Dead Letter Department #129

weather report

It’s sunny, and the landslide on the highway has been cleared away after weeks and weeks of work, the rock face stabilized, which is going to make traffic around town much better. There’s light in the sky until after eight o’clock at night, which was a little disorienting when I realized it, but now I rejoice. I saw my first couple of butterflies the other day, flitting around the grape hyacinth, and my first caterpillar humping resolutely along the edge of the house, on its way to be transformed.

The neighborhood is transforming too; the ramshackle to the point of falling down house next to the church down the road has been razed completely, and will be replaced by some sort of multifamily housing. A neighbor sold a couple of years ago, the one who had the little gnome garden under his tree. He was a woodworker & kept the place immaculate, so I watched the construction on his place with increasing bewilderment until I finally realized they were boosting the entire house up on blocks. No parking signs up went up all over the street, since they would need every inch of road to move an entire dang house, and they came through to get permission for trimming back overhanging branches that were spared by the utility workers but now might catch on the protruding porch.

I thought about getting up to watch them do it—how often do you get to see an entire house get moved on your own street? I couldn’t convince myself a 4:00 am alarm clock was worth it, but it turns out that when it’s happening right outside your gate, you don’t need your own alarm to wake up: the noise reached me even over my sound machine. It’s a strange sight in the dark—a truck that in no way looks powerful enough pulling a trailer with an entire house down the road, people in hi-vis vests darting around with long poles to push the wires up and out of the way.

“Slow down, Dad,” the one with the most booming voice would holler to the driver, “left a little, stop!” Then the vests would all converge on some point in the road, sometimes crawling under the trailer, until whatever problem had been sorted, and off it would go again, lurching another few feet. It all looked so improbable, about as likely as the little white house sprouting a pair of Baba Yaga chicken legs and sauntering up the block all on its own. A couple of other neighbors were out watching too, which gave the proceedings a bit of a festive air, and some people clutching coffee seemed to be following behind. I wondered if they were the new home’s owners, and had decided to walk with it all the way. I wonder what it’s like for the house, if it feels extraordinary, doing something that so few of its kin ever do, if it ever dreams about the place it left behind.

C and I went for a garden store wander on Saturday, after I did chores and grocery shopping, and the place was busting at the seams with over-excited people planning their seasons. I always have a long list of plant wants this time of year, and found a few of them, including the smallest fig sapling I have ever seen, which was therefore actually affordable on my budget. It does not inspire confidence, stick-like as it is, but I am afraid I am already overly attached & haven’t even gotten it into the ground yet. Perhaps in 8-10 years I will be writing to you about a single fig he has managed to produce.

Looking at my calendar this week, it’s seeming like my own work is going to be squeezed in amongst the endless appointments: home health intake, finally, a full week and a half after my mom arrived home, another wave of her backlogged medical needs, the library every couple of days, walks in pretty places to try to make walking seem more appealing. I used to be better at cramming writing and transcription into bits of the day, and I guess I need to somehow reboot that particular skill set.

reading room

I read the entire Temeraire series by Naomi Novik again—described on the covers as Jane Austen plays D&D, or Dragonslayer meets Master & Commander, it’s a nine book series that I think of as the Napoleonic wars, but with dragons. Temeraire & Laurence carried me through several difficult days, but apparently my thirst for enormous speculative fiction arcs was not slaked, because now I’m back onto the Vorkosigan saga, halfway through Cetaganda, with the remaining parts of the series winging towards me from a few different used book stores.

My mom sort of indignantly wanted to know why I couldn’t just get the books at the library instead of going to all that bother, and I had to explain that while our library is excellent, only about 40% of the books I look for are actually part of the collection, and award winning multi-book science fiction from the ‘80s is, alas, not necessarily their biggest priority these days. I’ve also completely burned through several of the nonfiction sections I’ve been interested in over the years, although I do go prod them dispiritedly once in a while, hoping that something will appear in the stacks out of nowhere.

I can’t remember when exactly the library started having security staff posted up at the entrance, or when that posting doubled, so that they can go walk the campus in pairs (presumably less dangerous). There’s a desk by a wall phone to direct people to resources, and the person working there always has Narcan out & visible next to their water bottle & their personal phone.

one good thing

I was taking my mom out to the overlook on Eldridge, where you can see the bay from above, high enough to watch the currents moving across the water, and a guy came up to the window who seemed to be asking for gas money. The hood of his car was propped open in the universal sign for mechanical trouble, so I did that quick three-second sincerity check in weighed against my personal finances that day, which could stretch to help. I was getting my wallet out when he said, oh, no, no, I’m just out of gas, but I have a gas can, would you go fill it up for me?

So I took the can and followed his directions to the nearest gas station, which did not actually exist, although to his credit it seemed like it probably had at some point, maybe a couple of a decades ago, and then followed my phone’s directions to the nearest extant Arco where I suddenly discovered I did not know how to operate a gas can. There was a confusing diagram on the front, with firm instructions on how to make the gas can fart out the fumes before using it and what seemed to be a beefy child-safety lock on the nozzle. I could not get either to work.

Finally, after much struggling and swearing, I went into the gas station, where the worker darted in front me like he was being pursued until he was back behind the safety glass, and I tried to explain, through the glass barrier & an additional language barrier, that I was a moron & could not figure out how to open the gas can. Eventually we understood each other, and he took the can from me, and with gentle condescension, clicked the nozzle off for me very slowly, so I could see how he did it, following it up with an expression that was almost a wink.

At this point, I had been gone for so long I was sure the dude waiting with his car fully thought I had taken advantage of his plight in order to steal his gas can, but I did manage to get it filled with only minimal splashing, and wind my way back to the overlook to return it. He was quite appreciative, and politely did not mention how long the whole business had taken.

The whole thing felt like a ridiculous little side quest. I had to A) trust a stranger, B) ask a second stranger for help, and C) return to the first stranger in order to help him.

More soon, and in the meantime, may you get a glimpse of something improbable, right there on your own block.