21 December 2004
103
R. Linda:
I mentioned Tonya and I were looking to move out of the city of Boston. Ack, the taxes, the crush of humanity, and the city living, is not exactly Tonya's cup of tea. For a Jersey girl, this is rather a strange craving since she was brought up in busy Toms River, New Jersey where there be a lot of hustle and bustle, not to mention honking horns, red lights and people everywhere.
I suppose you can say it be her dream to live in the country. She is a Kindergarten teacher, but finding no work in Beantown, resorted to her minor in college education, buyer of clothing lines for stores. She loves the job but would rather teach, and moving to the country she sees this as a career move. I don't know if it really would be since she creates her own fashions on the side and, to be honest, she must be talented because the ladies in me building think her designs are quite something. I think that is why Argie's mode of dress annoys her, among other things. Tonya made up me pirate outfit if you remember.
She does this bit of fashioning on the side when she isn't buying for the small chain of stores she works for. She has incorporated herself into making these "country style" dresses and that bit of life is cutting more and more into her paid professional one. She says she could probably drop the store and open a boutique of her own if she was in the right location. Better, she might even find a job as a Kindergarten teacher. Yes R. Linda, when it came down to it, it be location, location, location!
This bit of idea has crept more and more into our conversations of late and it came to pass she asked me if I enjoyed paying the taxes I do, living in a city that didn't exactly give me my money's worth. Well, begorrah me, I had never thought of it that way. She regaled me with the idea that a sales tax and income tax was draining yours truly dry. I was all into this and her eyes were shining and she said we should take two weeks off together and go to a place where none of these things like taxes existed and see if we could hack it there, and if we could then by golly we should move there.
We both have two weeks coming in holiday pay so this was a grand idea, I thought.
Where is there said I, and with eyes a-twinklin' she says New Hampshire!
Not the place I near froze on Lake Whatsayacallit, and where the thermometer reaches 10 below and the pipes break, or where turkeys pose as pterodactyls and try to outrun your car, not THAT New Hampshire surely?
"Gabe, there is no income tax, no sales tax. We'd have more money."
What could I do? I didn't want to wimp out so I said for her to arrange to get off and I would too, for her to pick out where she wants this experiment in terror (well, it be to me), and I'll do me best to kick in me resolve and try it out.
I did mention she'd sell more clothing in VERMONT, but she said that was a poor state and well, "Taxes Gabe, taxes."
She did all this arranging of a place to live for two weeks, and we got off and so last Sunday we took off for a place called, are you ready? New Boston. I liked old Boston, but well what can I say?
Talk about being out in the boonies, I think we found the boonies for real and well, she rented a lovely home with (get this) an option to buy. I was impressed she'd find something so quick, but Tonya had been investigating this move for a very long time, unbeknownst to yours truly. I was simply plucked to go with her.
I must say the place is a pretty one. The house is an old antique colonial cape that was built in the 1700s. It has two-floor living, a pretty backyard that melts into the woods where there is a stream flowing merrily and nothing but trees for as far as the eye can see, once you get passed the herd of 179 deer populating the place. The house sits up off the road on what looks like a wee hill until you try to walk it, and then you notice your breathing is heavy from the exertion of uphill mobility. If you turn around and look back down towards the one-lane road, there is a pond right on the other side of it.
Now this is the picture of old New England at its grandest. The Christmas postcard people dream of living in. We found it, or more correctly Tonya found it. The first three days were idyllic. The fireplace in the living room presented a cosy environment to sip hot mulled cider, the upstairs bedroom fireplace was quaint and the old-fashioned atmosphere would lull anyone to dreaming of quiet times past. Oh if only the walls could talk!
In this lovely setting, we were, until I saw a snowflake. Not one, but many fat flakes. Tonya told me that fat flakes meant not much snow. However, by the end of an hour, the fat flakes had disappeared into a white sheet of smaller flakes coming down like you would not believe. That prompted me housemate to shake her head and say, "Uh oh, small flakes mean lots of snow."
Well begorrah me, it looked like a blizzard it did and the last time I saw flakes like that, I was on me way to New Brunswick (a place I never did see), and ended up at Henry and Henrietta's in Nova Scotia for a prolonged stay that I did not enjoy. Burr.
It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed three days and nights straight. We ended up with over a foot and a half of the white stuff. The ploughman came and he ploughed a path not where the driveway was, but where he felt it should be. Ah, memories of house-sitting!
Tonya was no help at all in boosting me optimism, she told me we would be housebound until April. Oh me God, me job back in Beantown, I'd lose it for sure, what to do? I thought to go light a big bonfire in the backyard and pray for summer weather like the Druids did in England, but it was too cold to do that.
Meanwhile, Tonya's sister was sending us a live "something" for Christmas, and since it was alive and Tonya was not in old Boston, she sent it to New Boston. I don't understand the logic because Alison could have taken it in for her. But no, it was coming HERE. Now we had been going down the driveway or the new driveway for the mail as if we expected such, and to be honest with yourself, it was more an excuse to go outside and see whose nose hairs froze first.
A few days of this and no mail be in the box, including junk mail (which you know with a certainty arrives no matter what), no life whatever either. On one occasion, I got to meet the mailman. He came in his old jalopy and he chugged up the new driveway looking a bit confused we moved the old one, to inform me the mailbox as it was, was too low and I had to raise it up four inches or not get mail. Four inches. Hum. I informed this person that it was not me mailbox, but Tonya came over and said we'd do it, she was after all expecting a package.
Now this is all fine and good to the mail carrier and Missie Tonya, but yours truly is thinking he isn't hearing any of this because yours truly is not going out in 17 inches of icy snow with a pickax and shovel to dig a hole. Wrong, Tonya got a shovel, shoved it at me startled self and directed me to "dig."
Grumbling up a mighty storm of indignation, I took myself down the driveway to the mailbox and uncovered the damn bloody thing from the snow. Then I found I did need a pickax to unearth it and dragged me knackered self up the hilly driveway to the shed for said implement of hard labour.
I dragged meself back down again, all huffing, puffing and cursing, and put pickax to the ground. I want to tell you right now, that when the metal hit the hard dirt there was an electrical current that ran from the pickax up the shaft into me weary arms. I was standing there wide awake, feeling the current hit me with such force I fell over backwards into the snowdrift that was the piled snow from the snowplough. There I was on me back, legs sticking up out of the snow, me still holding onto said pickax, about to smother.
I was saved by Tonya who stood over the hole I had made in the snow looking down at me, hot chocolate steam wafting up from the thermos she held in one hand, cups in the other, to ask me the stupid question of, "Gabriel, what are you doing down there?" Which was not what I wanted to hear. I needed help, and that is what I yelled up at her, HELP!
With an oh dear, she put down the hot stuff and took the pickax from me now frozen straight arms and dead fingers and then grabbed me by the coat sleeves and started pulling. Well, about ten minutes later, with her having shovelled me out, I be sort of standing up, arms out straight because they were frozen in me jacket that way. I was so filled with anger at the mailman, that I unfroze me frozen limbs from the heat of it (and much more cursing) that I ripped the mailbox off the fecking post and jammed the thermos onto the flat board where the mailbox used to be and with a pocket full of duct tape I taped it to the board and then I taped the mailbox to the thermos.
"There! That's four inches higher for him don't ya think?"
Tonya was standing there watching all this, eyes bigger than saucers, saying abso-bloody-lutely nothing because me dander was up and she knew better than to say a word. We trudged up the driveway, me cursing the mail carrier under me breath all the way. I don't know if he was impressed with me Irish ingenuity or thought I be a nutter, but the junk mail started flowing at least.
More later, it gets worse and I be not up to recalling it right now, I'd like to forget. ;(
Gabe
Copyright © 2004 All rights reserved
R. Linda:
I mentioned Tonya and I were looking to move out of the city of Boston. Ack, the taxes, the crush of humanity, and the city living, is not exactly Tonya's cup of tea. For a Jersey girl, this is rather a strange craving since she was brought up in busy Toms River, New Jersey where there be a lot of hustle and bustle, not to mention honking horns, red lights and people everywhere.
I suppose you can say it be her dream to live in the country. She is a Kindergarten teacher, but finding no work in Beantown, resorted to her minor in college education, buyer of clothing lines for stores. She loves the job but would rather teach, and moving to the country she sees this as a career move. I don't know if it really would be since she creates her own fashions on the side and, to be honest, she must be talented because the ladies in me building think her designs are quite something. I think that is why Argie's mode of dress annoys her, among other things. Tonya made up me pirate outfit if you remember.
She does this bit of fashioning on the side when she isn't buying for the small chain of stores she works for. She has incorporated herself into making these "country style" dresses and that bit of life is cutting more and more into her paid professional one. She says she could probably drop the store and open a boutique of her own if she was in the right location. Better, she might even find a job as a Kindergarten teacher. Yes R. Linda, when it came down to it, it be location, location, location!
This bit of idea has crept more and more into our conversations of late and it came to pass she asked me if I enjoyed paying the taxes I do, living in a city that didn't exactly give me my money's worth. Well, begorrah me, I had never thought of it that way. She regaled me with the idea that a sales tax and income tax was draining yours truly dry. I was all into this and her eyes were shining and she said we should take two weeks off together and go to a place where none of these things like taxes existed and see if we could hack it there, and if we could then by golly we should move there.
We both have two weeks coming in holiday pay so this was a grand idea, I thought.
Where is there said I, and with eyes a-twinklin' she says New Hampshire!
Not the place I near froze on Lake Whatsayacallit, and where the thermometer reaches 10 below and the pipes break, or where turkeys pose as pterodactyls and try to outrun your car, not THAT New Hampshire surely?
"Gabe, there is no income tax, no sales tax. We'd have more money."
What could I do? I didn't want to wimp out so I said for her to arrange to get off and I would too, for her to pick out where she wants this experiment in terror (well, it be to me), and I'll do me best to kick in me resolve and try it out.
I did mention she'd sell more clothing in VERMONT, but she said that was a poor state and well, "Taxes Gabe, taxes."
She did all this arranging of a place to live for two weeks, and we got off and so last Sunday we took off for a place called, are you ready? New Boston. I liked old Boston, but well what can I say?
Talk about being out in the boonies, I think we found the boonies for real and well, she rented a lovely home with (get this) an option to buy. I was impressed she'd find something so quick, but Tonya had been investigating this move for a very long time, unbeknownst to yours truly. I was simply plucked to go with her.
I must say the place is a pretty one. The house is an old antique colonial cape that was built in the 1700s. It has two-floor living, a pretty backyard that melts into the woods where there is a stream flowing merrily and nothing but trees for as far as the eye can see, once you get passed the herd of 179 deer populating the place. The house sits up off the road on what looks like a wee hill until you try to walk it, and then you notice your breathing is heavy from the exertion of uphill mobility. If you turn around and look back down towards the one-lane road, there is a pond right on the other side of it.
Now this is the picture of old New England at its grandest. The Christmas postcard people dream of living in. We found it, or more correctly Tonya found it. The first three days were idyllic. The fireplace in the living room presented a cosy environment to sip hot mulled cider, the upstairs bedroom fireplace was quaint and the old-fashioned atmosphere would lull anyone to dreaming of quiet times past. Oh if only the walls could talk!
In this lovely setting, we were, until I saw a snowflake. Not one, but many fat flakes. Tonya told me that fat flakes meant not much snow. However, by the end of an hour, the fat flakes had disappeared into a white sheet of smaller flakes coming down like you would not believe. That prompted me housemate to shake her head and say, "Uh oh, small flakes mean lots of snow."
Well begorrah me, it looked like a blizzard it did and the last time I saw flakes like that, I was on me way to New Brunswick (a place I never did see), and ended up at Henry and Henrietta's in Nova Scotia for a prolonged stay that I did not enjoy. Burr.
It snowed, and it snowed, and it snowed three days and nights straight. We ended up with over a foot and a half of the white stuff. The ploughman came and he ploughed a path not where the driveway was, but where he felt it should be. Ah, memories of house-sitting!
Tonya was no help at all in boosting me optimism, she told me we would be housebound until April. Oh me God, me job back in Beantown, I'd lose it for sure, what to do? I thought to go light a big bonfire in the backyard and pray for summer weather like the Druids did in England, but it was too cold to do that.
Meanwhile, Tonya's sister was sending us a live "something" for Christmas, and since it was alive and Tonya was not in old Boston, she sent it to New Boston. I don't understand the logic because Alison could have taken it in for her. But no, it was coming HERE. Now we had been going down the driveway or the new driveway for the mail as if we expected such, and to be honest with yourself, it was more an excuse to go outside and see whose nose hairs froze first.
A few days of this and no mail be in the box, including junk mail (which you know with a certainty arrives no matter what), no life whatever either. On one occasion, I got to meet the mailman. He came in his old jalopy and he chugged up the new driveway looking a bit confused we moved the old one, to inform me the mailbox as it was, was too low and I had to raise it up four inches or not get mail. Four inches. Hum. I informed this person that it was not me mailbox, but Tonya came over and said we'd do it, she was after all expecting a package.
Now this is all fine and good to the mail carrier and Missie Tonya, but yours truly is thinking he isn't hearing any of this because yours truly is not going out in 17 inches of icy snow with a pickax and shovel to dig a hole. Wrong, Tonya got a shovel, shoved it at me startled self and directed me to "dig."
Grumbling up a mighty storm of indignation, I took myself down the driveway to the mailbox and uncovered the damn bloody thing from the snow. Then I found I did need a pickax to unearth it and dragged me knackered self up the hilly driveway to the shed for said implement of hard labour.
I dragged meself back down again, all huffing, puffing and cursing, and put pickax to the ground. I want to tell you right now, that when the metal hit the hard dirt there was an electrical current that ran from the pickax up the shaft into me weary arms. I was standing there wide awake, feeling the current hit me with such force I fell over backwards into the snowdrift that was the piled snow from the snowplough. There I was on me back, legs sticking up out of the snow, me still holding onto said pickax, about to smother.
I was saved by Tonya who stood over the hole I had made in the snow looking down at me, hot chocolate steam wafting up from the thermos she held in one hand, cups in the other, to ask me the stupid question of, "Gabriel, what are you doing down there?" Which was not what I wanted to hear. I needed help, and that is what I yelled up at her, HELP!
With an oh dear, she put down the hot stuff and took the pickax from me now frozen straight arms and dead fingers and then grabbed me by the coat sleeves and started pulling. Well, about ten minutes later, with her having shovelled me out, I be sort of standing up, arms out straight because they were frozen in me jacket that way. I was so filled with anger at the mailman, that I unfroze me frozen limbs from the heat of it (and much more cursing) that I ripped the mailbox off the fecking post and jammed the thermos onto the flat board where the mailbox used to be and with a pocket full of duct tape I taped it to the board and then I taped the mailbox to the thermos.
"There! That's four inches higher for him don't ya think?"
Tonya was standing there watching all this, eyes bigger than saucers, saying abso-bloody-lutely nothing because me dander was up and she knew better than to say a word. We trudged up the driveway, me cursing the mail carrier under me breath all the way. I don't know if he was impressed with me Irish ingenuity or thought I be a nutter, but the junk mail started flowing at least.
More later, it gets worse and I be not up to recalling it right now, I'd like to forget. ;(
Gabe
Copyright © 2004 All rights reserved
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