housekeeping

My mother has given me the best of all possible housewarming gifts: she's cleaning my new house for me, from top to bottom. The house has been empty for a while and has just been repaired, and there are cobwebs and dust and scraps, plaster and nails and dirty footprints everywhere. God, I was dreading having to clean it all up myself--and I am not the world's greatest housekeeper, not even, like, in the top million or so--and when my mother told me she'd do it, I practically burst into tears of gratitude.

I went over today to bring her some lunch and tell her to turn on her cell phone, and it already looks a thousand times better, and the termite guys were finishing up their treatment, and as we were sitting on the porch steps with our salads on our knees, the Head Termite Guy came up and asked, Are you the homeowner, and it took me a second. Hey, he's talking to me! I thought, and felt such a dizzying rush of surprise and delight that it took me a second before I could answer.

I still have not quite got over the feeling that my house is something like a house of cards, ready to come down if I so much as breathe wrong, or assume too much. I don't know how long it'll take before I can get past it and start enjoying that feeling of smug entitlement that I'm told comes with equity. But in the meantime, those termite guys can just keep calling me Homeowner. It makes me ridiculously happy.

:::

And after lunch, I drove back to my office and my boss's terrible mood, which had everybody tiptoeing around her all day. I spent the day avoiding talking to her by working with my headphones on, listening to OotP, which still tears me up more than even HBP, I still have not quite gotten used to Sirius being gone, I still expect some deus ex machina to deposit him back into Harry's life and they will live happily ever after in their tug-of-war, role-confused, competitive, entirely riveting relationship, stepping on each other's toes, misunderstanding each other, counting too much on each other, expecting too much from each other.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love, love, love Sirius in this book? God, I do love him so. I loved him in a different way when he was Harry's shining hope for a normal life, in PoA and GoF, but I love him exponentially more as a flawed, angry, sulky semi-adolescent who never really learned to deal with adult life and responsibilities, who spent years locked away in a terrifying Never-Never-Land, trying hard not to lose himself while everyone else grew up and away. Whatever it was he expected from life after Azkaban, he didn't get it, did he? Not any of it. It breaks my heart in a million pieces on the floor, every time I think about it, which is kind of embarrassingly often.

A long time ago and in another journal, I wrote about The Civilizing of Harry Potter. I wonder what would have happened if Sirius had lived on as Harry grew up. I can't think that it would have come to any good, at least not before a whole lot of bad. I believe that there was a world of hurt lying in front of the two of them. But I can't help wanting Sirius back anyway; I miss him, obviously, but Harry misses him more (of course he sucks it up and moves on--when has he ever been encouraged to grieve over anything in a way that he can understand and process?), and honestly, it's Harry I want him back for, as painful and messy and unhealthy (and maybe happy, damn it) as things were always bound to get between two such emotionally stunted people.