Making the move to small-town Michigan turned out to be far easier for my wife than for me. While they intimated that refusing the move would have been a career-limiting choice for me, my employer was helpful enough to help find employment for my wife. As it turns out, she was enjoying her job and making friends far easier than we both thought she would. Life wasn't so rosy for me. My new position required more hours than I had expected, and it was clear that, as an out-of-towner, I was not being held in high regard. But I did have my pottery. I like making clay pots. In fact I like it so much I started to sell them at craft shows up and down the east coast. I usually go to about one per month, just enough for my hobby to pay for itself plus a little bit. It's the kind of business that could grow into something more substantial when I finally get tired of corporate life. Moving to Michigan just meant I had to find a new set of craft shows, which I did with the help of some friendly crafters. I fully intend to toss the day-to-day intellectual pissing contest that comes with engineering for a large company right into the crapper, where it belongs.
The house we bought on Navajo Trail was a nice-sized ranch on a deep, wooded lot. The neighbors were close enough, and also far enough away. The basement was perfect for my craft: it has a walkout door up a short stair to the back yard. The rooms on the main floor are big, and there's a screened-in porch overlooking the back yard. It's one of those houses that so easy to live in that it makes you think you're on vacation whenever you're in it. Somehow, the elderly couple that we bought the place from had the good taste to decorate it in light colors and open spaces, something that's rare among folks of their generation. One of the features that I liked was a shed in the back yard, almost to the back property line. I don't know why, but whoever built it decided that it needed to be fireproof. It was built of cinder block walls on a concrete slab. It even had a corrugated tin roof that rested on metal framework, obviously from a time before sheet metal was a common building material. I have no idea what the previous owner would do with such a structure, but to me it was a perfect place to put my gas kiln. When you fire ceramic pottery, the firing cycle takes anywhere from twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on the size of your kiln, how full it is, and how hot you want to fire it. I work in stoneware, which wants to be fired to cone 10, pretty hot, so it takes awhile. I tend to like rich copper reds, which require a reduction firing. So for fifteen minutes out of every hour, I have to manually "choke" the oxygen out of the fire to get the colors I want. It's tedious, but there's something intimate about art that makes me want to do this without help from technology. So every time I have a firing, I spend the night on a couch in the shed with a sixty-minute timer. My wife is used to spending these nights alone.
So far, my neighbors have been pretty good about the excess racket. Even during the summer, in an area where central air conditioning isn't as prevalent and open windows are more the rule than the exception, no one has complained, and only one guy noticed because he works nights at the Delphi plant in Flint. His name is Jack, and he came home from work during the middle of my first firing and wandered back to see what was up. He stayed quite awhile and we shared several beers. And after he left, I fell asleep and damn near screwed up the firing! Although he's still a good neighbor, he hasn't been back after hours since, although because of other things that have developed, I really don't miss him.
While the folks I work with aren't very receptive, my new neighbors have been great. Jack, of course, is always ready to share a beer (or two) and a sea story. And his wife Maureen is as friendly as he is, though considerably less thirsty. They live on the one side of us, and on the other side are Stan and Maryanne. They're not quite as outgoing as Jack and Maureen, but always willing to help and always friendly. The folks directly across from us, Anthony and Gia, are a little more distant. They smile and wave, but more times than not, when they turn onto the street, the garage door magically goes up, the car cruises up the street and rolls into the garage, and then the door rolls down. Okay, well, not everyone is social.
Our back-yard neighbor is a woman named Arlene. Arlene is a little bit younger than me, is divorced (as best I can tell) and has two daughters, one at home and one usually away at college. Until recently, I didn't really know Arlene very well. In fact, I venture to say that I probably knew the elusive Anthony and Gia better. I do know this. She is a very attractive woman. Not really stunning in a supermodel sort of way, but definitely the kind of woman you'd want to run into at your kids soccer games. About 5'6, athletically built, blond hair, shiny green eyes, and just about the sweetest disposition I'd ever encountered in a woman. And sexy in that innocent, breezy sort of way that really makes you wonder what she's like in the bedroom, and think maybe you just might have a chance to find out. It seems hard for me to believe that any man would want to leave her, but I guess maybe it might not have been all his choice. Oh, and one other thing. She seems to be a little bit careless about closing her bedroom window. While peeping is not a hobby of mine, it's sometimes difficult to keep one's wandering eye under control when the most exciting thing going on in the middle of the night is very hot, baking glass. On two occasions while firing my work, my attractive neighbor returned home from wherever. Reaching the bedroom already mostly undressed, she doffs the rest of her clothing, heads for the shower, and then returns. She sits on the edge of bed and proceeds to dry her hair. There's a Victorian lamp on her nightstand that provides more than enough light, and her bed is one of those antique beds that sit higher off the floor. She seems not to be in any hurry and is completely oblivious to the wide-open state of her curtains. The second time it happened, I wondered "is she just being careless, or does she know I'm back here?" Either way, the view was hard to resist.
My wife works in a supermarket, one that's part of a large, national chain. One of the perks of making this move was that she got to move up into management. Leaving the union meant better treatment overall, and better money, too, although it came with the price of longer and uglier hours. The company expects a higher level of commitment from its managers, like all companies, I guess, and so when the union workers at their stores in southern California went out on strike, my wife was called upon to take her turn at keeping the stores there open. They sent her to La-La Land for a four-week stint in beautiful, downtown Arcadia. Well, it could be worse: she could be in south central LA and I could be worried about her getting mugged or worse.
Anyway, I had a craft show coming up and I was in high-production mode trying to get enough pots thrown to fill my kiln. I'd managed to get them done earlier in the week, and now it was Friday, and they'd dried nicely, so I was loading up the kiln. I was not having a good day. I'd taken the day off and the folks at work were not happy about it. The kiln loading was going just fine, but my colleague felt compelled to call me every couple of hours to get my "input" on some silly-assed problem that he should have been able to handle himself. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper because I wanted to be well through my firing by bedtime. Even the sight of Arlene running the lawn mower in a tank-top and running shorts wasn't helping, although it was a pleasant distraction for a moment or two. I was now well behind my goal and it was time to get some dinner. Take-out seemed to be the best option, as time for cooking was not in the cards. So I called Skip's and ordered the usual.
When I got to Skip's, I was early. I guess this was a good thing 'cause it did two things. First, it forced me to slow down and take breath, something I really hadn't done all week. So I sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Second, while I was waiting, who should wander on in but my neighbor, Arlene, now freshly showered and looking like she was headed out for the evening. I thought she looked good in the running shorts, but now, with her hair fixed up and wearing a sexy-looking dancing dress, well, it was hard to keep from staring. She came up the bar and sat next to me and we started to chat. It seems she was doing the take-out thing herself because she was headed out to go dancing at singles club dance at a nearby hotel. So we chatted for a while longer. She asked about all the activity in the shed, and I was surprised to find out she really had no idea what I was doing in there. She seemed genuinely curious about it, but I figured THAT tour would have to wait until there was some reason to invite her to the house, like a Christmas party or something that would, unfortunately, include the wife. So much for fantasy.
When I got back to the house, I took my dinner out back to the kiln shed and ate while I started to button up the kiln. The deep drying had been going on for a while now, and by eight o'clock it would be time to button it up for good and start the firing process. I set the kiln-sitter to temperature and the alarm clock to wake me hourly to check on things. By about one AM, it was time to start choking the fire for fifteen minutes out of every sixty.
Sleeping only 45 minutes at a time tends to leave one groggy when awake, but I thought I heard the slamming of a car door. Sure enough, a light came on in Arlene's house, of which I had a rather accidental view out the back window of my shed across the hundred and fifty feet or so of her back yard and into her bedroom window. Also visible were her deck, dining room, kitchen and bathroom, though smaller windows secluded the kitchen and bathroom. The light came on in the living room, and I could see Arlene taking off her sweater and walking to her bedroom. Soon the light came on in the bedroom and she came in. After a brief visit to the bathroom, she walked to the window and looked out. I turned away, because I keep a dim light on in my shed on firing nights, and I really didn't want my neighbor to think I was sitting there deliberately staring into her bedroom window. If she caught me looking, well, that was okay. But if she caught me staring... I guess I don't mind being regarded as a normal male, but somehow staring seemed more than that, and I try to draw reasonable lines for myself, however unsuccessful I might be.
But soon she left the window, turned off the light, and came out the back door, through the dining room. The back porch light came on and she walked out onto the deck, stopped to look in my direction, and then walked across the back yard toward me. It was a nice night. A little cool, but clear as a bell, and now this... angel is walking toward me in the middle of the night. Being home along for a couple of weeks, the thought of some feminine company, even for just a few minutes was exciting.
She came around the shed to the front door and said hi. In the dim light given off by the kiln, I could see she still looked like she dressed and made-up for an evening of dancing. Her make-up was perfect, accenting her eyes the way it did making them smile even more than they had earlier, at Skip's.
"Hey! How was the dance? C'mon in, have a seat," I said as I stood up.
