Hawks flew in circles above my house, about 3 or 4 of them. I think they were a family of Cooper’s hawks. Or red-shouldered hawks. They were very high up.
This week I started the remodel. I’m not actually doing the remodel, I’m just the boss. My cat was scared of the team, two people. I told him, I’m the boss, you’re the boss’s cat, and therefore protected. He is more relaxed now.
Everyone is doing well with each other and the walls and ceilings are coming down.
We found a message in the wall in blue crayon: this room added in 1963. Then the next day, the ceiling was torn off.
We kept two door open so the wind blew through east/west. It was a warm spring breeze and I regretted not doing that more often, having both doors open, but one was on the alley and never used.
Boxes are piled everywhere in the rest of my house. It’s a mess. I can’t really clean anything - so I’m just getting ok with living like a hoarder.
The old room is gone, peeled off, brought down to its bones.
It only took a few hours and it was stripped down to the basics ready to begin again.
I wondered what else we would find in the walls. I felt like something would turn up.
“We found something. Books,” Giovanni said, and handed me some paperbacks.
They found smutty books from the 60s stuffed between ceiling and insulation. They are in very good condition. One book review said, “a shocker, lots of sex, lots of wild parties, lots of free thinking. Its merits will be debated quite a while.”
We all laughed quite a bit about the books.
I’m working on ideas of what to put in the walls for the future. I thought about putting the books back in, but no, I will come up with something else. Any ideas?
It was just a few hours and the bits of house were in a pile, then in a trailer headed for the dump.
Its been spring break and sunny and warm so I took off on my bike toward the river path to give them some space in my house to work.
After climbing the big hill toward the orchard park I had to turn around because they had signs up to stay out because of sprayed pesticides that day.
I redirected to the mill race ponds and saw turtles sunning on logs. There were red-winged blackbirds and kingfishers around. It was an easy ride out with the wind at my back. It was more work to pedal back against the wind.
The next morning started with a flicker calling from high in the tree across the street. It’s been doing this a few days, looking for another flicker I think.
I learned about a new kind of insulation. It looks like thick slabs of wool. It’s called Rockwool, though it’s not wool. It’s spun from volcanic rock and slag, a byproduct of making steel.
On the fourth day a jay was the first to make sounds, but by breakfast, the crows had the most to say. After that, two ducks quacked while sitting on my neighbor’s roof.
Later that day I got home and heard a metal vibrating sound and it was the flicker again, trying another way to reach out.
Nearing the end of the week, I went to bed still kind of amped after the day so I tried to imagine riding a humming blimp in the night sky and how soothing it could be. And then I wondered, do we still have blimps? I had a dog, Casey, who always barked at them when they’d float over.
The back room is now insulated and wired.
Today while they worked on the inside, I worked out in the yard in sun and light rain- I turned over dirt in five beds. It was soft and easy to work with.
Tonight while talking with someone about remodeling and restructuring and repairing a house, we jumped the subject to being about how to heal trust, support another person, and make repairs with each other.
We decided sometimes it takes over communication so as to avoid assumptions.
And this can be awkward but it’s also awkward to lose people you don’t want to lose.
It’s the end of week 1 of remodel. It’s 7:20 pm and raining hard with pink and blue sky and distant sunshine.
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