Raising crane
Thursday November 14th 2013, 11:55 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Non-Knitting

I saw Joe walking past the door and I apologized to my parents on the phone, who said no, no, go talk to Joe, and as I hung up I opened it.

Joe. You saved our lives. And I told him about my headaches and their rarity (and Richard had them too), about the spike in the red blood cells that had made no sense to the doctor till I told her, how she’d confirmed that absolutely, yes, we had carbon monoxide poisoning.

I said, You came right away to give us that quote and you wanted to start right the next day. Even if I couldn’t afford to pay you all of it that soon. You insisted we needed to get right to it, and you did. You saved our lives.

He looked like he might suddenly burst into tears and turned with a quiet, Let me go check on that unit.

And he checked on that unit. He opened it up and got a really good look all throughout it. Burn burn burn in there, there, and there. Rust rust rust. Metal parts that should be solid moving easily (he took a video). Now we knew what the black stuff appearing out of the vent in the living room too high for me to reach was: the thing was burning mad and it blew a gasket. Totally gone. He showed how the carbon monoxide had come to be specifically directed towards and pushed down the vents instead of dissipating outside.

There’s no way to make that thing safe, is there, I asked. But it was not a question. Those pictures were the mechanical equivalent of my colonoscopy five years ago.

He thought out loud things he could maybe do, not wanting to pile on our costs, knowing how tight things were…

But your conscience wouldn’t let you do that.

It was not a question: it was me verbalizing his face.

No. No, he nodded, agreeing fully. It just… It isn’t…

We were both thinking out loud, word by slow word.

Then, let me talk to Richard to confirm, but I know what he’ll say (and he did). We replace it. It’s the right thing to do. We knew we would probably have to. Don’t worry, it’s okay, Joe, and thank you for worrying about us. But we need to do it, so, we need to do it. We’ll make it work somehow on the money end. (I wrote a chapter in a manuscript as the footsteps tromped around above my head earlier. It’s something, at least.)

So since we can’t take down three trees and part of the fence before Monday to make way for Joe’s lift, and given the tilt of the driveway, there will soon be a crane in front of our house. Parker would be in absolute heaven if only he could watch it in person. We’ll have to take a video.



I stood there stunned
Wednesday November 13th 2013, 8:46 pm
Filed under: Family,Life,Non-Knitting

So this was nothing like that.

Except in the ways that it was.

After two winters of paying obscene heating bills, knowing that to replace the damaged ductwork on the roof would cost us a minimum of $6k (hah! I wish!), as I was paying a utility bill I told Richard what the next one would be. And the next.

The next day, he bought the first of our two space heaters after resisting them for so long for fear of fire hazard. We set it up near the thermostat to blow across our bedroom at night and turned the furnace, which had been set to 66, to where it simply wouldn’t come on at all with that thing near it. But we didn’t quite turn it off.

And the headaches I’d been waking up with every single morning went pretty much away. I’m not someone who gets headaches but very rarely. It was such a strange thing. I’ve had no energy, but I ascribed that to having recently had the flu.

Joe and his crew came today. Eight thousand dollars (so far) and there will be no new flooring before the grandchildren come, I’m afraid, but two space heaters alone does not cut it with a toddler and a by-then crawling baby around; when it came down to it, we had to have honestly working central heat again. Ours seemed to just blow cool air, never warm–better than what was outside, but.

They had about half the ductwork ripped off the roof when the city’s recycling truck came by–hey, that works! Metal is metal, you guys want this? And so they loaded it on, there you go, everybody wins.

The first contractor had left nice shiny metal ductwork up there, years ago, and the birds (we heard the woodpeckers going at it) saw either a mate or a competitor, don’t know which, but they left many many holes in it. We hired someone to fix that; he wrapped it up, ignoring the holes, oblivious to the fact that it was full of rainwater inside and that the HVAC unit now had to heat that water to get anything to us. Thus the thousand-dollar heating bills that were just killing us.

But when the crew got all that stuff down from there, Joe inspected the now-disconnected furnace.

He came down from the roof, sobered, and knocked on the door. He showed me the pictures on his phone. This is what’s there. This is the rust. This is what it means.

I stared at him, speechless; it took me a moment to explain to him, in a voice that surprised me at how small it sounded, why that hit so close to home.

It had been blowing carbon monoxide through our vents.

My doctor said this evening that yes this explained the abnormally high red blood count two weeks ago, absolutely. Richard’s still not sure; after all, the alarm in the kitchen was still plugged in. But we don’t know how much was venting or where.

And last time this happened my CO count was way higher than his. It just was. I always assumed because of the pregnancy, though I wonder now. (I have been grateful all her life for Michelle’s good health…) But then, come to think of it, at least re this time, I’m in the house all day and he’s not.

My head is directly below one of the registers as we sleep. We had only had the furnace on at night. For Richard, a headache is an ordinary thing but for me, not at all. We did have a CO alarm at the far end of the bedroom–and I went and checked it after Joe left: it had been knocked ajar from the outlet it was plugged into, no way to know when. We’d had no idea.

My sweet husband two weeks ago went from no, I’m never getting a space heater, to, sure, dear, it still worries me but I’ll get you one. And a few days later, the second for the other end of the house.

It is November, we’ve had night temps in the low 40’s and even below, and not once have we turned the furnace on all the way to see if it could actually make the house feel warm. We’d talked about it, how it might be a good way to test to see if this was when we really did finally have to call Joe, but somehow it just felt like…don’t…don’t even want it on…

Lo these many years ago we were all hospitalized with carbon monoxide poisoning from a coal-burning stove in New Hampshire, and these headaches had reminded me of that only not nearly so bad–but to the point that I had said something out loud to Richard about it reminding me of back then, and of asking a firefighter friend at Kathryn’s party Saturday about some of the calls he’d been on. It seemed pure hyperbole to my own ears to even make the connection; after all, that time I had fainted not from lack of oxygen (as far as I knew at the time) but simply from pain beyond what my body was willing to stay conscious through. I woke up when I hit the floor but couldn’t really get off it.

This one was just a nasty headache. It made it hard to sleep, too. (Just like… Oh wait…)

Suddenly the pain of paying for Joe’s work doesn’t seem so much of one.

Get an alarm if you don’t have one. Check it. Be safe.

(Edited to add, the doctor says it should take about three weeks to work its way out of our systems.)



A blank slate
Tuesday July 02nd 2013, 9:38 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

So I have a question to toss out there. I need the voices of experience.

When I was growing up, there was a rock quarry a half mile down the road that had been in operation since colonial days; we had a flagstone entryway, a great place for scraping the mud off your shoes–oh oops, sorry, Mom. I love love love floors like that. Solid and of the earth.

We have 20 year old vinyl flooring in the kitchen and halls and bathrooms, and it has definitely seen better days. So we’ve been looking. The house is a California ranch built on a slab.

One salesman told me his Linkwerks stuff was far better than plain vinyl; wears longer, is thicker, is in essence padded compared to, say, a stone floor.  He says.

Given that I’m someone damaged in both bones and balance and I fall.

But the materials cost is almost as much as some stone ones, so why bother? And I don’t want to repeat the disappointments of what I had: the vinyl had a lot go wrong quickly, and the tile entryway cracked in a small earthquake.

I liked some of the slate floors I saw online–some have smooth surfaces, some, irregular, but Saturday’s salesman told me that regardless, slate absolutely wouldn’t do around a grandson who will be crawling in a few months, that it chips and flakes and the little one could skin his knee.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to crawl on my folks’ old entryway for the hardness, but then at my age I wouldn’t really want to crawl on much of anything; I don’t know if he was just trying to upsell me?

One reviewer on Yelp said to beware of cheap granites vs good ones, without answering the question that immediately raises: how can you tell?

So my question is, what do you have that you’ve been happy with?

(Edited to add: our water table is too high to make wood work.)

 



Narcissusarily so
Thursday January 24th 2013, 12:13 am
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Non-Knitting

The doorbell rang: a friend of Michelle’s I didn’t recognize and whose name I tried really really hard to get her to say loud enough for me to hear, since I was the only one home just then, offering up a blooming pot of narcissus in condolences. It was very sweet of her. Darned if I know who she was.

I remember the last time I had to be in real weather in winter, I felt very Californian because the only shoes I owned that had a closed heel were sneakers. (Other than the Wookie horsehair shearling-inside mukluks someone once gave me, but never mind.) So there I was in Birkenstock clogs, flipping snow at the backs of my quickly-freezing-wet legs as I walked.

Wookies are great for Halloween night as I hand out candy, funerals, not so much.

Young professional daughter to the rescue, Chan to the rescue by having given me a heads-up about a site to check out, and though they weren’t perfect, a new pair of size 6.5 EE-width leather boots in a price I could fathom right now was actually found. (A good time of year to be looking, too.)  Not flats, which I need, but at an inch and a quarter, close; we’ll see in express-shipping time if they fit, and if they don’t I will actually have to be dragged out shoe shopping, trying to find that one physical store among the millions of people in the Bay Area that has what I want in a size I can wear. Just a plain, classic, comfortable, no-frills pair of black leather boots. Hopefully they’re already coming.

That backup pair in that picture is motivation if nothing else. Family photographs will be taken. Um.



Jeff and Brady
Saturday December 22nd 2012, 3:29 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Life,Non-Knitting,Politics

Part 1. Turns out my daughter has her own Piano Guy friend. He had no insurance and was saving his money to pay for the surgery he knew he needed but the stroke beat him to it. At 30.  Sam blogged a link to the effort to raise money for Jeff’s medical expenses and I’m passing it along.

Any amount is an emotional as well as a financial support and makes a difference. Thank you.

———

(Edited to add.)

Part 2. Later in the day I read that there is a surge of interest and donations to the Brady Campaign, with politicians and others coming through their doors who perhaps would not have been seen there before, asking what can we do to help? On Brady’s site, they decry the official NRA argument of it’s all guns vs no guns, setting forth proposed limits that most NRA members would find very reasonable.That we have had in the past. But to go on with no changes, now, even after Newtown…

Again, out came my credit card. My token amount was a small but present voice among the many.

I hit submit.

It took me very much by surprise how fiercely the feelings came, instantly. I had owned my voice. I had used my voice. I knew then that I will use it again. Our children and grandchildren need our every voice, and when they needed me I too was there for them, is the only way I can put into words how strongly good it felt: more powerful than, as Superman says, a speeding… Yes.



Into white
Wednesday December 19th 2012, 11:14 am
Filed under: Non-Knitting

My blog vanished last night.  Blank white only for any page and we had no idea why. I googled while Richard spent hours on it, and half the posts listed seemed to have been replaced with spam–which is pretty self-defeating if you can’t click on anything.

And here it is up again as if there’d been no problem, all 2232 posts that had gone poof, my very-nearly-daily journal of over six years back up again, my written record for my grandson and future grandchildren; my grandmother wrote her autobiography when I was ten and I treasure it and managed to find a copy online for each of my kids a few years ago.

Googling just now, most of the spammed results are gone. All but one. I’m on it.

And so I am reminded and nudged that hard copies are wonderful things.



Wellerisms
Tuesday September 25th 2012, 11:29 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

I told DebbieR I couldn’t remember the name of the type of wordplay that this belonged to, only that my mom had given me such a round of applause over it when I was a teenager that I actually remember what I came up with: I dropped the toothpaste, she said Crestfallenly.

Debbie sent me this link with examples like, That’s the last time I’ll stick my arm in a lion’s mouth, the lion tamer said off-handedly.

Okay, let me give it a try.

We need to call security! he said guardedly.

What are you doing, Captain–do you think you can just barge in like that? Wow (turning to the others) canoe believe it? (Turning back) Shape up and ship out!

I like the way you cut and colored your hair! she said in clipped tones.

I don’t like what you did to that window, he said in great fenestration.

Lemme decide where to plant that peach tree, she plotted.

It’s fruitless to try to make sense out of a toddler; they mango their words.

I think the stove is leaking! he gasped.

That’s not the fridge I want, she told the salesman coldly.

With this Hunger Games thing going on and the demand and prices going up, too many people are paying too much tax on Paul Ryan’s arrows, he said pointedly. I think you got the shaft.

I wouldn’t ever want to own an animal with a cloven foot, he vetoed.

Her enthusiasm for hazelnuts is well nutted.

There’s an artist with us in the marathon and I think he just broke his foot! the runner painted.

Ganache me what the chocolate is for, said the Greatest Cakes contestant; we’re going to get creamed!

Anyone else?



Gold medals
Monday September 24th 2012, 11:40 pm
Filed under: Life,Non-Knitting

Bill Gold was the columnist for the Washington Post when I was a kid who taught me to love reading the newspaper–he was wise, he was funny, he was generous, he was and showed so much that was good about the area I grew up in.

And I remember his word contests: take any word, add one letter, and give it a definition.

My friend Ruth was marveling a few minutes ago as we chatted that, unlike herself, our friend Holly can knit lace, socks, intricate patterns, and chat at the same time without losing track of the pattern or dropping a stitch–only, the way Ruth put it was, she could do it simpultaneously.

And Ruth goes for the Gold!

It’s late as I type and I’ll come up with more tomorrow, but here’s a start.

Yarn’t. Not going to knit that one.

Musht. Gotta finish that oatmeal.

Spilk. What I did with my hot cocoa on my blouse on Sunday. (Right at the bottom, and I quickly rinsed it off, no problem.)

Prolitics. The likelihood that your candidate will win in November.

Windoww. Why I have scars on my arm from when I was eight.

Hamperr. The one with the happy cat in it.

Birrdfeeder. The one they would go to to cool off on a hot day.

And with that I’m off to bed. Anyone?

Edited to add in the morning, squirrtel. What my supersoaker is.



Time to put on the Cat in the Hat hat
Monday October 31st 2011, 10:11 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

…With the googly eyes glued on to either side of the seam to give it that certain Frankensteinian je ne sais quoi.

Or eye. Lost one in the bottom of the box a few years ago.

You can never plan right–but you can never plan on being stingy, sometimes it’s lots and lots of kids. I decided one 150-piece Costco bag was probably enough, though.

Tonight it was just two nice dads saying thank you, looking me in the eye and wishing me a Happy Halloween and meaning it, with their three tiny princesses, one of whom needed me to turn off the loud scary green “Happy Halloweeeeeeeen” rubber hand before she dared reach into the candy bowl. One little boy. Don’t remember his costume, all I noticed was that sweet little face that had clearly been coached to take one just one.  I thwarted all their training.

And with them was a sullen young teen who had either gotten dragged along to keep an eye on him, or maybe was determined to still get his share of the loot in defiance of how much he’d grown in the past year, a combination of the above–whatever. I’ve had four teens, I recognized his look that didn’t quite dare to dare me to challenge his right to be there.

Instead I laughed, “Sure, go ahead,” when he looked at me, and held the bowl of candy out to him too and held it and held it to make clear that he, like the little kids, was just plain welcome to all he wanted–it’s all about having a good time, and I was glad they were making memories together. (With a strong bit of Take it Take it Please Take it!) I was grateful to them for reminding me just how magical all this is for little kids: it’s more real for me when I actually get to see them getting to pretend and wave their wands and stay up late and be all dressed up and be so excited about it all. And candy too! Grownups are so nice!

Had I known they were going to be the only ones who were going to come, they wouldn’t have needed to knock on another door all night. On the other hand, I stayed on the dads’ good side. Pretty much.



Getting to the root of the problem
Thursday March 31st 2011, 9:57 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

The boss came.

The idea the other guy floated yesterday about maybe having to jackhammer the entire length of the house? Not so much. The boss ran his camera down and showed me the view on his screen: he’d been able to cut through some of the tree root from the inside and he got things going for now, but there was more there and it was only going to grow; he was going to have to get a permit and whack this big root coming from the flowering pear out front and replace that pipe it was breaking into.

Yup. My tree. And it looked so innocent, holding tight to its snowy-white blossoms through two solid weeks of rain, something it’s never done before.

And then after that root canal, we’ll be done with seeing the plumber as often as the dentist.

The new toilet is in, everything is working, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that all this waited to happen till after I got better.  Taking my long-awaited shower, I thought of all the people in Japan still waiting for theirs.

I went off to Purlescence and knitted among friends tonight in quiet celebration for how good I have it. It felt so good to be back, and they are all such good people there–it had been three weeks and I had missed them keenly. (And Fon, your copy is signed now and going off from there in the mail tomorrow.)



Tap dancing
Wednesday March 30th 2011, 9:41 pm
Filed under: Non-Knitting

At least I got a small shawl project finished while I waited for them to be done and gone. I have to put the word “plumber” in the post here just so next time I do a blogsearch to see how long it’s been, I’ll be able to find it.

Why I was pouring water over my hands over the azaleas in the dark a few minutes ago, to get the sticky off my hands after scooping ice cream, because boy did the evening call for ice cream:

We’re going to need to install a new toilet, ma’am, I’m so sorry. In the morning. We’re going to have to come back. We broke the toilet.

You broke. The toilet.

Yes, ma’am, I’m SO sorry.

So… (After their two hours of work) are the other ones usable now?

No, ma’am, I don’t think so.

(Just covering all my bases here.) So can I take a shower in the morning?

No,  ma’am, I don’t think so. (He probably wanted to scream in frustration, Are you CRAZY? There’s a hole in the floor! But I hadn’t seen that yet.) But my boss, he’s the one who came last time, he’ll be over first thing in the morning any time you want him to come. Um… Are you good friends with your neighbors?

I winced as I guffawed and he groveled, I’m so sorry, ma’am!



The legendary Arthur-ian
Tuesday December 28th 2010, 10:51 pm
Filed under: Family,Non-Knitting

Winter break: when you read the Sheldon comics start to stop. It’s a Sheldon-seen tradition.

I need me a duck to guard my stash. I’d have to draw it a skein-atic diagram of where it’s all tucked away around this house, though, and then it would come to this.

(See? All this research that’s already been done for you!)

Right, then. Off to go play Upwords with my kids while they’re still home on break.



Plane as day
Friday December 17th 2010, 12:58 am
Filed under: Family,Non-Knitting

His plane was late but that just meant I could go to Knit Night and afterwards go help pick him up, too. (Saying a prayer along the way for all those people in all those cars (six?) with all those rescue crews at work in the other direction on the bridge, it looked like at least one of the cars totally spun out in heavy traffic–slow DOWN, people, the weather is bad, it’s not worth the speeding! ‘Tis the season, you want everybody to be able to celebrate when you get there!)

John’s home, John’s home!



Maybe cane-abalize the plain old maple one
Monday November 22nd 2010, 11:33 pm
Filed under: "Wrapped in Comfort",Friends,Non-Knitting

Stepping away for a moment from the intensity of a new knitting project…

So. I have this cane. It’s made from sassafras wood, it’s spotted and hand carved and very cool, and my childhood friend Karen found it at a shop in Williamsburg, Virginia. (Yes–that is her on the left in the original Water Turtles shawl; new book copies available at the cover price+shipping at Purlescence.) I’ve used it as my main cane for five years now; I have to admit, the upper curve in the handle is looking rather well used by now.

Shown in the picture above, I have another one from Karen, who finds just the coolest ones, this one from Africa with painted animals on it and an ankh symbol for a handle: zebras, the perfectly-colored and -spaced spots of a giraffe, it’s got it.

Some small child got entranced with it at church recently and a zebra lost an ear.  It’s not very noticeable, except to me, but, so that one got put away for special occasions for its own good. Hearing aids for wooden horses are in short supply.

I went looking today out of idle curiosity, my local shop seeming to have gone to ugly aluminum only last time I checked, and where’s the artistry in that? I say, if it’s a permanent part of your life it needs to earn it a little bit.

And so I found someone who took an old cane and had fun with it. He steampunked it!  There’s a gear here, another few there, leather added to the handle, and, of all things, a lace-up black leather corset going up the shaft. It’s really, really cool! (But I can’t buy it without seeing if it’s comfortable with my hand leaning on that metal there, and I need  35″ and have no idea how long his is.)

I tell you. With apologies to my fellow knitters, this way beats the candy-cane stocking cover that every year about this time I start to daydream about knitting it for the season. Or maybe it’s just that that idea has lost its novelty for me by now.

Hmmm… How would you decorate one?



Pipe down!
Friday October 01st 2010, 9:27 pm
Filed under: Knit,Non-Knitting

How to get lots of knitting done:

The phone rings, giving you a time estimate so you can’t leave. Then the workers show near the end of that period, with no idea how long it will take them, so you can’t leave. Knitting kept me from constantly getting in their way and asking questions. (At that hourly rate, this is a good thing.)

It was the plumbers.   Having come here often enough by now, this time they sent a camera down the line to figure out just what was going on in there.

The guy who put in our addition put in a bend that ought not to be bent, and didn’t put in an outtake but it ought to have had an outtake. He also installed the water heater in such a way as to cause carbon monoxide poisoning, if not for the wallboard between it and our bedroom.

The inspector caught none of that. We got that water heater taken care of on our own. The pipes, well, they’re being taken care of.  Frequently.  Expensively.

Well, hey, I had some knitting I really wanted to get done.  I got in five hours straight. Ice my hands, the thing is blocking now, my shawl is done!