Monday Randomosity: Perplexing Things and Miscellaneous House Stuff and a Surprising Number of Ghost References Edition

Good morning, Internet! I am going to make a studious attempt at not talking about food in this post!

* I woke up at 5:55 this morning to the sound of howling wind and shrieking rain. (Rain doesn’t technically shriek, but I felt like it needed a descriptor so as not to feel left out.) I drifted back to sleep only to be re-awakened at 6:20ish by a suspicious chair-tumbling-over-in-the-wind sound. My husband peered out the window and saw nothing. Once I woke up (considerably later, though under perplexing circumstances STAY TUNED), I checked out all of the windows and couldn’t see anything that would have made such a noise. The two chairs on our front porch were upright. So were the 10,000 chairs on the back deck. I didn’t spot any rogue chairs that had blown over from the neighbors’ either. So WHAT MADE THE NOISE?

* Remember a long time ago (or 60-odd words ago) when I told you I woke up for good under perplexing circumstances? I was jostled out of sleep about 10 minutes before my alarm went off (fist of anger!) by the sound of two people talking. It seemed like they were standing right below my window, in the space between my house and the neighbor’s. I listened very closely but I could not make out what they were saying. Never one to pass up an opportunity to eavesdrop on stinky pre-alarm wakers (Word really wants to correct “wakers” to “wankers,” which I appreciate, but no), I crept over to the window and peered out the side of the shade.

Nothing. No one was standing below my window, having a Seriously Early Conversation.

But I could still hear the voices: a strident, whining woman and a calmer man. So I looked out the front window, straining to see down the street on either side.

Nothing.

What was it, Internet? Was my neighbor having a Very Loud Discussion with a lady friend in the room directly opposite my bedroom? Was he listening to an annoying morning talk show at top blast while he showered? Was someone hiding under the eaves of my porch, trying to torment me into waking up before I wanted to? WAS IT GHOSTS?

* Speaking of my neighborhood. The house across the street and one to the right has frequent visitors. Or, if not visitors, frequent Car Overflow. A white pickup or a brown sedan or both are regularly parked along the curb in front of this house. Right in front of the sign that says “No Parking This Side of Street.”

It must be terrible to deal with BOTH Car Overflow AND sign illiteracy.

* As you know, I’ve been pretty terrible about showing you pictures of my house. There are two reasons for this: 1. I haven’t really DONE anything to the house. There’s one room (coincidentally, the smallest room in the house next to the powder room) that’s NEARLY finished… And yet we just can’t seem to hang the picture that will complete the thing. (Also, the longer it sits there, nearly finished, the more I think that we need to do some rearranging of book shelves.) Anyway, it’s hard to get excited about writing a House Post when the rooms still look half- or un-finished.

2. The only room I seem to be able to write about is the master bathroom. Which is perfectly functional and which we will not redecorate in ANY WAY for many years. It’s perfectly fine and while we may replace the toilet sooner rather than later (who wants to see a toilet before and after?!?!), the rest of it is going to Stay The Same until we have enough money to replace the tile and the shower. Which may be never, if I’m being honest.

So WHY is that the room that I want to discuss at great length? Why not the dining room, which we are going to redo in February? Why not the kitchen, which ALREADY has some nice before-and-afters? Why not the basement, which is STILL painted in primary colors? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?

* We – much like most of the country, I’d guess – are having Wackadoo Weather. It snows… then it rains and the snow melts. Then it’s sunny and feels like spring. Then there’s a Thunderstorm Warning. Then it snows again and everything gets a thick, six-inch coat of white.

I’m not complaining. I’d take this wacky changeableness ANY DAY over Constant Grey. But it is perplexing.

* I spent part of this weekend scouring the internet for two books I couldn’t remember. I found them BOTH, so I am going to tell you about it so that I NEVER FORGET THEM AGAIN.

Both are books from my childhood. In both cases, all I remembered about the books were two key details.  (Full disclosure: I have ALREADY forgotten the name of one of them. So I need to pop over to GoodReads to check.)

The first book was a ghost story. I remembered that the main character’s name was Zoe and she had an imaginary friend. That is ALL. (Why did I want to find this book about which I remember next to nothing? Well, I think I liked it, back when I was a kid. Plus, it is aggravating when one’s memory fails.)

For a long time, I tried looking up other ghost stories I read as a kid (man, I loved Betty Ren Wright) and using Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” feature to look for the Forgotten Book.

This did not work. Although it did fill me with nostalgia for the time when I could spend hours reading ghost stories.

So I Googled “book imaginary friend Zoe” and TADA! Google showed me exactly what I was looking for: Stonewords: A Ghost Story by Pam Conrad.

The other book is one I’ve been trying to remember for YEARS. I distinctly remember wanting to track it down in grad school, when one of my colleagues did a paper on Dare Wright. Dare Wright wrote a book called The Lonely Doll, and it sounded ever so slightly like a book I’d read as a kid.

The book I’d read as a kid was about a wooden doll who bought a human at the human store and mistreated her much in the way a human owner would abuse a doll. I’ve idly searched Amazon off and on for keywords like “doll buys human,” “doll owns girl,” “wooden doll,” “mean doll,” etc. No luck!

Finally, this weekend, I had a niggling little memory that the doll’s name was Gert. Or Gertrude. Typing “Gertrude doll” into Amazon’s search field yielding the book Gertrude’s Child by Richard Hughes. SUCCESS!!

Now I need to re-read these books.

 

* We have some flowering shrubbery outside our front door. I mean, it’s not flowering NOW. But I know it DOES flower, since we first saw this house last summer. One of the plants is DEFINITELY a hydrangea. I know this for sure, because I love hydrangeas.

But… I have no idea what the other plants are. Worse? I have no idea how to FIND OUT what the other plants are.

* We really need to get some curtains. I am quite certain our neighbors would agree.

* Blogger has been eating a LOT of my comments recently. I promise I have been better (not GREAT, but better) about commenting lately. But if your blog is on blogger and has a word verification? More often than not, my comments are not posting. I have typed in up to TEN word verifications in an attempt to get ONE comment to post to NO AVAIL.

I don’t think my comments are going to be life changing, or anything. But I do appreciate comments so I like to leave them when I can and MAN IS IT FRUSTRATING for them not to post.

* A cat ran through our backyard the other day. That makes him OUR cat, right?

Well, that’s all the random I have for you today.

How are you, Internet? Did you have a nice weekend? Any random things you need to discuss with me?

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