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1:37 p.m. - 2003-01-02
Sarah and Ted and Miguel and Gregg and George
Ah, I am just USELESS!! I cannot seem to pull myself together to write about the remaining part of my Christmas up North. I'm just too much more into cleaning and organizing my studio and all my goals for 2003 (which include taming the elusive and cranky Burma and getting slides done of my art that don't have a coffee table in the background.)

So I'm going to give up the blow-by-blow recap and just write about the minimal highlights. Well, look at it this way: the blow-by-blow would probably just bore you stiff anyway, right?

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Besides seeing Seth, Sunday was also the day we saw Sarah and Ted and the house they bought 2 1/2 years ago. This was definately a high point because the last time we saw them they were still in the ghetto apartment house in Jamaica Plain. Since we're now out of the house-buying mode and into the house-fixing-up mode, I was anxious to see their new place.

It was distressing. I haven't wanted a house so bad since I wanted the house we actually bought. It conjured up serious cute-house-envy, and made me wonder if we had lost our minds to have bought a 50's modified ranch house. I had to mentally keep listing all the really groovy aspects of our house and land in order not to just fall on the floor in a state of covetous hysteria.

God, I want their house!

It's a cute cottage-y sort of house, and even though it's small (1200 square feet) it feels much larger because of all the rooms and nooks and crannies and groovy built in china cabinets and window seats that are also storage benches and the lovely little yard in the back that Sarah and Ted have landscaped. It has the original woodwork in the original, unpainted condition, and they've put in ceramic tile floors in the kitchen and bathroom.

Urrrrrrrg....I'm drooling just thinking about it.

It also was beautiful because Sarah is the queen of gorgeous interior decorators. If I had any money I'd fly her down to do my house, which is currently being redecorated in a style which can be classified as "Bizarre Ethnic Artsy Vintage Influenced By Tricia Guild And The Local Thrift Shop". Sarah's house is one of those places that look like they should be photographed for some funky but chic home decorating magazine.

I have to stop writing about it. I feel so helplessly inadequate!!

Anyway, the big part of the visit was that Ted made an amazing and overwhelming brunch for us with homefries, omelet, baked flounder, fruit....I never realised he was such a great cook. I ate myself silly at their perfectly set dining room table with the Christmas tree next to it. And then we exchanged presents which was funny because Sarah and I had used the same wrapping paper that we had gotten at the Dollar Stores in our respective towns (Yeah! America is homogenous!) and so we got a little confused as to whose presents were whose.

I'm so fond of those two. Just thinking about them makes me wish I lived closer. Sigh.

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All too soon it was time to cut the visit short and rush on to our next equally short and hurried get-together with dear old friends. One of my New Years Resolutions is to actually spend more than two hours each person I love on the next visit home.

We picked up Miguel at his apartment in Cambridge and zoomed off into the sunset (well, actually not because we were headed East) to Gloucester to see Gregg and George and their new house. Yes, house buying seems to be the thing to do these days!

Unfortuanately I was equally filled with house envy, but not cute house envy. No, this was rather a sort of Big-Victorian-Which-Hasn't-Been-Badly-Renovated-By-Icky-Yuppies type house envy. Gregg tried her best to pull me out of it by pointing out all the bad things about it.

She started when we first walked into the house. She had to ask us to take our shoes off because they had the floors redone and the varnish hasn't cured yet. It's been a big, exhausting ordeal for them which I honestly can't say I envy. "And we don't know if they'll EVER cure!' wailed Gregg. "It SUCKS!!"

We proceeded on a tour of the house, with Gregg pointing out all the bad parts. "Look at these windows! Screw historic preservation, I want to replace them with ones that don't leak air! These ones SUCK!" and "Look at all this greasey stuff all over the kitchen walls! I've scrubbed and scrubbed for hours!!! It SUCKS!!"

It didn't work. For all she tried to convince us that we were really smart to have bought a modern house in great condition I found myself lusting after the groovy, if leaky, windows and the window seat in the hall and the humongous foyer and the oddly shaped attic rooms. I started having all these bizarre ideas about how to turn our house into some kind of hybrid. Yeah, a 50's house with Victorian windows! Yeah, a built in old China cabinet when we redo the dining room! Yeah, weird molding everywhere! We'll get it from a salvage place!

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Gregg also made a delicious dinner of pea soup and egg pie (um, that's a quiche for all you snotty folks!) I did remember that she was a good cook, despite all the years it's been since we saw each other. I had the unnerving realization that I am actually a terrible cook and wouldn't be anywhere near able to present these kinds of dinners. I guess this probably has something to do with the fact that I have two entire pantry shelves full of candy and sugar related items and anything else I eat tends to come from a can. This does not make for a fabulous gourmet dinner for guests.

We all sat around the famous pink table which has survived intact from the days of 20 Ashford Street. It actually looked different than I remembered it, even though Bruce and I used it as our dining table for a number of years. It's weird how memory warps things.

I must admit I got really sappy at that point (though I kept it to myself) about how we had all basically stayed together for most of the last 20 years and would probably know eachother for the rest of our lives, despite Bruce and I having fled to the South. I do worry about losing touch with people down here, and it was a reassuring dinner. Not to mention nostalgic. I think Gregg should paint her kitchen black and pink and then we could all meet there for 20 Ashford reunions!

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That's all for today. Man, next time I will write things out as they happen! This business of searching my memory is like wading through a vat of molasses to find a straight pin....


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