Yours portly has begun his glorious Spring Break.  In years past, it’d be dedicated to nonstop indolence and self-indulgence (or, during my school maintenance years, to making some extra scratch).  Now Dr. Wife and I are working on getting the house unpacked and put into place.

We put a good dent into things this weekend, although there is still much left to do.  We managed to get quite a bit done in the kitchen, and last night I took some time to get my old stereo system and record player setup in my office.

I also purged a massive number of old CD cases (and some CDs), some of which I have not listened to in years (but I did keep my vast, nearly-complete collection of Rush CDs).  Ever since moving, our goal has been to reduce our clutter as much as possible.  I come from a long line of nesters, with a lot of “antique maximalists” (to use my sister-in-law’s phrase) in our family lineage.  I’ve endeavored to keep the best stuff, sell the good stuff, and give away the dross.  Even so, we’re still finding stuff from both of our old homes that, as we combine households, we just don’t need anymore.

Today I’m out of the house and running errands down in the “big city”—Florence, South Carolina.  Murphy is getting a much-needed bath and nail trim.  While she’s getting the spa treatment, I’ve been taking care of the “to-do” list.

So far, I’ve gotten an oil change; bought a doorknob; called a reluctant handyman to install aforementioned doorknob; bought Murphy a new bed (because her old one is so ripe from her odiferous extrusions); and graded some packets on Charles Martel and Saladin that I assigned my World History students as a way to avoid starting a new unit right before Spring Break.

Now I need to find a barber; research television mounts; and make an inventory of other necessary repairs/updates/etc. so the reluctant handyman will get the most out of his time (and we the  most for our money) when he makes the journey down from Laurinburg, North Carolina.

One of the downsides of living in a small, rural community is that it’s incredibly difficult to find people to do work.  Granted, there are more people in Bennettsville than in Lamar, but its location makes it a bit more isolated.  The “big city” of Florence is about forty-five minutes away; the next large town, Laurinburg, is about twenty-five minutes away.  There are probably people in Bennettsville who can and would do handyman work, but I can’t discover them through the modern method of discovery, the Internet.  I know just a few people locally, so I imagine I’ll find the secret handyman one day; in the meantime, I’ll get this dude from Laurinburg to come down and knock out some stuff.

I see lots of people in Bennettsville walking around in pajamas at 2 PM in the afternoon.  There are a lot of old houses in town that need work.  An enterprising individual could make a killing as a general contractor or a handyman.  Even just taking odd jobs could probably provide a decent enough living, especially if (as I suspect) the person is already on some manner of assistance.

I could take on some of that work, for that matter, but I’m leaning into my bon vivant era (lol) and taking up the pen (or the keyboard) as my tool of choice.  So far, that’s mostly yielding these kind of slice-of-life, self-indulgent posts, but that’s what I’ve got for now.

That said, I enjoy the productivity of running errands and getting the house squared away.  As the video above shows, my office is a wreck, but it’s coming together.  So is the rest of the house.  I told Dr. Wife yesterday that this past weekend was the first time the house really felt like our home, as opposed to Murphy and me living in a nice house crowded with cardboard boxes and miscellany.  I ran to the local hardware store (Bennettsville has that, at least!) last Thursday and loved seeing all the old men talking about small engine repair while the lady minding the till sauntered to get me some air filters for our HVAC system.  Maybe I’ll be one of those old men soon enough.

We’ve also been visiting some local churches the past few weekends.  For Palm Sunday and Easter we visited Bennettsville Second Baptist Church (their pastor has a blog); before that, it was Thomas Memorial Baptist Church.  These are the two “established” Southern Baptist churches in town.  Second Baptist reminds me very much of the church I was attending in Darlington, even down to the old ladies leaving blankets on “their” pews—ha!  Thomas Memorial has the more historic building, complete with stained glass windows donated by the titular Thomas family.

More updates to come.  We saw The Drama (2026) Saturday evening and enjoyed it immensely; I’ll write a review of that soon.  It was the first time I’ve understood why people love Zendaya so much.  She actually showed more than one emotion in this film!  Apparently, the flick is catching a lot of flack online for its frank discussion of school shootings, but that’s kind of the point of the film (and, no, it’s not some kind of preachy screed against guns; it’s actually a good, subtle film about how our pasts may or may not affect us, and how small things can change the courses of our lives).

In the meantime, here’s to unpacking and Spring Breaking!

—TPP