Homesteading

Random Thoughts on Our First Few Weeks In the Far Burbs

Feeling guilty about the increase in my carbon footprint. Gotta drive everywhere (and oh wretched SHATNER do I hate driving), the city doesn't do compost (so we're back to throwing out food scraps as garbage, which feels like a terrible step backward, until we can get our own compost thing going), I've had to buy a bunch of new plastic-wrapped stuff to get the house set up. On the plus side, the driving adds up to less than what Mr. Gleemonex alone was doing before, so that's actually a net reduction (just feels like more to me personally).

I fear that we have stumbled into a nest of Republicans. Our neighborhood is beautiful, lots of "mature" (meaning built in the early 70s) houses, extremely well-maintained, with aggressively manicured lawns (my kid calls this one neighbor's topiary'd trees "head trees"). And we like the pretty. But ... instead of four (4) Priuses on one block like our old shambly street, everyone here has Trucks. Big Trucks. Our neighbors across the street have two Suburbans and one shiny pickup. I think two people live there. It's weird. And EVERYTHING was closed on Easter Sunday -- even Banana Republic, which I know for a fact is open on Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving Day. The only store in the metropolis that was open was Gucci (which clearly favors making a buck over honoring the Risen Christ, and bully for them). I just ... I get the feeling our Obama signage next summer may stand alone on our street, dig?

We have so far been invited to church thrice, by three different neighbor persons, and have been brought baked goods by one. (My reactions: No, No, No, and Awesome, thank you!) Everyone has been super nice so far -- that's pretty cool. We lived at our old place for seven years, and only ever spoke to the people from one house. Oh, and Mr. Gleemonex talked cars with the creepy psycho-killer from the other end of the street once. But here, we've already met people.

You can make protected left turns and U-turns ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE here. Now THAT'S being organized for the automobile. I don't like it, the car-orientation, on a philosophical and moral level -- but, you guys: LEGAL U-TURNS. If you gotta drive, best you get to U-turn like a mothafucka, am I right?

I love my commute. I don't love getting up at 6:00 sharp, and it's a bit of an ass-pain to get to the train, but once I get there ... there's this beautiful station, built in 1935, with immense high ceilings, wooden benches golden with age, inlaid floors, old signage and murals, a tiny snack bar nook that smells of fresh coffee in the morning and absolutely heavenly fresh-popped popcorn in the evening. Passing through it is a high, every time (and so much better than that hideous depressing ugly windswept pigeon-shitted Soviet-bloc-looking BART station in the cold that I used to have to use). And my fellow riders -- Caltrain patrons are Commuters, man. No Krazy there. It reminds me of the LIRR, which I will continue to love till the End of Days, and it's an hour each way that I get to sit and write the book that will eventually make me too goddamn rich and famous to need to commute anymore ... but I'll still do it from time to time just for fun.

I love our palm trees, our pool, the view, the space, the feeling that this is ours. It's been exhausting, this move, and there's no end in sight ... but we are home, y'all.

U Draw Ass

Can we please stop with saying "[something] cum [something]"? Please?

You'd think in the post Beavis and Butt-Head era of modern society that we'd avoid that particular construction, and yet you still see it all over the place. I know, I know, it's real and valid and all that, but A)please, and B)must we?

You can't think of any better way to put it? You don't want to go with the more modern "slash" -- either the word, or the character, or (as with Conan O'Brien) a small icon of the head of Slash? What's your point? You want to show you know how to use the construction, or that you totally know Latin shit, or that you're above the immature giggling that is everyone else in the world's first reaction? Well yay for you. But I'm asking all writers of the world: Please don't, okay?

Thank you, from Gleemonex.

"Oh, Mister Floyd. Will you be gracin us with your presence today?"

So: We are moving. This is the central fact of the Gleemonex Family's existence at this time, to the exclusion of pretty much all else (including our 12th wedding anniversary, which was yesterday, which we celebrated by packing boxes all day long).

The move is awesome and groovy -- we're going from the tiny 3/1 windswept house at the edge of the continent to this bigass 4/3 Spanish-style thing with palm trees and a pool and good schools down at the southern end of the Silicon Valley, and we are really excited. WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SUMMER AND IT IS GOING TO BE AWESOME. I have been ballz-freezing cold for about thirteen years now, ever since we moved to SF in the summer of '98 and I'm fucking sick of it. Side note, you folks in the SF bay area or possibly also Manhattan island likely find it unremarkable that we are first-time homeowners at the age of 37, while you Midwesterners and Southerners are like, Finally growin up, are ya? Real estate here is fucking Krazy Kart Death Race, I'm telling you.

But anyway. So there's like a million Guys you have to call (carpet guys, carpet measuring guys, fumigation guys, fumigation prep guys, palm tree care guys, PG&E guys, water guys, garbage guys, chimney inspection guys, cable guys, armpit hair remediation guys, what the fuck EVER) and so many boxes to pack ... we've lived here nearly seven years ... you open a closet and BLACK DESPAIR pierces your heart, no kidding. We ever move out of this new joint, we're selling it as is, furnished and with our names still on the utility bills because FUCK IT.

Oh, and also, grave issues with the health of a member of my family of origin have required me to make a visit back to Olde Cowburg right in the middle of all this. Plus the job search. Plus there's international travel in early May (which, again, I am totally psyched about, but could we ADD more complications right this second? I keep thinking of that line from "Just," where Yorke is going "You do it to yourself, you do, and that's what really hurts ...").

To illustrate how completely the moving has taken over our brains, I will share a story.

Me and Mr. Gleemonex are crashed out watching the Yankees. Joba Chamberlain's pitching. We start bagging on him, as always:

"Been working on that Power Eating plan all winter, eh?"

"It looks like he's wearing a turtleneck made of a whole nother guy."

"Lookit those JOWLS. What the hell is in there?"

"He looks like Artie Lange."

And neither of us came up with the obvious. Maybe that's because we are Sophisticates who shy away from the obvious on principle. Or maybe it's because our brains are fucking fried. Either way.