We’re back in the Stone Age.
After a bolt of lightning struck a football throw away, the lights flickered, and I heard a pop. The breaker box had tripped, so flipping it back into place should have fixed everything.
It didn’t.
When the internet never returned, Dave’s troubleshooting revealed the router wouldn’t even turn on. Fried.
Without the TV, I watched France’s Mbappé score both goals on a screen the size of a playing card, with the soccer ball no bigger than the tip of my pinkie finger. Here I am with the largest TV I’ve ever owned, and it’s blacker than a jaguar in the middle of a moonless night.
Unaware of exactly when our new-to-us, rehomed chickens would be dropped off, Dave and I got to work. We rolled the unused mobile coop from next door—about two-tenths of a mile down the country road—to our house. We also brought over the portable fencing, whose metal stakes push into the ground while plastic poles and netting form a circle around the coop.
Our master plan is more permanent. It involves eight-foot green steel T-posts—the kind used for barbed-wire fencing. I imagine once the feathered friends discover they can peck, scratch, or possibly squirrel their way through the temporary fencing and into my garden, installing the permanent fence will become a very high priority.
Now what? Now what? Now what?
The evening is my oyster.
I’m tempted to continue drilling the different uses of se into my brain. It has always felt too big to hold—the four or five different ways it’s used—but what if I broke it up? One use per week, perhaps.
I could start with the one I know best: reflexive verbs. Me visto. Me lavo las manos. Me cepillo los dientes. The things we routinely do to care for ourselves.
That feels slightly better. More manageable. Doable, even.
Me lavo las manos.
Ugh.
It’s like my brain wants to reject it for some reason. Learning a language is hard!
Love, Jaclynn