Little orange agate of an adventure
Picture our 700 square foot home awash in the smell of boiling cabbage. Nope, we're not full o' Irish... Just trying to make natural egg dyes as the cumin tea cup boils over in the microwave. Add the several day old mystery pee spot (where IS it?) in the boy's room (because the tub won't drain and he waited far too long without a diaper for that bath) and you get one stinky house. This was the state of things when the hope of our back-up house love, complete with playroom and double lot potential garden space, died via the phone last week. Whenever another viewing, offer, or online house match-up failed we always had our never-ending short sale dream. Then it ended (We strung you along so long the market picked up and now we think we can get ever so much more for it!). This weekend my sewing machine died; I can't find a pulse. It's just been stinky and sorta blah around here.
The boy gets totally behind any suggestion of a plan though: "Yets DO IT!" ("Let's...", fists pumping air). He jumps all over everything (our coffee spills on the couch) and it's decided we must salvage our weekend, leave three piles of laundry on the Morris chair and have an adventure. A ferry adventure.
The captain surely wasn't the captain because he wasn't wearing a cap. On the return trip three painters, two life-vest-wearin' ferry workers and a priest walked through the cabin door, in succession, and we readied ourselves for a cosmic joke. A train wound it's way through our island views (LOUD!) and we threw pebbles on the beach. The boy found an little, orange agate.
The cosmic joke, of course, is how your house can stink, your sewing machine can die alongside home dreams, luck can fritz out a bit and life is still fully beautiful.
Sweet post. I've been reading a lot of your archives lately while my toddler was in the hospital. I really enjoy your writing.
Posted by:Mary Beth | March 17, 2008 at 04:52 AM
That's a quote worth cutting out and sticking on the fridge : )
Posted by:Autum | March 17, 2008 at 05:01 AM
sometimes an adventure is just what the doctor orders. I'm sorry the week was so awful - here's hoping for a better one.
Posted by:Sarah Jackson | March 17, 2008 at 06:19 AM
yep. sometimes you've just got. to. get. out. of. the. house! Here's to a new week!
Posted by:melissa | March 17, 2008 at 07:14 AM
a very nice post
Posted by:denice | March 17, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Hugs to you. You're a good person, you know that?
Posted by:Alicia A. | March 17, 2008 at 12:14 PM
Bummer about the house...the right place will come, esp. with spring right around the corner. I'm glad you could salvage the weekend, and a fun ferry ride no less (after a week of sickness--mine then hers--I ended up having the stomach flu all weekend).
Let's get together soon. I'll buy you a cup of coffee!
Posted by:carrie | March 17, 2008 at 08:49 PM