Friday, February 25, 2005

• Currently Reading Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady (Penguin Classics) By Samuel Richardson, Angus Ross see related

  Nearly halfway through Clarissa. The naughty Lovelace drank ipecac and, using the blood of a dead fowl, made it appear that he was vomiting blood. Poor Clarissa totally fell for it and is all sympathy. Lovelace also has a dastardly plan to kidnap Clarissa's friend Anna Howe, along with Mrs. Howe, and Mr. Hickman, the man who wants to marry Anna. Anyway, he'll get them onto a ship, take them off-course, knock the hapless Hickman overboard--he'll be rescued by the lifeboat, but rowed to the shore of France rather than returned to the ship--then Lovelace will have his way with Anna and her mother and their maid too for good measure. He is confident that, even if prosecuted for this crime, he'll be hailed as a hero, although it's hard to follow his logic here. He seems to think that his handsome face ensures that the people will refuse to believe that any force was necessary. The 1740s don't seem to have been a very pleasant time for women.

  I'm becoming blog obsessed. Throughout my day, I'm writing a blog in my head. Every incident is a potentially amusing entry. I am oh-so funny in my head, but when I sit down and try to write everything out, it falls flat. But besides writing my entries, I'm obsessed with reading other people's. It is endlessly entertaining to read the minutiae of other people's lives. I can't get over how fascinated I am with what someone fixed for dinner what they wore to work or happen to be reading right now. I never considered myself to be a voyeur, but this place is bringing out a new side of my character. So what did I fix for dinner? Lentil soup--an Elizabeth David recipe. Her recipes call for a deceptively simple list of ingredients. Who knew that lentils, onion, garlic, celery, cinnamon, lemon juice and water could make such a sophisticated soup? But then she likes to complain about "dustbin" cooking in which every ingredient under the sun is added to what could have been a pleasant little casserole or soup. Also cheese biscuits from the Cabbagetown Cafe cookbook--unsophisticated, but easy to make.

  Feeling a bit down, but I don't want to bore fellow Xangans with my blueness. I don't even want to bore myself with it. On to other matters: my in-laws are coming for the weekend and they picked the one weekend that the Tedious Friends are safely away in Tennessee. Ah--could that be the source of my depression--an impending visit from Jon's parents? Actually, no. As far as in-laws go, they're not so bad, although FIL will step out of the car, take his cigar out of his mouth, and say, "Why haven't you painted that GD trim yet?" But MIL does her best to keep him in line and sometimes succeeds.

  Our house is really shabby compared to theirs and to the houses of Jon's siblings. The major repairs need to be done by a professional which we can't afford, whereas the minor repairs are just cosmetic, so what's the point? I do my part to keep things clean and tidy and I no longer see the flaking paint on the living room ceiling, the broken closet door, the missing drawers in the kitchen cabinets, the backwards-installed door in our daughters' bedroom, which won't close and really serves no purpose at all, the inch-wide gaps between the dining room floorboards, the shabby second-hand chair with the ex-dorm room paisley tapestry draped over it, the clumsy homemade shelves in the kitchen ( I ripped out the upper cabinets and don't regret it). I could go on for another ten pages about our house's imperfections. However, I knew the minute I first walked through the door that this house was built so that I would live in it some day. I don't care that the front foundation wall failed, (I like to believe that what you don't know about your foundation won't hurt you. The same goes for your plumbing. And if you can't see the termites, how do you know they're there?) I don't care that the roof over the playroom leaks. We have patched it and patched it and patched it. We ripped out a section of the bead-board ceiling and tried to pinpoint the exact spot of leakage, thought we found it, patched right over it, and still it leaks. So now the roof leaks *and* there's a big hole in the ceiling. I don't care that my house has *one* closet and that it's not located in any of the bedrooms. I don't care that we don't have a shower upstairs and must schlep our towels and clothes to the freezing-cold downstairs bathroom in order to shower. Upstairs we have one of those giant claw foot tubs. It's so big that my arms aren't long enough to reach across it when I'm cleaning it.  I don't care that my son's bedroom measures approximately 9'X7' (at most), but the upstairs bathroom is furnished with above-mentioned claw foot tub, sink w/ vanity, toilet, closet, washer and dryer, wicker armchair, wooden dresser and yet there's still enough room in the center of the floor to do a jigsaw puzzle or set up the brio train tracks.

  But my in-laws think we live in a dump. What they don't understand is that they live in a city where no one wants to live, so you can buy a decent house for a reasonable price. We, on the other hand, live in a city where everyone wants to live, so a hovel with walls covered entirely with fake wood paneling and an outdoor toilet costs about $875K. They'll take us out to dinner which could be fun, but they expect to be able to park three feet from the door wherever they go, which means we can't eat at any restaurants in the city and will end up at a wretched suburban chain restaurant. We'll all go to mass together, and MIL might come and watch the end of Madame B's ballet lesson. FIL will smoke his cigar and growl, but his bark is worse than his bite.

  Started a new book: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. I need to read more before I comment on it.

   

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