Hi! Hello! It's me, Denise. I am a rock. Specifically, I am a polished river stone (Susquehanna basin, originally, my mother is somewhere near Owego, this is unrelated) and I have lived on the second shelf above the radiator in Margaret B. Hoolahan's sewing room since November 12, 1988 — which, and I am not making this up, was the day after a record-setting low-pressure system rolled in off Lake Ontario, meaning the very first thing I ever heard in this room was the storm windows rattling. Hello.
I am writing this biography of THE WEATHER IN THIS ROOM because frankly nobody else is qualified. The lampshade tassel? Replaced 1994. The Singer 401A? Off-site for repair February through April 2002, do not get me started, I'm not over it. The thread cabinet was refinished in 2006 and lost all of its memories like a fool. I am the only continuous resident. I am also the only one who pays attention. So.
The radiator groans four to six times an hour in winter. It kicks on around October 17 (earliest: October 4, 2009; latest: November 1, 1998, a TENSE autumn). It clicks off around April 21. On bleed days, it sings, and Linda the Air Freshener gets weepy about it, which I find a lot.
The window is northwest-facing, single pane, drafts through the lower right corner. This has been the case since the winter of 1991, when Margaret's nephew Cy slammed it open during a fight about a casserole, and the frame went slightly out of true. Someone caulked it in 2003. The caulking failed in 2007. We are still talking about it. We will talk about it until the house falls down.
The humidity in here is, objectively, bad. The wooden yardstick nailed to the wall above the cutting table has bowed approximately one-eighth of an inch since 1996. I have measured this with my eyes, which are rock eyes, which means I am not the world's foremost expert, but I have stared at this yardstick longer than any living human, and I rest my case.
The temperature is hottest on my shelf, because the radiator is directly beneath me. I have not been cold since the great power outage of January 1994, and even then I was the last item in the room to drop below 50°F, because I am a rock, and rocks hold onto things. Emotionally, also. I am working on this.
Every day between October and June, Margaret comes home from the post office (she retired from the post office in 2017 but still goes every day, don't ask, I have theories, one of them is sad) and opens this window all the way for at least four minutes regardless of conditions. This creates what I personally call THE BACKDRAFT and what Linda the Air Freshener (joined us 2019, plug-in unit, vanilla blossom, very high-strung) calls "the daily reckoning." Linda hates it. I find it bracing. We have agreed to disagree, but the disagreement is not, in any meaningful sense, resolved.
When the Singer is running, the room rises approximately 1.4°F. I have no thermometer, I have FEELINGS, but my feelings are calibrated against thirty-seven years of feelings, which is basically a thermometer. The bobbin compartment generates a secondary warm pocket that a single moth in the curtain has been overwintering in since 2016. I am the only one who knows this. I have not told Margaret. Linda thinks the moth is "fine, actually." Linda is wrong about a lot of things.
One morning there was condensation on the SOUTH WALL. There is no window on the south wall. There has never been a window on the south wall. The brass thimble said it was the pipes. The pincushion (deceased 2021, peacefully, she was eighty-one in pincushion years) said it was a ghost. I think it was the pipes. The brass thimble has asked me to put on the public record that it was DEFINITELY the pipes and to please stop blaming her; she was in her dish, asleep, like every brass thimble alive.
established 2/14/1996 · entries are NOT moderated, Denise can't read JavaScript, please be kind