Last night I was sprawled in an armchair, lazily catching up on the Sunday New York Times, periodically bellowing at my children to turn on the TV to see if the Office was on. No one would oblige me, so I turned on the TV myself, and instead of seeing Dwight and Michael, I heard Eric Pritchett's panicked voice talking about a tornado warning.

We don't get many tornadoes here in Virginia, although we get even fewer tornadoes in Buffalo, where I grew up. My only experience with tornadoes is my mother's story about how she was visiting someone in Indiana or Illinois, or somewhere, and saw a tiny tornado carry off somebody's rosebush.

The TV warned us repeatedly to "get LOW and stay LOW"--not very catchy, I must say. Couldn't someone have come up with an easy tornado rhyme?

How LOW can you go? This storm is gonna BLOW.
To the basement we go. We need to stay LOW.
When the tornado is acomin' to the basement go runnin'.

My house, with its outdoor-only access basement, is particularly unsuited for tornado survival. How, pray, am I supposed to round up four children, two dogs, and a bunny and take them out into a storm and around the side of the house, and unlock the padlock and usher everybody inside before an approaching tornado obliterates us? The animals are particularly problematic. The bunny would have to travel by Black Bag, which he does not like, and I envisioned the dogs attacking the bunny in the bag while we huddled in the basement. I also saw myself tugging uselessly on two leashes, trying to get two panicked dogs into a basement they are both afraid of.

My daughter Miss G made a case for all of us hiding in the closet instead. This is the closet.

Can you imagine six people, two large dogs and a bunny squeezed in here?  I told Miss G that she could go into the closet, but the rest of us would take our chances with the basement.

This is me, awaiting death as predicted by the NBC 29 Storm Team.


Jon, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found.  We had NO idea where he had got to. He was not in the house, he was not on the porch. He was gone and the Storm Team's hysterical reporting had worked my younger children into a state of high anxiety.  The bunny's cage was moved away from the window and piled with blankets.  Mr. McP had the dog leashes.  I had the key to the basement wound around my wrist on a string.  I think my time would have been better spent reading the hysterical commentary on the storm coverage over at Cvillain.

It was all so exciting, I was half disappointed when they canceled the tornado warning for Charlottesville.  Just at that moment, Jon came breezing into the house.   He'd been at the neighbor's looking at possible doors for our new bathroom.

Yesterday was one of those days in which a whole lot of stuff happens.  I thought I was going to have a quiet day painting my bedroom.   My bedroom was torn apart, most of its things dumped haphazardly into either the bathroom or the girls' room.  (Incidentally, in emptying my room, I found my GRE scores from 1989.)

So, I'm painting my bedroom and the electrician calls and wants to know if he can come this afternoon.  Jon, after the theft of his Vespa, wants to make our house more secure by adding more exterior lighting.  One day when I was at work, or school, or something, Jon and the electrician got together and cooked up a plan to make our house light up like a prison yard if so much as a stray kitten sets a paw over the property line. 

The electrician had the flu and then we didn't hear from him for a long time, and I began to have second thoughts.  It seemed excessive, it was going to be very expensive, and adding lights on four corners of the house was likely to ruin the paint job I worked on so hard last year.  As I worked on my bedroom,  the electrican and two apprentices did a scaled back version of the original job and replaced the porch light, replaced a lamp post at the end of the front walk, and put motion detector lights by the basement door.  This involved digging a large hole in the front garden and turning off the power.

Meanwhile, I was taking a break from painting, I called our plumber to see when he could come and put our toilet back into the bathroom.  He said he could come right away. I was so not prepared to hear that. This meant a hasty cleaning of the toilet, which has been sitting  in the back yard for a month.  Mad Scientist helped me carry it up the stairs into the house.

Then I got a phone call from Tedious Man.  Remember Tedious Man?   I knew he was in town today--he had just successfully defended his dissertation.  I figured he and Jon were going to meet in a bar later, but no, he'd brought the entire family, so I invited them for dinner. This news immediately put my children in a state of High Dudgeon since they dislike the Tedious Children.  The only decent thing to eat in the house was freshly baked peanut butter cookies, and both their kids have fatal peanut allergies.  I decided to order pizza, but by now it was 4:30 and the plumber was backing his van down my driveway. 

The plumber is the neighborhood hottie.  I could probably sell tickets to the other ladies when he is here.  He hemmed and hawed over my toilet and called it a "Lowe's Special," which it is.  He was thoroughly disapproving of the tile apprentice's repair of the toilet pipe and had to replace it. While he worked, I finished up with the painting, only I realized, too late, that the plumber had shut the water off and now my hands were covered with paint.  I wiped them with a damp rag, but since I had used that rag to wipe the floor underneath my dresser, my hands were now nearly as black as a Victorian chimney sweep's. 

Meanwhile, there was trouble in the bathroom.  The toilet, now reinstalled,  had a defect in the porcelain, causing water to run in a continuous stream.  That explains why our water bill had been much lower since we'd taken out that  toilet.  We decided he'd return tomorrow (now today) to put in a *new* toilet and then got on the subject of sinks.  He rolled his eyes when I said I wanted a pedestal sink, but then suddenly said, "Would you like to buy a Kohler pedestal and save some money?"  Why, yes I would.  Very much indeed.  He knew a woman who installed a brand new pedestal sink,  changed her mind, and didn't want it anymore.  I said I was definitely interested. 

Hottie Plumber was just leaving as Tedious Man and family arrived.  It was now 6:30pm.  Jon was home by this time and we busily socialized and when it was nearly pizza time, the Hottie Plumber's van came backing down the drive.  He had brought me the sink--just to look at, so I could decide if I wanted it or not.  He even carried it into the house and set it in the bathroom so I could see just how it would look.  It was perfect.  And it only cost $150.  It had been in this lady's garage for three years, so she was happy to get rid of it.  Happiness all around!  Hottie Plumber and I have a date to go shopping together today for a new toilet and taps for the sink.

Meanwhile, my kids have SOLs tomorrow. These are the Virginia standardized tests, now used to determine if schools may be accredited under No Child Left Behind. They have been given strict instructions by their teacher to be in bed by 9:00pm, but at 9:30 pm, my kids are sitting around our fire pit, inhaling lead paint fumes since it was Jon's bright idea to throw some old fence posts on the fire.  It is one of the tedious children who alerts us to the possibility of lead paint on the fence posts and he covers his mouth and nose with his shirt and in general makes a great noise about it. My kids are all, “Lead paint! I want me some of that!” Which is not conducive to passing SOL scores. Still, they are anxious, and want to go to bed, but can't because, 1. we have guests and 2. the contents of my bedroom are dumped all over their rooms and beds. So they play “scare,” an invented game, in the darkened house while the grown ups sit around the fire, except for Tedious Man who is pacing and talking on his cell phone. He has hardly been off his phone the entire time he has been here.

Then comes a comical dance in which Tedious Man and Tedious Woman keep circling the house looking for each other and missing each other. I am amazed that in a house and lot as small as ours, that two people could constantly miss each other, but eventually, they are gathered together as a family and drive off into the night.

The kids didn't get to bed until 11:00pm. 

I've done another chronicle of a day in my life. Below, was yesterday.  Today I feel like I've been mauled by a bear.

---

05:55 Arise and immediately go for a run. 

    A scene from my run.  I wanted to take more pictures, but the camera had no memory left.


06:30-08:30 The usual routine.  Pack lunches, wake up kids, get everybody going.
    Mr. McP at the bus stop.



08:30  Read blogs, post a review of Gormenghast on my other site.

09:00 Make a cup of tea and read for a bit.  I'm reading the ultimate trash novel, Forever Amber, and it is awesome.  I'll probably write a review when I finish, because it's so good.

09:45 Begin my usual start-at-the-top-back-corner of the house and work my way down cleaning routine.  This doesn't mean I clean everything!  Eegads, no.  It's more a strategy to push the crap in an ever-enlarging pile toward the door. I usually give up by the time I get to the kitchen.

10:30 Hang first load of laundry on line.  Time to visit the basement.  Our grass is about knee-high and all Jon will do about it is say, "Well, I can't get the lawn mower started," as if that is that and we will just have to let the grass grow, unimpeded for the entire summer.  We do have a push-mower, and since our entire lot is 1/10 of an acre, much of which is covered with a house, and the rest, paths and gardens, and you'd think mowing a tiny patch of grass wouldn't be such a big deal.  But it is. So I am going to attempt the push mower.  After all, the blades can have only been getting sharper as it sat, unused for over three years, right?  First, the basement, which involves donning appropriate basement attire--old clothes and cricket-stomping boots, and finding the key and then liberating the old push mower from behind all the other crap.

Basement.

See that little door?  Behind it is a secret room we never knew we had.  Our plumber had to squeeze through there in order to move the pipes for our new shower.  The blue oil drum is actually a rain barrel.  Rain barrels are hot in Charlottesville right now. Too bad mine isn't connected to the downspout.

Basement.

Basement.

10:40 So, it turns out I need only displace a large group of garden tools to get at the pushmower, but when I try to push it, it won't budge, and it all comes back to me, why we stopped using it in the first place.  This is a cruel disappointment because I'd had my heart set on mowing the lawn, so I try fixing it by digging out all the old stems and bits of dried grass that are wrapped around the ends of the roller.  This takes a long time, but eventually, I give it a go and it actually moves and starts mowing down the grass.  I am so pleased, I feel like I have invented the wheel.  By 11:30 some of the lawn is mowed, or, not so much mowed as randomly hacked so that now, at least I can see the piles of dog shit.  I could never hack it in suburbia. No pun intended.



Husqvarna, my old friend.

11:45 Hang second (and last) load of laundry on line. Pick up all the dog shit revealed by the lawnmower. Mad Scientist informs me that Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, died yesterday at the age of 102. 

12:00 Time for a coffee break.  Ack!  I still need to study.

12:30 Supervise Mad Scientist while he does his math lesson for the day.  He's pretty much self-directed as far as his other courses go.

1:00 pm  Study, but can't get the lawn out of my head.

2:00 Take another crack at the lawn.

2:30 Eat lunch.

3:00 The kids start coming home from school.  This morning, I thought I'd just mow a few areas that were bugging me, but now I am determined to finish the whole lawn.  Work like a fiend, sometimes pulling up difficult clumps with my fists.  It's all coming back to me--the blisters, the sore arms, the tactic of leaving a difficult patch of grass and working somewhere else for a while, so as to get a dry edge, which will then be mowed more easily.  Mowing with a pushmower is like vacumming with a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner.  You have to keep going over and over the same spot. 

5:00pm  Most of the lawn is mowed.  I feel like I've won the Nobel prize and the Pulizter Prize.  I feel like I am Queen for a Day, I am so happy with this day's work.  The unmowed lawn had been bothering me for two months. 

5:30 Enjoy my garden for a few minutes before starting to cook dinner.

    


Giant azalea






Freshly mowed lawn.  The last time we mowed was last farking July.  I think I will hire Mr. McP to pull all that honeysuckle off the top of the wall. It's super invasive and if you don't keep at it, will spread everywhere. He wants to earn enough money to buy a nintendo.


If I can grow figs, anyone can.


Under the arbor



In the arbor.  It was a beautiful day.  When I went running, the temperature was in the thirties, and even after my first mowing session, it was still cold enough that the furnace came on even though I had the termostat set at 60.  By afternoon, it had gotten into the sixties.

6:30 Serve dinner--meatball subs.  I am beginning to feel ominious signs of what tomorrow has in store for me.

7:30 Pick Jon up from work.

8:00  I'm never going to get any studying done at home.  Actually, I have terrible study habits.  Go to school to study there, away from distractions.

9:30 Stupid community college library closes at 9:30.  During final exam week!  I ask you.  The library at UVA is open until 2:00am, or possibly 24 hours during exams, but tonight is the Bruce Sprinsteen concert and to drive to that end of town would be suicide.

9:45-ish.  Why is Bob Dole singing on American Idol?  Oh, it's Neil Diamond.

10:00 Read Half Blood Prince to Mr. McP. 

10:30 Read Forever Amber in bed.

11:00  Get up to check on Mad Scientist and remind him to get to bed and see gypsy moth caterpillar crawling on Jon's jacket.  Mad Scientist kindly removes it and puts it outside for me.  He refuses to kill it..

11:30 Read in bed until fall asleep.