Hope yours was as easy and breezy as mine.

View from the sofa.

Oh my, so much to talk about, I don’t know if I’ll get to everything. I’m at the house now, in my living room, procrastinating on cooking dinner. This is the point in Manhattan where I’d call for delivery but that is not how it goes here, so I will eventually have to create a meal of some sort. Later!

I got here this past weekend with EXTREMELY helpful friends who fixed a number of things, some of which I didn’t even know needed fixing, and sorted out some other problems. I also have a to-do list of people I must call, some of whom I have already. An exterminator already came and it would seem that the ants have colonized my whole place. They are running rampant around the perimeter so he is going to power-spray and says that if I see even one ant a week after that happens, I must call him. Which is good, because an ant just walked across the power brick of this computer.

I also called an HVAC person because my A/C is decidedly uncool, and not in the way I was in high school. But he is booked all week and so can’t come till Monday. He also has to perform maintenance on my furnace. Is there anything in this world that just lasts without being maintained? I need to find it.

Not to bore you all too much further but there also needs to be a plumber and an electrician. I think they should all come the same day and we can have a service person party! I will serve cake in the shape of a hot water heater.

Other fun things this week: I discovered that the tub of my washing machine is yellow and the other innards are quite gross looking. So as I suspected, I needed to get a new one, and a dryer, too, for good measure. I bought those today at Lowe’s and I had to speak to several specialists and sign tons of papers. I had no idea it was like this. Weird.

And: I woke up drowsily one morning, went downstairs, opened a window (remember, my A/C is barely functional), and was greeted by a screaming siren. Oops, I forgot to disarm my alarm system. I am so used to doing that with a door and then it just clicks at you until you put in your code (you get 30 seconds). I guess with a window you don’t get that courtesy. That thing is LOUD. I dashed to the panel and could barely make my fingers work to disarm. I had to sit for several minutes after that while my heart slowly stopped thudding.

Cannot.do.that.again.

I saved the best thing for last, though: I HAVE A CAR! For those of you who have driven your entire adult lives, this may not sound that exciting or earth-shattering, but it’s impossible to state how surreal it is for me. I have lived my entire life without one, taking subways and other transport everywhere I go. The idea of bringing more than you can carry, going to any store without thought of a transit map, leaving your destination when you feel like it and not on anyone else’s schedule is just… bizarre. I don’t even know how to articulate how strange it is. It may be the oddest paradigm shift since I changed careers.

The salesguy kept asking me during the test drive “how it feels.” I didn’t know how to answer that question. Not like a bus?

A car-interested friend helped me negotiate the car purchasing landscape, which was great of him and totally necessary. The first dealership I went to was pretty much that whole high pressure/slick/smarmy stereotype I’ve been hearing about forever. The second was WAY better and much more no-nonsense. The hardest part of the actual process at the second place was them trying to pair my phone with the Bluetooth in the car, which just did not want to happen. It took over an hour! Then I drove away and went shopping all day. I still can’t really accept that this is my car, quite frankly. I can see it out my window but I’m not sure when I’ll ever be convinced that it’s mine. Maybe never, because it’s a lease, so technically it isn’t mine, but you get me.

I got a Honda Civic in the end. I wanted all the colors of car they only have in Hybrid. I guess people who are saving the earth deserve better colors. I can see that. It’s across the street right now because the people next door are parked in front of my house, as they have taken advantage of the fact that for the last two years they could park in the spot that should now be mine. They said they would move it when I got a car. Let’s see how long it takes them to figure it out.

There it is! That one. Behind the tree. Across the street. The Sweet-Tea-Mobile.

Yesterday, I got a text, “Becca, I will be mowing your lawn today.” How awesome is that?

This weekend, I leave for Baltimore “for the summer.” I say that because I am coming home in less than two weeks to work on a grant with some other teachers. And then two weeks after that for some medical things and then two weeks after that for professional development. And then the summer is nearly over. What happened to my summer away?

Nonetheless, I am stressed over packing. What do you pack to be away in your own house? Should I leave things there? If I leave things there, I feel like those will be the things I will want to use later in New York. This is the way I think. Maybe I should just pretend I’m going away for two weeks to someplace with a washing machine (at least, one which kind of works). And a television. I bought one last Black Friday thinking I might one day have a house in which to put it. Now I do, although I gave up finding an attractive corner stand. Do people not put their televisions in the corner anymore?

Also, I am attempting to live without cable, so there will just be an Apple TV and a radio and lots of books. This is how I imagine life in a vacation house.

But back to packing, which I should be doing rather than blogging. I am counting on the fact that it will be 95 degrees every day, like the summers I remember. So, maybe lots of t-shirts and one sweater? And a bag of Zabar’s coffee beans. And books. Done.