The Return of the Native Son

And lo, the son turned his face again upon his jilted blog and found favor with her, for she was pleasing unto him. And the son mused at his absence and how to proceed with his estranged blog and at his superfluous use of the conjunction “and” and he thought it was wonderful.

“A month has passed since last we met,” spoke the son, tenuous, like a child speaking to a mighty gorilla. “How shall we proceed?”

The blog—she has been anthropomorphic all along, has she not?—stared back at the son, blinking once per second with the soul-crushing gaze of a blank cursor.

“I thought so,” said the son, sighing a sigh beyond his twenty-six years. “The problem is that I’m not the person I used to be. I’ve changed, see. What we had was nice, but it just doesn’t exist anymore, y’know?”

The cursor blinked-blinked-blinked.

“Don’t look at me like that. You know I hate it when you do that.”

He might as well have been talking to a deaf and blind gorilla with cotton balls in its nostrils for all the good it did him.

“Fine. What do you want from me? You want me to tell you about my new job? Is that it? You already know how much I’m loving it, how I get to help the environment by polluting her in controlled quantities. It’s thankless and I’m hated by the people in production, but that’s environmental, right?” The son laughed a not quite sardonic chuckle. The great-and-terrible eye blinked-blinked-blinked. “Or would you rather me tell you all about the housing situation? Stewartland has been under a contract to sell for three weeks and she’s scheduled to close two days after the Ides of December. We’ve been frustrated waiting on the buyers to get an appraisal—which still hasn’t been ordered, by the way—because the house we’re moving into—currently unnamed—is all contingent upon our successful sell of Stewartland. It’s a crazy and mind-numbing process, especially with Christmas approaching and the very likely possibility that we’ll be spending the holidays in transition, wonderful for Keisha and Avonlea’s holiday spirits, I’m sure.” He couldn’t help but let the cynicism in this time. Blink-blink-blink.

The son made a fist. “I could delete you, you know? It’s not like I would miss you.” And he thought seriously about it. “It would be… easy.” Blink-blink-blink.
The son collapsed into a crumpled and tired form. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just, well, I’ve not forgotten you, but I don’t have the time to carry on like we used to. We’re not just some bumbling teens any more. I have a career and a wife and a seventeen-month-old and a son on the way and a million, billion other things and honestly you’re just not that high up in the priority list. But it’s not just you, either. Life is a crazy, wonderful, beautiful thing, too short by far. The time we spent together, it was good. But let’s face it, that was in the past. If you want to still be a part of my life, then you’re going to have to accept my decision. I’ll still visit you from time to time, if only for journaling. That is, after all, one of your primary purposes. I’m sure I’ll still even give you reviews from time to time, too. It’s not like I’m tying you to a tree, coating you in honey, and leaving you in the jungle for a gorilla to find. It’s more like I’m locking you in the basement and turning out the lights, but I’ll come down there from time to time just to check on you. That’s not so bad, right?”

Her eye reminded him of Sauron’s and he shivered.

“Right?” he asked again, but he already knew her answer.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said with an appropriate adverb applied to his tone. “Until next time.”

Stewartland (Almost) For Sale

The absence here on Rememorandom can be attributed to several things, but the chief reason is that I've been busy with getting our house ready to put on the market.  Stewartland, our cherished and beloved first home, is not quite ready to sell, but Keisha and I have been working hard at getting it up to snuff.  At the same time, we're continuing our downward trend of simplifying and de-owning things, and going through boxes and bags and totes of possessions is rather time-consuming.

Much of it we're selling in our subdivisions annual yard sell, which is this upcoming weekend.  The hope is to get rid of it all (which we will, one way or another) and make some extra cash to apply towards debt.  I genuinely want less stuff, and slowly I'm acclimating to that lifestyle.  We've already rid ourselves of one entire bookshelf (and books), making three into two.  We've also sold a bedroom suite and most of our dvds.  I think I might open my tote of STAR WARS memorabilia and sell it off, too.  Like I sold my shoebox full of Zelda collectibles.

See, Stewartland is a beautiful house in a beautiful subdivision filled with beautiful people and beautiful cars.  It's also the bane of my existence, the millstone around my neck that's pulling me deeper and deeper into the sea, and I yearn to be rid of the place.  Maybe I'm a transient person, unable to keep my roots down long.  I've lived in several different places during my 26 years, and I have no problems with uprooting and changing.  Keisha, on the other hand, lived in the same house until she went to college, and she'll have a tougher time leaving.

Why are we leaving?  Several reasons come to mind, but one of the biggest is that subdivision life is not something we enjoy.  We both grew up in the country with land and woods and creeks and small town drama.  We had land to play on and explore and nature was never hard to find.  Stewartland rests upon 0.3 acres of commercial grass and clay and rock, with a history of three years life behind it.  There are no giant oak trees or cow fields around.  Just neighborhood kids riding their bikes and people ignoring STOP signs (which really really really really really annoys me).

That's the biggest reason, the desire to return to the rural life.  What we hope to do is sell Stewartland and move into an apartment/townhouse and rent for a while, building up money to use as a down payment for the next home and continue to eat away at our debt.  We get questionable looks when we say we want to rent again, but from the research I've done, buying a house isn't worth it in the short term if you're planning on moving relatively soon.   And that's something we intend to do.  I'm still at the MLC (and still curious about the future of my career) for any of you that are interested.

So if the blog is quiet over the next few weeks, know that it's because there's a lot going on.  Life doesn't stop just because I'm trying to sell my house.  Many things I could write about, and whenever I find the time I may try, but until then, we'll play it by ear.

Cheesecake (again), and a Few Other Things

Where to start?  Last night I decided to attempt another cheesecake experiment, this time choosing to make a pumpkin cheesecake for Autumn.  This one was much simpler than the dark chocolate one, and so it didn’t take me as long.  In the end, the cake came out not as pretty as I’d hoped for, but not bad looking either.  The overall taste was great.  Smooth, sweet, and pumpkiny.  I didn’t like the softness of the crust, and if I choose to make this recipe again I’d probably bake the crust a little longer.  But the recipe was easy to follow and the results were definitely worth it.

[Windows—Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low.  Your system is low on virtual memory.  Windows is increasing the size of your virtual memory paging file.  During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied.  For more information…]

So.  Yeah.  Halloween’s just 15 days away.  We’re having a Halloween party at Stewartland this year.  Our neighborhood has almost a trillion kids in it, and on our street alone there are 65 (and our street’s not very long!)  So Halloween should be fun.  I’m thinking I may wear my awesome mullet again…

I decided to jump on the bandwagon with David and Crystal.  I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, but finally the inner author in me decided to take a dive.  I signed up for the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is a challenge to write and finish a 50,000 word (or more) novel during the month of November.  You can find more information about this by following the badge/link on the sidebar.

My step-dad’s having surgery today.  Back several months ago he was helping his dad cut some limbs out of a tree and he fell.  I think it was around 17ft or so up in the air.  He’s really lucky to not have more damage than he does, but he does have a lot of damage (crushed bones and the like in much of the right side). 

Speaking of lucky, check out this video of a six-month old baby surviving being hit by a train.  Apparently his stroller rolled down a ramp just as a train was heading into station and was hit.  His mother rushed to get the stroller and the train crashed into it as she was reaching for it.  Thankfully no one was hurt.

Oh, it looks like Joe Abercrombie will be shelved slightly longer than I thought.  I forgot that I have a library book to read (the next volume of The Fate of the Jedi series), but after that I’ll jump on The Last Argument of Kings.

I guess if you’re wanting to read a shout-out to why Chewie is the best sidekick in the Sci-Fi realm, you can click on this link.  The article is actually pretty dead-on and quite funny, too.  I always liked Chewbacca much better than 3PO.  That’s about it for today.  Sorry.  Maybe better luck next time.  Reviews next week!

On Working Around the House

I believe it was Spiderman's uncle Ben that said "With one's own yard comes great responsibility." It was when he was fleeing from the bandito that shot J.R. or something. Again, I'm not sure, but I think this is close to accurate.

Now that I own my own house I have a yard to maintain. This task has been slightly challenging, as the yard is all sod. And, having never experienced the joys of sod, I let some of it die within my first week or two at Stewartland, as I was implicitly told that I didn't need to worry about watering it and that it was already mature enough. Once I saw the brown, dead or dying spots in my yard I went to Wal*Mart and bought me a sprinkler. Now I water my yard either mornings or evenings, environmentally conscious of my materialistic need to have a green yard. (How ironic that I use the adjective green there.)

I mowed yesterday. I was going to get an electric mower, but I didn't, as they were much more expensive than their gas-powered kin. But I did buy me an electric weed-eater. It's pretty nifty and quiet, plus I have a million foot long extension cord so I never run into the problem of not enough wire. I also put together and hung up a swing for our back porch. I screwed in some hooks to hang plants on, but we currently don't own any plants that hang.

All in all I like being out in the yard on a summer night. The sun doesn't burn out until almost 9 o'clock, and it's nice being outside. The neighborhood has kids playing everywhere. Folks are walking their dogs. Me and Keisha take Stella for a walk around the trails that go around our neighborhood quite often. It's always pleasant being out, and now that we have a swing it'll be even nicer.

I'm really enjoying being a homeowner. I take pride in taking care of my place, inside and out. Sure, we're still in the unpacking phase, but we're getting there. Stewartland is looking more and more complete, though I'm not sure if it will ever reach the "completely satisfied" point. There always seems to be something else lurking on the horizon.

A Quick Update (complete with some miscellany)

We moved into our new house on Friday, 5/29. We are now officially homeowners. Everything went smoothly. I signed a million or so papers. The weather was nice for moving. The piano was not as heavy as expected. The weekend went by very, very fast. I'll be hopefully getting cable & internet for home this week. I'll hopefully get the piano tuned this week. I think I might cook tuna for supper tonight. My coffee cup is Darth Vader's head. I bought some new Sketchers. I also bought a pair of Levi's for $11! The ink pen on my stack of papers is a green Pilot Razor Point. Hopefully all the boxes will be unpacked within the next week or two. I like the radio feature on iTunes. I'm going to a Dulcimer Festival this weekend.