Sunday, June 08, 2008

D-Day approacheth

And so it has finally arrived. Okay, almost arrived. The big day. Tomorrow they will lift this house. And I won't be anywhere around. It would be like being awake when they cut you open. Who could watch that?


In the morning John will be in a scramble. He has to take down the living-room chimney to below the roof line and then cover the hole with plastic. He then has to put the furnace to bed (in cooperation with the furnace man who arrives around 8, we hope. Finally, he will cut the sewer line to the septic tank. And thus providing another excuse for me not to stick around. Women of my age have to be near a bathroom.

The house is almost naked tonight. The skirting has been removed from around the crawlspace, revealing the innards of the place. The furnace is sitting on concrete blocks, the sewer and water pipes are all exposed. The crumbling wooden shores are there for all to mock in their last moments of utility. Tomorrow they will mere firewood.

This afternoon I set out a row of onions. Kept some back for setting next week or the week after. Don't want a bunch of onions all coming mature at the same time. As it is we'll be eating a whole mess of onion soup towards the end of summer.

I also rescued some boulders that were dug up last fall when we trenched around the house. Rocks big enough to just get your arms around, some of them. Some not quite so big. All of them heavy as lead. I needed to make sure that they don't get covered with dirt or otherwise buried in the goings-on of the next week or two. I want them to put in the garden I'm going to build behind and to the side of the house when this is all over.

It's apparently 42 degrees on the humidex back home tonight. And here I was complaining about the cold breeze that's blowing up through the cold-air return duct from under the house now that it's open to all the ocean breezes.

So. Here's hoping the relation between my stress level and the house level is an inverse proportion: as it goes up, my stress level comes down.

Back at ya tomorrow night. I hope. Keep yer fingers crossed.

No comments: