Over the past seven days at Peapod Manor, I have:
- Installed 16 shelves in various rooms
- Put up two towel bars and a bathrobe hook, each with wall anchoring systems designed by a one-handed monkey that has been neurologically experimented upon in a desperate attempt to find a cure for Demented Chinese Engineer disease
- Repflaced the kitchen pfaucet with a new one (by Pfrice Pfisfterf, of course)
- Installed the first of three brand smackin' new basement windows. This involved shattering glass, smashing concrete, building a window frame, smashing more concrete, breaking some stuff, pounding on some other stuff, lots of sawdust, some brandy, some billion-year polymer adhesive, some Great Stuff expanding foam, and a big tub of Quickcrete. Rinse and repeat twice more.
Doubtless, this handyman's frenzy has much to do with the recent two-year anniversary. This time last year, I was refinishing floors with a vengeance, fixing up walls, painting rooms, and generally wreaking home improvement wrath upon the unbelieving structures of my new domicile. It took my mind off of...well, everything.
Thus, and so, this year. An unexpected bonus arrived in the form of a mortgage escrow overage check, some of which will go for a new stove (if and when Lowes gets the stove that we've been wanting for the past year back in stock...as soon as we got the money for it, poof, off it went...), the rest of which went for the basement window project. Thus we improve the economy and defeat terrorism...or something.
Next up will be the long-awaited Utter Devastation Of The Dining Room. Having discovered in the bedroom that some walls are better smashed and replaced than patched, spackled, sanded, spackled again, sanded some more, primed, and painted, I will avoid the same mistake. This will also give us the opportunity to add insulation, if missing, or replace it, if crappy.
We've been here through one cycle of the seasons, now. A descendent of Hortense, the tiger-striped Araneus cavaticus spider who guarded the Manor during the Fall of last year, has made an appearance. The Hortense species must be of the autumnal variety, and territorial, to boot: there was only one Hortense last year, and I suspect there will be only one Hortense II this year. She will get big and fat and then, sometime in December, will grow pale and slow, and will finally die in her big orb web, leaving Hortense III somewhere, hidden and unseen until next Fall.
This year, we will rake the leaves as they fall, instead of letting them pile up. Last year, we let them pile up, and then the snow came and stayed until March, leaving us with earthy black slabs to peel off of the suffering lawn instead of fluffy crunchy brown flakes to toss into the compost pile.
Some things are altogether new, this year: I've got wildflower patches to mow after the first frost, thereby sowing next year's small colorful meadows. There's a grill on the deck, for winter blackening of meat...deer, and mastodon. We know when to put the plastic over the windows, and when to turn up the heat, and when to break out the Insanity Salt for the serious ice melting.
Fall officially begins in a week or two, but it's already here...the final ripening in the air, the incipient harvest, the apples, and--just behind it--the turning inward, the long sleep, and the clear, muffled air of winter.
I'm so pleased to be in this place. It's a refuge for both of us, and Peapod Manor represents what we did for ourselves following the devastation of two Septembers ago: nothing less than a complete reordering of our lives together. At a time when the worst was suddenly all too possible, other things--good things--seemed less impossible.
And so, here we are: building windows, smashing walls, greeting familiar arachnids.
If not for that day...
It is too strange a thing.
