new house - a chess move away from the old one, three blocks south, two blocks east. slightly smaller, so we have to throw away some old junk that we've collected. i, for one, have trouble throwing away shoes, even though i walk them to death, but it's what, i paid maybe sixty bucks for them, so i just can't throw them away.

my wife buys one of these wastebaskets that you put your foot on it and it opens. but it's broken already. you put your foot on it once and it breaks. same with the battery-operated toothbrush. it was time for a new one. you unscrew it for two days and it's still not open, won't open. finally it opens. i wonder if there's anything a person can buy these days that isn't a worthless piece of crap. i already get my wife to do all the shopping because i can't bear buying the stuff, though i will if i have to. i hold my breath and just waste the money. but if it's plastic, i know where it'll end up.

unfortunately, now both houses are full of this stuff. plastic, broken, worth money, useful in an abstract kind of way, if it worked, yes, it would be a working garbage can, for example. but what do you do, throw it away and start over? the purpose of this kind of closing garbage can is to keep the dog out of it. dogs love greasy paper towels and whatever they can pull out of it, half-eaten hot dogs, etcetera, but dogs can break just about anything we can break, only generally worse, i wonder if they make this kind of stuff out of wood. somebody could make a killing, just coming up with functional things in life that weren't cheap plastic.

so this new house is on a quiet street, it's almost spooky. no constant traffic from nineteenth or flint or anywhere else, just an occasional dog-walker ambling down the street. the reason we did it was that the old house was a little too expensive, a little too prominent, a little too right up there on the main streets. we needed a place to function, a place to bring up kids, breathe, have a back yard, that kind of stuff. big improvement on all those fronts.

it's a quiet neighborhood, except for in the wide park where i usually walk; that one is totally full with students and dogs. i run the van the five or six blocks from the old house to the new one, and there's almost nobody else on the road. that's because it's football day, in this case it's the pros, maybe packers-seahawks, or colts-patriots or both. people don't care, they're into all of them, they're home watching. my wife gets a new bulletin on her phone: seahawks win. these bulletins used to be for big news, like 9-11. now they're for a football game, and it isn't even the super bowl. and, everyone in texas, just about, already knew who won. they all watch. that's why they aren't bombing around town causing trouble.

we have a new venue, place to get away from it all, place to see the world. the three kids are up high now, in the trees, looking down at the neighborhood. i kind of like it up there. lots of pecan trees in the neighborhood, and a few barking dogs in every direction. our own dogs are barking a bit, trying to establish their new territory, letting everyone know they're doing their job, guarding us. both of them bolted within a few days of getting here, maybe they weren't entirely comfortable. but they're getting more comfortable. it's quieter, safer, less traffic. pictures coming.