A Surprise Behind the Door
I suppose it’s time to tell you: I came back to my house yesterday—my house, the one with the thrice scrubbed floors that still feel and look and smell of plaster dust, where every chair I own was drug out for the holidays only to be ensconced once again, as soon as the last guests took their leave, beneath their plastic shrouds, lest they too succumb to the scourge of the plaster—to find a bouquet of purple flowers tucked behind my front door (which I have since transferred to a vase on my desk).
If I sound melodramatic, it is only because I am reading Middlesex.
And because last night’s flowers were not the first.
But we’ll get to that later.
In the mean time, I am back. I had intended to come back on January 1st, with a spiffy new blog to herald in the new year and all of the resolutions that go with it, but in my infinite wisdom, I purchased a new blog theme that I don’t actually know how to install, and if I wait to post again until I figure it out (what with all the wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org research I’m now trying to conduct), it will be 2025 before I start writing again, and that wouldn’t be very good now, would it?
Besides, I was otherwise occupied on January 1st. My fourteen chairs (four salvaged by my realtor, two donated by neighbors, and the rest found at various thrift shops and reupholstered by Yours Truly) were all full with out-of-town guests who had come for my parents’ New Years Eve party, so I was busy proffering bagels and vegetable cream cheeses and hurrying to put the kettle back on only to discover that it had already been done.
But we’ll get to that later.
For now, a belated Happy New Year. And welcome back.
Kat Echevarría Richter 
10 Responses to “A Surprise Behind the Door”
Wait… who were the flowers from?
Be patient, I’m getting to that 🙂
oooooooooh, love this!!!!!! PLEASE COME BACK SOON!
Well I’m never very good about keeping my NYE resolutions but one is to go back to blogging daily so you just might get your wish 🙂
Happy New Year! And I echo Zak’s comment. 🙂
“where every chair I own was drug out for the holidays” — I don’t mean any offence, but that’s so interesting! As a (student) linguist, I’m always interested in language variation, such as “dragged” (which is what we say in the UK) vs. “drug”. English is so varied and that fascinates me!
Well now that you point it out, it is quite possible (and quite probable) that I should have said dragged and not drug. Drug just sounded better. But I’m no linguist- far from it!
Oh, not at all! Anyway, who’s to say what’s correct and what’s not? I’m just interested in language variability and I prefer to take a descriptivist, rather than a prescriptivist, view (observing what is used, rather than stating what should be used)… 🙂
Glad to see you’re back, and I can’t wait to hear about all you’ve been up to!
Thanks! It’s always nice to get a warm welcome back 🙂
[…] did not mean to suggest in Monday’s post the Middlesex is melodramatic. It is, but not in a bad way. It is a book that I both love and […]