MOVING IN AND PARING DOWN

Last Friday we packed up the furniture and other belongings with which we have been camping in our temporary Mineral Point apartment and moved them to Underhill House, where we are continuing to camp for the present.

This period of camping with a few of our belongings is proving very valuable.  It’s serving the purpose of detatching us from possessions that I felt very committed to a few short months ago.

Dressing out of suitcases and boxes. Cooking with minimal equipment.  Sitting in a fraction of our chairs.

Camping has been surprisingly comfortable, and easy to maintain.  And for the next few weeks, the camping will continue.

MEETING OUR MOVING DEADLINE, BUT NO OTHERS

Doug wanted to move in before he began teaching, and the new semester began this week, so that dictated moving Friday – even though there are still a lot of finishing details to complete Underhill House.  Our crew still comes every morning and continues to measure and cut and shape shelves and trim around the unmilled timbers that hold up the house.  The compressor that roars to life to power the nail gun, the whining power saws and droning sanders continue.

The work station outside my office door.

Before we moved, I thought our lives were about as packed full and distracted as they could get, but living in the middle of a building site does up the ante.

It has increased our personal productivity because now instead of going back to our apartment, we can continue painting trim and chasing down plumbing mysteries into the wee hours.

After the furniture movers left Friday, we wandered around feeling like intruders.  It was like being in a construction museum after hours.

ATTACK OF THE TARP MONSTERS

Saturday morning , watching the first light fall on our interior was pure joy.

All day we worked in full sun with our painter, Jake.  Just about dusk, the sky darkened suddenly, and the wind kicked into high gear.

We heard something hit the side of the house hard and quickly determined that several roof tarps had broken loose and were beating against the house.

Nothing in life prepared me for watching this huge tarp smash into and rake across my bedroom window again and again  while the wind shrieked.

The tarps on the roof are protecting the rubber membrane till spring when we can add soil and dirt and create our living roof.  These tarps were secured by the fascia boards along the outside of the roof and held down on the center by sand bags.

We don’t want anything to puncture the rubber membrane!

The liberated tarps were being flung about by winds gusting up to 58 mph.

We didn’t dare approach them.  Our flailing roof protection had turned on us like a rabid guard dog.

After dark, I stood in the bedroom watching a huge tarp that had spent its early life as a billboard ad hurling itself against the wall and window like some kind of berserk tarp monster bent on breaking through the window, snatching us up and gobbling us whole.  It was an unsettling image.  After it occurred to me, I could not shake it.

Poor Ensign Ricky

I haven’t seen many horror movies, but I felt like I was a character in one — one of those hapless individuals who die early in the show to demonstrate just how threatening the monster really is.  If you are an old Trekkie, you’ll know what I mean when I say I felt like Ensign Rickie.

It made for a long night.

By morning, the wind had died down, and we ventured out to find no damage to the plaster or the fascia boards.

Those tarps were cut off Sunday, and more will soon replace them with extra sandbags so they will hopefully hold their ground in the face of any further high winds till spring.

OUR NEW ROUTINE

Since then, we have gotten up, dressed, breakfasted and tried to finish a short project before the crew arrive, haul their tools out of the corners and set to work.

shaping shelves.

My office is up and running.  In my old office, my desk sat against an uninsulated, concrete wall on the exposed side of the basement – cool in the summer and far too cool in the winter.

My new office is smaller, but was made to fit my desk.  It is well insulated, with lots of electric outlets and line-of-sight to one of those dreaded cell phone towers we hate to see but have come to depend on.

We still don’t have shelves in the pantry, poles in the closets or most of the doors, but I’ll start with a working office and take it from there.

Each night when we go to bed, a little more progress has been made, and each morning when we wake up, it feels a little more like home.