How many times did you move growing up? How did moving (or staying put) impact your childhood?
Until I was in my early teens,we moved all over: California, Idaho, Montana, back to California, back to Idaho. When I was about 13, we moved to Chubbuck, Idaho and stayed there until my parents bought their house on Wayne Street in Pocatello (oh wait, there was Hawthorne Street somewhere in there). That was probably aged 15? After that, we stayed until I moved out on my own. Of course, my parents sold that house many years ago and have lived in two states since.
I liked the fact that we moved around a lot. I could just be remembering it the way I want to, but I never remember being upset when we moved. It was always exciting and adventurous. I loved being in a new house, on a new street...
As an adult, I've "been" around a lot but only really been based in two places since I was about 26: Shanghai and Montreal. I've spent months on end in many more places than that (Toronto, Bangkok, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Hong Kong, etc.) but I've only really "lived" in Shanghai and Montreal for over 10 years.
And one day, we'll go more places for months at a time. Once we get through the first year of house stuff and Masa's immigration is finally done!
And another moving day coming up Friday. Since 18, this is (in my quick rough counting up, probably forgetting a few places) the 27th time I've moved!! 27 times in 20 years.
Yow.
A long-married couple visits their country house in the Landes region of southern France. While the wife takes a short rest, the husband goes off for a swim and never returns...
I somehow stumbled across this old short featuring Montreal in 1947. Much has changed (old men playing checkers in the alleys of the Plateau?!), but much hasn't.
...that after talking to countless "experts," trying stripper, glue remover, scraping and sanding and coming to a dead end, good old-fashioned bleach and water would do the trick in getting that old linoleum backer off the wooden floors in the kitchen and dining room.
Damn it's HOT. Hot hot hot. NO ONE wants to complain about it since we've all been complaining about how miserable the summer has been so far (raining, cold); but geez it's so hot and sticky the last week. Hard to sleep, no appetite (we always eat less in the summer), the cat lies on his back like he's dead and won't even go outside. It's not too bad since it usually only lasts about two weeks or so max. But wow it's all people can talk about the last few days.
So I have been trying for a year to take Sundays off. And that's been pretty useful and saved my sanity. And the last month or so, I've been trying to take Sundays and most of Monday off (I usually work several hours starting at around 8 or 9pm Monday) and though it's great to have that much time away from all the shit I have going on, it's almost MORE stress when I check my emails after being away for that long (48 hours): tonight I had 65 emails which doesn't sound like too many but each one is very detailed and requires intense reading & feedback. Just one email could easily take 30 minutes to an hour to respond to. The ones that get me though are the ones who get impatient because I don't answer or reply in 20 minutes. Like I have no life outside of this single project! Sigh. Well, at least it's job security.
Today we rented a huge silver SUV and drove all over town. Air conditioning was nice! We bought a countertop at Ikea, some tiles (for the kitchen backsplash) at Home Depot (we went with Ian and a very pregnant Catherine), grout and grouting tools at Rona, and we stopped off at several stores to look at sofas, washing machines, stoves and fridges. I should have been excited but poor Masa: I was a total dick all day. Grouchy. Hot. Sweaty. Unhappy. Mainly stressed out. For some reason with two more weeks before we move, I am a total stress case...
We ate dinner at KFC--something we almost never do (fast food is a rare thing in our household), but we couldn't be bothered to cook. Some queenie Haitian guy came in while we were waiting to get our food and started chatting up a storm with us, like we were old friends. He kept switching from English to French, joking with us, hoping that we'd get more chatty in one language but he was a bit over the top. Masa just laughed. I was still recovering from my bad mood and tried hard not to just glare at him.
These renovations have actually been nice in some way: it's been fun to have a project to do with Masa. We sat on the floor for 4 hours yesterday scraping old linoleum up, listening to music, chatting while we worked. It was good. Of course, today I was terribly unpleasant and snappy but maybe we can have a nice quiet day of working again soon.
Email tonight reminded me of my good friend Crystal and the fact that when we were in high-school, she drove a Chrysler Lebaron. I had totally forgotten about that but it made me laugh so hard remembering it--the fact that she drove a Lebaron all over the streets of Boise with her Spandau Ballet waver haircut, listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees and Peter Murphy. Ah, youth! That car was SO her! But it's so NOT her now!
Actually made it out this weekend and did something which didn't involve work or renovations.
An interesting article in the other morning's NYT about our changing morning routines.
Busy busy. Renovations we hired people to do are done. Bank account seriously alarming. We're gonna end up with a nice place and two nickels between the both of us.
of Annie Lennox's biggest hits. All together in one. I played this like five times while cooking dinner.
