WEEPIPR

My maternal grandmother's habit of saving all types of plastic containers, including yogurt pots and flimsy bowls from microwavable dinners, and using them to eat from every day despite having cabinets full of china, has inspired me to do the opposite. I know my mom would say the same—I'm pretty sure that she began using "special" dishes and cutlery all the time, instead of saving them for "special," soon after the time we stayed in my grandmother's Kansas house and helped her move into an assisted living place.*

Aww, spoony spoony.

I've done the same thing, especially since we were able to remodel and simplify our kitchen. There is one silverware drawer with all the silver we've collected over the years, and one with mainly stainless steel but also a cache of (unmatched) silver teaspoons. I love to use those spoons.


Our next door neighbors moved out abruptly last week. Well, it was abrupt from our point of view, but who knows. To them it may have taken forever. They were renters, from the elderly owners (who moved in with a daughter in Illinois years ago, and may or may not still be living. Before they left, the German retired philosophy professor, famous for scaling ladders and trees to paint his house and do extensive pruning well into his 70s and early 80s, gave Zoë a beautiful typewriter with a German keyboard). Yesterday there was a man with a metal detector combing the yard. I wonder if he was looking for something specific (A lost piece of jewelry? A time capsule buried years ago?), or if that's just a thing people do when they move, just in case. I am imagining the house will be sold. I am really going to miss hearing the kid next door practicing his bagpipes, and yes I mean that sincerely. Mark and I referred to him as "Wee Piper" despite the fact that he is now in high school, because of his mom's vanity license plate, which read WEEPIPR. Also, he was a Boy Scout and sold us an affordable and lovely Christmas wreath every year. And once, he and Mark teamed up to rescue a baby squirrel. They probably lived there for five or six years, right next door, and those are all the interactions I can think of. My neighborhood is weird.



*Mark was there too. We were children, practically. It was fun, and later we found out that there was a carbon monoxide leak in the house that had no doubt put a madcap, lightheaded spin on the whole thing.