A sure sign spring is coming

Who needs a groundhog.

FREE dog on ice

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.

a slippery slope

Apparently there is a massive storm blowing into the area tomorrow which will bring with it several more inches of snow and then a full day of ice on top of that.
This will be very heavy. A big concern here has been snow loads on roofs.
So far most of the collapses have been flat roofed buildings and sheds. But with a storm like this coming - this could change.

We were watching the news this morning and there were reports of people falling off their roofs and ending up in the hospital all over the area.
Perhaps these people have slightly underestimated their own capabilities or maybe they have forgotten that snow and ice can be slippery.

Our old colonial farm house has a pretty steep pitch to it. This not only helps keep the snow totals lower -but carries the load better.

The problem here is our much flatter lower roof which wraps around half the house.


There is some drifting, and parts of this roof never see the sun - this has us a little concerned. Concerned enough in fact to want to do something about it.
But -with the storm on the way early tomorrow morning, it leaves us no time to hire this job out.

I am working from home today - so my arthritic wife has forbid me to do anything about this until she gets home this evening.
(tee hee)
What makes a dangerous job more fun? That's right, do it in the dark. Might even be better if we were drunk - but I have enough trouble with ladders sober, so we may pass on that.

Unfortunately I don't think we'll be able to get pictures of the project in progress... unless of course the news crews get here in time.

speechless

who needs words - when you have a shovel.

It's only a matter of time

We have had some melting here so the snow depths are lessening. Just after the melting came a deep freeze.
We woke up the other morning to a balmy -5°.
That freeze solidified the damp, packed snow into a couple of feet of ice.

This ice is now solid enough to hold up a person - or say... a large dog.
Our large FREE dog has figured that out and is quite pleased not to have be doing her business in the man made paths anymore.

I wonder tho - how long it will take her to figure out the fence is essentially less than two feet tall now.

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.

sorry... have I not been blogging?
That's because I spend all my free time shoveling snow.

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.

moving... an iterative process

We decided we wanted to move a couple years ago.

We've been here almost 23 years. That's a long time.

So I've decided to blog the 'story' of this place and the time we've been here.
I will do it in chapters - because I am lazy, and because no one really wants to read more than a paragraph or two at a time. We all have lives here.

Note this for starters...
We have not yet found a house - tho we know where we want to look.
We are actively in the process of getting ready to go on the market - thus the dumpster.
We are hoping to be ready by spring - but would like to sell mom's house first.

and for our next project...

Really - what could be more fun!



Ok. The fact of the matter is this.
We are planning to move.
You know... put all our stuff into boxes, put the boxes into a truck, drive somewhere else, take the boxes out of the truck and put the stuff all back where it belongs.
The thought is daunting.
The dumpster will help.

Our motto is "Do you want to pack that?"
We plan on being ruthless.

drawing the line on cool

Here at the new digs we have what's called an 'open workplace environment'.

This basically means that are cubicle walls are low enough so we can see our neighbors. Well...in my case, just the top of my head.

Our overly organized and some what ideological company gave us plenty of pamphlets, seminars and web links so that we all know how to adjust while being considerate of others in our new space.
To that end - our speaker phone buttons have been disabled, we should not partake in odorous food at our desks, we should refrain from yelling over to workmates, and we are also supposed to adopt a 'clean desk policy' - tho I am not exactly sure what that is yet. I am quite certain that I am conforming simply by default.

Every one was also issued a wireless headset.
The headset will work pretty much anywhere in the building. This allows you to pick up a call ...and if you feel it may be disruptive in any way you can simply grab your wireless laptop and step into one of several small 'conversation rooms' scattered around.

It appears that some people are rather attached to their snazzy new wireless headsets... literally. They seem to be wearing them all the time in fact.
Just this morning I noticed someone in the kitchen getting coffee with their headset on. This person didn't seem to be on a call - just sporting the headset. This got me to wondering - do these folks wear them right into the restrooms?

Perhaps we made our workplace a little too accessible.

happy meal

I heard that in certain places in California - where the living is healthy, that a certain fast food chain has been asked by some watchdog groups to remove the toys from happy meals*.

The premise I gather is not to reward a child for eating over 600 calories in one sitting.

OVER 600 calories.
In one meal.
For a tiny person.

And they're gonna remove the toy?

Really.


* Fun weese fact: I actually served up the very first happy meals back in 1979 as a high school kid working at McD's. We were told it was a promotional offering and would be discontinued that fall. We hated them because we had to fold the boxes into shape. The toys were way better back then.

Friday

tip-o-day

My company just moved into a brand new LEED certified and terribly posh office.
No really...its nice. Here is where I get my coffee in the morning...just one of several coffee areas in the building. It looks like a fancy hotel.



Prior to this I was working at home 4 days a week... in the attic.
So this is a step up.
Now that I have my own space to occupy I go in more often.


I spent last week bringing in all my standard cubicle accoutrement. These things include but are not limited to: box of tissues, wind up toys, lava lamp, coffee mug, lotion, advil etc.
There are still a few things still left I want to have on hand.

Today's tip ... don't wear black pants to work before you bring in your lint roller.

presbyopiating

I am over 40. In fact, I am hanging on to the very threads of 40.
This means I need glasses.
Fact.
No getting around it.

I am perfectly ok with this.
I recently upgraded from the dollar store readers to proper prescription bifocals.
These have changed my life. I love being able to see... all the time. I love not having to get frustrated at the blurriness and then go pawing around for spectacles on the table, on my head, or on a string.

Being new to wearing glasses full time - I have found that there is a period of adjustment.
For example, I knew I was getting used to them when I got in the shower with them still on. I took this as a good sign.

I am also realizing, as my vision slips further into its 'opia, that it might be best to put them on a little earlier in the morning.
This way - I won't show up to work wearing clothes with tears or stains on them. I might also have a better chance at buttoning correctly.