Tales from the Shark Tank

I have spent so much time on the phone today it feels like a growth on my ear, but it’s saved me a direct interaction with a crank. I just played my voice mail to find that someone, deprived of the opportunity to disgust a live human, had left an obscene message.

I have, in the past two days, acquired two things that make me very happy. One is a replacement tuning key for my harp. I have a lovely little Celtic harp that a friend made for me, but I’d lost the tuning key. I’d also kind of stopped playing it, because I had to keep it out of my son’s reach. It came down off the top of the entertainment center and got dusted off in the packing process, and one of my foster daughters tuned it. (Yes, she carries a tuning key in her purse. You never know where you might find a harp. ) My favorite little boy has so fallen in love with it that he’s got me showing him how to play it a little, and wants one of his own so we can learn together. Fine by me; I’ve wanted harp lessons for years, and now I’ll do it with him. But the tuning key is sort of important to the project, and now I have one.

The other is a small but well made bodhran. I’ve wanted one for years, and mentioned that it would be my next instrument-type acquisition at dinner with some friends. It turned out that Li’s husband Ed had acquired one while in Ireland (sometime before their marriage, so over 8 years ago) which he had never even unpacked. Li knew where it was and unearthed it, whereupon Ed promptly turned around and gave it to me. I am over the moon! Now I have to learn to play triplets on a drum played with a beater (my other drums are hand-drums, like a doumbek), but I can do that.

My husband has a comment that’s becoming a refrain. “You have enough to deal with.” He’s right, of course, but that doesn’t seem to stop the Universe, or whatever Chinese sage I annoyed mightily somewhere along the line. His comments are apropos the time and energy I am turning to ammeliorate crises and difficulties that are not my own. He’s right, of course. The tales are not mine to tell, but suffice it to say that I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t a marriage-eating virus in the air. I have several friends whose relationships are in need of intensive work right now. Most are calm and civilized about it; one is thermonuclear. In all of them, most of what I can do is provide a caring ear, the occasional hug, and assurances of friendship. I can assure my friends that I will not leave them to go through whatever is coming at them alone, and mean it. In one instance, my husband and I have offered the shelter of our home; that friend should be arriving bag and baggage this evening.

But of course, the Universe does not consider that enough. I have unkind words for the customer service available from the phone company that holds sway over local service where we’re going. We have our service, but there is so much noise on the line that it’s impossible to hold a conversation. Service was just turned on Monday. But they won’t send a tech until mid-August, and someone has to be home to receive that individual. I got this word after I’d spent 30 mortal minutes on hold to get to the customer service rep in the first place. I suppose I should be grateful. I had needed a nap, and took one, lying on my bed and listening to hold music. (At least it was classical rather than elevator music.)

A further irritation is that there is no broadband internet in Boone Grove, Indiana. None. Zero. Zip. I’ve tried cable, satellite, DSL, and fiber-optic. None of them go there. Not one. Valparaiso University is 10 miles north, and some of the most heavily populated areas of the state literally 5 minutes drive away, and we can’t get broadband in any form. Why satellite in particular can’t be arranged mystifies me utterly. Satellite TV is available (cable isn’t), and it’s the same wiring as near as I understand it. Of course, I can drive to those places, camp at a place with wireless and work for the price of a cup of tea, but it’s more than a trifle inconvenient to have to put all my work in my backpack, along with my computer. And with the noise on the line that the phone company isn’t fixing, we can’t even use dial-up at the house. I like my internet, I do. I don’t want to be losing it. I’ve seen articles likening extending broadband “the last mile” into rural areas to the rural electrification projects of the 1930s. I hadn’t realized, until I started arguing with these companies, just how apt the analogy is. The people who run the farms that surround our new abode are running businesses. They need to be able to get the information that is so easily available to us city dwellers, probably considerably worse than spoiled suburbanites like me. They can’t. The high school that serves half the county – including the town which is home to the aforementioned university – can’t. And that’s absurd. Time for the wheel to start squeaking, I believe.

For those of you who call me on my cell, don’t bother. I left it on the table in a pizza place in Crown Point Indiana, 100 miles away. At least they found it and called to tell me they have it. My husband will pick it up tomorrow, and I’ll get it back Friday evening. I’ll go a bit nuts without it, but y’know, I’m not spending the day driving to get it if all it means is doing without for a few days. Of course, if my husband weren’t working up there, I’d go get it, and no question. But if I can avoid dragging my son on that kind of trip again, so much the better.

I have proven to myself that I am still, in a pinch, capable of a true all-nighter. For reasons which are confidential (It’s an attorney thing), some friends and I took a road-trip down to Lexington Kentucky on essentially no notice. We left here at 5:00 p.m., took care of business to the extent possible, and finally left for home at 4:00 a.m. Kentucky time/ 3:00 a.m. local, pulling into my driveway having seen the developing dawn of a new day. I was even coherent when I got home. Babbling, but coherent. Of course, that didn’t last any longer than it took to slip into bed beside my husband. I think I was asleep before he finished pulling the blanket over me.

Dawn is not my favorite time of day, just to understate the matter wildly. But it really was lovely to drive through the night, watching the light grow from a faint misty grey so subtle that it was hard to be sure if the sky was lightening or my eyes adapting, through a full sunrise and into a lovely clear day. At that hour it was warm and moist, but not yet overwhelmed by the breathless heat that would come later. And it’s good to know I can function competently when I’ve been up for 26 hours. But you know, I’m not in a hurry to repeat the performance. Fortunately, it doesn’t look like we’ll have to.

Me: “Why would I want to learn the language of the demonspawn” [French]
Li: “Because the food’s good?”

I love having friends who follow when I say things that are in context for my SCA persona (post 1066 Welsh) without explanation!

I’m trying to get the utilities turned on in what is soon to be our new home. The trouble is that some major league storms blew through up there yesterday, and the utilities are still recovering. They were sufficiently swamped that all I could get yesterday were recordings saying “we are only taking emergency calls. To report a power outage, use the automated system. To report a gas leak, call the fire department or police. Here’s a list of towns we know still doesn’t have power; it you’re on it, please don’t call.” I figured that starting new service wasn’t an emergency, and went quietly away. It all worked out; as of today I was able to reach everyone I needed to and get everything turned on…even the phone, which took some serious detective work in terms of figuring out which company did land-service up there.

And on the list of farewells my current house could give me, I’d say insect invasion was at the bottom. But that’s what has been chosen, and I am here to tell you that the place you don’t want to see ants is inside your (theoretically) sealed honey jar. Ick! So now I’m off to acquire ant bait and then resume packing. And if anyone is on speaking terms with Rube Goldberg, please tell him he can stop practicing his talents for creating complication on me!

I met some friends here briefly from out of town for lunch today, and as we were chatting one of them said to me “So…are you ok with this move?” I’ve been doing my best to be hopeful and optimistic about it, so I was a little surprised myself at the answer that fell out of my mouth. “No. I’m not. I don’t want to go anywhere, and I’m heartbroken about it…but there’s really no choice.”

That’s the truth. There’s always a choice, of course, but in this instance none of the alternatives is good. I can go on single-parenting, but that way lies madness. Even more to the point, it would probably mean giving up on my marriage and I’m in no way ready to do that. I miss my husband for far more reasons than relief from child-care. And at the same time, I’m terrified. My support system is here. I invited a few people over last night for a packing party to help me demolish a lamb roast I had in the freezer that I myself can’t eat, and when I looked around realized that there were 11 people wandering around. That includes the 3 of us who live here, of course, but it was just a gathering of chosen family, and we had a capacity crowd.

My parents are here as well, and I still have painful memories of the reasons we moved them down, ironically enough from a town about 20 miles north of where I’m moving to now. I was driving between Indianapolis and northwest Indiana every weekend for their sake ten years ago, and damn near killed myself doing it. I have terrified visions of doing so again, with the only changes being that I’m going from north to south instead of south to north, and that now I have a small child who takes kindly neither to mom leaving nor to lengthy car trips. I have friends here I talk to daily, and see several times a week. I’ve no least desire to leave them behind.

So no, really, I’m not ok with moving. But it’s going to happen anyway, so forgive me while I shake out my optimism and put it back on. I have packing to do.

We got a house! It’s an old farmhouse on a working farm. The owner’s brother still farms it, so there’s corn on one side, soybeans on the other, and a nature preserve across the road. They’re installing A/C for us this coming Wednesday. Moving date will be determined between us and the owners based on when they can get the barn closed off to keep a certain small boy from getting in and getting hurt. The house is on a full acre, with lots of trees and room for a small boy to play. There are 2 bedrooms downstairs, with a huge livingroom, decent diningroom and quite a nice kitchen. Upstairs (up the proverbial winding stair), is what could be a third bedroom and will for us be a workroom for me and a playspace for our son. We’ll put a futon up there as well, so that we’ll have guest space.

There are no neighbors nearby, so getting our son kids to play with will require arranging play dates. That should be doable, though, and there’s plenty outside to enchant him anyway. And me. I already have garden plans, which I’m sure comes as a shock to no one who knows me.

The owner is a fabulous woman, who grew up in the community and has been teaching there for 26 years. End result? I have all kinds of information on who to talk to and what to tell them to get our son what he needs. She has plans for me to guest-teach on various subjects as she gets to them in her history class. Medieval social structure, early 20th c. immigration and the development of the American legal system are some of them. She lives within walking distance – well the whole town is in walking distance, and so small it literally isn’t on the map. Closest town that is (a mile away) is Hebron, Indiana. Not only have I found a house, I’m going to have a friend when I get there. If I’ve got to move, I can’t think of a better way to start.

Dear script-writer,

My life is not a test script for a soap opera. The lives of my chosen family are not test scripts for a soap opera. Any notion to that effect is a misconception. Please stop now. Go pick on someone else.