Inspired by a) Emily, who is reminding me to live in the moments and take notice of the present and b) Soulemama, who weekly posts “{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”
Happy Weekend!
When the frosty window veil
Was melted down at noon,
And the caged yellow bird
Hung over her in tune…
– Robert Frost,
Wind and Window Flower
Wandering about the streets of Philadelphia this afternoon in a blur of thoughts…thinking of the people I most dearly love and lamenting the geographic distance that leaves me perpetually homesick…this quote came to me; on one of Philly’s many many murals. So it seems rather appropriate for today.
The house has at least 2 extra chimneys. Extra because there is no longer a coal stove or that sort of thing. Extra because the furnace now has its own “modern” chimney, as does the kitchen exhaust. Useless because the only thing going through the chimney now is cable connected to a satellite dish. Inconvenient because they take up space in weird areas…such as creating an entire useless wall to hide a chimney, or encroaching on the bathtub in an already tight bathroom.
The wall to your left is now gone. As is the chimney that it was concealing.
Now it looks like this. But I am reminding myself that in order to make something new, something better, something more useful…well, sometimes you have to make a mess…and clean it up…and build again. The next question: what to do with the chimney hole. We’re thinking skylight or solar tube… But before that, we’ll stack the bricks, and think about how to reuse them, soot marks and all.
Day One: It’s a house with lots of work needed. I will give a more formal introduction once this house and I are better acquainted …it’s only day 1 after all! For today, I can introduce you to this hole and the most immediate project below door number one.
The pressing project is securing the “Michigan Basement.” From what I’ve learned, this means that they actually dug the basement, by hand, after the house was built. WHY??? That’s another question… At any rate, part of the area below the kitchen trap door was not secure, so after replacing the door locks, this was the first project. Ryan and my brother Dan must have hauled at least sixty or seventy buckets of sandy soil to the backyard, but they seem happy with the results. One of the treasures that they found was this horse shoe. It’s much more exciting than the fork, syringe, screw driver, and ink pen finds and I’d say it’s a good luck sign. 
Update from the 17th: thank you all for your warnings.I have since turned the horse shoe the other way, said a few Hail Marys, spat, and will now be catching good luck in my horse shoe.
Oh! One funny little anecdote from the day. I hope Ryan won’t mind my sharing it. At the end of this day, I notice that rather than wearing work pants, Ryan’s jeans look pretty nice. I say “we’d better find more grubby clothes for tomorrow.” And that’s when I notice that not only do his jeans look pretty stylish, wait…they’re mine! Poor boy was so preoccupied with the tasks for the day that he didn’t even notice. his sheepish reply: I thought they seemed pretty tight…and I wondered why the pockets were so little.
PS: For those of you shrugging and asking “what, a house what…where?” Yes, this is all happening very quickly. To be brought up to speed, the beginning of this story can be found here.
