So I was in the bath. Thinking about, of all things, water. I was running hot water in and trying to drain some cold water out at the same time. Which should go alright because cold stuff sinks most of the time.
Then I thought about temperature and liquids and solids and density all at the same time, and started thinking wouldn’t it be cool to explain that to kids in a way that they would then move through their life looking at everything as, as a liquid, just with all different freezing points. Then I started imagining all of the different little experiments these hypothetical kids would do and hmmm the problem of water, because water is an obvious place to start, but it floats and expands once it’s frozen. Hydrogen bonding seems a little beyond most kids, and it sucks when the most obvious and readily available substance is the exception not the rule. Ah, but no matter, we’ll just explore and write down things that don’t make sense and then go to the library or find experts until we sort it all out.

Of course this was all just fantasy since I’m not a teacher, and I’m not likely to be hired for the TV show Zoom any time soon. Sigh. Frown. Grizzle.

Then it dawned on me – wait I have my very own kid! That I can fill up with whatever crazy notions I want to! Oh joy!

After that the bath continued with no events worthy of note.

Step 1. Hesitate slightly to eat beefy goodness from Taco Bueno on account of all this media hype about bad beef.
Step 2. Go instead to Whataburger and order chicken.
Step 3. Spend the next 24 hours sick as a fucking dog from food poisoning or something like it.

The house was haunted, but not in terrible ways. There was a spot on the wall which was always very cold, but no one had ever touched that spot. It was slightly out of the way.

The closet door in the upstairs guest bedroom sometimes clicked open in the middle of the night, and then shut again. If anyone had ever squeezed into that closet among the spare pillows and blankets, a mysterious feeling of uneasiness might have washed through them. At the very least they would have felt an unpleasant tingling in their toes.

Oh and inside the refidgerater the light always stayed on, even after – well, no one ever noticed in any case.

Harrington settled into his leather chair, which was shaped like him, next to the little grey radio. Ah, that Dolly really could sing.

Harry, do we have to listen to that? We’re not a couple of barefooted Southerners you know.

He was falling in love with Dolly. Jay Leno had her on the other night, her hair was all done up and her legs were perfect. Like a sexy country and western robot.

Sorry, his wife breathed unapologetically as she reached over him to flip the station. The radio whined and hissed until she found 109.2 The Oasis. A soothing mix of contemporary Jazz and light rock from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Donna was hoping to catch the weather news. Chopper Dan had a warm, gravelled voice. He could make thunderstorms sound like something nice to look forward to. But it wasn’t him on now; that saxaphone guy was playing a sad, sweet melody.

Harrington closed his eyes. Sax music made him nauseous. It was so painfully smooth, not like the ragged fiddle behind Dolly’s round voice. He let the sax moan on for a minute before he was overcome by the horrible feeling that the song might go on for an hour. He couldn’t help himself… he reached over to change the station.

They did this sort of thing all night, sometimes until 9 or 10 at night.

I’m not sure if that was part of the haunting or not.

I just noticed that almost every single one of the last 20 posts were about house stuff. Who the hell cares about house stuff? New year’s resolution: More interesting posts. And more posts, period.

I haven’t been good about updating my journal lately. See, November was full of packing and getting ready to close on the house and travelling to see Kevin’s family for Thanksgiving. Then we had to like, move and stuff. Ugh. But! Then! We had barely caught our breath after moving when we realized that it was almost Christmas and holy crap we had a lot to do. So we unpacked, put up a tree and lights, cleaned house, went Christmas shopping, wrapped presents, celebrated with Kevin’s parents, shopped some more, made Nicolaus his very own stocking, gathered pecans, made gifts for a few people, made effing Christmas cards (three different designs, colelct them all!), celebrated with my parents, cooked numerous dinners, drank lots of yummy wine, visited with Jamie, dodged bizarre comments from my grandmother, made luminarias, painted the living room and cheered as Nicolaus learned to walk.

Holy great big month Batman! January has a tough act to follow… although it does contain my birthday so obviously all the parades and media fanfare are always great.