This is the first year we don’t have any kind of garden.
At all. It’s liberating.
Garden
around the house
Blossom
Crossing Over Again
Evening Shooting
The renovation project is nearing its end. The final exterior painting was completed today, but K decided she wanted to change one color — the trim around the new windows will soon match the color of our newly-painted shutters.
The brown shutters seem to tone everything else down. Those old, peeling, white shutters just made the house look unplanned and neglected. With freshly-washed brick and newly-painted shutters, the house doesn’t really look like it’s from the late sixties — except for the architecture, that is.
In the evening, some shooting.
Almost
Almost is a word that has so much wiggle room that it is almost meaningless. It can mean anything from “nowhere near” to “just moments from.”
“How are you doing with that project?” I ask a student.
“I’m almost done,” he replies, and depending on the student and what he’s taught me to expect, I understand that to mean “not even started” to “doing final proofreading.”
“How are you doing with that project?” K asks me.
“I’m almost done,” I reply, and that means nearly done or no where near done, but most often it means, “This is taking me a lot longer than I had anticipated or planned for.”
Seven years ago, the Boy was almost here. It was just after we’d gone to bed on a Sunday night that K woke me with, “My water broke.” By about half past eleven that Sunday (Mother’s Day), we were at the hospital. By one in the morning, we were holding E.
For the last few weeks, we’ve felt like we’re almost done with this renovation, almost ready to move Nana and Papa into their little apartment as they’ve taken to calling it. The floors are done everywhere; the power is on; the lights are hooked up; the washer and drier are installed; the sink is almost ready. Yet so much remaining. The bed for Papa sits in parts in our living room, with the headboard and footboard set to arrive later this week. The toilet sits in its box, ready for installation. The shower needs to be completed, and the exterior needs painting. There’s still so much to do, and so little to do.
Tonight, with a little help from the Boy, I got a little more done: the drainage system is 99% complete. We need a new downspout for the back corner, and as such, I’ve yet to make the final cuts on the PVC for the drainage outlet there.
I stuck some PVC in to keep dirt from getting into the system while I filled in the gravel and dirt, but ti’ about 24 inches too tall at least.
It’s relatively smooth, relatively done. Almost — just like every other almost.
Digging, Mowing, Sealing
We put the new bed in a year ago — exactly a year ago today.
End of Spring 2018 Soccer
It’s tempting to fall into the obvious reflection: the “so much has changed in a year” cliché. A lot has changed in a year, but the majority of it has changed in the last five months, all starting December 4 with a phone call at around 9:30 in the evening while I was out walking the dog. “Nana is going to the hospital.” And from that moment, it all changed. No one knew just how much it would change, of course. No one has any real clairvoyance in medical emergencies. But here I am, a day past five months after it all started, exactly a year after we put them in, taking out the last vestiges of a garden.
It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then, Saturday work spills into Sunday. We try to keep Sunday as a day for the family, but with the last five months begin what they have, that in itself is a challenge.
Today’s job was simple but critical: deal with the recently created drainage issue at the front corner downspout.
Visions of it seeping through the brick into the now newly created concrete-slab crawl that would offer no outlet at all haunted me, and when the rain woke me at three in the morning, I went to check and found the hack I’d created didn’t work either and set about digging, in a downpour in my underwear and Crocs at three in the morning, a quick trench to direct the water away from the house.
Today, then, was the day to solve the problem once and for all. The first task: dig up the Crepe Myrtle at the corner of the house. That took a couple of hours. Then, the trenching, including a trench under the newly built ramp. Why not do it before they built the ramp? Simply — I didn’t know it would be necessary.
For now, everything is simply laid out and pushed together. I’m far from done and not even sure how I’ll terminate it for effective discharge.
Next, after several hours of digging, I turned my attention back to the yard and the hedges three-quarters trimmed. I’d cut my power cord yesterday and decided to put it off until Sunday — and the torrents of rain that were by then falling didn’t do much to avoid said procrastination.
The Boy for his part was upset and thrilled about it all. Digging is one of his favorite things, and he was disappointed that he missed out on so much of it. Mowing, though, is equally enjoyable for him, and he reached a milestone today: he can now start the mower himself. He ran over the trimmings that remained around the yard, always looking for a reason to turn the mower’s engine off so he could turn it back on.
(The hard rain really did a number on our plants — they’re beaten into submission.)
The final task was indoors: sealing up the entry to the new room. The floor guys are going to be here tomorrow, and the thought of sawdust throughout the kitchen and living room was none too appealing.
Finally, dinner without the girls: leftover soup and a salad. The Boy, being the wonderfully odd eater than he is, was disappointed with the soup (he’s grown tired of all soups, I think) and thrilled about the salad.
End of April
It’s difficult to believe that April is over, and when I look at my school calendar for May, I realize that the year is, for all intents and purposes, over. We have no single week of school remaining that is a regular, five-day, testing-free week, except for the last week, which consists of three half days.
April in a way flew by, but it also crawled. We’re still not done with the renovation: “Two more weeks” has been the eternal refrain. We’re so close now it’s ridiculous: the walls and ceilings primed, ready for painting tomorrow; tiles in the bathroom and shower installed, ready for grout; hardwood floor installed in the bedroom, read to be sanded and finished next Monday. It feels like forever and no time at the same time.
Spring Monday
I was worried that this would be the first of several very difficult days. With no one here to help with the kids (read: E) in the morning, it’s difficult for me to get out of the house very early. This week, however, is my duty week: I get to spend thirty minutes before my contracted arrival time supervising kids on the eighth-grade hallway. It’s loads of fun, but the downside is that I have to leave much earlier than usual. Which created a dilemma: what to do with the Boy. Two options: ride with the neighbor or leave without breakfast and have it at school.
At around 6:15 this morning, the Boy toddled downstairs, still rubbing his eyes, and presented a third option: “I’m just going to eat breakfast now.”
“Are you sure? You could still sleep another half hour.”
“Nah, I’ll stay up.”
And so the Boy proved once again that life is like calculus: there’s often more than one (or even two) solutions to a given problem.
Once at school, the usually peaceful morning duty transformed temporarily into one of those moments when, as a teacher, I see a student’s future and think, “Wow, if this kid doesn’t make some serious changes, do some serious maturing, she’s in for a long, tough life.” And much of that, in most cases, is due to environment: they’re not choosing necessarily to be a disrespectful kid. It’s something that works on the streets and/or at home, and they just bring it into the school as well.
That particular exchange foreshadowed the discussion I was to have with my honors English kids, who read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” last week as their article of the week. We began with a review via video:
Then the kids went through a few discussion questions:
- To what extent do you find Socrates’s point about the human tendency to confuse “shadows” with “reality” relevant today?
- What could be the elements that prevent people from seeing the truth, or regarding “shadow” as the “truth”?
- In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?
The common theme that came through in all of these discussions was the role social media plays in creating false realities, in preventing people from seeing truth, in shackling the mind. It’s ironic: I see so many of these kids buried in their phones before and after school, yet they’re strangely aware of the negative effects.
After school, I hopped out of the car thinking, “So far, other than the little issue in the morning during hall duty, this supposedly tough day is surprisingly enjoyable. After dinner, it was even more so: one of E’s choices in his literacy log is to find a pleasant place to sit outside and read for a while.
And after that, a little project: a bird house. Where did this idea come from? I don’t know. The Boy simply talked K into buy him a piece of pressure-treated 1 x 6, and although he originally planned on building a tree house from that single plank, he was flexible enough to realize that a bird house was probably more in the scope of that single plank. So he found instructions on YouTube, gathered tools, and together we built a little bird house.
“Once you’re done, I want to help with the painting,” the Girl declared, and so with twenty minutes to go before the start of E’s evening ritual, they began working.
“Let’s decorate it with birds,” the Girl suggested. They began drawing various silhouettes of birds while I got the dog’s dinner ready, only to discover we were out of dog food.
“Alright kids, you’ll have to do the actual painting tomorrow. E, you’ll have to go with me to the store to buy some food for Clover.” I was expecting a small fit, some protesting at the very least, and I was reluctant to stop the work in progress: it’s so rare that they find something that really engages them both.
Still, the Boy was surprisingly mature. “Okay,” was all he said, and off we went to get some kibble for the pup.
And so at the close of this surprisingly pleasant day that was supposed to be the first of several tough ones, I find myself realizing anew that “tough days” and “bad days” and “rough days” depend more on our perception than anything else, just like Plato’s shadows suggest.
Crash
Our swing broke. K was swinging; the kids were playing; I sat down in the swing to join her.
We were soon on the ground. Thus ends “The New Swing.”
Spring Break 2019 Day 2
Spring Break 2019 Day 1
The first day of spring break, and I spent the morning in the attic, putting additional insulation to compensate for the fact that the insulation we blew in eleven years ago has settled significantly: all the rafters, once hidden beneath several inches of insulation were once again visible.
This time, though, I decided simply to buy some R19 batts and hope for a little longer break than eleven years before I need to do it again. Part of this is due to the fact that to get to the attic above the upper part of the house, we have to take everything —Â absolutely everything — out of L’s closet. That in itself will be a task. Today, though, I just focused on the lower part of the house.
While all that went on, our regular construction guys worked on our new windows in the basement and the siding for the closed-in bedroom/bathroom we’re building for Nana and Papa.
Additionally, two other fellows came in to start putting up the drywall and eventually finish the bathroom.
During all of this, the kids took care of themselves. The Boy spent the day playing with neighborhood kids, an activity that included me at least once saying, “Where’s E?” and having to go look for him. He was right where I thought he would be, but we’ll to establish some new protocols with him now that his independence is steadily increasing.
Saturday Growth
The day began with a bit of unusual work: pulling old wiring out of the attic. At first, the plan was just to remove them from the area over the old carport. But when in the afternoon I began the second part of today’s tasks — adding insulation to the lower part of the house — I realized I could pull almost all the wiring out — just about the whole length of the house. It was a relic from the past: old 10-gauge wiring used for long-removed baseboard heaters.
We took a break around lunchtime for E’s first game of the season. Emil had his first break of the spring season in the second quarter. (Youth soccer is divided into quarters.) He beat the last defender, sent his shot past the goalie toward the far corner, and would have made a goal but for a few inches.
Afterward, it was back into the attic for me. In the end, I put in several bags of insulation and took out one full contractor back of wiring.
Floor Joists
are in. Our builder tells us he will be done with framing, plumbing, and wiring by next week.
Changes
The other day, I was looking through old posts here and noticed this picture:
I had forgotten completely that when we bought this house, there was an enormous antenna on the chimney. I found the image in Lightroom’s catalog, played with it a bit, and then found this image:
This was from about 2008. The bushes in the foreground are long gone, as are the pine trees and dozens of sweet gum saplings, which I thought, at first, were some kind of maple. What an idiot.
That is all to say, things change around the house. Since we moved in twelve years ago, we’ve replaced the windows, replaced some doors, remodeled a bathroom, remodeled the kitchen, added insulation, replaced the outdoor sewer line twice, redid the landscaping in front of the house, replanted the front yard at least three times, repainted a few rooms a couple of times, replaced the whole HVAC system, and dozens of other little things.
Today began the first of another change: remodeling the carport to make it an extra room and to convert the laundry room into a bathroom. Nana and Papa are moving in with us, and I began the transformation today by removing the brick steps up to the door. It wasn’t necessary, strictly speaking, but we’ll use those bricks to close up finally the gaping hole left when we removed the old heating system.
An odd feeling, realizing that our house is about to undergo its most radical change.
(Click on images for larger version.)
Saturday Adventuring
The first day of spring work — outside collecting hundreds of Sweet Gum seed pods to prevent potentially thousands of saplings, mowing, cleaning.
Dinner at Nana’s and Papa’s, preceded by some exploring.
What For Dinner?
Railing
Sometimes, I think I can’t do anything right when it comes to projects around the house. If it’s something I’ve done a number of times, I’m fine with it. The toilet in our master bathroom, for example — I’ve replaced it twice. If I had to replace it again, I would be frustrated but not overwhelmed. I wouldn’t even have to look at a YouTube video for help. Any spigot replacement is no problem because I’ve done it so many times that I simply installed a Shark Bite coupling, and it’s a simple matter of some Teflon tape and a quick trip into the crawl space. The reason is obvious: practice makes perfect.
But catch me doing something for the first time, and you’ll probably find me using inappropriate language at some point, sitting at some point with my head in my hands, standing at some point staring at what I just messed up.
Today, I put up the stair railing that we took down over two years ago when we remodeled our kitchen. Following the principle that one doesn’t want to rush into anything unadvisedly, I’d put this off for ages. When necessity finally overcame procrastination, I thought it would be a simple process — after all, it looked simple on the YouTube video. And in hindsight, it should have been terribly simple. Yet not being a professional handyman, I screwed things up (poor pun intended). I mismeasured once even though I checked it. Somehow 29 3/8″ morphed into 31 3/8″ in my head, and though I’d written down 29 3/8″ and drilled the first hole 29 3/8″ from the stair tread, I drilled the pilot hole for the last bracket a full two inches higher than needed.
That wasn’t the first error, and it wasn’t the last, and as a result, I have a number of superfluous holes that need to be patched, sanded, and repainted.
What I wouldn’t give for a second shot with clean walls…
Autumnal Saturday
The Dog digs. And digs and digs and digs. She digs everywhere. We’ve discovered that staw keeps her from digging up an area again.
Soon, our whole yard will be covered with straw, I fear…
Yellow
It’s been a couple of years since we’ve had a yellow jacket infestation. For a few years, we had one or two nests just about every summer, and taking care of them became a simple process: a few gallons of boiling water around ten in the evening, when they’re all bedded down in their nest, and no more problem.
This year, though, one hive made its home under the slab that supports our heat pump. If it were a concrete slab, I might consider the water method again, but it’s some strange concrete/foam “slab” that is just a little bigger than the unit itself. The thought of pouring water into that area, possibly destabilizing the whole unit — not a good thought. The other hive has made its home within a bush: it’s impossible to pour the water through the bush to make a good clean shot.
So today, I went by a DIY pest control place, bought some Talstar and Evergreen Pyrethrum Dust and let them have it.
I hit the nest under the heat pump while it was still daylight: I turned the nozzle on my sprayer so it was a fast, fat stream, stood back about ten feet, and sprayed into the opening for a good ten to fifteen seconds. I went back ten minutes later and did it again. After ten more minutes, I hit them a third time. Then a fourth time.
By then, there were yellowjackets everywhere, all rolling around on the ground, all struggling through their last moments.
It’s a strange moment: on the one hand, I feel a little bad for the guys. There they are, just doing what instinct has trained them to do. They’re breeding, raising young, defending them when necessary. On the other hand, they’re assholes. It doesn’t take much to get them riled up, and with two kids, two cats, and a dog around, it’s not a chance I’m willing to take.
Still, I can’t help but feel a little like Ender…
The Show Begins Tomorrow
The first day of a new school year is like the moment the curtain rises on a play that is often improvisational and responsive to the audience’s reaction. Each year, I reinvent myself as a teacher a little bit, especially during those first days when I’m setting a tone for the year. Always looking for that sweet spot between commander-in-chief and coach, I waver between the “don’t smile before Christmas” type of teacher and the warm-and-welcoming-almost-a-friend type of teacher. Neither is sufficient in and of itself, and I really like the coach mentality more than the authoritarian mentality, but kids will be kids, and sometimes, I have some really emotionally damaged students who add a whole new dimension and need that forceful approach — if only for a second, like a splash of cold water to get their attention — so I waver between the two in the beginning.
And yet it always depends on the class: some groups come in and I see immediately that Joey in the back is going to be a living terror if I don’t make sure I set the right tone (which might not be the authoritarian despite the initial impression that he needs a “strong hand”); other groups come in and I see, though not immediately, that there aren’t any students set on hijacking the class, and I breathe a bit easier. Still, that hint of “I can become the strictest, meanest teacher in the world if I need to” must be there, around the edges, because you never know what’s going to happen in October when the honeymoon is over.
So the night before, I sit thinking about who exactly I’ll become tomorrow. I know who I’ll end up being: I have enough experience that I can get to the coach stage fairly quickly once I’ve established that I know how to drop the hammer, but those first few days — I never really know.
The magic begins tomorrow, too. I’ll see wave after wave of totally foreign faces and look at attendance sheets that are just a bunch of names, and by the end of the first quarter, I’ll be able to predict how each student is going to react to a given assignment. By the end of the semester, I’ll even know what words a given student might use.
