The railing! The railing! The railing!

The last screw has been applied to all that wood I purchased and Firewood Man used to fashion two porches from one.

[Firewood Man wanted me to note that he is not satisfied with the way the gutter looks against his work and wants to reconfigure it a bit.]

It is interesting to me that the way we had thought the stair handrail would look was to come out straight from the top and then angle downward did not work at all.  However, I like this step-down solution ever so much more.

Taking that first step is like grasping the handles of a walker and then the angle down is most perfect.  Aside from the dirt all over the steps, I am just pleased as punch with the end result.

It took every inch of my will power not to spray off the steps and the porch.  I want so much to clean them.  However, tomorrow's forecast is still showing weather in the upper 50s.  I could prime and paint a solid coat on the porch posts and the porch railing.  But not if I got things wet tonight.

After tomorrow?  We are descending to the depths of arcticness.

The broken light is replaced.  The gutter down spout is back in place.  All of the debris is gone from my garage.  And, as a bonus, the hinge doorstop is properly installed on the screen door to the basement entrance.

Firewood Man was so very happy about my doing all of the returns that he sat down, waded through all the receipts, marked the items to be returned, and loaded everything into my vehicle.  All the returns have been completed.

Much to my frustration, when I went to pick up a second gallon of the outside white paint, I spent another hour and a half waiting whilst two men tried to match the color.  Again.  You see, the woman who spent all that time a couple of weeks ago trying to match the color, since Lowe's codes do not include the name of the color of the paint, failed to put the proper sticker atop my can.  In fact, neither of the two stickers on the paint can lid were the formulas for my paint.  SIGH.

I do now have a single, properly marked sticker on a card that I can keep in my house file.  And, if the weather holds, I will be ready on the morrow for paint.  I am half tempted to put down the blue tape this evening, but I don't want to jinx my chances of having an even more finished back porch.

Yes, in case you are wondering, I showed before and after photos to all the sales folk processing my returns.  Also, in case you are wondering, one of the customer service managers at Lowe's knows both my name and my phone number (to look up orders) because I've been in there so much over the past nearly four years.

And I'm utterly, totally, and completely exhausted from the stress (good and bad) of finally, finally, finally having this endeavor completed.  The airing porch was started September 18th.  The porch wall demolition began September 22nd.  I have been blessed beyond words by the safety and beauty of all that work.  But I have also been struggling with seven and a half weeks of chaos in my normally visually restful world.

Firewood Man.  Well, he almost did not make it through this help.  But who could have known that the porch supports were mostly missing??????  Today did not start well for either of us.  I barely slept wondering if he would come and if this would be completed.  But at the end of the day, it is done and Tim assures me that we are still "good."

He also asked if he could only bring a half load of wood at a time, now that I will be keeping it on a rack.  He does not mind the extra trip, because he does not want me to ever be carting wood from the garage to the back porch.  I was stunned to realize that he had already been planning to stack half the wood in the garage and then have me call him when it needed moving.  Of course, I had not thought about the fact that the rack would only hold half the wood he brings since he brings such a generous amount (far more than a true rank).  I've only been anticipating how lovely it will look in my rack.

So, my plan on the morrow is to wake, tape, fill the screw holes with Drydex, prime, go back to sleep, paint, nap, and then see if I might sneak in a second coat.  If not, I might see if I can rescue the portions of my rock river that have been smashed flat from all the foot traffic atop them.  I would also like to drag the rest of the mulch out to that area and dump them around the porch and one atop the raised bed.

[What does it mean that the garlic that I planted is already growing ... about six inches above the top of the soil???]

If I am too week in the afternoon to be dragging about mulch, I would like to try Firewood Man's suggestion for clearing out the leaves beneath the burning bushes and atop my rock river:  "Use your blower."  You know, I tend to think of the blower as a grass-clippings-on-the-sidewalk blower.  A one dimensional blower.  But Tim said, if I wanted, I could even blow clear a light snowfall, as well as leaves.

Three dimensions.
Mind-blowing.
Pun intended.

Rosemary anyone...

Remember these?

I had bought them at the end of January/beginning of February and this was how much they had grown by the beginning of March.  This was the night of my first harvest.

Here they are rather happily ensconced in the solarium in the pots that Leslie got for me (she paid $0.25 at a garage sale).  The one on the left was at the far end of the raised bed where there is less sunlight.  Thus, I learned that rosemary bushes like sunlight.  Also, about 1/3 of it was growing separately, so I potted that bit and gave it to Leslie.

Now, I had worried that the rosemary bushes would not survive the winter inside.  Boy, was I ever mistaken!  I pruned them rather severely before digging them up to put in the pots.  They have already grown quite a bit even though it has not been all that long since their move indoors.  So, if anyone needs fresh rosemary over the winter, come to Fort Wayne.  Of course, I also have copious amounts of dried rosemary and a rather healthy supply of rosemary butter.

Today, I vomited and fainted several times doing so, but I got most of the fall yard work completed.  I'm exhausted, languishing in the GREEN chair.  Amos, having followed me all over the place and jumped up a few feet into the air repeatedly to get me to hold him instead of working, is also exhausted, languishing with me in the GREEN chair.

With a second strong wind storm, the magnolia tree lost almost all its leaves.  They are now bagged up waiting in the garage.

These were the burning bushes a short while ago, with leaves and still overgrown.

Here they are now, mostly bare and properly pruned again.  I should not have to do them next fall.  And, hopefully, two falls from now someone else will be happy to plug in the hedge clippers and start whacking away.  I was glad that I did not (as I have in the past) cut through the electric cord.  I have not, as yet, figured out how to rake up the leaves beneath them, especially the ones on my beloved rock river.

I also whacked away at (and raked beneath) the forsythia.  For several years, I had been trying to keep it shaped.  However, it is a type of bush that I call a splitter.  By this I mean that wherever you cut, if not at the base of the branch, the branch will split into new growth.  Basically, you have to take a bonsai approach to pruning it.  And you have to do 4-5, very time consuming prunings per growing season.

Being so frequently exhausted, I finally decided to follow my mother's advice and allowed the forsythia to send up those ginormous branches this year and not try to stay on top of them.  That meant that I did not prune on this all summer long.  However, now that it is naked and I had already unwound the 100-foot electric cord, I used the hedge clippers to whack away at the four-foot extensions above the main section of growth that have embarrassed me all summer (making me feel like the neglectful homeowner).  That way, next spring, they will split and the giving-in-to-vertical-growth should be more balanced (less embarrassing).  My mother's idea is that, eventually, if I keep allowing the top to grow unfettered and only pruning up from the bottom, the growth will all be above the fence and out of a walking path and, thus, will no longer need any pruning.  All I will have to do is clean up the small sprouts that appear around the base each spring ... work of mere moments.

[Please ignore the pealing paint on the garage.  Somehow ... some way ... the three bad sides of the garage will be scraped and painted next year.]

I have never really tended the hydrangea.  Frankly, I don't know what to do with it.  Since its growth and blooms were a tad disappointing this year, I decided to treat the hydrangea as I do the rose bushes and whacked it down for the winter.  I'm crossing my fingers that this will result in greater growth and blossoms next spring/summer/fall.

As you can see, the weeping cherry is still not naked.  So, whilst I did rake up the majority of the leaves that had fallen, I did not rake carefully this entire side of the yard.  I believe in waiting to rake until the tree is bare, rather than repeated raking as it sheds leaves, says Myrtle the lazy procrastinator.

Fort Wayne has this weird vacuum thing that picks up leaves off the park strip twice a fall.  I missed the first pass through our neighborhood, but hardly any leaves had fallen before the last week or so.  I literally studied this map for two days before I finally figured out that I am in the central zone (I thought for sure I was in the south zone).

[Frankly, I think the map needs more reference streets on it.]

Anyway, the map tells me that I have until next Sunday evening to get the leaves in my front yard into the park strip.  Right now, there are not that many leaves.  But the trees are not yet bare.  I am hoping that there will be more wind storms between now and there that blow the leaves into someone else's yard.  This is not all that selfish a hope, because the past two falls I have had my yard raked clean only to have my neighbor's leaves blown into it.  I am vehemently opposed to double raking a yard.  Thus, I might be out there raking at midnight, wearing my headlamp and frightening the neighbors.

Once I finish filling up the bags from the back yard, I can call the city for a special pick-up for them.  These are the benefits of living in a smaller city.  Back in Fairfax County, we had no help with leaves.  And, were there a program, we would have been charged a ginormous fee for it.  The leaf collection here is simply a part of city maintenance ... or something like that.

The bag that is filled with the pruning bits is considered yard waste.  That I can put out with the trash next Thursday night, as long as its not raining ... and I remember.  I like that I can do that.  You do have to use the special yard waste bags that are 5 for $1.50, but I stuff them and smash stuff down in them and basically cram at least two bags worth of waste into each one.

I also pruned the rose bushes, but I did not take any photos. I think I am discouraged that the one I tried to save did not respond to all my songs of encouragement, whispers of sweet nothings, and judicious applications of fertilizer.  However, the one I moved into the sunshine at the far side of the garage quadrupled in size.  Roses most definitely love sunshine.

Tomorrow, Firewood Man is supposed to be coming to finish the railing.  However, I have not heard from him.  I am trying not to be discouraged.  To cheer myself up, I put the four (primed) post caps on so that the railing-less posts next to the stairs look more like they belong to the porch.  If he comes, I am sure you will hear my affectations of giddiness wherever you may live.

Tim starts a new job on Monday, so the whole world has been asking the hero for help whilst he still has time. I get that I must share the wealth, but I am worried about the railing ever being finished.

I did check the forecast.  Monday is going to be even warmer.  Prime weather.  As in primer weather.  I am tempted.  IF the stair railing gets done, it will be too wet (green) to prime and paint.  However, the rest of the porch has been up now for five weeks.  If you read up on pressure treated wood, you will see that the time frame for waiting is 30 days.  Like I said ... temptation abounds.

As for now ... and for the morrow ... I plan on remaining in the GREEN chair, languishing with my beloved puppy dog.  Recovering.  Resting.  Trying to avoid thoughts of having the back porch railing painted before next spring.

However ... will I even be capable of painting next spring???

I will finish by noting that, today, Becky told me today that there might possibly be a Kulp family visit come winter.  That means I can finally share my airing porch with someone!!!  I know that, even if the weather is 16 below again, my friend will spend some time out on the airing porch with me.  I know this because my friend bundled up her newborn and went walking about the DC monuments at night with me.  Rebecca Anne Bettina Matilda Boyles Kulp bundled up her three-month-old daughter, most generously allowed me to be the one to wear the snuggly, and walked around the national mall with me because she knew that my most favorite time to visit the memorials was at night.

 

 

Aren't they even better at night???

Two and ten and one...

Two things about the weather.

First, I read this article about a polar vortex descending upon the midwest in the very near future.  Now, I've watched and read forecasts about this winter and all noted that we were not going to be having the polar vortexes that wreaked havoc last winter.  Nope.  Not at all.  Except.  Except that we are.  SIGH.

Second, one forecast (I check many these days), has Monday as being 55 degrees.  From there we will be descending into the depths of winter, but 55 degrees is paintable weather.  As in ... I could prime and get one coat on the railing of the lower porch.  Not the stair railing, if it goes in this weekend, but the main railing.  Am I nuts?

Speaking of articles, I read this one, which is actually from here.  And, frankly, it is so spot on that I want it recorded here ... for me:

10 Heartbreaking Truths Single People Never Talk About

By Shireen Dadkhah

Trust me, you don't understand what it means to be lonely.

For as long as I can remember, I've watched my friends pair off. Temporarily and fleetingly in high school, longer and more lasting in college, and now, permanently. Throughout it all, I've remained single. Too shy, too insecure, too...whatever. I got used to my role as the Single One—I was even okay with it. As an introvert, I not only like my alone time, I need it. But, somewhere along the line, I stopped just being single and started being lonely. Most days I'm both. And try as my paired up friends might, they don’t seem to fully understand what it's like to watch everyone around you fall in love. They don't understand what it means to be lonely. So let me tell you.

1. You are nobody's first priority. Between boyfriends and girlfriends and spouses and kids and church, there's always someone before you on the priority list. I don't have that one person I come home to at the end of the day, with whom I share all the mundane details of my life. So I parse them out between friends and family, sometimes oversharing because I just need someone to validate my existence. I'm not saying it's wrong that I'm not the top priority (of course family should come first). But for the perpetually alone sometimes it'd be nice to be first. Just once. Just for a day.

 

2. Physical touch is a thing for other people. When you're not part of a couple and you're living alone, physical touch goes out the window. And not just sexy, intimate touches. I'm talking mundane, everyday, almost-no thought-put-into-them touches. Last week, I realized it had been months since I’d been touched by another person. For as much as I value and need alone time, nothing is more isolating than realizing no one has touched you in over a month. Nothing.

3. Jealousy is green and ugly and real. I don't want to be a jealous person. I don't like being a jealous person. But when the loneliness is overwhelming and all-consuming, I can't help it. I can't help but be jealous of the fact that other people have someone to come home to—that they have the occasional unthinking brush of hands and take so much for granted.

4. There's physical pain associated with being lonely. It's not something you know until you've experienced it, and it's hard to describe. But it actually hurts to be lonely. It's an ache in your chest, a heaviness that you can't shake, a longing that only the touch of another person can soothe.

5. Being the third wheel sucks. No matter how much I like my friends' significant other (and really, they're great!), I don’t want to be the third or fifth wheel. A little part of me dies every time I have to plaster a smile on my face and joke to the waiter that the bill is going to be split, "Two, two, and me. Just me."

6. Friendship isn't enough. This one is hard. I have an outstandingly good group of friends and family, but as much as I want them to be (and as much they wish they could be), they aren't enough. I've tried really hard to make them enough, but it's like forcing a puzzle piece into a spot it doesn't belong. You can push and push and push, but it's never going to quite sit right.

7. Everyone is part of a couple. Or maybe it just seems that way when you're not. But from my point of view, everywhere I look, I see couples. Even events are geared towards couples. Have you ever tried cooking for one? It's not pretty.

8. The grass isn't greener. Stop telling me how you'd love to have some peace and quiet or a night where no one touches you. Because that's not what I'm talking about. There is a profound, bone-deep difference between "alone time" and being lonely. Comparing the two or romanticizing something I consider painful undermines my feelings and makes me hate you a tiny bit.

9. This isn't a "lifestyle" choice. Plenty of folks choose to be single. Nobody chooses to be lonely. That's part of the problem. I didn't ask for this. I don't want this. But it's not something I can fix on my own.

10. No one gets it. It’s kind of like the Dead Dad's Club. (Please lower your pitchforks and allow me to explain.) Until you lose your dad, you don’t know what it's like. You can sympathize and you can think, "Oh, that's really sh*tty," but you can't really empathize. And it's true for loneliness, too. Unless you've experienced it—unless you know what true, deep, painful loneliness is like—you don't get it. And, well, that just makes things all the more lonely, doesn't it?

Seriously, this is really, really, really spot on.  I've shared with with a few single folk I know and each time I was thanked.  In a way, reading it, is like being heard.

Funny, just the other day my sister referenced the Dead Dad's Club.  By that I mean, she said she thought she understood how hard it is to lose your father, but now knows she understood nothing, knew nothing.  A friend of hers lost her father a while ago.  Now ... now my sister gets it.

I wouldn't add to this article, because I think it paints a honest, full picture.  But I will chime in on something I just don't want to hear about anymore.  The other day, someone stopped by and remarked for the 100th time about remarkable it is that I have done all this work around my house.

It isn't.
It isn't remarkable.
Not at all.

Yes, in looking at the end result, I do still want that effusive adulation.  [Case in point, I received hardly any adulation on the near miraculous change to the horridly ugly basement steps that were lined with different colored carpet squares that were long, long, long past their prime.]  But the effusive adulation is for the end result, the beauty, the care, the working toward keeping this home ... relevant ... for the next 95 years.  Not for me actually doing the work.

In truth, despite the help labor is for dealing with upsettedness is for me, I do not want to be the one laboring.  I don't have a choice about it.  I do not have a husband or a father or a brother or an uncle or a friend or a neighbor or some male(s) from church who will do the things that needed doing.  And I cannot afford to pay anyone to do the hard labor of, for example, scraping paint from my back porch or the front steps.

When the kitchen was done, I needed to paint the trim and doors in there.  I needed to do so because they had not been recently painted, but also because the construction folk were really, really, really hard on them.  I got two quotes to have the baseboards (two walls), door frames (three), and one side of each of the two doors painted.  The cheapest quote was $400!  I was flabbergasted, especially because the painting took just a couple of hours for me to do it.  A couple of hours and days of paint in my hands.

Over the past fours years, what I can do has dwindled markedly, which is upsetting to me.  The old me certainly would not have returned that third can of paint remover goop for the front steps, but the me I am now is just too exhausted for doing the proper job there.  The steps are no longer slippery.  That has to be enough for me.

I am so exhausted that, despite all the stuff still rattling around my head, I fall asleep the minute I close my eyes.  No more lying in bed for hours on end trying to fall asleep.  If the pain in my midsection is manageable, I'm out.  I'm out and struggle to get back out of bed (aside from fetching ice packs and feeding Amos his morning meal) before twelve or more hours have passed.

If Firewood Man were able to come, I would have let him be the one climbing the ladder and finishing the painting.  If I did not have to spend the extra money shoring up the back porch (I still shudder over the revelation that two of the three supports were gone), I would absolutely have paid Firewood Man to paint the airing porch railing.  He would charge me his usual pittance.  And, for once, I wouldn't argue with him.  I'm that tired.

My one-liner about how hard being single:  You are always the only one to take out the trash.  There's no one else to do it.  Just once.  Just this time.  [Amos is absolutely no help in this area.]

Anyway, I really, really, really don't want to hear that it so [fill in your adjective here] that I do all this work around the house.  I do it because there is no one else.  Yes, I have always liked learning about tending to houses and being able to make repairs.  But that does not make moot the fact that I learned those things and did all the work because there was no one else.

And now ... there still isn't.  I have homemade coupons for help that are meaningless.  I have had offers for help, but ones that remained vague and unavailable at the times I've asked specifically.  Someone once remarked to me that the idea or offer of help is what you receive more than actual help.  I have read much the same on that dysautonomia blog. 

I think, perhaps, the work that I have done—at times almost frenetically—is my attempt to prepare my home for the time when I can do little ... or nothing ... about the house.  Getting as many ducks in a row as possible.  Structural ducks. Maintenance ducks.  Accessibility ducks.  Organizational ducks.  Safety ducks.  
Whatever the reason, I do the work because it is needful.  And I do the work because there is no one else.   

No more ladders, please...

So, well, Laura Ingall's taught us that it is important to make hay whilst the sun shines.  That means Firewood Man was unable to come over yesterday.  That means I had to go up that bloody ladder again if I wanted the airing porch painting finished this year.  SIGH.

It is not that I do not want the cover board for the lower porch fascia to hide the bolts and stuff.  But, with little chance of any further painting days this year, I did not want to look at raw wood until next year.  So, I went ahead and used the poorly matched red paint that I have been using as an undercoat to cover the wood for now.   The difference in color is irksome, but I would rather have only the railing left raw.

It was doubly hard to go up the ladder again.  Only the thought of the color matching and being DONE up there made me take that first step.  Those Little Giant ladders are nothing like I ever saw in its commercials back when I had cable and HGTV.  Nothing!

I had to work to open it and then lie it down.  I huffed and puffed and rested.  Then, I opened the holders and extended one side.  I huffed and puffed and rested.  Then, I opened the holders and extended the other side.  I huffed and puffed and rested.  Then, starting at the end that would be the top, I picked it up and then moved underneath it and lifted it up as I walked forward.  I huffed and puffed and rested.

Then, I climbed up the thing, terrified again, and finished the job.
DONE!

Well, actually, I lay huffing and puffing on the ground, dreading pulling down the ladder and closing it back up when I decided to paint the fascia.  I didn't even clean the brush. I just switched cans.  What could it really hurt??

I was so knackered.  And then the alarm went off on my phone.  An unexpected alarm.  You see, last night was the first of the four chamber performances of the symphony.  I fed Amos and then sat with him in the rocking chair on the back porch ... just ... doing nothing for an hour or so.

Then, I dragged myself upstairs and cleaned up and dressed up and left.
Am I ever so glad that I did!

The performances of the Freimann Series are held at both the Fort Wayne Historical Society and the performance hall at IPFW.  For the life of me, I cannot figure out why anyone would not want to go to the first venue.  It is ever so beautiful.

The music.  Oh, my!

The first of three pieces a wind quintet playing Franz Danzi's Quintet in F Major OP, 68, No. 3.  It was utterly delightful.  If you walked into that room in the foulest mood of your life, I guaranteed all that upsettedness or ire or whatever would have melted away before the first movement was over.  I thoroughly enjoyed the piece.

Then.  Oh, my goodness!  Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Opus 110 is the most hauntingly spectacular music I have ever heard.  It was so beautiful that I started weeping.  I cannot even tell you why.  It was just amazing, darkness that was not frightening or terrifying, darkness that was exquisite beauty.

I brought my Kindle, as I do with the Masterworks Series, but not merely to read during the intermission.  I used to love listening to classical music when I read.  So, I thought, with the casual atmosphere, I could unobtrusively read if I sat in the back.  Which I did ... when I wasn't weeping.

After Shostakovich we had an intermission and then finished with Mozart's String Quartet in C Major, K. 515.  All three pieces were so utterly different and yet were like the perfect three-course meal.  Mozart's piece was so rich, like a dessert.  It was deep and moving, almost as if a satisfied acceptance of the darkness of Shostakovich.

Whoever put the performance together is bloody brilliant.  The price of the series tickets was paid back to me many times over with just the first performance.  In fact, $15 was a mere pittance to pay for such a gift as that, to sit and have such magnificent music swirl around you, filling both the room and your being.

It wasn't that music, but I had a thought, today, about music.  One of the things that has stuck in my head is how Mary's husband said he enjoyed singing hymns in a full house, being the pastor of a small church.  A day or so later, I was reading about folk holding hands in prayer.  Mainline evangelical folk.  And it struck me: Is the fellowship of holding hands in prayer in the mainline evangelical world (which I miss more than words can explain) akin to the fellowship of Lutherans singing hymns together?  

Were that the case, a few of the confusing puzzle pieces rattling about my head, would fall into place.  I've never understood the passion of folk speaking of Lutheran hymnody nor the almost ... antagonist response to the idea of holding hands whilst praying.  I mean, not really any of the Lutheran folk I've ever met pray outside of church and home, home being in private, personal, mostly by yourself or with family.  Maybe singing the hymns is akin to praying, and thus the fellowship.  I don't know.

I do know that I miss praying with others, as I've said.
Miss it so much it hurts.
Hurts beyond words.

Inching ever closer...

Firewood Man was not able to come this weekend, nor today, which were two days he had planned.  So, I girded my loins and set about painting the fascia on the airing porch.

I was terrified the entire time.

So was Amos, but he faithfully remained beneath the ladder the entire time since he promised to catch me if I fell.

I couldn't figure out how to get the ladder on each side of the airing porch, so I actually ended up climbing off the ladder and just walking on the edge of the roof.  Terrified.  But I got the painting done.  I then walked around the very much shorter front edge of the roof to paint the other side.  Thinking that the nice weather and strong breeze were enough to speedy dry the first coat, I walked back around the front of the airing porch, holding on to the railing for dear life, painted a second coat on the first side, walked back around to the other side and painted a second coat on it, and then walked back to the ladder and carefully made my way back down.

You see, to get it in place here, one leg was perched on a rock.  GULP.

Even with the ladder in front, I had a really, really, really hard time making myself climb back up the ladder for the second coat on the front.

I had painted from left to right on the first coat, but I discovered that I can do a better job of cutting-in with my beloved Purdy brush if I paint from the right to the left.  There is not a single smudge of red on the underside of the airing porch deck!

While I was giving the front a chance to dry, I painted the bottom board that Tim attached to the new facia (the doubled framing).  I did not paint the facia itself because Tim is bringing a thin covering for it so the bolts are hidden the next time he comes.

Hopefully, that will be Wednesday.
Hopefully.

I really, really, really like how the airing porch looks.  For such a drastic change to the back of the house, the end result (next Spring once all the porch railing is painted) will be rather seamless.  At least, to me it will.

You cannot really see it, but the underside of the fascia is not painted on the sides.  I figured out that I could stand lower on a ladder and use my 1 inch angled Purdy brush to paint it.  I actually had my chin resting on the edge of the roof and found the slow, steady work a bit peaceful.  But since I was squatting and bending over to paint the two sides (something I should not have been doing), I could not figure out a way to get that bottom painted.  I am hoping that Tim has an idea of how to get the ladder on either side on Wednesday, when I paint the top coat.  The top coat will be, as with the other boards, painted with my precious, dwindling supply of the original house red.

After taking a nap, I made a Double Chocolate Dr Pepper Cake.  You see, Mary's husband has a proper appreciation for Dr Pepper.  I thought that it would be nice to eat a slice (huge slab) of cake with someone whom I am sure will find it most tasty.  After all, Ned, at my request, brought me some tostada shells since I have not been able to find them in the store for the past few months.  Soon, I will be having chalupas again!!

Climbing up and down the ladder was terrifying, for it really squeaks and creaks and bends when extended like that.  Moving it was almost impossible for me.  I had to huff and puff and rest each time I did.  The actual painting was rather easy.  On Wednesday, if Tim is able to come and finish the stair railing, he will be moving the ladder each time, so the painting should go even faster.  Plus, I just know he will hold it for me whilst I am climbing.

Tim really wanted to do the painting for me, since even he did not realized we had left that part out of our plan and agreed it would have been ever so much easier had we done it before the railing went up.  But he is really busy and my priority is the railing on the stairs.  Now, the paint has to go on when the temperature is high enough.  The railing could happen any time.  However, the weather will be warm again on Wednesday and Tim is planning on coming so I will at least have help.

Hopefully.

What do you think my neighbors thought seeing me walk around the outside of the railing on the airing porch??

A Word here and there...

Today, I watched my beloved Cowboys lose for the second week in a row.  Last week, I think it was a mistake to allow an injured player to talk himself back into the game.  The Cowboys success has not merely been because of Tony Romo, but because of the entire team.  Without Romo, the back-up quarterback and the rest of the team found a way to work together and score points.  I think they should have continued.

I watched them lose today because, my beloved Cowboys have developed this distressing pattern of shooting themselves in the foot.  The run, which has served them well thus far this season, just wasn't there today.  So, passing more is the logical course of action.  However, my beloved Cowboys seem to just love banging their heads against a brick wall.  SIGH.

Then, I watched the Broncos lose.  Get wallopped, actually.  It was difficult to watch.  I think that Peyton Manning is an honorable, respectful man.  There are not a lot of those kind of men out there, so I have been pulling for the Broncos, save for any conflict with the Cowboys.

The television was still on, so I ended up watching a show I never do: 60 Minutes.  One segment was about the Navy Seal who was on Team Six and wrote a book about the killing of Bin Laden.  He's in a mess of trouble, for which I disagree.  But in the segment he talks about a tiny bit in his new book.  It is a book about what he learned as a Navy Seal.  The tiny bit was the lesson of just worrying about your own 3 feet.

In his training, he was doing rock climbing on a cliff and became paralyzed.  He couldn't move.  His training person rappelled over and told him to mind his own 3 feet.  The guy was puzzled, until his trainer pointed out that all he could do was address the 3 feet in front of him, not the whole cliff face.  Armed with that bit of direction, the guy figured out his next foot and hand holds and proceeded to finish his climb.

When I heard that, I thought:  Gee, Myrtle, there is your problem.  You care about things that are not in your own 3 feet.  Needless to say, it has been a pensive evening for me.

The person staying here is Mary's husband, whose attending a conference.  Two actually.  When he came home, he came upstairs to visit.  That's a mistake.  If you are willing to talk Scripture or Confessions with me ... well ... it is hard for me to not keep you up too late.

The conversation wended around several subjects, but we did end up talking about Matthew's Jesus.  You see, I have finished the commentary.  I stopped writing about it because I have been very distressed with Matthew's Jesus.  It is not the commentary Michael Card makes about the Gospel of Matthew, but the words Jesus speaks himself.

Mary's husband had two things for me to consider.  The first was asking me about the sermon on the mount.  Well, that's where my trouble began, because my first thought in reading it was:  I know Jesus is the one giving the sermon here, but this is not a sermon I want to hear.  Where's the comfort???  Ned asked me what Matthew put in his Gospel immediately following.  What happened when Jesus came down the mountain?

The leper came to Jesus and said, "If you will, please heal me."
Jesus did.

When confronted by a sermon that appears to lean so heavily on the law, albeit it a new law which is not actually law, the response we might have is to look at our diseased flesh and ask Jesus if He will heal us.  The answer will always be the same.  Yes.

Mary's husband also suggested that I read through the commentary one more time, thinking about how a literary text's beginning is almost always connected to the ending.  Think about how Jesus the king had no authority or power and had to flee to escape death and yet at the end of the Gospel text Jesus the king had all authority and power even over death and look at how He used it to instruct His disciples.

I had just about decided to try and set aside my ... terror ... over Matthew's Jesus and start reading Luke's Jesus.  Now, I want to read the commentary on the Gospel of Matthew yet again to see if I can see the Jesus Ned talked about.

I'm typing this out on the airing porch.  Could I be addicted to that bit of sanctuary?  It is a bit nippy, to be sure, but the wild winds have died down.  I thought Amos and I could be out here for a while before frost bite set in.  The quilt I'm using out here is not quite thick enough.  I have my grandfather's Army blankets from WWII.  I bet they would keep us warmer.  Tomorrow,  I would like to dig them out.

Before coming out here, I watered all the plants in the solarium.  Amos happily lounged upon one of the twin beds in there.  My puppy dog is as besotted with the solarium as I am with the airing porch.  Anyway, any qualms I might have had about the rosemary bushes have been dispelled.  They have all new branches from my heavy pruning.  Basically, that means that I might could learn to be a better sharer of rosemary butter because I think I will be having copious amounts of rosemary all winter long.

I just love the smell of wet soil.

Sitting here, starting to think about what I learned about the magi and the idea of Jesus the king, from exile to triumph, maybe this time through the commentary will be ... better.  I am ever so thankful that Michael Card wrote his commentaries.  I am rather confident that anyone else reading the one on Matthew would be in raptures, the way I still am about Mark's Jesus.  It is just that the Gospel of Matthew is a bit difficult for this particular person.

I want to flee from it.
I want to wrap my arms around it and hang on for dear life until I no longer fear it.

Need I even mention that part of our discussion was about the Psalter?  I got to share my five Go-To Psalms that I believe would cover any situation in a pinch.  The last one, Psalm 104, I read to him.  Weird, eh?  Reading a psalm to someone whose vocation is a pastor?  I heartened myself up hearing that Word of God in my ears as I read to him.  And that was my point.  No matter what is going on in your heart or your mind or your body ... reading that Psalm is this glorious reminder that God is mighty and powerful and yet so intimately connected to all of creation.

All of creation.
All.

What are my five Go-To Psalms?

Psalm 27:  You're being assaulted on all fronts and want relief and all that desire is boiled down to just one thing: to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Focus.  Focus on what you need in the midst of the maelstrom swirling about you.  But, hey, it's okay to also ask that God doesn't forget about rescuing you and defeating your enemies.

Psalm 42:  Why is my soul in despair?  You long for the Word of God, but your soul in is despair.  You know these good things of God to be true, but your soul is still in despair.  Well, hey, that's okay.  God gave you a prayer that lets you know that He knows that even knowing Him and all that He has done for you you can still find yourself in despair.  That's life in a fallen world.  God understands.

Psalm 51:  You're forgiven.  God doesn't need you to go out and make yourself better.  He knows you've messed up and forgives you.  Knowing, actually, that you are going to mess up, God gives you the words to pray to be renewed, to be cleansed ... to be forgiven.  To be forgiven and to know that you will be forgiven.  The promise received and the promise to come all in one.

Psalm 77:  It can happen.  You can start thinking that God has left you and that nothing is going to be okay, that He's changed.  Then, you realize that it is your upsettedness that is making you think God changed, not that He actually changed.  So, remind yourself of who He is and what He's done.  It's okay to find yourself having a wrong thought, a bad thought, just follow the plan of the prayer and replace the wrong thought with what is true.

Psalm 104:  Man!  God is powerful and mighty and cares about every facet of this world.  He cares about it and cares for it.  And so sing about it.  Sing about of all those wonderful things until the wonder dispels the darkness within and leaves you with the glorious and comprehensive reminder of just how connected God is to this world ... and likewise to you.

Seriously, it doesn't matter that you might not know what to say to someone.  God does.  And He gave us His perfect word in such abundance to speak into the ears of those who are in need.

Oh, yes, when in doubt, you can also throw in John 1:1-5.  Or read it even when you are not in doubt.  Hey, it can be that antiphon thing, that little bit you begin with and then repeat at the end.

Less is not always more...

We had our first snow last night.

Yes.  Snow.

The front that came through was so windy that it was as if the wind was wrapping its hands around my house trying to pry anything and everything away.  The rocking chair went nuts.  Pieces of my gutter landed in my neighbor's yard (the gutter that has been lying atop my rock river ever since demolition day).  The wine crate rattled around the airing porch until I rescued it.  My magnolia tree lost 2/3rd of its leaves in a very short time.  And, when I went to take Amos outside to tend his business, I literally was knocked to the ground by a gust of wind.  Thankfully, however, even though it sounded like all of the siding was being ripped away from the upper part of my house, it remains intact.

That was the most ferocious storm-that-wasn't-a-storm that I have ever experienced.

I have someone coming to stay for a few days, so I was cleaned the toilet in the basement (how is it that a toilet that is not being used can get dirty??????) and went to fetch orange juice and bananas, since that was the response back to the question: what can I have in the house that you would like to eat or drink.  I know Becky is longing for the orange juice.

That is the extent of my hospitality, because 1) I asked that the sheets be changed before departure and 2) I decided not to strip the bed to put on the heated mattress pad, but rather point out its location in case it is desired.  I am an exhausted, disabled person, after all.

I did turn the heat up tonight to start warming up the house.  Seriously, it is already 10 degrees warmer.  Really, I could have waited until tomorrow afternoon before cranking up the thermostat, but I told myself that I need to check to see how long it would take to warm up once I started using the heat.  That's the blessing of a guest:  no guilt about an un-miserly use of heat!!

I fetched the orange juice and bananas (using the money I got back from my shopping trip on Tuesday via Walmart's Savings Catcher app) on the way home from the symphony.  Yes, tonight was the third performance.  I wouldn't have known that if both my phone and computer had not reminded me.

Because it is a bit cold outside and my abdomen has been extra swollen for days, I had a difficult time finding something to wear that was both warm and painless and going-to-the-symphony attire.  I finally rediscovered this very long sweater thingy with which I wear a sweater shell that has a turtle neck and paired it with winter knit pants from my working days that are too big, but were hidden by the tunic length sweater thingy.  Once I put on the shell, I noticed there was a stain on the front of it.  Being the now very, very, very practical and pragmatic Myrtle, I simply wore the shell backwards and then tossed it into the laundry basket when I got back home.

Yes, I remembered to cut out the tag so that it was less obvious that I was wearing it backward.
No, I did not take a photo of myself.

Tonight's performance was dedicated to a longtime patron of the symphony who died a year ago tomorrow.  Because he was instrumental (pun intended) in getting full-time salaried endowments for each of the first chairs for the strings (I think), the first half of the performance was three (not the usual two) pieces, all of which were more of ensembles than orchestras.

The first of the three, Concerto Grosso in B-Flat Major, Opus 6, No. 5, by Charles Avison was interesting.  First, the conductor admitted that he was on his way to a football (English soccer) match when he saw a plaque marking some famous person and stopped to see who. It was Avison.  So, soccer matches can actually affect a symphony performance!

Second, it was like being at a dance.  Well, what I imagine being at a dance in eighteenth century England was like.  Engaging, relaxing, a break from everyday life.  Plus, reading the description of the piece in the notes made me realize just how poor my vocabulary development has become.  Do you know what "gigue" means???

Tonight really was a cello fest or fete or both.  The second of the three pieces was Antonio Vivaldi's  Concerto for Two Cellos in G Minor, RV 531.  I was unfamiliar with the music, but who in the world could not savor Vivaldi??  The cellists were two members of the orchestra and, to me, were rather impressive.  One of the parts seemed far more difficult than the other.  But, then again, perhaps playing subtly around a whirlwind part ever so seamlessly was the harder task.  By the end of this piece, if you are a cello fan, you probably thought you had died and gone to heaven.

Igor Stravinksy's Concerto in E-Flat, "Dumbarton Oaks" was the final piece in the first half.  My life would not have been poorer had I not heard it.  Whilst I did not wish to flee from the room, as I did with the other piece I disliked last spring (I think it was), I did struggle the whole three movements trying to find just one segment I found pleasant to my ears.  I cannot say that I did.  I do not care for this composition at all.

Then came the second half of the evening.
Johanne Brahms' Symphony No. 2 in D Major.
BLISS.

This piece is everything that I love about classical music. It was sweeping and stirring. It was peaceful.  It was so beautiful that I found myself weeping that God would gift the world with such a work of art.  It had no triangles or symbols or xylophones.

The audience was on its feet immediately.
I might possibly have whooped and hollered a bit myself.

The musicians who came to the last performance commented that the Fort Wayne Philharmonic is not a first tier orchestra.  Frankly, I took umbrage at the comment.  The orchestra certainly plays at a very high level.  And I would argue that the conductor is at the top of whatever a first tier would be.  Never have I seen a conductor who worked so hard to prepare an audience for what they were about to hear.  He raises the level of engagement before he even lifts his baton (or whatever that thing he waves around is).  Yes, mine is an un-tutored ear, but I know what poorly played music is like and I doubt the audience would shout so loud if they were listening to a second tier performance.

From the first note, to the last, the Brahms was incredibly satisfying.  Now, to be fair, I will admit that going from smaller ensembles to a full orchestra would, of course, change the experience.  But the entire room was filled with incredible music.  I was enveloped and carried away to a place I have yet to be at the symphony.  Not once, during the piece, did I start to marvel at how any one individual can envision how all those instruments will sound together and then write that music down.  I did not think about nature or dancing or war or any of the themes that have been so apparent, at times, in the concerts I have attended.  This piece was pure musical magic or magical music.  It drowned out all thought and demanded that there only be music.

And, for a time, that's all there was in the world.

You know, Avison was the organist and music director of St. Nicholas Cathedral in Newcastle Upon Tyne.  Vivaldi, known as the red priest, took his holy orders as a youth.  For all the bad things being blamed on the church these days, it would do the world good to be reminded that an awful lot of beautiful, incredible, un-matched music came from its members.

Other words I need to look up in the dictionary besides gigue:

• contrapuntal
• coda
• recapitulation
• delectation

Should I mention that the conductor also uses the word "whilst" in his writing??  A learned man to be sure.  Those British sure know how to proper schooling.  Forget about studying for the SATs.  Just watch British television.  Even reality shows.  You'll have a constant vocabulary lessons.  David Tennant first won my heart when he used the word "churlish" on the Graham Norton Show.

The one thing I loathed most about my career in marketing, communications, resource development, and knowledge management (life in the non-profit world requires the wearing of many hats) is how every single senior management person I ever worked with beat the drum on the need to dumb down written text and eliminate as many polysyllabic words as possible.  The mentality that folk should never have to use a dictionary whilst reading text is just plain wrong.  However will we learn, then?  I absolutely do believe that it is important to know the difference between a termagant and a curmudgeon.

I would be every single Taco Bell gift card that might come my way in the rest of my life that the program notes for the Fort Wayne Philharmonic contain at least 40% polysyllabic words, many of them four syllables!  And, for the record, if you look around during a performance, you won't have to move your eyes very far before finding someone reading that dense, rich, complicated, and long text of the program notes.

Less is not always more.

A little bit of cleaning and organizing does a body good...

You know the movie "The Birds"?

You have to peer closely to see the masses of birds in that ginormous tree, but the sounds you hear are their exchanging neighborhood gossip!

Wild!

For one who has whacky blood sugar crashes, oft due to responses to food magnified/skewed by dysautonomia, I found this article to be great news.  The point:  left over pasta is healthier for you because the heated starches become resistant to breakdown into simple sugars, resulting in less calories.   In the study, the blood sugar spike/glucose response was 50% less in reheated left overs!!  How cool is that?!  So, that means, for me, my freezer food cooking is both healthier and safer when it comes to the pasta dishes that I make!

Speaking of freezer cooking, Wednesday I finally divided up the chicken I bought on Tuesday.  No matter that the packaging is marked "boneless skinless" chicken, I still have trimming to do.  Yesterday, whilst I was working on that, and matching smaller breasts with large ones so that my divisions came out more equal, I got the rather brilliant idea of putting four in one bag, since it takes four breasts to make the Chipotle Chicken Chili.  You see, whilst I will reuse ziploc bags that have had scrapes or bread or anything that is not raw meat in them, I do not reuse raw meat bags.  This saved me two quart bags and took up one of the old pizza gallon bags I had in there (yes, I mark up my bags).

The other idea I had was to go ahead and make more of the chicken for Lemon Chicken Gyros with Tzatziki and Feta, since I had put the last container of that in the refrigerator to thaw for my meal today and I had all this not-yet-frozen chicken meat in front of me.  For the first time, I made a double batch, and even stretched it from 8 servings to 9.  Of course, that will make my gyro dough balls not match up to my lemon chicken servings.  The best part about making the chicken was that I used oregano and thyme from my raised herb bed!

Since I was tired after "processing" my packages of chicken, the lemon chicken marinaded for about four hours.  I always let it marinade the minimum of one hour, but letting it go longer sure is tasty!  When I ate my gyro today, I was giddy at the thought of my freezer having all those servings back in it.  I do so enjoy the thought of balance in there.

My next lowest meal options are black bean soup and pulled pork for tacos.  That is okay about the latter, because ... well, I forgot I had bought the pork for this last month and bought it again this much.  Of course, I do have a most firmly held belief that one simply cannot have pulled pork tacos too often.

My contraband item this month was Honey Nut Chex.  Whilst I truly do savor chowing down on the stuff, as a monthly contraband item, it is rather disappointing in that the box is gone in the blink of an eye.

Last night, I had a bowl of Malt o'Meal for the first time in eons.  I had forgotten how much I love the stuff.  Oh, how I loathe that kind of forgetting.  I heard someone mention it the other day and promptly added it to my grocery list.  As with Cream of Wheat, I always make it with half milk/half water.  And lots and lots and lots of butter and brown sugar, of course.  I don't get why folk think it is strange that I like Malt o'Meal.

Or peanut butter on carrot sticks, for that matter.

I had the Malt O'Meal to warm me up in order to spend some time on the airing porch.  Amos believes he should have had a bowl, too!

Anyway, budget wise, I did fairly well, even with the need for further milk and cucumbers later in the month.  I spent $125 on groceries and household.  That $25 below my lowest-ridiculous-target number and $50 my barely manageable, still rather low target number.  I did have my first inkling of what it is like to be beyond the donut hole.  Celebrex dropped from $220 to $23!  Now, before the donut hole it was $90.  Then $220.  Now, $23.  What the pharmacist could not tell me is if the Erythromycin was affected by being out of the donut hole since it was just under $2 different.  I think that ringing up the erythromycin tipped me past the donut hole and the price change was just market fluctuation.  If that is the case, picking up prescriptions next month might be a cause for much celebration.

The other drug that was affected was the larin.  It is $18 cheaper in the donut hole, so I have been picking it up as soon as possible in order to, hopefully, end up ahead two packets worth (42 days) going into next year.  Beyond the donut hole, the larin dropped another $15.50!!

What does that mean Myrtle math wise?  By the end of December, I will be able to replace my broken glasses ... almost.

The hard part is that I really, really, really want to understand what my medication costs will be next year.  I know roughly what they are before the donut hole.  I know what they are in the donut hole.  But I think I will not know what they are beyond the donut hole until I pick them up again November 27th and see if the Erythromycin is affected at all.  But, whist I do know that, with the Erythromycin, I will hit the donut hole faster next year, and thus greatly increase my monthly medication cost more quickly, I will also get beyond the donut hole sooner.  Not really understanding how the math works, even though I receive monthly reports, I think that I will hit the donut hole in April and get beyond it in August.  I wish there was a way to know what the yearly medication cost will be and then just average it out.  Right now, I have no clue what to set aside as a monthly savings, come January, for when I am in the donut hole.

Have I mentioned that I loathe math??

Today, I spent quite a bit of time cleaning up in the garage.  Even though Firewood Man is not finished, I organized all of the remaining construction materials.  I put away the wood that is still usable and the largest remaining piece of lattice.  I went through everything in the garage, to re-evaluate if I still need it.  And I swept the walls and the floor.

One of the things I cleaned and organized is this cabinet.  The locker portions are metal and the drawers wooden, with all sorts of dividers in them.  I used the large locker to put the left over soil, peat, and compost manure bags from when I filled the raised herb bed.  It also has a smaller cubical inside where I put the partial bag of ice melt.  I used the upper left small locker to store some shelves that I found in the basement utility closet and think might one day be of use.  [After all, Marie used one of my pieces of shelving to organize a workspace in her apartment last spring.]  I used the upper right locker to store the tarp I had to buy in Alexandria for something and have never found a home for since (it was too expensive to just discard).  And I used the lower left locker to store the partial bag of lawn fertilizer.  Since Firewood Man tends my yard, I no longer need it.  But none of my neighbors have wanted it and I, again, don't want to just throw it away.  Does lawn fertilizer expire???

[Yes, that is a plunger that you see against the wall.  I found a total of eight plungers when I moved into the house.  I kept one for each floor of the house and put an extra in the garage just in case.  The rest went to early visitors.]

[I know that is a large pile of lawn refuse bags to have left with winter just around the corner, but the burning bushes still need to be seriously pruned once they are naked.]

I couldn't finish cleaning and organizing the middle part of the workbench area because I did not want to step on the un-cut piece of lattice.  That is $30 I get back from Lowe's once Firewood Man returns it for me!

At the tippy-top of the photos, you can see the uncut 2x2s and the 1x4 that are left over from projects.  Although I do not have any other work left on my house that could possibly use them, you might notice that the wood scraps holding them up and the ones holding up all the screen door sections above the work bench are hung crooked.  Firewood Man doesn't know it yet, but I would like him to use the last of the wood to knock down those haphazard "shelf" supports and put up fresh ones.

I am of two minds about those two GREEN chairs for outdoor events.  I never go any place anymore, so if someone could use them, I think they should be passed on to a new owner.  But maybe someday someone might take me somewhere, to some festival or something, and I would need a seat.  Plus, they are GREEN, after all.  I will not discuss just how many times I've put them in my car to take to the donation center—even driven them to the donation center—only to take them back out a while later.

This might not look like visual rest, but believe me ... it most certainly is!  The brown bin, the contents of the trash can, and all those boxes Tim is going to take away once he is done (i.e., his truck bed is no longer filled with 1,001 tools and saws he needs to work here).  The very minute the handrail on the stairs is finished, those bags of mulch are going around the porch to cover up the bare earth (mud when wet).  That bundle of wood are the balusters that Tim is no longer able to avoid making the angled cuts for the stair railing!!  So, all of that, now arranged very neatly, will soon be gone, gone, gone!

Anyone need any bricks??  Those were left behind here and I cannot find a home for them.  SIGH.  I don't plan on keeping all those little scraps of wood painted the house red forever, but I do plan on keeping them until next spring or so until we are absolutely sure they are not needed for anything.

In case I never mentioned it, those boxes holding the kindling for my fires that Firewood Man spent a long, long, long time splitting down for me, are WWII ammunition boxes.  That still surprises me.

Anyway, I can envision the balusters, the mulch, the construction debris, and the boxes all gone, so this is an organized space to me.  All the scraps we are keeping for the moment are tucked between studs in two locations and none of the scrap wood that has been atop the extension ladder since Firewood Man built the closet in the basement living space has been relocated to a more appropriate location (mentioned above).

How is that for close parking??  If you know me at all, you will be in awe of what a miracle it was that I did not knock over the sawhorses and all the wood.

The pile on the workbench at the back wall and the last deck board on the sawhorses are returns to Menard's.  I sure am thankful for anything we get to return and reduce the cost of this easy-project-turned-save-the-back-of-Myrtle's-house endeavor.

One of the things that I had hung on a garage wall and forgot about when I moved here was the external auto CD player with a cassette speaker interface and motion-stabilizing platform from my previous car.  Magnavox.  Great quality.  I never knew what to do with it, because I loathe throwing away perfectly usable technology.  However, who in the world would want such an ancient device?  It turns out, I would!  Actually, I very much wanted the very lightweight headset I found in the case.

Light weight.
Headset not earbuds that constantly fall out of my ears.
Lightweight headset that bows away from the sensitive nerves on either side of my head.

Oh, my!  What a find!

I decided to put the auto CD for cassette players contraption in the donation bag I started when I spent two days dusting upstairs a while ago and went through all the closets again.  Maybe ... just maybe ... someone might could use it.  And I went inside and listened to a TV show without any pain and yet able to hear all the sounds!  I was also happy to have my vehicle back in the garage, instead of outside where all sorts of bits of no-longer-growing things are falling and sticking to it.

It still needs a bath though.
As does Amos.
Almost.

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.