Still Camping

So the plan was that I would be here for a week to meet various service people and then my husband would pick me up again (today). But he has had to put the car in the shop, and there is a lot happening at home that he has to deal with this weekend, and then we're back to Monday and he's back to work and can't pick me up until the following weekend. Except I have to be back up here the 18th to meet the propane people (heat, blessed heat!) so I may as well just stay here until hubby can fetch me the following weekend, on the 20th or 21st. So...the one-week stay looks like it will be a three-week stay.

This poses some interesting logistical problems. It means nearly three weeks lived at 12 degrees celsius, which is doable but not comfortable, especially for Brio. I have a washing machine, so clothes and towels aren't a factor. But I only brought so much dog food with me, or people food, not having anticipated a lengthy stay. I'm looking at my meagre stores and puzzling over how to ration it in the most effective way. Pasta and tomatoes. Oatmeal. Some rice. A serving or two of couscous. One bag of frozen vegetables. Some canned tomato soup, corn, peas, and pork n' beans. One bottle of peaches. A half tub of margarine. And luckily I brought all my medication with me and not just my "weekly pack." 

I think I can do that. It's not too difficult, and if I get desperate, the local gas station sells chips and crackers. What worries me more is the lack of reading material, and the fact I have two library books with me that are due, and a doctor appointment I'll have to reschedule. Thank goodness I have internet! What did pioneer women do without that? And I feel bad that I'm camping here in relative peace and quiet while my husband scrambles to get everything done at home. I have the easier load to haul.

So. Two more weeks. I will regard it as a retreat. Or fat camp. I will do yoga and calisthenics (to keep warm). I will nibble dry oatmeal for breakfast, I will play endless hours of fetch with Brio to keep him warm too. I will watch every Hallmark movie available on Youtube. I will pretend I'm back in lockdown.

Brio having a ball

 

He will hold this position forever until you finally throw the ball.

Camping around the edges

 I can tell that I'm not entirely at home yet here at the church. I can tell because all the belongings we've brought up so far are congregated in little piles around the edges of rooms. They haven't been spread out to actually claim spaces, as if I'm afraid of encroaching on someone else's territory. In the kitchen I have a dozen cupboards but I'm only using three of them. The chairs in the rec room are lined up against one wall in a row like a theatre, waiting for someone to come on stage. A few items are piled at the bottom of the stairs, either newly arrived or heading home. It's like when you go to a hotel, and you don't transfer your belongings from the suitcase to the dresser because you think "I'm only here a short while." Or -- more likely -- "If I put stuff behind cupboard doors, I'll forget where I put them and leave something behind." There's that same sort of timidity going on here at the church. If I put bottled fruit in the cupboard, I'll immediately forget it's there. So I leave it out on the counter... My clothes are in the gym bag they came in even though I have perfectly adequate hangers and I'll be here for a week...The tools we leave here at the church to use are not in the utility room on the shelves meant for tools, but are congregated in a box in the rec room, as if we're afraid to let them out of sight...like new-born puppies we want to keep an eye on for a while.

It makes no sense, really. I'm not sure why the hesitation to expand and move in. Maybe the previous occupants haven't totally moved out? I'll know I'm totally, comfortably at home here when I no longer have to give much thought to the placement of objects. Until then, it still feels a bit like camping.

Well, and I'm sleeping in a sleeping bag. And there's a flashlight by the bed in case I have to get up at night, because I have no idea where the light switches are...So yeah, definitely still camping.

Getting Some Little Things Done

 

Batteries put in the smoke alarms and the motion-sensor light at the top of the steep back stairs. Grey foam wrap slipped around the water pipes in the crawl space (where the miracle of the hot water heater is still holding. I check often throughout the day, breath held, and offer prayers of gratitude each time). Rec room vacuumed. And I’ve fashioned a big pillow of plastic sheeting, pink insulation, and two-sided tape, to block the one gothic window where we’ve removed the stained glass. (There’s still fibreglass on the outside to keep the damp out.)

The eavestroughs are filled with maple leaves and water is still spilling onto the foundations. I really don’t want the expense of adding gutter guards, and I’m not convinced their designs are any good anyway, Leaves still can land on the flat surfaces and clog the tiny holes in them, and our ones on our city house have been pried apart and inhabited by birds. So we’ve been trying to think of an alternative.

My amazing, problem-solving husband decided what we really need instead of eavestroughs is a French drain, something that will collect and funnel water out without clogging no matter how many leaves pile on top. So he bought 160 feet of corrugated, perforated black plastic irrigation pipe and rolls of thin black wire. Our contractor will come in the next couple of days to clean out the troughs and then lay the pipe in the eavestrough. The pipes are 4” wide and the troughs are 5”, tapering at the bottom, so the pipes will lie snugly in them with only a bit poking above the edge but leaving a free channel in the bottom where the round pipe curves away from the squarish eavestrough. Where the troughs are held to the roof by clips, the pipe will either be cut (and butted up against each side of the clip) or---the solution I think is better---we can cut a 1” notch in the bottom side of the pipe to fit snugly over the clip but leave a bridging piece on top to keep leaves out. The theory is that rain water running off the roof will be able to get into the trough via the corrugations in the pipe, collect in the bottom in the triangular channels formed between the round pipe and the square trough, percolate through the perforations in the pipe, and run merrily down to the downspout regardless of how many leaves pile on top of the round pipe. Voila! A French drain suspended twenty-five feet in the air. We’ll anchor it here and there with twists of black wire encircling the pipe and the eavestrough.

I can’t wait to see if this inexpensive and innovative idea works. I really think we’re onto something. And the nice thing is, it can be installed in our old, battered troughs without having to replace them, and if we ever do replace them, the pipes can easily be transferred over.

I have an increased respect for water, a newly deep awareness of the role it plays in both sustaining life and breaking objects down. A house can do without many things, but it has to be water-tight.

Pie Shelves Turned to Pantry

 

I have started stockpiling a bit of food and other supplies at the church so that our visits can be longer. The pie shelves in the kitchen are too narrow to allow for cans to be stood upright on them, so I’ve written each can’s contents on the lid with a Sharpie and put them on their sides. Ditto little mason jars of spices and herbs. 

I’ve also brought up some DVDs I can watch in the evenings on the computer. Last night was The Help. Today was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And the great thing about it is I’m here alone, so I can dance to the musical all around the rec room and no one will see but Brio.

The Crowing of the Coyotes

 

Halloween night. I took the dog out one last time before bed. Dark as only a country road without streetlights can get. A nearly-full moon caught in the tree branches. A cold wind blowing. Stars starting to come out in the inky sky. And then…a howl. Far off, one high-pitched note suspended in the air. A cold, lonely sound. Solitary, not a pack. Not a wolf. A lone coyote? Not quite. What then? Again and again, that one sustained note. And then I heard the little tell-tale yip at the beginning and I could identify it. It was…a rooster.

Came inside again, giggling at myself. Silly city woman. Chilled by the howling of a rooster.

On My Own

 

I am spending a week at the church, dealing with various service people, while my husband remains in the city to work and deal with the finishing of the basement. That was supposed to happen last week, but because of various delays, it won’t be finished until this week. Except today a new renter arrives and will need the room my son has been borrowing while the basement is being completed. So my son will shift all his stuff into our room and be bunk mates with my husband for a week while the final basement renovations are finished, my husband will deep clean the renter’s room, and the new renter will arrive. And hopefully this week my son will move back to the basement. Lucky me, I get to hide at the church and avoid all that chaos. If the internet is successfully installed tomorrow, I may even finagle an extra week up here, and by the time I eventually come home, the renter’s quarantine will be almost over.

My son scolded me a bit before I came up here because I don’t have a car or cell phone, and no internet until it’s installed on Monday. What if I need anything? What if I fall down the stairs and break an ankle and can’t get help? What if I get snowed in and can’t get groceries? Those fears don’t worry me. There are neighbours on each side, and so many workmen coming in and out that eventually someone will find me.

Our husky young contractor, Ray, confessed to my husband that he would never stay in the church at night alone. The idea freaks him out. I feel no fear or nervousness about it. This is a solid, welcoming, friendly building with a long history of generosity and kindness to others. I feel perfectly comfortable here. Except for the fact that there’s no heat. That’s a tad annoying. I could manage it just fine by staying barricaded in the bedroom with a space heater, but Brio isn’t thrilled at staying in one small room all day. He wants to be down in the rec room, playing fetch with his red rubber ball, even though he’s freezing cold once he stops and holds still.

I love my family and have friends and enjoy my work, but I also really, really like being alone. I look at my hobbies---writing, reading, gardening, handicrafts, weaving, walking---and all of them are activities done alone. I relish curling up with a book and blanket or sitting on my yoga mat, knowing that there’s no one expecting anything of me at that moment. No conversation, no questions, no guilt for eating cold cereal for supper if I feel like it. No one rolling their eyes when I watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers for the hundredth time.

Tomorrow I have the internet people and environmental study people coming. Tuesday I have the propane guy coming to decide if they can install propane (hopefully soon!). And at some point Ray will appear to do the eavestroughs. But otherwise I am free and on my own until next Saturday, and there is a bone-deep pleasure in knowing that.

Right now I’m in the bedroom, my laptop perched on a plastic stool while I sit on a cushion in front of it on the floor, and Brio is flaked out on the bed. It is completely silent except for the clicking of the keyboard and the steady ticking of the heater and the buzz of the fluorescent light (soon to be replaced). An entire Sunday to spend quietly by myself. Pure peace.