Home ownership and other woes.
5:01 p.m.
In other news, Little Princess and I had a magical moment this morning as we walked to the university. Coming down the hill with the private school to our left and the cemetery to our right, I noticed a deer standing just where the playing field meets the trees at the side of the road. We kept walking, looking at her, passing her, looking over our shoulders, and she trotted through the trees towards us. For a moment I thought she was going to approach us; instead she waited until we were past and then bounded across the road and through the graveyard, veering around the tombstones. We don’t often see deer during daylight hours, but they are becoming more plentiful and their habitat is disappearing.
I met with Joey at strike headquarters about writing newspaper articles on the strike and the issues. He assigned me two topics, one on pension de-indexing and another which I have forgotten (but which I have written down on a piece of paper). I have to make a phone call and get some information before writing them. They are to be brief, 200 to 500 words. I’ve never been a journalist before.
I also spent a long time on the phone with my mother, whom I am ashamed to say I have been neglecting of late. She called last week when we were out and told Little Princess that her breadmaker had died. This is rather inconvenient for her, since it is a bit of a bother for her to get to the store to buy bread, and she prefers what she can make at home. I pulled out the Sears catalogue and perused their appliance pages, then went to their website and saw that the one that would be most suitable for her was actually $10 cheaper there. So, with her on the phone, I ordered one to be delivered to her house, paid for it on my card, and she will pay me back when I see her on Monday. It’s the kind with two paddles that makes a long loaf, like in a regular loaf pan, which is the same shape that my breadmaker gives me. She was very happy about it.
Also, to complicate things further, the landscaper came by to give us an estimate on redoing our front walkway, taking out a hedge and redoing the front gardens, the ones I constantly neglect. The walkway is presently bricks which have become pushed all out of alignment with 17 years of spring heaves. The spaces inbetween are filled with moss and weeds, and they look terrible. The gardens, in which I had proudly planted lupines and lilies (and rose bushes, but they kept getting winter killed) are all overgrown with lily of the valley (plant just one and look what happens) and invasive weeds, including grass. They look terrible. Hubby would like to replace all the plants that are presently there with bushes and cedar chips.
This saddens me. At one time I spent a lot of time in the garden, weeding, planting, arranging. Now I do nothing. The hedge, originally cotoneaster, has been invaded by all sorts of things, including a honeysuckle and a black raspberry bush which is at this moment bearing fruit (I picked about a cup of berries from it). I will have to salvage what I want saved before they come with their mini backhoe and remove everything: the mint, the raspberries, the bleeding hearts. Oh, and the oak tree has fungus. The joys of being a homeowner.
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