tuckova

Oh, I want to do a whole thing about how the cottage was totally
neglected for 8 years, and so if anybody had thought we were going to
make it better instantly then that person was crazy, but I'll tell you
that even though the neighbors are surely frustrated that we haven't
gotten ourselves all up to snuff yet, we've focused on domestic issues
and the improvement to the land itself is dramatic, albeit subtle. It
was A METAPHOR, because everything is a metaphor. I might write it
someday before November, but not today.

Last weekend we went to the cottage (!I know!) and Squire was being
impossible, totally disinclined to work. At all. You'd open your mouth
to some sentence about the chainsaw and he was too absorbed in
re-reading a book to even notice you were talking. It was irritating.
Then I realized it could be fun. I dubbed it "Proust Weekend" and I
think everybody deserves one once in a while. We propped him up with
pillows and sleeping bags that I declared were furs, and we fed him tea
and gave him snacks and inquired after his general health and his
digestive system every couple hours. Friar said we should get a
four-part novel out of it, and perhaps someday we will, but the point
was: you make it a game, and then it is one. Proust weekend is not
remotely irritating; it is fun and it is funny!

Squire started school again Monday, so I think a Proust Weekend was a
well-deserved sort of mental bachelor party. School persists in being
stupid. They've changed their idea over the summer that he should take
Some Other Language and decided that he should take English classes. So
yeah, the native-English-speaking kid will be learning "eeeeet eeees
ayyy dog!" yay. I went and met with the English teacher, and suggested
that she let him read (English) books during classtime or that perhaps
she use him to help the strugglers or something. She mainly seemed
interested in if she could give him the same tests she gives the other
students. I have lost the battle over how this is stupid, and am now
girding up for the battle over whether "How come" is correct English
(or whether "Do you have" is the same as "Have you got" or whatever
idiomatic and correct English he'll be using and be corrected for
using). Le sigh.

I could make a list for you over battles lost and battles won and you
would be horrified. Not least because I tend to change allegiance: take
the swimming battle for example. Sometimes it's hard to care enough to
fight from where the sun now stands.

Also on Monday, for SPICY, my computer died. I don't even want to hear
about it. My grandmother had serious trouble keeping pictures in frames
and my parents have a recurring problem with the front door of their
home and I cannot, CANNOT, manage to keep a system that backs up what I
said. I have lost journals to rainstorms and apparently I can knock out
a computer by sneezing.

And that's us: an unexplored metaphor, a proust weekend, school is
stupid, my computer died. It's September, and I wish you the best,
because we all deserve it.