Improbable Things

Grow, Girl, Grow!

I've been obsessing about the garden. I should be obsessing about, oh, say, the windows (before the season changes again and it's too cold to work on them) but instead, it's all about the garden. My last library run was all gardening themed, with the best find being You Grow Girl, which was useful, succinct, and fun. I've also been following some local gardening blogs (DC Urban Gardener, Takoma Gardener, The Slow Cook) and some not local ones (You Grow Girl, Garden Rant) and indulging in garden porn on various online gardening stores. My list of desired plants is getting unreasonable, especially since I don't so much have a real plan.

Projects large and small

Time to retire the A/C thread:
It is installed and re-recharged and as a result, the whole city is a mild, low-humidity 81 degrees. No need to thank me. Really. When the weather changes again, we'll know for sure that the recharge worked. It should be all good. Whew!

I also finished another much smaller project this morning: putting the composter up.

 

From Annie Hall:

Alvy Singer: I'm so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for "Dysentery."
Robin: "Commentary."
Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that "Commentary" and "Dissent" had merged and formed "Dysentery."

We went to the Screen on the Green last night and I saw Annie Hall for the first time. I think the biggest joke is that Woody Allen claims it is NOT biographical. We saw (but did not do) the HBO Dance. It was the first time I sat and seriously thought, "Damn these kids today are just too weird." The baby slept in her stroller and we came home to air-conditioning... kinda...

Kinda. Because it's running but not quite cooling. So they will be back, like cheesy Sci-fi villains. I'll rewrite the story so they can be heros in the end if we get this sorted out quickly. I liked Johnny the HVAC Guy. He doted on the dogs and even danced some for WeeE. I really don't want this to end in villainy.

I also like the Annie Hall quote tonight because I caught up on some news today and it brought me around to a YouTube clip of Tucker Carlson frothing on MSNBC. It doesn't matter what it was about because, well, Woody Allen put it best. "Dysentery." 

Instead, check this out. Andrea Dezso's art is staggering and lovely and it makes me want to CREATE.

ick

just ick. it's hot. so hot i can't be bothered with capitalizing. it's actually about 10 degrees cooler than it was at lunch today, but still ick.

the a/c is nearing completion. we have 17 of the 18 drops put in and then it's just the compressor, thermostat, and test run. i think we'll be good to go on thursday. we'll still have some plastering to do (since the a/c guys are not plaster guys) to be truly finished, but, ha!, we will never be truly finished with this house. Holes in the ceiling are character. yup. character.

Plaster v Man: Plaster Wins.

We have amazingly study plaster walls. I go on about this a lot, I know. But here is hard proof:

Three dulled holesaws. Check out the one on the right. No Teeth at All! And we only have 5 1/2 of the necessary 22-ish holes drilled. Each blade dies after only 2 holes. Why?

How to Cut Open a Ceiling

While nervewracking to a homeowner, it's still pretty cool. Today the guys are vacuuming out insulation and running the silver tubing. Tuesday we had the largest of the holes cut - to access the attic and put the air handler up there.

A/C Install: Demo Day One

We are back to Old House repairs and upgrades. Today the A/C installation began. I've sounded maybe a little ambivalent about air conditioning. After a week of 90 degrees and 100% humidity and toddlers with heat rash, I'm reminded that I dearly love the modern magic of central air conditioning. Even renewed in my desire to have the central A/C installed, I am suffering a mild heartache about doing it. Today we cut an access panel into the attic. An attic that had not been seen by human eyes since construction in 1932/36 (the records vary on our build year). No one has screwed up the attic yet, but here I go. I get to be the one that someone curses in 20 years for having had the bright idea to install SpacePak. I didn't mind so much with the kitchen renovation because, well, it'd been wrecked by someone before me. What we did in there was at least no worse. But this is big. This is holes all over the place. This is machinery in the pristine attic. I'm kinda taking some innocence from the house. Man, I feel way too much responsibility about this, don't I?

So anyway, today was Demo - Day One.

Tiger Swallowtail

As I was walking out the door a few days ago, I was treated to a garden visitor. I managed to snap two decent photos. That's a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly enjoying the coneflower.

House Storm Coming

Last year, when I was ditzy, emotional, and pregnant, we bought an old fixer-upper of a house and failed to sell our old house. A year later, our former house is sold (whew!) and so now I can come back to the things I want to do to the new house.

Right, but now I have an (almost) 1 year old. Which complicates house projects so much more than being pregnant did.

Still, here's some of what's coming:
Air conditioning installation: Scares me silly because they have to snake things through the old plaster walls without breaking everything. And it costs a small fortune. I chose a contractor with a solid contract, good recs, valid license and insurance... here's hoping I chose wisely. It's killing me that I can't micromanage this project, but I'm adapting to that impossibility. I don't really understand how they are going to fit it all in (but there is a design phase, so I should have a better idea before the cuts are made) and I don't want to be in the house with E while they are making a mess.

Windows: Oh the geekout I am having. When it was cold and miserable, I was totally just going to rip out the old windows and get vinyl. But, thanks to the advice of some cooler heads, I'm doing due diligence before I make that decision. There is no turning back once we remove the old sashes. Considering the expense of new windows, I'm exploring doing some low tech stripping, repainting, and reglazing of the old windows and investing in some serious caulking of the storm windows. Windows will earn a whole post of their own, maybe several.

Roof: We have at least 3 leaks. So we hope to have this done this season, probably towards fall.

Front stoop: The front stoop is a poorly laid concrete slap with a big cavern under it that holds water against the house (not the textbook way of doing it, as Garrison Keillor might say.)This was my highest priority, but I'm becoming calmer about it since we filled in the hole with fill dirt, waterproofed the basement and looked at the list above. Now the thought is to plant some things to 'rain garden' it a bit to slow the drainage problem and postpone this a year.

Back deck: Pressure wash and stain. This should be easy enough with a little babysitting help.

And the list goes on and on and on... but don't mistake it for complaining. I love this little house. I really do.

Settlement...with Stolen Monkey

"Jessica's House" is sold (pictured here in 2002). It's hugely ironic that the realtors, who worked for a year to sell our house, took to calling it "Jessica's House" since I was never on the mortgage or deed. This was Bill's doing and a wonderful accomplishment indeed.

I vividly recall my first visit here in 2002. I stood tensely on the stoop looking at the yard full of gravel instead of grass and listening to the shrieking of the neighbors outside the skeezy apartment building across the street. As Bill unlocked the bar door and then the two locks on the main door, then turned off the shrilly beeping alarm, I thought to myself, "I would NEVER live here!"

I moved in 6 months later.