Packed and on my way

In just a few hours, my vacation will begin. I've been planning this trip for months, which included careful timing to minimize disruption for my department during my absence. I've arranged for dog and cat care, carefully packed my suitcase to fit the weight requirements, and followed a sleeping schedule to progressively awaken earlier and minimize jetlag.

In a way, my packing was made easier by my choice of hostess gift. My cousin, an American who lives abroad, requested Cheerios. When I happily acquiesced, I had not considered how much space this would take in my suitcase. I was therefore motivated to pack lightly.

Expect a blitz of vacation posts in the next few weeks!

Putting the garden to bed

Although I took a month-long break from blogging, I now feel the need to catch up on all my projects of the fall. This is particularly pressing as I go on vacation this weekend, so everyone should expect many upcoming travel posts.

I've been busy getting the house and garden ready for winter, so I won't be surprised by the cold weather. I've stashed the rain barrels and hoses and anything else that might freeze, and I harvested the very last vegetable, sweet potatoes. I had an extra gardening project this fall, which was to remove some side garden beds.  I suspect that when the previous owner put them in, decades ago, they weren't as shaded by the trees as they are now. I grew tired of soil that produced verdant weeds but spindly vegetables. 

The beds, lushly growing with weeds and unproductive vegetables. 

 Removing the meter-long iron rebar. A friend had the brilliant idea of using a car jack to wrench them out of the ground, and with his help, I got them out in an afternoon.

 Smooth, seeded dirt.

Done. The regrowing wasn't terrific - this fall we had so much rain that the seeds kept getting washed away. But I'm firmly of the "if it's green and I mow it, it's lawn" camp, so I'm not too fussed about the mix of grass and weeds.

New Bathroom, Parts 7-9

See this lovely room? It has walls! And a door, WITH a doorknob!  Once again, I am reminded when changes happen slowly then you appreciate every small improvement. This is the product of three different friends-coming-to-help days. The door was dreadful to install - I accidentally chose a model that is designed to be easier to install, which (sadly) made it nearly impossible to install. In fact, I used the bathroom without a functioning door for several weeks, which only worked because I am the only person that goes upstairs in my house.

There is still much work to be done: the green on the walls is drywall, which will need to be taped, mudded, and painted. There is no electricity yet. We have not even begun to tackle the shower or new A/C system. Nonetheless, it feels pretty amazing that I now have an actual bathroom where once there was an unfinished closet.

Water

     Water is currently the bane of my existence. It has been raining far more than usual in DC. Along with fact that this makes biking less pleasant, camping damper, and the grass grow faster, it has flooded my basement. Usually, after a few days, everything dries up just fine, but this time the damp patches turned into small, shallow rivers, and my walls started molding. Mold is Bad News, of course, but the good news is that it's not black mold and probably isn't going to make us really ill. However, it still needed to be removed.
     On Sunday afternoon I returned from my camping trip (Summary:  beautiful canoeing on Saturday and lovely friends who sat with me under tarps in the rain the next day) and went down to the basement to deal with the mold. While I was down there formulating my plan, I realized the basement sink was flooding rather than draining. So I reprioritized and spent the next two days trying to clear the drains. And I was 95% successful. Taking apart the drain didn't work, so I had to cut into the vertical drain PVC pipe, install a Y connector for access, and snake the pipes. See that lovely degree Y and access cap? I installed it, and the drain, well, drains now. I must admit that there is a teeny tiny drip where I installed it, which is why I only give myself a 95%.

     While I was working on the pipes, I realized that my furnace was gurgling. Furnaces shouldn't really have anything, ever, to do with water, so this was more bad news. I have again reprioritized my home disaster list, and will try to solve the excess water from the A/C problem tonight. Hopefully I can start on the mold tomorrow. And if I'm lucky, it will finally stop raining by the weekend so I can put my damp tent out to air. Please send very dry thoughts my way.

Catching up

Last week I turned 43* and celebrated by having my most foodie friend, D, over to share a meal of as many wonderful foods as I could think of. We had artichokes and lasagna and pots de creme. I will definitely make the lasagna again, although it took a LOT of time, and that's quite a statement coming from someone who cooks as much as I did. I made the homemade noodles and sauce a few days before, and then assembled everything to bake it right before the meal. It was heavenly, and I'm sad that I'll be eating the very last piece tomorrow.

It has been raining for days. My basement is flooded; this happens regularly and I just need patience, a good box fan, and all my belongings elevated off the floor. I also suspect that my newly sown grass seed will have washed away. But at least until the rain stops I will have an excuse to avoid mowing the rest of the lawn.And while I am so grateful that summer is nearly over, I wasn't quite so appreciative when I had to change a tire in the cold rain and then go pick up a door (more bathroom construction supplies) on a trailer on Saturday. I just need to hang on and soon it will be sweaters and campfire weather, which is pretty much my favorite way to spend time in the fall.


*I mentioned this at my widow(er) group tonight and all the seventy- and eighty-year-olds called me a baby. Which is yet another reason why I like hanging out with them.

Built to last

A few weeks ago, my neighbor called me to let me know that the former owner of my house had died. I never actually met Bill, because he was moving into assisted living by the time his house was on the market, and his son handled the paperwork during the sale. But I think about him often as I work on my house, because his personality shines through in the work he did.

Like many people in my generation, I don't really build things to last. Sure, I've made furniture that I hope to own until I die, but when I repair a door or plant a bush, I unconsciously think I'm making something that will maybe make it ten or fifteen years. Bill, on the other hand, built things like he wanted them to be around in fifty years. And a lot of the time, they still are. I appreciate his handiwork when I admire my custom-made bathroom cabinet, or the scale drawings of every circuit in the house. 

It can be harder to appreciate this engineering when I'm the one destroying his work. I am ripping out some beds that line by back garden to reseed with grass. These beds were probably once beautiful, but time (and tall trees) mean that they are now shady and grow far more weeds that edible crops. But of course, when Bill installed these, he didn't just line them with a few bricks, like I would do. He drove down a half-dozen metal rebar stakes in the the ground to firmly anchor the wood frame borders. This weekend I spent hours digging up holes around the rebar. I don't think I'll actually be able to remove them; even with a two-foot hole they are firmly entrenched, and I can't guess how long they are. Next weekend I'm going to try to saw them off below the soil line. "Try" is the operative word here. I'm not entirely sure whether I, and my recriprocating saw, are up to the task. 

West Virginia

Last month I got fed up with all of my friends texting me great vacation photos and I booked a weekend trip at the first AirBnb that I could find which  (1) was within driving distance of DC and (2) accepted dogs so I didn't have to bother with a housesitter.

That turned out to be a cabin in West Virginia. Driving distance is relative, of course, in DC traffic - it still took me three hours to go 85 miles (about 130km). But once I arrived it was idyllic. I researched, but didn't plan anything, which meant I spent lots of time sitting around in the woods reading books and drinking coffee. I did manage to eat out a few times, but the best meal I had, I cooked myself using garden tomatoes and cheese my cousin AinA had brought from Europe.

I also thought carefully about whether I'd like to live in a place like this someday. When I retire, my current financial plan dictates that I can either stay in DC in my house while having a roommate,or move to a lower cost-of-living area and have my home to myself. I have sometimes considered that a college town in Pennsylvania, within driving distance of my parents, might bring the diversity and cultural aspects that would allow me to thrive in a small town. Spending the weekend in West Virginia added a few more qualifications: I don't want to have to drive everyday and I need to figure out exactly what I mean by diversity. I like my life now, where I'm in the car about twice a week. And I'm pretty sure that diversity means more than different skin colors: what I love is people with a variety of experiences, who haven't all lived in the same place their entire lives. I don't know if this wish list is even possible, but if I don't start creating it, I'll never know what to look for.

And finally, some hiking pictures.

 Ada abhors a bath, but loves swimming in ice-cold mountain streams.

The woods were very green for late summer, and exceptionally peaceful. I only saw four people in three hours, and luckily managed not to encounter any rattlesnakes (although I did see evidence of them).

Ada has no fear of heights, and walked right up to the edge of this cliff, which has a several-hundred foot drop. This is terrifying in a creature that is tied to you.