Keith just called. His best friend from childhood will be driving down here tomorrow, along with wife to be and their five children. They will spend the night and then drive down to Panama City, where they will be getting married.
My head is spinning. I've got a lot of cleaning to do. Actually, I'd probably better start the laundry right now.
The spare room used to be clean. Then, Keith needed some long lost and generally unnecessary item of equipment, stored somewhere in one of his eight bags of non identified stuff.
So he did what he always does. He ripped through the bags, disemboweling them and strewing their contents over the entire space. The amount of stuff that eight bags can hold is mind blowing. It's like watching a clown car unload.
So now we have what looks like an Army Surplus store's entire inventory blanketing the bed and carpeting the spare room. And the other spare room was never actually converted from a storage area. All it is is a bare room full of boxes and one really old desk in the corner.
This must all be converted into something resembling two bedrooms.
Oh goodness.
Sayonara, story. No more pleasant meanderings along your wooded paths, your quiet houses. Not for me the work of drawing out the moss grown, ancient convent, with its orchards and tolling bells, with paths of grass and dormitory rooms with steeply slanting ceilings.
The sweet scent of boiling rice, the scarlet maple leaves slipping through the air, the shuffling sound of socks upon the tatami mat and the cool autumn evening; I must put it all away, for the next few days. It all must wait, and simmer away without me.
