that time of year

green and brown
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Audrey has a cold; Miles is walking around saying "You will contract zee swine!" in an exaggerated accent and I am tired. Nobody has heat, except me, and my heat is either solar or magical, because I have no propane and no furnace either. It doesn't matter: my house stays in the high sixties for no apparent reason and now I understand why the people who lived here before me never bothered to replace the old furnace or buy propane. This is wonderful - I have never had a warm house before and I am all about it - but I sort of wish I had figured the magic out before I got into an expensive contract to buy a new furnace. Still, it's nice that I'm not freezing as I wait for the new furnace, which, according to the furnace guy, I should definitely be getting someday, perhaps when the cows come home.

Audrey has no heat because she, like many, cannot afford to buy oil. You may or may not be aware that if you rent or own a house in Asheville, as opposed to an apartment, you cannot pay as you go for heat but instead must buy at least 100 gallons of either heating oil, propane, or, more rarely, kerosene. That is around $300 - $400, which is a more or less insurmountable sum to accumulate if you're making regular twenty (or, let's face it, forty at a nonprofit) something wages here in our lovely mountain city. Therefore, she is spending a lot of time at my house, sniffling. I have just erased a rather lengthy rant about the war on poverty that is always being waged in this country; you're welcome.

In other news, my friends Anthea and Tony, who now live in Portland (Oregon, not Maine) called up on Sunday. They were driving a car cross country and wanted to stop by. I told them about the rock slide, which is more than the Tennessee highway department had bothered to do, yet they persevered through Hot Springs and come to stay with us on Sunday night. So that was lovely and also a big surprise: Anthea, who has always been willowy slim, is still very slim but now is sporting a large bump in front. Sometime in February there will be a new kid in Portland; this is awesome although I must say, these kids growing up and having kids, good god, it seems like just yesterday she was 11 and torturing Audrey in Barbieland.

And, as time flies, so Thanksgiving is the damn day after tomorrow. We still have room and turkey for a couple more people, so if you find yourself at loose ends or inexplicably turkey free, come on over.