Wednesday, July 16, 2008

It's a gas

Well, between the fumes from the primer being slathered on the house by the painting crew and the off-gassing of the new rug in the living room, I am sure that there are enough fumes floating around here to kill a canary. But we endure.

The new stuff looks pretty good, but it's a little hard to tell, since the house is in a bit of disarray from our having had to move all the exterior stuff, some of which came inside, for the painters. I gotta tell you, the front yard* looks a lot better to my eyes with all the potted plants and cat stuff removed; maybe we'll be re-thinking our exterior design somewhat.

Yesterday evening, we took a post-prandial walk up to the library to (a) pick up materials and (b) join J-Force for some ice cream! It was a perfect time to walk on the grass of the park in the sunshine and watch the summer go by.

Speaking of the summer going by, Otis still has room in her Writing from Your Body workshop, so if you were thinking about it (or know someone who might be interested), let her know! Check out the updated announcement.

When I wrote this sentence, I first used the term "areaway" instead of "front yard," because that's what we called the fenced space in front of our house when I was growing up, although we pronounced in "airy-way." It was always concrete and enclosed the basement windows and door (which was usually under the stoop**). Here's a picture from about three blocks from where I lived:

But then I looked up the definition in a coule of dictionaries, it doesn't sound at all like that, and I thought that y'all would be more confused than anything else, so I edited it out. But I still wanted to talk about it, hence this sidebar. The space in front of my townhouse is an airyway in my mind, and always will be.

**I don't have to explain a stoop, do I?

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