Construction. Day 8?

Yeah - let's call it day 8.  It's really hard to tell because we've done a little bit here and a little bit there.

We've had a few problems.  The rain has been persistent and ugly.  I've had to work two days, Thursday Peter took an alpaca head to the face, resulting in a broken nose and I woke with a migraine this morning.  Needless to say, construction progress has slowed wwwwaaaayyyy down.

I have a photo though:

As you can see, the sun finally came out today and Peter was able to resume digging.  "We" want to dig all the top soil out and save it for raising the the future lawn.  We'll put junky old fill under the future parking pad.

Yesterday the weather was so crazy we had sun breaks, rain, hail storms and snow flurries.  Great fun for delivering mail.  It was a "take my rain coat and jacket off, put the jacket on, take the jacket off, put on the rain coat, put them both back on, take them off" kind of day.  The temperature was very fickle.

Today the weather was much better.  Sunny and warm - as long as you weren't hanging out in the shade.  I wish I had felt better and was able to help Peter more.  Instead I made muffins, cleaned the kitchen, napped,  sat staring into space, and I did manage to take the chicklets that have been living in our kitchen on their first outing into the big, wide world.  Sparky had to help me supervise.

The weather should be good like this for nearly a week.  Unfortunately I have to work 4 days out of five.  I'd rather be here than delivering mail but we have to do what we have to do.  I'm not really so much help with just digging anyway.  I'm sure he'll be fine without me.

Call me Beppe

Beppe.  Pronounced: "Beh-peh."   
Peter can be Pake.  Pronounced:  "Pa-keh."

Those are Frisian words.  I'm not Frisian but Peter and his family are.  Since I'm adopted and my background could be anything I COULD be Frisian and just don't know it.  That means that using Frisian words are perfectly acceptable (she says rationalizing..).

It's not that I'm vain like some women and insist their grandchildren call them by the first names and they go around denying they are old enough to have grandchildren.  That's not the reason I'm resisting being called Grandma.  I never really knew my grandparents and have had very few occasions to use the terms Grandma and Grandpa.  Those terms to me represent people that love you, but live a long way away.  My mother was called Grammy and I kind of feel like that name should still refer to her, not me.  I had cousins that had a "Meemaw" and I know other people that had an Oma and Opa.  To me these names just sound so much cozier and welcoming.  I think Beppe is a fine term for my not-too-distant future self.

An ultrasound today confirmed that the big event should be early November.  I'm very happy for my son and his wife.   I read something the other day that was quite moving.  I did not write it and I do not know who did but it seems relevant to my feelings.  For both my son and daughter-in-law I share these words:

We are sitting at lunch one day when my daughter casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of “starting a family.” “We’re taking a survey,” she says half-joking. “Do you think I should have a baby?”

… “It will change your life,” I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral.

“I know,” she says, “no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations.”

But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my daughter, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes.

I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable.

I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking, “What if that had been MY child?” That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her.

That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die.

I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of “Mum!” will cause her to drop a soufflé or her best crystal without a moments hesitation.

I feel that I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby’s sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is all right.

I want my daughter to know that every day decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy’s desire to go to the men’s room rather than the women’s at McDonald’s will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom.

However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother.

Looking at my attractive daughter, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself.

That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give herself up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs.

I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor.

My daughter’s relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks.

I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child.

I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic.

I wish my daughter could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving.

I want to describe to my daughter the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike.

I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or cat for the first time.

I want her to taste the joy that is so real it actually hurts.

My daughter’s quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. “You’ll never regret it,” I finally say. Then I reached across the table, squeezed my daughter’s hand and offered a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings.

Construction Days 5, 6 & 7

Day 5 found Peter needing to rest and recuperate.  His hands were damaged and needed time to heal.  So Thursday Peter mended and I went to work at the Post Office.  I keep hoping I will wake up one day and not hate my job.  It didn't happen on Thursday, in fact I was having fantasies of quitting before 10:00 a.m.  Then to add insult to injury - I found out I will be covering for vacation again next week.  That doesn't fit in construction plans at all. 

But I digress and I whine.  I was talking construction.  Not much progress has been made in the last three days because of the rain.  It has been coming down in deluges.  It's been miserable and makes me very cranky.  Today was really the first day we had reasonable weather in ages.  We ran out with enthusiasm to greet the pretty day.  Surprise!  It was really cold!  But at least it wasn't raining so we bundled up and got to work.  We made progress before I bailed out to go get alpaca food.  Shortly after I got back Peter bailed out to go to the office.  Together, but separately, we got the concrete up from the west side of the parking slab.  Now we need to dig up the gravel, then dig out the top soil.  The new parking slab is going to be much higher, slightly smaller and off-set from the old one.  Our front lawn will be bigger (and actually a lawn!).  

It's nice to be making visible progress.

In case you're wondering, the stripping of our kitchen floor has been stopped in the middle and my studio has doors, but all construction has been halted in favor of THIS construction.  That's okay. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

(De)Construction. Days 3 & 4.

Day 3 of construction brought rain.  Torrential, oppressive, disgusting rain.  It felt as if we should be building an ark instead of an addition.  Instead of doing much actual construction, Peter made arrangements for a jack hammer rental as well as spent time at the office.  We also took our 4 goose eggs off to a friends house to be incubated.  If all goes well we'll have more baby goosies in about 30 days.  Because we need more critters in our growing menagerie!

About 6:00 we finally made it out to the garage to continue clearing out the stuff that went back in after it went out.  The rain was so bad though that even making a few dashes from garage to barn or shed had you soaked clear through.  Man I hate rain like that!

Day 4 proved much more productive, aided by the fact that the rain held off for most of the day.  We were up before daylight and Peter had the jack hammer with it's very own compressor/trailer home and nearly ready to go by 8:00.   Because we had to resort to a jack hammer and jack hammer rentals are expensive we had to temporarily skip to phase 2 of our construction plan.  Phase 1 was to just break away the concrete on the parking pad and in front of the garage and replace the other concrete when it made more sense. Because we had to rent the jack hammer and we wanted to get our moneys worth our mission for the day was to break up ALL the concrete that needs to go.  Ever.  That's a lot of jack hammering!

Peter said the jack hammer officially weighed 90 pounds.  I tried to use it, I think it weighed more. I managed to "drill" 5 holes, total.  I was no help at all.  In my defense, Peter said that by the end of the day the thing weighed closer to 300 pounds.  It was probably an accumulation of the concrete dust and crumbs that made it so heavy.

While Peter cracked concrete I pried it loose and piled it up.  It was a long hard day for both of us - more so for Peter.  He logged just over 6 hours on the jack hammer.  No one can say my husband had girly hands.  They are totally torn up with more blisters and tears than you an imagine:

The rain hit about 3:00 and we yet continued for another hour or two.  The sidewalks and slab are all cracked, there is a growing pile of rubble with so much more growing to do.  

I think I'm glad I'm working at the Post Office tomorrow.  Otherwise I'd be picking up concrete in the rain.

Construction. Day 2.

The end of day 2 finds me not quite as exhausted as I was Saturday.  Today we headed off to the toxic waste disposal place.  It turns out not all our toxic waste was toxic at all.  Latex paint is non-toxic and can be disposed of with regular trash, as long as you make it solid.  Fortunately the place did take all the nasty stuff so we don't have to worry about THAT anymore.

On our way home we stopped and rented a concrete saw.  Peter applied himself to the task:

I applied myself to the task of turning latex paint into a solid.  I do distract easily though and before I knew what came over me I was swirling the pretty colors together and entertaining myself quite nicely.  I know.. I'm a slacker and I did eventually get all the liquid out of the cans and spread out in boxes so it can dry.

 While I was playing with paint, Peter continued working on concrete removal.  He hammered on it with a sledge hammer, while I burned paper in my chimenia.  He pried on it with a pry bar, while I played with kitties.  He got the farmer next door with the really big tractor over to help lift sections while I wandered around the field with the alpacas.  The result of his efforts are below.  That's Oliver, Intrepid and Minuit, our outdoor cats, hamming it up in the photo.

The concrete was much thicker than expected and was not going to be removed as we had planned.  Our next step is a jack hammer.  I wonder what I can find to keep myself busy while Peter uses that?

Construction. Day One

Day one of construction is done.  Gone.  Thank goodness.  I'm pooped.  The day started off somewhat leisurely with attention to the chicklets and alpacas.  Everyone needed food and preparation for the day, including Peter and I.  Cleverly I threw food in the crock pot so we'd have dinner ready when we wanted it.  We began our endeavors by 10:00.

Our construction plan involves a complex chain of events.  Here is a before photo of stage one.

Our plan involves turning the garage into additional living space for the MIL suite. Our plan is to remove the garage door, frame in a wall, add a window, remove the brown door on the end, add a window, re-side the building and build a pergola/patio where those plants are on the end.  On the inside we are going to vault the ceiling, insulate and sheet rock the walls, break out the old concrete and re-pour the floor, topping it with matching hardwood that we put in the rest of the suite last year.  Before we can do any of that we need to remove the parking pad and tree stumps, raise the level of the ground, re-pour cement to include the foundation of the garage and future pergola.  But before we can do that we need to make space for the pile of broken concrete and foundation that we need to break out, as well as the soil we're going to try to sift and salvage.

And that's just stage 1.  

My beloved husband (aka the great time under-estimator) says we can have it done in a couple of weeks.  Bwaa haaa haaa!

Now that you know the plan, here is how day one went.  Peter started clearing a space for the concrete and soil while I started emptying the garage.  Most of the stuff in the garage was not mine so I could not make the judgement call on what to do with it.  I just hauled it out to the parking slab and sorted into piles:  Tools/hardware, garden, wine-making, organic material (like potato starts, cuttings, etc), everything else, hazardous waste (there were cans and cans of unlabeled paints and chemicals) and then a pile for the stuff that probably needs to go to the dump.

By 3:00 the garage was mostly empty, Peter was done with his task and began tackling the chore of sorting through the piles.  He added new piles to my sorting schema and made serious progress.  I turned into his assistant as the decisions being made could not be made by me. The problem was that by the time we finished sorting, nothing was actually put away and it was nearing 9 pm.  We had promised his mother that we would not leave anything on the slab overnight.  She worries about how things look.

Peter stashed the potatoes in the barn, as well as the tools and hardware, while I burned our burn pile.  A few things were put in Peter's mom's van for charity and a few things were put in the SUV for recycling.

Everything else went back into the garage.

EVERYTHING.

(can you hear the crickets chirping?)

At least it's sorted for easy dispersal once the dump, recycling & hazardous waste places open on Monday.  Peter still needs to make some decisions on where to put the things we aren't getting rid of but the hardest part of this section of the plan is over with.  yay.

Cheep Cheep Cheep

Chickens!!  We got chickens!  We're starting with 6.  2 cuckoo maran, 2 black australorp & 2 silver laced wyandottes:

When they grow up the Cuckoo Marans will look like this:

and they will lay eggs that look like this:

The Black Australorps lay a nice medium brown egg and will look like this:

The Silver Laced Wyandottes lay a light brown egg and will look like this:

Chickens come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but I find that I like big, hearty birds.  As my mother taught me, you're not healthy if you're not fat!  No little bantam hens for me!  Peter likes the little ones though so we will, eventually, get some of them (once we're sure our chicken virus is gone we'll get LOTS more chicks).  I got free reign in chicken picken while Peter was off on another errand so I picked out the breeds that appealed to me.  I very nearly brought home two turkey chicks.  They are very friendly little birds and I love adult turkeys.  They have such attitude as they strut around with their plumage.  But I resisted.  For now anyway.

Right now our chicklets are asleep in a box in the kitchen.  They will live there for a few days, perhaps for even a week or more, until they get strong enough to survive outside.  I don't mind chickens in my kitchen at all and I'm in no hurry to throw them out the door.

Tomorrow we begin construction on converting the garage into additional living space for Peter's mom.  It's all part of a process that will require tearing out the parking pad, re-grading the front lawn, re-pouring concrete paths and parking pads and framing walls, hanging sheet rock, installing windows, painting, re-siding, and building a pergola and a breezeway between the two houses. I've already taken the before pictures so I'll be sure to put up updates.