The Closet

Last year I was still in school. All I did was read and read and then write and rewrite. I watched a lot of TV too, or at least I had it on a lot. Here at Trinita, not so much.

I learned a new weather condition today. We've had snow on the ground for weeks now, and very cold weather. Now it's been getting above freezing, and last night it rained for a while. Though we had blue skies this morning, when I went out for 8 AM mass, I found a thin sheen of ice on the car, and puddles freezing over. The road looked only wet, as if with dew, but apparently it was ice. Lucky for me, there was a car ahead of me going very slowly, so I was forced to slow. I could feel the car slip a bit, but I have no doubt I would have slid right off the road had I been going at normal speed down that hill to mass. The sun was out and the road merely looked wet. Tricky, very tricky.

I disassembled the old office computer after I got back from the MCA meeting this afternoon, and attempted to store it in the little closet under the stairs in the cenacle. The sisters' cenacle is a remodelled basement under a remodelled farmhouse. Storage space is minimal, yet somehow we keep encountering artifacts from previous eras tucked away in odd places. That closet is even smaller than Harry Potter's original bedroom at the Dursley's. Yet inside were three computer units, a monitor, a box of computer accessories and cables, and.... a cardboard box labelled "Sister Mary Clare, for Camp T."

I do not know who Sr. Mary Clare was, and this place has not been called "Camp" in a really long time, so I sort of figured it would be old stuff in the box. It was. There were about eight large vinyl albums of cassette sets. For example, a 12-cassette series of presentations on religious life. An 8-set by George Maloney SJ for making a private retreat. The entire New Testament on tape, two different versions. One version actually looked well-preserved, so I saved it to donate to the local dump thrift shop. The rest were circa 1972 or thereabouts, and looked it.

I waded out to the dumpster and tossed the stuff in. Have I mentioned the snow is melting? Mud and flowing water everywhere. Then I put the computers back, except that I discovered the monitor from the former office computer was too big to fit through the closet door. Monitor=17.75 inches, door=17.5 inches. I am not kidding, I measured. Ultimately, I had to trudge like a troll into the nether regions of our dungeon until I found space to deposit the monitor. This was complicated by the fact that the monitor weighs a fair amount, the "flooring" is uneven to put it mildly, and I could not stand up straight. Clearance in the dungeon=5 feet 8 inches more or less, Me in bare feet=6 feet 2 inches. I am not kidding, I measured!

Then, Olivia made homemade pizza, and there was great rejoicing. And that, today, was life at Trinita.