Home sweet home

I am taking advantage of my time at my parent's house (and their working computer) to write one my stellar blogposts that you all (Julie and Morgan) love so much.


I've been reading this book of poems by Anne Carson called "The Beauty of the Husband." The book is comprised of 29 poems which illustrate the trajectory of a failed marriage, and is supposedly a response to Keats' assertion that "beauty is truth." She is one of my favorite poets and I am particularly enjoying this collection. It has also gotten me thinking a lot about marriage, something I generally spend very little time contemplating, although that is changing a bit now that every time I log on facebook, I read that somebody else I know has become engaged.

Anyway, back to my parents house: tonight I got an eyeful of martial bliss as I watched my mother step up the annual war she and my father wage over the thermostat. My dad is cheap and has reptilian blood and therefore believes that 60 is an appropriate room temperature for the house in the winter months. My mother disagrees, calling my father a cheap Irish bastard who cannot respect her poor circulation and turns it back up to 65. Tonight she took it to a new level when she, upon discovering the heat at 62, stole his college diploma (which happens to hang next to the thermostat in his office)off the wall and hid it in the guest bathroom. The diploma was then replaced with a note that said "no Magna Cum Laude Princeton graduate could possibly live here, because they would be able to remember that the heat is supposed to be at 65 degrees when it is below freezing outside."
He has not yet seen this note.
They will be married for 27 years in February.