A Well-Paced Eternity

The trees around my neighborhood are starting to change colors. Like so much else about the Midwest environment, this triggers off something primal in me from childhood. Fall was always such a colorful, happy time, and the perfect lead-in to the holidays and winter.

Most of the trees on my lot are evergreen, so very few leaves to rake.

And while I appreciate the pace that seasons give to life, it certainly does seem like an eternity since these guys started working on the pipes in the powder room. Brother-in-law David first identified the leak back in late August, when he and Kittie were visiting. Before that, with just one shower a day upstairs, I never noticed the leak, beyond a tiny pooling of water on a main stack coupling.

If you'll recall, I even had a plumber in to try and find the leak, and we couldn't. So, yeah.

After the plumbers (who are really good guys and very competent and reliable) ripped open the wall to expose the huge, cracked 80-year-old wrought iron pipe and replace it, I decided to pull out the entire wall, as it was only about 6' x 8' and most of the plaster was water damaged.

So the drywall guy came by — last week, was it? — and pulled down the wall. It took them a few days to get back (a weekend was in there somewhere) and, just before starting to cover the opening with drywall, they found (you guessed it) another pipe. This one was galvanized, so it was probably only 50 or 60 years old. The problem was, it was the vent pipe for the plumbing, and there was about a two-inch gap between where the powder room sink drained into it and the pipe that led to the roof.

Not even close! Who did this?

I'm glad he noticed it. I'm not a fan of methane seeping into the walls, especially one so close to the stove in the kitchen. So they held off on patching the wall, and I called the plumbers back in. And, of course, it took them a couple days to get back here, which meant another weekend, and finally they showed up last Friday and repaired the pipe.

And another weekend. The drywall guys were supposed to call on Monday around noon to make sure the plumbers had fixed the pipe, but they never called. So I called them. Joel said they could come first thing Wednesday morning (today), and they did. They had the drywall up in no time, and said the guy to tape and mud the wall would be here in the afternoon.

I went in to check their work, and it was acceptable. And then I noticed: where the plumber had opened a small section of ceiling to access the first pipe, they hadn't bother to patch the hole. So I called Joel back and told him to hold off on the mud guy since the drywall guys hadn't done all the work. He said he'd have someone here this afternoon.

Around noon, Ron, the floor refinisher guy, was at the back door. He came in and there was a hint of disappointment in his eyes, as though he expected to start the floors tomorrow. I pointed out the powder room job and said it wouldn't be done for a day or two. I also pointed out that I had to get someone in to help me move the furniture and pull the rest of the staples that were still in the floor around the edges of the room. I told him it would probably be next Monday before I could get someone here (and I was right).

I called the guys at Eagle Eye Property Services, who are members of the Center's business directory, and Mark answered. I told him my need and, sure enough, it was Monday he could come. Which leaves me the weekend to wrap knick-knacks and clear out as much as I can on my own. I tried to get ahold of Ron, but I got his voicemail, and it has been full ever since I first tried to call him, lo these many weeks ago.

So I worked on my Halloween costume (I finally got a great idea, but it's a secret) and expanded the newsletter template that I'm working on for the Center. I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, so around 3:45, I figured no one was arriving to deal with the wall, and I had a lie down. Just as my eyes were closing and my body relaxing, I hear somebody talking on a phone in the kitchen. The mud guy had arrived.

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He was talking to Joel, since he had seen the hole in the ceiling quite readily and wanted to let Joel know the work wasn't completed. Then a set about mixing his mud and finishing off the 98% of the job that was done. Jason (the mud guy) did a really nice job. When he finished, he said the drywall guys will return tomorrow at some point to finish off their work. Then Jason will return to finish off the ceiling tomorrow afternoon, and return on Friday to sand and finish. So the powder room walls should be complete by the weekend.

My new driver's license came in the mail at last. The license plates for the car were handed to me as soon as I got all the necessary paperwork collected, but the driver's license — a new-fangled type with some sort of chip in it that the TSA will be using to streamline domestic travel — meant that it took longer to process. As friend Deeann (who grew up in Viroqua, just south of here) said, "Now you're a cheesehead." You betcha.

Another milestone I felt creeping up: yesterday was the second anniversary of my husband Steve's death. This year it felt positive, like a scab healing, an injury improving. I'm still wearing my wedding ring. I took it off at the first anniversary of his death, but I still felt so naked and incomplete without it. I wondered if this was the year to take it off and, almost as if he was speaking, Steve's little voice in my head said, "Find the ring box it came in; when you have that, you can safely put the ring away without losing it." Sometimes voices in your head are a good thing.

Last night we had our first meeting of the Center's communications committee, of which I am a member. The big discussion is the newsletter, which at this point is pretty nonfunctional. I was planning on suggesting a redesign, but I didn't want to step on any toes. "Don't worry about it," Jackson said. "If any feelings are hurt, I'll just ask them why they weren't stepping up and taking care of it themselves." Good point.

Celebrating the SCOTUS decision.

I had already been working on a template for the redesign, so I spent today finishing up a rough version of it while trying not to think about the powder room. (I still have to purchase the sink and toilet; the vanity light fixture and the mirror for over the sink and the floating shelves for over the toilet have all been purchased for some time now; I just didn't want to have two toilets sitting in my kitchen, even though one of them would be factory fresh and in a box.)

This weekend one of the colleges in the area (the one Pam works at) is having an auction to get rid of excess old office furniture. She and Steve are going, so I told them I'd join in on Saturday morning, hoping to find shelving for the office and a solid, comfortable desk chair. After that is a chili cook-off of some kind. I may try and get them back to the house to join in the tchotchke packing, but that is a very conditional if.

Either way, I'm going to try and get as much done before Mark comes to pull the old carpet staples. Next move: figure out a way to keep Patty off the downstairs floors while they're being refinished. From what I see, it's going to take two or three days to get them sanded down and get three coats of sealer on them. So, with luck, I will have finalized plumbing, new powder room, freshly done floors by the time Halloween arrives. It will be so nice to be able to tell if you've swept the floors or not (at this point they look just as horrible clean as they do dirty).

Perhaps I'll get to have a housewarming party before the end of the year after all!