Tag Archives: home-improvement

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Threshold

I went to kickball last night and had a good time connecting with my team. I didn’t go play flip cup, because I don’t want to drink very much while I’m processing the murder in the acute stage. I also have my feelings with regards to not being in my previous family anymore.

I’ve gotten so many of my friends and also my family members to donate to the fund for her orphaned children that she leaves behind. I think that I’m doing as well as I possibly can with processing this event and what it means in my life given that I am not involved with my ex-wife’s family anymore. I’m feeling better with regards to this tragedy.

I’m not Zen about my house. How do people live in a house while it’s being painted without going over the edge?

It’s really hard to live with tented furniture that was limited anyway. I’d only left my bed, my dining area table, and the desk and it’s wires. Yesterday, because the floors were taped, plastic-covered and papered, I felt like I was living in “ET” when the hazmat scientists start to study the creature.

So, I had a lapse in judgement. I didn’t pay too much. Well, a bit.

I bruise easily. However, these are pretty bad. If I knew where my oral arnica was, I’d take it, but things are piled in linen closet and other places so most things are blocked, and I only know where my topical arnica is. I applied it, but I imagine that I’ll look bad for a week or so.

I’m reading “Where Men Win Glory,” and it’s great. Last night after kickball, feeding my pets, and walking my dogs I wanted to read in a chair. Not in my dining area, but in a chair. I wanted to get a fabric chair upstairs from the basement. I have a staircase and a baby gate that is retractable at the top of my stairs.

Best laid plans…

I got the ottoman for the chair upstairs fairly swiftly and slunk around the ladder, the staging area, and traipsed through the paper and plastic that my dogs and cats have dug up and moved around, but the chair that goes with my ottoman is an entirely different story.

I got it out of the hoarder piles and around my upturned loveseat and existing table in my basement. Recall if you’ve read previous entries that movers emptied my upstairs so my basement isn’t usable. It’s like a Jenga Tower which has fallen.

I moved the chair around stacks of boxes and such and then got it to the base of my staircase. I thought that inverted and pulling it up each stair was good. I got it up all the stairs. Then it got caught on one of the plastic hooks on my gate.

I needed a Phillips Head Screwdriver, but those were in the laundry room closet. All of my large storing and my laundry machines are downstairs. Downstairs was blocked.

I was sweating so badly. Although the chair is fabric, it was really difficult to get it back downstairs because plastic tenting kept attacking me in my stairwell. It would stick to me too or would trip me. I imprisoned my shoe under the chair and almost fell until I shimmied the shoe off under the chair. It was now 8:30 and I’d done cardio with my son, ran errands, kicked, ran and scored two runs in kickball. I was a sweaty and angry mess.

I texted my neighbors who are like family to me. They said that I could borrow a screwdriver. I got the clip off without breaking it. The screws were really long. I made a mental note to use my electric screwdriver when I was no longer blocked out of my basement and could get tools. I pushed the chair all the way back down and removed the gate clip and it was really hard.

I went back downstairs and realized that I would have to slide the chair sideways with the legs toward the banister. That worked until I had to hoist under it from the top of my stairs. Heaving and hoeing finally got it upstairs and I got it into the corner by my living room window and successfully avoiding buckets of paint and a ladder.

I still couldn’t read though.

Now, I had to screw back the gate clips. Well, the screwdriver was set to left. I unscrewed my work and nearly fell backward. Then it was too big for the screwhead. I got the other one that we have and discovered that the nut is missing to attach non-drill pieces. That was something that my son was famous for during his whole life. He would take things out of my tools and they wound up in the _______ chasm of loss. My drill isn’t usable as a screwdriver anymore and the other electric screwdriver is too big for very small screw heads.

Finally, I just screwed them in by hand enough so that the top of the gate was somewhat secure and read for an hour in the damn chair! I have the bruises to prove it.

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Construction

7-years ago the pipe that took water out of the house to the city sewer system caved in and backed up all the plumbing in the house. The basement was flooded. Our pets were so freaked out. We didn’t have our tiny black cat at the time, but the dogs and the two cats were cowering, trying to comfort each other and in general fear mode.

Not right now. My dog is asleep next to me. Her sister is in a little bed that she uses. My cats are all three sleeping on my bed. I can’t believe it because the jackhammer is shaking the front of our house.

I tend to think that animals follow your lead. I don’t like all the noise, but I’m not reacting much to it. It’s just annoying, but I know that it won’t last forever.

It was over 17k all said and done.

The work that I’m doing now is nowhere near that amount. I paid out of pocket for removal of trees that were really overgrown weeds all along the perimeter of the backyard. I also paid out of pocket for all the insulation that I did this winter, and think that I can do that too with the work that I’m having done right now.

It’s significant to me to be able to choose what needs to be done and the timeline for it.

This entry is about construction and improvement.

I’m getting a concrete block at my garage entry, a drainage system to divert water from the front of the roof to the tree on the east side of my house, the irrigation going, a new porch, demolition of the hideous concrete in the back where the irrigation, hose hook-up, and evaporative cooler water flow is, the 60s or 70s tin shed is already gone, they’re laying a new concrete base, and new concrete on the side of garage where a poorly installed irrigation system had eaten away the concrete.

The Carpenter will custom build a small shed after the concrete is poured and is completely cured

I’m chilling. It’s noisy, dusty and disruptive. However, it’s not all that bad and my animals know that too. They’re not reacting much at all even when the crew is cutting rebar against our house. I’m constructing myself too. I love living alone, getting rid of deteriorating things, and looking forward to all the renewal.

It got oppressively hot this week. Everything is fried. I sat in the heat on the patio drinking coffee last weekend in a glider on the porch. There are chickadee babies in the birdhouse in the corner and it’s very sweet to watch them feed their babies larvae and little grasshoppers. I’ve been keeping the hanging birdbath that I got with Aveda points full of water for them. I am going to work all summer to improve both gigantic yards so I can sit outside. I’ll sit in the back this summer and sit up front in the fall.

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Gearing up

I’m going to work with the climber for a couple of hours the week after next on our book. I’m looking forward to her feedback and seeing her illustrations. I told her that I’m also amenable to story changes. I want to have a couple of pictures out too, because I’m a little married to the idea of a couple of scenes that are autobiographical, so I want to show her the context of them when I was growing up and a child. I’m interested in her childhood too. We should add some elements from hers.

She and I commuted without the guy from work on Monday. I was talking to her about my dog and then my Dad. I said, “It’s going to be much more difficult to lose my dog than it was my Dad. I think that you know that my Dad was abusive.” She was pretty quiet. I told her that I’d done 5-years of analysis and it fixed everything and I was able to show up for everything until he died of COVID. I didn’t really grieve him per se, and made peace with all the yelling, some limited hitting and aggression, and also intimidation. I did what was right. I didn’t give these specifics that I’m writing about here, but left it at “abusive” and making peace with my childhood. Finally, I said, “I don’t want you to feel like my therapist. I want to make sure that it’s ok that you know these things about me.” She said that I know her well too, and I said, “I don’t feel like I know you very well. I just want you to feel comfortable with me when I share.”

I took her home because she doesn’t have a car right now and sometimes borrows her partner’s car. We wished each other well and we have a time and day scheduled after work on the 15th for our book. I still get fluttery with her, but I don’t make any moves because I don’t know what is on or off the table with respect to her partner and don’t want to be disrespectful. I don’t know either if she has another partner currently. Regardless, she is smart and a brilliant artist and I’m so glad to get the book going!

I went to a book launch on Thursday and it was nice. I was incredibly tired though. I left right after it was over because I had already socialized with my friend (The author who I see when I go to the co-ed discussion group.) and met a new friend. The new friend lives near me, so when I go to this group again, I’ll text her to see if she’d like me to pick her up. I’m going to the Women’s Discussion group at the end of the month. My friend who leads it is out of town with her family currently, so I’m going to bring whey protein to drink because the other facilitator doesn’t do any food.

I have my car back. It looks like a cyclops. I have a man who restores headlights on luxury cars coming to my house today to work on the passenger headlight. I’ll have to move out all of my bikes. I’m bringing my Mountain Bike inside. It’s really rainy today. It feels like April. I’m so glad to be out of the monstrous rental car with front wheel drive. It was terrible and really noisy with actual bells and whistles. It barely fit in my garage!

I got the door of my hall closet repaired. I got the sheetrock in the entryway to my basement repaired too. Oddly, right before the potluck the mirror above my stairs fell. It didn’t break and was lodged onto the cat perch where they eat and drink. The paint behind it was bright white. Who paints a house and tapes over a mirror? So careless and lazy! The contractors textured the wall, painted primer over it, and hung the mirror with subtle metal clips. The next project is finding three nice door knobs, painting all the doors, and painting the stairwell where I had a new retractable gate installed. I’ll have the painter also paint behind the mirror in the same color and match the paint that is on most of the accent wall behind my hutch. I want to do projects in my house now that I am alone in it.