tedwords

Aside from the upcomng Thanksgiving dinner, we have one other huge home project in the works: (hopefully, God willing) finishing our back yard deck before the winter is upon us.

It's been a long, drawn out process. We wanted to start the deck in the summer, but decided to tackle the installation of a pool heater before we did. We thought that would be an easy fix.

It wasn't.

I have been meaning to tell that story on Live Journal for months, but suffice it to say, it involves buying a big ass heater, getting upgraded to an even bigger ass heater, and Corb determining he didn't want to pay an electrician $750 to install the pool heater when he was perfectly capable of doing it himself because his stepfather used to be an electrician. Fast forward to the entire summer spent trying to install said electrical wiring, encountering roadblock after roadblock.

Me, trying to suggest that maybe we should hire the services of a licensed electrician. Corb getting offended,saying I didn't have any faith in his abilities. Ah, the fragile male ego.

Cut to improper installation of wiring, a condenser that blew up after having 17 gazillion watts of electricity being dumped into it WHILE WE WERE IN THE POOL, and you have a sense as to how our summer went.

Finally, around Labor day, we did the only sensible thing we could do. We hired a gay electrician.

No, I'm serious. We hired a gay electrician. He even offers us a "pink discount" and everything. Who ever though a pink discount even existed? Maybe it won't any more, now that Trump is president.

Anyway, the man spent two days at our place, fixing the connections. Two days. I freaked about that, but he reassurred me he was going to cap his work at 10 hours, only charge me $80 an hour and apply the pink discount. Total cost...you guessed it, $750.

Sigh. I should have blown the gay electrician for saving me so much money. I didn't.

I didn't, but we have put him to work on other things. In fact, he has agreed to build the gargantuan backyard deck Corb has plotted out for a relatively minor amount on one condition: we do the heavy lifting.

Which brings us to this week-end. When Corb and I finally had the bandwidth to hire an auger to start digging the holes for the bracing.

Oh, it should only take a week-end, we thought. We have 17 holes to dig, it will be hard work, but we can do it, we thought. We'll buy a top rate auger. how bad can it be?

What stupid fools we are. What stupid, stupid fools. Why did we agree to do the heavy lifting? CRAZY.

Today was our first day. Each hole has to be four feet down and 12 inches wide. Anyone want to hazard a guess how many holes we managed to dig?

Well, maybe it's because we live in the rocky New England clime. Maybe it's because we started the rental at around 11:30. Maybe it's because we had an appointment with the vet at 1:25 to check out a bald spot that Kyra has on her left leg. (Don't want fleas in the house, after all. PS: It's stress.)

Anyway, sum total after one day? Well...

One and a half.

One. And. A. Half. And neither one is entirely complete. The most complete one has six inches more to go. Who ever thought six little inches could be that difficult? We have 15 more freaking holes to dig! AT the rate we are going now, We will have 17 complete holes by...well, winter may be upon us.

And by the way, boy do I hate augering. Is "augering" really a word? I don't know, I'm too tired to worry about that. I'm officially making it a word. I bless thee augering. Augering, the act of using an auger.

Every muscle in my body aches. And I wasn't even doing the heavy lifting!

I can only hope tomorrow brings better progress. Maybe if we wake up earlier. Maybe if we don't have any distractions.

At least Corb has all of next week off to prepare for the Big Dinner. I am going to go to work on Monday in complete agony thanks to the Big Dig.

What I Learned Today: I really, really, really hate augering.

So, Corbie has a new obsession. Old upright pianos.

Oh no, he doesn't want to learn to play them. He wants to refurbish them. He wants to take one and turn it into something along the lines of this:


Cool idea, right? Try putting it into practice. This week-end, we embarked upon our task: the acquisition of our first upright piano. Finding one was pretty easy, because it turns out, there are a lot of folks with upright pianos out there just dying to give them away for free, if you'll go and takem them off their hands. Seriously! Check it out on Craigslist if you don't believe me. These things take up room and are really, really heavy.

Corb, naturally, chose the piano farthest from where we lived, out in West Cranberryfuck, Cape Cod. The guy who had it admitted it was out of tune and didn't work, which Corb liked because among his other choices were pianos that had recently been tuned and worked perfectly. He doesn't have the heart to destroy a perfectly working piano. Also, he thought it had the best design overall, with some of those old Roman columns for legs and at the top.

The guy we were getting it from also admitted that the piano had been in his wife's family since she was a child and she was heartbroken to see it leave. "Not that she knows how to play it," he said. "She's gone this afternoon. When she comes back and sees it missing, she's going to break down and cry."

We got our first taste of what a bear this was going to be getting it out of his house. Even with the truck pulled all the way up to the front steps, it still took four guys (me, Corb, the owner, and what appeared to be the owner's gay lover) a bit of effort to get the piano into the hitch Corb had rented. I must admit, this made me a little nervous, because I knew that at Green Victoria, there was no way we were pulling the truck up to our front porch. No, we had a long driveway and then a lovely stone path to contend with, which was picturesque, but going to make life a living hell.

But that was a challenge for another hour. At that time, we simply bolted up the piano and drove back to Eldredge.

"So, any ideas how to do this?" I asked Corb, once we arrived home.

Corb clutched at his blond hair. "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

The first part was the easiest. Get it off the hitch and onto the small dolly Corb had purchased to help it roll better. That got us to the edge of the driveway and right next to the picturesque crushed stone walkway. How to move it forward? The dolly was going to get in a whole mess of trouble if we moved it any further.

Believe it or not, I was the one who had the bright idea. Me! I remembered reading about how the ancient Egyptians were able to move heavy stones to create the pyramids, and thought the principal might work in this case. "Why not grab the plankwood we have in the backyard and place them over the stones? That will give the dolly something to roll over."

Corb was a little skeptical. But it turns out, I was actually right!

After four months, the partner's desk project is finally complete. Corb's weekend in his pseudo-meth lab really paid off.




The top photo shows what the desk looked like when we purchased it. We found the desk in the basement of an antique shop, gathering dust and unassembled. It's circa 1890 (although I am singularly unreliable when it comes to dates, and I am certain that Corb will correct me on that when he reads this) and came from the Point Judith Inn, located in Narragansett, Rhode Island. According to the grizzled owner of the thrift shop, he was friends/neighbors with the then-owner, whose husband was battling cancer, forcing her to sell the place. That's how the desk came into his possession, and how it sat in his Partners 1basement for about a year.

I don't know what we saw in it, frankly. In looking at the photo now, it looks awfully scuffed up. Corb was the one who saw some potential first, of course. For me, it was the back story that interested me. I'm a sucker for back stories. I mean, who knows if it's even true? It doesn't really matter, it just gives me something to talk about, you know?

But the point is, he saw potential. And for the first few months, it just sat in our kitchen as is, while the wheels in Corb's fertile little mind starting spinning. Then he started making some calls, to see what some local carpenters would charge to fix it up. Then he didn't like the quotes that he received. Then he decided he could do the job himself. Then he freaked out, wondering whether he actually had the vision and skills to get the job done. And in the past month, he finally realized that he did--and he could.

To make it a proper kitchen island, he built two small platforms on the bottom, to raise each desk up a few inches. Next, he sanded and stained the tabletop, which is truly my favorite part of the project. After that, we took one of the paint buckets that the previous owners had thoughtfully left us in the basement, to match the color of the desk to the cabinets in the kitchen. Then came the hard part: sanding and painting the desk itself. Would it look okay? A few people were kind of shocked that he was painting over the wood. But after even just the first coat of primer, both of us knew it was going to look terrific.

And there you have it! This month's episode of "From Drab to Fab" (a title Corb HATES, by the way. He much prefers, "From Old to Bold." He thinks the former title sounds a little gay.)

Note: I have forbidden Corb from embarking upon any more home improvement projects for at least one whole week. Next Saturday, we are all gathering for my parents' fiftieth wedding anniversary, which will begin with a small reception at the house. And if you don't think that's causing us stress...

I hope everyone is ready to get this day over with and hop into the week-end. I know I am!

Actually, this week-end is going to be insane. It's Ashes' 21st birthday, and we have a big party planned for Sunday. On Saturday she will be going to the One Direction concert, and I've got chauffer duties. And tonight, her best friend is arriving her from Springfield. In other words, for the next three days, my life is not my own.

Even Corb is putting his stuff on hold. The next phase of his partner's desk project is probably going to have to wait until after this madness has ended, which is a shame, because he is at an important point. He finished sanding and staining the table top and it looks beautiful, but now he has placed a coat of primer on the base. This was the difficult part, as it involved painting over wood from a desk that's over 140 years old, and both of us were kind of angsty about it. It's done, but it now needs to be painted the same color as the walls in the kitchen, over and over again. That's the part that is going to have to wait.

We see the potential, though. And in the meantime, Corb is considering putting together a blog of his adventures in refurbishing. He doesn't think what I call his "adventures in refurbishing" stories will work for him--I call them "From Drab to Fab," because he thinks it's a little too gay. WHATEVER! But he did like my alternative: From Old to Bold. So, we'll see what he does with that.

In the meantime, as always, I've been hit up by the folks at The Eldredge Players to direct once again. This is an annual ordeal, which I've firmly (or maybe kind of firmly) said no to these past two years, in part because of a fracas that happened when I directed my last show for them, the beloved Drowsy Chaperone (or as a friend of mine likes to call it, The Lousy Chaperone.) Helping to call their last show kind of helped heal those wounds, and I said I would consider directing again, if the show was right. (It would be a nice way to promote my book, frankly.)

Little did I know what I'd unleashed. About two weeks ago, a member of the board came to my house while I was mowing the lawn, on the pretense that he was at the post office and saw me pull in and wanted to see the place. It made no sense since I had pulled in a half an hour before he arrived, but I played along and gave him a tour of Green Victoria. Halfway through the tour, he blurted out the real reason: they want me to direct Jesus Christ Superstar, this fall. It wasn't official they were doing it, but please think about it.

I said I would, and yesterday I received the official request from the artistic director.

I'm kind of torn. It is kind of sudden (auditions would take place after Labor Day), although I do know the show well, having played Judas many years ago. However, I don't like the venue, because the acoustics are terrible there, you don't have much space for set, and you only get two rehearsals at the place.

On the other hand, I already do have ideas for how I'd like to direct the show. The problem is, I'm not sure they are ideas they would particularly like!

The first approach would be to do it as a modern day dress Jesus Christ Superstar. All the apostles are dressed up in business suits, and the opening scene takes place in a board room (something like "JesusCorp") with Jesus at one end of a long table and Judas at the other. The Pharisees are something like a rival corporation plotting a hostile takeover. And Mary Magdalene, the whore? That one's obvious: Christ's PR person.

IT WOULD NEVER FLY.

My other idea is a bit more conventional. Simple production, minimal set, with the exception of the cross at the end and a big visual explosion for the title number. Heavy use of projected images. It would be an approach similar to how the production I played Judas was carried out.

EXCEPT. One thing the board member suggested was that to expand the roles of women in the show (there are so few), I could give each apostle a woman by his side. And that got me thinking: why do the companions all have to be women?

Think about it: there is speculation that at least two of the apostles may have been gay. Maybe...just maybe...one of the apostles might have a male companion? It wouldn't be anything really in your face, direction-wise, but it would be there. I don't think Jesus would have been upset by something like that at all.

Guess what. IT WILL NEVER FLY. This group is too conservative and would freak out if they even caught a whiff of what I had in mind.

So, gotta think about this one. But if this all comes to naught, I am okay with that. I am having too much fun with the writing! If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen.

More to come!

You can't really see it, but it's there. Second window to the right, in the upper left hand corner.

We noticed it about a week ago. It was about the size of a baby's fist at the time. A wasp's nest, attached to the outside of one of our front windows. Since then, it's grown. Now it's about the size of a baseball.

Shudder. Wasps. How I hate them! But then, I hate anything with a stinger (unless it has vodka in it. God bless you, Elaine Stritch). And Corb, he not only hates them, but he's deathly allergic to them. Turns out he stepped on a bee's nest not once but twice when he was a kid and his doctor has repeatedly warned him that if he gets stung again, he could go into anaphylactic shock. Or at least, that's what I've been told.

That meant dealing with the wasp's nest was up to me.

Not that Corb hasn't given me helpful advice. He wants me to dress up in a giant bee costume. "Then go over to the hive and pretend to be a friend. Tell them they have to see the really cool beehive in the backyard. Then when they are out, whack the hive down with a baseball bat! They won't know what to do."

Thanks, Corb.

Surprisingly, it actually wasn't the worst piece of advice we received. It's kind of like the deer advice, where people told us to sprinkle all sorts of crazy things down, like human hair and dead deer blood to keep Bambi away.

Jim, who is the boyfriend of Corb's mom, had the worst advice. I was surprised, because he is a bit of an expert on everything. He's about ninety years old, loves to travel. Will eat just about anything. I honestly thought he'd be able to help with this. But, no. His advice:

"Take a putty knife, see, and scrape the nest off quickly. Then make sure you have a big paper bag that it can fall into. Close the bag once the nest is in really quickly. And then, you have to get rid of the bag, so either throw it in the woods or set it on fire."

That's the last time I listen to a world traveler who will eat just about anything. Let's go over things I will absolutely never be doing with a live wasp nest, shall we? First, moving close to it armed only with a putty knife. Then, pissing off a bunch of wasps by detaching their home. Then, dumping said home into a paper bag and trying to close it as they rise up, just a little angry at me. Can you imagine me trying to crinkle that shut? Then, sprinting into the woods to set the bag on fire?

I swear I'd burn the forest down. And, I'm too much of a wimp. I cringe when my avatar gets stung by a bee in Animal Crossing. So I'm not sure what Bizzarro universe this plan of attack is going to happen.

"Just get an exterminator," was Corb's other piece of advice. But no, I don't see the need for that. This is something we should be able to handle on our own.

I spent the whole day thinking about how to kill the bastards. What I needed to do. I carefully considered all the possible pitfalls. Ted against the wasps. Major stingage. Hundreds of insane insects converging down upon me, or finding a way into the kitchen, where they would pull an occupy Wall Street. Missing limbs. Carnage.

In the middle of a movie last night, I made a sudden whimpering noise.

"Are you scared?" Theo asked.

"No," I replied. "Just thinking about the wasps." He looked away.

And then, at ten at night, under cover of darkness, when all the wasps were sound asleep and dreaming of world domination. I sprang into action. I had Corb stand in the kitchen with a lantern, placed right near the wasp nest. Then I ran outside with Theo. Moved a few dozen feet away from the nest, can of wasp poison in hand. Then, I sprayed like crazy. Emptied out the whole bottle. And then, I ran like hell.

End result: the wasp nest is quiet today. I spy a few dead wasps on the bottom of the window sill. Mission accomplished?

Only time will tell.

The back yard needs the most improvement. Corb, who is the master builder, has a lot of ideas for what he wants to do--and some of it is going to take a few years. For one thing, he wants to grade the entire area so that it slopes downward (and doesn't become a swamp during the start of spring). He also wants to extend the back deck so that we can install a swimming pool and fire pit. And around the swing area, we need to remove an old dead tree that is what is popularly known as a "widow maker." It has a huge dead branch that extends over the swing set. If that ever feel while Kaeden was playing on it...

But, first for the easier stuff, and that's why, this week-end, we started on the patio area. It was clearly once really nice--in fact, at one point, the guys had installed a jacuzzi, but while the house was up for sale, the area had fallen into disuse. The stones were covered in moss, and the garden beds had become overgrown with weeds. This week-end, Corb fixed up a power washer that his brother had that was broken (Corb is a handy one, no?) and Sunday morning, bright and early, we got to work.

I did my fair share, but again, I have to give Corb credit for the grunt work. He spent six hours power washing all the stones. It was like watching an archaeological dig, as he used the washer to line by line remove moss and dirt from each stone individually. The whole project (which isn't completely done yet) went quite smoothly, except for one little rough patch, as we were weeding the flower beds and came across one bit of suspicious wickedness.

CORB: Is it poison ivy?
ME (Still weeding): I don't know...
CORB: It looks like poison ivy. Three leaves...
ME: Then we should get rid of it.
CORB: So get rid of it.
ME: I don't want to get rid of it. You get rid of it.
CORB: Does it look shiny? Poison ivy is shiny. Is that shiny?
ME:L Deep sigh...
Anyway, turns out it was climbing hydrangea. It is now dead climbing hydrangea. We didn't figure that out until we had removed it with a steel rake.

Other than that, I am pleased with our progress. We still have some planting to do and have to pick out patio furniture, but I think part one of the "Drab to Fab" project turned out pretty nice!