| leatherman's log |
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October 2008 |
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| Week One: |
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Of course, there are
always a few problems to work out when you move into a new place and
we had one that I just couldn't fix. The first day we moved in (and
finally took HOT waters after 7 weeks! ), we seemed to have a problem
with water backing up from the basement drain. After I risked a
flood and did a few loads of laundry, everything seemed to be
draining just fine. I figured it was a blockage of plaster dust or
something after the landlord had the repairs done on the house
before we moved in; but then
we had a few back-to-back rainy days, and water began to back up
once again. Another few loads of laundry seemed to clear up the
problem; but it came back again - and this time without any rainy
weather. So it was time to call the landlord and get a plumber in to
fix the problem. |
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I learned my lesson a few years (Jan
2003) back when Jim and I tried to repair a drain problem at my
old house. Should have called the plumber or water department right
off the bat that time, and it's time to call in help again. |
The plumber arrived Monday
morning, on time just as promised, right as the cable tech was
leaving (oh yes. a cable box had been acting up; but she handled up
things, and got all the lines working properly. WooHoo!) Using two
different types of "snakes", the plumber got all the lines totally
cleared out. It seems the cause of the problem was a wad of baby
wipes stuck in the sewer.
 Now
all the water from our showers and loads of laundry drain right away
instead of forming a lake in the basement. |
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After the plumber had fixed up the drain, the first thing I did was
wash down the place.
Afterwards, I worked on finishing up some odd-n-ends tasks left down
there.
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| I've nearly sorted out the
boxes and boxes marked "computer stuff". I have keyboards, routers,
cables, mice, and just about anything you might need to generally
repair or upgrade a computer or stereo. |
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Next I tackled the
workbench and sorted out my tools ... and screws ... and nails ...
and washers .. and a zillion other tools and parts that could be
needed running, or repairing, a house. |
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| the workbench before and
after |
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After the tools, I finished sorting out
the Christmas stuff from the decorative stuff and from the unused
furniture. Now everything is grouped together and there's plenty of
open area left in the basement. |
| And we need the room in the
basement for the guys to hang their dart board. During the cold
Winter months, cards, darts and puzzles are what we do to not go
stir-crazy. |
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Even without my
construction buddy, Jim, I always have some project in mind to do
around the house. Since it's nearly Fall, there's nothing much I can
do in the backyard right now except finish cleaning by the "patio"
and waiting to rake leaves. However, there was one thing I really
needed to have done as soon as possible - build a back porch.
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| Our back door (or rather,
our second "side door") sits up off the ground about three feet and
goes nowhere right now, because there are no steps! I've been
letting the dogs out the side door to go outside. That has worked
out alright so far. Even though we have a shared driveway (with a
derelict car parked in it right outside both houses' back doors), I
had enough room to finish out a run for the dogs to get to the
backyard. |
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But there were a couple of
problems with this arrangement. One is that I have a door that goes
nowhere! LOL Besides that they were three problems with my dogs
going out the side door. The dogz are too close when the neighbors
are entering or exiting their cars; the dogz are too close to the
front yard and the street; and that area of ground is actually cider
rocks covered by weeds. So for the safety and comfort of my dogz,
and to avoid any neighbor/dog confrontations, I needed to have
something done.
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| My friend Mikie P brought over his
power saw, and using pieces from my old water bed, we constructed a
porch. The next day, I finished up the project
by building a set of steps. Wrapping the porch frame
in lattice, throwing down a piece of indoor/outdoor carpeting and
extending the fence up around the area, I
now have a little more piece of mind about letting the dogz out and
not watching their every move. |
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For just using scrap wood,
the porch decking is pretty solid; however, the steps are another
matter right now. I
guess I needed a 5-step stringer instead of the 3-step that I
bought. So I turned the stairs upside down to get them to reach from
the porch to the ground. Unfortunately, it makes the steps very
steep and the dogz aren't too fond of them; but they do use them.
Poor going-blind Joxer
figured the stairs out pretty quickly, while I had to use powdered
doughnuts to tempt the two boyz to come back up onto the porch.
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| I had already run a power line from the
basement to outside the back of the house where I mounted a security
light at the first of the week. It's on a timer and senses motion,
so it works perfectly for lighting up the backyard when the dogz
trigger the light at night. |
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| Joxer and Zeus nudge each
other out of the way to make sure to get into the shot.
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Joxie mugs for another photo of himself; but Aries really is in this
picture! He's there on the right, giving us a good GBS!
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| While I was getting the
supplies to finish up my porch and steps, I had hoped to pick up enough wood to
finish one more major project that I really needed done - shelves
for over my computer monitors. I have really missed the "mission
control" setup that I had at my old house and at Jim's; but that
setup was just too large for where my computer is situated now.
Unfortunately, I only had access to Joyce's van and it wasn't a big
enough vehicle to bring home several sheets of plywood. I'm going to
need to borrow Richard and Angie's truck to bring home supplies to
do that project. |
| Since I had to put off
that project for a few days (I'm borrowing the power saw and need to
return it soon), I decided to tackle another project before the cold
of Winter settles in. While the walls downstairs and the upstairs
hallway were painted an acceptable antique white/ecru color, the
bedrooms were definitely yellow - not "yellow bus" yellow, but more
"banana" yellow. Whatever yellow it really is, it's pretty ugly. So
I took about 12 hours (Joyce stopped by, Richard came to visit, and
my mom called, so I wasn't really working all that time), and my
crappy yellow bedroom is now a soothing medium/dark blue. |
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| It was definitely a pain
in the ass trying to paint around all the stuff I have in my
bedroom. I tackled it a section of a time - moving furniture,
painting two coats, and then putting the furniture back. It was
probably just as well that I had all those "interruptions" by
visitors and callers, by the time I'd return to my project, the
paint was mostly dried so I was able to finish up a section. |
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Before and After views
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| Looking in through the
door at the completed project |
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| The view from my bed |
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| MouseOver if you see me in
the mirror! |
| I closed out the week with a trip to
the hospital!
Just fooling you some, it wasn't for a bad reason. Since my doctor
appointment had been rescheduled and I had already gotten those
results anyway, I stopped by the hospital to have more blood work
done for my upcoming appointment on the 15th of the month. |
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Week Two: |
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Since I couldn't fit the wood I needed
for my shelving project into Joyce's van, I had to borrow Angie's
truck again to get the wood home. I spent the afternoon then,
measuring and cutting up the pieces that I needed for this project. |
| After all the stained pieces dry, I'll
be putting the shelves together. |
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| So while I waited for the
stain to dry on my boards, I worked on correcting a previous
project. |
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The 3-step stringer that I had used for
the back porch steps just wasn't tall enough. Temporarily, I turned
it upside down, and the dogs used the tall, steep steps hesitantly;
but they used them. When I went for this latest batch of lumber, I
picked up some 5-step stringers. |
| Cutting another couple of
steps, and knocking a few off the old stringers, I got this set of
steps up in no time. Joxer was the brave one again to try the steps
out first; but the red boyz followed soon after. |
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| Next, after the animal testing, came
the human trials with required a guinea pig - otherwise known as my
housemate John.
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Of course it's not all
projects all the time. Sometimes I run errands; and sometimes those
errands can be very exciting. Just the other day, Joyce and I were
doing some errands together. It's nice that "mom" has a vehicle I
can borrow, since I don't have a car. (I do try to be good and
borrow her van as little as possible or try to do all my errands
while running Joyce around on her errands.)
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So I'm driving us along,
and we're chatting away, nearly done with our errands. As I was just
coming up on a red light that was changing to green, suddenly and
with no warning, there was a loud bang!
and the driver side window
shattered inches away from my head! Thankfully, the safety glass
held together (for the most part
), so I wasn't hurt; but by the
time we got back to Joyce's house to clean up the mess, most of the
glass was either inside the van door itself or lying on me or the
floorboard.
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All I can figure is that a
rock was popped up by a passing vehicle and shattered the window.
Luckily, John and I both still had some money on hand and were able
to loan DO enough to get her window replaced.
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| A few days after having her van
repaired, Joyce and I went to the park to enjoy and early Fall day.
Only a few trees were changing colors yet; but it was a beautiful
day to be out in the fresh air. Joyce and I will have to go to the
park a few more times during the next two weeks to get pictures of
the really pretty Fall foilage. |
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| GBS
Alert |
For your viewing pleasure,
and because Joyce was thinking like me ,
there are TWO Gratuitous Butt Shots to view.
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| Some views of the park
during early Fall. |
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MouseOver Special |
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| The one who loves going on
the walks in the park the most is Rosita, Joyce's dog. Even though
she's gotten a little chubby from all the table scraps she gets,
Zita loves running through the park chasing the squirrels and geese.
MouseOver these pictures to see Rosita better. |
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| MouseOver |
MouseOver |
| I hadn't minded at all
going to the park for the afternoon with Joyce. We were having a
sewer drain problem again and my house smelled so bad, I was glad to
be out in fresh air. Of course, the plumber didn't show until late
in the day, so by the time I got home things still didn't smell any
better. After running over 120 feet of snake through the drains (he
only found one sock, and it wasn't any of ours), the basement drain
still wasn't draining and we had a small lake of dirty water in the
basement. The plumber found our that our neighbors were having a
similar problem, so I called the city water department. They arrived
in about 20 minutes, flushed out the clogged manhole just down the
street, and our house lost the water and the gross smell. I figure
now that the house drains and outside city drains have been so well
cleaned out, that we shouldn't have another problem like this for
many years. |
| After I bleached down the basement, I
was able to cross another project off my list when I hung the dart
board. |
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| John and Sean tested out
the new setup. I don't play darts myself; but it's a very popular
pastime around these parts during the Winter. |
| A short burst of Indian
Summer came through, so I went out back to do some yard work. As I
was cleaning up around the patio, I realized that I won't ever have
to take the mower to this part of the yard. I found that over the
years, dirt has washed down the hill and mostly covered up the
bricks going down the shared driveway to where the garage used to
stand on this property. I plan on working on this project some more
during the Fall. After I get all the bricks uncovered, I'll be able
to fill in some holes in the yard with the extra dirt; and I won't
have to mow down there during Spring. |
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The old garage had been built using red sandstone cinder blocks.
While picking up glass shards from around the patio (someone must
have had a lot of fun breaking up beer bottles on the bricks), I
loaded up a bucket with the broken pieces of the red sandstone lying
around. There was still a few loose blocks too, so I took a hammer
to those blocks and broke them into smaller pieces. I used all these
pieces of sandstone to cover the ground around a few trees in the
upper section of the yard. In the Spring, I'll clear a small from
these rocks and plant some type of flowers. |
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MouseOver for a better view |
After being rescheduled twice, I
finally had an appointment with my doctor. Luckily, I had blood work
done for the last rescheduled appt and knew that my counts had
stayed stable; so it was okay that I went a while without seeing the
doctor Since this appt. had been put off for nearly two
months, I haven't seen my doctor since early June.
(Goodness! Five months is probably the longest stretch that I've
ever gone without seeing a doctor!)
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First, the doctor and I chatted about
whether some current symptoms are the result of all the crap I
breathed in yesterday while out working in the yard (damned hay
fever!) or whether my friends "passed" some bug on to me the other
night while we were playing cards. (I've been pretty healthy for a
while and they seem to have forgotten my germ-ophobia - and
susceptibility - and didn't warn me about their "terrible head colds
that must be from some bug that's been going around"
)
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Of course, then we discussed how I've
been coping since Jim's passing. Last time I was in the office, Jim
had barely been gone a month, so I gave the doc the condensed
version of living without Jim, packing and moving, and then the
issues with the new housemates. Having been "trapped" together in
the hospital, because of the blizzard this past March when Jim was
first hospitalized, my doctor and I have formed a much better bond.
He was very comforting and sympathetic, while I talked about how
hard it's been for me lately - first by how fast this situation came
upon us me (gotta go back to talking in the
singular person again) without any warning, to the upheaval in my
life by having to move.
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But it wasn't all bad news I passed
along. I also told him about how much of the actual moving I did,
along with cleaning up the jungle of a yard at the new place,
fencing it in for my dogz, building a backporch - with steps!,
painting rooms in the new house and several other smaller projects
that I've completed since moving in. Of course, he was quite pleased
to hear that I'm moving along and moving forward with life. Even
with my slightly fading tan, he mentioned that I looked the
healthiest he's ever seen.
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Then we got around to the nitty gritty
of the appt - the results from my blood work. Unbelievably, once
again, my counts were stable! My tcells bobbled down slightly from
256 to 243, which is negligible. (That's around my 3-yr average of
250; and better than the 5 yr avg of 170; and much better than the
10 yr avg of 161) Amazing my viral load was again "undetectable". I
found these results so surprising because I keep thinking that at
some point the stress, grief, unstable sleep patterns, poor
nutritional intake, physical exhaustion and depression that I've
been through since Feb is going to take a hit on my health. If not
any of those reasons, then surely my poor med adherence should be
having some effect.
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Part of me is happy that my numbers
have stayed stable, and a part of me is confused about how such a
thing could happen with the problems I've had this year. I'd like to
be just happy about this news, but somehow seeing that I've stayed
alive (and fairly healthy) just to suffer through losing Jim, having
to move, and now having to live into the future without a companion
sorta dampens my exuberance about having these results.
(Re-reading through this post, I sound a little schizo.
I'm happy about the numbers. I'm not happy about the numbers.Having
been down this road before, you know, I'm still probably just
talking through the grief and depression. Give me some time, and I'm
sure results like this in the future will be making me nothing but
happy.) |
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For more information about
my lab results, just click on the graph above. |
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Week Three: |
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This week hasn't started
off well at all. Remember I mentioned I thought my friends has
passed some bug to me? Well, they did; and I got sick. Luckily, it
wasn't a puking kind of sickness; however, along with the stuffed up
sinuses, it did give me a nasty fever. Pretty much through the whole
weekend and into the first of this week, I've stayed in my bedroom.
Either I was coughing too much, or trying to get the fever under
control, or lying on my bed just dog-tired with all my joints
aching, my eyeballs burning, and a roaring headache.
Little by little, I got better during the week. Though my head is
still a little congested, I haven't had a fever in over three days
now.
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| Since I couldn't shake that +2 degree
fever starting the week, it was making me a tad crabby. It was also
turning out to be one of those days when it seems like all your
friends are doing everything they can to piss you off. The biggest
one peeving me was the unemployed housemate that has been mooching
off me for quite some time now. I was really ready to just pop him
one in the face; but I took the high road and politely explained
what a douche bag he's been and that if he was not employed by Oct
31st, he wasn't living in my house starting Nov 1st! Damn that felt
good, my headache stopped and the fever went away. |
| The following day, I got a piece of
mail, forwarded from my old house, that left me quite sad.
Unfortunately, once you lose your partner while under Hospice care,
every once in a while the mail will do that to you. With only the
best intentions, those nice Hospice people will send letters
checking up on you, or reminding you about their helpful services
still available, or inviting you to a Memorial service. That's very
nice; but unfortunately those kinds of letters are also just a big
slap of reality, reminding you of your loss. So after a nice big
cry, I rsvp-ed and have a memorial service for Jim (and the others
who passed away under Hospice Care this year) to attend next month.
Now that I think about it, I guess I should be on the lookout for a
note from the local family services agency about their World AIDS
Day candlelight memorial. |
It seems that "uncle mikie" has now
been talked into driving his 15 yr old OhioNephew (Ritchie) and
friend to a concert on Halloween. Luckily I have pretty eclectic
tastes in music (my top 6, in order: Prince, Nine Inch Nails, Pet
Shop Boys, Madonna, Smashing Pumpkins, and Garbage), so I'm busy
downloading Mushroomhead* music to see just what mess I'm getting
myself into chauffeuring the kids to this concert. Part of me
doesn't really care because it's been a while since I went to a
concert with my nephew. Our first concert together was when I went
with him and his Mom and Dad to see Kiss. My nephew was only FIVE
then!! He and I pal-ed around the whole concert and had a blast! LOL
I won't be able to carry him around on my shoulders like back then.
He's taller than me now and outweighs me by about 70 lbs. (Boy do
they grow up fast!)
*from wikipedia:
"Mushroomhead is a band from Cleveland, Ohio. Formed in 1993,in a
city called north royalton a suburb of cleveland, the band's music
can be described as a synthesis of alternative, heavy metal, and
electro-industrial influences."
Sounds like leatherman might end up in the mosh pit!
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Week Four: |
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| Although I don't count it official
until I can get a photo of the white stuff actually in the yard, it
has been flurry-ing around these parts lately. For the last four
days, they have been small sn*wflakes fluttering down. Thankfully,
it's been nothing more than an interesting aspect to the sprinkles
of rain that have been blowing over the city this week. Looking back
through my blog, I see that our first real sn*wfall each year
usually doesn't come until next month. |
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I kept trying to get a specific project completed; but I just don't
think it's going to happen. It's more of a money problem than my
skills. Remember, I mentioned the shelves I was building? Well, I've
run into a few snags. I tried putting it together once (omigod! that
was a terrible experience!) and the pieces didn't fit right! Yes, I
measured twice before cutting.
