This is a brief entry. One might consider it a "for the records" sort of post. It is a memoir of sorts, based on the things I found as I'm moving into the new house. Based on impressions. It's a glimpse into another sort of life, which is always a very curious thing.
How shall I begin but at the beginning, with the introdution and the so-called background information? The previous owner is female, hispanic, and looked to be about thirty from the one time I met her, nearly a month ago. She has two kids, one at the five-eight age range and the other barely a toddler. She was recently devorced and she was in a hurry to move out. She wanted to close the deal as fast as possible and presumably she needed the money.
All that is well. That is only the background information. Here is the other bits and bats that we can use to try to reconstruct something (as I've said, I'm curious, and this is a fascinating thing to focus the mind on). Many of the window blinds are bent, and there are odd scratches on many things and few small things left in corners of closets which she had forgotten to take with her. From this we can see that she is more likely to have a careless sort of nature, more likely extrovert than introvert. Her room is painted plain white, with rudimentary celing light and fan fixture, while the two other rooms for her children (one decorated as semi-nursery for the younger one) was elaborately decorated with patterned paint and special light fixtures that you see on toy catalogues at Christmas. (The lights, of course, were taken down right before we moved in.) Small problems with fridge and water fixtures, denoting again that either she didn't notice, or she noticed and didn't care, or didn't have time to care. Old toys in the backyard, she cares for her children very much. Tarp-ed down and wood-chip-ed over yard, no time for plants, though the grass seed, the foot-print shaped garden tiles and the half-constructed tiers at the front indicated hope, at one time or another.
The tiers had plants that have spilt over, the hoses are spider-webbed, the plastic rack have a wasp nest inside. They have seen better days. They have been neglected. The first stiring of woodchips revealed what must be hundreds of cigarette butts, a few of them fairly recent by their looks. A chronic smoker then, but one who cared enough about her children to smoke outside (there was no odor of smoke of whatsoever indoors)-- and then to hide the evidence of her indulgence. Antique-feeling mirrors and painted lightswitches. Impractical and, as far as color-combinations go, in bad taste, but spoke of personality and thought.
There was a small orange-colored hair clip in the nursery room, by the closet. The toddler's a girl then.
A yellow piece of plastic puzzle, of a shape that I recognized from this classic children's puzzle set that my mother had bought me before I could remember, that I still could not solve without a solution guide. She had tried to norish their intellect, then.
A red-pink mock-leather wallet in the hall's closet, empty and smelling of perfume. It is new enough, but the perfume matches that from her room, so it's been used one or twice. Then why is it abandoned in the lowest back corner of a dust-bunny infested closet?
The smaller bedrooms had stars and giraffe patterns painted on the light switches, respectively. The bathroom and the hall: rubber duckies and a lone cow boy. The living room have fluted lamp shades the kitchen floral-patterned window decor with ruffles. Why, then, is the plainest, most undecorated place in the house also the master bedroom?
Why is the entire backyard in a state of neglect and devoid of other living things (save for those opportunistic critters that have found their way in) except for one florishing bush of pink four o'clock, beside the rock, almost squashed behind the door?
Why does the master bedroom have what's possibly the only door in the house that doesn't have a lock? And why is the most somber place in the house (by color and feel), the living room and the master bedroom?
Most of all, why do people put themselves through this?
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