4 posts tagged “home”
Snark is working at his computer on the sofa, with his knit hat sitting companionably next to him like a deflated small animal. We have a programmable thermostat that will automatically let the temperature of your house plunge to something cheap and uncomfortable while you're out or sleeping, and heat it back up in time for you to care. The idea, of course, is that you save money without actually suffering any deprivation. However, we set the times back when we both went out of the house to work every day. Since then, things have changed, and he works at home while I'm at my office on campus. You might think that he would adjust the settings to reflect this fact, but instead he likes to try to muscle his way through, and I often come home to find him wearing a hat, a scarf, a coat, or all three. I'm sure he'd wear gloves too if he could type with them. Then I turn up the heat and make fun of him, and he slowly sheds the extra garments. The result is that bits of winter clothing can often be found in unexpected places around the house.
Now he has just idly reached out and picked up the hat with one hand as he stares at the computer. He's put his hand in it like a mitten and is twirling it around and around. Now he's dropped it back down again, and it sadly looks much more deflated this time around: no longer companionable, just defeated. Oops! He's picked it up again and put his hand back inside. He gives it a number of little quick shakes, then puts it back down. All of this seems to be entirely unconscious. His gaze remains fixed on the screen, and his face gives no indication that he has noticed the hat at all. It's just something between Hand and Hat; he takes no part in it himself.
Oh! I'd been spending some time trying to articulate the special variety of ennui and encroaching mortality that has been plaguing me lately (products of this effort not worth keeping for posterity) and while I was engrossed in that, the hat somehow made its way right back onto Snark's head.
Observing all of this has actually been very cheering.
And now Snark has just offered to get up and make us cocoa, and the cat is scrabbling at the door asking to be let out (he'll regret it, it's turned back into winter out there). Melancholy provisionally averted, domesticity ascendant.
Our favorite teapot originally belonged to my grandmother. Nanny had been brought up poor and proud in prewar East End London, and (having grown up to not be poor) was very, very particular about her house and everything in it. When I was a girl, I didn't appreciate how nice all of her things were -- a lot of them were very midcentury modern, and I thought they were just plain weird. (The womb chairs, for example.) But I am now quite ready to appreciate the handful of things that were hers that are now in our house. They are truly all beautifully made, and beautiful, and just perfectly redolent of her.
And so it was very sad when last week, the teapot suddenly went CRACK and water began pouring out the bottom. I am sure it was at least thirty years old, a good run by any estimation, and had faithfully served up enormous quantities of tea day in and day out.
I immediately snatched it up and looked at the bottom to see who had made it, and ran to the internet to see if I could replace it. Well, I could, but it would cost rather more than I had expected or would ever be inclined to spend on a teapot on my own initiative. (This is often the case with Nanny-things.) I dithered about it. Was replacing it really going to mean anything? asked a friend. It wouldn't be the same teapot, after all. Wasn't it kind of like buying a new goldfish after the cat ate the old one and hoping no one would notice? This was perfectly true, but I decided that it was what I wanted to do, anyhow, even though this also made me feel like a crazy person.
So I did, and here it is, and I am glad. Buying the same teapot over again was in fact the perfectly right thing to do, an active affirmation of how much I appreciated the original. I feel a wave of fondness every time I see it on the table or the counter and it is just exactly right. Our people have this teapot. Good teapot. Hello. (Oh, look, I am a crazy person. That's okay.)
This was right in the middle of those super low temperatures we had about a week ago. It was strange how everything else was frozen entirely solid, while the water gushed on.
