Good Bones

I didn't leave the house at all yesterday, and I probably won't leave it today. (This is an idea that does my heart good.) This past week was one of running about frantically, with five parties to attend in as many days. The parties consisted mostly of the children's sort, held in places like massive playgrounds and those inflatable, jumpy monstrosities where the kids feel compelled to boo-hoo obnoxiously whenever it's time to leave. By week's end, I'd had enough.

So yesterday was the first day that I could nest and rest alternately. Before breakfast time, I was scanning the basement shelves for green paint for the iron table and chairs in the gazebo. "Good bones" I kept thinking to myself as I sprayed the green over the white that had covered the yellow. A year ago, we found the set at the end of someone's driveway in my husband's parents' neighborhood, and after deeming it still useable, he went back later in the truck. I thought about the family, yearning for something new, no longer valuing the old table that would now be mine, freshly painted and functional. I know that yearning. That need to trade in. To give up something with "good bones" for a "new face." Sometimes it's necessary, lest you feel stagnant. Sometimes ill-advised, lest you feel forever nostalgic for what you left at the end of the driveway in a random fit of "de-cluttering."

Then there was the arrival of the package. Completely unexpectedly, my husband came to me mid-day with a just-arrived box and a knife for easier opening. I blurred my eyes a little (a technique I've mastered in such cases) so that I could not read the contents on the customs slip. After growing up overseas, one learns how to do this if you ever desire any kind of surprise. The contents was heartbreakingly wonderful. Really, my heart hurt. My friend Gretchen had recently returned from a trip to India, a trip that I had originally planned to take with her. But she had not forgotten me, no. Inside that box was...well, let me take pictures of it later...

In other news, the mamma jamma of ovens doesn't work. After many pains on the husband's part to re-wire the electricity to accommodate it, it simply won't heat up. The clock works, though. (: We're going to try to return it for store credit today. And I was so looking forward to that double-oven goodness. We'll see what else the universe has in store for us...