Yule Stock Show Moon
Category Archives: Our Land and Home
Pounding, Screeching, Whining
Yule Stock Show Moon
Can you feel the tension creeping out from here? The (we hope) final day of our kitchen remodel is underway. The new countertop is in, the new broom closet (unprimed, however) is in, the microwave and sinks and faucets are in. Various items, punchlist items, are being taken care of. A couple of other custom cabinets are waiting to be installed. Saws whining, drills screeching, hammers pounding.
Todd’s multicultural crew, Michele (French) and Luis (Latino), is here and have been since 8:30 am. Todd’s a good guy, but he’s a big picture schmoozer in a small picture detail oriented business. We hired him and we’re riding the process out to the end, but we could have done better. The price however was right.
Kate left in the middle of the day for more hand/thumb physical therapy. She came back with black kinesiology tape snaking out from the top of her thumb midway up her forearm. Kinesiology tape? Yep. This gave her time away, a spa hour for her opposable digit.
Nextdoor Shadow Mountain, an electronic water cooler, had a woman on yesterday who wrote: “Any recommendations for an electrician?? The company we were using did not show up for a scheduled appointment, and no one has responded to texts, phone messages, or emails.” This is the story here at altitude. Over and over. In all trades and services.
Last week I wrote the heads of three local business schools and suggested there might be a business opportunity up here. No takers yet, but it’s early days.
That’s how we ended up with Todd. He actually showed up.
Connected
Samhain Christmas Moon
A wire had slipped loose from one of my ethernet connections to the house. David and Ian fixed that, then, using a five position switch lit up all the ports in the loft. The desktop and the TV have hardwired connections rather than the fickle wi-fi. Much better.
That’s one project finished. Solid internet link, no more fussing about it.
While Dave and Ian worked, I continued the last stages of unpacking. Yesterday I put art supplies in the cabinets of the big work table. It still awaits a top that Jon is making from oak floorboards of recycled semi-trailers. With a year almost gone, the final shape of the loft is very close to realization: bookshelves, work out area, writing and research spot with computer, a chair for reading positioned on a large rug and overlooking Black Mountain, a small fridge and a large counter space for teaware and coffee presses, art positioned and hung.
The books, though in very large categories, still have to be organized within those categories, e.g. mythology and folklore and ancient history, Lake Superior and Minnesota, art, poetry, religion, travel, Colorado, Civil War, various literatures of the world.
A lot of work up here over the last year, close to the finish.
2015 Home Project Year
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
A father and son team came over Monday morning to do a site survey. Their task is to create a reliable internet connection between the modem and the garage. Might be wi-fi. Might be hardwired. Hardwired is the preference and that’s what they’ll work on first. Hopefully they can make all the ethernet jacks live at the same time. That would make positioning things in the future much more flexible. They’ll be back next Monday to work.
The kitchen remodel is on hiatus right now, waiting on the countertop’s creation and the arrival of various doors and a large cabinet injured in the first shipment. Kate’s got great ideas for color once the remodel is done. Slowly, slowly.
The December 29th date for switching on the solar panels has me a bit twitchy. The new rule promulgated by IREA (Intermountain Rural Electric Association) goes into effect on January 1st. It makes demand charges for peak load times, evenings here, so high that the result is solar panel investments will not pay out. IREA needs to install our net meter before January 1st for us to be grandfathered in under the old rules, rules that allow our solar investment to go positive in about 12 years. Having the same people in charge of installing our net meter who benefit if it’s done late doesn’t seem like the best thing, but it’s the way it is. And the 29th. So close.
Back to the fire mitigation today. I have some free time and warm weather has melted snow cover from downed trees I need to limb. This is an all winter project, taking advantage of various windows of acceptable weather conditions.
We’ve had a long string of projects this year. Makes sense since we’ve moved into a new house. After 20 years in Andover we’d adapted 153rd Avenue to our peculiar needs and values. Now in some sense we’re starting over. Each step, the bookshelves in the loft, the generator install, the new gas lines, the new boiler, the new stickley table, sealcoating the driveway, fire mitigation work, solar panels, the new bed and tempurpedic mattress, the kitchen remodel and now the loft internet connection have met some priority or another.
A few, the generator, gas lines and boiler, were driven by necessity. The seal coating was timely. The bookshelves, the kitchen remodel and the solar panels on the other hand are projects designed to make our home more responsive to our values. The new bed and mattress made sense given aging bones and joints. The fire mitigation is necessary, but also enjoyable, something I can do.
We are in these ways becoming native to this place, learning its contours and possibilities and just as important, it’s limitations. Home. Black Mountain Drive. On Shadow Mountain.
Lotsa Likes
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Internet has the slows today. Yesterday, too. I know just how it feels. Though, the tempurpedic has reduced my morning stiffness and I do feel better rested. Still not fast. Not any more.
Had a weird cyberworld experience yesterday. I joined a facebook group called Creative Aging. I posted on it. So far I’m at 143 likes on my post and many replies, some from Australia and India, others from Evergreen and Bailey. This would be more remarkable, but I seem to have been the first male to post on this forum in quite a while. The number of folks living in the third phase grows daily and many, maybe most, have lots of energy for life.
Some of the new cabinets are in place. All the old cabinets went away yesterday afternoon. A nephew of Melanie and Kevin has just bought a new house. Feels good to know they’ll have a home in a new home. Mike Vanhee, the fence guy, comes by this morning to pick up the old fridge, dishwasher and metal bed frame.
Our solar panels passed their final inspection. Now the process moves to IREA, the local electrical co-op that has passed the draconian excess usage charges for new solar. Those new regulations don’t go into effect until January 1. If they get the net meter in before then, we’re under the old rules. That means our return on investment goes positive in year 12. If not. Well.
No snow in the forecast for the next ten days. I’m glad. I may be able to get back out and work on fire mitigation.
Making It Ours
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Todd, Luis and Robert dismantled and stripped bare our kitchen. It looks naked, the old secrets of holes cut for pipes, tile stripped off its mastic, the entry points for gas and water laid bare. And smaller. For some reason it looks smaller to me that it did with the cabinets, sink, stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. Odd.
The wood cabinets, custom made of good quality, will go to Kevin and Melanie. Melanie cleans our house and Kevin will chip our slash, help me cut down tricky trees. The new cabinets are in boxes now, in the kitchen itself where Todd wanted them. The only portion of the old kitchen left is the refrigerator, plugged in but sitting in front of a window, awaiting our final cleanout.
Mike Vanhee, the guy who put up our fence about this time last year, will pick up the old fridge, the old dishwasher and our metal bed frame, the one Kate and I slept on for all the years of our marriage. Certain physical objects accrue affection, like the Velveteen Rabbit. They become a real part of our life, not merely chairs or cars or canoe paddles. Not that old bed frame, nor the remnants of the old kitchen. Just things. Going on now to live a recycled life, the thing equivalent of reincarnation. The karmic wheel of recycle, reuse. Moksha comes in the incinerator.
Today Todd and crew will start installing the new cabinets. On Thursday the countertop people come to make a template they will use to create our countertop out of recycled glass. We may have to get Herb back to move the gas for the stove over about 6 inches. It’s in the way of the stove fitting flush against the wall.
Meanwhile Kate and I have the microwave, coffee pot and toaster oven sitting on a towel on top of the coffee table. The silverware is on the table still in its plastic bins. Paper plates and bowls, too. Some fruit. We’re in a state of self-imposed domestic siege. Familiar. Seems like not so long ago that we did the same thing in Andover.
The new Tempurpedic mattress rests on the new Ikea king sized bed frame. We’ve had it for three nights now. The mattress came on Saturday just before we sat down for Thanksgiving dinner. Lots of newness. The mattress. Amazing. It caresses your body, a firm muscular caress that leaves you confident of your position. Still, it’s different from the old Sears mattress with the hyperbolic name. It was, according to the silky label, the Imperial Ultimate.
We’re making this place ours. Solar on the roof, a new kitchen, new bed, bookshelves in the loft, new boiler, generator installed as something old. The process is disruptive, but exciting, too. We’ll head into 2016 in a changed house.
Monday, Monday
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
A midnight clear on a joyous night of old. The waning Thanksgiving moon has a huge moondog encircling much of the sky to the west. New snow, about five inches, so fresh white sparkling. Quiet. Wonderful.
Thanksgiving, our first here on Shadow Mountain, is behind us now. Memories have begun to accumulate, still fresh like the snow. That delayed kitchen remodel gets underway today. Over the last week we’ve been moving pots and pans, spices, plates and cups, flour and tea and coffee to temporary locations. Todd and his crew will dismantle, then rebuild our cabinets, install a new fridge and dishwasher, a new countertop and sinks, build in some new cabinetry.
Our new refrigerator is in the garage and running, plugged into a wall socket. It will get the last of the old fridge’s contents today or tomorrow, depending on when those get removed. Logistics. The new cabinets come today and they have to go somewhere, probably the garage as well.
With the driveway covered again, I’ll have to blow it since we’ve got the kitchen crew plus the Jefferson county inspector for the final inspection on the solar panels both coming today.
We’ve also got a loan to close today. It will help us bridge the gap between paying the last payment for the solar panels and getting our tax credit money next year.
Hanukkah starts this Sunday as well. That means eight days of candles, prayers, grandchildren gifts. The high holy month will be well and truly underway.
The Year of Two Thanksgivings
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Grandson Gabe walked in the door and asked two important questions right away: Grandpop, what’s the password for your wi-fi? This was followed quickly by a pulled down t-shirt. See my new port! It was on his right side, had a small yellow butterfly valve in place temporarily and looked good. The end of a week long saga of hospital, surgery, recovery. That’s what he and his parents did on Thanksgiving day, Thursday.
So, we had a Thanksgiving brunch today: prime rib roast, popovers, squash from Jon and Jen’s garden, a rice dish from Barb, then pecan pie and homemade vanilla bean ice cream.
It was one of those children at the table holiday meals where the kids could hardly wait to get away. God, I remember that feeling. Stuck with the old people talking about grown up stuff. Boring. Really boring. I’m dying here. Let me go, please let me go.
Barb (Jen’s mother) recounted the story of her husband, Henry, and his family’s escape from Romania in 1964. Her father-in-law, mother-in-law and 16 year old Henry plus some other family members got ransomed by a group specializing in getting Jews out from behind the Iron Curtain. Henry’s parents wanted to go Israel. They got a flight to Vienna, then Genoa where they were told it would be six months before they could get papers for Israel.
Henry’s father knew there was a large Romanian Jewish community in Buffalo, New York, so they went there instead. Barb grew up in Buffalo. The rest of the story is Jen, Karen and Andy.
These are the long tendrils that any Thanksgiving meal sends out, connections weak and strong to ancestors who suffered, who triumphed, who slogged out their life and in that way allowed the people around this table to come together.
I’m grateful for each one in that great cloud of past lives who preceded this Saturday Thanksgiving on Black Mountain Drive. Yes, even those we don’t like so much. Without them, we wouldn’t have eaten this meal as a family today.
Oh. And the dogs got the four rib bones with plenty of meat on them. I’m grateful, too, for the doggy ancestors who brought this current pack of ours into existence.
Shadow Mountain Thanksgiving Snow
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Still new to winter in the mountains. A beauty I’d not known before. Different from the silent deep cold of Minnesota.
Lights, Power, Holidays!
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
So many things moving together at this time of year and at this time of our settling in on Shadow Mountain.
The solar panels are now all in place. This was midday today. A final inspection from Jefferson County on Wednesday, then IREA (electrical company) has to come out and install the net meter, maybe three weeks. At that point we can switch on the power.
Hanukkah comes fast after Thanksgiving, so we have two festivals colliding in the rich way of Holiseason, commenting on each other, sharing light.
We’ve also got a few holiday/Holiseason decorations, non-sectarian, ready to go for the Thanksgiving visitors. These two plus the pine cone wreaths and a couple of large red ribbons for the garage will satisfy my longing for direct participation in the season.
The fox, the deer and the pinecone wreaths decorated in Hanukkah colors will go outside tomorrow or Wednesday.
The kitchen remodel, held up by Thanksgiving, gets started next Monday, the 30th. Even the generator seems to have regained its traction and may be actually functional soon. Then, finishing the loft, the downstairs bathroom and an external sprinkler system will be all we have left of the first round of make it our own projects. The boiler is in and working well.
We’re still under a year in the house, December 20th is our anniversary here.