The 3rd house in astrology is associated with writing, conversation, personal thoughts, day-to-day things, siblings and neighbors.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004And so are the apples
As Ana has rightly pointed out, it's apple season here in the Northeast. After going apple picking over the weekend, she says, "Now... what to do with all the apples." I'll tell you what to do with them! (Said in the manner of my mom when we were kids, "You don't know what to do? I'll give you something to do!" - followed by work.) This is one of the easiest apple recipes I know: Apple Crisp with Oat Topping. I just popped a half a batch in the oven before dinner, and now the whole house smells of apples and cinnamon.
Winter squash is back
What I had for dinner last night - delicious: Penne with Chicken, Squash, Broccoli Rabe and Carmelized Onion.Wallowing
It’s been a sodden morning, with rain from tropical storm Jeanne soaking the outdoors and filthy water from my stopped up kitchen sink and pipes splashing half the kitchen. The sink backed up late last night, as these things tend to do. So after spending a futile half hour or so trying to plunge one of the two sinks with one arm while holding down the ill-fitting stopper in the other, I gave up, wrote a sticky note to my housemate telling her not to use the sink, and went to bed.
I woke in the night again and couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour or more, then overslept. Not that it mattered since work’s at a lull, but I wanted to call the plumber early. He came over late morning and spent a good hour and a half getting the pipe unclogged. This after I shut Ingrid in K’s bedroom to keep her from tearing into the poor guy, fierce little sentinel that she is. While the plumber was here – a nice fatherly-type guy who came once before a long time ago for some other clog – I also had him replace the ball cocks (yes, ladies, that’s what they’re called) in each of the toilets, because I was getting tired of sticking my hand in the tank to pull the chain every few flushes when it wouldn’t stop running.
I know that this, and all the other things falling apart around the house from 17 years of living, is just part of general maintenance that any homeowner must take care of. I’ve neglected a lot of it for the past 10 years since my dad hasn’t been able to, or hasn’t wanted to, come down any more to take care of them. Not that I blame him, at 76 years old now, when he has all he cares to do in maintaining their own condo. When I first bought this place, he would bring his toolbox down whenever they visited and he’d fix various things – drippy faucets, loose doorjambs, teetering shelves. In fact, he did most of the work finishing my lower level (I’m in a split-level), which I bought unfinished, in the first few months I was here. Now it’s just me and I’m neither handy nor remotely interested in learning much more than how to operate the power drill my dad gave me one Christmas so I could put up curtain rods and the like. So basically I should be hiring handy men for this stuff. If money weren’t tight, I’d have a lot of things replaced and/or fixed around the house. But I can’t complain. It’s mine, and worth about double the price I paid (thank God – 10 years ago it was worth about $40K less than I paid – that was scary).
Well, all this to say that my day seems to have been blown, or drowned as the case may be. I’m having trouble getting my focus on the bit of work I could be doing or the writing or the general overhaul of my life I’ve decided to undertake. I spent some time on the latter last night, before the deluge, writing out in my private journal some of the ingredients necessary to make this cake rise and with the flavor I’m seeking. I’m not sure it’s such a drastic change of direction, but perhaps more of a clarifying – and then building some new supportive mechanisms to re-energize myself out of these wallows and back onto the path.