You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
In no particular order:
~*~
Well, that’s what’s first coming to mind …
As for you?
Good luck to the new owners. They’ll have their plate full. As I’ve said, we bought the place as a fixer-upper, and two decades later, after a lot of big work, it’s still a fixer-upper.
According to some owners, a boat is a hole in the water where you pour endless amounts of money.
In the same vein, an old house is a hole in the ground where you pour endless amounts of money.
After his conversion in prison, Charles Colson held aloft Francis of Assisi and the early Quaker George Fox as his two examples of what happens when a person devotes his whole life to Christ.
Earlier, when Colson was in the White House, he oversaw the FBI creating subversives’ files for Fox and fellow Quaker William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and anybody else whose name they found on public Quaker Meeting newsletters.
Yes, beware of true religion.
what upset me was the basic ineptitude that causes such accidents and delays to happen, still, if it hadn’t been for a couple of foolhardy neighbors one-thirty a.m., fire alarm, dashing outside before smoke in a neighboring apartment turned into flames, only then did I think who brought the blaze under control with fire extinguishers while eating way too much smoke, the fire trucks would have arrived to an attic entirely aflame so I should have carried my computer files out, too, but why the fire department took thirteen minutes to respond from a station just five blocks away is inexcusable
The Cape we bought was listed as circa 1865, but from some of the detailing, we’re guessing it was more likely around 1835. A bird’s-eye view map from the 1835 shows a house on this site, though maybe not this one.
Many potential buyers passed on the place, for whatever reasons. It is definitely a fixer-upper, but it feels good, and we like its in-town, close-to-the-ocean location.
One chimney was in peril of collapse, and it’s already been removed. The fuel-oil tank had to be replaced. Also done.
We’re looking at the work ahead in two stages.
The first, of course, is more essential. The second, renovating the place more for our dreams.
Not that I especially wanted another This Old House kind of series, but this time we think we can tackle the project more comprehensively, rather than piecemeal.
Here’s what’s on our plate as soon as possible:
Do you ever look around and see people who seem to get a lot more done than others? I could tell you about some of the lifeguards at the indoor pool where I swim, the ones who do their school homework when they’re not watching us splashing around. Uh, swimming laps — something they can do four times faster than us geezers.
Well, in my novel What’s Left, the narrator has a similar question, one regarding many members of her family. (You won’t find it in the final version of the book — but it’s true all the same.)
I return to the question, How do they manage? All that they do?
~*~
Her aunt Nita, as we’re told, sticks to a routine and limits her evening activities. Her father could easily split his workweek into 20 hours of photography and 20 of Buddhist focus. Her mother would be putting in more at the press but still devoting considerable free time to practicing and rehearsing music.
Some others just seem to go without sleep or rise before dawn to get an early jump on things.
Tell us about somebody you know who seems to be super-human. Do they have some secret you see?
~*~
Jnana's Red Barn 