Yule Stock Show Moon
Category Archives: Shadow Mountain
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.
Meet and Greet
Yule Stock Show Moon
Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.
Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.
Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.
Quite an Array
Yule New (Stock Show) Moon
Called up our solar array on Alternative Energy Systems. Each of our microinverters, one per panel, sends out a message about its panels performance. 27 panels, 27 graphics with the amount of energy in watts being produced at any one moment. Very cool. Except for the fact that we have snow on the panels and only a few are producing at near optimum. Plus, even with tree cutting we’re still getting some shading. This will take some time, maybe a full year, to assess. The good news is that electricity now comes from the sun through the photovoltaic panels and into our home. (chart from today)
Smart
Samhain New (Winter) Moon
The wind was calmer today so I got more tree trunks cut into logs. Used my smart holder for the first time. It works pretty well, but I’ve got to get more facile with placing logs on it. A learning curve. Lots of fireplace size logs stacked between two trees, three stacks in all. This is the last step in the fire mitigation process for this season. Now the wood will dry for a year, be ready to split next fall. As soon as I get all the front tree trunks cut into fireplace size, I’ll move to the back and begin felling and limbing.
Getting my regular hour of Latin, but boy it’s coming hard right now. Not sure why. Struggling. Back to regular exercise, too, though most of my resistance time is still spent with arthritis alleviating exercises from Dana. I backed off a bit on them, tried to work in some other resistance, but the tingling returned, the left shoulder began to ping. Struggling a bit here, too. Not anywhere near my pre surgery levels.
Tomorrow we’re going to Sushi Harbor with Jon and Jen to celebrate Jon’s 47th birthday. I met Jon when he was 21. 47. Realized another milestone birthday must be when your first child turns 50.
Our neighbor Jude came over to wish us a Happy Hanukkah. Sweet of him.
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.
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.
Not the Thanksgiving We Got Ready For
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
And so, we spent Thanksgiving on Shadow Mountain, watching the snow come down in lazy lines, thinking of Gabe and his second surgical procedure in a week, the roast and the pies and rolls in the freezer. It was downbeat, too quiet for a holiday.
Kate the clinician, a person with a bias for action, stewed. She wanted to do something, fix something, but the snow came down and no roast could be cooked, no salad prepared, no engagement with the medical issues of her only grandson. Impotence, or the feeling of impotence, is a terrible burden because it shrouds the capacity to act with an inability to do so. So many revolutions have been borne. So many political movements.
Later, after Gabe’s delayed procedure was over in the late afternoon, she relaxed. Jon had called and asked us not to come. The snow. The stress of the day. All made sense to me.
The holiday hung in the air like a sneeze not completed. Thankful, of course, for the good outcome with Gabe’s procedure. Thankful for the snow and the flocked lodgepoles, snowy Black Mountain, the dogs running pushing muzzles into the snow, rolling. Thankful that Kate and I were together, playing Bethumped, talking.
I ate too much of the sugar cream pie I made. Really more like a delicious pudding. It didn’t set up. No matter. We had shrimp with Bookbinder’s sauce while we answered questions about word origins, eponyms, general history, homophones and pushed our plastic markers around the board.
It wasn’t the Thanksgiving we had prepared for, but it was the one we had. And it was a good one.
In fact, this year we’ll have two Thanksgivings, yesterday and the delayed meal on Saturday around noon. Now, there’s plenty to do. Gabe’s better. Kate will have tasks to be done. And that prime rib roast. Well, I’m looking forward to that.