O4-JAN-A-5
RAPID
PROGRESS IN A CLOUD OF DRYWALL DUST
AS DERWOOD IS GETTING ITS INTERIOR WALLS,
CEILINGS AND TAPED AND MUDDED CORNERS—
AND I AM
NEGOTIATING DELIVERY OF MAJOR APPLIANCES, EXTERIOR LIGHTING
AND A FANCY
FRONT DOOR,
AS WE ARE PACKING UP FOR
I am back to working on my laptop after it has returned from the shop with a cracked corner of its case and a toggle key that has broken loose. They looked it up and it is two weeks out of warranty, so, of course, their advice? Trash it, and get a new one! That is the advice I got today after the printer that was on the network for which I had to hoof down the hall for any printouts was declared obsolete, taken off the network—and voila!—it becomes mine! But, it is going to have to fit into my office, displacing a row of books that are now crammed behind the door so it only opens about ten inches—a screening method for obesity. I cannot get anything into or out of my office, and the house is worse.
Anything in the house that is in any way exposed is now officially trash. They moved the book rack filled with highly organized series of National Geographics and their index issues away from the stairs and pushed all the stuff into what had been walkways—no more. Then they came up the stairs--somehow—in the dark, and drywalled the whole of the closed in cedar-closet-to-be—you know, the one that is a luxury designed to hold my camouflage hunting clothes and woolens! Since I have been unable to get into the guest bedroom for a month since it is inadvertently locked and the small key that was on the sill was lost when they have blown away the sills—I had stacked upstairs a few carrousels of my Antarctica slides, for example, which I had pulled out for the slide show and adventure travelogs at REI. But, I was unable to re-file them, because the files are in the locked bedroom where the irretrievable Christmas presents etc are held. It is just as well it has been locked since that may be the only room in the house and the only salvageable stuff not layered in a half inch of sheetrock dust which has permeated everything everywhere attic to basement. That includes such things as the Antarctic slide carrousels, found upside down and dust covered in the attic where they along with everything else have been pushed over. There are big fluorescent lights up in the attic and the stacks of things they illumined were rather well organized at one time, but that was before the first disconnection of any of the electricity anywhere was to disable the attic lights so that I could only navigate by feel up there. I had to snatch whatever felt soft and warm, rather than waterproof, so what I had worn goose hunting was what I could retrieve by touch and a weak flashlight—now returned to the attic and looking like a castoff pile of plaster dust.
The basement has been insulated and is awaiting the drywall, so that I had taken Michael's picture next to his artwork painted on the wall just before it was covered over in insulation to be re-discovered in some future generations "demo" when the cave painting s of a prior civilization may be puzzled over when uncovered.. The master bedroom is now separated by drywalled corridors from the master bath and the walk-in closet. The guest bathroom is also drywalled upstairs. Just today they spackled and mudded and applied tape to the many angles of the hexagonal Great Room and its skylights, having done all of this previously to the Breakfast Room. It looks so much bigger now that all the studs and insulation rolls are covered. The living room ceiling and dining room is now all ceilinged in drywall, the acoustical tiling having been torn lout at the first start of the demolition. All of the recessed lighting is cut into the dry wall patterns and then someone puts on the jointed stilts that they walk around to spackle and tape each corner and fitting and seal it with some of the 24 big pails of “mud” stacked on what once was the living room carpet—now just a sotted thick pelt of dust protecting—I hope—the hardwood floors beneath, the refinishing of which will be one of the last items in the series of processes to signal time to let the large furniture order come in upon delivery at the beginning of February.
I have been negotiating the charges for delivery and the relative merits of service contracts on competing bids between the suppliers Bray and Scarf and the Great Indoors which have come to matching the prices on each of the big ticket item appliances, and each are so eager to get the whole package of this High End complete kitchen outfitting that they are throwing in items that they had formerly charges of two to three hundred dollars for. That is about the only good news in the charges that have been accruing. That bad news has already been reported, that the recent “additional charge” of the forestry surpassed even the high end kitchen appliances aggregate.
But, not to be outdone, the exterior lighting fixtures are now figuring prominently in expensive change orders. Wrought iron matching outside lamps are replacing each of the yard lights I had previously, and I had in mind adding another one down the driveway—but that once is too expensive to be added. Ironically, the solar powered distant fixture would be cheaper that trenching wiring all the way down. And it is too simple to simply take one of those lights already in place and moving it out to the oval of the driveway circling up top. So, that will add three thousand dollars—but that turns out to be the cost of the new front door!
It is fiberglass with wrought iron surrounded glass
and is red cherry stained finish, exceeding the $1,000 allowance by almost two
thousand dollars. And service contracts
for appliances are being negotiated for about the same and all of this is time
for me to be heading out to go to
I had made a couple of long runs in the unseasonably warm winter temperatures earlier in the week, then went out yesterday on a bright sunny day with the Audi’s dashboard thermometer recording 54* to run the long Needwood Bike Trail as the temperature plummeted to remain now in altogether too seasonable winter subfreezing. On the return from the long run, I got back into the Audi and the same thermometer now recorded 23*, a steep drop during the course of my run which I could recognize by my fingers not working upon return.
Multiple students have been contacting me by the word-of-mouth that brings them to me, each with the starry eyed dream of going somewhere to do something good. Each has an idea that they will be going to a specific place at a time that they can choose and going with me on a private tutorial—as the one who wrote to me yesterday for me to meet today who had written “Going with you to Nepal this summer” getting at least two out of three factors out of place, time and person. But, it is fun to help them get beyond their biochemistry and think of how this might actually help someone somewhere. One wrote “I want to be you when I grow up!”
There is not a lot of growing up needed to enjoy and appreciate this activity, but the entry level assumption of responsibility should be a qualifier for any of the helping professions. At present, it seems that we might go to Somalia and/or Ecuador in February, working this with Kevin Bergman and two of his classmates who would like to work with me as Kevin have in both Ladakh and Malawi. I had set up a possibility for Ecuador with my friend Edgar Rodas with whom I had operated in Saipan Commonwealth of Northern Marianas long years ago before he returned to Ecuador n a new capacity—the Minister of Health! He and I were on the ACS panel in Chicago three years ago and he is a contributor to the book I should be editing in galley proof this next month—at the very time I had scheduled the visit there with him—around the same time that the Derwood move in should be starting up. Then, a long ago MPH student whom I had befriended from Ethiopia had called today urging me to get back in touch with the University Medical school in Gondor Ethiopia with whom I had corresponded when it was just starting up. This gets my juices re-flowing on the exploration of the origins of the Blue Nile in the Ethiopian Highlands, along Lake Tana. This would be a consolation prize in the future if other plans that had been committed to do not work out as previously planned. March will be Haiti and then April Taiwan, before scrambling back to drusie the entire length of the Amazon.
But, that is then—and this is now, and now is the time to take off to a return to Cumberland Island according to the game plan you will see in the chapter preceding this one Jan-A-4!
To refresh your memory about how strange and unpredictable life in the wild can be, I will hearken back to January 2001 to tell the story that no one could have made up about the time I had endangered a rare species—then two—on Cumberland Island by falling into a pattern of rearing the young in the wildlife ethology, and a hunter shooting through one target to hit another!
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