Not quite, but close...

Firewood Man slaved over here from 11:00 AM to 6:30 PM!  We are not quite done, but are much, much, much closer.  Of course, more than an hour of that time was spent trying to figure out how to do the handrail for the steps.  You see, the way that they are hung means that the lower railing could not match the same height as the porch lower railing because the steps are in the way.  The incline is odd.  Yet the steps are the way that they were and what is best for me, just shorter.

The first step is just slightly lower and the last step is the same as all the rest.  If the steps were flush with the porch, the last step would be about four inches higher than all the rest.  If the first step was the larger step, so that the railing could continue its run as is, then the last step would have to be changed as well.  And, even though Tim would do it, I was not about to have my new steps taken apart and rehung a bajillion times until we figured out a way for the railing to work.

So, Tim decided to run the railing out straight for the first step, and then run the rest at the incline.  That makes sense since the first step is just a bit down and is often a place where I pause and holler at Amos to tend to his major business.  I actually grew fond of the idea.  However, I was not fond of the idea of a 4x4 post supporting the end of the flat section because the post is larger than the railing itself.  My idea was to glue two railing pieces together so that the jury-rigged post would be the same size. But Tim pointed out that we had leftover sections of 4x4 that were already paid for and more railing would mean spending more money.

Truth time, I might have pouted just a bit over the 4x4.  I know this because Tim finally suggested that he take the 4x4 posts home and put them on his table saw to resize them and then run his router down the edges so that they will more closely match the handrail.  Of course, Tim really is a perfectionist himself, so he is not opposed to the extra work.  After all, I actually tried to talk him into just having a four inch gap on the bottom rail of the stairs and have it mismatched up at the posts on the porch deck.  He was adamant that no railing of his was going to be mis-matched.  I was, however, adamant that he was not going to be tearing apart the stairs.  I love my news stairs.  They are the same as before so that my walking memory pattern fits, but they no longer wiggle and jiggle and move about as you walk on them.

If you look at this photo carefully, you will see that the sides of the new stairs are resting on the original footer:  mortared brick.  In front of the stairs is this ginormous hunk of concrete.  Whoever put in the last set of steps, not only failed to put in a middle support piece for the stairs, but also just dumped concrete on either side to hold them in place.  I have loathed the concrete that has jutted up from either side of the steps for as long as I have lived here.  Mulch does not work as a covering because rain always washed it away.

I talked Firewood Man into removing it before putting in the sides of the stairs.  I did make a solid argument for using the original footer on the sides as we did on the front.  Plus, I pointed out all the extra cuts it would take to make the boards fit over the jagged top of the concrete.  Tim loathes extra cuts.

This is almost all of the other side of the steps concrete mess that Tim will eventually load into his truck and dump for me.  I am not sure how he is going to lift the one above that is still next to the steps.

I thought that Tim was going to leave around 5:00, but he stayed late to get the lattice up below the airing porch.  Does not the back of my house look just wonderful??  As you can see, the stair hand rails and the cover board for the facia still need to be installed.  The sad part, to me, is that I just don't think either the upper or lower facia will be painted the house red before spring.

It is a bit too dark to see, but the left side of the porch (looking from the yard) has only a 1x6 trim on the bottom.  The other two sides have two 1x6 boards.  In part, this is because the yard slope a bit.  IN part, this is because I really, really, really wanted to leave a way for Baby Bunny to get back to his home beneath my porch.  Tim put a double 1x6 at the corner for about six inches, so that, from the front, the corner matched.  I doubt anyone but me would notice the difference, especially once all the mulch is replaced.

When Tim was working on the lattice below the decking of the airing porch, he needed me up there to stick my arm through the railing and hold things in place.  Whilst lying on my back, I admired the clouds.  We had a storm rolling in and so we were racing the weather to finish.

At one point, earlier in the day, Tim wasn't happy with how the lattice was looking, since it is now a thinner I-NEVER-HAVE-TO-PAINT-IT vinyl.  So, he lay on the ground and shimmied himself beneath the lattice so that he could use his nail gun to secure the lattice from the back side in several places.  Oh, man!  Did I ever want to take a video of him doing that!!

The only disappointment of the day is that Tim did not have effusive adulation for my paint job on the airing porch.  Tim actually does not have effusive adulation for anything, being one of the most taciturn person I have ever met.  But ... I wanted effusive adulation.  [Feel free to put some in the comments section here.]

The rough part of the day was when I fainted because my blood pressure tanked due to the waste in my innards pressing on the vagus nerve as it passed by.  I HATE that part of dysautonomia.  There is just no gentile way to explain why you are lying on the ground.

"Myrtle, what happened?"
"It is just my blood pressure tanking. Don't worry"
"Can't you take medication for that?"
"No.  There's no medication out there for broken nerves. Think about all the billions of dollars poured into spinal nerve research because of the prevalence of paralysis.  We might know how to map the human genome, but we cannot repair severed spinal cords or mal-functioning autonomic nerves.  The fainting is a vesovagal response.  In layman's speak, I oft faint when poop is at the lower end of my large intestine because it's pressing against my vagus nerve and my vegas nerve doesn't always work well.  I also oft faint whilst I am pooping." 
[Dead and awkward silence follows.]

Truly, having a malfunctioning, hypersensitive vagus nerve makes for a vastly wretched life at times.
And embarrassing.
And isolating.

Tim also got to see me melt down before I was going to leave to fetch my prescriptions.  I called, just to let them know I was coming and to make sure the odd-date one that fell on the 27th this time was filled.  It turns out that all my prescriptions were somehow taken off auto-refill.  And the temporary pharmacy tech tried to tell me that they were not refilled because it was not time for me to get them.  I've been picking them up on the 27th for over two years now.

She kept calling me "honey" and "sweetie" and trying to tell me that once I had more experience with insurance I would better understand how refills work.  I wanted to ... well, let's not go there.  But I did start weeping (that darned brain of mine) and asked to speak to the pharmacist.  The one who cares for me so well is out on maternity leave, but the one who was there knows me.  Yet she didn't tell me that she was sorry the auto-refill was removed somehow or that the prescriptions were not filled or that she knew I always come in for them or reference any of the 1,001 times she and I have gone over my prescriptions.  In fact, she is the one who asked me to have them all re-written again last December so that they would all need new prescriptions as the same time.  All she did was ask which ones I wanted.

I had started the phone call sitting in the rocking chair of the back porch.  Once I was being told I just needed to learn more about insurance, I moved inside to hide my meltdown.  But Tim already knew I was crying.  He was laughing when I came back outside.  Not in a bad way, though.  He gave me the nail gun and told me to go shoot some of the scrap wood for a while.

Because he worked so late, I missed the opportunity to get to the pharmacy tonight.  Had they been ready, I could have popped over during the time Tim didn't need me to hold onto the other end of long boards (i.e., when he was siding the stairs).  I am so happy about the lattice being up and so frustrated over the prescription debacle, I don't even care that I am going to be missing two doses of my medication (12:00 AM and 6:00 AM).

I do hope that my innards can hang on without the erythromycin.
SIGH.