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Paean to Portability

Paean to Portability

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Let us pause for a moment to praise portability. Here I sit in my kitchen rocking chair, laptop on lap (actually, laptop on lap desk on lap), able to sway back and forth to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, now blaring from the radio, monitor soup simmering on the stove … and also write this post.

This is nothing new. I’ve drug this trusty machine all over the world. But given that I came of age first on typewriters and later on desktop computers, the fact that I’m able to hop around the globe or the house, creating a workspace wherever I sit, is nothing short of amazing. 

What does portability provide? Ease and freedom. Today I’m appreciating them both.

(Sometimes the laptop is almost lost amidst the clutter that surrounds it.)

Desk Envy

Desk Envy

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I really can’t complain. I may not have the desk of my dreams, but it’s not bad. An apple-green table of a desk, only slightly dented and worn (a lopsided heart carved into the middle, a few splotches of salmon-pink paint in one corner, souvenirs of the girls who once used it).

True, it does not overlook the Atlantic Ocean, or the Front Range of the Rockies, or the harbor in Oban, Scotland. But it does have a lovely view of the backyard, the main street of the neighborhood and a corner of the woods beyond. 

My perfectly-fine desk doesn’t keep me from having desk envy, though. And last night I experienced a full dose of it while watching the movie “Something’s Gotta Give.” It wasn’t my first viewing of this film, but it was the first time I had desk envy watching it. 

Instead of focusing on the budding romance of Erica the playwright, I zeroed in on her writing space. The broad expanse of the (mahogany?) desk, the perfectly placed lamp. The windows! Oh, my gosh, the windows! And the door, open to sea breezes.

I keep telling myself it’s just a movie set. But still…

Laundry Day

Laundry Day

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“Perhaps the job most loathed by Victorian womanhood was doing the laundry,” Ruth Goodman writes in How to be a Victorian, which I mentioned a few days ago. 

As I sort through my own darks and lights, I can’t help but think about how differently my laundry day will proceed from that of the Victorian woman’s. Hers would have started on Saturday, when the soaking began. 

More than 36 hours later she’d begin hauling and heating the water to eke out suds from the harsh soaps of the day, then stirring and agitating the clothes in a tub with a dolly stick (a plunger-like item) to remove the dirt. If she was lucky and had a wringer, she’d remove water from the clothes that way; otherwise, she’d wring them by hand. This would repeat through a couple of rinses, of course. In between she would have to carry large tubs of water in and out of what was most likely a cramped, dark kitchen. Only then could she hang the clothes up to dry. 

Laundry took up so much space and water-heating capabilities that the family would have a cold supper on laundry day, relying on leftovers from what was usually a larger meal on Sunday. 

Goodman says that her own historical laundry experiences lead her to see the automatic washing machine as “one of the great bulwarks of women’s liberation, an invention that can sit alongside contraception and the vote in the direct impact it has had on changing women’s lives.”

The Appointment

The Appointment

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I made the appointment, and I’m keeping it. Not the dental appointment, though I made that one, too. This one is with the Reston Used Book Shop, where I’ll take a box of books tomorrow. If I can lift it, that is. 

I’ve written before of purging and rearranging, of my meager attempts to bring order from chaos. This current book removal project began as part of an ongoing basement decluttering effort, and has spread upstairs to a slew of double-booked shelves. 

The question now: Do I start filling another box to give away? Not so fast. I don’t want to overdo it. So I  haul the carton to the car for tomorrow’s date with destiny. That’s enough for now. I think I’ll celebrate …  by ordering a new book. 

(The future home of many of my books, I hope.) 

Out with the Old

Out with the Old

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Like many folks during these waning days of 2023, I’ve spent a few hours getting rid of stuff I’ve accumulated this year and many other years (emphasis on the latter). In particular, I zeroed in on an area of the basement where I’ve stored — dumped might be a better word — the girls’ dolls and toys. The girls who are grown up and raising children of their own. 

Obviously, this is a task I’ve postponed for years. And no wonder. It’s a bittersweet duty indeed. Here were favorite toys I’d long since forgotten — stuffed rabbits, a dancing mouse, an acrobatic lamb on a stick, a jack-in-the-box. Here too were boxes of school work, mostly middle school and high school, so not that precious early stuff, but still a potential minefield. 

I’ll admit the tears flowed as I sorted through these treasures. They were good tears, necessary tears. I was mourning a time of my life that is no more. Like any other loss, it’s better to acknowledge it, to kiss it and let it go. As I write these words, I can hear the garbage truck stopping in front of the house. Now all of those relics … are truly gone. 

(An old photo of a messy garage that I trot out when I need evidence of Too Much Stuff.)

Badge of Courage

Badge of Courage

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Long before Shout, my go-to stain removal substance, and the little Tide pen I now carry with me on trips, there were stain removal charts. Mine is tacked up in the laundry room and is still my best source for wild and wacky — but often effective — stain removal tips.

From it I learned that the remedy for ballpoint ink stains is glycerine. I once had an old bottle of the stuff that worked wonders, saved a yellow linen shirt that I paid way too much for and was almost ruined by an inky gash across the front.

I used that old bottle until I couldn’t anymore, but I regret to say that the new stock I ordered — proudly described as vegetable glycerine — isn’t nearly as effective. I scrubbed and scrubbed and managed to mute the stains slightly, but the ink stain isn’t gone … and probably will never be.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter. Ink stains are a badge of courage, not a blot of shame.

(A lovely painting — by Edmund Blair Leighton — but an ink stain ready to happen?)

Blanker Canvas

Blanker Canvas

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I’ve removed the standing desk from my office, a large black metal contraption that sat atop the scarred apple-green desktop. The standing desk was helpful when I spent more hours sitting. Now I’m free to jump up and down scores of times a day — and I do so, probably more often that I should.

But that’s another matter.

What I wanted to mention today is the geography of my workspace, how the terrain has changed. A vast, flat expanse has emerged now that I’ve removed the two-tiered standing desk. And with it gone, I realized I could shift the desk lamp from the far corner to the exact midpoint of the surface, between the windows, so as not to block the view of trees and sky. 

It’s a blanker canvas. A more open vista. It suits me now. 

(The prism that hangs between the windows makes rainbows on the walls.)

A Reckoning

A Reckoning

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The furnace came on this morning. I smelled the heat before I felt it, slightly acrid but warm and comforting, too. The aroma of thick bathrobes and steaming kettles and stepping inside from a cold rain. 

We could have held out longer, but why? It’s inevitable. The cold is coming. Toughing it out won’t keep it away. 

As befits a day of forced air heat, clouds dominate, and the stillness they bring is welcome. They promise seclusion and concentration and a long writing session. They promise cold, too. 

Vintage

Vintage

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It just dawned on me that my blog is like my kitchen: both are vintage. Although I cook on a gas stove  manufactured in this century, the cabinetry, Formica and wallpaper hail from the 1970s. 

The template I use for A Walker in the Suburbs isn’t that old (it couldn’t be!), but in tech terms it’s a woolly mammoth, held together by random HTML code and the good will of Google (ahem). 

In both cases, I’m playing for time, hoping that if I hang on long enough, what’s old will become classic.

(Apparently, I take no pictures of my own kitchen. This is from a house we rented at the lake. It’s dated, but not as old as mine.)

Sideways

Sideways

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It’s part of the Charleston allure, the way so many single family homes in the historic district sit sideways on their lots, presenting to passerby not their ample fronts but their narrower sides.  

It wasn’t for tax purposes, but for privacy and tranquility that the airy old manses on Tradd or Legare turned their shoulders to the world.

I didn’t enter one of these homes, but I can imagine the cool breezes that would flow from the portico ceiling fans. There would be rocking chairs, of course, and tall glasses of iced tea, beaded with moisture. 

To enter you’d step through a portal that led from street to porch. A false door? Perhaps, but it provided an extra layer of protection between inside and out.