Barn

Give me strength.

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

Let’s recap, shall we?  Yes.  Let’s do.

On a fine day in August of 2023, I turned 64 and was happy to do so. 

Exactly one week later, I tripped over my suitcase and broke my right leg.

Yes.

Broke it. 

(It’s not even a good story!)

I was visiting my son in upstate New York. 

My health insurance is terrible, and an out-of-network emergency room visit was out of the question.  Besides, I convinced myself it wasn’t broken, I could move my leg and wiggle my toes. Never mind that I felt it break as I fell.

I drove, yes drove, the 500 miles required to get to my beloved home.  My leg seemed a tad better.  I walked around on it for a week when it started swelling.

And swelling.

And I became afraid it would burst and I would fly around the room like a popped balloon.

I sought medical attention.  “It’s broke,” the doctor said. I saw an orthopedist the next day who told me it was too swollen to do anything with or make an assessment, so they put me in a boot and sent me home for a week with instructions to stay off it.

I’ll not bore you with the antics of that very long week but suffice it to say I learned who my friends were.

Because I had walked on it that first week and despite the nature of the fracture generally calls for surgery, they determined it was “stable” and it was my choice to undergo the surgery or not.

I declined.  (Insurance again.)

So.  A few days went by with me dutifully wearing the boot.  I was told to wear it for four weeks and then come in for a progress report. 

After several days of excruciating pain and more swelling, I called and said, “Something is not right.”

They worked me in.  I was told I was wearing the boot too much as I had taken to wearing it while sleeping as it minimized the pain.

So, I left.  And followed instructions.

The swelling got worse.  That balloon thing again.

They worked me in.  Again.   I was x-rayed and examined and told I should call my Preferred Provider for a lymphedema workup.

By this time in this story, I had been x-rayed so many times I glowed in the dark. 

Somebody ordered an ultrasound to look for blood clots.  I forget who.

Somebody called me with the results.  Told me – I would swear to it – that I had a cyst in a lymph gland near my groin.

I got rather excited at that news.

Nobody else was, but, by golly, I was terrified. 

COVID was surging along with the flu and a nasty virus.

I came down with the virus at Thanksgiving.  Didn’t recover until January.

Finally, got my Preferred Provider to talk to me in a telehealth appointment.  She read me the results.  No cyst.  I had an enlarged lymph gland.  Not anything to be excited about. I was referred to a physical therapist who specializes in lymphatic massage and a vascular surgeon.

That word surgeon is rather scary.  Don’t you think? 

By that time, it was December.  The broken leg no longer required a boot, but my right foot was so swollen shoes were a problem. 

It took weeks before the physical therapist could see me. 

I’m scheduled to see the vascular surgeon on April 4th.  For the first time.

Now then.  Some of you will remember that I have Long COVID.  Well, the fun there just never ends.  One of my symptoms is foot neuropathy which is a fancy way of saying my feet feel like they’re asleep all the time with the occasional shooting pains and electrical jolts.

Yeah.  I’m a mess.  They tell me the broken leg, the onset of lymphedema, and neuropathy are three unrelated problems.  I’m having a hard time with that.

But, I think, I’ve been coping rather well.  I’m seeing the physical therapist and her magic is of benefit, but the neuropathy is getting worse.  Upon occasion, I wake up screaming in pain.

I’m hanging on for April 4th as I’ve convinced myself that the word surgeon isn’t quite so scary and that he or she will work a miracle.

April 2nd dawns with a tornado warning.  I’m at work and we’re sitting in the basement of the building in this decrepit room and I’m staring at my swollen foot waiting for the storm to pass.  I have this terrible sense of foreboding.  Heavy, heavy dread.

We learn later that a derecho (straight line winds traveling more 240 miles) roared through as did fifteen tornadoes.  Both phenomena are rare in the mountains. 

Once we get the all-clear, I’m fixing to go home because I’m not fit to work.  I feel awful mentally and physically.  But I can’t.  Downed power line in one direction.  Fallen giant billboard in the other.  I literally can’t get home.

Several hours later, the one road is clear and I head for my Beloved Barn.

Did I mention they clocked those winds at 91 mph at my local airport?  Yeah.  They did.

I arrived home to find my giant oak tree laying on my sanctuary, my heart, this pile of sticks I call home.  It starts to rain.  I start to cry.

I cannot tell how bad it is as it is getting dark.  And raining.  And I’m crying. 

My dogs are in the house.  I can’t safely get to the door.  I can’t hear them. 

I go into shock, I think.

I get in the car, and I drive to my lover’s home an hour away.  I don’t remember much of the drive.  My lover has no power, but he feeds me and puts me to bed. I don’t really sleep although I do have nightmares.  Finally, it is daylight and I head for home with a quick stop to buy a dog crate and leashes and dogfood.  Hope dies hard in my heart.

When I get here it doesn’t look as bad as it had in the dark.  But still.  Plenty bad. 

I’m afraid the whole barn will come tumbling down, but I work my way to the front door, open it like I’m defusing a bomb, and my dogs come running out.

Hallelujah!

I rake a quick peek and hope rears again, but the real damage is likely to be to the roof and the second floor.  No way am I going in.  But in any event, it’s not a catastrophic loss as I had first feared.

Of course, there’s no power.  Anywhere.

I sit in my car with my dogs and make phone calls.  Cell coverage is spotty. 

The woman at the tree service sounds manic, but she says, “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow being April 4th. 

I must cancel my appointment with the vascular surgeon in order to be here when they remove the tree. 

Yes, really.

Thankfully, they reschedule me for April 18th – next week.

The tree is removed.  Part of my old tin roof is missing on the portion that is still tin and not shingles, but the tree did not penetrate the roof.  It’s a miracle. 

Inch by slow inch, I go inside.  I go upstairs.  Nothing is collapsed.  Nothing is knocked over.  There is a crack in the drywall near the ceiling of the master bedroom, but it didn’t even leak.

I am blessed.

I crawl into my bed, with my dogs, in my beloved barn and I sleep nearly 24 hours.

When I wake, I am not refreshed. If this is what PTSD feels like, I have a new appreciation for traumatized folks and the effort they make to get through a day.

I give myself comfort care as much as I can with no power.  I am not about to leave my dogs again and they don’t travel well.  We are hunkering down.

The power eventually comes back on, and my crying jags begin to ebb.

I return to work on Monday. 

But wait.  There’s more.

The eclipse is Monday.  I have the nifty approved glasses.  I go outside and I watch the eclipse.  But it’s an unpleasant sensation.  My eyes are bothered. My greatest fear since I was a child was going blind.  I continue to watch, very carefully positioning the glasses, but my eyes are watering and I am not enjoying myself.  I go back inside.

I wake up in the wee hours of the morning with a red, swollen left eye and shooting pains. My eye is crusty with discharge.

I manage to find an eye doc that can work me in.

I am not going blind.  But I have debris embedded in my eye. No.  We don’t know what.  I’m guessing oak tree fragments.  He digs it out and applies a temporary contact lens as a bandage.  I am instructed to return tomorrow.

Tomorrow was today.  My eye should be normal by the weekend, he said.

Normal.  What a concept.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is calling for rain, high winds, and possibly, yes, possibly, tornadoes. 

Give me strength.

My bedroom needs a refresh.

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

Upon the occasion of my divorce, I developed a deep, nagging need for a luxurious bedroom. No. I didn’t have a lover to entertain. I wanted such for me. When living at home as a young’un, my bedroom had been my sanctuary. It had been decorated with Sears French Provincial and a 70s-worthy floral wallpaper quieted down with jungle green paint on the three other walls. Pink shag carpeting.

It was in-your-face early 70s pre-teen.

I loved it.

I clocked some hours in that room. I dreamed there. Wrote bad poetry. Listened to good music. Traveled the world in books. Sanctuary.

When I left my family home for my first apartment, it was furnished. Just dreadful. But for $90 a month what can you expect. The freedom was heady, and I was never there. My first “real apartment” was a partially furnished two-bedroom duplex and I luxuriated in having a real kitchen of my own. Yes, at the tender age of 20-something I loved to cook, and I loved kitchen toys and dishes.

Eventually, I moved in with the man who would become my husband to a fully furnished house. I had little in the way of furniture, but I packed his kitchen and dining room. Piece by piece we refurnished the house from bachelor digs to earnest couple in love with antiques.

Then we moved here and undertook the barn. Put all the furniture and kitchen stuff in storage and set to on the barn conversion. We moved in far before it was habitable. But it was easier to work on that way. Turn on the television and sand drywall after dinner. That sort of thing.

The barn conversion was one step-forward-five-steps-back and after ten long, long years, we’d had enough. The idea had been to be debt free. We threw in the towel and got a construction loan, hired a contractor, and ran out of money before it was quite done. The next 6 years found us finishing what we could, ignoring what we couldn’t and divorcing.

I got custody of the barn and a master bedroom that was an eyesore.

I had plans to finish the barn without the never-ending argument with a husband about how to do it cheaper. When I refinanced to pay off the ex, I took out some equity money. I also raided one of my retirement accounts.

My plan? A bedroom Martha Stewart would ooooh over.

It’s a long story, but I could not find the furniture I wanted, and I’m very fussy about furniture, at a price I was both willing to and able to pay. Fine furniture is expensive. I found the suite of my dreams in a magazine, tracked down a store that sold that brand online and had it priced. $26,000.

Um no.

So, I went looking again. But my heart was broken. What I’d found was perfect in every way and I had some odd requirements of size and pieces. But $26,000 is just crazy talk.

So. I’m driving home from work, and I drive by The North Carolina Furniture Outlet Store. I’d been in there looking and he had some brilliant furniture but nothing that would work. However, he’d told me over and again that if I found something elsewhere to bring it to him and he’d see what he could get it for.

Not hopeful, I presented him the furniture of my dreams. He pulled a big dusty showroom catalog off a shelf, flipped through it, turned it around so I could see, and said, “Is this it?”

I shrieked, “Yes!” So, he set to ciphering. Got out the calculator. And the little wheel of white paper spun like dervish. When he was done, he wrote a number on a legal pad, tucked the pencil behind his ear and said, “That includes, tax, delivery and set up. Take about 12 weeks.”

I took a breath. Looked at the numbers and gaped.

“Are you sure this is right?” I said. He looked at his page of calculations again and declared them solid.

$5600 for a king poster bed, an oversized dresser, nightstand, leather bench, vanity with matching leather bench, and a lingerie chest.

I closed my eyes. Clicked my heels together three times and whispered, “Let’s do it.”

$5600 was a good 2K more than I had budgeted. But…but…but I wasn’t finding anything other than particle board in my price range. I am a furniture snob.

The frenzy began. I had 12 weeks to find bed linens, draperies, a mattress, paint the master and the dressing room with it’s 20-foot ceilings and clean the carpet. I also had to hire a contractor to move a doorway so things would fit where I wanted them. I worked like a madwoman. The bed linens are another story, and they too were far more than I wanted to spend but they were just too perfect. And then there were the lamps and chaise. The whole thing was out of control, but I was going to have the bedroom of my dreams.

And I have for about seventeen years now. The comforter needs to be replaced. I’ve found another set in a icy blue that will be astonishing against the dark wood, and is highly impractical, luxurious, and I love it with an abiding passion. I believe these linens may be my 65th birthday present. If that’s the case, I need new draperies, new paint, new carpet, new lamps .and I will have to have the chaise reupholstered.

I can’t afford this.

There will be no clicking-of-my-heels-three-times-impulse-buy. Nope. Nor gonna do it. I have spoken.

My Front Door

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

I live in a converted barn.  When we first started working on it, I learned about supporting walls.  These are walls you can’t knock down unless you put a beam in, and walls you can’t move.  And walls that need a lot of structural support.

We had a few.  They were the bane of my existence.  There were walls where I didn’t want them to be.  Coming up with a floor plan was daunting. 

Finally, I had a Eurkea! Moment.  I found the floor plan that worked for everything I wanted except one thing. 

The main entrance to my house, the front door, opened into my kitchen.

This is just awkward. 

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