The hideous camellia has a weird, sort of mutant knot of flowers hanging from one of its branches. This is not the time of year for the camellia to bloom. It has no other blossoms. I wonder what triggered these flowers to go for it at this dark, insectless time of year?
I had a crazy day at work yesterday. I had to cover a couple of stacks of new books -- it seemed like 100 volumes, but about 25 is probably a more reasonable estimate. Many of them were novels-in-verse that are going to be used for Middle School classes today, so there was no time to waste. Do you ever read novels-in-verse? In other words, works of fiction that are written in a poetic style but follow a plot? They're not my favorite thing but they're big right now, particularly among books for young people. The cynic in me thinks they're popular because in this era of fragmented attention spans they can be read rather quickly.
Anyway...I also had to inventory the books for those classes and put them on a spreadsheet (my favorite thing!) and today we'll have to manage checking them out. It will be slightly more complicated than checking out normal books but the reasons for that are uninteresting even to me so never mind.
Plus, of course, all my regular daily duties including lots of re-shelving. When I write it all out it doesn't sound like much. Am I being whiny? Maybe.
I also received an unexpected and thoughtful letter from a blog reader, responding to one of my recent posts. I was so surprised that this person took the trouble not only to write me, but to write three pages, print them out and snail-mail them. It shows their level of passion about the subject at hand. Never mind the details but I will write them back once I've had a chance to compose my thoughts.
The other night I was closing our bedroom drapes, as I always do, and clipping them closed with the clothespin that always dangles from one side. We've done this every night for more than a decade because otherwise the drapes gape open slightly. It made me laugh at the persistence of this silly problem, and I got to thinking about the other quirks of living where we do.
There's our bedroom door, which will not stand open unless propped by some object. We use a pot that I made in pottery class about a quarter-century ago. It fits perfectly into that little space between the carpet edge and the door and holds it just right.
And there's the door to "the hole," the closet underneath the stairs going up to the flat owned by the Russians. It sticks because of repeated paint jobs, and it has a ridiculously small knob -- so small that it's impossible to grip, making it impossible to open the door. So we keep a bread knife handy on an adjacent table, to trip the latch and get the door open.
There are other issues -- the bathroom door that won't fully close because it doesn't fit the frame, and won't fully open because there's a radiator in the way; the sink that's too small to be truly usable.
I suppose every house has little oddities like these -- too minor to repair, but not optimally functional?
In one house that we rented, the developer had squeezed a WC into the cupboard under the stairs - unusable by anyone except a dwarf, but enough to boast a second cloakroom on the letting details, and bump up the rent accordingly.
ReplyDeleteThe bread knife caused a wry smile. We put a cat flap in our understairs cupboard (kitty litter box in there) and Mr T insisted on prising the whole door open rather than suffer the indignity of the cat flap.
ReplyDeleteI love quirky things around the house, hubby hates them, I don't point them out and enjoy them whilst they stay.
ReplyDeleteYep, our place has it’s little quirks, too. Not as charming as yours I think. But we at least finally have a big sink.
ReplyDeleteits... not it’s ... Oh dear god!!!
DeleteI am not very tolerant of quirks in my home but some you really do have just live with. The knife to open the door is funny.
ReplyDeleteThat pot used as a doorstop looks remarkably like a gazunder!
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't you just cover the pile of books with a dust sheet? It would have taken a few seconds. Also when you referred to "a ridiculously small knob", I thought you were going to talk about the 47th president of your old country.
ReplyDeleteIn German there's a saying, roughly translated as "nothing lasts as long as a provisorium", and it proves to be true time and time again.
ReplyDeleteWhat on earth is a provisorium?
DeleteTemporary
DeleteI am considering down-sizing and moving back to the East Coast. Going around the house, cataloging what needs to be done is eye-opening. Things I live w/that would never fly for a new buyer. That line "how you live in your house is not how you sell your house" is so true.
ReplyDeleteOooooh, a move! How exciting!
DeleteWhining is allowed. And it's not for long. Hey, we all have those weird house things -- I have more than a few too. When I sell in a few years it will probably be "as is" and eat the loss, because I'm not sure I could make up the work to go into it. Now most of them seem second nature!
ReplyDeleteSimilar thoughts were going through my head yesterday. I don't know how anyone could bear to live in my house - it suits us, but it's hardly conventional.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, we have a linen closet door that is held tight with very compressed folded pieces of cardboard. A bedroom closet door that is hard to open unless you grip it a certain way. We have also had for 2 years a heavy set of drapes that after being taken down for the rooms paint job have not closed properly. However, the drapes did finally drive me nuts and with a chair and husband standing beside me I got them all down, and readjusted the clips and now they meet properly. We also have an overhead light array that is very temperamental so we usually don’t use it. Jean in Winnipeg,
ReplyDeleteCodex: I installed an additional track to make curtains overlap. That know would have been changed quickly. Know. Know. Know. Three tries to overcome autocorrect. Thought you should know. Fs sake.it changed b to w again.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if every house has these quirks you don't even notice when you live there. I was thinking I don't have any when I remembered having to lean against the front door to make it click shut or it will spring open again later.
ReplyDeleteThe entrance to the bathroom off our bedroom has a sliding door rather than a simple one that opens and closes. I kind of hate it, but it will never be changed.
ReplyDeleteAs you can imagine, we have SO many of those quirks. A funny one that we ourselves have invented is that in order to keep the bedroom door open just enough to allow Maurice to come and go through it at night as she often does, we prop one of Mr. Moon's gigantic slippers between the door and the wall to keep it open. It works! If she gets shut out, she'll stand out there and wail at us to let her in for a sleep in the bed with us.
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, I could list a whole page of similar small things that I have developed my own little work-arounds to contend with the problem. I hadn't given that much thought before. The quirks of modern living.
ReplyDeleteWhere will you get your spreadsheet fix after you retire? I once created a database of all of our books. I even linked to their ISBN numbers. It was very ambitious! But I got bored after I had entered about 25 books.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of books, we use a history book about General Sherman to prop open one of our doors. Ha!
I have lots of things in my home that could use repair but I figure the next owner will probably gut the place and do it over so why bother?!
ReplyDeleteIt's funny the things you get used to in your home, like close pins and pots and screwdrivers. But I like the quirks.
ReplyDeleteFront door out of square because that corner of the house sunk so it sticks and has to be closed with the dead bolt because the regular latch doesn't line up. The plumbing between the kitchen sink and the septic tank is crappy which causes the it to stop up and drain very slowly on a regular basis. The knob that changes the water flow from the tub to the shower head turns on in the opposite direction (the left as opposed to the right like the knobs for hot and cold water).
ReplyDeleteOur house would not function without a small stainless steel letter opener, an antique from Ireland long ago, that sits in a jug on the shelf above the breakfast table. It's an opener of all things that need opening, a cleaning tool for assorted grooves and hollows, excellent for retrieving small objects from wherever, pushing heavier crumbs out of the toaster tray and removing dandelions sprouting up from between the paving stones on the patio - and that's just a small selection of what it is used for.
ReplyDeleteGo easy on the porr magnolia, it did try hard after all.
I think most of our homes have their funny little foibles don't they, and learning to cope with them with humour is so much better than getting persistently annoyed isn't it.
ReplyDeleteMy younger son once rented a flat with a very badly planned out kitchen, every time you opened one particular drawer the washing machine knob flew off, unless you remembered and just squeezed your hand into the smallest gap to retrieve things from the drawer. I always used to forget and was forever hunting for the knob that had flown across the kitchen.
I think older homes probably have more of these little problems. You could put a larger knob on the door to make it easier to grab.
ReplyDeleteWhen I travel, I now always take a clothespin to pin the drapes shut. I like a dark room. I also cover up all the LED lights on the TV, microwave and clocks with towels. I like a dark room.
You're going to miss your job so much when you retire:)
Even with the quirks, your flat and garden are lovely. The location is wonderful too. If you owned the flat, I suspect all quirks/repairs would be completed.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the Camilla is planted in a warm/sheltered location which encouraged the bloom. The flower is a nice, unexpected surprise.
Wouldn't Shakespeare count as novels-in-verse? I remember reading Romeo and Juliet in English class once upon a time. I can't really recall doing anything else like that since then though.
ReplyDeleteBut those are plays, not novels. I would say that novels in verse contain more narrative verse from the writer, as opposed to being composed solely of individual speaking parts, if that makes sense.
DeleteI don't like novels in verse but I can understand their appeal. We have two doors upstairs that don't stay open without a decorative rock. One of them is the cat's room which is important since that's where her litter box is.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for explaining. At first I thought that was a chamber pot by the door.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for your white camellia when you talk so ugly about it. I think it's pretty. Our camellia always blooms in cool/cold months, so I thought that was normal.
ReplyDeleteThe house's quirks...that if it were yours you'd probably deal with.....but as it isn't... it's not! Same here.
ReplyDeleteMy house is full of quirks. I just live with them. As for novels in verse, I've read some good ones for youth. But my fav is Beowulf (the Seamus Heaney translation ) which is essentially a novel in verse.
ReplyDeleteI really do think most of us have a few weird or quirky things around the house.
ReplyDeleteAll the best Jan
I feel obliged to defend the camelia. It's a nice looking flower, sort of looks like a double impatiens.
ReplyDeleteI don't think those doors are too minor and I would be getting them fixed. Odd about the camellia flowering at this time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments, everyone! I do agree that any house is going to have its little foibles. I like hearing about everyone else's! (Makes me feel like I'm not being taken for a sucker by our landlords. :) )
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