HOME FOR NOW

The past week has flown by in a blur of cardboard boxes, mouse droppings, and desperate Craigslist searches for the loveseat that I know is out there, waiting for us to find it.

I thought this move would be a good opportunity to prove that I've matured, that I'm no longer as instant gratification-oriented as I used to be, but it hasn't worked out that way: I want this house fixed up, filled with cute furniture, and looking 100% perfect RIGHT NOW. Patience is not one of my virtues, a fact that was made clear again yesterday, when I tested our new hedge trimmer, a gift from Joedy's parents, on the bushes in the back yard.

My thoughts went like this:

"Wow, this is fun! I could do this all day! I could do this for a living!"

"This is a very big shrub."

"I'm bored."

I managed to finish the job, which is more than I can say for certain creative projects I started eighty billion years ago, and though the bushes are now more or less leafless, just a bunch of depressing-looking sticks pointing upwards, as least we can see out the windows. Of course, all the fallen branches still need to be picked up--I'm sure I'll get around to that someday.

I wasn't kidding about the mouse poops. Hello, hanta virus! Thanks for coming into my life just when I stopped worrying about our child-molesting meth-cooking ex-neighbors. Now I have something besides my Craigslist addiction to occupy my brain. It's always good to have something to worry about! Even if little furry fuzzums isn't dropping lethal turds around the children, he might eat the electrical wiring and set the house on fire! Which, given the crackling noise and Halloween-esque flickering a couple light switches have produced, seems totally possible.

AN IMPORTANT ASIDE: Parents, you're right--the landlord should take care of this. I will call him immediately.

Maybe we can get him to send over an electrician. Hopefully, unlike the plumber he recently sent over, he/she will not have red eyes and act...funny. I'm fine with stuff that turns your eyes red and makes you act funny, but I'd prefer electricians didn't smoke it before working on the wiring in our house. What if the dimmer switch got confused with the garbage disposal switch, causing a short and a fire and sizzling little hanta-bearing fuzzums in his sleep?

While I've enjoyed unpacking, finding new places for our things, cooking in the new kitchen, and generally settling into this house, which is in many ways a really nice place, I can't help feeling a little cynical, a little...unenthusiastic. I know it's partly due to having moved no less than six times in the last six years, but it's also because I'm getting old and still don't have a horse.

I've wanted a horse my whole life, and if I don't hurry up and get one soon I'll be too arthritic to lug around wheelbarrows of manure or act out scenes from The Black Stallion. Our current house is fine--it's quiet and roomy, and there's enough mouse poop to pretend I'm mucking a stable--but in a few years I'd REALLY like to say goodbye to the rental world and hello to the farm I've dreamed of since I was seven years old.