The world is a different place during work hours. Stores and supermarkets are virtually empty. People aren’t in such a hurry; they seem to meander more. Those of us who don’t go into an office for work get used to the the leisurely crawl of the work week day that never seems to compress, no matter how busy we are. We are surrounded by silence, and in that space, little daytime dramas loom large and loud.
I am used to this. I don’t even really think about it anymore, but it’s interesting watching Steve settle into this new world. And whereas he once laughed at the minutiae I fed him in the evenings, now he participates eagerly.
Our little neighborhood is a hotbed of drama. For instance, the neighbor across the street two houses up just moved out. Turns out that when she and her husband got divorced, he agreed to make the house payments for a year. It’s been almost two years, and she simply would not move. So he stopped making the payments, got a friend to repossess, and then had his new girlfriend buy the house. Now, the girlfriend has evicted her.
So she and her two children have been spending the past few days moving. She is a nice enough woman, I guess, but boy does she yell at her kids. That’s what we’ve been listening to. Bump. Thud. “I told you not to …” “Are you listening … ?” It goes on and on. “God,” Steve said. “No wonder he left. Can you imagine living with that?”
Or there’s the Korean family across the street in the huge 50s monstrosity. They are doing major work on the house. Actually, it’s kind of depressing, because they’ve done in two weeks what it’s going to take us 5 years to do.
“Now they’re repainting,” I tell Steve.
“What color?” he asks.
“Come see.”
Right next to them, is the lady whose father was the original developer of this neighborhood. She is 101. Every now and then, she emerges from her house. It’s not that exciting, but during the day, it seems worthy of a mention.
“I saw the lady across the street,” one of us will say.
“What was she doing?” the other asks.
“Taking out the garbage.”
And of course, there are the dogs. We are surrounded by yappers. A yapper gets going, and then the next thing you know, dogs are howling, baying, yodeling, and practically mooing. “Jesus,” says Steve. “I can’t hear myself think.” I agree and then get back to work.
I had thought that having Steve home during the day would drive me crazy, but it’s not. Not at all. In fact, I feel closer to him now that he is participating in the observation of such little things with me.
*** So much for being all sensitive. Steve looked at me like I was crazy when he read this post, and told me it was all my imagination.
Should I be embarrassed at the sheer number of kid books on the blog lately? Probably — but I think children’s literature is more consistently good than literary fiction. Sure, there’s some good stuff out there, but I am getting more and more disgusted with a lot of the pretentious garbage that masquerades as literary highbrow. With kid’s books (and romance novels!), you know where you stand: they don’t purport to be anything more than what they are. I think kids have higher standards than adults in a lot of ways — and they’re a lot harder to fool into thinking something’s good when it’s not.
