odd few days of free weather, where doors could be thrown open and still air could be pushed out of the house. But no, the still air is still there; cars went unwashed, porches were bare and unsat, and tea was left unmade.
We made our winter bed this weekend, stripping off the tired and wrinkled thinness of our light sheets and replacing it with t-shirt fabric sheets, layers of blankets and comforters, and a heating pad. Even the ferrets have warmer, more cushioned nests in their cage. The twin knobs on the thermostat were moved from AIR to HEAT and from OFF to ON. The boxy air ducts under the house rattled as the heater kicked in, but no warm air was pushed into our rooms through the floor grates. Instead, we had wish heat, which is exactly the same a being cold, but being cold and having the unfortunate expectation that heat would eventually happen, which it didn’t.
Christy activated her hand-me-down Blackberry Pearl on Saturday afternoon. The Verizon store is a sliver of glass panels near the food court entrance of the mall. Bodies were packed into the glass at fire-hazard levels, but we managed to find a niche between the desk and the wall to speak with a representative. The metamorphosis from the Juke to the Pearl was a surgical procedure involving sensitive equipment and time. While that was going on I procured drinks form the food court and shopped for a present for Alasdair’s belated birthday. I got him They Might Be Giant’s No!, which is a fabulous album and an excellent introduction for a two-year-old. I bought for myself TMBG’s Here Comes Science, a collection of songs by Louis Prima, and Cash, the final album by Johnny Cash.
It was suddenly cold; there was no warning. Summer was blown away by a few days of rain. Within those days of murk and gray lay the hope of the odd few days of free weather, where doors could be thrown open and still air could be pushed out of the house. But no, the still air is still there; cars went unwashed, porches were bare and unsat, and tea was left unmade.
We made our winter bed this weekend, stripping off the tired and wrinkled thinness of our light sheets and replacing it with t-shirt fabric sheets, layers of blankets and comforters, and a heating pad. Even the ferrets have warmer, more cushioned nests in their cage. The twin knobs on the thermostat were moved from AIR to HEAT and from OFF to ON. The boxy air ducts under the house rattled as the heater kicked in, but no warm air was pushed into our rooms through the floor grates. Instead, we had wish heat, which is exactly the same a being cold, but being cold and having the unfortunate expectation that heat would eventually happen, which it didn’t.
Christy activated her hand-me-down Blackberry Pearl on Saturday afternoon. The Verizon store is a sliver of glass panels near the food court entrance of the mall. Bodies were packed into the glass at fire-hazard levels, but we managed to find a niche between the desk and the wall to speak with a representative. The metamorphosis from the Juke to the Pearl was a surgical procedure involving sensitive equipment and time. While that was going on I procured drinks form the food court and shopped for a present for Alasdair’s belated birthday. I got him They Might Be Giant’s No!, which is a fabulous album and an excellent introduction for a two-year-old. I bought for myself TMBG’s Here Comes Science, a collection of songs by Louis Prima, and Cash, the final album by Johnny Cash.