Summer Hours

The camera lens rarely conveys the scale of the interesting things that often appear in the sky. The other day, on the way home from Ms. B.'s house, this lone, very tall cloud came drifting into view. You'd never know it from the pic, but it appeared massive, its vertical contours distinctive against the horizontal bands of clouds behind it. It struck both Ms. B. and I as worthy of a photo, at least.

If last week was a heavy-moving fest, this week was attempting to put things to right inside Casa de Rodan (oh yeah, it's still gonna be Casa de Rodan even if Brugger and her attendant felines are now permanent residents). If anything, it seems as though the more we work and organize, the more the house succumbs to disorder. I know this is kind of the way of things, but two full households merging into one poses unique challenges — as opposed to young newlyweds building things up for the first time, or divorcees arranging new domiciles in place of the old. I'm sure things will eventually come together, but right now, the only word to describe home is Chaos, with a capital C.

Now that the one-year anniversary of Mum's passing has past, I am having to begin the accounting phase of the estate, which poses unique challenges for a soul whose experience with accounting has never been harmonious.

A nice upside is that the office has reverted to Summer Hours, meaning that on Fridays, we only have to work half days, without making up any time. Love that!

And at Pleasant Hill in Martinsville — it's tree-clobberin' time. One of the old cedar trees that had been next to the back stairway since I was a kid had begun leaning damn near to the point of collapse, so I had to have it taken down. Hated that, since it offered so much nice shade, but if it had fallen, the damage might have been severe. Kinda sad, though.

Anyhoo, till next time around.... toodles.

All that remains of once-towering cedar

Worse Than Moving?

Current view of one corner of the living room. The whole house looks like this.

Well, I dunno if the seemingly endless prep for combining households is actually worse than picking up and moving a whole house, but it’s gotta be pretty near. Ms. B. and I have gone from minor upheaval during the initial do-it-yourself painting/refurbishing phase to all-out holy horror as we prepare to have both painters and flooring people come in to complete the interior overhaul of Casa de Rodan. Brugger and I have spent most of the week cleaning out every nook and cranny (with some most welcome assistance from friends Terry & Beth), dumping what we can and reorganizing — or at least attempting such — the things worth saving. Most of her belongings aren’t even here yet, so where we’re eventually going to fit everything is probably the biggest question of our lifetimes. And we still have a long way to go before this business is finished.

In the process of dismantling every neatly organized grouping of my personal belongings, I did find a number of things I had thought permanently lost, such as a cassette tape of my brother’s music and some artwork I did during and post college. I also discovered a couple of boxes full of copies of Deathrealm issues #20 and #23 — unopened — which I had no idea were even here. I thought all that stuff had been cleaned out long, long ago. Go figure. Anyhoo, I plan to keep a few extra copies of both, just for good measure, and probably recycle the rest.

Add to all this yet work on my brother’s house, which I managed to fit in this morning. I truly hope that place is now ready to sell and that it will move relatively quickly. While I was in Winston-Salem, I snagged a handful of geocaches this morning, which was the extent of the weekend’s caching. Friday night, Ms. B. and I did spend some quality time with authors/friends Stephen Provost and Samaire Wynne in Martinsville. Good company, foods, and drinks.

I hope I survive long enough to see all this in the can.

A newly discovered box full of copies of Deathrealm #23, circa 1994. Cover by the late, great Lew Hartman,
back cover by Ian McDowell

The Same Only Different

Heading down to Myrtle Beach, SC, for anything other than a relaxing good time certainly isn’t typical for us fun, wacky folk, but that’s what Ms. B. and friends Terry & Beth ended up doing over the weekend. Our friends Gerry & Bridget, who have hosted us at their beach condo any number of times, have sold said condo, and they generously invited us to take any of the furniture, since they no longer had any need for it. So, Terry & Beth acquired a U-Haul trailer for just that purpose, and on Friday afternoon, we all trucked ourselves down to the beach. Now, we did actually manage to work in a little fun — some good eating and drinking, as well as a wee smidgen of geocaching per me — but we did indeed spend most of our time hauling big-ass furniture out of the place. And then we trucked back to the Triad, unloaded stuff first at Terry & Beth’s, then at Kimberly’s, and then at mine. Lord, all that hauling just about did these old bones in. Maintaining social distance during moving was pretty difficult, but we had all kept ourselves totally isolated during the preceding week, and we wore masks whenever close contact was inevitable.

At the end of it all, I was able to completely overhaul my living room, which you see in the photo above. It’s taken a ton of work, and there may be some tweaking on the whole business yet, but Casa de Rodan has taken on a bit of a new look. Same place, only different.

Sleep. Sleep is good. Whew.

Droolie approves.

View from the front door