August 09, 2009

11:15 a.m.

You Have Reh-ceived a Bimp

Iris and the Salty Dog run the general store, two doors down from me. I call him Salty Dog because he looks like an ex-sailor: grizzled, white-bearded, loves to tell stories. Certain spots on his hands, arms and face tell of melanoma. He has to stay out of the sun. Their house, which includes the two large rooms of the general store, is old and cool just like the rest of the houses on Main Street. The kitchen has nooks and crannies. The wraparound porch holds rockers, milk jugs, flower pots, things for sale and things for show. The store itself is wonderful. I�ve only been in it once, during the 4th of July pot luck they hold every year after the parade. It�s a fascinating array of old and new stuff. Need a butter churn or a blanket or some enameled cookware? A steamer trunk? A hat? Iris probably has it, plus a few things you didn�t know you needed.

Iris also happens to be the town historian, and she�s the one who sent us the first pictures we had of my house being moved up the hill. We found others in the attic and wanted to share them with her. Rose, Marc and I went over last night for tea and photos and had a lovely time. Iris�s passion for town history is palpable. She LOVES digging into the past and is a wealth of information.

She didn�t know much about wife Anna, though, or son Joe, who died. She thought Anna was pretty much homebound, in that 50�s housewife way. We still don�t know when either of them passed.

Anyway I saw pictures of my house from the mid 1800s, and also from about 1935.

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I woke up in a lousy mood today, overwhelmed by all the work ahead and not knowing where to begin. Marc hasn�t really been on board this week, being consumed by getting stuff out of their old house (finally, once and for all) and needing a little down time. I feel he expects me to carry on in various ways but it seems I need him to get me started on just about anything. I think I�ll go to Home Depot today and try to get replacement drainage pipe for the black corrugated one we busted with the Dynahoe. I have to look for couplings too. I have no idea what I�m doing, but if I make the effort and then call him and say, �Here�s what I found. Shall I pick this up and will it do?� then I�ll have conjured a little faith around myself. I can�t expect him to just be here all the time fixing everything. But for example I said last night, �How you do remove a ceiling?� Well, you take a crowbar and a big putty knife and you put a mask on your face and get on a ladder, and you chip off everything down to the lath. Paint, plaster, gray cement-looking stuff (which is also plaster). You put an exhaust fan in the window and (nine years later) when the ceiling is all off, you put the detritus into five-gallon buckets and take them to the dumpster at work every day until they�re gone and no one�s any the wiser.

But, ceilings � can�t begin those yet, really. I said I�d rather put my efforts towards winterizing, which means pipes (need Marc�s help for that), kitchen (oh � need Marc�s help demolishing and rebuilding that) and pellet stoves. Those I can research but I don�t know where all that money is coming from. The Obama bucks aren�t going to stretch that far. And we have to build a woodshed to house two one-ton pallets of pellets. Need Marc�s help for that. Plus I have to get a new back door, which is two or three hundred bucks! Need Marc to help install that. See?

Meanwhile I COULD have been doing things like, on any sunny day, mowing the lawn. It�s almost so long again that I�ll have to weed whack it before I can mow it. Granted it�s rained most days this year, but this week there was some sun. But even if I had decided to do it, Marc says, �When you mow, I�ll bring the tractor over and raise the bucket so you can keep emptying the bag into the bucket and we can dump it on the compost heap.� So, guess what? Yes. I need Marc�s help with that, at least to get started. And he�s been at their old house every night this past week, working on that.

And today, 50% chance of rain again.

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So I was a little out of sorts already, and I came downstairs and there was this huge fly in the house. Rose had gotten me one of those bug-zappers that looks like a tennis racket, when I had all the problem with mosquitos, only it was a $5 one from Job Lot and although the light comes on, it doesn�t seem to zap anything. I have impotently swatted about two dozen mosquitos with this thing, with no result. In fact, bugs have crawled happily all over it and then flown away, with me clicking and clicking the damn button. Nothing. I thought, maybe I need a bigger target, so here was this fly, all big and easy to spot. I got the zapper and clicked the button and whacked it!

The fly flew on. Three seconds later, the zapper emitted a loud ZAP!

I tried this again with the same result. Whack! Bzzzz bzzzz, fly, land elsewhere. ZAP!! into thin air.

�I give up,� I said in disgust.

Then I went to rearrange an extension cord in the bathroom. To do this I had to pull the piece of wood forward that sits on the radiator. I have this here so the plants will be stable. Two lovely plants I got at Logee�s. The board sort of tucks under the windowsill. The cord goes behind the radiator, so I pulled it forward so I could see what I was doing. As I was fiddling around with all this, I noticed a couple of things behind the radiator on the floor that I�d missed when I was decontaminating the bathroom. �Oh, now what is THIS?� I said in exasperation. At the very next moment, as I leaned forward to look closer, I put pressure on the board which was no longer centered on the radiator, and felt it tip. One plant crashed to the floor. I caught the other and only lost some dirt. Down went the shelf, crash. Some little part of my brain knew I was all alone in my big house and didn�t have neighbors any more, so I could yell and curse all I wanted. So I yelled and cursed with gusto, suddenly really pissed at the old man who left his nasty toilet brush behind the radiator, probably covered with his poop like everything else was in there, and now my pretty plant was in pieces on the floor and MAN, was I pissed.

The pot broke, and both saucers broke. The plant was okay.

I repotted it, watered both, vacuumed up everything, put on the HazMat gloves and retrieved the objectionable objects from behind the radiator and put them in a super thick, super big garbage bag. I told the old man that I hated him. I even vacuumed up the poor fly, sucked him up alive. I don�t usually do that to bugs (unless they�re fruit flies � it�s the only way you can catch them, vacuuming them out of the air) but I was so MAD I couldn�t help it. I wasn�t even crying, just angry. Severely premenstrually angry, which I don�t normally get.

Maybe I caught a little residual turbulence?

I don�t like to think that might be the case. I guess I�d better Reiki the radiator. And maybe it had something to do with talking a lot about the old man last night with Iris and Salty. Salty was even doing little impressions of him, yelling at the neighbors, making us laugh. We have to laugh; it�s too sad otherwise.

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It�s cold at night now. I closed all the windows last night for the first time. So unusual for August. After the Falling Shelf Debacle I found a tiny, baby grasshopper inside and rescued it. Yesterday it was a large katydid on one of the door frames. I�m certainly bigoted when it comes to bugs. (Does that make me a bugot?) So compassionate for the cute, harmless ones. But mosquitos and flies? Little mercy there.

I went on a big search among my boxes for the slow cooker. I�ve marinated chicken and have everything ready for Marmalade Chicken, and I couldn�t find it. Then I discovered I�d already taken it out and put it in the pantry. But meanwhile I found the box with my computer paper in it, and, I hope, labels and so forth. Time to put the chicken together and zip over to Rose�s before going on errands. It�s hard not to be frustrated by the slowness of progress here. I need Marc to help me finish the pipe details so we can fill in the trench, first of all. And it has to not rain for us to do that. I take a few deep breaths and center. Everyone is overwhelmed. R&M close on Wednesday and after that everyone�s mind will be clearer. And in the back of my mind there is a voice saying, �You have to start playing your guitar again very soon. Like, this week would be good.� I have to already be in shape when we start rehearsing again in a few weeks.