Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego?

For those of you who are wondering how I came to be a field hand, and where I might be fulfilling this life-long goal of working the land as if it were 1875, here’s the explanation.

Peter and I have been vacationing in Kennebunkport for over 30 years. We love the Maine coast, and hoped to have a house there someday. Over the last couple of years, we thought the time was finally right. We came to this conclusion just as Lehman Brothers was being sucked into the black hole of the financial apocalypse that it and the rest of Wall Street had so thoughtfully created. It was September 2008, and we were driving around the country roads of southern Maine, listening to that card-carrying CNN cretin, Rick Sanchez, on Sirius Radio as he cheerfully whipped up the panic about the financial collapse. (I will go on about the irresponsibility of the 24/7 commercial news cycle some other time.) So we put our conclusion aside for awhile.

We continued to look around even while the economic winds of fortune blew like a hurricane. We are firm believers in that old adage: location, location, location. I found a lovely little lot that backed on the Webhannet Golf Course in K’Port. For a mere $900,000 we could own property on which we might afford to build a quonset hut. We wouldn’t have enough spare change to erect an outhouse. Luckily, since we couldn’t afford to clear the land, there would still be enough forest to afford me the privacy that the outhouse would have provided. I’m sure the neighbors would understand. And best of all (remember location, location, location) I would be able to observe President George H. Bush (aka 41 or the Bush with brains) while he played golf on the Webhannet course once a year.

So, with real estate prices that rivaled Scarsdale’s, Peter decided K’Port might not be the garden spot for us. I have no idea how he came across Harpswell, Maine. But anywhere, here we are: owners of a house on 2 acres of wooded property, with a beautiful (if overgrown) garden built on tiered stone walls. The house is a 2,700 square foot saltbox, about 25 years old, in need of new bathrooms, a new kitchen and the expected cleaning-out that goes with 25 years of accumulated detritus.

My approach to anything that needs to be cleaned, painted, raked or weeded is to attack it with gusto. My favorite form of gusto now comes in the shape of cash: Let’s hire someone to do that! But Peter has suddenly become the very soul of financial responsibility and sober judgment. That used to be my role in this marriage. But with menopause comes wisdom, patience and a new, mellow approach to life. (Just ask Peter how mellow I’ve become.) My new approach takes the shape of live-and-let-live, and Let’s-hire-someone-to-do-that! Peter’s new-found maturity has taken on the persona of fiscal conservator for the Rockefeller Foundation. So when it came to the initial hands-and-knees scrubbing of the house’s kitchen, bathrooms, floors, cobwebs, and more, I spent nearly a week going at it hammer and tong. Had I known how grimy the house was, I would have hired a cleaning service to do it. I mentioned this to Peter, but he thought that would be a waste of money: no one would clean it with the zeal that I brought to the job, or to my satisfaction. And besides, you’re so far along, why not just finish it? I should have climbed up on a milk crate and smacked him right then and there.

We are back in NJ for now, having lived through the heat wave (that reached handily up to Maine) with no air conditioning. By the last week of August I took to spending large chunks of the day in the blissfully cool and comfortable Brunswick library. If I stayed at the house, I inevitably fell to hacking at overgrown shrubs, raking leaves or ripping out yard-long golden rod stems by main force. The arbor vitae and the rose hips were so intertwined as to be virtually braided together, the rhododendron had grown tall enough to cover the second story windows, and the rose bushes were over 6 feet tall. They called to me to come out and do battle. Better to be in the library than sweating in the mid-day sun and heat.

I lost my train of thought… We are back in NJ, and I am unemployed. (I will go into that story at length and with great gusto another time.) For now, while I am searching for work, I will actually be a housewife. This is entirely new territory for me. I’ve never been a housewife before. Wish Peter luck.