Freckles & Doubt

It's happening again! Chez Evil Landlord is once more infested with an Army of Reconstruction, only four years after the last one, and with the traditional pinpoint accuracy the blitzkrieg has been unleashed just in time to coincide with my exhaustion-making orientation frenzy. This time the panzer divisions are rolling only over the front wall of the garden, which they are assaulting for processes of dismantling the gate where I park my car and moving it five metres to the right, lowering the ground by a foot or so, paving, and installing a carport. I should add, for posterity, that the conversations around this particular proceeding have gone as follows:

(Approximately four years ago):
ME: Gosh, you know, that extreme right-hand corner of the front garden under the plane tree is an awful little space, nothing grows there, it would make more sense to move the second gate there and use that space for a carport. We might actually get something to grow in the space where the car currently stands, which is further away from the plane tree and has more light.
EVIL LANDLORD (dismissively): Nah, it'll never work, there isn't enough space for a car in that corner.
(Invoking the well-known "Well it's his house anyway" clause, I give up and go away.)

(Approximately a year ago, on a more or less averagely drunken Sunday evening):
JO: Gosh, you know, that extreme right-hand corner of the front garden under the plane tree is an awful little space, nothing grows there, it would make more sense to move the second gate there and use that space for a carport. You might actually get something to grow in the space where the car currently stands, which is further away from the plane tree and has more light.
EVIL LANDLORD (struck): You know, you're right!
(Various tape measures are unleashed and measurements slightly wildly made; it is determined that there's plenty of place for a car if you remove the small sad mirrorbush. Plans are submitted to Council for the necessary delay, circumlocution and meaningless quibbles, and Kurt the Amazing Builder and his panzer division are contracted. I roll my eyes. Memo to self, next time suggest interesting renovations only when the EL is safely sloshed.)

The blitzkrieg started on Monday, and by yesterday evening they had already cleared the corner of the tree and all the associated guff that's accumulated there over the last few years (piles of branches, decaying veggie boxes, the old birdbath, weird bits of broken garden ornament, small pocket universes, the like), dismantled the wall where the new gate is migrating to, and dug a large and mysterious hole under the current one. My vague theory that this was probably foundations for the new wall was proved correct when I came home today to find that a new section of wall had mysteriously sprung into being in the gap.

I note, also for posterity, that this has done exactly what I gently suggested it might, which is to block most of the light from the front garden so that nothing much is likely to grow there anyway. Within the terms of the Well It's His House Anyway clause this is covered by the fact that the EL is more interested in privacy and security than in flourishing gardens, which sunk my suggestion that they stick in a lower section of wall with iron palings atop it. We're getting the extra bit on the whole wall anyway, with electric fencing, which I have to admit is something of a balm to my wounded druiding. It is difficult to overestimate the extent to which I am now bored with being burgled.

I include for your amusement pictorial evidence of (a) the chaos, and (b) the size of the gap which will contain the second car and carport. (As of today it's about a foot lower). The presence of the elderly tumble drier is somewhat mysterious, but I think represents a migration from where it's been standing for a year or so in the back courtyard after it died and the EL replaced it. I think it may have been some sort of shrine.




I also hasten to add that, theatrical whinging notwithstanding, I am delighted by this development and ecstatic at the possibility of a carport which will prevent the damned birds roosting in the plane tree from crapping all over my brand new and recently washed car. (Last weekend I drove it back from the carwash and emerged from the car exactly as a hadeda let fly all over the roof. Actual time between stopping and desecration: fifteen seconds). The EL, while somewhat impervious to suggestion from the Lawful Good front, is a kind and generous man of whom I am somewhat fond even while I gently mock his idiosyncracies. I shall also attempt to forgive the Army of Reconstruction for disconnecting the grey water system without warning, plonking their ladder on top of the struggling plants in the bed below the bottlebrush, and piling sand in front of the pedestrian gate so it narrowly missed bouncing back and clonking me in the teeth when I opened it yesterday. These things are sent to try us. Car port, I tell myself. An end to the bird crap. It'll be worth it.

Time seems to go awfully fast when you're tired. I mean, it's October already, and the end of the semester, with its associated expectation of my return to work, is looming ominously. I feel as though I've hardly been at home for any time at all, and I certainly haven't achieved a fraction of the things I thought I would.

Given that I have been lurking in my study for whole chunks of the day (i.e. when not collapsed on the sofa), and will continue to do so for a few weeks yet, it's just as well that my study is a nice place to lurk. Last year's Return of the Bride of the Revenge of the Army of Reconstruction achieved wonders in the way of extra space, a lovely built-in desk and acres of shelving which fended off the book crisis for at least a couple of months. (It's back in full swing. I estimate that the separate piles of books all over the study rack up to about four metres of height.) In the last few weeks, though, the finishing touches have been applied: I scored a perfectly spontaneous kelim rug, courtesy of Vi, in appropriate size and shades, and today the Evil Landlord actually put up the wooden blinds I ordered for the window about three weeks ago and which have been languishing in a corner of the study in a sort of quantumly indetermined state occasioned by the wrong size of screws. The result is, though I say so myself, luvvely.



Please note (a) the inevitable Hobbit, who has for once abandoned his little ottoman hobbit-throne in order to lie heavily on the pile of papers in my in-tray, and (b) the plethora of Ursula Vernon artworks. The blind is lovely, all wooden and warm-toned, and it allows me to adjust it so I can look out of the window and watch my tomato plants visibly stretching skywards in the current ridiculously warm weather. It certainly beats the hell out of the previous "blind" arrangement, which consisted of a fast-fading Malawian cappulana, featuring black and blue butterflies, draped over the burglar bars.

Now that I have this perfect working space, all I need to do is some work. Hmmm. The weekend has been a washout owing to toothache, but these excuses are starting to wear a bit thin.

We have a house! almost. Still a bit gritty, but most of the furniture is in, and I actually cooked supper last night. Yesterday the EL and I sallied forth and bought furniture, including a set of six birch bustle-back chairs for the dining room, to replace the benches, which were starting to look rather more than rickety. I'm very enamoured of the new chairs: curvy and minimalist and attractive, and rather feminine in shape. I am also amused and distracted, however, by the fact that the furniture store had them labelled as "busselback chairs". I'm assuming "bustle" here refers to the curvy item of Victorian clothing attached to a lady's waist to make an extra sort of false derrière: there is, after all, considerable correspondence of shape. Viz:



Please also to note the new hanging lamp, produced after two days of looking at lights while arguing gently. Given this, it looks surprisingly serene.

The furniture is mostly in thanks to the sweating, heaving efforts of jo&stv and sven&tanya who assisted the Evil Landlord yesterday afternoon. My role was restricted to plying them all with gin, as I've once more buggered my dodgy wrist (the one that's attached to the dodgy arm with the dodgy elbow joint lacking a piece of bone), and singing "Right Said Fred"¹ to myself under my breath ("Charlie had a think and he thought we ought to take off all the handles, And the things wot held the candles...") - this last occasioned by the fact that we borrowed the furniture delivery people to help move the piano, a minimally six-person operation productive of swearing, cursing, more sweating, backing and filling, shouted instructions, repeat tries in new configurations and almost, but not quite, ending up with it magnificently wedged in the door to the passage. (My piano is heavy. They had to tilt it up on its end, finally, which is probably a Piano Solecism of the first water, but I figured rather that than having to access my bedroom via the garden door for ever after.)

In other news, Golux amused the crowds yesterday by turning up in little black booties, suggesting she'd wandered through an ash pile or something, but she callously cleaned them up before I could find the camera.

Right. Now I shall go and immerse myself in jo&stv's pool, on the grounds that once more it's STINKING HOT!

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¹ Which I always thought was Flanders and Swann, but apparently it's Bernard Cribbens, of whom I wot nothing except that he has a rather irresistibly Goon-Show name.

I love blogging. Yesterday I post a deliriously happy-making video featuring Jane Austen movie parody and Darcy espousing the cause of free-style disco, and what happens? a flurry of comments based entirely on a throw-away footnote about tiles. The unpredictability of blog responses is curiously pleasing to me.

Today is the last day of Hell, in the sense of the most difficult month in my year, and I'm in that slightly reeling state of realisation: I survived, I didn't kill anyone, I haven't actually dislocated any limbs. (Yet). From here on, it can only improve. Yay! Of course, there's still a bunch of admin left, and I'm running late orientation tomorrow morning, but my sanity is slowly being restored by the fact that I can actually spend more than ten minutes at a time alone in my office, catching up, cruising the internet and otherwise recharging. While I enjoy interacting with students and making their lives better, it's also continuous and incredibly draining, and I am firmly an introvert in the sense that I need time alone to recover my energy.

The home front is also on the up: have resolved tile argument with EL¹, the ADSL has miraculously started working again, and apparently the plumber installed the bath backwards for good and sufficient reason which makes actual practical sense. Also, I really like all the paint colours.

This weekend my Princely Hosts are buggering off to Knysna, leaving me to water the cats, pet the garden and play incredible quantities of Zelda, so score. Tonight I have supper with wolverine_nun, which is another chance to see starmadeshadow, so double score.

And, in the Department of Brass Bands Make Me Cry, the new OK Go music video is simply delightful. Notre Dame marching band. Silly uniforms. Trumpeters camouflaged in fields. The whole song recorded live in the open air while they were performing, which is rather impressive and gives it a particularly rough and plausible edge. (Context: OK Go were the people who did that amazing video with the treadmills).



Memo to self, must acquire some OK Go, the music is also muchly fun.

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¹ Well, we've agreed that glass-finished mosaic tiles in a much calmer colour than the bronzy green ones we're using for edging will work, since we are united in liking none of the varying shades of oatmeal offered by the larger stock. The EL has degenerated into threatening to choose tiles in electric blue, which usually signals that he's run out of viable arguments. Since habituation has granted me a +10 saving throw vs. Electric Blue Attack, I shrug and move on.

Right, so have been in curriculum advice all morning and just found myself shouting at a particularly dense and recalcitrant student, so this is a designated 20-minute break while I drink Earl Grey, cruise the internet for random distraction which doesn't require a brain, and recover my equanimity and love for the gazelles. Therefore, linkage.

• The recent Amazon bully tactics against Macmillan make me cross and inclined to boycott Amazon, although I have to say Macmillan's pricing on e-books seems little excessive. As a bonus side-effect, alternative online sources are being punted all over: The Book Depository is apparently as cheap, doesn't charge for international delivery and lets you watch people buying books across the world in real time, which for some reason I find inexpressibly cool.
  
  
• Is all this curriculum advice rotting my brain? I find myself rather liking the first pink swirly thing worn by Lady Gaga at the Grammys. Kind of a classic insanity rather than the more usual incomprehensible madness. On the other hand, I wouldn't currently trust my aesthetic judgement.
  
  
• In other news, this is exquisitely written and does precise, tenuous, luminous things with vision and significance. Catherynne Valente is my new literary girl crush.

Right, that was the last of my Earl Grey. I dangle before myself like a deep-fried battered carrot the promise that jo&stv, still Prince of Hosts, promise to cook tempura tonight. This shall console me for the First Serious Army of Reconstruction screw-up - they've delivered the wrong kitchen tiles, so probably a couple of weeks of delay. Phooey. I'm dying to see how they look.

My doom beckons. Excelsior!

Also, typing this on stv's computer owing to still-being-in-exile-from-horrible-home, and the keyboard has everything subtly in the wrong place, which is playing merry hob with my touch-typing. I'm very, very tired after a twelve-hour day ending in two hours being badgered, foxed and boared with angsty questions by nervous first-year parents. Have fulfilled daily quota of hand-patting, fog-dispersal and wantonly sabotaging the undergraduate Law stream. Actual orientation for nervous first-years, the second instalment (twice as large as the first), starts tomorrow. Am braced. Will stash gin bottle in my left boot and the emergency Red Bull in my right.

When not staggering drunkenly around in a pre-, post- or mid-orientation haze, I've caught up (in company with jo&stv, Prince of Hosts) the first five or so episodes of Supernatural Season 5, which has principally charmed me by giving us (a) shy!uncertain!geeky!Sam, who was a bit submerged at the end of last season, and (b) a totally unexpected Paris Hilton guest star in which she cheerfully takes the mickey out of herself. It's possible I may despise her marginally less than before, i.e. only mostly utterly.

Wimped out on visiting the house tonight, too tired, so I have no idea what the Army of Reconstruction have been doing. If they've knocked down the wrong wall or anything I'm sure the Evil Landlord would tell me. Probably. Unless he didn't, on the grounds of preserving what's left of my mental health.

I'm wittering, and something is eating the hell out of my feet. (Not the cats, I checked). I'm going to bed. Send prayers for continued sanity.

So, this time last year (i.e. the Friday afternoon of the first orientation programme) I was in hospital with a dislocated patella. I am certainly tempting bodily injury to state that I consider myself to be worthy of congratulation to have reached the same milestone this year refreshingly undislocated, and in the face of ravening parents, scatty OLs, stupid errors of my own and the discovery, this morning, that the entire run of faculty handbooks, delivery of which has been delayed for three weeks because the printers were waiting for the final section before they could print, has in fact been printed without the final section. My curriculum advisors have been giving advice without the handbooks for a day and a half, and thank heavens I'm prone to giving them handouts which digest the information. The entire undergrad office has been wandering the corridors all morning giggling weakly, on the grounds that there's not much else one can do but laugh. We'll deal with it. But heads will roll, she says darkly. They'll roll.

The house is horrible. It's a filth pit, and the garden is worse. The electricians and their merry angle-grinder crew have dismally failed to prepare us in any way for the degree of mess, and have cheerfully tramped brick-dust into mats, sprayed it across carpets and coated with a thick film a bunch of stuff in the kitchen, without it apparently occurring to them to move anything. Also, the Evil Landlord forgot about the fridge and it's sat without power for two days, which means we'll have to throw out absolutely everything in both fridge and freezer. Bleah. These things are sent to try us. On the other hand, we have a foundation, the start of a wall, several bricked-up windows, a semi-dismantled bathroom and complete new wiring. Also, jo&stv and their house are a Saviour and a Blessing, and are keeping me sane.

I'm going home now. First time before 6.30pm this entire week. Victory!

'Tis a momentous day, oh yes. Today is the day that the Army of Reconstruction, or rather the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Army of Reconstruction, rolls in with its panzer division and proceeds to lay waste to all before it. I came home to a house infested with a choking pall of dust, through which the kitties peered all wide-eyed and jumpy. Oh, and the builders have done the usual, which is to put the pile of bricks flat down onto a reasonably flourishing piece of lawn. I am not destined to grow lawn. Between the plane tree, which is ridiculously shady, the fact that I park my car on the poor struggling grass, and my Erratic Hosepipe of Ineffectual Druiding -2, it's pretty much doomed even before the builders implement their scorched earth policy.

I have to report, they're clearly not amateurs in the Destroying Things category. This was the courtyard yesterday afternoon:



This was the courtyard when I got home this evening after a jolly orientation-preparatory 11-hour day:



(I think Hobbit thinks this is a new, giant litterbox especially for him).

I'm beginning to think my fondness for disaster movies is actually a deep-seated psychological response to renovations, the latest round of which is extra-traumatic because it's entailed my book collection being reduced to forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, with the contents printed clearly on each, and I get downright twitchy when I suddenly can't access my Bujold collection at 2am on an insomniac whim.

Golux is also a bit traumatised, one of the minor unnecessary walls which bought it today was the randomly curvy one on which she was wont to imitate the action of the gargoyle, all medieval-like:



I'm going to book club now, where I shall proceed to get drunk, on the excellent grounds that work is horrible, and there's grit in my teeth.

My Ultimately Big Boss had one of those Touch Base sort of meetings with me this afternoon - as an abstract concept, the kind of token buzz-word get-together which fills me with a sense of lowering doom. However, my belief in her ultimate support of my academic nature, self-definition and overall happiness has been materially improved by the fact that (a) she informed me upfront that I am pretty much the best possible candidate for this job, and (b) she spent fifteen minutes asking me fascinated questions about fan fiction and encouraging me to babble in a more or less intellectual fashion. This seems promising, not to mention being about a thousand percent improvement on the interest levels of my old department.

Other reasons not to whinge about my job: the view from my window.



While on the subject of pictorial evidence, reasons to wimp out of making dinner for jo's game tomorrow night:



The nice cabinet-maker man has made a fascinating sort of exploded diagram of the kitchen, removing for the purpose the sink, the oven and all actual counter space. The kitchen contents are piled all over the dining-room, where they occasionally slither over on top of the cats. I'm about to go out for take-out.