Total Zen in 2010

The Doors to Nowhere Somewhere

/ wvfurandroot / 6 Comments

Doors to Nowhere

I can’t, now, remember the logic behind it, but one of the very first things we did in The Barn was to put in a set of French doors on the second floor. The idea was to build a balcony. I was in my Shakespeare phase.

The balcony still hasn’t been built. I refer to the doors as the Abbot & Costello Doors, the Laurel & Hardy Doors, or The Three Stooges Door. Each of those comedic teams, at one time or another, used the gag of a door that opened to nowhere and involved a fall. When Chef Boy ‘R Mine was small, we nailed a piece of wood across the doors to prevent their opening. That piece of wood was still there when I re-did the room in 2006. (Re-did, hell, DID the room.)  Despite it being nailed shut, The Ex made a down and dirty screen for it which is still there and still ugly.  Screen doors for narrow French doors are hard to come by.

In keeping with the ridiculousness of doors  that go nowhere by way of an ugly screen, I bought the wrong kind of door handle in 2006 to replace the wash cloth stuffed into the door handle hole that had been there since 1990. HMOKeefe installed the door handle. He never questioned the selection; I am, afterall, the woman who installed her towel rods upside down because I like them better that way.  The handle was a mistake, but I’ve grown to love it.  It’s goofy and the master bedroom might be too pretentious without a touch of goofiness here and there.

Dawn

The doors lock from the inside. Makes sense, no?

I love those doors. Someday there will be a balcony.

[I can’t decide if I want French Quarter wrought iron or Deep South veranda with a pergola, or what, but I don’t have the money so the point is moot.]

The French doors are in the master bedroom which was the living room during Phase I, II, and III of The Barn’s transition to house. When we finally moved the living room, the French Door room was the dressing room and the exercise room. When I had the Happy Divorce To Me remodeling, Burl, the Handyman Extraordinaire, moved a doorway to accommodate the new bed and the dressing room became the bedroom.

I wanted to relocate because the room which used to house the bed (and is now the dressing room) has 5 windows and far too much sun in the morning. I was waking up just past o’dark thirty everyday. The sun was better utilized to illuminate the dressing table; and the French doors are friendlier to wake up to. On hot summer nights, I open the doors and listen to the peepers and enjoy the breeze wafting through the lace curtains – the ceiling fan lazily circling and going nowhere.

mmmm, nap

We had a snowstorm today with significant snowfall. I had no place I had to be and nothing I had to do.

[There’s always plenty to do, but today there was nothing pressing. As is customary for me on such days, I accomplished far more than if I had something that had to be done. I’m oppositional like that.]

Before bed last night, I draped the lace curtains up over the curtain rod so I could watch the anticipated snow fall when I woke up. It did and I did and it was a lovely morning. Eventually, I got up, drank a half-pot of coffee, and decided a nap was in order. I lazed away the morning, snoozing and watching the hush fall over my world through those doors.

I have the keys.

It’s not true that they go nowhere. They’re a portal leading to contentment and comfort. The longed-for balcony won’t change much. The doors, all by themselves, bring the outside in and the inside out. It is my place between the worlds – inside/outside, waking/sleeping, daydreams, sweet dreams, midsummer nights and midwinter naps.

The doors are no longer nailed shut. And when Juliet builds her balcony, the lock will still be on the wrong side of the doors leading to Nowhere and Somewhere and all the places in between. 

I have the keys.

A symphony in praise of central heat.

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

Hah! Would my furnace room be so clean!

Bliss.

I have heat.

If I had the know-how and the talent, I’d write a symphony in praise of central heat. With parts for a chorus. Perhaps a movement involving nothing but percussion to celebrate the sound of a furnace kicking on.

Central heat must be on the list of all-time greatest inventions. If the discovery of fire and how to make it was monumental, isn’t it just as monumental to discover how to heat our caves without fear of catching our furs on fire?

I’ve been three days without central heat. The kerosene heater scares me to death, so I only run it if I can be in this room to watch it like a daddy watches that boy who shows up to take his sweet, baby girl out on her first date. Like that dad, I know what’s going on in the head of that flame swain.

No. No. And No. Maybe for a week with good friends and champagne. Some lobster boiling over those open flames, but otherwise no.

I don’t ‘need any furs at W. Va. Fur and Root smoldering, singeing or smoking much less flaming like a Drag Queen at the pinnacle of her career.

All the electrical work is not done – in fact, it’s barely started, but with consideration of this weekend’s forecast (snow storm and bitter cold temperatures), Electric Dude figured out a way to get the furnace to work until the job can be completed.

Connie and the Electrician Dude

I’ve stuffed financial prudence under the door to help with drafts and cranked the furnace to 80. I’m up to 65.3 degrees now. I started the day at 38.1. At least for a few months, I will not complain about how I have to keep my house at 60 degrees so as to insure Appalachian Electric Power doesn’t get all of my money. 60 feels right balmy about now. At 80, I may run through the house naked just because I can.

[I’m talking about degrees. At the age of 80, I may well run through the house naked, but it will be for different reasons. Of course, it’s more likely that I’ll traverse the house naked with a walker rather than run, but at 80 it may seem like a sprint.]

Yeah, right.

My hands are still cold. I’m pretty sure washing dishes in lukewarm water I heated on top of the kerosene heater has something to do with that. I’ll be heating water for a bit longer. I don’t mind washing dishes by hand, but I certainly mind doing so without hot water. The water heater is another of those truly great inventions.

And the washing machine. The washer works fine and I’m going to celebrate heat by tackling the mountain of laundry and celebrate that I’m not beating it against rocks.

The (predicted) snowstorm is due in later tonight. I’d wear a poncho made of old blankets before I’d go beat laundry by the side of the creek at the bottom of the hill in a snowstorm. I will go out in it though. Tomorrow.

Accumulation is supposed to be pretty big and I’m kind of excited about it now that I know I won’t die of hypothermia. With any luck, I’ll find the fortitude to go out in it tomorrow and take some photos. From everything I’ve heard, dawn will show us Ma Nature being especially photogenic.

Happy snowstorm, y’all.

Convergence and Amalgamation

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments
Wishing and hoping and praying. . .

I marvel, at times, how my life is one big goofy convergence of conversations and events that shouldn’t amalgamate, but do.

I’ve been dealing with domestic and personal chaos. Such chaos is better described as a nightmare, but I’m not in a fetal position, I’m not drinking (much), and I’m still laughing.

On Facebook, I was bemoaning the electrical aspects of the nightmare I’m living. A friend made an offhand quip to the effect of “You don’t have a squirrel living in your walls do you?”

Well. As a matter of fact, I do have something living between the ceiling drywall and the roof. There’s only a few inches between the two (barn, you know, never intended to be a house). I hear the creature rustling around most mornings and most evenings. My coming and going seems to annoy it. During the day, I sometimes hear it galump across the roof, the galumping loud enough to be reminiscent of the thunder of baby elephants charging.

Live and let live. Besides. I have no idea how to evict the varmint short of tearing out the ceiling or tearing off the roof. Ain’t gonna happen.

Today, after a morning of working at home and dealing with non-electrical crises, I go tearing out the door late for a meeting. Rolling down the hill, I catch out of the corner of my eye – something. I turn to look. There’s this huge ball of something wrapped around the main power line where it conjoins with the house wiring.

I’m late. I grab the cell, ask Dad to check it out, and laugh, remembering the squirrel conversation. I make up my mind. All this chaos is the result of some big bird roosting in my roof. Won’t this make a good story, I thought.

The disparate, the faux, the natural, the sublime.

No such luck. Dad removed the nest (and a dandy it is). Still lots of problems. Relocating the nest to my living room didn’t solve a thing aside from a decorating dilemma.

After the meeting, I rush back to the house to meet with the electrician. I’m late. He’s later. Good.

I admire the nest and try to figure out where to put it which leads me to remember a Facebook conversation I had just this morning with that same friend. The topic was: So, Connie, How Many Bowls, Trinket Boxes, Shelves, Etc. Do You Have Filled With Rocks, Shells, Dried Flowers, and Other Natural Stuff?

Dried flowers, a bowl full of rocks and shells, and a whiskey barrel - what's not to love?

My answer was lots. I don’t buy t-shirts for souvenirs; I collect Ma Nature’s leavings. [Okay. Once in awhile, I get a t-shirt.]

I have stuff everywhere. I even have a piece of driftwood that sits on the dash of my car.

These things please me.

And they’re cheap.

And they seem to fit in the unlikeliest places.

Ostrich feathers in the frame.

I have birds’ nests in the living room, rocks in the bookcase, seashells in the inkwell, pinecones in Spanish glass, and feathers tucked into a frame. Wishbones and sliced geodes hang from the kitchen window. There are dried flowers and seedpods throughout. I have tree branches in the umbrella holder (which looks suspiciously like a milk can).

Most of my houseplants are souvenirs of sorts – grown from cuttings friends gave me or delivered for one event or another.

Copper and glass and porcelain

Probably the strangest thing – and stretching the natural definition – are the copper wires sticking out of a water pitcher in the kitchen. When they rewired Old Main at Marshall, the electricians left these end pieces of wire littering the basement floor. After walking past them several times one day, I began picking them up. They were bright, shiny copper and pretty. It seemed wrong to let them end up in the trash. At present, they need dusting, cleaning and polishing, but years later I still like them.

The bird’s nest found this morning which I hoped would end the nightmare is now a souvenir of sorts. An emotional one. I’m surviving this round of insanity without needing a strait jacket. It now lives on the mantle of the faux fireplace (a giant candle holder of sorts).

The electrician just called. It’s a Big Ugly Number to fix what ails the electricity. I’m looking at the bird’s nest and smiling. I’ll remember always this day – the day I was lucky enough that my problems were such that money could solve them. Nevermind that I have no money, but how awful it is to have problems that money can’t solve. Those are the tough ones.

The nest now sits on a silk table runner I grew up with.

I have no heat except for the kerosene heater I bought yesterday. I have no hot water on the first floor. But I do have a dandy new bird’s nest, a seemingly competent and highly recommended electrician who can fix the heat and water, and a big number with a $ symbol that will get solved one way or another.

It’s all good. Or will be.