Changing it up: pt. 4

Oy. Doors off the bathroom. Holes cut in the wall. A major cold front coming through.

Cold showers.

Mar 18

You MAY NOT LOOK at the following pictures if you don’t eat your vegetables (i.e. – read what I, with my new something-like-carpal-tunnel, have so lovingly written for you). And you have to tell me: comedy or farce?

It occurred to me, as I was doing the final stripping down of my bedroom this morning: I have slept in the same bed, on the same side of that bed, with my feet pointing in the same direction—the same exact piece of real estate in other words— almost every night of my life for thirty one years. I’m sure there’s a Google maps address for this little piece of the planet. All mine for at least a third of a lifetime.

Last night was the last night I will ever spend in it.

I thought about that and wondered if there was any sentimental meaning in it. Should I be sad? But I wasn’t. I was mad. I had spent the en-tire day schlepping my life’s history into the kids’ rooms yesterday. And this morning, G was helping me with the heavy and high stuff. Pulling things away from the wall. Moving them off to the side. Taking them out entirely.

Do you know what you find when you haven’t moved a piece of furniture for just about a third of a century? You find out what color your carpet used to be, for one thing. You also find out just how much dust and how many spiders you’ve been living with all these years. And it’s way demoralizing.

I had a little discussion with myself, standing there with the vacuum hose-and-nozzle in my hand:  in my little life, there just hasn’t been enough time to bring up four children, run a business, write novels and still  breathe—much less invest a lot in moving furniture and chasing dust. Something had to give. And for me, I chose the bohemian, Waldonish way—philosophy over responsibility. But seeing as I have never been very good at any of the womanly arts, this is no surprise.  In consequence,  I sort of have to stop from time to time and accept my base-line failures. Moving furniture is evidently the perfect time to do this.

I was very busy then, vacuuming up the unspeakable dust on the long-hidden walls, the dust bunny colonies stuck to the deep brown (and not-gold-after-all) carpet. When one of G’s music associates (and a good friend of mine as well)—a person famous for the fact that he painted his garage floor WHITE and ALWAYS keeps it that way—dropped in. Under normal (?) circumstances, as in, when I am not dressed in my exercise clothes (not cute ones), rough-haired and unshowered, in my private bedroom (whether totally torn up or just normally so) up to my knees in dust bunnies and highly sensitive to that fact—I’d have been glad to see him.

“I told Mike I’d show him the project,” G says and, dropping the king-sized mattress like a hot potato, scampers off down the stairs to greet his buddy. Moments later, here they come, back up the stairs – into the most vulnerable and intimate truths of my ineptitude and slovenliness.

“Do NOT look at anything,” I order, not in any kind of kidding tone. And of course, Mike has to look at EVERTHING. They finally climbed out through the window into the new room addition, and it was about seven minutes later—as I am tearing down the bed frame, carrying bunky boards out of the way and trying to shift that danged mattress—that I realize G is still out there showing off, having the time of his life, while I AM  WORKING LIKE A DOG (do dogs work?).

HE was not burdened with guilt over years of gender role failure. HE is not even burdened with sentimentality about any of this. He doesn’t even have a hurt arm.  HE just thinks the whole deal is totally cool.

Back inside they came and I literally PUSHED Mike out the door, down the hall to the stairs and slapped him on the behind for still LOOKING.

My parents moved us four times before I was sixteen years old. We never lived in a place long enough that drowning in dust was ever cause for real worry. But then, Mom wasn’t the kind of woman who would’ve let a thing like that happen anyway. And every time we moved, she shed stuff—stuff like all the stuff in every one of my closets and drawers and cabinets—things I can’t get rid of because A) there are memories attached to them, and/or B) I might need them someday (thank you, Dad, for reading Robinson Caruso out loud to us when I was of very tender and malleable age).

I swore that I would never move my kids if I could help it; too traumatic. But here is the price: in the final reckoning, my life just plain weighs a lot more than my mother’s.

Even so, I suspect that I like my life pretty much as it is.

REAL TIME (actually yesterday afternoon) Now Les and Galin are upstairs tearing down walls, cutting in doors, making a huge mess. And G and Todd are downstairs drilling holes for electrical wire. And I believe Blake must be back, because the ground is vibrating under my person, and the dogs are cowering at my feet. Yep—Blake’s out there, alright—with a Bobcat (the man must LOVE machines), cleaning up this HUGE mound of old insulation and junk wood and saw dust and packaging.  And very possibly squishing my daffodils.  What’s left of them.

All of that makes me really, really happy. Not only because the change is just plain exciting—but also because this huge mess is NOT MY FAULT.

And I don’t have to clean it up.

YAY!!!

Now, lots of pictures of Monday and Tuesday, because I was so fascinated with every little change, I just kept running out there to record them:

The author, at home (work).

Monday—8:30 a.m.  Dawn’s early light and all that.  And here is Les, ready to go (yes, Holly, the contractor not only showed up on the day he said he would, but almost before the sun came up).

Here now – this is more the feeling of the light.  I was up at eight, and the crew got here at around 8:05 am.

This was shot at 8:30:31.  One wall up.

Tidying up before

putting the other wall up. 9:05 am.

You can see them loading the floor joists into the window here. 9:14

Before throwing them up on the deck.  9:26

Joists in place.  9:44

I ran around the end of the building, looking for another exciting angle.  Heck, it was ALL exciting angles. This was shot at 10:28.

After that, they had to trim the trees.  We’d already lost one major tree and several little guys.  Now several huge, hoary old branches.    All these trees were tiny when we moved in decades ago.  They thrived on our sprinkler systems, but got leggy because there were so many of them and only so many square feet of sunshine.  I’m not sure that climbing into a tree – and onto the specific branch you are trying to cut is the best idea.  But hey – these guys are professionals.

Going backwards because I really like this shot.  9:45

2:59

I drove out to the horses, and when I came back, I saw this happening.

Things slowed down a bit on the cosmetic front because they had put down the floor boards and then tie the old room into the new bit, which was tricky and challenging.  And which turned out beautifully. 4:32:03

End of one day’s work.

Tuesday morning: 10:10:27.  All walls in, roof trusses in place.

An actual room.  I kept telling the three man crew: this is like the Creation – you came here, and there was nothing.  Nothing but space.  And then you defined and organized that space into this – something.  (Well, some day it WILL be something.)  Nothing – into something real.  Life will be played out here.  Even ten feet in the air above the ground, people will be walking and talking – which they could not have done if somebody hadn’t organized and defined the space.  Weird.  (All over the world, there is invisible real estate, ten feet, twenty feet, two hundred feet up in the air.  The birds have known about this for thousands of years.  But until this afternoon, it had never struck me so.)

Actual room from the back

Actual huge mess.

Remember that lawn I keep talking about – the one I used to have?

Okay, tomorrow I will show you what I was writing about yesterday.  Or maybe tonight.  G is out there drilling and hammering and deciding where switches go.  And I am celebrating three weeks without more than two full nights’ sleep.  I’m behind in correspondence, and probably in car inspections and bills.  But that’s why I stay a month ahead on the bills – just in case.  So what I’m officially doing (this blog is not official) is the laundry.  This is important because today’s dirty clothes are the only clothes we know how to locate.  I will not be dusting, though (whistling in the wind).

I can’t remember, just now, what else it was I used to do in my life.

K out.

P.S.  Did I mention that it just started snowing?