Our Neck of the Woods

We've been in this rental house for almost 3 months now, and it is still barely habitable. The family room, the one with the fireplace that we're hoping to huddle in front of when the vicious winds blow, is still filled with crap. Boxes, unboxed things, stray lampshades. The third "bedroom" is a flurry of clothes and boxes, disturbed only when I go digging through it to find more stuff to wear to work.

Then there's the garage, which is overwhelming. PIcture the warehouse at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Yeah. It's that easy to find things out there. I'm missing a crucial box of books (crucial in that I wanted to teach from a couple of them before the semester ends) ((it's a box of half of my poetry books written by authors with "B" last names)) and Scott is missing some important paperwork. But when we open the door leading to the garage, we reconsider and quietly close it before the angry stacks can make us out in the dim bulb haze.

I swore that Friday would be the day we'd go out there and hunt, but then I came home from work Thursday night with one of the many illnesses that lurks the classrooms and airspace of the Big Giant University like foot-dragging phlegm mummies. Thus, I have spent most of the weekend sleeping.

Meanwhile, Scott is making the most of his pre-new-job time by cooking up some of the tastiest things ever, all fancy stuff like this cod smothered in peppers and sesame seeds and a million other things, baked in parchment paper. It was the best fish dish I've ever eaten. If only my salary were high enough to just employ him as my own blisteringly good chef. But alas, it is not.

My neglect of my blog is unprecedented. I was pulled into the dark forest of my first semester back, and busy to the point of near-psychosis. I have two great classes and then there's the third one. That's another post. Maybe. I don't want to give the monster more power by speaking of it.

We're in the last few gorgeous days of the fall, the ones before the I'm-going-to-kill-you icy winds and ice storms and overall weather that will make Scott have to fight the urge to strangle me for taking him away from Phoenix, where it's just now becoming insanely nice outside. At least I hope he fights the urge.