The Final Walk Through, August 2009

I found these pictures on my cell phone this week. I took them during my final walk through of Devil Queen last August. Haven't seen her since.

Below is the railing the buyer's insurance company required us to install before they'd close on the deal.

Making Fugly Fly, Part I

The last few weeks, we (my wife, her friend Laura, Jack, me, but mostly my mother-in-law and her friend Liz) have been working feverishly to overhaul our fugly exterior paint job. We didn't get anywhere close to fixing the whole Devil Queen, but we fought and won several important battles.

First, every window, door, and piece of trim on the back porch plus the one master bathroom window visible from the back porch have been scraped, primed, and painted with a pale yellow. It looks nearly white next to the sunglow yellow of the house (Valspar incase you're wondering), but it's actually yellow.

I love the ceiling fans. It's amazing how much cooler the porch is with them. We're trying to decide if we want to get light-kits for the fans or not.

And, as you can see, we actually got one of the storm/screen windows back up. This is great because we can open the windows without cats, bugs, and God knows what else coming into the house. Since summer is nearly here, this is very important.

Good Feeling

One of the best feelings in the world is coming home from work and finding that things are getting done.

The master bathroom ceiling is nearly ready to prime and paint.

I know it's not much to look at, but here are the first to rows of the last floor I hope we ever have to have installed. I have high hopes that this will be finished today or early tomorrow.

Two Tactical Victories

The weekend was a whirlwind.

We went to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, for a wedding on April 14th, the 95 Anniversary of the Sinking of the Titanic. A nice wedding, but was that the most auspicious day for one?

Sunday, our third and newest car broke down. It's still in the shop. That pretty well ruined most of the day. The funniest part is everytime we tell someone that our car broke down they say, "So the Saturn finally went. You sure got some good use out of it though." The look of incredulity is priceless when we tell them, "No. Actually, the Saturn is the only car that is still running. The new one broke down."

Our crisp, smoking broken-down-asses were pulled out of the fire by the immense kindness of two friends of ours. They not only picked us up off the side of the road, but loaned my wife their car until hers is out of the shop. Incase anyone is wondering, we are in the process of constructing a shrine for their perpetual worship. I mean, I'm so grateful that I'd willingly commit multiple felonies at their request. Thank you!

Then, I took Gideon to the doctor to have his allergies checked et cetera. And, best yet, I got to do all of this with a cold which my wife has now caught. Really, the cold is my fault. Last week, I worked myself too hard and slept too little. By Thursday night, I'd pretty well wrecked myself. Friday was spent fielding a lot of questions about why I looked dead.

By the time Sunday night was crashing to an end, I was very weary. And, it wasn't just the cold, the stress, and the 750+ miles on the road catching up with me.

It's amazing what spending a few days away from the Devil Queen can do for you. It takes very little time to get use to things like a clean house, real furniture, and the utter absence of construction sites and tools. You suddenly remember what it is like to live in a normal house, under normal conditions.

And then, you come home. There you are, sitting on top of a five gallon bucket of primer by the light of a bare, 60 watt bulb thinking, "There were trenches at the Somme that looked better than this, why the fuck are you living here?"

I was demoralized. In that brief absence I'd lost my sense of direction and purpose, but, after a night's sleep and a lot of coffee, I managed to regroup. While I should have massed my forces right away and stormed the hall, I decided to start off with two small, carefully chosen battles, skirmishes really.

I needed a taste of victory and a small dose of closure. Besides, it needed to be done anyhow.

The first battle started when I noticed I'd nearly fallen into an ambush. The house took advantage of my preoccupation. Last night, I had a sudden epiphany and spotted the trap. "Damn it man, the porch is painted! Clean off all the stupid tarps and rubbish, and quit stumbling over it every day." I decided that was a wonderful idea, particularly since the cat had deposited something small, dead, and wonderfully ripe by the front door. The way the porch was collecting flies and bad karma was appalling. I could feel it closing in upon my soul.

So, I sprang into action, and, while I was at it, I wired up the porch light.

The house wasn't expecting this little assault, she hardly put up a fight. I followed up with trying to finish off Pee-Wee's Playhouse's rim lock.

She tried to rally her forces, but she was still off balance. With the last minute substitution of a different set of knobs, this little piece of work fell together nicely. Now, all I have to do is chisel out a place for the lock-catch and it's finished. Even so, this is the first door in the whole bloody house with real, working, "finished" hardware. Not even the front door can boast this.

Emboldened, I descended upon the hall, a never-ending war of attrition. I'm moving forward, but who ever put the 100,000 staples in the foyer wall should have their private parts stomped. Considerer yourself warned.

I'm going to try to smuggle out one last post today. Then, I'll have to slip back into radio silence for Friday, Saturday, and, maybe Sunday. The enemy is always watching.

Run silent, run deep. Then, blow the bastards out of the water, right?