A Big Little Life Read Online Free PDF

inevitably bring with it enough disorder to put me at risk of a mental breakdown.
    It is true that we fold our socks rather than roll them, that we iron our underwear, that for years I would not wear jeans that didn’t have a crease pressed into them, that prior to a dinner party I use a tape measure to ensure precisely the same distance between each place setting (and between each element of each place setting), that Gerda would rather be coated in honey and staked out on an anthill than go to bed when there’s even one dirty spoon in the kitchen sink, and that if a guest discovered water spots on a wineglass, we would be no less mortified than if he had found someone’s body compressed into a cube in our trash compactor. None of this means that we’re obsessive. It means only that we care.
    In response to Mike’s concern that we were too oriented toward order and neatness to cope with a golden retriever, I said, “This dog is well trained, totally housebroken.”
    “I’m not talking about that kind of thing,” Mike said.
    “We know it sheds. We’ll give it a long combing every morning.”
    “I’m not thinking about dog hair.”
    “It’ll go to a groomer for a bath and the full works everyThursday, so I’ll never have to express its anal glands myself.”
    “I’m not thinking about that stuff, either,” Mike said, “though I usually do think of anal glands when I think of you.”
    “You’re fired,” I said.
    “I’d be worried,” he said, “except who else would want to work for you?”
    “Maybe someone who’s actually built a house before,” I replied.
    Prior to committing himself to the ten years of planning and construction that our house required—including four years with three architects before the third one delivered what we wanted—Mike had been a mason and then a swimming-pool contractor. Our house was the first he built, and the two architects whose plans we did not use were always trying to get him fired, which is one of the reasons that Gerda and I let them go.
    Over the years, we have learned that the most important quality anyone can possess is character. If a person has true character—which always includes a sense of honor and duty, as well as a tough set of personal standards—he or she will not fail you. Experience matters, but an experienced homebuilder without character is forever a trapdoor under your feet, waiting to be sprung. When we asked Mike if he could take on a project as complex as this one, he said yes without hesitation, and we hired him with confidence. We never had a regret.
    Now on the morning of Trixie’s arrival, in the affectionate mockery that is a characteristic of our relationships with most of Gerda’s and my friends, Mike said, “By neat, I mean your days won’t be as structured as you’re used to, and your time won’t be used as efficiently anymore. You’ll find out what it’s like being a normal person after all these years of being so damned abnormal .”
    I said, “I think of myself as delightfully abnormal.”
    “Yeah, right,” Mike said.
    “The dog,” I predicted, “will not bring a tenth as much chaos into my life as you have, and because she’ll be bathed once a week, she’ll also smell better.”
    “It’s happening again,” he said. “I’m thinking of anal glands.”

IV
“if this dog does something wrong, the fault will be yours, not hers”
    LINDA, A COMPUTER maven and all-around talent, has been Gerda’s and my primary assistant for so long that she will need to be in therapy for the rest of her life.
    On the other hand, before she came to us, she did contract work for the state of California, instructing bureaucrats in the software they used. California government is so dysfunctional, by comparison with Koontzland, that itmust have seemed like an asylum to Linda, while our little corner of the world might well have struck her as a restful sanitarium.
    Back in 1998, Linda occupied an office in our house on the hill.