Thursday, September 20, 2007

The last minute gang

I can't believe it. Here we are. Three days away from crossing over on the ferry and my husband is up to his neck in a trench that stretches all the way around the back of our house. It was put there this morning by a lovely young fellow from Lewisporte who owns a small bobcat -- a mini-backhoe, for those who are not up on their machinery -- whom my husband previously hired to dig the hole for our new septic tank.

Today's trench is an effort to ascertain as best we can whether the sill plate of the house, along with the studs and the wall boards are in any shape to undergo the process of 'jacking' which we had hoped to have done either this fall or early next spring.

I didn't bother going outside. I could hear everything that was going on through the walls which are now full of holes where hubby has been tearing off tar paper to look at the boards beneath. He's tapping and banging right now as I speak.

The back end of the house -- a kitchen extension, in local parlance -- is now sitting with its ass all exposed. This same ass, for want of a better metaphor, was previously buried by dirt and grass and goutweed, all of which did nothing at all for the well-being of the ass. All it did was hide the rot that was taking place below soil level, although, I suppose, it was keeping the wind from whistling around in the underparts.

A fellow is supposed to arrive this afternoon to survey the situation and give us his opinion on whether the house can be safely jacked. I suppose it would be more correct to say that he will say it can be safely jacked, but for a much higher price than he originally hinted at.

Neighbours came to watch the bobcat. Of course, neighbours are always interested when a hole appears in their cove. They bobbed their heads up and down, with their lips tightly pressed together, and then allowed as how it might be best to just tear the sucker off and start over. Build a new kitchen extension.

When I finally managed to get outside -- had to jump the trench no matter which door I used -- I was dismayed. There is a lot of rot. There was even a fly that was landing on the trench, on the house, in the trench, back on the house that sounded like a bee when it flew, but like a giant mosquito hen it was landed. For a few minutes it had us worried -- like there was air escaping from somewhere, not a good sign when you've just exposed the innards of your house, plumbing, water supply line, and the like.

So. We wait. Like we waited all this week for this day to come. Wait for the fellow from Twillingate to show up with his crew. Wait for him to pronounce whether we will have to pay a lot to 'jack 'er up', pay a lot more to replace 'er, or pay nothing and just abandon 'er.

And I've made plans to spend the afternoon in Twillingate with a friend -- ladies' day off -- and I may have to go before I find out anything.

I hate waiting. I've never been good at waiting. Really, I suppose, it's not the waiting that is tough. It's not having information that I need to make a decision. And I like to make decisions when I have to make them. That's it. I hate having to wait before I can make a decision.

And all this with only three days to go before we pack the car and leave. Hubby is talking about moving the boat reservation. That might mean I have to go get groceries because we have barely enough in the house to get us through until Sunday.

Sigh. If only we'd dealt with the sloping floors problem when we first arrived. But it was like the elephant in the room. We completely ignored it, hoping, I guess, it would go away. So now we're doing it all at the last minute.

Talk about getting hi-jacked. What's that? I hear a vehicle. Maybe the fellow has arrived.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The price of going home

A friend asked me yesterday if we were likely to live in Newfoundland year round anytime soon. This came on the tails of a conversation in which I inquired about tips on closing up a house for the winter, since that is what we will be doing in a little over a month.

My emotional answer is that I'd love to live in Newfoundland year round. Nothing I'd like more. Just the thought of going back to the big city is giving me nightmares. Back to house alarms, pass codes, pool closing, multi-bathroom cleaning, etc. Not something I look forward to.

So what's the problem, you ask? The problem, she answered, is heat. This old house is 120 or more years old. It was built before furnaces and insulation and R-factors and climate change. I've been told that retrofitting a house like this to bring it up to 21st century building code is well nigh impossible since it appears that the structure of the house can't take it and it will rot from the inside out. It has to breathe, summer and winter.

We've had a few cold days and nights so far and I have to say, the house is less than cozy when the wind is blowing or the rain is pelting. The crawl space is quite wet and the dampness moves up through the floors, keeping everything humid (nice in hot dry weather, but not on a cold day). We don't yet know what's in the exterior walls, if anything. We understand it's probably sawdust. There is nothing in the attic except very warm air. We do have a furnace which is bolted to the underside of the living room floor. It does provide a great deal of hot air most of which I fear seeps outside long before we can benefit from it.

And that brings me to my point - can I live with myself if I'm burning barrels of heating oil just to keep the house at a livable temperature? Surely this is not in keeping with how I live my life otherwise - to make the smallest footprint possible.

Saying this here though is not going to win me any friends. Most people here live in old, very drafty homes and crank up the furnace to keep them warm. They can spent more than $2500 a year on heating oil. Surely some of this, spent to upgrade the homes, would be a better investment and a kindness to the planet.

So. Am I staying here this winter? No. Even if the above problems didn't exist, we haven't made plans for it. Much preparation needed if we are to become resident Newfoundlanders again.

Next winter? Not likely, although one of the reasons for my reluctance to live here seems to be falling by the wayside. A comparison of health care experiences is showing the big city to be falling short of what is available here. If what I've learned is true, I would have been better served to have been diagnosed in Newfoundland than in Ontario. Would have gotten attention faster, by far.

Maybe it's time to just start researching what can be done with century old salt box houses. Can they be retrofitted to be energy efficient? I would love that to be the case. Our only problem then would be to find something for John to do as a photojournalist here that would interest the rest of the world. So far, we've not had a not of interest from other parts of Canada in what's happening in Newfoundland. It has been ever thus.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Getting resettled

We saw a house today with a sign in front that said: "Resettled Bushies". Obviously a family -- with the same last name as the current US president -- which had been away from Newfoundland and has returned to stay. Also a reference to the forced resettlement of many Newfoundlanders in the 1960's at the whim of the government of the day.

Returning to one's roots is thrilling. I am still pinching myself when I regard the exquisite vistas along the road as we drive from place to place. Returning home is easy, for the most part. It just takes some readjustment.

For instance, yesterday while chatting with our neighbour, we discussed a tree in our back yard She called it something that sounded like Haps. Puzzled, I asked her to spell it.

It was her turn to look puzzled. "It spells the way I'm saying it," she said. Spelling is probably not her forte.

Haps? Hasp? Ah. Light bulb. Like many here, she adds "h" to words that begin with a vowel. "Aspen?" I asked. The transposition1 of the last two consonants did not register with me until tonight.

"Yes," she said. "Haspen."

I have just looked it up. Aps is a good Newfoundland word for the aspen tree. It is a variant of Aspe2 which is itself a good English word for the same tree. I feel I should apologize to my neighbour for having inadvertently corrected her. Many words here have remained unchanged from Old and Middle English. I should have known better.

From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English:
aps n also hapse, (h)apsen [phonetics unavailable]. EDD ~ sb s w cties. Trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides); also attrib.
1842 JUKES i, 160 The wood ... they here called the 'aps.' 1907 MILLAIS 86 On each side was dense forest of good-sized birch, white pine, 'haps' [etc]. T 50/2-64 You chop up bark off o' the trees—white spruce or apse; apse was good bark. An' you dry that on a flake or a wharf. T 203/5-65 An' then you'd get those apses; you'd cut two an' you wire 'em together an' the dead stick in the centre. That's what you'd tie your trap to. 1966 FARIS 240 Apsen (aspen) ... [used for] planking for boats. C 70-21 Christ's cross was made from an aspen (hapse) and that's why the leaves always tremble. P 148-72 No woman wants it for firewood because 'aps wood is full of water.'


I've been away too long.

Tonight someone mentioned his cousin's name. "Bice," he said.

"Bice?" I replied, looking puzzled, and able to think only of Bo Bice who competed on American Idol this past winter.

"Bice," he repeated. It didn't help that there was a downpour hitting the metal roof of the lobster pool shed, making conversation of any kind difficult.

"Bice." I said again, more to myself than to him. "Bice. Sorry, I'm not familiar with that name."

"B-o-y-c-e," he explained, spelling it rather quickly.

"Ah, Boyce", I said, feeling both relieved and foolish.

"Yes, Bice." He smiled.

And so it goes.

1Reminds me of the way the word "ask" is pronounced in some places, Barbados among them. "Aks" is the common prononciation, rhyming with "axe". Can throw you for a loop at first, especially if someone says "let me aks you."

2 Thus Gerard says of it:--"In English Aspe and Aspen-tree, and may also be called Tremble, after the French name, considering it is the matter whereof women's tongues were made.... (http://www.2020site.org/trees/aspen.html)

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Bliss on a Rock

Bliss on a Rock. Sounds like a drink. Isn't. It's just me being happy in Newfoundland.

We're still pinching ourselves that we're lucky enough to be living here, albeit for only a few months. But then, maybe that's why we're so lucky. We get to enjoy Newfoundland at its finest (in summer) and retreat to our cave in Ontario while everyone here does battle with winter. Some might say that you can't fully appreciate summer unless you've endured the winter. Perhaps. But if I appreciated it any more than I do right now, my face would split from grinning.

I had hoped to write while I was here. However, I doubt if the current novel will get finished or any new novel will be conceived. I'm just too excited to sit still to write anything of any length. Heck, just hanging clothes on the line keeps me blissed out for hours. And I'm dying to go blueberry picking in August.

Blogging will have to suffice. So watch this space.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Tears for Sears

I just got off the phone yelling at some poor woman who works for Sears. I don't usually do that, but today I received a statement from Sears telling me that the credit I had on account of overpaying a while back is now being raked back to the tune of $25.00 for what they term a "credit balance admin fee". Say what?

When I explained that such a fee was unknown to me when I signed up for a Sears card, the lady on the other end of the line insisted that it was contained in a little booklet which I would have received once I got my card. I still have that little booklet (I bet most people throw them out and she was counting on that) and was able to go through it, page by page, showing that there was nothing in it about a credit balance admin fee. Then phone-lady says the information was contained in a "flying page" that came with the booklet. I assured her that nothing I received from Sears had wings, and the only insert I got was about the use of my personal information.

Her reaction when I asked to speak to her supervisor was to raise her voice to the point where I had to ask her to please not shout at me. I was already holding the phone a foot from my ear. However, it seems that raising the voice must be significant to reaching a deal, because when I raised my voice back, she said she was putting me on hold and would be back in a jiffy. While I hummed and waited and hummed, I looked at the sheaf of papers in my Sears file folder and noticed that I had been through this exact same discussion with Sears a few years ago on a previous account that I held with them. I didn't win that time, it appears and I cancelled my account without getting my $25 back. Hmm. Should I tell her about that time? Naw. Funny how a thing like that would slip my mind. I must be getting older faster than I feared.

When she returned, her voice had returned to mellow tones and she informed me that they would credit the $25 back to my account but that I would have to use the credit (all of $26.41) withint 12 months or the Credit Balance Admin Fee would reappear.

I assured her I would use it. (Maybe even tonight.) I also suggested that she tell her superiors that it would be a good idea to put a notice on people's bills that they are running out of time to use a credit, and that $25 of it will go poof in the next month's bill. Seems like a neighbourly thing to do.

What I didn't tell her was that the minute I use up the credit, I'm cancelling this account. You know what they say, Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on you again. Fool me three times? Not going to happen.