Tuesday morning window-condensation view. It's EW-mid here today, folks. Temperatures aren't as hot as they have been, but it's still a sauna out there. I said to my husband, as we half-walked, half-swam up the hill for home with the dog last night, that this is what we pay for the lovely mild winters here. And it's true, although this time of year I start to think, But what if we had permafrost instead?
So. Much. Needs doing around this house. I'm feeling overwhelmed by it at the moment. The closet in my office is a wreck, full of stuff we moved into it when we moved into this house. It houses our big central filing cabinet, which is fine, but also a bunch of old clothes, and shelves of I don't even know what paperwork and documentation, and then stuff we've just piled in there (we=mostly I) because there wasn't anywhere else to put it. We have big upstairs closets, too, but they are also disaster areas, crammed with stuff that again we didn't know what else to do with but didn't want to get rid of. Summer is when we have time to deal with these things, but no energy. Winter: energy but no time. I'm about ready to pay somebody, although . . . at least in the case of the closet in here, I suspect the husband is attached to things that I would just as soon throw out, in order to have the space. I really don't know what's in all these file boxes on the shelves, but it must be important or we wouldn't have moved it all those times . . .
Anyway. That's on my mind. The front porch is also covered with cobwebs, the whole house needs pressure-washing on the outside, the whole inside needs painting, the roof needs work . . . I read a Twitter discourse the other day about how the housing crisis is the fault of older people (us, for example) "hoarding" our big houses that young families could otherwise move into, and my thought is that actually, at this moment, if I could, I would move out of this house, because that would be an excuse to get rid of stuff that I otherwise can't talk other people into dealing with.
But also I have to say: Young families do not want my house. It has been a fixer-upper since we moved into it, and no matter how much we do fix it up, a fixer-upper it shall remain, because it's a hundred and two years old. Like a very old person it needs constant care. Young families largely don't want that, and who can blame them? They want a house in an HOA neighborhood with a playground and a community pool. They don't even want the kind of starter home we started with, because it's not enough space. We put doors on the formal living room and turned it into our bedroom to make the space work for our family of 6, but that's not what people seem to want to do anymore.
Also, even if a young family wanted this house, which I bet they don't (lead paint, babes, although my kids who grew up here seem to be fine), we could not buy a smaller house in this neighborhood, which we like, for what we paid for this house in 2008. Mind you, there are houses for sale even now. There are NICE houses for sale in my neighborhood. Beth and Eddie's house next door is still for sale. The lady behind us is selling her quite nice little house (brick, screen porch, screen summerhouse in the backyard). There's a funky bungalow --- again, a really nice house, just added onto in interesting ways since the 1920s --- around the block. These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head, in a pleasant, safe, settled neighborhood.
So hey, young families. But the deal is that we live in a small town in the part of North Carolina that is not near the Research Triangle. We're within reach of Charlotte, but it's not a quick commute. There's a lot more here than there was when we bought our house --- I would especially have appreciated the splash-pad park on the greenway when I had little kids --- but this is still not really what you'd call a growth area. If people want houses, they're here. And despite its small-town limitations, it is a nice area.
This area is nice enough, in fact, that if we sold our house today, at 2024 prices, we probably could not buy one of these smaller houses currently for sale without loading ourselves up with an enormous mortgage to hoover up whatever we have to live on in retirement, assuming anybody does ever actually retire. And we're not poor. We're just not sitting on a $700,000 house that we could liquidate and buy what we wanted. This house will not fund our old age. What it will do is house it. I really hope to have the closets cleaned and organized before that eventuality comes to pass, and maybe the porch pressure-washed (actually I would like to rip off the entire back porch, which includes my nasty laundry room, and rebuild it as a utility area with built-in storage, but realistically, it's probably just going to be a decaying junk area for the rest of my life, which is exactly the kind of thought that makes me want to move). But anyway, this idea that everyone in your parents' generation is wealthier than you are, can do what they want, and is just selfishly refusing to relinquish their houses for you to buy, is . . . indicative of some failure to observe actual people in the wild?
Also, what the heck? If everybody over 65 decides to downsize, what do you think they're going to buy but the very same starter homes you also want to buy, of which there is a massive shortage? Or maybe it is that you don't want the starter homes, because you think they're too small (and again I say: formal living rooms can be bedrooms), but they'll do for your dumb old parents?
Alternatively, have you actually looked at what retirement communities cost? Because I have. Ain't no way. My mother likes to say that old age isn't much fun unless you have a lot of money, and . . . well, okay, once again I guess we'll have to be creative, because we certainly aren't moving to anything like the place where she lives. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't. We don't actually want to, because we like living in a neighborhood of diverse people and all ages --- where right now we also couldn't really afford to buy a smaller house, to free up our big house for all you people who say you're not having children because we're hoarding the houses with multiple bedrooms and big gardens . . .
I also think that the part of this that people aren't talking about is how much student loan repayment is hampering people's buying power. Maybe this is their parents' fault too, which I say unironically, because yes, my generation's sense of what people need to do and have in order to be respectable does, in this economy, set the next generation up to struggle. The Texasgirl and her husband managed (through luck, at least on her side) to graduate from college with no debt, which has put them ahead of their classmates in terms of being able to buy a house. The house they bought is small, and they bought it thinking of it as a starter home, though I think their thinking has shifted to we're living here for the rest of our lives. Both of them grew up largely in small spaces --- we didn't move to this house until the Texasgirl was almost 15. Before that she had lived in a rectory and a series of apartments, then a small rental house and, eventually, the little first house we managed to buy when she was 12. Our son-in-law grew up in a family of 6 in a similar 3-bedroom ranch house. So the "starter home" they own feels to them like a house they can live in for a long time, even if eventually, and by some miracle, their family expands. And they are fortunate, and unique among their friend group of just-turned-30somethings, to have it --- because they were free of other debt.
OK, enough complaining about the world. I have stuff to do.
And really, nothing to complain about. Look: my book of short stories is available for pre-order! And check out the endorsements. I didn't know about Ron Hansen, whom I now must write and thank with all my heart.
Also, our new parish pastor is having his installation Mass today at noon, and I plan to go --- reinstating daily Mass as part of my life is a goal of mine, now that . . . well, now that some changes have happened in the parish. We'll still go to the Abbey on Sundays (and I want to go there on Thursday to see Br. Gabriel make his first profession of vows), but if I can stand to go back to my parish on weekdays, and reintegrate myself into a more regular habit of Mass and confession, then that would be a wholly good thing.
Wearing today:
*Secondhand Eileen Fisher merino tank, bought January 2023, last worn May 31
*Secondhand Garnet Hill cotton-modal maxi skirt, bought June 2024, last worn June 17.
*Secondhand Birkenstock Mayaris, bought April 2024, last worn yesterday
So, a total thrifted outfit, and a tweak on what I had planned on Sunday. I really just wanted to see how I liked this tank with this skirt. Answer: a lot. Now, for Mass at noon I'm either going to have to put on a cardigan OR to change my shirt so my shoulders are covered --- I'm not sure yet which thing I will do. I might just change to my planned pink linen top and have done with it, but we'll see.
I have been trimming my own split ends, which is probably not a great thing to be doing, but at least my ends feel softer than they did. Might be updo time for a while . . .
Yeah, see, if I just stand like this all the time, everything is great.
Before I go and do stuff, here's your periodic dose of Naked Old Face:
Because this is normal and beautiful. Life is good, and the way it marks you is good. Note to self, but note to you, too.
UPDATE:
I did change into my actually planned outfit to go to Mass (which I will shortly do):
Seemed easier than picking a cardigan to go with hot pink. And having bought this lovely little shirt, I did want to wear it.
LATER:
Very nice Mass. The church was packed. The former pastor had been ill since the start of Lent, and while various other priests covered for him, there haven't been daily Masses, or weekday confessions, or any of the other sacramental pegs on which a parish hangs its daily life. The Gospel for today was the one in which Jesus pities the people for being "sheep without a shepherd," and it was remarkably apposite. The new pastor is young and seems energetic, is liturgically a good fit for the parish, and if today's homily is any indication, is not overly in love with the sound of his own voice. Mass again at noon tomorrow, a much better time for me than the former 6 p.m. slot, with confessions beginning at 11. I imagine the line will be out the door, but I might try to get in.
Back home, I have:
*eaten some hardboiled eggs for lunch
*read poetry submissions for the magazine
*answered some emails
*done a little dog training (because she was barking at me and pawing me for attention, so we did some "lie down" practice)
*messed about with a little versecraft
*cleared the deck enough that I think I can spend some time reading this afternoon
Current reading:
Don Quixote (the eternal Don Quixote, although it is a lot of fun)
Plato's Apology
I'm still reading Laurus, too, but in a really desultory way. I don't hate it, but I'm not enchanted by it, either. Meanwhile, what I'm trying to do is get back into reading my way through the Harvard Classics, which I have in their entirety on Kindle. I had tried this once before, starting at the beginning --- and the beginning is The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, who honestly goes on a little long, and not nearly as entertainingly as Cervantes.
So I've decided to skip that first volume with what my husband calls the Dull Americans and leap right into the not-at-all dull Greeks. Socrates, man. Having the conscience. Doing the right. It's a little hard toggling between two volumes and finding my place again --- I have to memorize which chapter of DQ I'm in or I'm sunk. But I think the only way I'll get through all this reading is to do it Charlotte-Mason style, and slow-read a lot of things all at once, in a programme.
Things I have already read in the Harvard Classics, recently enough or often enough in the past that I don't want to read them again:
A House of Gentlefolk and Fathers and Sons, Turgenev
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I had actually started Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle a month or so ago, while I was reading the book on Darwin and Emily Dickinson, not realize that I already had it in the Harvard Classics. Part of me doesn't want to read the scientists, such as Lister and Pasteur, or the French philosophes. But if I'm going to be a better educated person, then I must. Little bits at a time. That's the Charlotte Mason secret --- read it in bites. Tell yourself it's okay not to love it, but try it and persevere in manageable doses. This is the way.
I'll get there faster, too, if I stop talking about it and actually do it.