attempting normalcy and spring sprung

In an attempt at restoring normalcy, I went to yoga Wednesday night, then fixed a quick easy meal of baked perch fillets, steamed broccoli, baby croissants from the freezer, and grapefruit halves. Yesterday I finally made it back to SHARE which was short staffed and busy. First thing I had to do was restock my station while the baskets piled up but eventually caught up. Another cold front started blowing in and by late afternoon it was cold and windy and I was napping on the couch, opting not to go to yoga that night. Still catching up I guess. Yesterday morning I had to wake up before dawn to get Marc to the follow up appointment after his Wednesday appointment to get the results of his blood work. No waiting for the doctor at 7:15 in the morning. At this rate being sleepy is going to be a permanent condition. Then I finished my book, French Braid, and can start the one on loan from a different library, Neverwhere, so I can get it read before it has to go back. Did the dishes, took Minnie for the longest of the long walks, and fixed dinner.

Despite the current cold weather, spring happened while Marc was in the hospital. One of the tallows and both ginkgo trees and a few other trees in the neighborhood have put out their new spring leaves. Yesterday I saw two red bud trees in full bloom. The big backyard is covered with 10 petal anemone blooms and dandelions coming on.

The ground orchids (bletilla) are blooming,

daffodils starting,

some early amaryllis bloom stalks appeared,

and my personal harbinger of spring, the crane flies, hatched.

The shop yard already had to be mowed, the spring weeds and grass were so high. The birds are still mobbing the bird feeder, big fluffed up blue jay on there now, lots of cardinals, chickadees, titmice, goldfinches, sparrows, an occasional little warbler and wren are what I'm seeing right now.

The week before Marc went into the hospital, I finally hung my collection of chandelier crystals that I've been accumulating for years, some of which I bought at the Thieves Market in Portugal. There's still three but I ran out of room in the window because I already had three things hanging there. I may take the big flower on the left down and put it elsewhere as the last three would fit nicely in that space. But for now this is how it looks. They throw prisms all over the room in the morning as the sun rises in the winter when the trees are bare.

 

reclaiming my space and a big decision

I did get my desk top and printer moved on Wednesday so, of course, the curse Rocky showed up on Thursday to finish up the punch list and my desk had to be moved once again for him to get the hooks in the ceiling but they put it all back for me. It's set up like before because it's a familiar configuration but I think it will evolve because...

In January, Marc will get his first SS check and combined with mine we will have a regular dependable income and health care for the first time in our working life together. We've had many years when we made more than we will be getting and many more years when we made less and years when we had hardly any income but never have we had an amount that was dependable month after month. Since moving out here or really since we sold the Houston house/shop in 2014, commissions have been few and farther apart. This year we had two small jobs in February and no other inquiries and thought we were retired by default except for one proposal that, if the art glass stays in the budget, will come up next year. And then this fall, after the flood, two more possible jobs came up. They are willing to wait til after the first of the year while we get the house and shop put back together so that we can do the work.

So what all this is leading up to is that we were talking the other night and decided that after we do these two jobs (and the third if it comes through because I have already committed us to it), we are going to purposely retire from the etched glass commission work. As of now, we are no longer going to accept new jobs. It's not that our combined SS is a huge amount but it is an amount that we can easily live on as we are used to a simple lifestyle and we are both over the etched glass work and after having no work this year I'm not really of a mind to start that whole thing up again.

Now that Rocky won't be back until after New Year's to start on the next part of the re-build I've been slowly excavating my stuff from the piles of boxes but I don't want to hang anything on the walls until I get whatever furniture I need in here. However, the kites and star lights are back up!

more of the same

I have sort of reclaimed my studio in the house. After taking down all the old paneling and associated pieces around the doors and windows, removed all the exposed insulation, pulled all the nails, and cleaned up after myself, I have reclaimed my studio even if temporarily. I've set up my desk in a different configuration mainly because this whole situation is different and I have an auxiliary work table, also temporary since it belongs to my sister and because I need to be able to break it all down quickly when work begins in here, and moved my computer off the dining room table and back here. I'm sort of enjoying this stripped down version of my space, all the furniture that I had to make work gone, all the other stuff that I had refused to deal with for years taking up space, gone with no guilt (although plenty of that stuff is in boxes somewhere). Now I get to think how I want to make this space work best and then add in whatever furniture is needed to make that happen.

I set up 8 more color samples yesterday, all for sand. 

They're all combined colors ranging from 4 - 8 different colors and transparencies each. I've always worked with transparent colors, my objection being that opaque colors are so flat, they have no depth, and they don't really portray the reality of, well, reality hence my combining similar but different colors and different transparencies just to get something that looks like sand. We'll see. In the meantime I'm cleaning up the four molds I have ready and measuring them so I'll know how much weight of glass it takes to fill each one.

I worked out in the yard some, more cleaning up and digging up trees...pecans and hackberries mostly...pulling up tens of little yew trees and grassy weeds and the black and blue salvia which is proving to be greedy. Still finding things that didn't make it like the purple verbena. Some things are coming back like the gerber daisies and the four o'clocks, a few of the rock rose survived but you know what liked the flood? The day lilies. They haven't looked this full and lush in years. Guess I'm not watering them enough.

back to the real life

Last Wednesday, it was three weeks since we were rescued by airboat as the water lapped at the door. Last Friday, three weeks since we saw the house for the first time. Those three weeks were filled with long days of physical labor. Nothing is back to the way it was but we've managed to reclaim some sense of normality now that we are back in the house. I feel lucky in that respect. Walking the dog early on Friday, stopping and talking to Gary to see how he is getting along and news of other neighbors and visiting with Leonard and Judy further down and next door Deb and Robert, all of whom are still working to get one room of their houses livable so they can move back, I know how much we were spared.

Now that I've hauled everything to the street, I'm no longer working hard long hours though I could easily spend a week doing just that over at the shop cleaning up behind the demolition over there. I work til about 2 PM and then quit mostly or do small things. I've gotten my wind chimes all cleaned and rehung and the totems and plate flowers are all cleaned and put back in place. I'm working on clearing the yard of all the fallen green and rotten pecans because they are starting to pop out of their husks and I don't want to confuse these dried up things with real nuts if we still have any up in those trees and they start falling.

I managed to find the jar of already mixed kiln wash for a shelf to do my color samples on for the drowned feathers. Fortunately there was just enough to do the kiln shelf because I have no idea in which box in which room or building the powder is in. I've set up the forms I cut out and cleaned the jars of frit and powder that floated in the water for three days. Out of 23 jars, only 3 seeped any water so I need to scoop out the damp frit and wash it and dry it out. And I've also got the drowned feather waxes set up and ready for molds to be made.

I had thought that I would not do a fall garden this year but then someone gave me some beet and lettuce seeds and I went and bought some spinach seeds and I just know that when the little plants become available I'll want to get some so I went over to the gardens to pull up the okra and check out the state of things over there and the state of things over there is nut grass and johnson grass have colonized my two original raised beds but I did notice a few volunteer tomatoes. I pulled up the smaller okra plants but the two big ones are like small trees with trunks about 2 1/2” in diameter! Could not pull those suckers out, had to get the shovel and dig them up.

It is still blazing hot out there. Mornings are a little cooler but it doesn't last.

ch ch ch changes

you didn't think that little reprieve was going to last, did you?

Since the flood has reshaped our reality just about everything I write about has/will reference it in one way or another. For a while anyway. Currently I am without a studio. I can set up my desk at some future point before the room is remodeled and work but my environment is gone. The kites still hang but that's all that's left of my studio. 

No star lights, no paintings or prints or other wall hung decoration, no 'kapow', no place to hang my keys and caps, no roll of 3' butcher paper, no so many other things. Right now I'm set up on the dining room table. Not the best option but the only option.

The shop is also changed. It was full before, containing our stuff and a lot of our friend's stuff who is in the process of a major move himself, moved but still adjusting. Now, with our stuff, our friend's stuff, and all the stuff from my studio and the back bedroom that survived and the total demolition of the 4 built-in rooms in the metal building that is our shop and the contents of those rooms...with all that stuff in the big bay and the small bay, it's stuffed full and unusable. Still we are planning on casting these waxes I spent the summer on because I have committed us to the December open house and we need these pieces for that so we're starting on that this weekend.

It seemed to me that when we first returned and in the first week or so after there were no birds. I don't know if this is true, perhaps my situation didn't allow me to notice them but slowly they have been returning. First one day I saw a cardinal, then a few days later I heard the wrens fussing and today I saw in the white crepe myrtle beside the house a titmouse and chickadees fussing and two mockingbirds. I've put out birdseed in the little feeders that I can't see from here.

The neighborhood is changed too. Some left and I haven't seen them since. Some are about but not everyone is in residence yet or they are living in rougher conditions, or in their travel trailers of which there are a few. My neighbor on one side has rigged up an outdoor kitchen. Another neighbor has put a hog fence perimeter around the front of their house and trailer. This is also one of the few houses that keeps lights on at the front of their house all night every night. Clearly they live in fear. Rocky is suddenly inundated with calls for bids to repair their houses as everyone is ready to get back home.

The big claw truck came down our street again earlier this week. They had cleared along the front of the house once 

but then the debris from tearing out the shop rooms got dumped and I've spent the last three days making sure every ruined thing that I wanted gone from either property was on the pile. Many others put out another load after the trucks came by last week. I even managed to get rid of an ancient rusted frozen up heavy as shit flat lap and the water heater from the shop, neither of which I could move, when one of the metal scavengers happened by while I was on the street.

I've mentioned how the things in my gardens have fared. What I didn't mention is the ox-blood lilies. They liked all that flood water. Three or four days after the water receded, up they popped.

one foot in front of the other

Every day has one or two or three or more goals. Sunday I got two done but they were the main goals. I had a few others, you know, if I had time and energy. I'm satisfied with achieving the main two especially since one of them took most the time. I scrubbed both sides of all the rubber floor mats that interlock and cushion the hardness of standing on concrete in shop and garage and set them out, propped on chairs or trees or whatever is available, to dry. Finally I covered as much of the exposed sub-floor in the kitchen as I could. Not a great floor covering but better than the sub-floor.

The other task was cleaning the metal frame of my desk, the two desktops, and the counter top from my cold working station in the garage and get them moved off the driveway and inside. The cabinet part of my cold working station is toast but the top is still usable. The minor items on the list were to finish cleaning the bathroom, finish vacuuming the house, and hosing down the floors on the slab one more time.

We moved back home on Saturday. The cat and dog were a little freaked out by the changes but enough remains the same so that they are getting used to the new normal. Today is yoga class but if my arms at 5 PM are as tired as they were Sunday at 5 PM I may not go, waiting til Wednesday instead.

Stopped to talk to a neighbor while walking Minnie last evening, trading damage stories mostly, how we are coping stories. Mentioned that the kitchen tiles had to come up because the sub-floor was wet. She said that 'they' are saying if the sub-floor got wet the floor has to come out. Nope. Not doing that. Not tearing out my hardwood floors, they are just a little wavy, I'll take my chances. I've got that high powered blower blowing under the house through the vents and I move it every day or two or so and Rocky is going to assess the floor joists and sub-floor when he gets under there.

I have mostly cleaned out the yard and gardens. Some things survived, some things looked like they were going to survive and then wilted like the Philippine violets and the toad lilies, some things survived in one place and died in another like the yellow bells over at the shop,

some things were washed away as if they had never existed like the ox-eye daisies and the periwinkles and the four-o-clocks and the purple coneflowers and 99% of the orange cosmos. 

My one german verbena survived for which I am glad and the black and blue salvia and the rock rose looked dead but some of both are already coming back. I'm not sure about the roses as they mostly look OK but some branches are starting to die. The flower beds at the back of the property are all mostly intact though I did lose the bulbine that I replanted after it froze last winter. The penta looks unfazed but it's losing foliage from the bottom up but that just may be normal for this time of year.

about two weeks later

We are home. We are trying to reclaim some sort of normalcy but nothing about this is normal.  We have been at our second home, my sister's house, for about two weeks. During that time the lower house was torn apart, the upper house became a store room of sorts, and the cat was confined to the indoors. Minnie had a yard she could go out in but cats jump the fence.

It smells musty. At first, it smelled like rancid river water mixed with all the cow patties and overwhelmed septic systems. Not pleasant. Then after liberal sprayings with vinegar it pretty much didn't smell. We're still using the blower under the house. Right now it's blowing under the bathroom and the closets in Marc's office. I guess I'll move it tomorrow.

I want to use the hose to wash down the floors one more time in the part of the house that flooded. Our son ordered some product for us that eliminates odor and I plan on using it back there and in the kitchen on the sub-floor. Tomorrow I plan to scrub down all the interlocking rubber mats and make a new floor in the kitchen. I don't much like walking barefoot on the sub-floor.

Still waiting on the call from the FEMA inspector to schedule an inspection.

I'm feeling the need to clean every square inch of this house. Whether or not that gets done is another story.

I spent the day scraping out the old caulking around the tub and re-caulking it. It's not pretty but I hope it's effective. The knobs for the tub/shower leak which has caused decay behind the laminate on the walls. One more thing to be addressed in the remaking of our house. It's pretty ugly but hopefully it is sealed and won't cause any more decay until we can re-do it.

I'm tired. Tomorrow is another day.