As I write this, the phone is ringing. The landline, that is, that I am required to have as a condition of Vince living with me. I had forgotten how loud a landline phone is, and we can’t turn it on silent because Vince has to answer it when he’s home. He’s not home now but I hesitate to turn it off because I might forget to turn it back on, and that could get him into trouble.

When we first got it, there were numerous calls for Mohamed, apparently the previous number holder. Those finally tapered off, but there are still calls now and then. Like now. And the phone is still ringing … 15, 16, 17 rings … I am tempted to pick it up and tell whoever it is to bugger off, but if it’s a robo caller, that just verifies that the number is a potential customer to be strafed with more calls. Still ringing … 18, 19, 20 … ah, silence, finally!

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My birthday was last week, and I asked Vince if he would consider going to a classical music concert with me at the James J. Hill House, St. Paul’s equivalent of Downton Abbey.

I was pleasantly surprised when he said yes. In fact, he was excited to go, and he spent the next few weeks searching for nice clothes to wear. I told him that Minnesotans are sloppy, but he wanted to dress up anyway. I thought that was great. I always dress up too.

He found a good pair of men’s dress shoes during his community service job at the Goodwill. If you’re a thrift store shopper, you know that decent shoes are the hardest thing to find second hand.

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I’m house sitting for a friend for two weeks, and it’s heavenly to have my own place. I’m sure Vince is happy to have the condo to himself, too. Unfortunately, this was the week that the condo association chose to have the chimneys cleaned, and the sweep dropped his tools down our chimney, breaking the flue control so it’s stuck open, allowing all the warm air to be sucked out. I’m just home to write this post, and it’s really cold in here. After many calls back and forth, a guy finally came and shoved a tarp up inside of the chimney. He promised someone would come back “soon” to fix the flue.

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It was also at the Goodwill that our concert plan came undone. Vince’s probation officer called him twice, and Vince didn’t answer because he just didn’t hear his phone ring. It’s true, cell phones don’t ring nearly as loudly as landlines. Vince works in a warehouse amid fork lifts and dumpsters and people yelling, so that seemed like a reasonable explanation, but not to a probation agent. Or at least, not to this one on this particular day.

The agent put him on indefinite lock down, which means Vince can’t leave the house except for work or AA meetings. So he’s back to square one.

This happened just a few hours after I posted this piece about the Department of Corrections people in the class I am co teaching. Connection? I don’t know. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t really out to get you, right? And I had written and rewritten this piece to tone it down in case someone with the DOC was monitoring the blog.

This all happened the day before the concert. Vince called his agent and left a message asking for an exception for this one night—his mom’s birthday, tickets reserved weeks in advance, etc. The agent never even called him back. I told Vince we will go to another event.

I went to the concert by myself. The mansion was open for wandering, and it is splendid. Some people, including me, were dressed up but most were not. The woman in front of me looked as though she had just gotten out of bed and hadn’t bothered to run a comb through her hair. Yuck. The music was not good. I go to a lot of classical concerts and it’s rare to have someone play painfully badly, but this was the night. Oh well. I went, and that’s what counts.