What kind of idiot thinks that mowing their lawn with a gasoline powered push mower WITH A TWO YEAR OLD BOY SITTING ON TOP OF THE MOWER HOUSING is acceptable.
Gasoline engine. + Whirling blades. + Little boy.
Tim said, "Oh my God. That is so dangerous, I can't even watch it."
It was reported.
To be honest, in my ignorance I pictured the Tower of London as...well...a tower.
It's not. This cool picture was taken by my daughter after we got off the subway in the dark. My contribution was tripping over a curb I didn't even see and falling on the ground. Luckily, there were no witnesses. (Thank goodness it was dark.)
But many an unfortunate soul was brought by boat to Traiter's Gate...
Monday, I cleaned the apartment and readied it for the new tenant. Tim worked down at the renovation. The kitchen has a bank of five windows, side by side, facing the river and I threw them open to the river breeze blowing in. It made the scrubbing and polishing far more pleasant, that is for sure. It is a pretty kitchen, and I rehung the clean cafe curtains and enjoyed watching them fluttering. A storm was approaching.
That was then. This is now. Today, 48 hours later, it's snowing. Amazing. (There may or may not have been unfortunate words uttered).
Yesterday, I painted at the renovation, and today, I was back at the apartment I was cleaning. I had a carpet to shampoo. I thought that I had enough shampoo, but it turned out that I did not, so I ran to a local big box store to get it. While there, I decided to get the makings for sandwiches for lunch. It is unnecessary to rush home to cook at noon when we are so busy . I had a craving for a tomato for my noon sandwich, and so I picked one up. Imagine my amazement to get to the register and discover that one lone tomato cost 53 cents. It wasn't even a large one!
Something else happened.
When Tim and I were first married, things were quite rough, financially. We both worked multiple jobs to keep five children fed and clothed. One of the jobs that I had was cleaning at a local resort owned by a well-to-do woman. We went to the same church, and she thought she was doing me a great charity. She was. I worked hard. I cleaned not only their huge house but the resort rentals as needed.
One of the things that became very evident was that she had a problem with addicted to opiates. It was my first experience with an addict, and sometimes it was scary. Once I was certain she was going to die. She had laid on the couch for 6 hours while I cleaned, never waking, never moving. Before I left, I called her husband at the office to tell him that I was leaving but was worried about his wife. He told me that he knew she had a problem but he couldn't do anything about it.
Long story short, it got very uncomfortable. She felt strongly that her husband was having an affair with another one of the women who worked for the business and pumped me for information. I honestly did not believe it and never saw anything to indicate that this was happening, and told her so, again and again, believing that her drug problem was causing her to be paranoid. Then her husband began to pump me for information as well. I began to get suspicious, but the alleged mistress was a friend, and she assured me that there was no affair.
Foolishly, I simply believed my friend.
When the affair finally was exposed, the well to do woman assumed that I had been lying to her right along. Her husband's mistress lost her job. I lost mine because she refused to have a liar in her house. Moreover, she was a big shot at the church and she took her story there. The church gossips in her circle were horrified at my alleged dishonesty.
Losing the extra income provided by the job made life difficult, but even more difficult was the fact that I was a pariah in the church. I lost my job as a Sunday school teacher. My reputation took quite a beating and it was a humiliating time. I tried to talk to the pastor who took the woman's side and said maybe this church was not a good fit for me.
Months later, that well-to-do woman was in the newspaper. She had been caught at another well-to-do friend's house stealing the woman's opioids. She was arrested. The pastor stopped in that day. I was trying to catch up on laundry. He never said why he was there, but he was very pleasant and kind.
Later when I read the paper, I figured out why. I didn't blame him. He was a young pastor. He had been duped. I sure knew how that felt, but I never did go back to that church.
Anyways, the point of this rambling story is that a few years back, I saw this woman and she was so pleased to see me. She wanted to chatter on. I was not interested in chit chatting with her, so I made my excuses. As I was pushing my cart away, she said, affronted, "I don't know why you are so short with me," and I turned to her and said exactly what I meant to say. "I had no idea about your husband. Not one clue. I was minding my own business and working, and when it all came out, you lied about me. You forced your husband to fire me at a time when I needed the money. You got me drummed out of the church. You made my life miserable for a couple of years over this."
And she said, "Well, you have to understand. I had a serious drug problem. I couldn't help it." She added a little reminder that, as a Christian, I was required to be forgiving.
I was amazed. I turned to my cart and left her in mid-lecture.
Today, as I was being amazed by the price of a greenhouse tomato, I heard a cheerful "Hi Debby!" I looked up, and there she was, looking much older, and not at all like the well to do woman of 25 years ago. She smiled beatifically at me.
I said hello. Nothing more. I turned back to my groceries as they were rung up.
But inside my own thoughts, once again, I was amazed.
Replying to comments is fun.
Margaret said she'd like to see the tub. Well. It's packed away in storage, but if you google Kohler cast iron Mendota 60 x 32, you'll see the tub.
Anonymous had a question: "With all your home renovations of older homes, have you ever experienced anything 'paranormal'? I guess if you don't believe in it, it's a moot point. I've talked with flippers and people that renovate older homes who didn't believe...until things happened they couldn't explain. I guess we're all looking for that rational thought."
It is an interesting question. I am of the opinion that there are things that I don't understand. I'm also completely comfortable accepting that I don't understand. I have no curiosity to be poking around in the paranormal.
That being said, there are three instances in my life that stand out to me. The first time I was walking out of Gunston Hall in Virginia, which was the home of George Mason, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. I love historical homes. I did the home tour. I headed out the back to see the gardens, and there was the strangest feeling: I just felt very strongly that I knew this place. I felt like I belonged. I actually felt dizzy.
It was shocking, and...
...that was it. I continued on my merry way wondering what that was all about. (Years later, I was talking to an old man who'd spent his life in the Merchant Marines and he had gone vacation and did a tour of Dodge City, Kansas, and described suddenly feeling as if he knew the place, as if he belonged there. I recognized the feeling he was trying to describe right away.)
The next time, was early morning, and it was at the Chippewa Nature Center. By that time I was the mother of three children. I was taking one of them to Nature Camp. They had to be dropped off early in the morning, and I had to drive down a dirt road to the camper drop off. You went through an area that had an old log cabin school house that had been dismantled, the logs numbered, and brought back and reassembled at the CNC. As I came upon this building, approaching it from the end, I caught a glimpse of a woman in the window. The glass was the old very wavy distorting sort of glass, but as I glanced over, I saw a woman in the window. The nature center proper was not yet open and wouldn't be for another couple of hours, so there were no volunteers. The buildings would have been locked. But I caught that glimpse of a woman, and the only thing that I remember plainly was that she wore her hair up, and her blouse had a high collar. I hit the brakes in surprise and she just wasn't there when I looked again.
The final thing happened in my own house, the house in the header.
I was getting ready for work. I worked third shift in a group setting for developmentally disabled adults. My work partner watched a ghost hunter show. I will admit that those things bother me because I do believe that there are things I don't understand, and I would like to keep it that way. But I'd be folding laundry and she'd be watching her show, and I'd always try to logic through what was happening.
On one very dumb episode, a woman hired ghost hunters. She felt uneasy in her house. She didn't know why. The ghost hunters came in, went to a local library, and found a newspaper clipping that told the story of a death in her house. Triumphantly, they took that to her. The death happened in the room she claimed she felt uneasy in, and she exclaimed. 'I knew it! I could feel it.'
So I was brushing my teeth and walking between the bathroom and the front of the foyer to the french doors where Tim sat on the couch as I got ready for work. I was telling him how stupid the show was. "It proved nothing!" I said. "We know of at least four deaths in this house, so based on that, OUR house is haunted." As soon as I uttered the words there was a thud. Standing in the foyer, I felt that thud in my feet.
Tim leaped of the couch, blew by me and headed up stairs saying "What was that?"
I said, "Where are you going?"
He said, "Upstairs to see what that was."
I said, "But it came from the basement," and I stood there holding my toothbrush quite sure that I was not going to the basement. I felt like the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz, wringing my tail and repeating 'I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I DO.'
The source of the noise was not discovered. Our house is a friendly place, and no one has ever claimed to feel uncomfortable in it. including me. Well. Once one of William's toys started by itself and shut off when I walked into the living room. It was not a wind up toy, it was battery operated. It was in the middle of the livingroom rug and William was still sound asleep on the couch having his afternoon nap.
11 years later, I can tell you one thing that I understand the least about that thud. Tim does not remember it. We talked about it, because I can assure you that it absolutely did happen, and I could not believe that he didn't remember it. All I can tell you is that he is a very practical man. If he doesn't understand something that he feels uncomfortable with, he tucks it away and never thinks on it again. A preacher's kid, he does not care to look through that mirror darkly.
I think everyone has been complaining about the snow, but this weekend, the temperatures went up a bit.
Friday night, we had to run up to Levi and Mattie's to pick up some posts. On the way up, I said, "You know what we should do? Pick up slushes for everyone!"
Tim agreed. Since Amish don't have freezers, this would be a nice treat. We started calculating: 8 kids. 2 adults. We can't forget grandma. Tim mentioned that Levi had taken on a hired man. That is how I found myself bouncing up a hill, balancing 12 slushes in my lap.
We made it.
We pulled in the driveway. Mattie and Grandma were planting trees with a crew of children. The youngers were playing with the dog. The sawmill was running full bore. Tim called out the truck window: "We're going to need a few kids over here!" They came running from all directions. They carefully carried the box of 8, and another carried a car carrier with 4 more. Mattie sent one down to the sawmill to find out what flavors they wanted, while the others waited for permission to take make their own choices. When it finally came, eager hands went to work.
I said, "Come on, Grandma, there's one for you in here."
She explained that Levi had a hired man.
I explained we'd bought one for him too.
They were suitably impressed by my math skills.
Saturday, we did some work on the renovation, and Sunday, I did nothing. I purposely did not one thing.
Well, besides help Tim. We bought a cast iron bathtub. The seller had left one little factoid out of his online description. We were not aware that it was cast iron, until we got there to pick it up and realized the blessed thing weighed 350 pounds.
The bathroom it was intended for is tiny, and trying to get a bathtub that weighs that much, into a space that tight was asking for trouble. I know this because maybe 10 years ago, we actually got a cast iron bathtub stuck in a stairwell. Wrestling it out of there, I threw my back out, and discovered the amazing world of muscle relaxers.
Neither one of us was anxious to have that experience again. We had driven quite a way though, and it was a beautiful tub, a Kohler. So we wrestled it on the truck with the idea that it will go into the new build. It can be put in place and the bathroom built around it.
Once home, Tim discovered it was a $1300 tub that we'd gotten for $100, so he's quite thrilled with life and Sunday, we drove that tub up to the retirement property to be stored until such a time that we begin building a house worthy of such a bathtub.
Helping him with the bathtub was the only useful thing I did Sunday besides cooking dinner and washing the dishes.
The temperatures reached 81 degrees, and it was glorious. When we went to bed that night, for the first time this year, we slept with our bedroom windows open.
This is our latest acquistion.
It's old.
Big.
It has three very cool bathrooms. Ignore the green stickers. That just indicates that the place has been winterized, so that water will not freeze in the pipes and explode if the place stood empty and unheated over the winter.
The place has all sorts of built in cupboards and cubbies, and neat things, as old historic homes are wont to have. We even found a secret compartment behind the fireplace.
It was empty. No treasure.
Damn.
Unlike most repos, someone loved this house a lot. It is very well cared
for, but dated. It needs new appliances, and it needs some updating, new
wallpaper, kitchen countertops, etc, but all in all, this is
a beautiful home, and is two separate rental units. Each apartment has one
bedroom and an office/den, as well as the bathrooms, kitchen, living room,
and dining room, so they are spacious units.
This is the house that everyone is dying to see pictures of. Tim has already hacked away the bushes in front of the house. This is what Tims do. The bushes were overgrown, way to close to the house, and we discovered rhododendrens and azaleas and interesting flowery stuff choked beneath the overgrowth. So hacking away the bushes from in front of the house was a very good thing.
Please excuse the picture taking skills. We will try again when we have more time. Welcome to the foyer. The picture doesn't show this, but you enter from the side of the house climbing a big broad porch. The door is heavy wood with full length glass. It opens with a skeleton key, believe it or not. Yes. We do have the original skeleton keys and the brass locks. The foyer is actually open in the front. It is probably 15 feet from front to back.
This is the living room, to the right of the foyer. If you open these doors, you would be going back to the foyer.
This is the view from our downstairs bedroom. It's a horrible shot of the bedroom, which is actually quite nice. There is a narrow long window which will be above the bed. Do you see the hard wood floors here? We will be renting a sander and redoing all the floors, and then sealing them. We won't do that, however, until we get all the painting done. Which we won't do until we get all the cleaning done. Which we won't do until we get the water leak situation all straightened out. Yep. This is not going to happen over night. I'll remember to take lots of pictures, but remember, this are the 'before' pictures! The bedroom also has its own glass door. It matches the doors in the livingroom and library and office.
This is the downstairs bathroom. It does not have glass doors. It is right next to the bedroom. You would reach these two rooms by going back to the foyer, and then walking back past the stairs.
If you go back through the foyer, and walk in front of the stairs, you would be walking into the kitchen. In front of the island is a picture window that overlooks the back yard, and we are uncovering some wonderful stuff back there. In front of the picture window is a comfortable place for the dining room table to go.
This is my little kitchen. It is homey, and of all my little kitchens, it is the kitchen that I love the most. 
Tim wants to replace the cupboards. I do not. 
Come on in, and have a seat. I'll make a cup of coffee.
What are you doing on the floor?
I replaced the exploding coffee pot.
It'll be okay.
My baker's rack with all its clutter.
Heading out into the dark hall...
...you'll see the foyer. The door to the right leads outside. The piece of door you see to the left leads into the livingroom.
But if you turn left before you get to the livingroom, you'll see a 23 foot long hall. The humidifier runs pretty much constantly, and we have one on all three floors. This house sat vacant for many years, and radiators exploded. We do not have central heat. We discovered that the roof leaked around the chimney and that water was running into the center of the house right along that chimney. Tim got that taken care of. Still, without central heat, the house is damper than we would like, so we run the dehumidifiers and dump them daily. Still, it's a great house, and we expect that this situation will be mostly resolved once we get central heat next year. 
A picture grouping on the wall: Some sketches from Britain that Cara bought us (Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and London Bridge), black ink sketch of Cloister Castle, which was one of Dylan's and Brianna's favorite places to go as young children, before there was a Cara, a drawing of the oldest Episcopal church in America, which we visited before there was a Dylan OR a Cara. There is also a slate from an old house in New Orleans, with a street scene. Cara bought that for us when she did mission work in New Orleans after the hurricane. It seemed cool to me how we had all these things, but they were packed away from a long time ago, and in the packing and the unpacking, we found them again, and realized that they all fit together perfectly, right there. 
This is the livingroom. Dark, ain't it? Lord knows I cannot take a picture to save my soul. 
Here's a better shot. The sofa is the one that I found just before Christmas. The chair is an old one that we had. They don't really match, but since we're buying furniture to last us the rest of our lives, we are cautious, careful to get exactly what we want. Since we haven't found exactly what we want, well, it is what it is. The living room is sparsely furnished. We have our couch, chair, that little table, a small wooden end table, and then the TV on another old library table that I rescued from a junk pile 27 years ago. I like that table, and it deserves a much better life than holding the television, the DVD/VCR and the satellite stuff. We hope to find a couple nice solid color wing chairs, and an armoire for the television stuff. Oh, and there is an antique sewing machine there as well.
If you go through another set of french doors, you are in the library. The picture is dark. I'm not home during the days, usually, to get decent pictures. 
This is the most imcomplete room on the first floor. It is the office. Tim just put heat out there. It will probably be the only space heater that will remain in place once we get central heating put in. This used to be the porch, and there is really not another way to heat it, since it has a concrete floor with ceramic tile laid over it.
Downstairs bathroom.
Our bedroom.
Probably an important note here is that there are no closets on the first floor. None. Nada. Zip. We have one closet on the second floor, and two on the third. It's a long walk for our clothes. Part of my 2012 physical fitness plan.
We've got two more floors to go. There are also several bloggers who have found a place in our house. I have given up promising ANYTHING, but I will try to get them in by next Friday.
l’m old enough to remember that putting the National Guard on college campuses is a bad idea. Bernie Sanders might be old but he has said ...
