The State of the House Address

Life as I know it is seriously disrupted. Nothing that can’t be rectified with a bit of hard work, but annoying nonetheless.

Just before I left for DC, a contractor started work on the basement. In the spring, the waterproofer had fixed the large crack that was sending water into the room and since we had messed up the paneling trying to locate the crack, we decided to redo the whole room, in part as a retreat for visiting grandchildren. As the contractor removed the rest of the paneling, he discovered another crack, this time in the wall at the front of the house. Re-enter waterproofing man, who suggested we go through the whole procedure again. But this time, instead of digging up the driveway, he had to dig up the shrubs and flowers in front of the house. I had spent a lot of time out there this fall. Two years ago the roofers had sent three layers of old roof crashing down and I had finally cleared up most of the evidence of their destruction. At least we weren't expected to dig up the shrubs. Or re-plant them. I am such a trusting person. We had to run errands the day the crew turned up to re-plant and I believed them when they said they had placed markers to indicate where the plants belonged. Maybe they had, but they had failed to indicate which shrubs went where. I returned several hours later to find everything in the wrong place, planted too high and gasping for water. Probably by spring the picture will be brighter. I will go out this week, plant some bulbs and wait to see if Mother Nature can help me out.

Meanwhile we have had the fence people replace the rotting posts in the backyard fence, the gutter people install shiny new gutters and downspouts and the window crew put glass block windows in the basement room. We are getting somewhere, at least with the infrastructure, if not the cosmetic stuff.

I forgot to mention that we moved between two and three thousand books from the basement. They have now taken over my sewing room and are scattered throughout the house. And in one week we are having the study floor sanded and re-finished, which means another fifteen hundred or so books are slowly being moved to the dining room. Then we have to move the furniture. That has to be done in between continually cleaning the house as the dust rises up from the new drywall in the basement. Am I complaining? You bet I am.

At least the saga of Ernie’s hand is gradually coming to an end. For the second time he spent several hours at St. John Macomb Hospital. Some of the area where the hematoma had been drained was not healing and yesterday he had a skin graft. So he is back in a hard cast for a while (try moving books and furniture when you can’t bend your wrist.) Then there will be therapy. The surgeon suggested he stay out of the workshop and write a book instead!

So there we are. Order will be restored, but it helped to get this off my chest.