The House Without Heat

It's been a beautiful fall here in Bowling Green. Lots of sunny days. Lots of warm days. But the nights are cold now. We've had our heat on from time to time, and we both noticed that the heat pump was a little loud. But we couldn't decide if it was any louder than it was last year. Times like those, I wish I had carried a tape recorder with me so I could play it back and decide if the heat pump was louder last year than this. Turns out the tape recorder isn't needed. It is--or I should say was--louder this year. Last night, it made a death rattle and gave up the ghost around eight o'clock. Of course, there were two options to repair it. The cheap way and the expensive way. Turns out we need the expensive way. Plus the expensive way requires a part that takes a day to arrive, so we've spent the day--high fifty-nine degrees--and now the night with no heat. Our space heater blew a fuse, and we're out of logs for the fire. We wouldn't make good pioneers. Still, it's only one day. We hope. And for a while, it put us back in our grad school apartment, the one where the landlord would wait until we were all seeing our breath--inside--before he turned the heat on. And I thought, Weren't those good times?? And my answer was, Hell no. I like being a grown up and having my own heat.

The Cricket in the Shower

A few days ago--actually in the middle of the night--we noticed a shrill whistling sound coming from our bathroom. It's not a very big bathroom, and it's all tile, so any noise in there gets amplified pretty well. It was clearly a cricket that had wandered in from outside, perhaps trying to avoid the cooling temperatures. We both searched the bathroom high and low and couldn't find him. But at various times during the day--and especially at night--he'd let loose and start whistling. I even noticed that he'd be chirping away during the day, and if I went into the bathroom and opened the door, he'd stop. Instantly. And then later on he'd be back at it again. This cricket must have had a highly developed survival instinct.

Alas, we haven't heard the cricket all day today. Either he believes Sunday is a day of rest or he moved on to a better location or his brief hour upon the earth is expired. Someone asked us tonight if we had any pets. I told them about the cricket. But we might be petless again.

WHERE THE WILDS THINGS ARE

I have to admit I don't remember reading this book when I was a kid. I might have read it, but I don't have a distinct memory of it like so many people. I can't say I loved it because I don't remember it. So I'm not one of those people with a strong attachment to the original material. But I did want to see the movie. Very much. Especially after I read interviews with Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak in which they said it wasn't a typical kids' movie, and that it may not have even been made for kids. (Sendak also said that kids should be scared, which I agree with. We protect kids too much.)

Anyway, I loved the movie. It's one of the smartest, most original movies I've ever seen about childhood, about the very nature of being a kid. Of being out of control--physically and emotionally. About the emotional and physical minefield that childhood can be. (And, let's face it, it doesn't really end with childhood. Adults act the same way.) The visuals are stunning, the music excellent. In a couple of places, the plot drags a little, a consequence perhaps of adapting a ten-sentence picture book to the big screen.

And I don't really think it's for kids. I think one has to be older to appreciate what is being said about childhood. Though if I had kids, especially ones over ten years old, I'd be taking them. Yes, I would.

The Mean Streets of Bowling Green

We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. We've spent a lot of time living in cities, so the sound of traffic and sirens and screaming people became second nature to us. We liked it. It made the neighborhood feel alive. I love our neighborhood in Bowling Green and couldn't think of another one I'd like to live in. We chose it because it would be more quiet than the neighborhoods closer to campus where the people living next door to us might be students.

But things here can be a little slow. But the other day, I was in the back of the house and I heard the whoop of a police siren. It sounded close. Lately, the police have been cracking down on speeders who treat our twenty-five mile per hour street like the Autobahn, so I figured that was the case. When I came out, an officer had a car pulled over across the street. But then he brought the guy out of the car and started administering a field sobriety test. This was much more exciting than working, so I watched. I'm no expert, but once I saw how poorly the guy walked the straight line, placing his toe against his heel, I knew he was going away. He moved his feet as though he were wearing giant, lead-filled clown shoes. Sure enough, the officer put the handcuffs on him and took him away. Impounded the car too. All of this happened about two in the afternoon on a Tuesday, and then things returned quickly to normal. It will have to do for our excitement.

Fall Break

As a kid I always looked forward to days off. I'm sure ever kid did. Counting the days to X-mas break, counting the days to summer break. And then when it came, I would stay up late, watch lots of TV, laze around. I guess I never really thought about it, but I assumed adults didn't do the same thing. Here I am an adult and we have our fall break at the university, and I still look forward to the breaks. I count down the days, slack off as the last day of work approaches, and spent the first night staying up late like the school kid I once was. (Actually, I did grade some papers so I wouldn't have to deal with them over the actual break.) Worst of all, I know that on Sunday I will dread going back--and drag all day--just as I did as a kid.

Cooler Days

The leaves haven't really started to turn here yet, but we did get a little bit of a cool spell. It feels like fall, and now the calendar has flipped to October. Our house didn't come with screens--don't ask me why--so we're having them made. On Tuesday, weather permitting, there to be installed, which means we can let some of the fall air into the house.

As I was driving home from work the other day, I saw a truck hauling a trailer, and the trailer was full of large pumpkins. He was in town heading out of town, so maybe he had spent the day selling them somewhere. A few neighbors have already begun with the Halloween decorations. This is a great place to live at this time of year. People here embrace Halloween, perhaps since John Carpenter grew up here and based the small town in HALLOWEEN on Bowling Green and the surrounding area. I might just have to watch that again this year. It never gets old.

The Love Song of the Slugs

The other night, just after dark, I stepped onto our front porch. I saw what initially appeared to be a very, very long slug oozing its way across the bricks. On closer inspection, I saw that it was actually two slugs, the slightly larger one having positioned itself right behind the smaller one. I'm not sure how slugs reproduce, and of course I couldn't tell the genders by looking, but it seemed to me that either they had chosen that moment to play leap frog or some mating was about to occur. Far be it from me to interrupt such activities. I turned out the porch light and left them alone. And now I can be considered the Chuck Woolery of the slug world.