January 29, 2004

• Our Sit-com Life

  
  

  Sometimes living around here is like being in a sit-com, sort of like the Osbournes without drugs.  There are times when Doug (Kathy’s adult son who lives here) and I manage to avoid the sniping and sarcasm and sort of play off each other’s remarks, much to the delight  and amusement of Kathy.  And there are other times I feel like the Ozzie Nelson for the new millenium, and I want to don  a cardigan and wander around the trailer saying “Harriet, I’m worried about the boys.”  Anyway, what happened this morning was a classic case in point.

  
  

  I had just gotten up and I’m sort of putzing around, doing what Kathy calls the “inconsequential shit”–cleaning the litter box, emptying her pee buckets, putting out water for the dog, taking out little bags of trash.  (Today is trash pick-up day, and a reminder of our relatively new-found affluence–we actually pay a couple of burley young guys to heave our trash and whatnot into the back of this huge truck.  Used to be, we would burn all our paper trash and let the other stuff pile up in the yard. Every few months, I would gird up my loins–so to speak–line the back of the station wagon with newspaper, and haul the stuff out to the local drop-off place, paying four bucks a cubic yard for the privilege.  But I digress.) 

  
  

  I haven’t had my coffee or my meds yet, so I am about as sharp as a sack half-full of wet leather.  I see this untidy pile of newspaper on the footlocker we use as a table in the living room, think “What the heck is that doing there,” stuff it into a plastic grocery sack, take it out to the garbage cans.  I notice that Doug has thoughtfully moved them closer to the road, for the convenience of the trashmen–thing is, he put them right behind  my car, so I need to move them before I can move my car.  But I digress.  Again. (Late-breaking news–cancel the preceding whine–the garbage guys got here early, I don’t have to move the cans again after all.)

  
  

  Anyway, a bit later, I go out to look for the paper.  (Another new thing–we actually pay someone to bring me the daily paper–what a luxury.)  No sign of it.  “What’s up,” I wonder.

  
  

  I ask Kathy if she knows anything about newspapers, and she says she put the pile of papers on the footlocker before I got up, having found them on top of the fruit basket on the table next to the couch (aka Couch Potato Heaven).  Turns out, that had been today’s paper.  Doug brought it in.

  
  

  So I schlep back out to the garbage can and dig through it until I found today’s paper, thankful that it was free of coffee grounds and stuff and glad that it’s not real cold–it’s a few degrees above zero–since I hadn’t bothered to put on a coat or gloves.

  
  

  Just another morning in our little inmate-run asylum.

  • 4:46 pm
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