It’s Sunday morning, and I’m still pajama’d. The boys are playing endless video games. Adam, hero of the century, is shoveling. Again. Church has been cancelled today. And this is likely the first of several snow days for a family already feeling rather cabin-feverish!
We’ve all spent more time than usual obsessing about weather forecasts. Here’s what this particular storm – slated to run long from Saturday night into Tuesday morning, looks like:
We’re in that very high impact band.
There’s another storm that may be brewing behind it. Following that we are likely to get a historically cold snap, with highs in the single digits.
This is the kind of winter that sets the mark for what winter means and what it is for years to come.
The current scene – we have another 12 – 18 inches coming
Last night my neighbors hosted hordes at the Vinterfest. She’s Scandinavian. He’s from New Hampshire. They lit candles, turned off the heat, shoveled the porch to make it one more room for the party, and produced pounds of meatballs, head cheese, remoulade, and other deliciousness. It was a celebration of the winter, an avowal to be unafraid of the cold. We toasted each other in a room made of snow.
For perspective – it’s really hard to get good snow pictures
One of the ceremonies of Vinterfest is the eating of the rice pudding. Tobin makes a vast batch of rice pudding, puts one blanched almond in it and passes out cups to the assembled crowd. One person finds that almond and conceals it for as long as they can. I’ve always wanted to be that person, but I never have been… until last night. I came home, late at night, with a crunchy almond taste, a marzipan pig and a year of good luck. Here’s to good luck, and a spring that comes someday!
Written Monday night, after the epic unheralded snowstorm and Patriot’s Superbowl win
So last night I sat with my friends and watched the the Superbowl, and I started contemplating the number twelve. And the fact I had no ideas for what to blog about this week. So I decided – a la Sesame Street – to do a blog on the number twelve.
12 inches of snow
1. Twelve is my favorite number. I like all multiples of six. Well, I’m slightly ambivalent about eighteen – I feel like I should like it, but not really. Six is great. Twelve is amazing. And twenty-four? Top notch. After that I stop caring. I don’t have a particular fondness for thirty-six, for example. But my passionate feelings towards six, twelve and twenty-four are actually quite pronounced. I think I like six more than I hate seven, and that, my friends, is saying quite a bit. (Stupid seven. I hated it so much I refused to learn my seven times tables, which led to me hating it even more.)
2. Twelve is Tom Brady’s jersey number. It’s a common number for a quarterback, I think. But if I bought a jersey… well, let’s be honest. I’d buy a Wilfork one because Wilfork is awesome. But I’d be tempted because Tom Brady has a cleft chin and wears number twelve, and has won four of the six Superbowls he’s played in. Fewer things in sports are more lovely than watching Tom Brady in a two minute drill.
3. Twelve was the top range of the of the predicted snowfall. It’s what the weather station claims Stoneham got today. They are lying liars who lie a lot. I swear we got at least eighteen inches. There’s another three or four that fell after the third shoveling of the day at five pm. We have a LOT OF SNOW.
You can watch some awesome video of my eldest son getting trapped in the snow by clicking here.
4. Twelve times twelve is 144, or Bilbo’s age at his big last birthday party when the Fellowship of the Ring. I learned from that it’s also a gross, and not considered a polite number in reference to people.
5. Twelve is the clarion call for the Seahawks. Buildings were emblazoned with 12, jerseys with #12 proudly worn. It took me quite a while to figure out what the #12 was about, since Russell Wilson is #3. It stands for the twelfth man (person) – the crowd whose energy and enthusiasm could do everything but complete that final catch of the the final minute of the final game of the year.
6. Twelve is the number of pies we had the first Piemas. I believe that the first Piemas was 2007, perhaps. That was definitely the year we first met Dave. So the celebration upcoming in about six weeks is not the 12th Piemas, alas. It does, however, fall on the ULTIMATE PIE DAY, since it will be 3/14/15 and I will be making pies at 9:26:53.
First Piemas?
7. Twelve is the current temperature – before wind chill.
Brrrrr
8. Twelve is the number of days until Truck Day (the day when a truck leaves Fenway Park with all the gear for the Red Sox’ spring training). It seems entirely impossible that anyone will ever play baseball again, since the entire city of Boston is under three feet of snow. But it gives you hope!
9. Twelve was the number of sledding runs I took tonight, after leaving my neighbor’s lovely blizzard potluck. I’d missed out on getting a single run in last week, when the snowplows were thick as mayflies. But tonight our street was deserted with about two inches of fine powder. My boys, seeing me out there, hopped into their snow gear and joined me rocketing down our street.
My boys and I on the slopes of our street
10. Twelve is the number of kids in the neighborhood (when you add in the honorary members). This leads to a beautifully chaotic and noisy scrum when we all get together. We have more room for screaming in summer, but are more likely to actually get together on these cold winter nights for a potluck.
Snow day
11. Twelve days from now is Valentine’s Day and I found (what I think is) and AWESOME Valentine’s Day gift for my husband. It’s romantic in the way that people who have been married for nearly fifteen years are romantic. I also read this great article on how to fall in love. Tragically, it requires staring into the eyes of your target for four minutes, not twelve.
12. And finally, well, it was tough to come up with just the right 12th thing for this post. I looked at my pictures (I apparently didn’t take one on 12/12/12 – an oversight!). I asked my husband for a great 12 thing. And then I checked my blog and found Twelve things I liked in 2012. Truth be told, a bunch of those things are still my favorites! (Also, apparently I’ve already publicly confessed my passion for 12. Ah well – we can never overtell our affections!)
I woke up yesterday morning to a cold house. I contemplated whether my son figured out how to open his heat vent and steal the heat back into his room (after we’ve rightfully stolen it into ours)… but no. Too cold. The hallway was cold too. The heated floor in the bathroom couldn’t get up to temperature against the chill of the air. I went downstairs praying the battery in the NEST had just died, but no. It was the furnace. We had quick and chilly morning ablution with two icicle-boys eating breakfast in their coats. I called my amazing furnace company Royal Air Systems, and they sent someone right away. This hero of heating replaced something as part of my plan, then checked back an hour or two later. No dice – it still wasn’t working right.
At 7 pm last night he was just leaving my house, having ordered a part from the warehouse. “I adjusted your furnace manually, so the pipes won’t freeze. But please, don’t sleep in the house with those boys. There’s a chance there might be Carbon Monoxide.” Right. Cold temperatures I can handle, but even with CO monitors throughout the house, I’m not a fan of dying in my sleep. The boys were thrilled, THRILLED to have a sleep over with our kind next door neighbors, who opened their home to us last night. They were awfully cute together this morning!
The furnace news is not good. Either it needs to be replaced like today, or it needs to be replaced really soon. If it has to be replaced, it’s entirely possible I’ll need to impose on my friends’ hospitality for another night. (The kids are rooting for this outcome, since they think their sleepover is SO COOL.) I’m cheering for really soon since I am not a fan of snap purchases. My beloved husband is also – conveniently for him – traveling this week, so it’s all on me.
I would say something cheerful about how times like this make me feel lucky because I have such amazing friends, and am capable of handling projects, and am impressed as heck with my service provider, and lucky enough that we can postpone our planned home improvement project (the freaking windows) and do this instead but… I don’t feel 100% and it’s a gray rainy nor’easter outside and I’m not feeling cheerful. So bah humbug!
UPDATED: Just got the call from my dude. He managed to fix the part that needed fixing. He checked on the part that that might have required a new furnace and it’s ok. He ran tests on Carbon Monoxide, and there is none. So we can go home and sleep tonight in a warm house and not die. Yay! We probably need to replace the furnace this year – likely in January. But I don’t have to do it like today. YAY YAY!
And the total out of pocket with my service plan? Not a single red cent. $0. No invoice. The parts alone cost $700 and the dude was there for HOURS and it cost me nothing. YAY YAY YAY!
Last night Grey and I got to join a lot of other families in town on our local tv station talking about what the Greenway means to me. Those fresh, young faces really helped remind me what this project is about: doing something awesome to make our town an even better place to live. Check out the video!
For those of you who are dying for more details on exactly where the project stands, what it does (and exactly how much of Rec park would be impacted), the Greenway Site has an excellent update you should review!
I’m excited to work with so many great, excited people to make this happen!
There have been many discussions during this World Cup round whether this is finally the moment where the United States joins the rest of the world in not just FIFA-fever, but in a regular love of the game.
I remember when I watched my first soccer games. There was no soccer in my community or school – it simply wasn’t an option available. But the summer of 1998 I was home for the summer. I was working, but not SO hard. And the World Cup was on tv. I don’t remember any of the games I saw, or the teams. I do remember that it was sponsored by Snickers and there was a Snickers logo right under the score box for every game. I probably ate 10 Snickers during that World Cup, and just watching the game still makes me want a Snickers Bar.
My sons have a different experience of soccer. We’ve tried a number of things: swimming, aikido, dance (ill-fated), basketball. (They both really want to do t-ball, but the times for t-ball are completely unworkable with two working parents.) But they’ve done more soccer than pretty much anything other than aikido. I actually love the games and practices. I love sitting on the sidelines in a camping chair that smells like woodsmoke, next to MY friends, and watching the boys play. I love on gamedays, when all six fields are full of blue and white jerseys and parents and neighbors and friends – with little siblings putting together their own little games on the sidelines. (I’m impressed and grateful to the excellent run Stoneham Soccer Club for the program they’ve put together for our kids.) My sons know soccer better than baseball, football, hockey, basketball or any of the other classical American Sports.
Grey’s team, Greece, coached by our excellent next door neighbor, came in second for U8! I found myself engrossed and full of nerves while I watched these 8 years olds I have come to know and love do actual ball handling and real actual skills and passes. It was amazing to see how much they learned and improved in one year!
And it’s not just the prior generation. I’m a suburban WASP, surrounded by many other folks whose families have lived in the US for generations. And you know what we’re talking about these days? How great it feels to finally leave Ghana behind. How we owe Renaldo a debt of gratitude. How we’re caught between wanting to watch Messe play and not wanting to face him and Argentina on the field. Whether that biting suspension was a bit too much, and how hilarious it is that he fell on the ground and clutched his teeth after the whole biting incident. We’re messing up details and maybe not 100% sure on all our countries/claims, but we’re watching and talking.
I think the time has come for the international game to take its rightful place in the US. I think that we’ll not have to wait another four years – or watch Univision – to watch the game!
What about you? Are you watching the World Cup? Do you find yourself having to Google things in order to follow along with the conversations? Are you feeling inspired to go see your local MLS team?
I woke up this morning to find this menacing visage staring back from my erstwhile toothpaste-smile-free bathroom mirror. Of course, this morning I woke up with a certain alacrity usually missing from my morning hours. A door burst open, shedding light into the snoozy darkness of our bedroom. “Mom! Dad! It’s 9 am!” Adam and I immediately levitated two feet above the sheets and initiated a midair synchronized panic – one of the rarest forms. “April fooooools!”
He was permitted to live because it was 6:58 am and we were getting up in 2 minutes anyway. Plus, this kind of thing is good for the heart, right?
Downstairs for a good ol’ bowl of cereal in purple milk (my contribution). In the car on the way to school, my usually suave second grader effused, “April Fools day is my favorite holiday! It’s just a day of cheerfulness and energy and good fun!” I have to agree with him. We are now in the apex, the absolute height of April foolishness. My guitar was mistuned. Many long discussions happened about what the best “alternative” filling for an Oreo would be. (Mayonnaise? Avoid cookies in our house this time of year.) Some prankster *ripped a hole* in the sheet of toilet paper to be used next. THE HORRORS!
Google joined in the fun, as it so often does, inviting me to enhance my gmail experience with Shelfies. I sadly didn’t listen to NPR, so I didn’t get a chance to be completely taken in like I was with the epic “Coffee Pipeline” debacle. I have personally retired from the trade after my epic accomplishments in the “It’s twins” announcement when I was pregnant with Grey.
I’ll second Grey’s notion – I love April Fool’s day too.
So, what about you? Did you get any great ones off today? Do you love it, or do you find it, well, foolish? What’s the best prank you’ve ever been part of, as pranker or prankee? And why does such a non-commercial holiday persist in our culture?
Sometime around Halloween, I usually start to despair. My life is such that I’m always busy. But between September and November I’m not just busy, I’m epically busy – and it’s been even truer than usual this year. Contributing factors include four birthdays in six weeks, apple picking and preserving, Halloween and the last good weather of the year (see also: raking time!).
This year I added to that normal busy mix a cat who requires tube feeding, soccer-which-requires-practices, a new role at work that has me travelling fortnightly and the World Series (I didn’t miss a game this year, at the cost of sleep, relationships and using my spare time for anything that wasn’t baseball). Somehow I felt just a touch busy, even with the strong effort by my husband (and mother-in-law for the past week).
So this is a catch-up post, where I get back on the horse and update on you a few activities.
Grey striking, surrounded by two of his good friends.
Soccer
Stoneham has a great town Soccer club. We haven’t done it in the past because it’s on Sunday mornings. But this year, it really seemed like something we needed to do. (It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that all their friends are in the league.) We showed up to church in cleats a lot, and only missed a handful of Sundays. It was pretty great. Grey was on team Greece, who pretty much rocked it. They lost two games (I think) and won several quite decisively. By the end they were doing things like “passing” and “having a strategy” and “knowing what they were supposed to be doing”. There were a few actually thrilling moments of soccer! It did involve practices, but Grey’s coach understands that I’m coming from work, and so it was relaxing instead of stressful. Greece will hit the fields again in Spring, and I’m excited for it. Thane did soccer too, but his version seemed to involve a lot of falling down.
My best preserve, I think, is the autumn pear.
Canning
This year I made: 2 strawberry jam, 3 pesto (frozen), 4 plum jam (shiro, red, Santa Rosa & mixed spiced), 1 plum compote, 2 autumn pear, 1 ginger lime pear (remind me never to accept a bushel of pears again), 1 crabapple jelly (from wild crabapples on the soccer field), & 1 apple butter. I think that’s it. I missed making a second batch of apple butter (I usually make two) and pepperonata (the red peppers didn’t do as well this year). Next year I hope to have damson plums from my tree.
Thane listens to Grey read a very sick Tiberius a story about cats. You can see Grey petting Tiberius.
Tiberius
One of our new cats (what was I THINKING getting new cats at the beginning of heavy season?) developed fatty liver disease, and required a feeding tube. It was put in three weeks ago (I think?). For the first week, he was being fed four times a day and throwing up five. He was within two days of me deciding that this was no kind of life, and ceasing his pain. The second week we started getting some traction. It’s been up and down since then (it was a great day when I got down to three feedings a day, eliminating the middle of the night feeding). Today, for the first time, he started eating food. You’ve never seen someone as excited as I was about a cat eating cat food. He’s going to make it!
Best friends in line for a roller coaster
Grey’s birthday
Grey turned eight, and I took he and two of his best friends to Canobie Lake Park. I had a blast as we rode very mild roller coasters, hung out in the arcade and made fart jokes. Well, some of us did. Then we had sushi, followed by a Minecraft cake. It felt… older. It was the first time I’ve taken Grey and his friends out to do kid stuff and be kids. I loved it – they were old enough to have so much fun with, but young enough that all of them would hold my hand. Pictures here
Scary birthday goers!
Thane’s birthday
I will confess that I just threw an invite out there at the last minute for Thane’s fifth birthday, figuring I’d figure it out as I went along. Two days before the event, I panicked as I realized that it was EXACTLY THE SAME TIME as the Main Street trick-or-treating! I was going to miss it, and all these five year olds were going to miss it too. So I sent out a last minute change asking that the kids come in costume. We spent the first hour trick or treating together. We had a blast, and I felt brilliant. Let the record show that it took 5 years for a kid with a 28th birthday to have a Halloween/Birthday party. I held out that long.
(Does it say anything that I’m going through my pictures trying to remember what the heck I’ve been doing that’s made me so busy?)
Well, that’s about it. I think you’re caught up. Don’t get too comfortable with it though, because Mocksgiving is in (EEEEK!) a week and a half, so yeah…
Anyway, pictures of my super-busy October can be found here!
Camp Gramp time is usually a week when Adam and I slip away, and remind ourselves joyously of why we chose to marry each other in the first place. It is appropriate, then, that Camp Gramp week almost always falls on our anniversary. On August 5th of this year, Adam and I marked thirteen years of joyful marriage together. Thirteen has always been a lucky number in my family, as my parents married each other on a Friday the 13th. I’m feeling 13 years lucky myself, these days.
Anyway, the rhythm of Camp Gramp was shifted a bit because my brother had obligations into the second week of August, and this year Camp Gramp was to be held at my brother’s manse* in New York. This had the effect of moving Camp Gramp week into Gencon week – two sacred obligations colliding. Since I could schedule time with my husband another time, I am sending him with goodwill to Gencon where – I am reliably informed – he has the best schedule he has yet gotten (possibly due to some algorithmic javascript software he wrote to help him rejigger his schedule on the fly.) So this year, there was no Istanbul, Austria or Ashland for us.
Still, there was the weekend. We left Friday night – after a full day’s work. This was – of course – the Friday night where the beer truck dangled off the side of the freeway. (An incident only amusing because I ended up making it home in good time due to some excellent and thoughtful reaction by MBTA employees, and because no one was hurt.) I fetched our farm share, prepared that which would not keep, schlepped the rest of it in the ‘fridge and consigned the three watermelons and two vast cantaloupe to Camp Gramp consumption. We packed full the back of the car and cossetted our sons with pillows and blankets.
Come and sit by my side if you love me
The last pink traces of sunset found the Flynn family singing “Red River Valley” in the car, with certain young voices picking up the refrain. I thought as I sang “Come and sit by my side if you love me” about Michael. I remember him crying when I crooned the old words to an infant grandson of his, remembering his lost brother Jimmy. And now those small voices from the back seat may someday fondly remember the same strains, and their beloved brothers. One of those small voices begged anonymity, as though I would ever find a love of singing something to be ashamed of, so you will never ever know who sang so sweetly back there.
Through construction, leaving the Red Sox broadcast area, crossing the mighty Hudson and late into a starlight night we went. Only I was awake when we finally got to Middletown. My mother was waiting for me on the steps – waiting up for me to pull in to the driveway, like she has done so many times. Small bodies were carried upstairs – perilously close to the last time that will be possible. Cantaloupe were unloaded. Blessed flat, soft surfaces were revealed.
How silly is that Unka Matt in the window?
We left not too late the following morning. It’s funny how little time is required to fall into the cadence of your family. For me this is a blessing – I’m very fond of my family. I ate breakfast, kibbitzed with my brother, brushed my niece’s hair, took a picture of the four of them – Thane clinging to his Kay, Grey with a comradely arm around his Baz – and we were on our way. We only forgot four things, and we hadn’t even left town by the time my mom called to tell me of it.
It was 11 on a Saturday morning, and my husband and I were at LIBERTY. We went shopping. We ate at Denny’s. We pointed the car northward in search of an elusive hike on the Appalachian trail. By the way, in case it ever comes up, I highly recommend searching for a particular unmarked trailhead on the Appalachian Trail as an excellent way of discovering and becoming intimate with the rural ways of Connecticut. We sought for signal to update our directions in the high places of grassy, half-forgotten graveyards. We went round and round main square intersections looking for signs. We accosted random hikers. We went on one-lane, washboard gravel roads thickly papered with no-trespassing signs. We did u-turns. We drove past horses and pastures and woods and rivers. We went past shoulder-high corn, dappled streams, private schools and mansions in Salisbury.
The author, on the Appalachian
We finally gave up, and hiked a different section before turning around to Kent for our night’s repose in a fancy inn. Any implication that I picked the Starbuck Inn because of my coffee leanings is purely hypothetical, mind. We had a lovely dinner at the Fife and Drum, right next to the pianist. We laid out in the dewing air and watched the Milky Way stretch itself luxuriously across the country sky, hardly blemished at all by any falling Perseids.
The next day we got a good start on the morning, up in time for the breakfast part of bed and breakfast. Our host, calloused feet clad in sandals, regaled us with tales of what we’d missed the prior afternoon. The portraits and maps adorning the walls of the well-kept colonial attested to the fact that Starbucks had been in New England a very long time. I wondered if he was the hippy scion of a long and proud lineage. Anyway, two blocks to town for a cup of coffee! But look! The bookstore is open! I consider it a moral duty to stop at small local bookstores and find things I desperately need (even if you can get them cheaper at Amazon). So we found the new Arthur translation by Tolkien, and books for the boys. But hardly had we gone a block before we discovered the library was having a book sale! Tables and tables of trade paperbacks, clothbound books, best sellers and all manner of odd books were laid out. Well, that set us back long enough that I had to get a refill of my coffee before we left (happily, four times as many books cost a tenth as much as the bookstore). Finally, we were awa’.
Actual Appalachian Train – I have proof!
This time, we did find the Appalachian Trail. We walked our way up the gold and green Connecticut hillsides, punctuated by old stone walls and periodic views. Adam was nursing a hamstring injury (a parting gift of aikido) and a nasty cold, and I was still trying out my new knee, so we didn’t go to far. But we talked and laughed and ate pretzels and talked through the latest developments in Season III of Downton Abby. We noted various interesting bugs and talked about how astronomy and atomic theory seemed on the point of convergence, like a fractal. We missed our children in the cheerfully satisfied way parents miss their children when those parents are perfectly satisfied that the children are having a blast and not missing them at all. Finally, we turned back (the path racing below our feet as we returned). We wound our way north over 7 and returned with abrupt reality to bad traffic on I90 – two days and a vast refreshing distance since we had traversed it Westbound.
And here I am now – at over 10,000 feet – on yet another business trip (missing my husband of 13 years, and my still-satisfied-to-be-gone children). It’s remarkable that although the days seems to blur together in an endless March of sameness, when I cast my memory back I find so many joyfully memorable moments popping up.
Business travel is losing what allure it once had by novelty, but yet I am content. Thirteen years I’ve had with my husband, and two bonny bright children. A thousand joyful memories we’ve made together, along with a home and a life strong enough to endure. I hope for thirty and thirteen more. Maybe then we’ll do the whole length of the Appalachian Trail together!
Housatonic River Valley
*I discovered later in life that manse actually has two meanings. In a New England context, it’s synonymous with mansion and means a fancy house. In a Presbyterian sense, however, the manse is the house that the pastor lives in. It usually specifically means a home provided for the pastor by the church. It is in this second sense I use it – since it is a classical manse, so close to the church as to almost be touching and built in a similar style. We actually lived in The Manse (a double-wide trailer) for two years when I was a young girl.
When I took a job in Boston’s Innovation District, I assumed that I could somehow take public transit to get there. I was right, but not in the T-centric way I had thought. I ended up taking the 354 Express Bus from Montvale to State Street, then walking nearly a mile through the financial district to my renovated-brick-warehouse office. I wrote about my 354 commute back when it was new.
I’ve done this for almost 18 months now, and for 18 months it’s continued to be the best way to get to work. Oh, there are downsides. When you’re 2 minutes late for the bus, it makes you 22 minutes late to get where you’re supposed to go. Every once in a while (not that often) a bus fails to come, or comes late. Then, not only are you late but often you end up standing (or sitting on the floor – it’s a long ride.) Or – worst of all – the bus comes five minutes early. Parking at the bus stop is a very big problem, with an unused lot sitting blocked and idle while we cram our cars in to tiny cracks in the approved lot, or park a few blocks away and hoof it over a major road that has very little pedestrian traffic. And of course, that mile long walk is less fun in 16 degree weather, or with blowing-sideways rain, or in 90 degree heat with humidity.
There are some pretty awesome upsides too, though. I have done more reading in these last 18 months than I did in the five years prior. I read some books for information, some books to keep current, and plenty of books just for fun. The cast of characters I identified in those early days have become friends. There’s John, the mayor of the bus stop. Matt has an uncanny knack for arriving 2 minutes before the bus does, not matter what. Elizabeth and I have become friends on Goodreads because of our overlapping interests. Chris has read the entire Sword of Shannara series twice in my knowing him. The burly Viking I walk past on my commute is named Adrian (he’s a lawyer) and the magician is Andy, and “Grampa Munster” as I call my older friend in jeans has assiduously never made eye contact this entire time.
But tomorrow, the commute comes to an end for me.
The reason I could not just drive to work are because:
– Taking the carpool lane on this particular route can save you about 15 – 20 minutes every single day
– Parking is $15 a day
– A two+ hour stuck in traffic commute is not fun at all.
– I care enough about the environment and congestion to not want to add to the problems where it can be helped.
Let’s review why I couldn’t carpool, though.
1) It’s weird finding some random stranger to carpool with. What if you hate them? What if they kidnap you and sell you the gypsies?
2) I didn’t know anyone who worked near me and lived near me.
3) My daycare pickup/dropoff schedule is uncompromising. I CANNOT drop off before 8. (And I need to get to work by 9 for an hour and fifteen minute commute – thus my husband does most dropoffs.) I MUST pick up before 6 or there is great wrath.
So to carpool with someone, I would need to be really good friends with them. They would need to have my same rigid schedule. And they would have to live pretty close to me.
Ahem.
My next door neighbor and good friend, whose sons attend identical classes in school and afterschool, has had her company move headquarters. To the building next door to my building. SCORE.
So tomorrow is the start of a new regime for me… a regime where I don’t have an express bus pass for the 453 ($160/month), but I do have a parking card. We’re taking turns driving, and taking turns with whether the “guys” or the “girls” will handle kid duty on a particular day. We’ve already agreed that it needs to be perfectly kosher to read in the car instead of converse. I could hardly ask for a better setup!
It sort of feels like a time of change for me. Not only do I now have a new commute, but I also have a new desk on a new floor. On Friday, I moved my things to a new location. It’s funny how much a new spot changes your perspective on a day’s work. I’m sure I’ll get used to it quickly, but it does seem like a number of changes, all at once!
When we bought our house, six years ago, the home inspector told us that the roof wasn’t in danger of imminent demise, but it would need replacing in the next three to five years. This was, by far, the best house we’d seen and I was already in love with it, so I made a note that we’d probably need to get a home equity loan (we were putting a goodly amount down) in order to fix it. This was October of 2007.
Then, the whole, “home equity loan” concept took a serious hit. Uh oh. And New England got hit by a bunch of roof-tearing-up extreme weather, with Sandy and Nemo and Irene. I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief as our roof made it through the winter with no internal rainstorms. We also had two separate spots in the roof with colonies of bats. Great for mosquitoes, but not so great for the attic.
In February, we started making calls and comparing quotes. Our house has a difficult roof – many levels, four stories up, lots of different planes.
I was very glad they were tied on.
We finally settled on Nuza Roofing. They did a lot of work. They removed all the shingles, replaced any rotting wood (including the entire porch roof), put ice & water shield on the entire roof, reshingled, replaced all the fascia (the out-facing boards), put on all new gutters in a different format, repointed the chimney, and put like 28 soffet vents in the roof. Whoof. It took almost two weeks. Every single nail they put in place was hand hammered. They did an amazing job.
So now I don’t have to worry about my roof for like, another forty years! Yay! Of course, they did discover that we need to replace rotting trim on most of our windows (a project we actually undertook once already, to little effect). So it’s not like I don’t have to worry, I just don’t have to worry about the roof.\
So to summarize: new roof. Very expensive, but well done. I have roofer recommendations if anyone wants them!
My Truant Pen 