The New Normal

First: the day to day life details which seem really ordinary when you know how to do them but which pose great complications when you do not.  Hub and I agreed on Friday that everything in South Bend has taken us about twenty minutes longer than we thought it would and about thirty minutes longer than it really should.  Very simple tasks like finding the grocery store become hour long journeys through sketchy neighborhoods filled with overly friendly gentlemen and angry looking women.  

Friday was one of those days.  We bought a desk, a really cool desk, from a Restore here in SB.  But, unfortunately, this gorgeous desk couldn’t fit into the back of our car.  Because we’re new in town, this poses a rather significant problem.    In Lawrence we would call up any number of dear friends and ask to borrow a truck, but in South Bend, things are more bleak.  Instead, we went to the neighborhood Home Depot to rent a truck.  Now to get a cheap flat rate, we had to return the truck in 75 minutes or less.  Doesn’t seem like a big deal, right?  No big deal until the fearless navigator gets lost on some winding road in Mischawaka with no gas station in sight.  Though it was a little stressful, we made it and with some puppy dog eyes from the handsome hub, we still got the flat rate.  Not bad hub.  

Shortly after the truck debacle, we returned home to the prospect of dinner.  We had invited the other first year grad students from hub’s program to come over since we were all in the same lonely boat.  This doesn’t sound too hard starting off, but the afternoon’s excitement put us late starting dinner and we rushed around to get everything ready.  At 5:55, with everyone arriving at 6:00, I was turning up the oven to make sure the cheesy bread finished on time.  Funny sounds started to come from the oven (which always smells funny when we turn it on to begin with).  I was a little distrusting so I kept checking to make sure everything was all right.  My hunch was rewarded when I opened the oven door to find flames making their way up through the oven.  I let out a little screech to hub and we began to fight the fire.  In this we discovered that the fire safety that is ingrained in us as small children is wholly unhelpful when it comes to kitchen fires.  Hub dutifully manned the pan to fan smoke alarm, while I timidly tried to dump the contents of a couple of glasses of water into the oven (it’s hard to dump water, even when fire is involved).  When my lame attempts didn’t work, Hub handed me the fan-pan and took over.  He was not nearly so timid and under his dousing the fire went out and all that was left was a coating of ashes over everything in our kitchen and a horrifying smell of burning cleaner.  

Good things that came out of this: (1) we discovered that the drawer under the stove is not really a drawer, it’s a broiler.  Whoops.  New-fangled stoves are hard to handle.  (2) We also discovered that our neighbors take an eager interest in the building as they came down in force to figure out what the smell was.  It’s not the way we had planned to meet our neighbors, but it certainly worked.  (3) Hub and I learned that in dire circumstances we can actually work as a team—fires: a catalyst for marital growth…

Other happenings have been less stressful.  For instance, the farmer’s market here in SB is really glorious and cheap.  Unlike Lawrence, where you paid more for the farmer’s stamp, these folks are pretty reasonable.  Saturday I wandered through isles of peaches and apples and berries and corn, haggling with Indianans and trying not to step on small dogs.  The effort paid off and Hub and I have been eating the first fruits of sweet corn and blueberry cobbler and so forth.  

Hub is ready to head off to grad school

Farmers Market goodness

Blueberry ice cream in our A and P mugs

Barry the Basil--My latest attempt with plants

This week represents the return to more normal life for hub and I.  He is back at work now, and I am back to filling the days with whatever I can find.  The loneliness is a little more intense now as I wish I could pop home for an afternoon or grab coffee with a friend.  This too shall pass we hope and though our first church-hunting endeavor was not so successful, we hope this dry season will have an end.