My new reality

Exciting news! January is over and hopefully the brutal cold we had is gone with it. There were too many days of 0 deg F for the high but with the bad comes the good: generally speaking those days came with brilliant blue skies with no wind, awesome sunsets, and amazingly clear, starry nights.  Greg recuperated from the plague, we went cross country skiing a few times, celebrated his birthday, relaxed briefly, and then we returned twice to PA to work on Dan and Anna’s house.

More exciting news! We passed the rough electrical inspection! By “we” I mean mostly Greg, again. “We” ran lots of wire in prescribed sequence, direction, and purpose in and around studs, plumbing, HVAC, and steel beams. Lighting, CO2, switch and outlet boxes were installed.  Trying to anticipate electronic upgrades or imagine futuristic possibilities was daunting.  In our own house in the early 2000’s Greg installed wall outlets for iPod stations that were out of date before we finished construction. Who needs central vacuums if Roombas rule the rugs? Or wall switches if Alexa will turn lights on for you? Should established old school design be abandoned in light of current or as yet undetermined future trends? What new advancements in video or audio can we anticipate?  Building a house is hard work; it’s also ‘hard thinking’ requiring some serious discussion, imagination, and planning. 

And even more exciting news! We finished rough plumbing and framing and insulation in preparation for sheetrock installation. Christina visited for a weekend and insulated Pex plumbing. Dan and Anna installed the bathtub and Greg got shower drains aligned and glued up while I finished minor framing tasks.  Any project that would be covered by drywall was completed. Hopefully, every project was finished. Greg and I have installed drywall in one house already, another job I will never do again (on such a large scale). D+A hired a contractor to do theirs and so we put down the framing nailer, wiring stapler, and pipe wrenches and took a break.  Thus January ended.

Sister Clarice, my high school Latin teacher, also taught mythology which I enjoyed. Janus, the two-faced god of Roman mythology only (no Greek counterpart) is considered the god of transitions and also of beginnings and endings, among other things. I always think of sister Clarice come January each year. She was old enough to have Latin be her native tongue, or at least I thought so in high school. She was a fairly reserved teacher though I did see her chuck a chalkboard eraser at another girl once. Pretty spunky for a petite nun. (Pauline, do you remember this?)  Just a musing on ‘January’.

I’d like to give a shout out to the staff at Home Depot of Hilltown. Everyone working there is friendly, helpful, and wears masks. This was the closest store to the project, so no offense intended to Lowe’s (or my sister who works there in MA) where we often found items that were out of stock at HD.

Finally, the most exciting news: we’re going on a road trip! It’s to Florida, but a trip nevertheless! Next blog, travel!

P.S. I’m having a deja vu moment writing about Sister Clarice and Janus. My apologies if I repeat myself in these blogs. Or am I just testing my readership’s memory? Hmmm?