Ah, Fall

When the thoughts of someone lucky enough to live in an old house turn to caulk. And expandable foam. This is the third fall I've spent looking for and sealing off drafts, and I am STILL finding places where I can see daylight. To be clear, these are places that are not windows. SOOO shocking to find them, soooo satisfying to seal them off.

EW

Remember how I was all proud of myself for putting up with mouse poop to install insulation in a crawl space, thinking it was the grossest thing I'd done? Oh the grossness just keeps going. Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to replace some nasty looking insulation above the dormer windows in my loft. It had obviously been there for 20+ years, and no one had gotten around to putting sheetrock over it, so it was pretty dusty and I just thought, you know, let's put some nice clean white stuff there. In addition to choking on dust and ancient insulation when I pulled it down, I screamed like a little girl and literally FELL OFF A LADDER when I saw at least thirty yellow jackets and half again as many flies CRAWLING on the wall where the insulation had been, daylight streaming from the seams between the siding. EW!!!! I'm still recovering from the grossness and horror of that moment.

On a much happier note, I've ascended one giant step up the ladder from trash to just plain poor with the removal of those junked cars. Someone came to take them away yesterday and it made me just plain giddy. There's still a trashy tarp-covered pen that needs to be pulled down, but I am moving on up as the Jeffersons might say.

In Which I Feel Like a Superhero for Braving a Little Mouse Poop

So remember when I said that my mom managed to get the insulation in half of the ceiling of the crawlspace beneath my dining room? You did all realize that meant that she'd left half of it for me to do, right?

A little background that I'm sure I've already mentioned, but it's easier to re-type then find a link. Originally there was a greenhouse attached to the cabin's kitchen. Due to harsh winters and complete neglect it sort of fell apart and a prior renter sort of turned it into a dining room on the cheap. I mean really cheap. The greenhouse had been dug into the ground a little bit, so to have the dining room floor match the kitchen floor, the renter left a fairly sizeable (though not sizeable enough to stand up in) storage space beneath the dining room. A storage space that is accessed by a door sawed in half. A storage space containing ZERO insulation. So, in our continuing effort to make this house more comfortable, we decided that a priority would be putting some insulation between the floor joists of the dining room. Which required spending time in the sort of storage space. Which is full of mouse poop and dust and spiders and ancient cobwebs and holy hell is it unpleasant down there. But I did it. Yesterday I donned full protective gear (including mask) and spent two hours squatting on mouse poop covered dirt floors and stapling insulation above my head.

Aren't you impressed?

I mean, I know there are worse tasks. In fact, I seem too remember my dad, about this time last year, spending a week emptying a septic tank with a shovel and a bucket in the 90 degree heat of Belize. So yes, all ickiness is relative. But this is the ickiest thing I've done in quite a while.

Just Busy-ish

Here's the short version of the past month during which I apparently decided I no longer loved my blog enough to write. Which is stupid, because I've missed it:

The spa owners spent three weeks rafting the grand canyon, leaving me nominally "in charge", which meant at one point I worked 11 days straight. For me, that was brutal.

I then started applying for real jobs. Yes. Really. I sent out letters of interest and resumes and everything. There is a causal connection between this activity and being left "in charge" of the spa. While they were gone, something just clicked and I realized that "No. I will not be happy working a mindless customer service job for the rest of my life. I have very little ambition, but what I have is not going to be satisfied by this for much longer." I only applied for two real jobs, but was quickly rejected (one post had already been filled, the other I just never heard back from). So then I was a bit depressed/discouraged. I'm hoping to apply for a few more jobs this week. I'm serious about it now, so if anyone has any leads for jobs in Idaho, let me know. My pay requirements are minimal. (I actually found the perfect job (the one that was already filled, damn it) and determined that I could actually live, just barely, on the low low sum of $35,000/year. So now I at least have a floor of what I need to survive. Good to know I guess.)

And then, last week, I had a bit of a home invasion. On Monday my mom, stepdad, and their two large dogs showed up. On Wednesday, a dear old friend of the family (Howdy) arrived to remove about 500 pounds of horseshoes and a couple of forges that he'd been storing in the chicken coop for about twenty years. Also on Wednesday, fabulously skilled Uncle George arrived to finish a few more projects. These four people have done a HUGE amount of work. Totally makes me embarrassed for all the work I have not been doing. Stepdad and Howdy split and stacked two cords of wood between them. Stepdad bushwacked all the weeds I'd let take over the property and cut down two dead trees. Mom cleaned and planted the flower beds, killed about a million yellow jacket and wasp nests, put insulation in the scary space beneath my dining room floor, and buttressed the woodshed so it will survive another winter. George built a funny little deck off my dining room so he could take out these horrible old windows and install new french doors! (They're doors to nowhere for now since there's a five foot drop from them to the ground, but eventually, someday, there will be a real deck.) Oh, and the neighbors totally regraded my driveway. Yeah. It's been quite a week.

Howdy left on Friday, Mom, Stepdad and the dogs headed out this morning, so now it's just me, George, and the cats. The house seems really empty. As much as I'd kind of been dreading having such a full house, (have I mentioned lately what a hermit I am?) I miss them already.

Mercury Is No Longer in Retrograde. . . I hope.

I've got my fingers crossed that I didn't just jinx myself by writing that. The new battery charger/grass hog appears to be working so far. I've managed to plant a little herb garden for myself before the plants died in their pots. Which is huge because usually? I get excited and buy plants, get distracted, forget to water them, and they die before they're even in the ground. I also bought an old-fashioned rotary lawn mower, which I'm not sure will even work on my lawn/prairie what with all the weeds, but I hate relying on my neighbors so . . . worth a try. Despite my broke-ass brokeness. I've got to start looking for a real job. I started a cover letter to the law firm I worked for in Boise after my 1L year. And by started I mean I saved a file, found their address and the name of their hiring partner, and wrote a single sentence. A week ago. It's a start. But summer is so fun! I'm actually enjoying working outside, planting, watering, and grasshogging. I love drinking iced tea in my new vintage lawn chair while birds I can't identify dive bomb for bugs on my prairie/lawn. And walking down by the river is just fabulous.

Broken

So the brand new sewing machine my mother bought me randomly decides it will only sew in reverse and then just as randomly changes its mind. Oh, and it also changes stitch sizes every two inches. Which is clearly fucked. And now, the battery charger for my brand new weed eating grasshog decided to stop working after charging a single battery once. What the hell is going on in Chinese factories? I mean, I knew about the toothpaste, the tainted clams, and the lead paint, but those were just poisoned products, not non-functioning ones. This impacts ME and it sucks. Royally. I just discovered that I actually kind of LIKE this particular form of yard work and now it's barred to me until I drive 200 miles to exchange this broken machine.

I guess, if I felt like putting a positive spin on things, I'd say yay, I have an excuse to go down to Boise next week. But it's now summer, and really really pretty, and I don't WANT to spend the $40+ in gas and one of my days off to exchange a grasshog. Even if I do throw in a trip to Anthropologie and a movie theater. Damn.

31, Now With Roommate!

Because a friend of mine was scheduled to show up at 4:30 with her clothes and her dog to stay with me for a bit while she sorts out her life, yesterday turned out to be one long cleaning binge. Now she's here, and until we make the guest room habitable with primer and paint and maybe some actual furniture (soon I'll have a guest room with a door and a bed and everything, NOW will someone visit me?!?!) she's sleeping on the couch, and her dog is snoring and of course I woke up too early and have been sitting in the living room drinking my tea, and trying to type quietly and not wake her. (Have I mentioned that my wireless router hasn't mysteriously started working as mysteriously as it stopped? I am beyond annoyed.)

So what with the cleaning, and the nerves over temporarily losing some of my privacy, my birthday was not quite as peaceful as I was anticipating. But it was lovely nonetheless. My roomie and I (let's call her L) met another friend for dinner and life change debriefing. They didn't know it was my birthday until I mentioned it late in the dinner, and they were a bit pissed. But . . . all sentimentalizing aside, my birthday really isn't an occasion I like to have become a thing. It's nice when people remember and call or write (thanks to all who did!), but I don't mind when friends don't remember. I actually think a completely normal dinner out, with no one the wiser, was a great celebration. I honestly don't LIKE being the center of attention. Anyway, birthday nonsense over with, it's time to move on to just being 31. And the first order of the day is to wake up L, meet our friend Nadine, and start out the new year with another muscle destroying yoga class. YAY!

(Oh, and because I know at least one person will be curious: The cats are reacting surprisingly to this invasion. Sugar seems fine with the dog. Wary, but not scared. Freckles on the other hand, once a bold invader herself, has been hiding upstairs since this giant gentle Akita showed up in her living room.)

More photos to relieve the monotony

I don't think I've posted a photo of Freckles since she had the kittens have I? Well, here she is. She was purring during the photo shoot, even though I hadn't touched her. I think strays have to be ingratiating to survive, and she is a pro, purring as soon as I look at her. And if I'm walking around the house, she has to be under my feet at all times, or at least until I acknowledge her existence by pausing in whatever business I have to pick her up for a quick cuddle and chin scratch. Then, satisfied that I still like her and don't intend to throw her back out into the wilderness, she'll run off and attack the carpet some more. Good thing I hate this carpet, because Freckles is destroying it.

And here's the oh so pretty glass and tin chandelier type thing I got on my last trip to IKEA. I love it. Its shiny glamorousness looks so out of place, but pretty, with the rustic post and beam construction of the house.

I am Not a Perfectionist

This is not a new revelation, but every once in awhile it strikes me afresh. I mean you all know this about me, especially if you're a former co-worker. But all these little home-improvement projects I've signed up for . . . yeah.

One of the many projects that my uncle began (and really, "began" is the operative word here) when he was here last time was the creation of a real, honest to goodness, coat closet. It was a great idea. This house has NO closets. Of any kind. But under the stairs there was this area that vaguely resembled a closet, in that it was kind of tucked away and had its own light. But it wasn't walled in, so anything you stacked under the stairs, was visible from everywhere in the living room, sort of defeating the purpose of a closet (which is to let you throw crap somewhere it can't be seen and therefore can be forgotten.) Anyway, my uncle took down the shelves which were in the living room sort of shielding some of the crap under the stairs from view, stacked everything that was on the shelves in my dining room, took out all the outlets and switches and lights, walled in this space with drywall, and bought a door to put on it, and my very kind and helpful neighbor came down and put on the first couple of layers of mud to smooth the walls. And then my uncle left. So for the last month I've had this unfinished useless closet where there formerly was a very functional, if ugly storage space. Sigh. My carpet has been rolled away from the wall, my couch has been in the middle of the living room, and the bookshelves that used to be outside the closet are sitting out in the carport making it impossible to park my car there (they're really big shelves), and my dining room is full of boxes of crap that really belongs in a closet, unseen.

The big hold-up in finishing this closet, is that the living room bookshelves can't get put up until the walls are painted. And the walls really shouldn't be painted until they're textured to match the rest of the living room. Which is a messy job, and mixing mud is a pain in the ass. So today I finally said "fuck it". I don't like the texture on the rest of the walls anyway. The closet walls are smooth enough. I'll paint them, and I'll get the neighbor down to help me put the shelves back up, and it will be FINE. And, more importantly, finished.

So yeah, I'm not even a proponent of "the perfect is sometimes an enemy of the good". I'm really more a "why bother reaching for good, when with a little less effort you can achieve good enough" kind of girl.

Self-sufficient

When I moved into the cabin, I had lots of grand ideas about home improvement projects I'd take on by myself. I'd teach myself how to do all sorts of things and the cabin would look amazing. After all, home improvement runs in my blood. My parents were always doing handy things and surely I could be handy too if I had enough time and no TV to distract me.

And then, all of a sudden, I got lots of help. My uncle came for over a month this summer, and my mom was here while I was in Belize, and my uncle is here again now . . . and somehow that spark just faded. I tried at first, really I did. But my uncle, while a fantastic teacher, doesn't really need a lot of help, so there was a lot of just standing around watching him do things and occasionally handing up a tool while he was on the ladder. And then, when I got back from Belize, it was easier to just hide in the loft, playing with the kittens and reading the internet, and generally just keeping out of his way except when I had to come downstairs to play the girly supportive role - making sure he ate, and keeping him in cookies, and when there was something decorative to do, like painting, getting my hands a little dirty.

As I woke up this morning, I could see the sun streaming through a seam in the wall in what would be a closet . . . if I had such things as closets. When I'd moved in, this little triangular section of wall had some ratty old insulation covered by a 1980s era floral sheet. While my mom was here, and I was in Belize, she'd discovered a wasp nest in the insulation (I know, it's mortifying, don't you want to come visit?) and had ripped off the sheet and disposed of the insulation, leaving only thin sheets of rotting exterior plywood between me and -20 degree winter. So this morning, I thought . . . well, I know how to caulk, I'll just seal up that seam. So I did. And then I thought, you know, there are spare slabs of drywall laying everywhere, I bet I can put one up. And amazingly enough, I did. Now, I didn't do a great job, but I put up nailing strips and insulation, and cut a piece of drywall to fit the hole, and now, now that little corner of what should be a closet is weathertight and doesn't look all that much worse than the rest of the naked drywall lining the walls of the loft. It's a little cattywampus, because I didn't bother with using a level to make sure the nailing strips were even, but . . . I did it myself. No help. And I feel ridiculously proud of myself for it.

(Not proud enough to post a photo, because it actually looks kind of like shit.)

Quick Update

I've had family staying with me for almost a week helping me spruce the cabin up. All the orange is gone from the kitchen, and the living room only has one remaining yellow panel (behind the wood stove - the drywall needs to be replaced with something more fire-resistant so I'm holding off on painting for a bit, but it's KILLING ME). Everything is now a color called "driftstone," aka beige. It's so much cleaner and prettier. The family is also helping me seal the place up for winter. We've bought loads of caulk to seal all the window frames where I can see daylight (which, shockingly, is not supposed to come through the frames, only the glass). Of course, some things need more than caulk. In the last two days we've found two dead bats in the house so a new priority is sealing the big-ass holes that are letting the bats in. Most exciting of all however is that we're starting to put up siding on the west wall. Woohoo! SIDING! Don't get me wrong, the relatives aren't staying forever so it's not like the whole house will have siding, but it's a huge start.

Oh, and for any of you who were wondering, Freckles has had her kittens but she hasn't introduced them to us yet. Once I'm living on my own again, I'll post some photos and more tales of rural life. But for now I'm just too damned exhausted what with all the painting and staining and caulking. I even got to use a nail gun today!