...and we're back

we've moved.
we put all of our crap in boxes.
25 years of crap.
in boxes.
and we used ALOT of tape.

5 guys came and put all of those boxes in two trucks.
we all drove down here to the beach (its a marsh actually).
the five guys then unloaded ALL those boxes into our new house.
our new house is smaller than our old house.
the movers lost nothing.
dammit.

we are nearly unpacked.
but thats only because I live with, and am in love, with an industrious woman.
a woman whose stamina and work ethic are terribly hard to keep up with.

we are still under renovation.
there has been MUCH renovation, and more to come.

in retrospect, I really wished I had been blogging this whole time.

its been hilarious, scary, daunting, wonderful and enlightening.
I don't recommend moving for the faint of heart.
my energizer-wife says the next move will be to the 'home' with just our toothbrushes and a picture of the kids.
I am down with that.

or

A little word with so much power.
There is OR and AND, or AND and OR.

Often used in the ubiquitous snippets of the if, then statements.

Can you even imagine how often you say them.

Trying to write about these little words without using them makes for difficult prose.

When I think of my life, I have always thought of it in terms of 'and'
My adorable wife and I.
Me and my family.
See... we are 'ands'.

However, in legal terms… or is the way to go.
For example - when you own property. You want or... not and...

You want it to be: property of weese or her delightful wife.

If it were and - then it would not be mine...it would be ours. Meaning it would only be partially mine. Which is great and cute and all la-de-daa sharing and what not...but when it comes to property you need to toss cute out the window.
We need property to be each of ours, not both. If our marriage were recognized it would not be an issue. But its not, so it is.

So why do I care today?
Because my spontaneous wife and I went on a little shopping spree this weekend.


This is hers...or mine...

uncle

Thank goodness we finally realized that we're ... well... 50 or so.

After laying in bed the other night listening to the porch roof creak and thud under the weight and thawing and freezing - we hired out.

Two guys with shovels and a ladder.
Done.

We've let most of the front walk go.
The driveway has an inch of solid ice.
Now that the roof is clear the snow piles around the house are 6 feet.
We have given up on Ferris' hand me downs and purchased our own braces and wraps, I am using a cane as well.

More snow is coming this weekend, followed by another storm next week.

I am calm. Eerily so.

keeping up

Over the weekend, my achy wife and I tried to tidy up a bit before this next storm (the one going on right now).

Since we live on a busy street - it's been a bit challenging to get out of our driveway due to visibility.
Here is my clever wife bringing down the height of the pile on the left side. She climbed up on top and shoveled it back away from the road - removing about 2 feet off the overall height, and maybe 6 feet back from the road (she moved ALOT of snow).



On the other side - there was really no way to bring the height down - so I just trimmed back the snow bank to widen the driveway. That side is very high - way higher than the cars.



Yesterday we had a couple more inches of sleet. It was hilarious fun trying to shovel this stuff. You would fill your shovel ... well not full - cuz that's just too heavy - then toss it up ontop of the pile. Like sand it would come right back down, along with the layer that was already there. It looked just like sand in an hourglass.

I was unable to help very much with the sleet removal due to a persnickety fever I had for the last couple days. My diligent wife handled the clean up like a champ (she also managed the roof stuff alone).
Tho she does keep asking about the maximum allowable NSAID dosage.

Today we are having an ice storm. There is really no way to clear ice (yay).

I say 'yay' for today - tho I imagine there will be much ice chipping in the days to come before the next scheduled storm, which I believe is Saturday.

With Ferris away I raided his room this morning. Luckily from all his years in various sports, his room is a treasure trove of ace bandages and appendage braces, not to mention all the prescription pain relief he never took (the man just fights through the pain).
By tonight we should be all wrapped up and fairly stoned.

speechless

who needs words - when you have a shovel.

No...seriously..

we shoveled again this morning. apparently there's more coming on Tuesday.



I took some pictures a few days back, or was it weeks? or was it yesterday.
O well, either way I thought I might like to look back on these.
We'll just call this they year we didn't need the gym.

I should also mention our star shoveler - Ferris, is soaking up the warmth, good food and good times in Florence. He simply bought a ticket, got on a plane, and now he has a little efficiency with a roommate and he is doing some pick up work for a guy he met out there when he did study abroad last year.
He can only stay 3 months without a work visa.
He said before he got on the plane "I have three months to find a wife."


Ok - back out to widen the driveway now.


trying to shovel a path for the 90lb FREE dog


when it hit 2 feet we made the first pass at clearing.


note that our fence is 4 feet tall.


we realized after the storm that we may need to clear more snow - unless the patio was to become her outhouse.

and so we made some paths with the snowthrower.

The House on Elm - don't sweat the small stuff

Very shortly after we moved in we needed to do some quick, nothing fancy fixes.

For one - we foolishly assumed the hideous blue tile looking stuff around the shower was in fact actual tile. Ah.. rookie mistake.
So that had to all come out.
Ok. new bathroom ..check.

When we bought our three bedroom home we asked our oldest child, then 8, to pick out her room - she chose the attic. The unfinished attic.
Slightly too short to be legal living space - but perfect for a child, we forged ahead with sheetrock and skylights. We didn't do any creative, atticy stuff like you see now in all the remodeling magazines. We just finished the room added a blue carpet (of her choice) and moved her in.
She loved that room at the top of the house. Too hot in the summer, too cold in the winter. But a child's paradise none-the-less.
In the beginning - the only access to the attic was through our room... the so called master bedroom. Which was perfect for an 8 year old. Years later we would reconfigure the hallway to allow our teen a private entrance to her space at the top of the house.


We planted a vegetable garden and a some trees in the vast backyard... but those piddly projects never made us work hard, sweat, bandage up, or cry... and certainly did not involve a sledgehammer.

The House on Elm - let the demo begin

Below you can clearly see a snapshot into the daily lives of a happy family raising children.
There, my still-big-haired-in-the-80s-wife and our little imp have just finished planting flowers by the walkway. Ferris used to love to water flowers. Or more accurately he just loved to play with the hose.

Life was quiet and flowing.

Notice behind my adorable family the last remaining aluminum awning, being held up by rusted iron scroll work, resting on a cracked cement stoop.

...
It was a clear sunny day when I pulled into the driveway and found a sledgehammer leaning against the house in a pile of rubble that was once our cement stoop.
Huh.

I crawled up into the house to find my motherly-wife in the kitchen spooning pasta into Ferris.

"Um... we have a sledge hammer?"

She excitedly told me about how proud she was for removing the whole thing and taking down that hideous awning and now all that cracked mess is gone.
Although that would depend on how you define 'gone'.

"Um yeah...true... tho how will we get into the house now?"

blank stare.

Let's recap. Cement steps, awning and ironwork are all demo'ed into a pile of rubble conveniently mounded near the kitchen door. We have no idea how to get rid of this stuff. We have no idea of how to make new steps.

ok... this is going well.

Later that week I came home to find a long haired guy driving away in my resourceful-wife's very used Chrysler Laser. She was smiling proudly - standing on our brand new steps.

I still wonder where she got that sledge hammer.

The House on Elm - ready for baby and beyond

The first years included some renovations taken on with reckless abandon. Luckily we both had a sense of humour, and were still able to drink hard liquor.

For starters, understand that we didn't take pictures of our early --hmm... I am cautious to call them home improvement projects... But I have found old shots around the house and yard that can help with the details in some cases.

For example - in this shot, which I have posted before, you can see there were striped aluminum awnings on the front and sides of the house.

These were to be removed.
Immediately.
With no knowledge of how they were attached, how to take them down - or what to do with them after.. we forcefully ripped them off the house.

My ever-round wife only able to call out advice from a safe distance.

We stood scratching our heads at the holes, and old caulk left behind. And after some requisite scratching and staring - we just walked away.

Later that spring we 'fixed' the problem by painting the door and hanging some planters.

There. Ok. Moving on.

Inside the house the nesting seemed complete with the nursery ready to go, with a crib and changing table and handmade bumpers.

By the time Ferris arrived we had finally covered the unfinished wood in the living room with a new area rug.

Another great fix. It kept us from getting splinters in our feet and gave us a place to play with the new baby.

But while it was a nice rug - the dark blue was hard to keep looking good. I spent much of that summer vacuuming.

This turned out not to be a long term problem because soon after Ferris began crawling my safety-conscience wife had us install new carpeting including the stairs. This turned out to be a wise idea. As Ferris was a rather active lad during the learning to crawl, walk, fall and bounce years.

What I didn't know of course was just how often we would redecorate.
Rugs installed, and ripped out. Wallpaper applied and removed. Paint colors changed like the seasons, we've had more sofas than most, and learned to not only set tile - but take it up as well... but I am getting ahead of myself.

I have much to cover - like where did she find that sledge hammer, and who else moves doors and windows like they are furniture....

The House on Elm - this old house

With remarkable speed and very little dexterity we painted the entire house...
dreary in its offwhiteness, but clean.

As we started to get settled and make changes we began to understand that our new house was anything but new.
It was built in the early thirties by the parents of our elderly neighbor, she actually grew up in this house.

She and her husband then built the house she is in now, right next door. In fact, our house was the farm house that owned and managed the land on much of our street. Our busy double-yellow-lined road was once dirt and our neighbor, as a young girl, used to walk the cows up the hill to the north pastures. These pastures long ago sold off to build new neighborhoods.

While this is all very quaint and New Englandy we were young and stupid and knew nothing of updating or maintaining a house - let alone an OLD house.

Imagine our surprise when we ripped up the living room rug to find the entire center of the floor was unfinished wood. Unfinished 70 year old wood. Huh.
Apparently - back in the day, they only shellacked around where the edges of the area rug. Why waste good shellac under a rug.

Well - there was no way we were going to embark upon refinishing wood floors with a baby due any moment. Thank goodness for that sage moment...
So we simply measured the unfinished area, and bought a rug of optimal size.
There... problem solved.
We were feeling pretty good about ourselves during those first few weeks.
We focused much of our attention on preparing ourselves for the baby to arrive - I was reading every baby book I could find, and was pretty much ready to deliver the baby myself if the need presented.

It wasn't until several months later that I learned to hide the sledge hammer...

The House on Elm - moving in

Moving day went swimmingly.
Well - as best as it could for doing the entire move using a pick up truck.
That and we weren't quite, exactly, completely packed yet.

Yes, its true. I may be overly organized now - but back in the 80's I was a bit more - let's just say spontaneous and relaxed.
(thanks again Bets, I owe you still)

Almost needless to say it was a very long day.
And my increasingly-round-wife could really do nothing more than watch.
Well...watch ... and tell us that the rugs needed to come up and the entire house needed to be painted.
NOW.
Seriously.
NOW.

Have you ever tried to reason with a woman who is 8 months pregnant?

You see, we bought our house from an old woman with one leg. Peg.
Actually - her name was Mary. But we called her Peg.
Yes, we were that immature.

Peg loved green.
We made this assumption because the entire first floor was not only painted green, but had green wall to wall carpets as well. And really ...who paints their basement green - unless you really, really like it.

Granted upstairs there was a blue room and a pink room, as well as a green one - but Peg didn't go upstairs... with the one leg and all.
In fact - Peg creatively turned the the dining room into her bedroom.
It was, of course, green, and matched her green bedspread.

All of this green needed to go. And there was clearly no time to waste with all this nesting going on.

And so - we rose early the next morning, opened all the windows to the cool March winds and started tossing carpet out of the house.

That week we painted the entire house off white. If memory serves, I believe the color was Navajo White. This was a stop gap till we could make more decorative decisions later.
For now - since the baby was coming ANY SECOND - we needed wood floors and clean walls.

The House on Elm - circa 1987

It was 1987, we had just gotten past our big hair phase.

We lived in a comfortable apartment, the first floor of a small house, which had ample space for us, our 7 year old daughter and two cats. We had a fireplace, full basement, a nice porch to sit on, and upstairs neighbors with healthy libidos. We were in our mid 20's. Life was good.
Then, we got pregnant.

At first, we didn't think much of our living arrangements. My young-wife and I were both growing larger day by day -- this of course was because she would send me out to Burger King or Carvel or the grocery store in the middle of the night and be sound asleep by the time I got back with whatever her latest craving was.

We were young, stupid spontaneous and literally taking each day as it came.

Then came the nesting.

Are you familiar with the nesting?

wow.

And so - in her third trimester - my round-wife proclaimed

"We need a house."

Um. Ok.

This was the late eighties people. Interest rates were through the roof, houses were selling like wildfires and were totally overpriced.

We went to see houses everyday - and the ones we bid on were already sold by the time we picked up the phone.

One afternoon our realtor called and told us she had a house for us to see.
We went immediately. It was getting dark.
We walked through - we noticed the house seemed to have a kitchen and bathroom and we saw no obvious holes or missing walls. We put a downpayment on it right then.
Did we see potential?

No.

My ready-to-burst wife needed a house NOW.

This would have to do.

We went back later in the week to see just what the hell we actually bought.
It was at this time we noticed the house was somewhat ugly (notice the aluminum awnings), needed a bit of work (also the aluminum siding),
and had a back yard big enough for horses.

egad.

We're gonna need a bigger lawn mower.

More fun with science

Ok, kids today we will learn about velocity and mass.

How fast does a vehicle need to be travelling(V) to move an object of a specific weight (M) a certain distance (D)?

To test this equation - someone drove through our stone wall last evening, how convenient.
Let's review that sentence.
The key phrases are 'drove through' and 'stone wall'.

Please view the test data below. Note that we were not home at the time of the incident (rats).

Here is the scene:


The most likely approach (V):


Gaping hole:


Hmm, the gaping hole seems to be approximately the size of a midsized Toyota:


My flipflop included to show size of a moved object(M):


Distance (D):



wow.

nature... it plays with us

One afternoon last week my able-bodied wife and I were in the back yard collecting some branches and limbs for the fire-pit we planned to light later that night.
As I was bending over to pick up sticks I saw a squirrel tail...with the rest of the body tucked under some overgrowth.
I protectively grabbed my distracted wife's arm and held her back.
'Stand back!' I declared, pointing to the tail end of the deceased animal.

Feeling all bravado from saving my wife - I went to get a shovel to bury the poor little guy. I bury any animals I may find around the yard, or those that our pets may have killed. After so many years here we now have a pretty full cemetery of birds, mice and chipmunks, and the like. I feel it's the proper Christian thing to do. Even tho I myself and not a religious person - far be it for me to judge anyone elses faith. I also make it a point to get them into the ground before dusk... should they be Jewish.

As I grabbed the shovel off its hook, I wondered off-handedly why the FREE dog hadn't found this little treasure yet. Seemed odd. O well.

I had some trouble digging the hole - kept running into roots and rocks. After 3 attempts I finally had a hole that satisfied my needs.
So I returned to the dead animal to scoop it up.
Seemed light as I slid the shovel under him. This was odd...the fur looked fresh so it could not have been there long - I would have expected a little more heft.
As I pulled it out of its hiding spot I noticed that the fur was in remarkable shape, and wait... is that eye actually open! Wait a minute wait a minute - whats with the stitches on the paws, and is it leaking... stuffing...
Doh.

Science time!

Not too long ago we studied the melting point of chocolate here in my warm attic office.

Luckily I have an air conditioner up here with me today.
I can now eat chocolate freely.


For today's melting experiments:

What is the melting point of candle wax?


anyone...anyone...


From further data we can hypothesize that it's lower than that of a large, black, FREE dog*.


Let's get this into perspective - shall we -


*she went out there willingly... never said she was bright.
also - yes the grass is dead. I like to call it summer dormancy.

ants

We've been here in our house a long time. Luckily we moved in about a month before Ferris was born - so its always easy to remember how long we have been here.

Here we are on the day we moved in, all twenty-something and naive.
You can't really tell from this picture, but my round-wife is very pregnant. Doncha just love the flash-dance leggings and socks.

See the aluminum awning. My very-pregnant-nesting-wife made me take it down that very afternoon. We also ended up pretty much ripping off the front room and re-doing it.
Not to mention we have moved almost every window and door in the house over all these years...there's new siding, new roof, new furnace, new... don't even get me started on how my wife moves shrubs like they are folding chairs.

Ah.... I digress.

Being in one place for such a long time gives you the opportunity to see trends.
Over the years I have noticed that each summer season there is a plant and insect and and animal that seem to swell in numbers.

Last year we had this most pervasive weed ... It was easy enough to eradicate from the lawn and gardens, but I feared for the wildflowers and grasses out in our meadow. Remarkably, this year its practically non-existent.
Then there was the year we had so many so many slugs there was slug slime everywhere.
We put out cups and cups of beer that year. Oddly, Free Dog also put on about 5 pounds that summer. They too have all but disappeared.
huh.

This year, it ants. They are everywhere. I was sweeping the front walk and the next thing I knew my leg was swarmed. I was cutting the side lawn and noticed it looked like the ground was moving there was so many of them.
ick.

So ...while I may shepperd a single bug out of the house on scrap of paper or toss them one out the bathroom window in a cup... somehow I make peace with the mass genocide of the hose end sprayer.
go figure.

what would weese do?

freak little storm blew threw here last night and limbed this pear tree.



The answer that is poised on your lips is... she would go get her chainsaw and have that taken care of by lunch time.

But you know what?
weese is tired.
We have dozens of trees and have had many limbs come down over the 22 years we've been here.
It's heavy work.

Meh.

All this butchy yard work was fun at one time.
It's getting old now.
Or wait... maybe that's me.

I think instead of picking up my saw, I'll pick up the phone.

environmental waste

I was thrilled to receive a package recently with those corn starch packing peanuts - as you may know I have a very strong aversion to styrofoam.

The insert in the package said they would easily dissolve in water. Of course I immediately put one in the sink. It dissolved pretty quick with warm water.
Awesome.
So I tossed the rest out the back door. I figured its pretty wet outside - so eventually they would dissolve.

Of course, since that time we have had one snow after another and we've not seen bare ground in several weeks.
Ah, but Spring nears and yesterday, we had a huge melt.

Hmm.

how to make weese happy

The technician who came to diagnose our heating problems this week has been to our house several times over the years for parts replacements and general service. He is familiar with our system and our old house. He often notices changes we've made and will compliments us on our choices. He seems wise and considerate in his care.

After he had a good look at the problem and fiddled with some parts and made some adjustments, he stood and looked thoughtfully at our 30 year old system.

He placed his hand tenderly on the boiler and told me it might just be time to replace the whole thing now.
I gulped.
He gently showed me all the different issues we were dealing with and how if we were to fix many of these we would most likely have to do all that work again when the unit finally stopped working. And that day was inevitable.

He turned and panned the room and said - "You know, really - its not that hard of a job, maybe 4 or 5 hours. The biggest concern of mine would be ...your basement floor is so clean."

It's only money

My frugal wife and I were discussing an important matter over email yesterday.
After much back and forth, a little research, and some calculating, we had come to a decision... she replies:

"We've been fortunate.

Although, a cruise would have been fun..."


So, rather than a cruise with foofy cocktails and warm beaches, we'll instead warm our souls... or the living room as it were -

We expect her on Thursday. We are busily preparing for her arrival.