Contingencies...Carrie

I said I needed to finish grading my papers (wait, marking my essays) before I could write in the blog, so I apologize to all my devoted readers for the delays...I would have finished yesterday except I had to go and pick out colors (or colours) for the kitchen, and it took ALL AFTERNOON. Who would think. We will have a new and exciting colour for our cabinets: barge blue. The ladies there restrained my from my impulse to have actual colour, rather than the subtle and possibly imaginary colours contained in the final selections of "barge blue" (grey with perhaps a hint of blue), seafog mist (or some such nonsense--kind of speckled grey) bench (countertop) and some other fog rendition for the walls. They did have a dizzying and sorely tempting array of colours for the walls, including systematic gradations of non-colour. I think we actually have double fog, or something. they had half-fog, fog, and double and sometimes triple somethings. I was most tempted by "half-ash." Although I really don't want a half-ash kitchen (it was a bit dark), I really would like to be able to say I had one.

Enough about kitchens? I am allowed to add colour as I accessorize. or maybe that's accessorise. they do that sometimes. Then we can change as the fashion police direct. Though I really do think there is something to that trying-not-to-be-too-quickly-dated. A bit too much of the current kitchen is harvest gold. Probably used to have an avocado fridge.

Then I arrived home dazzled and plumb out of decisions, and found that Emily's school had a disco planned that night. In fifteen minutes (5:30-6:30 for the little ones). We rushed over with much excitement and it was great fun: lots of little kids, girls mostly kind of dressed up, and boys looking cool with sunglasses (though it was dark), dancing happily to favorites (favourites) like "Rock around the Clock," "The Locomotion," and "Bob the Builder," DJ'd by a guy who looked like someone's grandpa. Some of the boys were quite good future breakdancers. Popcorn and juice were served, and an hour was just right.

Joseph also had a social milestone, or two. Last Saturday he was included in a group of boys from his Form (homeroom) who decided to go to a local internet cafe to play bloody computer games with each other. I mean that literally, not Britishally. So we said ok, and I ventured downtown and had a nice afternoon exploring the nice main library, and lots of shops around the area--discovered one very nice little street with cafes and a real bookstore (not a chain) and a couple of galleries. Joseph had a good time and assures me they were all on the same team, so were just killing computer-generated people, not each other, and it was a nice, clean, apparently safe place with very flash (snazzy) computers. They appeared to be decent boys...and then on Tuesday he announced that the next day was a half-day at school and they would like to take a bus downtown and play again. Ok, the fledgling is ready to venture out...so we said yes, and he did it, and we all survived. I went downtown to pick him up and the whole area was crawling with teenagers at that time of the afternoon (4:00). Identifiable by school uniforms of various sorts. He still won't let me take a picture of him, but we're thinking of sending Emily undercover. She likes to use the camera. I hardly ever see him in his uniform, anyway, as I leave before he wakes up and he strips it off immediately on getting home, before I get there.

And we are about to close on the house--Monday is D-day. D for dollar. We've been negotiating the tricky waters of international money-shifting for weeks, and seem to be ready...we do a walk-through tomorrow with the realtor, and the previous owners called and want to meet us and try to get us to buy some of their furniture--they seemed quite nice, actually; they are from Malaysia, and had all kinds of interesting shrines and figures around the house. I suppose those are gone, now, but we'll see. On Tuesday they are supposed to deliver our furniture and boxes, boxes, boxes. The shipment will be accompanied by the customs inspector, who is wondering what is in all those boxes, particularly (we suspect) the ones that the packers described on the shipping list as containing "gunsswans." We are wondering what could possibly be in there, too. In our next episode, Carrie and Manford have interesting encounters with international law enforcement...

Stay cool!