Blather

Since today is a slow day no one will go to the port. I took advantage and slept in. Last night I sketched in ¼” scale what three side-by-side containers would look like. Briefly, two small-but-adequate 8’ x 12’ bedrooms at one end with two adjacent bathrooms, one of which is only a half-bath because I put in a washer and dryer where the tub is in the mirror-image bathroom. Next to the bathrooms, in the big, open area, I have two tiled areas, one for the main entry and the other for a Franklin stove. Next to the Franklin stove I have a sliding-glass patio door; next to the entry way is my living-room area. Just outside the bathroom with the laundry are my Bangkok computer desk and two file cabinets; in the same area against the outer wall of my bathroom is the dresser I refinished for Pense. Adjacent to the living room is my small dinette table. In the far corner is the nice dining room- an oval table, four chairs, the buffet and china closet. Back-to-back with the china closet is Bill’s old computer desk. Not placed are the étagère and my favorite old coffee table. I may try again, making my bedroom large enough to accommodate this old coffee table. The smallish bedroom might be squeezed with two twin beds, but it might be OK, too- no closet, dresser, drawers or coffee table, just two beds and some lamps on a small table. I’ll have to do some more layouts of the bedrooms, perhaps in ½” scale. There seems to be plenty of room if I just scoot the walls towards the kitchen by two or even four feet. Looking at the layout, I may even be able to shoehorn in one more bedroom, making a small-but-standardish 3BR/2BA home. Never mind that one of the bedrooms is only a half bath.

In a half hour, it’ll be lunch. Right now, Fox Movies has some slightly sappy film about a very young Audrey Hepburn growing up in postwar London- ballet, musicals and now movies. Good costumes, though a lot of smiles that approach cloying. Now a woman with a French accent is offering her the role of Gigi. Well, the girl is cute and someone has spent some resources trying to recreate postwar life. The movie feels like someone lost the last 50 pages of the screenplay. Audrey breathlessly tells someone she’s going to Hollywood to make a movie. then the credits start to roll. Someone said, “Well we’re out of budget. Finish the film in the next 30 minutes and we’re done.”

In a bit, I’ll go drop off my laundry and go to lunch.

1435 – My oopsie. Once again, one part of me knew it was Friday, the day I can sleep in. But another part of me forgot that today’s the day the cookhouse stops serving at noon. Thus when I went over around 1215, the door was closed. Locked to me and a few calories. So I came back, ate two packets of Muesli and some pistachio nuts, a couple of mini-Snickers bars and some of my “I’m hungry” staples, sunflower seeds.

I sketched some more, some ¼” of the entire three-container house and a bit of ½” for just the bedroom, trying to fit what I want into 10’ x 12’. I like the three-container layout because I don’t have to be good. It feels like the adage about loading a van- “Throw stuff in until you run out of stuff.” Three containers allow me enough space to have two bedrooms easily and two bathrooms. More challenging is making all my stuff fit into two containers. And for grins and giggles, I sketched my hooch, too, as it is today.

Then around 1400, I got ambitious. I turned off the TV and turned on the radio. BFBS played music while I took down my shower curtain and soaked it in my plastic bucket. Without the shower curtain, I had access to the entire shower. I squirted it a bit, then attacked with Ajax and my green scrubber. The floor was amazingly dirty, having been scrubbed not so long ago. But it’s better now. Then I squirted the toilet and spread more Ajax around, scrubbing the whole thing with my green scrubber. The floor got plenty of warm water, so I squeegeed until the floor was mostly dry. Then I did the sink and mirror. In a bit, I’ll put back the laundry hamper and small collapsible table that keeps my Stars and Stripes for bathroom reading. I’ve got the shower curtain draining now, so I reckon that’ll be first. BFBS riddled us with ‘What occurs once in June, once in July and twice in August?” As I was finishing the bathroom, I knew- the letter “U.” A few minutes later, BFBS confirmed my guess. Oh, I’m such a clever fellow!

While in a homemaker mood, I also put a piece of tape on my cord from the cable descrambler into the front of my TV. Now the cord doesn’t drag into the top drawer of my dresser and it doesn’t get in the way of the picture. All in all, I’m kinda proud of myself for getting these chores done.

And that takes me to a dose of reality- if a small, 250 square foot hooch is about as much as I can maintain, how will I take care of something with 960 square feet, with kitchen, dishes, stove and other things that need regular attention? I suppose I could ask Bonnie but I’m afraid her answer would be “Eat another bacon sandwich and forget about it.” Oh, that wasn’t very charitable, was it? I have to be careful not to let myself get wound up in anger over her. Most of the time, I just want an easy life somewhere; I don’t really want to keep roasting her over my sarcasm spit. Poor girl, I wonder what she does with her life- roast me over her own variation of a vicious, bile-basted spit or is she OK with what she’s got left? I suspect she’s a lot like me- many moments are spent in her own mostly pleasant world. But occasionally, she’ll start thinking about her situation and she’ll become angry, hostile and bitter.