“I think we should make a list of things we need for the house.”

“Well, I already started making a list of all the birds I’ve seen in the yard so far.”

J and I have been sleeping in the new house, on a futon we’ve set up in the basement. We’ve got two pillows, one thin blanket and a TV and DVD player set up in the corner on a box, but somehow it’s a lot of fun.

Last night, after finishing work, I decided I wanted to take a quick walk down to the water and along the seawall, where an asphalt path runs parallel to the road. That’s one of the first things that drew us to the place, the fact that we’d be so close to the water, and not only that, there is a terrific network of walking trails and parks nearby. It’s nice, in this automobile-driven world, to be able to walk places, and from our house we can walk to both the water and to this awesome Italian deli – the kind you never would have found in North Carolina.

So, basically, we picked the perfect location.

Poor J has been really sick, but he opted to join me in this first jaunt around the new neighborhood. In the half block of sidewalk we covered while making our way to the water, we looked at the houses surrounding ours, the various shapes and sizes, and the materials used to build them. Some with old, wooden porches, and some with tiny balconies on the second floor, the kind where you’d imagine wives looking out for their seafaring husbands.

Down at the seawall, we breathed in the smell of salt water and the air felt damp. “There is just something about the water,” I said. I’ve said this a lot over the years, including at the beach with a cold drink in my hand when, yeah, obviously there is just something about the water, but I do sincerely mean it and it’s not a very original sentiment by any means. People tend to like the water, whether it’s a little cove on the edge of New Haven or the vast ocean, complete with crashing waves.

We walked, talking about the area, wondering if we could somehow get down to that little sandy beach in the distance, questioning the purpose of the stone steps placed at intervals along the path, leading straight into the murky depths, and how maybe that’s what you do when you’ve simply had enough – you just walk down that oddly-placed set of stairs and end it all.

From our new vantage point we checked out the houses facing the water. They looked so inviting with their tall windows and warmly lit interiors. Several were built with three levels, each one a little smaller than the one below so that the top level was just one room with, you’d imagine, a wonderful view. A great room for curling up and reading a book.

We came across a young couple, probably about our age, sitting on a bench having a Guinness, said a polite hello and as soon as we were safely out of hearing range, discussed how “totally cool” that was although, remarked J, technically illegal.

“I know,” I said. “But that is another reason why I love this neighborhood. I don’t think people here care too much about the rules – in a good way. Like, they won’t care if we have a party and it’s kind of noisy. They clearly don’t care if people paint their houses pink. They won’t care about Mina, for instance. ‘Your crazy little Chihuahua-like dog hates children? That’s ok with us.’”

I don’t mean to make fun of a bunch of people who committed suicide, people who believed they would shed their “earthly bodies” and be transported in a spacecraft traveling behind the Hale-Bopp coment, but if you have time today, please, for the love of God, read the story I wrote about the Heaven’s Gate cult mass suicide that occurred on this day in 1997. Make sure you watch the videos I included, too. If you are at all feeling at all like the world is a boring place, I promise this story will remind you that it isn’t. Not in the slightest.

Troy Patterson can make fun of One of The Best Shows on Television, Ever, because he is very, very funny:

“When The Hills left off, Heidi—who now resembles an actress in a big-budget romantic comedy, not the cuddly lead but the uptight rival or the workaholic sidekick—had called off plans for her wedding to Spencer, presumably because his narcissistic shiftiness renders him absolutely unmarriageable. The show picked back up with her jaunting to her family’s house in Crested Butte, Colo., where she put matters into perspective during après-ski heart-to-hearts with her mother. Spencer arrived unannounced at the ancestral home. Heidi’s stepfather cast skeptical glances—eyes brimming with wariness, baffled stares garnished with pity—at the poor boy. Spencer played with his phone. They all went out to dinner. Heidi told Spencer off. Crested Butte looked like a very dull town.”

You can read the full story here.

“Easter candy is my favorite.”

“Come on.”

“It IS.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve said that before about every kind of candy. Like, ‘Christmas candy is my favorite!!! Halloween candy is my favorite!!! Summer candy is my favorite!!!’”

“Summer candy?”

“Yeah. All candy.”

“That’s ridiculous. First of all, Christmas candy and Halloween candy aren’t even a thing. It’s just normal candy in different wrappers. Easter candy is totally different. And it’s my favorite. And I’m going to eat it all day.”

* When I was little, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince” was a staple in our household, along with this book of Italian folktales by Italo Calvino and the movie “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Anyway, when people mention any of those things, which, like, never happens with Calvino’s collection of folktales, by the way, I’m totally taken back to those childhood memories, so this recent story about how a German pilot, Horst Rippert, believes he may have shot down Saint-Exupéry’s plane during World War II really got to me. I mean, to be totally honest, I didn’t even know there was a mystery surrounding the author’s death, I just liked the story about the little prince all alone on his planet, which, actually, is also kind of sad, so before this whole post gets too sad, I’ll mention that one of the great things about my new job is that I’m constantly learning. Learning that a German pilot may have shot down a beloved author of children’s books, for instance. Wait. Now it’s sad again.

* It appears that after renting for my entire adult life, I can’t quite get used to the idea that we own our new house. You know, own it, as in, it’s ours. While talking on the phone today to the contractor who is doing a little work on our place before we move in, I found myself asking if we could stop by sometime? Like maybe Sunday? Would that be ok? He told me that, yeah, we could stop by anytime we wanted. Oh yeah, right! That’s right! Because it’s our house.

* I’m assuming that you’re getting ready for March 24 with the same enthusiasm that I am. What? What’s that? What’s happening on March 24? Ok, people. This is me you’re talking to. It’s ok. I used to claim I hated “The Hills,” too, even as I watched with rapt attention. I’d say things like “Oh my God, this is so fake,” and “How can these people respect themselves?” and then before I knew it my comments were more along the lines of “This is the best show ever created by humankind,” and my sister-in-law had bought me the first season on DVD for Christmas, now a cherished possession. So, it’s cool, if you want to pretend you’re not going to watch the third season premiere on Tuesday, whatever, but if you want to fess up to your obsession and discuss the intricate details with me the next day? I’ll definitely be up for that.

I know my posts have been somewhat brief lately and I was about to write another rather lackluster sentence or two about how one of the things I love so much about Grand Central Terminal in New York City is that, no matter what time of day, there is always someone taking a picture of the ceiling, which is a totally valid and truthful statement, but I then I remembered that, Hey! I like blogging a lot! And I owe it to myself and all of you to really get back into it with some good, long posts.

But still, Grand Central’s ceiling is a good starting point.

It’s what I see every morning and evening on the days I commute to the city, and the reason someone is always taking a picture of it is that it’s seriously awesome, just like the rest of the train station (minus, you know, the perpetually long line for the bathroom). The station is huge and pretty and historic and makes you feel like the long train ride you just dealt with to get to work was really worth it.

The nice thing is, however, I’m kind of in love with the commuting experience in general, including the many charms of the Metro North Railroad.

If you read J’s Uncle Bobby’s blog, you know that Bobby, as a Metro North conductor, sees a lot of celebrities on the job. I have yet to see anyone famous on the train but, believe me, there is plenty of good people watching as it is.

The commuters, for the most part, are pretty well behaved. They’re amazingly quiet, lowering their voices to a near whisper when they need to talk on the cell phone (which is barely ever) and they are polite, smiling as they ask if the seat next to you is vacant. They drink coffee and read books and newspapers. They listen to their iPods. Every once in a while they exchange pleasantries about the weather or current events.

So the train, especially in the morning, tends to be this friendly, warm, coffee-smelling place where I often drift in and out of sleep as we rumble southward and, I know it sounds crazy, but I sometimes wouldn’t even mind if the trip lasted an extra ten minutes or so.

The ride back home in the evening is different, of course, less comfortable and relaxing, as the commuters are drained and anxious to get home. Instead of coffee, they drink beer. They play with their Blackberries. They sigh.

Still, though, I cannot deny that it’s a pleasant ride, especially now that we’ve turned the clocks forward and it’s light enough when I catch the 6:29 p.m. train that I get to check out some of the adorable Connecticut towns we pass through on the well-traveled route.

Perhaps the best thing about the ride is the forced opportunity to relax, because, honestly, what else are you going to do? Try as I might to do something “productive,” my train ride into the city a few times a week is undoubtedly an excellent time to listen to “This American Life” and “The Splendid Table” podcasts, to read my Italian murder mysteries and to slowly make my way through that week’s issue of “US Weekly,” which I’ve forced myself not to read until one of the days I commute.

So I relax. Sometimes I do nothing more than look out the window as the scenery changes from quaint, New England town to gritty city expanse in the morning, and back again at night. I sit and think, sometimes with an overpriced fruit smoothee I bought in the Grand Central food court, and I make the most of my alone time. Well, alone time that I share with many, many commuters, sitting shoulder to shoulder, as we make our way along the coast.

100 phone calls, one big check, several minor arguments and a zillion signatures later, we own a house!

Pictures to come, and there will be stories once we move in, which will hopefully involve my serenely organizing clothes in a clothes closet and putting books in a bookshelf, both of which sound like the best and most wonderful activities in the whole entire world to me right now.

But, you know, before you run off never to return again to this site, I’ll try to keep it as interesting as possible, I swear.

Because I have a few friends who are having babies, I decided to get out the old knitting bag and do something more useful with my time than reading murder mysteries and waiting anxiously for “Us Weekly” to come in the mail, although honestly there isn’t anything much more worthwhile than that.

Even though I’ve tried three or four times in the past with the same end result (throwing the knitting needles down in frustration, shouting something like, “I will never finish this!” and moving on to something more do-able, like maybe taking a nap) I decided I’d try to knit a baby blanket again, which I think is kind of like punishment for knitters, not just for mediocre knitters like me, but for everybody. Because it takes forever. Not that I’d know, I’ve never finished one. Know why I’ve never finished one? That’s right, I just told you, it takes FOREVER and I unfortunately don’t have that kind of patience. Which is why it’s amazing that I knit at all.

This time, however - even though I’ve already messed up and had to start over two times, and even though I probably won’t complete this thing until five years now, but hey, people will still be having babies then, right? - I’ve decided to see it through. And when I finish I’ll post a picture on the site and we will have a party. And that party will probably involve me not doing anything crafty again for a long time because I will be very, very worn out.

Another frustration this week is that I’ve been trying to figure out a way to make my blog header (the part with the birds up above that says “www.caramcduna.com”) into a link that will take you, the reader, back to the current homepage when you click it. So let’s say you’re enjoying a post of mine from 2006. And you’re like, “Hey this girl is alright,” and you want to see what I wrote about recently. Well, then you’d just click the header, just like on most webpages, and be immediately directed to a homepage with all my most recent posts (right now, you can click the “Home” link in the upper right hand corner of the header, but it’s pretty small and difficult to see).

The thing is, I’m not very good at making that happen either. So if any of you computer geniuses out there can tell me a simple way to do it, I will give you a million dollars. Or a shout out on the blog. Whatever seems more appropriate at the time.

This morning I was getting ready for work, pulling on some tights I’d yanked from the makeshift underwear drawer I’ve been using in the spare bedroom and a skirt I’d found in the pile of clothes that habitually sits on the computer chair in the bedroom where we sleep.

As I was dressing, trying to make record time (no makeup, no fun jewelry, reminding myself to toast an English muffin to eat in the car on the way to the train), J, who would drive me to the station and then return home to dress at a more leisurely and civilized pace, turned over and started sleepily telling me about some abstract situation, thus striking dread in my heart, because damnit, he was telling me about his dream.

“I was in, like, a conference room, and then I saw some of my friends, and then - no - wait, first I was in a meeting, and then…”

I looked at him in disbelief, because seriously, how many times have I told him not to do this? Not to tell me about his dreams? Millions. Maybe more than that.

I realize saying I don’t like to hear about peoples’ dreams sounds cruel almost. Like, “Hey, you know that cool story you wanted to tell me? The one that doesn’t make any sense and you think is really, really funny? Well, that sounds great, but seriously, shut it.”

But come on, admit it. Hearing someone else’s dream - unless you happen to play a major role in it - is boring, right up there with listening to someone tell you the plot of a movie or TV show you haven’t seen. It’s even worse than most boring things, because the other person involved obviously thinks this dream is the most awesome thing that ever happened, and you have two choices: pretend you’re enjoying while muffling groans and frantically racking your brain for some excuse to change the subject or tell that person you DO NOT want to hear it and risk hurting their feelings.

With J, however, I mean, we’re married, and being straight up about stuff doesn’t mean we’re hurting each other’s feelings like it might have when we were first dating. “Don’t go out in your sweatpants,” “You have funny looking toes,” “Please, no more birds today.” We’re over it.

So when J wakes up and says, “You will NOT BELIEVE this dream I had last night!” I feel it’s my right to remind him that I absolutely, under no circumstances want him to tell me. No matter how intrigued he thinks I am. Even if you had a dream that you were in an episode of “The Sopranos.” Even if you had a dream that you were at a party with some guy from high school that you haven’t seen for 15 years. Especially not then.

My friend Jennifer, who hates hearing other peoples’ dreams as much as I do, said her rule is that she only wants to hear about the dream if she’s in it and/or you can summarize the dream in 20 seconds or less. I think that last part is an excellent guideline because the length of time it takes most people to fully explain, in agonizing detail, what they dreamed about is one of the most excruciating parts of the whole ordeal. “Wait, I was in the room, but then…my dad was there, oh my God! And my roommate from college! So were were all going to this party….and, oh - wait! NOW I remember….first I was at the doctor’s office and for some crazy reason the doctor kept making me drink all this orange juice, but hold on, even before that I was in this sailboat…”

Really? FOR REAL? OH MY GOD, I don’t care! I DON’T CARE!

The thing is, of course, my husband isn’t going to stop telling me his dreams and I’m probably never going to get violent enough to force him to. So I suppose this back and forth will remain one of the charming little anecdotes of our marriage. And if not there’s always the old “Just keep talking, I’m going into the next room but I’m still listening” routine (a.k.a. exit stage left, turn on hairdryer, drown it out).