around the house

96 – 48

Tuesday 23 June 2015

There was an almost fifty-degree temperature difference between Jabłonka and Greenville this third day of the 2015 summer. There, it was raining all day; here, the sun was merciless. That being said, we all had the same reaction: stay in as much as possible.

Aunty came by for a visit -- she lives just about a mile away, so it's convenient, and visiting is just what you do when it's forty-eight degrees and raining in June.

K told me that she "couldn't put enough layers on today." But being trapped indoors leads to discoveries: "We played a couple of games of battleship, and then we discovered the Qwirkle game upstairs in the wooden room. It is a great game, I think we will play it a lot when the rest of the kids join."

That will be next week, when Polish schools are done for the year and the cousins come to grandma's.

On this side of the ocean, I spent the day cleaning out one half of the basement in preparation for a thick, heavy coat of water-sealing paint. "Withstands up to 15 PSI" proclaims the label. Sounds like you could submerge your house in that case. Still, it was a job that required a lot of work that doesn't leave a lot to show for it. The before and after pictures look almost the same. A little less dirt on the floor, and some patches where I scraped up the old paint entirely.

In theory, this is unnecessary: I've discovered the source of our occasional flooding (poorly clogged drainage that leaves the downspouts to pour water along the house), and I've fixed the problem. In theory. But I'm not about to take a chance, so I have plans to paint both the basement walls and floor as well as the portion of the crawlspace where water was likely entering.

But it wasn't all inside work today. I worked in our small garden, finishing pulling up the old peas, straightening some of the tomato stakes, and dreaming of the not-too-distant future when I'm overwhelmed with tomatoes.

Drain, Rain, and a Snail

Saturday 20 June 2015

Our crawl space flooded at least five times in the last couple of years, and our half-basement itself flooded once or twice as well. It quickly became clear what was the cause: two downspouts of our gutters were gushing water straight into the foundation, which meant that our drainage system (already redone twice) was insufficient, clogged with roots, dirt, and who knows what. So earlier this year, I replaced the system with a temporary fix. An ugly fix. But it solved the problem. I knew I'd have to do it for a second time (the first time was done by a contractor before we moved in, part of our closing deal), but I as in no hurry.

"Your number one priority while we're in Poland," K clarified, though, "is to redo the drains in the front." So for the last few days, I've been digging, tugging, leveling, and getting everything ready for a final fix. I knew it'd be overkill, but I also figured I'd rather not do it another time, so the replacement system is with three-inch schedule 40 PVC pipe. But before I could get everything set, the sky began to gray, and I decided I might need to reattach the old temporary system, just in case.

What followed was a storm unlike anything I'd seen here. "It would have been the perfect test," I muttered to myself.

Yesterday and today, though, I was able to get back out, finish up the leveling, and finish up the project, by and large. I decided to include two clean-outs in the plan just in case: I do not want to do this yet again. I reattached the hose to the spigot, rammed it down it not the newly constructed system, and turned it on. Perfection.

"Now if I could only get a real test," I thought. Wish granted: another storm blew through this afternoon and everything worked like a charm. All that's left is packing a bit more gravel around it and replacing the mulch.

Job one, done. More or less.

But who cares about drains and rain when across the ocean there are snails and soccer games?

K took the kids and Babcia to visit A, K's sister-in-law, and their kids, who live just outside of Krakow. There was soccer and silliness until L discovered a snail -- "na prawda duzy slimak!" K assured me (though probably with better grammar) before I'd had a chance to see the pictures -- and that entertained them for a couple of hours.

L has fallen back into Polish with no problem, K tells me. In fact, she's eager to accompany her cousin S for a two-week camp up at the coast. The Boy, though, is a different story. Though K speaks almost exclusively in Polish, he's still not really speaking that much Polish. I would imagine he feels a little left out as a result. "I translate for him a lot," L explained today during our Skype time, but there's something about this picture, his hands held in front of him as he watches, that makes me just want to hug him and assure him that he'll be able to jabber away in no time as long as he makes a real effort. Or maybe there's something else entirely going on with that picture. Maybe he's just hungry, ready to head to the kitchen for some chicken and potatoes.

Or maybe not.

Break

Tuesday 09 June 2015

K informs me that I work probably fifty to sixty hours a week during the school year. Grading, planning, grading, planning in the evenings, on the weekends, in the evenings, on the weekends. It adds up, she tells me. I never keep track, but I'll go with her assessment. That's why, when summer break comes around, it's an absolute relief, at least for the first couple of weeks.

And it allows me to do things like cleaning up a trampoline we got for free from a family whose boys have long outgrown it and doing it in the early afternoon of a Tuesday.

Which is also good, because as L helps, she gets tired, which bodes well for a restful night's sleep.

So we all get breaks.

Back to Normal

Saturday 16 May 2015

What is normal in a house with kids? In the late spring, it's hard to determine what might be "normal." School, winding down, is in flux. The yard is in constant need of attention, with a thousand and one things calling out -- berry bushes need covering, hedges need trimming, tomatoes need staking, peas need something to climb on.

So what is "normal"?

Ironically, with a now-three-year-old, it's a first around every corner. A first time bouncing the ball repeatedly and catching it. Not a first time watching it roll down the hill. But a first time walking down alone, with Tata standing watch at the edge of the driveway.

And it's a day of not-firsts leading to firsts. The Girl cleaning her room, alone in the house, semi-fine with it, semi-fussing about it as everyone else works outside.

"You'll hear everyone outside from the window," I reassured. Well, not everyone. I was back working on the car -- another "normal" when you own a Volkswagen is that there's always something going wrong -- but everyone else was in theÂ front yard. Eventually the fussing subsided, the room got cleaned, quite well, and the Girl joined us. Them.

Afternoon: washing the cars. The Girl didn't want to "help" until she found out she could get wet. And so she came bounding out of the house in her old swimsuit and helped wash the car. Sort of. A bit more playing.

Well, total playing. I wanted to do it all myself because my normal hasn't been so normal until recently. But that's normal.

The Boy joined us. Again, normal. He squealed -- literally -- every single time he got a shot of water.

"Daddy, squirt me again!"

Finally, normal again.

Catching Up

Tuesday 12 May 2015

The last few weeks have been bad for our scrapbook. Surgery, work load, and general apathy have all combined to shut things down creatively speaking. Photos have remained on the camera for days, weeks even. Day after day has passed without writing a single word. And so there's a backlog that creates an odd mosaic of the last couple of weeks.

New Swing, Redux

Sunday 26 April 2015

Defense

Monday 20 April 2015

Mothers are defensive -- ferocious, in fact. A bird, for example, will take on an animal much larger than itself in an attempt to defend her young. Our tenants on the back downspout have been proving this.

Come out, for example, onto the back deck while she's feeding, and she'll attack -- positively attack.

Guests and the Evening

Saturday 18 April 2015

We have two birds’ nests in the downspout of our gutters. One is at the back of the house, in a very safe location. We just leave them alone every year, and we get a good view of the hatchlings as a result.

The other nest is in the downspout next to our raspberry and blackberry canes. We have to put up netting to keep the birds out, and so the last thing I really want is to enclose them in the netting. With the blackberries blooming, it’s only a matter of time before we start putting the nets back up.

My first effort to evict them was a failure: I put nails in a board, much like anti-pigeon devices one might find in cities, and set the board in the downspout. They build around it. SoÂ I’ve been going out and knocking the nest down, hoping they’ll get the hint. But they’re stubborn and rebuild. I took some bleach water while they were out and soaked the nest, thinking theÂ odor would repel them. It did, for a while.

I’ve got another solution in mind, but in the meantime, I just go out and knock the nest down before they really settle in. “Just leave them alone,” K says, but it’s a battle I will win.

So the dayÂ begins with an eviction, and then another battle: thick, long, heavy grass. The Boy comes running up, walking beside me as I struggle with the tall grass before deciding to raise the mower deck to its highest level for an initial trim.

“I’m going to help you!” cries E, squeezing his way between me and the mower.

It slows the process considerably, butÂ it’s worth it. We work out a deal: he helps one direction, then races me back to the other end. We’re both happy with the compromise.

After dinner, it’s time for a little exploring.

The azaleas are in full bloom now, and the kids love picking up the fallen blossoms (and picking them from the bush if I don’t keep a close watch), so between the swing, the creek, and the blooms, it’s paradise.